Antiwar.com is a website that describes itself as devoted to non-interventionism and as opposing

imperialism Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic powe ...

and

war War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

. It is a project of the Randolph Bourne Institute. The website states that it is "fighting the next information war”.

History

The site was founded in December 1995 by

Justin Raimondo Justin Raimondo (born Dennis Raimondo; November 18, 1951 – June 27, 2019) was an American author and the editorial director of Antiwar.com. He described himself as a "conservative- paleo-libertarian." Early life Born in White Plains, New Y ...

and Eric Garris, as a response to the

Bosnian war The Bosnian War ( sh, Rat u Bosni i Hercegovini / Рат у Босни и Херцеговини) was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. The war is commonly seen as having started ...

. It is a

501(c)(3) A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of ...

nonprofit foundation, operating under the auspices of the Randolph Bourne Institute, based in

Atherton, California Atherton () is an incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, United States. Its population was 7,188 as of 2020. Atherton is known for its wealth; in 1990 and 2019, Atherton was ranked as having the highest per capita income among U.S. ...

. It was previously affiliated with the

Center for Libertarian Studies The Center for Libertarian Studies (CLS) was a libertarian and anarcho-capitalist oriented educational organization founded in 1976 by Murray Rothbard and Burton Blumert, which grew out of the Libertarian Scholars Conferences. That year, the conf ...

and functioned before that as an independent, ad-supported website. In 2006,

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

suspended it from its

AdSense Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advert ...

advertising network, which was then the source of a significant portion of its income, due to its hosting of explicit photos of abuses committed by United States troops at the

Abu Ghraib Abu Ghraib (; ar, أبو غريب, ''Abū Ghurayb'') is a city in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq, located just west of Baghdad's city center, or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000 (2003). The old road ...

prison in Iraq, categorised by Google as "gore".

Stance

The site's first objective "was to fight against intervention in the

Balkans The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...

under the

Clinton presidency Bill Clinton's tenure as the 42nd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1993, and ended on January 20, 2001. Clinton, a Democrat from Arkansas, took office following a decisive election victory over ...

." It "applied the same principles to Clinton's campaigns in

Haiti Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and s ...

and

Kosovo Kosovo ( sq, Kosova or ; sr-Cyrl, Косово ), officially the Republic of Kosovo ( sq, Republika e Kosovës, links=no; sr, Република Косово, Republika Kosovo, links=no), is a international recognition of Kosovo, partiall ...

and bombings of

Sudan Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...

and

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is borde ...

." Antiwar.com opposed the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and generally opposes interventionism, including the US

bombing A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-transmitted mechanica ...

Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia ( Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hu ...

and the recently ceased US occupation of

. It has also condemned aggressive military action and other forms of belligerence on the part of other governments, as well as what contributors view as the fiscal and civil liberties consequences of war. Wen Stephenson of ''

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

'' described the site as marked by "a decidely

right-wing Right-wing politics describes the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that view certain social orders and Social stratification, hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this pos ...

cast of thought." Its founders characterize themselves as libertarians, and the two principal co-founders were involved in

libertarian Republican In American politics, a Libertarian Republican is a politician or Republican Party member who has advocated Libertarian policies while typically voting for and being involved with the Republican Party. Beliefs and size The Republican Party has ...

politics, at the time. Salon.com describes it as "right-wing"; ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

'' describes it as "libertarian, anti-interventionist"; and James Kirchick in ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'' calls it a "paleoconservative clearinghouse". The site publishes opinion from a range of perspectives, publishing "critiques of American foreign policy from the far left and the far right" and featuring writers such as the

paleoconservative Paleoconservatism is a political philosophy and variety of conservatism in the United States stressing American nationalism, Christian ethics, regionalism, and traditionalist conservatism. Paleoconservatism's concerns overlap with those of the ...

isolationist Isolationism is a political philosophy advocating a national foreign policy that opposes involvement in the political affairs, and especially the wars, of other countries. Thus, isolationism fundamentally advocates neutrality and opposes entan ...

