The Trump Administration’s “Alternative Right”: The Swamp Deepens…

Region:
In-depth Report:

The so-called “alternative right” is at least posing as holding its breath over the prospects of Bush-era Neo-Conservative John Bolton being appointed as US Secretary of State. However, with the appointment of Breitbart’s Steven Bannon as Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor of the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, Bolton and his Neo-Conservative agenda already has a solid foot in the door.

Breitbart News exists today as a living success story of Cass Sunstein’s cognitive infiltration doctrine. It infiltrated the increasingly independent and influential alternative media, and reasserted establishment talking points under right cover.

The actual alternative media focuses on issues with a perspective outside of the Western “left-right” paradigm. Organizations like Breitbart News, World Net Daily (WND), and others, have ceaselessly worked to repolarize audiences increasingly seeing through politics and identifying the bipartisan control corporate-financial special interests hold over Western society.

Bolton’s Breitbart Affair 

A search on Breitbart News for John Bolton’s name, reveals not only an extensive archive of articles focused on the otherwise obscure, Bush-era politician, but summaries of numerous interviews Bolton gave with Breitbart News itself.

In essence, Bolton, and many other characters brought into Breitbart News’ “alternative” media coverage, aim to reassert a right-leaning tinge to what is supposed to be an alternative media devoid and outside of “left-right” bias. This successful cognitive infiltration has in fact given rise to the label “alt-right,” which is essentially the establishment right retrenched within the alternative media.

Breitbart articles including, “John Bolton: U.N. Set to Elect Another ‘Secular Pope’: Hilary Clinton Will ‘Play Right into his Hands,” “John Bolton: I Wouldn’t Recommend Donald Trump’s GOP Critics for a Republican Adminstration ‘If My Life Depended on it’,” and “John Bolton: ‘It Would Be an Honor to be Considered For ANy Position to Serve the Country’ in Trump Administration,” are not only examples of this allegedly “alternative media” platform introducing and promoting an establishment figure, but includes radio interviews with John Bolton hosted by Breitbart News’ and Trump’s most recent appointee to his cabinet, Steven Bannon himself.

Articles like “Trump: We are Seriously Thinking about Picking John Bolton as Secretary of State,” may appear to simply indicate a possibility of Bolton joining Trump’s administration, but in reality, the love affair between Bolton and Breitbart News, directly involving Steven Bannon himself, signifies the ideology and interests Bolton represents are already deeply entrenched in Trump’s administration and agenda.

Whether Bolton is Secretary of State or Not, Continuity of Agenda Continues…

The agenda Bolton represents is not merely based on speculation, it can be discerned from Bolton’s own words in an op-ed he published this month in the New York Post under a section titled, “The Trump Doctrine.”

Bolton’s op-ed, titled, “Trump needs to reverse the Iran deal and assert our interests,” states:

Barack Obama’s foreign-policy legacy includes reduced American global influence, dramatically underfunded military and intelligence capabilities, and rising concern among longtime allies about Washington’s understanding of international threats. A world of nuclear-weapons proliferation and growing radical Islamic terrorism are the consequences.

For the “alt-right,” who temporarily flirted with the reality of “radical Islamic terrorism” being a creation of the West and its Arab allies, namely Saudi Arabia and Qatar – with Breitbart, WND, and other infiltrators’ efforts – this reasserted polarizing narrative peddled by Bolton is now music to their ears.

In reality, the Obama administration simply carried on the wars started under the Bush administration, expanding some, and starting others that Bush simply ran out of time to initiate.

US Army General Wesley Clark, in a 2007 Flora TV talk titled, “A Time to Lead,” would reveal this singular agenda by relating a conversation he had as far back as 1991 with then US Under Secretary of Defence for Policy, Paul Wolfowitz, by stating (our emphasis):

I said Mr. Secretary you must be pretty happy with the performance of the troops in Desert Storm. And he said, well yeah, he said but but not really, he said because the truth is we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and we didn’t. And this was just after the Shia uprising in March of 91′ which we had provoked and then we kept our troops on the side lines and didn’t intervene. And he said, but one thing we did learn, he said, we learned that we can use our military in the region in the Middle East and the Soviets wont stop us. He said, and we have got about five or ten years to clean up those all Soviet client regimes; Syria, Iran, Iraq, – before the next great super power comes on to challenge us. 

From 1991 onward, the goal of US intervention across the planet has been to establish deeply-entrenched global hegemony before another rising world power could balance American geopolitical domination.

Bolton himself, in his op-ed reaffirms his own commitment to confronting other rising powers, stating:

…it is critical the incoming Trump administration also fashion strategies to deal with longer-term issues like protecting America’s constitutional system from the advocates of global governance and the realities of international competition from the likes of China and Russia.

What is perhaps most ironic and telling of all of just how manipulative and disingenuous both Bolton and outlets like Breitbart News are, they have repeatedly and desperately deferred to the use of Islamophobia to polarize and reassert pro-war establishment narratives among the “alt-right.”

