As a committed and unapologetic neocon, Michael Rubin loves the idea of the old purges once common practice under his ideological forebears in the Soviet Union. The details of the infraction were unimportant – and to even consider the need for details once the Party has spoken was to court suspicion.

So Comrade Rubin is demanding a thorough denunciation of Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief-of-staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell (and academic advisor to the Ron Paul Institute). Rubin took to the website of his luxurious neocon Beltway sinecure, the American Enterprise Institute, to call for Wilkerson’s deportation to the gulag for severe ideological deviationism.

What was Wilkerson’s crime? Rubin first loosens up the crowd with some guilt-by-association accusations, the stock-in-trade of the neocons. Rubin begins by bringing up what he views as Donald Trump’s too-slow disassociation of himself from the KKK. “Unfortunately, wavering and silence in the face of hate isn’t new,” he continues.

But Trump’s crimes pale in comparison to those of Wilkerson, the think tank keyboard warrior explains. Lawrence Wilkerson “has increasingly descended into a fevered swamp of conspiracy and hate,” writes Rubin.

Has Wilkerson joined the KKK? Has Wilkerson joined the skinheads? Has Wilkerson joined the US-backed Ukrainian neo-Nazi government?

No! Even worse! Col. Wilkerson had the nerve to doubt the once-official US government story (long discredited) that Syrian president Assad used chemical weapons on his own people!

Never mind that the 100 percent proof of Assad’s responsibility promised by Secretary of State John Kerry has never materialized, and that even the Director of National Intelligence warned at the time that the case against Assad was “not a slam dunk.”

But it’s even worse than that according to Rubin:

According to Wilkerson, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons use was actually an Israeli false flag operation because, well, in Wilkerson’s world, it should be obvious to everyone that Assad is really a Zionist plant controlled by the Jews.

Like most neocons, Rubin is an inveterate liar and a man without principles.

Because Wilkerson said no such thing!

In a media interview in May, 2013, just after the chemical attack in Syria, Col. Wilkerson cautioned against a US military attack on Syria because there was no solid evidence tying the Syrian government to the attack. Here is what Wilkerson actually said:

‘This could’ve been an Israeli false-flag operation, it could’ve been an opposition in Syria,’ he added, saying that the attacks also could have been carried out by Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president. (The United States believes the Syrian government was in fact behind the chemical attacks.)

‘But we certainly don’t know with the evidence we’ve been given,’ he added. ‘And what I’m hearing from the intelligence community is that that evidence is really flaky.’

Could it have been an Israeli false-flag? Of course. It could have been an American false flag as well. Both countries have a history of false-flag operations. That’s not “fevered swamps of conspiracy,” it is called “history.” Could it have been the rebels? Of course it could have. Just last month the US State Department stated that ISIS has carried out chemical attacks in Syria and Iraq.

Wilkerson’s speculation in the absence of any evidence was nothing nefarious at all, then.

But truth is not Rubin’s game. What Rubin wants – what all totalitarians want – is to silence the opposition. With the surprise Russian pullout from Syria this week, the neocons are scrambling for a new casus belli to push the US into a full-out attack. Central to their efforts is to dust off the demonization of Assad and to divert attention from al-Qaeda and ISIS (their true allies in overthrowing Assad).

That means voices like Wilkerson’s, which are much appreciated on the antiwar Right and the Left, must be made unacceptable in public discourse. What better way to do that than to use the old bludgeon of accusations of anti-Semitism?

Not only is Wilkerson a raving anti-Semite, avers Rubin, but he dares appear on non-approved news stations like RT and PressTV!

Rubin’s vicious and savage character is further on display as he slimes Wilkerson’s new book even before it appears:

He is currently working on a book about foreign policy in the George W. Bush administration which, if he continues his dissent into conspiracy, might as well be a sequel to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

How does even AEI allow such vulgar vomit to stink up its website?

But after his blood-filled, fact-free denunciation of Col. Wilkerson is fully laid out, he whispers with a grin that there is one way to cure this little Wilkerson problem. There is one little thing that can be done to rid us of this troublesome Colonel: let’s get Colin Powell to deliver the coup de grace!

Concludes Comrade Rubin:

Wilkerson is entitled to his opinions, however feverish they may be. But Wilkerson derives his legitimacy from his proximity to Powell. A simple statement from Powell disassociating himself from Wilkerson’s views, conspiracies, and assistance to the propaganda arms of Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia might undercut the legitimacy of those views.

Let’s hope General Powell will avoid the sulfurous stench of Rubin’s breathy admonitions and stick by the good Colonel, who unlike keyboard warrior Michael Rubin actually knows a bit about the horrors of war.

Daniel McAdams is director of the The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity. Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.