I really am—honest—trying to write a rather long and complicated book and don’t have time for things like this. But when one’s good name is impugned, sometimes thumos (to coin a phrase) gets the better of one.

Professional X Troll James Lindsay keeps dragging me into his every little fever dream. I almost always let it pass, though I did once demonstrate that he knows nothing about Plato, Carl Schmitt, or political philosophy generally.

Now he has committed yet another disastrous unforced error, on some level realizes it, and is spinning frantically to direct fire outward at everyone who has shown that he has once again made an utter fool of himself.

The nub is—literally—this: Amanda Milius, a filmmaker and former State Department official, recently gave a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in Jerusalem. For the record, I was not there and did not watch or read the speech. But I have known Amanda for eight years and doubt I would be surprised by the content.

Lindsay spotted a picture of Amanda with a portrait of George Kennan in the background. He used this to insinuate that Amanda is somehow an anti-Semite. That’s right: Amanda Milius, a right-wing Zionist Jew who grew up in West Los Angeles, in the film industry (that notorious bastion of WASP Jew-haters) no less, who has visibly worn a Star of David around her neck literally every single time I have ever seen her, whose father is maybe the most right-wing Zionist since Menachem Begin, Amanda is somehow…an anti-Semite?

Nor did the absurdity end there. Indeed, the layers are so endless it is hard to determine the best order in which to lay them out. Let’s start with Lindsay’s “evidence.” Which is simply this: Amanda is standing next to a photo of George Kennan.

I happen to know this photo for more than one reason. First, when Amanda first took it, she showed it to several of us (I saw it on her phone; this was 2018) because she thought it was amusing. There she is vaping after hours next to the fabled first Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department! Vaping in what the Deep State calls “Main State” is a violation of Foggy Bottom protocol, to be sure. But when the picture was taken, it was something of a lark, and we all had a good laugh.

At that time, I had no idea I would one day occupy the very suite of offices where that picture was taken and pass that very same portrait every working day. Because you see, the Kennan photo is literally one in a long line (two rows of two, actually) of every single person who has ever held the office.

So, according to Lindsay, a lark photo taken in 2018 is supposed to be intended as a “dog whistle” to the “groypers” in 2026. For those not steeped in such matters, this gets complicated and absurd, but one must bear with me to see the full lunacy of this fake “controversy.”

The “groypers” are, not unlike James Lindsay, full-time X trolls. The key difference between Lindsay and the groypers is that Lindsay claims to be pro-Israel while the groypers are avowedly and vehemently anti-Israel. Which just adds a layer of bizzarro to this whole sorry episode. Amanda went to Jerusalem of all places to give a speech defending Israel, and for that deed James Lindsay accuses her of … anti-Semitism?

Lindsay also attacks the National Conservatism Conference, at which Amanda delivered that speech, which he hates just as much as the groypers. Therefore, based on Lindsay’s own “logic,” since Amanda Milius standing next to a picture of George Kennan identifies her with every opinion Kennan ever (allegedly) held, doesn’t hatred of NatCon make Lindsay a groyper?

In any case, since George Kennan is supposedly the linchpin of Amanda’s alleged “dog whistle,” one must ask: What’s the connection? It is true that in his diaries, Kennan records private remarks unflattering to Jews, sentiments common among upper-class WASPs of his day—not that this excuses anything. Kennan also opposed American recognition of Israel in 1948. But so did George Marshall, James Forrestal, and basically the entire American foreign policy establishment, for reasons of strategic judgment, however debatable, not from any nefarious motive.

But Lindsay doesn’t cite any of that, presumably because he doesn’t know any of it. Lindsay merely takes for granted that Kennan is somehow a bad person, so anyone who stands next to a picture of him must also be bad. That would be a long list.

But to repeat, Lindsay cannot explain why Kennan is bad. He doesn’t even really assert that Kennan is bad. He simply wants to smear Amanda, and Kennan is his vehicle.

Which is especially ironic since Lindsay’s X bio is “James Lindsay, anti-Communist.” George Kennan is literally the greatest and most effective anti-Communist who ever lived. When the entire American political, military, and foreign policy establishment was at a loss as to what to do about the rising Soviet threat, Kennan (in early 1946) cut through the fog with an unforgettable analysis. And—this is the most important part—not just a diagnosis, but a treatment.

George Kennan did what every would-be policy wonk spends his entire life dreaming of doing: he came up with a plan, which his superiors then adopted, which was followed by eight administrations of both parties for forty-five years, and which worked. And which threaded the treacherous waters between the Charybdis of “rollback” and the Scylla of appeasement.

For this great achievement, surely one of the greatest of the 20th century, Lindsay dismisses Kennan as “obscure.” I don’t need to say much on this point because Lindsay has justly been dogpiled for saying something so laughably false. But I will say at least this: George Kennan is the most famous and accomplished pure diplomat (which is to say, someone who did not go on to higher office) this country has ever produced. His “containment” is almost certainly the most famous single-word strategic concept in three thousand years of recorded history. And Kennan was the subject of one of the greatest works of biography of the 21st century so far.

To call George Kennan “obscure” is, simply as a factual matter, to show oneself to be an ignoramus. Why James Lindsay continually insists on advertising that fact, I find mystifying.

