From the Solidarity listserv, with permission of the author:
***** Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 15:48:47 -0500 (EST) From: WSheasby at cs.com Subject: The Rise of the Neo-Centrics
2003 has seen the rise of a new current in U.S. politics, best described as NeoCentrics, or simply NeoCens, for ease of comparison with a better known defection of Socialists to the Conservative Right. Although allied with longtime social democrats (who were once distinguished by whether they accepted secret funding in bags from John A. McCone's office or Armand Hammer's office), the NeoCens are former radical critics of "lesser-evilism" who have decided a year before the 2004 election that the whiff of fascism is in the air.
Funding for a few of the Neo-Cens comes from George Soros, who subsidizes some of the Neo-Cen luminaries and publications. He told the Washington Post on Tuesday, Nov. 18, that a day before he gave five million dollars to MoveOn.org to benefit Howard Dean. He has donated more modest sums to other Democratic candidates and had already given 10 million dollars in August to "America Coming Together," or ACT.
The Neo-Cen attack on Ralph Nader has been welcomed by unreconstructed social and liberal democrats who have long been critics of the Green Party and independent political action. Michael Tomasky, executive editor of the American Prospect, wrote a piece for the L.A. Times Book Review titled *A Lesson for the Left: Go to the Aid of the Party* on Nov. 9, 2003. He reviews two books by radical intellectuals, G. William Domhoff's Changing the Powers That Be: How the Left Can Stop Losing and Win, and James Weinstein's The Long Detour: The History and Future of the American Left. Both books are monuments to the new revisionism transforming the most trenchant critics of co-optation in the 1960s into the masters of the back-flip in the new century. Through many books Domhoff hammered home the reality that the corporate rich dominate both the Republican and Democrat Parties and that grass roots insurgencies were inevitably co-opted. I was one of many who took up that thesis in a paper I wrote that Domhoff approved on the Fund for the Republic. Weinstein showed that Progressive politics in both mainstream parties were aimed at co-opting and deflecting the Socialist Party in its heyday.
The Neo-Cens have been joined by any number of former revolutionaries like Carl Davidson and Angela Davis. The Green Party is split between Neo-Cens who previously touted the line *Neither Right nor Left, but out in Front,* to those who are supporting the intransigent Ralph Nader and/or Peter Camejo for President. The division could weaken the Green Party and perhaps result in its demise. On the other hand, if the counter-revisionists rally to their own Party, this could be a real turning point in U.S. politics, which the election of any of the democrats would not be.
If Howard Dean wins the nomination and puts Wesley Clark on the ticket as he planned before Clark himself entered the race the final days of September and October 2004 could be a real awakening for the left.
-Walt ***** -- Yoshie
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