Bill Kristol

From War Propagandist to Woke Propagandist

We’ve all heard stories of those who struck deals with the devil, trading their souls for power, wealth, or influence. Bill Kristol sold his, and got nothing but a cheap seat at the MSNBC table and a handful of retweets in return.

Once the smug, untouchable mastermind of modern neoconservatism who shaped Republican foreign policy for decades, he now spends his days catering to the same progressive activists he once ridiculed. I contend that his transformation wasn’t genuine. Instead, it stemmed from desperation, a bold attempt to maintain relevance after the party he once shaped rejected all that he stood for.

The depths of his humiliation were on full display when he recently tweeted:

“Stand with trans Americans. You don’t have to understand everything about the transgender experience to know that Trump’s acts of humiliation and dehumanization are unjust and dangerous.”

This is Bill Kristol now, breathlessly moralizing about Trump’s rhetoric like an aging professor desperate for tenure in a gender studies department. The guy who once championed preemptive war, shrugging off civilian casualties as the necessary price of American dominance, defending black sites, indefinite detention, and the carnage of Iraq and Afghanistan, now clutches his pearls over the supposed threat to trans people. The same Bill Kristol who dismissed Abu Ghraib as exaggerated liberal outrage, who brushed aside torture and drone strikes as necessary for maintaining global order, now shudders at the president’s rhetoric.

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This article was first published on Courage.Media. You can read it on Ayaan’s new platform below:

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The Kristol of 2003 would have mocked the Kristol of today. He would have called him weak, unserious, a squishy liberal begging for elite approval. It’s important to emphasize that he didn’t just support the Iraq War – he designed it. His think tank, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), wasn’t just a cheerleader for interventionism; it was the blueprint for the Bush administration’s foreign policy, the intellectual engine behind America’s march into endless war. Kristol wasn’t some backroom strategist – he was everywhere, the go-to guy for cable news whenever a network needed a “serious” conservative to justify another invasion, another bombing campaign, another flex of American empire. The only thing Bill Kristol took more seriously than American hegemony was his own importance in shaping it.

President George W. Bush pictured after signing H.J. Resolution 114, which authorized the use of force against Iraq.