Hi,
I realize the importance of challenging corporate control of globalization, but some of us who have been progressive activists for many years have concerns over the way that persons promoting right-wing nationalism, xenophobia, racism, and antisemitism keep trying to recruit out of progressive movements battling NAFTA, GATT, MAI, and WTO. This is happening around the world.
As the following exchange with Michael Dolan suggests, it has been difficult to raise criticisms that are taken seriously by Dolan, Lori Wallach, Joan Claybrook, and Ralph Nader at Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.
If you are interested in the larger discussion of these issues, please visit:
http://www.publiceye.org/Sucker_Punch/Clueless.html
http://www.savanne.ch/right-left.html
If you feel that you can involve the folks at Global Trade Watch in a serious and respectful discussion, please contact them at: gtwinfo at citizen.org
One suggestion is that they craft a clear public statement distancing themselves from the xenophobic policies of Pat Buchanan, and the conspiracism of certain right wing populists, and post it on their website.
Sincerely, Chip Berlet Senior Analyst, Political Research Associates co-author, "Right Wing Populism in America" = = = = = = = = = =
Original message posted to Right-left mailing list 5/22/2000 From: Chip Berlet To: Michael Dolan
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 themselves 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 Mountain."
Here is something from editor Gary Benoit's comments in the magazine 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 = = = = = = = = = = =
> From: Michael Dolan [mailto:MDOLAN at citizen.org]
> Sent: Monday, May 22, 2000 3:14 PM
> To: cberlet at igc.org
> Subject: RE: [right-left] fwd: 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
>
= = = = = = = = = = =
From: Chip Berlet To: Michael Dolan
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 6:00 PM
> To: cberlet at igc.org
> Subject: Re: Mike Dolan's response to Chip Berlet
>
> 1) There are no xenophobic Naderites.
> 2) I have never been like a spider.
> 3) Buzzanco tried to accuse me of racism, and I
rightfully shut him down.
> 4) Straight parallel lines will never meet.
> 5) Nature abhores a vacuum.
> 6) You're all crazy.
>
> Why don't you fight corporate rule?
> Who the hell is Gregor Strasser?
>
> MD
>