It is ironic because even in Bolton’s public op-ed in the New York Post, he is unable to identify, let alone condemn the actual state sponsors of terrorism, particularly Al Qaeda and the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS). He states:

In the midst of this wasteland that has developed over the past eight years, Israel and America’s Arab friends are desperately waiting for a strong American president who understands who his friends are. President-elect Trump can change the regional political dynamic quickly, signaling that US elections do truly have consequences.

These “Arab friends” of Bolton’s are in fact Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two nations that have been revealed during the Wikileaks John Podesta-Hilary Clinton e-mail deluge as direct sponsors of ISIS and other terrorist organizations.

One particular e-mail titled, “Congrats!,” would reveal this, with John Podesta stating to Hilary Clinton that:

We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.

And while people like Bolton attempt to pin the rise of ISIS on the Obama administration, support for terrorist organizations by the US for the specific purpose of overthrowing the governments of Iran and Syria began in earnest by the Bush administration as early as 2007.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in a 2007 article titled, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?,” would state unequivocally that (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

This is a process that began under Bush, expanded under Obama, and is being advocated – simply from a different perspective as a means of manipulating public perception – by Bolton and the interests he represents. It is a conspiracy that the alternative media has attempted to expose, under Bush, Obama, and now under the incoming administration of Trump, and a conspiracy various sections of the establishment media, including retrenched “right cover” like Breitbart have attempted to defend through a smokescreen of partisan politics.

Bolton’s Clique Also Sponsors Terrorism Directly 

Bolton, along with other prospective Trump appointees including Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich, have been lobbying for US State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization Mujaheddin-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian terrorist group that has killed US military personal, US civilian contractors, as well as Iranian politicians and civilians through decades of terrorist attacks both within and beyond Iran’s borders.

They have done this side-by-side the Saudi government, with Breitbart itself reporting in an article, “Iranian Regime Says Saudis Back Terrorism After Prince Faisal Attends MEK Rally,” that:

During Sunday’s rally, Prince Faisal, a member of the Saudi royal family and a former intel chief for the kingdom, said, “We support you, we are with you” to the sea of more than 100,000 people who had gathered at the Le Bourget convention center. “We stand by your side to help you reach your goals,” he added, indicating his hope to see the fall of the Shiite-backed Iranian regime, his Sunni nation’s archenemy. Saudi Arabia is itself an absolute monarchy.

Breitbart strategically omits that at the rally in Paris, John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, and Newt Gingrich were also present, pledging support to the terrorist organization – side-by-side a government admittedly arming Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

A 2016 rally in Paris attended by the Saudi regime and prospective members of Trump’s administration, promote “regime change” in Iran.

CNS News in an article titled, “Senior US, Saudi Figures Call for Tehran Regime to be Overthrown,” would however reveal the Neo-Conservative figures attending the same rally. The article would report:

Bolton, who has attended the annual NCRI event for a decade, cited Iran’s military intervention in Syria, in maneuvering in Iraq, and its support for Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists and for Houthi militia in Yemen.

CNS News’ admission that Bolton has attended NCRI events in support of MEK terrorists “for a decade,” reveals that Bolton lobbied for the group even before it was removed from the US State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, in direct violation of 18 U.S. Code § 2339A – providing material support to terrorists.

The hypocrisy is that while Bolton and his clique of “alt-right” infiltrators attempt to pin the rise of terrorism as an exclusive feature of the Obama administration, he himself and those amongst him have worked ceaselessly side-by-side the Obama administration, and literally shoulder-to-shoulder with the Saudi regime to sponsor terrorism and promote endless war across the North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

Those who think “Trump” is going to “change” anything find themselves precisely where liberals were in the wake of Obama’s victory in 2008. Despite evidence suggesting otherwise, the temptation to believe in “hope and change” led to an increasing indulgence in denial and excuses until liberals found themselves passionately defending policies they had once marched in the streets in opposition to during the Bush administration.

The alternative media was meant to eliminate the smokescreen of left-right partisan politics. Those infiltrating the alternative media, particularly outfits like Breitbart, are simply attempting to reassert establishment agendas under cover of now an “alt-right” perspective.

Will those lured into this “alt-right” bear trap pull their leg out in time? Or will they allow it to sink its inescapable steel jaws into their legs, trapping them for 4-8 years in a cycle of denial and excuse-making for why the wars, abuses, and decline of America both Bush and Obama cultivated, continue under Trump?

Real solutions, beyond partisan politics exist, but in order to see them, the smokescreen of left-right distractions must be cleared. The smokescreen exists precisely  to prevent us from seeing them.


Articles by: Tony Cartalucci

Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. The Centre of Research on Globalization grants permission to cross-post Global Research articles on community internet sites as long the source and copyright are acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original Global Research article. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: [email protected]

www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.

For media inquiries: [email protected]