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Justin Raimondo (born Dennis Raimondo;[1] November 18, 1951)[2] is an American author and the editorial director of Antiwar.com. He describes himself as a "conservative-paleo-libertarian."[3][4]

Early life and education

Born in White Plains, New York, Raimondo's family moved to Yorktown Heights, New York, when he was very young, and he grew up there. Raimondo describes himself as a "bad kid"; to deter him from this path he spent one year at a Jesuit-run school in upstate New York. Around this time, he took an interest in Objectivism.[5] Later, he joined Young Americans for Freedom. In the 1970s, he became active in the Libertarian Party. He "joined the party in 1974, and was active in the MacBride for President campaign, the LP's second White House bid."[6] With Eric Garris, he organized the "Radical Caucus", which brought them to the attention of the libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard. In 1983, after a schism in the Libertarian Party, Raimondo left and attempted to organize a libertarian faction in the Republican Party known as the Libertarian Republican Organizing Committee. After 1989, Raimondo again began working with Rothbard in the anti-war, paleoconservative John Randolph Club.

Career

In 1980, Raimondo ran for public office for the first time. Running as a Libertarian candidate for the 16th district seat in the California State Assembly. Raimondo received 4,730 votes[2] for 7.7% of the vote.[7] In 1982, Raimondo ran for California's 5th district seat in the United States House of Representatives as a Libertarian, against Democratic incumbent Phillip Burton and Republican challenger Milton Marks. He received 14.2% of the vote.[8] In the 1996 U.S. congressional elections, Raimondo ran as a Republican candidate in California's 8th district against Nancy Pelosi. While he championed conservative and libertarian causes in general, the main emphasis of his campaign was his opposition to the deployment of U.S. troops in the Balkans and, in particular, Pelosi's vote to that effect.[9] Raimondo received 25,739 votes [10] for 12.39 percent of the vote while Pelosi got 84.34 percent.[11]

During the 1992, 1996, and 2000 presidential elections, Raimondo supported the campaigns of Pat Buchanan, both as a Republican and in the Reform Party. As he is openly gay,[12] his support of the social conservative Buchanan attracted considerable attention.[13]

In 1994, Raimondo was the San Francisco coordinator for the "Save our State" Proposition 187, which would have barred taxpayer funding of non-emergency services to illegal aliens in California.[14] The measure was passed by California voters, but later suspended from going into effect by a federal court.

At the end of 1995 Raimondo and Garris launched Antiwar.com.[15] In 1999, with the Clinton administration's military intervention in the Kosovo war, the site became a full-time effort, providing a platform for their opposition to foreign intervention. Raimondo has been a vocal critic of the invasion of Iraq and the ongoing occupation.

In 2004, he supported Ralph Nader for President, and explained his reason for this in an article published in The American Conservative.[16]

In 2008, he frequently wrote admiringly of Ron Paul's Presidential campaign, and has also expressed support for Dennis Kucinich.[17] He has also been critical of Barack Obama's Cabinet choices as President,[18] along with the President himself. However, when Obama nominated former Nebraska U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel for U.S. Secretary of Defense to succeed Leon Panetta, Raimondo came out in support for Hagel.

Major ideas and recurring themes

Several themes recur regularly in Raimondo's writing, mostly derived from his libertarian ideological roots. He strongly opposes the Israeli occupation of Palestine. He believes that initiatory war is wrong, immoral, and counterproductive, that a small group of neoconservatives in both major American political parties have been responsible for "lying us into war" repeatedly, and that the ideals of the Old Right conservative movement have been consistently sold out since around the time of the Vietnam War, when neoconservatives united with religious conservatives to pursue an expansive foreign policy, often in support of Israel.

Raimondo argued in a 2003 Antiwar.com column that Israel exerts a dominant force in the formulation of American foreign policy.[19] Raimondo also believes the United States was led into World War II through lies by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and that the U.S. provoked a war with Japan deliberately through economic sanctions.[20] Raimondo's views have been compared by Christopher Hitchens to those of Charles Lindbergh,[21] whom Raimondo describes as an "American hero sprung from the heartland."[22] Raimondo has also written that Israeli intelligence operating in the U.S. had advance knowledge of the September 11, 2001 attacks.[23]

Raimondo believes the government should refrain from adopting laws that would prohibit discrimination against homosexuals.[12] He also is against the legal recognition of same-sex marriage and instead favors marriage privatization,[24] both mocking the idea that gays should adopt a heterosexual model of sexual and emotional relationships, and noting that as a libertarian he opposes "State incursion into such private matters."[25] He also has written that after years of persecution by the state, LGBT rights activists seek to "use the battering ram of government power" to actively intervene on behalf of homosexuals.[26]

Religious views

Though raised a Catholic, Raimondo describes himself as "not a believer."[27] Raimondo further describes his early interactions with the Roman Catholic Church and a local Jesuit seminary in Yorktown Heights as being influential early in his development, despite his rejecting the notion of God.[4] He describes being "taken with their engagement with ideas" and discussions of philosophy, which he was lacking in traditional school or from classmates at the time.[4]

Bibliography

In addition to his thrice-weekly column for antiwar.com, Raimondo is a regular contributor to The American Conservative and Chronicles magazine. He formerly wrote two columns a month for Taki's Top Drawer, but ceased in 2009.

He is the author of several books:

Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993), reissued in 2008 with new introduction by George W. Carey, by Intercollegiate Studies Institute ISBN 978-1-933859-60-6.

(Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993), reissued in 2008 with new introduction by George W. Carey, by Intercollegiate Studies Institute ISBN 978-1-933859-60-6. Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans (AFPAC, 1996).

(AFPAC, 1996). Colin Powell and the Power Elite (America First Books, 1996).

(America First Books, 1996). An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard , Prometheus Books, July 2000, ISBN 1-57392-809-7.

, Prometheus Books, July 2000, ISBN 1-57392-809-7. The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection, iUniverse, November 2003, ISBN 0-595-29682-3.