Ralphie

Eric Beck rayrena at accesshub.net
Fri Jun 30 08:58:12 PDT 2000


[This reminder goes out to all of you Friends of Ralph, reluctant supporters of Ralph, and those like Alex who think that the "Nader campaign can serve as an organizational center for ... toppl[ing] capitalism." The entire article can be found at <http://www.dsl.nl/~lokabaal/engifgl.htm>.]

from De Fabel van de illegaal april 2000

The village politics of the International Forum on Globalization

In june 1999 the Dutch anti-racist organisation "De Fabel van de illegaal" ("the myth of illegality") quit the international campaign against the MAI and the WTO. Within the struggle against "globalization" and "free trade" coalitions were being formed with organisations working from a nationalist or even New Right ideology. The IFG plays a central role in building these coalitions. It is now widely known that their founder Edward Goldsmith is a New Right ideologist, but what political positions are taken by the other IFG-members?

[...]

Our asshole

The struggle against nationalism should be an important aspect of radical Left resistance. By only serving the needs of fellow countrymen, political organisations will drift to the Right. Left wing liberation struggles should be internationalist or even anti-nationalist.

In the United States, just as in the Netherlands and elsewhere, nationalist feelings are common. A lot of American lobby organisations say they defend the interests of "the average American", who is being threatened by the "global" economy. That also goes for the consumer and environmental organisation Public Citizen (PC), which is represented in the IFG by Lori Wallach.

PC was founded in 1971 by Ralph Nader and by now has 150.000 members. The organisations is sponsored by the Ford Foundation. PC has a leading role in the campaigns against the MAI and the WTO. In 1997 PC started the campaign against the MAI by publishing the first draft of the treaty on their internet website. It has a dominant position in the Citizens Trade Campaign, an anti-globalisation coalition of environmental, union and other organisations.

Global Trade watch (GTW), is the PC branch that resists "uncontrolled globalisation" and "free trade". In an analysis of the North American "free trade" treaty NAFTA, GTW director Mike Dolan chauvinistically emphasizes the dangers that are threatening the US from abroad. He stressed that NAFTA would make the import grow of unclean Mexican products, and also of Canadian meat that is not carefully examined. Dolan is a chauvinist American.

PC-president Nader is also a follower of Adam Smith. He likes competion, but abhores monopolies. He often criticizes the power of big companies and the way that money corrupts the American democracy. He remains completely silent, however, on issues like abortion, homosexuality and migration. "Ralph Nader may look like a democrat, smell like a populist, and sound like a socialist - but deep down he's a frightened, petit bourgeois moralizer without a political compass, more concerned with his image than the movement he claims to lead: in short, an opportunist, a liberal hack, and a scab", says Tim Shorrock, who for a long time worked with Nader. [14]

Others also aren't happy with the politics of the PC directors, like the PC volunteer who worked last autumn at the Seattle office that PC had organized to coordinate the campaign against the WTO summit. His office colleagues, "local people", weren't racist, nationalist or homphobic, he said. But he wasn't so sure about the national PC leaders, one of them being Mike Dolan, who was the Seattle office manager. "We all found out at different times the back door dealings that PC has with Pat Buchanan and Jesse Helms and for various reasons decided to stick it out in the office." The volunteer openly asked the national PC leadership about their working together with Buchanan and Helms, for they are known far Right politicians. Buchanan, for instance, plays down the holocaust and hates gays, jews, and communists, amongst other groups, and struggles against the perverted "foreign" capital that threatens "the average working American". Buchanan will probably be a Reform Party candidate for the presidency.