Pat Buchanan Patrick Joseph Buchanan (; born November 2, 1938) is an American paleoconservative political commentator, columnist, politician, and broadcaster. Buchanan was an assistant and special consultant to U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, ...

, right libertarians such as

Ron Paul Ronald Ernest Paul (born August 20, 1935) is an American author, activist, physician and retired politician who served as the U.S. representative for Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1976 to 1977 and again from 1979 to 1985, as we ...

, and left libertarians such as

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...

and Juan Cole, and Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin.

Lawsuit filed against the FBI

In 2011, the site discovered it was being monitored by the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice ...

. After their

Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request: * Freedom of Information Act 1982, the Australian act * ...

request failed to produce results, they worked with the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

of Northern California which in May 2013 filed a freedom of the press lawsuit for full FBI records on Antiwar.com, Eric Garris and

. The documents received in November 2013 indicated that the FBI in San Francisco, and later in Newark, New Jersey, began monitoring the site after Eric Garris passed along to the FBI a threat to hack the Antiwar.com website. The FBI mistakenly took this as an actual threat against its own website and began monitoring Antiwar.com and its editors. Eric Garris demanded the FBI correct its file. In September 2019, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FBI must delete its memo documenting Garris' First Amendment activities. In 2013, Eric Garris, Justin Raimondo, and Antiwar.com began a lawsuit against the FBI for incorrectly identifying Garris as a national security "threat," and conducting an investigation into Antiwar.com as a potential threat. The lawsuit was conducted by the

. One issue was that the FBI had incorrectly naming Garris as threatening to hack the FBI website (after Garris reported a threat he received against Antiwar.com). The federal court ordered the FBI to amend their files and issue a correction to Garris. In 2017, the court ordered the FBI to give Antiwar.com access to all the records of the investigation without redaction and to pay $300,000 to the ACLU lawyers. Antiwar.com lost the part of the case that claimed violations of the Privacy Act by the FBI. Antiwar.com and the ACLU appealed the Privacy Act claim and the appeal went to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2019, the 9th Circuit three-judge panel unanimously ruled against the FBI and order them to expunge all records from the investigation. Civil Liberties groups like the ACLU and the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ...

hailed the ruling as a victory for privacy rights of journalists and activists.

Personnel

Notable site personnel have included: *

(1951–2019), founder and editorial director * Eric Garris, founder, webmaster, and managing editor * Scott Horton (born 1976), assistant editor

Notable contributors

Featured writers include: * Praful Bidwai * Alan Bock *

Ivan Eland Ivan Eland (; born February 23, 1958) is an American defense analyst and writer. He is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute. Eland's writings generally propose libertarian and non-interventio ...

Philip Giraldi Philip Giraldi (born c. 1946) is an American columnist, commentator and security consultant. He is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a role he has held since 2010. He was previously employed as an intelligence offi ...

* Ran HaCohen *

David R. Henderson David Richard Henderson (born November 21, 1950) is a Canadian-born American economist and author who moved to the United States in 1972 and became a U.S. citizen in 1986, serving on President Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers from 19 ...

* Michael Scheuer *

George Szamuely George Szamuely (born 1954) is a senior research fellow at the Global Policy Institute. He was a frequent columnist for the Taki's Top Drawer pages of the ''New York Press''. Szamuely has also written for Antiwar.com, ''Counterpunch'', '' Com ...

The site syndicates columns and op-eds by such authors as: *

* Kevin Carson *

Alexander Cockburn Alexander Claud Cockburn ( ; 6 June 1941 – 21 July 2012) was a Scottish-born Irish-American political journalist and writer. Cockburn was brought up by British parents in Ireland, but lived and worked in the United States from 1972. Together ...

* Juan Cole * Jonathan Cook * Reese Erlich *

Robert Fisk Robert Fisk (12 July 194630 October 2020) was a writer and journalist who held British and Irish citizenship. He was critical of United States foreign policy in the Middle East, and the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians. His stan ...

