Henry Kissinger was not a war criminal, says the Acton Institute, and other far right claims

For people who are regular readers of GRIID, you will know that since GRIID first became an Indy media site – providing on the ground coverage of local news, first hand accounts of social movements, acting as a media watchdog and monitoring systems of  power and oppression – that we have been writing about the Grand Rapids-based far right think tank, the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.

The Acton Institute went from being a small think tank in the early 1990s to a national, even global think tank, with connections to other far right/conservative institutions abroad, and ties to the State Policy Network, which acts as sort of a clearinghouse for think tanks across the US.

Even before GRIID came into being, several of us had been monitoring the Acton Institute through other Indy media sources such as The FUNdamentalist and Media Mouse, both of which are sourced at the end of SourceWatch’s information on the Acton Institute.

GRIID has been monitoring the work of the Acton Institute, in part because of their deep commitment to defending the system of Capitalism, but also because the think tank also embrace other far right perspectives, such as White Supremacy, an anti-LGBTQ stance, US Imperialism and a hatred for public education. However, on their most recent podcast, Acton Unwind, they might have produced their most over the top show ever.

On the Acton Unwind show for December 11th, they cover some of the recent activities of the Venezuelan government, the US Congressional Hearings on antisemitism and the death of Henry Kissinger, which they refer to as “Remembering Henry Kissinger.” The show is sort of a tri-fecta of far right ideology.

The podcast begins with a conversation about Henry Kissinger, where they read a bit from the Conservative Online source, The Morning Dispatch. A one point they talk down on the idea that Kissinger could have been a war criminal, saying, “The characterization that Kissinger was a war criminal is a bit overdone.” In addition, one of the guests on the show, although did not read Kissinger’s book on diplomacy, believes, “the book will be read for many years to come.” 

In fact, all of the participants on Acton Unwind, wax eloquently about Kissinger, that he was such a towering intellectual. It is unfortunate that the Acton Institute talking heads didn’t talk about the role he played in the Ford Administration, avoiding the abvious connection to Grand Rapids. Now, GRIID did a post about the legacy of Henry Kissinger, which you can read here, but if there is one source that you should read, check out the declassified US documents on Kissinger, since these documents properly frame Kissinger’s influence in US foreign policy as brutal and imperialist. 

Acton Unwind then shifts to talking shit about Venezuela, particularly Venezuela’s President Maduro whom the Acton talking heads refer to as an autocrat. This is consistent with the Acton Institute’s position on Venezuela, since Chavez was President, since he dared to challenge the US domination of Latin America.

The Acton podcast then ends with some discussion about the US Congressional  hearings on antisemitism on US campuses. Here, the Acton Institute also sources The Morning Dispatch, which essentially mocks the presidents of several US universities because they have “tolerated” students and faculty for being involved in criticizing the Israeli assault on Gaza that is taking place right now.

What you don’t find on Acton Unwind of the so-called hearings on antisemitism is that it is really just another form of McCarthyism. In fact, the editor of Jewish Currents,  Peter Beinart, in a recent interview on Democracy Now!, stated a much different critique of the Congressional hearings:

This really isn’t about those individual presidents. It’s about the fact that given the extraordinary slaughter that’s happening in Gaza, there is a movement on college campuses and across America for a ceasefire and to end American complicity in that slaughter. And in response to that, the effort is now to try to limit the ability of people who want to protest U.S. policy and support Palestinian rights from being able to organize on college campuses. So the reason that you’re going after these presidents is to try to set a precedent and bring in people who will be much tougher on restricting the ability of students and faculty and others who want to organize politically against this war in Gaza. This is what this is about.

As I stated earlier, this may have been the most ideologically-driven podcast from the Acton Institute that I have listened to, and it demonstrates how reactionary and far right the Acton Institute is on critical issues of the day. This is exactly why I can’t stress enough why it is important that we become familiar with the Acton Institute’s role in the larger far right movement in the US, and why I believe they not only need to be exposed, but they need to be resisted.