Workers of the world unite, you've got nothing to gain, but, your chains.
---From Serve the People American Style
Carrol Cox wrote:
> Lisa & Ian Murray wrote:
>
> > I guess Dolan will be getting an earful on this as well as a
> > bunch of other shit when he's in town later this week for a film premiere
> > that makes him the star...
> >
> > Ian
>
> He is getting an earfull all over. There follows an exchange between Chip
> Berlet and Dolan.
>
> Carrol
>
> *******
>
> Mike Dolan's response to Chip Berlet
> by Chip Berlet
>
> 22 May 2000 20:21 UTC
> ----------
>
> Dear Mr. Dolan:
>
> I certainly found your parody of Gregor Strasser amusing, and we all need a
> good laugh from time to time, but I do hope you will take the time in the
> next few days for a serious response to my original post.
>
> If you visit the following websites you will see there is considerable
> serious discussion on these matters already taking place.
>
> http://www.publiceye.org/Sucker_Punch/Clueless.html
>
> http://www.savanne.ch/right-left.html
>
> When "Right Wing Populism in America" comes out in August, I will send you
> a review copy.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Chip Berlet
> Senior Analyst
> Political Research Associates
>
> From: Michael Dolan [mailto:MDOLAN at citizen.org]
> Sent: Monday, May 22, 2000 3:14 PM
> To: cberlet at igc.org
> Subject: Mike Dolan's response to "Aryan Politics and Fighting the WTO"
>
> What is wrong with you people? Don't you know who the enemy is? It's not
> us. I'm part of a hard-working underpaid progressive tight little team that
> lost on NAFTA and GATT but led the fight on Fast Track, the MAI and against
> the WTO.
>
> The enemy is corporate rule and the political lackeys of big bizness from
> the global goober on down. I mean here I am up to my neck trying to
> forstall the corporate take-over of the Chinese mainland, the vote in a
> couple of days in the House, neck and neck with the 'free trade' lobby once
> again, hoping to frustrate the transnational corporate agenda without any
> help from you .... and all I get is inquiries about who picked Maude up at
> the airport a few years ago and why.
>
> PLEASE get real. This navel-gazing, lotus-eating, incestuous, constipated,
> masturbatory, canabalistic circle jerk of the left is distracting us all
> from the true fight, not to mention essential movement building. Here's a
> toll-free number to the capitol switchboard, courtesy of Motorola:
> 877-611-TRADE. Use it.
>
> Back to work,
>
> MD
>
> = = = = = = = = = =
>
> Original message posted to Right-left mailing list Right-left at savanne.ch by
> Chip Berlet 5/22/2000
>
> Dear Mr. Dolan:
>
> Well, it certainly does not move a discussion forward to call Angela either
> "an idiot or a digital agent provacateur" for being critical of your
> language.
>
> Angela is hardly alone in her concern that some in the anti-WTO movement
> appear to be insensitive to the way racist, xenophobic, and anti-union
> movements are seeking to recruit out of your coalitions.
>
> Why does Nader say in an interview he has been working in a coalition with
> Buchanan and his advisors for years, when you, Lori Wallach, and Joan
> Claybrook continue to deny it? And this goes back years to the days of the
> right/left coalition that regularly appeared on the right wing populist
> Chuck Harder radio program where Nader, Pat Choate and Jim Hightower were
> used by Harder to weave together right wing conspiracy theories about
> global power. I confronted Choate and Hightower about this on a Pacifica
> radio program and at that time there was a refusal to even acknowledge that
> there was a problem with right wing conspiracy theories being woven into
> the anti-globalization campaign.
>
> Of course in my view Choate is a right wing populist nationalist whose book
> on Japan as a global economic power was xenophobic.
>
> I was the person several years ago that talked to the Canadian delegation
> of anti-NAFTA activists who went to visit Nader in DC. They told the story
> of how they had been picked up at the airport by a person (Jock Nash) they
> later discovered was a right-wing anti-union business- nationalist lobbyist
> for the Milliken textile interests. Milliken is not just a major funder of
> the John Birch Society, but a notororious union-busting firm.
>
> Why would the Naderites send such a person to pick up an international
> delegation from Canada where the main base of support was trade unions? The
> delegation was upset and talking openly about it at the meeting in DC where
> I first ran into them. I spoke with Maude Barlow a year or so later at a
> meeting in Detroit, and she said that the left/right alliance still
> concerned her, but there seemed to be no recognition of it as a problem
> among the Naderites. I have raised this as an issue with Hightower several
> times, once in person at a meeting in Key West. He at least is now willing
> to discuss it as an issue that needs to be considered seriously, even if we
> disagree on the particulars. He even had me on his program to talk about my
> concerns. Why can't the Naderites see it is a problem that needs to be
> discussed openly and seriously?
>
> When my colleague Allen Hunter gently raised the issue of xenophobia in
> anti-globalization campaigns, he became one of the first people raising
> these issues to be called divisive and sectarian--now a familiar refrain.
>
> See: Hunter, Allen. (1995). "Globalization from Below? Promises and Perils
> of the New Internationalism," Social Policy, v25n4, 1995, pp. 6-13, online
> at http://www.publiceye.org/Sucker_Punch/Hunter.htm.
>
> When Bob Buzzanco, Associate Prof. of History at the University of Houston
> and another professor tried to raise some concerns in this area at a recent
> meeting in Texas, according to Buzzanco, you made fun of them for being
> professors and refused to engage in a serious dialog.