Dolan and other PC leaders acknowledged the cooperation, and praised Buchanan: "Buchanan may be an asshole, but he's our asshole." The volunteer got really angry and wrote: "With this level of political cynism, we would have worked with Hitler on these issues". He decided to never work for PC again and is now planning to tell everyone "their dirty secrets". [15]

America First

Buchanan also admires Nader. In an article called "The millennium conflict: America first or world government", Buchanan writes that a couple of years ago Nader asked the managers of 100 big American companies to show their loyalty to "the country that bred them, built them, subsidized them and defended them". Nader asked them to bring a tribute to the American flag on their yearly shareholder meetings. [16]

Whilst some American "populists" are dissociating themselves from Buchanans xenophobia and nationalism, IFG member Mark Ritchie praises the coalitions with the Right. Ritchie is director of the American Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, which supports small farmers. "Traditional antagonists as politically far apart as Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan are finding some common ground on trade issues", according to Ritchie. The political differences between Nader and Buchanan could really be a lot smaller than their resemblances. "Aside from Nader and Buchanan, the anti-GATT and NAFTA trade alliance included a wide spectrum of what would have previously been called right and left elements. This diversity of views and constituencies gave the campaigns much of their strength." [17]

However, others worry about campaigns like that. Mark Swanson, for instance, calls for activists to ask PC and the IFG to immediately end their cooperation with far Right politicians like Buchanan. He points out that Buchanan is the only candidate for the presidency that time and time again spoke out against "globalisation". [18] Buchanan is supported by a middle class of nationalist white collar workers. Being the foremost politician against "free trade", his person and opinions got a lot of media attention during the campaign against the WTO summit. With his public appearances Buchanan was able to influence the debate around the Seattle summit and he now profits from the anti-WTO atmosphere in the US. Now that public opinion has been swinging to the Right for decades, Buchanan has the power and the possibilities to triumph, and not the Left wing movement, that for tactical reasons cooperated with conservatives and the far Right.

Secret sponsors

Journalist Ryan Lizza discovered even more of PC's "dirty secrets". He wanted to know the truth about rumours that PC is being sponsored by billionair and textile-tycoon Roger Milliken, who also sponsores Buchanan, and earlier sponsored the far Right Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich. Milliken has got the money and the experience to easily build a complete infrastucture for political movements. He is therefore considered very dangerous.

Milliken has a bad name in progressive circles. So most organisations do no like to be associated with him. When Lizza asked Mike Dolan on the phone about the backgrounds of PC, Dolan was ordered by his boss Lori Wallach to break up the call. He was not allowed to talk any longer with Lizza. PC has a policy of secrecy on sponsors. Both PC and Milliken deny nor acknowledge their financial ties.

Such relationships were unthought of in the sixties and seventies. During the Cold War period, Milliken fought every communist and union activist in sight. Back then he also fought Ralph Nader, because he made public the abuses in Millikens textile factories. Nowadays the extremely conservative Milliken has focused his attention on protectionism and nationalism, and he finds plenty of political friends in the anti-globalisation movement. [19]

Anti-Mexican jokes

Milliken has a special lobbyist towards the government, Jock Nash, who has brought together the followers of Buchanan and Nader in 1993 on a couple of anti-NAFTA strategy meetings. According to the Wall Street Journal those meetings were rather xenophobic: imported wine was boycotted and people made sick anti-Mexican jokes.

Nash became well acquainted with the prominent PC-lobbyist Wallach. They became political allies. In 1995, when Canadian IFG member Maude Barlow visited Washington, Wallach sent a man with a car to pick her up. Barlow was surprised about the conservative ideas of her driver, who turned out to be Nash. "I thought, who is this man? Why is this man driving me somewhere?" Barlow wanted to visit the PC leadership and was picked up by Milliken's lobbyist. This shows how familiar the PC leadership and Millikens cooperators are.

The followers of Nader are calling their relationship with Milliken "a tactical alliance". But according to others they also share an ideology. "What is Lori Wallach's or Ralph Nader's positive agenda for the global economy?", a trade union leader asked. "At times it seems to me to be not that different from Buchanan's view." [19]

Harry Westerink

Notes:

14. 1.75 cheers for Ralph, Doug Henwood. In: Left Business Observer nr. 74.

15. E-mail from Paul, 14-12-1999.

16. The millennium conflict: America first or world government. On: the website of Buchanan.

17. Cross-border organizing, Mark Ritchie. In: The case against the global economy and for a turn toward the local.

18. Public Citizen and IFG's dirty little secret, Mark Swanson.

19. Silent partner. The man behind the anti-free-trade revolt, Ryan Lizza. In: The New Republic, 10-1-2000.



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