I have noticed that whenever Lindsay is caught in a humiliating error like this, he simply moves on, pretends he never said it, doesn’t defend it, doesn’t correct it, just acts like it’s not still out there in pixels, and sprays random fire in every direction. On the other hand, when called out for implying that Amanda is an anti-Semite, he puffed out a high-dudgeon denial. He didn’t say that in those precise words, you see. No, he just said that she was winking to the groypers who are all (or I at least assume them all to be, based on what I have read) anti-Semites. No one was buying that phony dodge, but it ought to be career-ending.

Anyway, leaving the matter at George Kennan’s alleged “obscurity” is to underestimate the magnitude of Lindsay’s malfeasance. He has taken it upon himself to decide who in American history is worthy of admiration and who is not, and to denounce as bad people anyone who admires one of those cast out of the pantheon by James Lindsay. If this sounds exactly like what, say, Nikole Hannah-Jones and Robin D’Angelo do for a living, that’s because it is. In other words, “James Lindsay, anti-Communist” is in fact in lockstep with the Communist, America-hating Left and works hand-in-glove with them toward the same ends.

Lindsay claims to be a supporter of Israel and is critical of the way certain quarters of the Right are turning (or have turned) against the Jewish state. OK. I share this concern, despite being (far) less of a traditional interventionist Republican hawk than James Lindsay. But he chooses as his target, of all people, Amanda Milius, speaking in Jerusalem, on the current state of the American Right. He denounces NatCon, and by implication Yoram Hazony, for…what? Is the latter man, whom the groypers denounce as a Zionist plant to destroy America, somehow also…anti-Israel?

I suspect what really freaked Lindsay out is not anything Amanda (or Yoram) did or did not say but simply what they represent: a new faction of the Right, gaining strength—because their arguments are stronger than their opponents’—that sees the impossibility of America forever remaining an overextended Atlas propping up every corner of the world. Lindsay wants to frame the issue as: you either take my exact same position on Israel, or you are anti-Israel. That framing is absurd enough on its face, but when your targets are Amanda Milius and Yoram Hazony, you are lashing out so blindly and wildly that your aim may as well be random.

It might also interest Lindsay to know that one of the topics discussed at NatCon Jerusalem was the desirability, to both countries, of Israel weaning itself off American aid. This is not yet a majority opinion in that country, but it is gaining ground, especially on the Israeli Right, a fact I learned when I first visited Israel in 2007. Are all adherents of this view—not just the Americans but the Israelis—also somehow anti-Semitic and anti-Israel? According to James Lindsay’s “logic,” they must be.

Why did Lindsay drag me into this? What is my even ostensible link to this non-controversy? It seems to be, though Lindsay does not mention it, my review of a biography of George Kennan, published in the Claremont Review of Books nearly four years ago. Lindsay never or rarely spells anything out, but perusing his tweets on this sorry business, his point seems to be: Anton is skeptical of further American aid to Ukraine; Anton reviewed a book about Kennan in which he said Kennan would be too; Milius posted a picture of herself next to Kennan; the groypers are pro-Russia; Amanda’s photo was a dog-whistle to Anton and the groypers (who Lindsay neglects to mention hate me and denounce me daily). It’s all literally that tenuous, about at the same IQ level as John Blutarsky’s grade point average: zero-point-zero.

None of this adds up on any level except as personal grudge. I know that Lindsay has one against me, but from what it arises I have no idea. I see that he claims he has “met” me. Not so. It is true that we once attended the same event—a Claremont Institute event, James; you decided to conceal that little detail from your acolytes—but we never spoke.

Lindsay insinuates in that same post that all of the supposedly dastardly Kennan worship he denounces me (and Amanda) for was present on that occasion. But that is also false. That conference’s topic was tech; its date was January 2021, two years before I even wrote my review of Frank Costigliola’s biography of Kennan, which I hasten to add was assigned to me by the editors of the CRB: I otherwise likely wouldn’t have even heard of it and certainly wouldn’t have sought it out. Kennan was not then on my mind at all, except insofar as I had read John Lewis Gaddis’s biography upon its publication ten years earlier. (Has Lindsay read either?) The idea that Kennan was some proto-groyper secret handshake Jew-hating link tying us all together is the fever dream of a malicious lunatic.

Lindsay began this sorry episode with a character-assassinating smear. As he spiraled downward when his cruelty and stupidity were pointed out to him, he went on to call Amanda “trash,” called Megan Basham an “awful person” for standing up for a friend, and accused Matt Peterson of having a “personality disorder.” These are not, to say the least, arguments from strength.

People can’t help being dumb, and stupid people can’t help being ignorant. But anyone can avoid malice, and anyone can avoid choosing as their profession spouting garbage and libeling others on the internet.

James Lindsay’s great ambition is to be the reincarnation of William F. Buckley, the man who gets to decide who is on the “legitimate” Right, and who must be excommunicated as part of the nefarious “far right.” What his qualifications might be for this position, to which he has appointed himself, are hard to say. Beyond his nominal “anti-Communism,” he rarely espouses any conservative opinions. He only, as the saying goes, “punches right.” He’s a sort of X version of David French, without the New York Times imprimatur.

Why does anyone on the Right listen to him? Or perhaps the better question is: Does anyone on the Right listen to him? Here I think most signs point to no, which is encouraging.

To end where we began, some will then ask: Why bother to respond at all? To which I reply: Are my friends and I obligated to be subjected to tidal waves of unanswered libel simply because we are supposed to be “above it”? We all have reputations and good names that James Lindsay routinely impugns. Is there some rule of justice or prudence that requires us to put up with that endlessly?

I have little expectation of changing James Lindsay’s behavior. But I hope that others will see through his bluster and see him for what he really is.