>
> Here are some paragraphs in the forthcoming book "Right Wing Populism in
> America" (Guilford Press) by me and my colleague Matthew N. Lyons:
>
> = = = = = =
>
> Consider the statement of John Talbott, the Reform Party spokesperson in
> New Hampshire:
>
> "If you close your eyes, it is difficult to hear much of a difference
> between Ralph Nader on the left and Pat Buchanan on the right when they
> talk about corruption in government, the excesses of corporate welfare, the
> devastating effect of free international trade on the American worker and a
> desire to clean big money and special-interests out of Washington. There's
> a reason for this; 91 percent of the American people consider themselves
> middle class or working class. The time is now for a new political party
> that is neither right nor left, neither conservative nor liberal, but
> created and built to represent the hard- working average American in
> reforming our government."
>
> "If we all pull together, put our prejudices behind us, and ignore
> traditional labeling such as liberal or conservative, we can join together
> to fight the battle of our lives against the collaboration of big business
> and big government, break the two-party monopoly, and return control of our
> government to the true owners of this country - the American people."
>
> "This is an example of repressive populism in service to business
> nationalism since it is a call for "the people" in the middle to attack the
> internationalist elites while ignoring the racist and xenophobic policies
> of Buchanan."
>
> "Nader and his colleagues worked closely with a business nationalist brain
> trust financed by right-wing textile magnate Roger Milliken. The
> strategists included Milliken's lobbyist, Jock Nash, Alan Tonelson of the
> ultraconservative U.S. Business and Industrial Council, and Pat Choate of
> the Manufacturing Policy Project."
>
> "According to Ryan Lizza, it was Choate, the 1996 Reform Party vice
> presidential candidate, who ‘orchestrated Buchanan's flight from the
> Republican Party.’"
>
> "The Naderites and other anti-globalization forces frequently cited books
> and reports by authors such as Charles Derber, David C. Korten, Jerry
> Mander, Edward Goldsmith, and William Greider. In thousands of pages the
> authors denounced large multinational corporations, global finance capital,
> international banking interests, powerful elites, and betrayal by corrupt
> politicians. Only in Greider was there a serious (albeit brief) discussion
> of how these historic themes have been woven into right-wing populist
> conspiracy theories."
>
> = = = = =
>
> If there is anything not accurate in the above, please let me know. I have
> researched it independently and find that this is a coalition that has been
> working together for several years. If you claim it is not so, then why do
> legislative staff in congressional offices see you all as in a working
> coalition? Are they mistaken? Where could they have gotten the idea that
> you all work together?
>
> In fact, you openly work together.
>
> At a regional meeting May 31, 1997 at Boston College on globalization run
> by Naderites, The panelists included Lori Wallach, Pat Choate, and
> Tonnelson of the anti-union US Business and Industrial Council.
>
> Issues of the right wing conspiracist John Birch Society magazine and the
> antisemitic and fascist Spotlight were being quietly passed out. When I
> asked the meeting organizers to make some comment distancing themsleves
> from the Spotlight, as well as the John Birch Society (since there was a
> large stack of JBS magazines on a literature table), I was scolded and told
> that they were trying to build a broad coalition. A number of the people I
> spoke with knew that Spotlight was antisemitic.
>
> The organizers of the Boston event included Charles Derber, a professor and
> author of several books. Other organizers spanned a wide age range. I also
> approached Lori Wallach and was brushed off. (To be precise, Wallach said
> she didn't have time to talk about it.). I also said hello to Choate, who
> also said he had no problem with the JBS literature.
>
> The JBS magazine was The New American special reprint of its Special Report
> "Conspiracy for Global Control," and included a special page of books
> available from the JBS on the freemason/illuminati conspiracy, and the
> favorite hoax book, "Report from Iron Mountian."
>
> Here is something from editor Gary Benoit's comments in the magazines at
> the event:
>
> "To be sure, the CFR itself is not the conspiracy, and the members of the
> CFR are not all new world orderites. Yet in the shadows--behind the CFR and
> other powerful internationalist groupings such as the Trilateral
> Commission, behind the giant tax-exempt foundations, behind the Wall Street
> and Federal Reserve financial and banking interests, behind presidents and
> prime ministers, behind the NAFTA/GATT/IMF/NATO/UN axis, behind even the
> communist menace itself--is the conspiracy for global control."
>
> I realize that you do not think like this, but can you see why many of us
> on this discussion think that the Naderites and their allies are
> insensitive to the dynamic? Can you understand why we want an explicit,
> clear, public rejection of racist and xenophobic nationalism and
> conspiracism? If you don't support right wing nationalism and conspiracism,
> then you need to publicly distance yourself as an organization in clear
> terms. This may not be your fault, but it is your obligation.
>
> Here is something that Hunter said in his article:
>
> "In networks and coalitions it is important that decision-making processes
> be as transparent and democratic as possible, since there are no general
> rules which can resolve tensions in coalitions between, among other things,
> "beltway" and grassroots perspectives. Especially because the US remains
> the most powerful nation on earth and has a long history of imperial
> domination, Americans committed to internationalism, to global equity and
> sustainability, should be leery of using appeals to nationalism. Racial
> divisions remain crucial fracture lines in US and are replicated in
> progressive politics; a commitment to anti-racism (including immigrants'
> rights) implies that the potential racial implications of coalitional
> politics should be a primary consideration."
>
> I look forward to a serious discussion of these issues.
>
> Chip Berlet
> Senior Analyst
> Political Research Associates