The Trotskyism allegation against Neocons

Critics of neo-conservatism have charged that neo-conservatism is descended from Trotskyism, and that Trotskyist traits continue to characterize ideologies and practices of neo-conservatism. During the Reagan Administration, the charge that the foreign policy of the Reagan administration was being run by Trotskyists: This claim was called a “myth” by Lipset (1988, p. 34). This “Trotskyist” charge has been repeated and even widened by journalist Michael Lind in 2003 to assert a takeover of the foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration by former Trotskyists; Lind’s “amalgamation of the defense intellectuals with the traditions and theories of ‘the largely Jewish-American Trotskyist movement’ [in Lind's words]” was criticized in 2003 by University of Michigan professor Alan M. Wald, who had discussed Trotskyism in his history of “the New York intellectuals”.

The charge that neoconservativism is related to Leninism has been raised, also. Francis Fukuyama identified neoconservatism with Leninism in 2006. He wrote that neoconservatives: