Antiwar.com

Antiwar.com is a website that describes itself as devoted to non-interventionism and as opposing imperialism and war. It is a project of the Randolph Bourne Institute. The website states that it is "fighting the next information war: we are dedicated to the proposition that war hawks and our leaders are not going to be allowed to get away with it unopposed and unchallenged."^[1]

History[]

The site was founded in December 1995, as a response to the Bosnian war. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation, operating under the auspices of the Randolph Bourne Institute, based in Atherton, California. It was previously affiliated with the Center for Libertarian Studies and functioned before that as an independent, ad-supported website.^[2]

In 2011, the site discovered it was being monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.^[3] After their Freedom of Information Act request failed to produce results, they worked with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California which in May 2013 filed a freedom of the press lawsuit for full FBI records on Antiwar.com, Eric Garris and Justin Raimondo.^[4][5] 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.^[6][7] Eric Garris demanded the FBI correct its file.^[8] In September 2019, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FBI must delete its memo documenting Garris' First Amendment activities.^[9]

Stance[]

The site's first objective "was to fight against intervention in the Balkans under the Clinton presidency." It "applied the same principles to Clinton's campaigns in Haiti and Kosovo and bombings of Sudan and Afghanistan." Antiwar.com opposed the US wars in Iraq^[10] and Afghanistan^[11] and generally opposes interventionism, including the US bombing of Serbia and continuing occupation of Afghanistan. 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.^[12] Wen Stephenson of The Atlantic described the site as marked by "a decidely [sic] right-wing cast of thought."^[13] Its founders characterize themselves as libertarians,^[14] and the two principal co-founders were involved in libertarian Republican politics, at the time.

The site features many writers from across the political spectrum, including conservatives such as Pat Buchanan, right libertarians such as Ron Paul, and left libertarians such as Noam Chomsky and Juan Cole, ^[15] and Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin.

Lawsuit filed against the FBI[]

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 American Civil Liberties Union.^[16] 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.^[17] 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.^[18] 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.^[19] Civil Liberties groups like the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation hailed the ruling as a victory for privacy rights of journalists and activists.^[20]

Personnel[]

Notable site personnel have included:^[21]

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

Notable contributors[]

Featured writers include:^[22]

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

Antiwar Radio[]

Antiwar Radio is hosted by Scott Horton (radio host) 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:

Reactions[]

According to Eric Margolis, "Americans would have been totally misled [in the run-up to the Iraq War] had it not been for the Internet sites like Antiwar.com; CommonDreams; LewRockwell; and Bigeye; and magazines like The American Conservative and Harpers."^[23] George Szamuely said in 2000 that "Antiwar.com now easily outshines the dreary foreign policy mags filled with the self-important vacuities of the Washington apparat."^[24] Antiwar.com is "a thoughtful, well-organized site," according to The Washington Post's Linton Weeks.^[25] Scott McConnell wrote in the New York Press that Antiwar.com was "strikingly successful" and "could claim more readers than Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly Standard once the [Balkan] war began."^[26]

See also[]

• List of anti-war organizations

References[]

External links[]

• Antiwar.com
• PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer, “Voices of Dissent,” May 24, 1999
• New York Press, Scott McConnell, “The New Peaceniks,” June 22, 1999.
• The Atlantic Online, “Not Your Father's Antiwar Movement,” April 14, 1999
• “Intrepid Antiwarriors of the Libertarian Right”, San Francisco Weekly, December 10, 2003.