“I left the meeting with them hopeful. But one thing that came out that I thought was extraordinarily powerful was the power of hate, the unifying power of hate — that the same people who hate Palestinians, hate Muslims, hate Jews, hate blacks, are unified in their hatred. And we need to be unified in our understanding and in our love to find a path forward.”
That was Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Joe Biden’s ambassador to the UN, about “young Jewish and Muslim activists meeting met in New York “to discuss their experiences with antisemitism and Islamophobia.”
Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield is also on record that “we intend to do this the right way, so that we can create the right conditions for a safer, more peaceful future. And we will continue to actively engage in the hard work of direct diplomacy on the ground until we reach a final solution.” That invites a comparison with Ronald Reagan’s UN ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick.
The lifelong Democrat “studied totalitarianism all her life and was aware of its tensile strengths and subtle ruses for maintaining power,” wrote Peter Collier in Political Woman: The Big Little Life of Jeane Kirkpatrick. “She had cut her intellectual eye teeth on documentary evidence revealing the psychological and political consequences of the gulag state.”
Kirkpatrick met Hannah Arendt (Origins of Totalitarianism) and Franz Neumann, a Columbia University historian who gave her files on the inner workings of the National Socialist regime and they “changed me forever.” So ambassador Kirkpatrick would never use a phrase like “final solution” when dealing with Jews, or indulge a bogus term such as “Islamophobia.”
Kirkpatrick came to the attention of former Democrat Ronald Reagan though her 1979 Commentary essay “Dictatorships and Double Standards.” The future UN ambassador contended:
The failure of the Carter administration’s foreign policy is now clear to everyone except its architects.
Our “commitment to the promotion of constructive change worldwide” (Brzezinski’s words) has been vouchsafed in every conceivable context. But there is a problem. The conceivable contexts turn out to be mainly those in which non-Communist autocracies are under pressure from revolutionary guerrillas. Since Moscow is the aggressive, expansionist power today, it is more often than not insurgents, encouraged and armed by the Soviet Union, who challenge the status quo. The American commitment to “change” in the abstract ends up by aligning us tacitly with Soviet clients and irresponsible extremists like the Ayatollah Khomeini or, in the end, Yasir Arafat.
So far, assisting “change” has not led the Carter administration to undertake the destabilization of a Communist country. The principles of self-determination and nonintervention are thus both selectively applied.
If, moreover, revolutionary leaders describe the United States as the scourge of the 20th century, the enemy of freedom-loving people, the perpetrator of imperialism, racism, colonialism, genocide, war, then they are not authentic democrats or, to put it mildly, friends. Groups which define themselves as enemies should be treated as enemies. The United States is not in fact a racist, colonial power, it does not practice genocide, it does not threaten world peace with expansionist activities. . . . We have also moved further, faster, in eliminating domestic racism than any multiracial society in the world or in history.
The essay probably got by Sen. Joe Biden. As Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down) noted in 2010, the Delaware Democrat “makes few references to books and learned influences.” In 1984, the learned Kirkpatrick attended her first Republican convention and told the delegates:
When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the “blame America first crowd” didn’t blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States. But then, they always blame America first.
When the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the San Francisco Democrats didn’t blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States. But then, they always blame America first.
When Marxist dictators shoot their way to power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don’t blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States policies of 100 years ago.
But then, they always blame America first.
In 2024, Democrats still blame America first. Biden fails to distinguish friends such as Israel from enemies such as Hamas, and does his best to restrict Israel’s response to 10/7, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Biden’s UN ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield shows her ignorance by using “final solution,” the exact outcome Hamas and its foreign supporters have in mind.
The failure of the Biden administration is evident, even to its architects. In 2024 moving forward, it’s all about memory against forgetting.