Uncovering the Right on Campus

Chuck Grimes cgrimes at tsoft.com
Sun Apr 1 04:11:11 PDT 2001


``_Guide to Uncovering the Right on Campus_, eds. Dalya Massachi & Rich Cowan, is a helpful countermove by the Left. Naturally, we don't have the same financial resources as the Right, but we have enough manpower to make some change Last I checked the Intercollegiate Studies..'' (Yoshie F)

``Institute (ISI) was still the largest foundation, with a huge apparatus covering all sorts of stuff including the Collegiate Network, which is the network of right-wing student newspapers. (The 1997 edition of "Uncovering the Right on Campus" still has the Collegiate Network listed under the rubric of the Madison Center, but I know that ISI bought them out some time ago. Don't know if they swallowed up the entire Madison Center or just the Collegiate Network.) Plus there's the Young America's Foundation (YAF), which is an offshoot of the Young Americans for Freedom (does this latter organization still exist?); they have a bunch of the high-profile noxious right-wingers that they send out to the campuses, including D'Souza, Oliver North, and Star Parker..'' (John Lacny)

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I am sure everybody knows this, but the best way to undermine the rightwing (beyond shooting each and everyone of them and their children) in just about any of its moves either on college campuses or in publications and politics, is just follow the money. Their money is always dirty and it is always ideological. So, when you trace the money, you trace and demonstrate the ideology.

If I was interested enough in Horowitz, I would start with his non-profit organization whatever it is called and look up the broad of directors, past and present and begin to follow their other community, business, financial and political contacts. Chances are they are well connected and chances are they serve on other boards, commissions, community advisory boards and so forth. There are probably direct grants from conservative foundations or foundations with a lot other reactionary client programs. All that is probably already known--but the connections to more serious and much more nasty people are probably in there some where.

All this probably sounds ludicrous. Think again.

I was in an e-mail debate in the early nineties over Martin Bernal's Black Athena, versus Mary Lefkowitz Not Out of Africa (NOA), conducted between academics in Classics and Ancient Near Eastern history. The rightwing and racist tinge to the ML's position made me suspicious and I went looking for her book at Cody's. I read the copyright page, where down at the bottom was an acknowledgment to some grant or other. From this institute grant, I found out that their main source of funding was the Olin foundation. I recognized Olin as a manufacturer of cartridges for concrete stud guns and asked friends who told me their main retail line was hunting ammo. Okay, I thought that was probably the NRA (rightwing, white supremacists). But that was just their homey retail product front. Another guy (nicknamed Zapata) in this list debate traced Olin's empire. Olin's main line turned out to be integrated weapons systems of mass destruction---like missiles, heavy ordinance, artillery, and coordinating hardware systems for what the military likes to call the three dimensional battlefield (sea, land, air). Olin was neck deep in cold war ideology via its defense contracts, and therefore all its attendant ideologies, right on up to the master white race sort of crap---which brings us back to Not Out of Africa, and why Lefkowitz could get funded to write it. Nice huh?

NOA turned out to be funded by the same folks who brought us those wonderful weapons of mass destruction now aimed at the dark hordes of the earth who threaten our very white way of life---blah, blah.

So, the bottom line is (for those who care) go back to these student institutes, associations, and other rightwing front campus organizations and trace the money. Somewhere along the way you will probably find some real shit in all the stink. Somebody out there is `getting involved' in `education', and they will leave a money trail and that trail will lead to the real assholes. Since the Left has no money, you can bet, it's not us.

Sometimes this backfires. About three years ago San Francisco State was toying with the idea of exchanging education research and teacher training materials developed on campus for a new campus computer system. When I heard of this I immediately thought it was Microsoft---some sleeze-bag locked-in contract so they could authenticate their own edu-tainment as certified educational materials (probably re-sell it to University of Phoenix) and pilfer SFSU faculty work for their own development---blah, blah, blah. It turned out I was wrong. It was actually Sun Microsystems and there was no formal tit for tat arrangement---other than Sun keeping their foot in the education door. Paranoia can be a problem. But not very often.

I haven't read or even looked at Guide to Uncovering the Right on Campus, but I will bet it doesn't go half far enough.

Chuck Grimes



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