Kathy Kelly Kathy Kelly (born 1952) is an American peace activist, pacifist and author, one of the founding members of ''Voices in the Wilderness'', and, until the campaign closed in 2020, a co-coordinator of ''Voices for Creative Nonviolence''. As part of pe ...

* Jack Matlock * William Lind *

John Pilger John Richard Pilger (; born 9 October 1939) is an Australian journalist, writer, scholar, and documentary filmmaker. He has been mainly based in Britain since 1962. He was also once visiting professor at Cornell University in New York. Pilger ...

* Gareth Porter * Charley Reese * Paul Craig Roberts *

Cindy Sheehan Cindy Lee Sheehan ( Miller; born July 10, 1957) is an American anti-war activist,Geraghty, Jim (2011-05-02)Cindy Sheehan: ‘If you believe the newest death of OBL, you’re stupid.’''National Review''. Retrieved May 2, 2011. whose son, U.S. Arm ...

* Norman Solomon

Antiwar Radio

''Antiwar Radio'' is hosted by

Scott Horton (radio host) Scott Horton is an American radio host and author. Career Horton hosts ''Antiwar Radio'' for Pacifica Radio's KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, as well as the podcast ''The Scott Horton Show.'' Horton has conducted over 5,000 interviews since 2003 ...

and others including Charles Goyette. It features interviews focused on war, international relations, the growth of state power, civil liberties, and related matters. Guests have included: * Mark Ames *

Julian Assange Julian Paul Assange ( ; Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army int ...

* David T. Beito *

James Bovard James Bovard (; born 1956) is an American libertarian author and lecturer whose political commentary targets examples of waste, failures, corruption, cronyism and abuses of power in government. He is a ''USA Today'' columnist and is a frequent c ...

* Francis Boyle *

David Bromwich David Bromwich is Sterling Professor of English at Yale University. Career After graduating from Yale with a B.A. in 1973 and a Ph.D. four years later, Bromwich became an instructor at Princeton University, where he was promoted to Mellon Profe ...

* Patrick Cockburn * Juan Cole * Robert Dreyfuss * Jeff Frazee *

Sibel Edmonds Sibel Deniz Edmonds is a former contract translator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the founder and editor-in-chief of the independent news website NewsBud. The FBI hired her as a translator shortly after 9/11 but fired her a ...

Daniel Ellsberg Daniel Ellsberg (born April 7, 1931) is an American political activist, and former United States military analyst. While employed by the RAND Corporation, Ellsberg precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the '' Pen ...

* Charles Goyette *

Glenn Greenwald Glenn Edward Greenwald (born March 6, 1967) is an American journalist, author and lawyer. In 2014, he cofounded ''The Intercept'', of which he was an editor until he resigned in October 2020. Greenwald subsequently started publishing on Substac ...

* William Norman Grigg *

* Nat Hentoff *

Robert Higgs Robert Higgs (born 1 February 1944) is an American economic historian and economist combining material from Public Choice, the New institutional economics, and the Austrian school of economics; and describes himself as a " libertarian anarchis ...

* Scott Horton *

Dahr Jamail Dahr Jamail (born 1968) is an American journalist who was one of the few unembedded journalists to report extensively from Iraq during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He spent eight months in Iraq, between 2003 and 2005, and presented his stories on ...

* Raed Jarrar * Karen Kwiatkowski * Jim Lobe * Trevor Lyman * Eric Margolis *

Ray McGovern Raymond McGovern (born August 25, 1939) is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer turned political activist. McGovern was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990, and in the 1980s chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the Pres ...

* Cole Miller * Brandon Neely *

Robert Pape Robert Anthony Pape Jr. (born April 24, 1960) is an American political scientist who studies national and international security affairs, with a focus on air power, American and international political violence, social media propaganda, and t ...

