What is going with the neocons’ alliance framework and its multi-front strategy right now is extraordinarily frightening. The Woke Left and MAGA Right are rookie leaguers in comparison, and the neocons, who have decades of experience in professional subversion and unlimited billionaire wealth behind them, are simultaneously working both angles to maneuver a return to power.
I greatly suspect that the natcons’ comparatively non-interventionist stance, at least publicly, is a total fraud that will be abandoned as soon as it is no longer useful. Remember that Dubya originally ran on a mildly non-interventionist program as well. I think the neocons are directing the natcons through organizations like Claremont and Thiel money, while publicly distancing themselves from the natcons and even having some of their kept journalists attack them in print (like David Brooks). Through the natcons and West Coast Straussians, the natcons have started bending the neo-reactionaries like Yarvin in their direction and are starting to make inroads into paleoconservatism, paleolibertarianism, and the populist right as well.
The neocons’ plan is to dupe the left with anti-Trumpism and dupe the right with anti-wokeism. I always thought that as the populist-right became more popular the neocons would form an alliance with the left in order to crush it, which they have done by aligning with the Democrats against Trump, but they’ve also formed a faux populist-right front movement that is now trying to coopt the populist-right and bend it in their direction by appealing to economic anxiety and anti-wokeism. Master Machiavellians, those bastards.
Bill Kristol, second-generation leader of the neocons, shakes hands with Peter Thiel, chief financial benefactor (at least publicly) of the neocons’ faux-populist front project, the “natcons.”
A “natcon” (from AEI) and neocon (Bill Kristol’s literal son-in-law) “debate” how to simultaneously coopt Trumpism along with liberal and centrist anti-woke opinion to bypass Trump and put another George W. Bush in power.
Tom Cotton, a leading neocon functionary, more or less revealed the neocon strategy in a recent interview. They’re hoping their friend Liz will finish off Trump so they can replace him with a more malleable figure.