* Gareth Porter * Coleen Rowley *

Kirkpatrick Sale Kirkpatrick Sale (born June 27, 1937) is an American author who has written prolifically about political decentralism, environmentalism, luddism and technology. He has been described as having a "philosophy unified by decentralism" and as being " ...

* Michael Scheuer *

* Helen Thomas *

Christina Tobin Christina Tobin (born June 17, 1981) is an American activist and leader in the election reform and voters' rights movements. She is the founder and chair of The Free & Equal Elections Foundation, and president and chief executive officer of Fre ...

* Jesse Trentadue * Jesse Walker * Philip Weiss *

Andy Worthington Andy Worthington is a British historian, investigative journalist, and film director. He has published three books, two on Stonehenge and one on the war on terror, been published in numerous publications and directed documentary films. Artic ...

* Kevin Zeese

Reactions

''s Linton Weeks described it "a thoughtful, well-organized site" in 1999. Scott McConnell of ''

The American Conservative ''The American Conservative'' (''TAC'') is a magazine published by the American Ideas Institute which was founded in 2002. Originally published twice a month, it was reduced to monthly publication in August 2009, and since February 2013, it has ...

'' wrote in 2010 the ''

New York Press ''New York Press'' was a free alternative weekly in New York City, which was published from 1988 to 2011. The ''Press'' strove to create a rivalry with the '' Village Voice''. ''Press'' editors claimed to have tried to hire away writer Nat Hen ...

'' that Antiwar.com was "strikingly successful" and "could claim more readers than

Rupert Murdoch Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including ...

’s '' Weekly Standard'' once the alkanwar began." When Raimondo died in 2019,

Patrick Buchanan Patrick Joseph Buchanan (; born November 2, 1938) is an American paleoconservative political commentator, columnist, politician, and broadcaster. Buchanan was an assistant and special consultant to U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, a ...

said that "In the three decades since 011 no man in America worked harder or did more to resist the interventionist impulses of the American establishment and the wars they produced than Justin and his Antiwar website.” David Bernstein included it in 2012 among "far left anti-Israel sites that have ties to the anti-Semitic far-right or are known for playing footsie with anti-Semitism". Antisemitism scholar

David Renton David Lockhart-Mure Renton, Baron Renton, (12 August 1908 – 24 May 2007) was a British politician who served for over 60 years in Parliament, 34 in the House of Commons and then 28 in the House of Lords. Renton was Member of Parliament fo ...

in 2021 gave the website as an example of how "ideas

hich Ij ( fa, ايج, also Romanized as Īj; also known as Hich and Īch) is a village in Golabar Rural District, in the Central District of Ijrud County, Zanjan Province, Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also ...

started in the American far right... migrated into British left-wing circles without people having any idea where they began." Anti-fascist researcher Matthew N. Lyons describes the "paleocon-sponsored" website as an example of left-right alliance. In 2019, researchers from

The Open University The Open University (OU) is a British public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate students are based in the United Kingdom and principally study o ...

found that the crowdsourced MyWOT program labeled Antiwar.com as "trustworthy", while the OpenSources evaluator tagged the website as "conspiracy, clickbait and bias".Mensio, Martino and Alani, Harith (2019)
News Source Credibility in the Eyes of Different Assessors
In: ''Proceedings of the Conference for Truth and Trust Online 2019''.

References

External links

Antiwar.com
* PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer, �

” May 24, 1999 * New York Press, Scott McConnell, �

” June 22, 1999. * The Atlantic Online, �

” April 14, 1999
“Intrepid Antiwarriors of the Libertarian Right”
''

San Francisco Weekly ''SF Weekly'' was a free alternative weekly newspaper founded in the 1970s in San Francisco, California. It was distributed every Thursday, and was published by the San Francisco Print Media Company. The paper has won national journalism awards ...

'', December 10, 2003. {{DEFAULTSORT:Antiwar.Com American political websites Anti–Iraq War groups Criticism of neoconservatism Internet properties established in 1995 Libertarian publications Libertarianism in the United States Non-interventionism