TOMORROW
THE WORLD
To
the Clintonians, and their British and German counterparts,
the very idea of national sovereignty is a racist concept,
since, by definition, it necessarily excludes other nationalities
and often coincides with ethnicity. This is the true meaning
of the "Clinton Doctrine" now being enunciated,
in fits and starts, by the administration: the whole world
is fair game!
MULTI-CULTI
A
crusade for multiculturalism in the post-Soviet world is a
prescription for perpetual war. In Eastern Europe and Central
Asia it means the reconstruction of the failed Soviet "multinational"
model, and a relentless military struggle against all form
of separatism. That this conforms nicely to the plans of powerful
business interests in the West – as
I pointed out in my last column, where I discussed the
brewing crisis of Azerbaijan – is sheer coincidence of
course. The big oil companies and the big investment banking
concerns have already signed contracts with the government
of Azerbaijan: if the country now begins to break up into
separate statelets, then the deal is off.
PEACE
BY COERCION
The
same is true in the neighboring country of Georgia, Stalin's
homeland now run by former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard
Shevardnadze, the diplomatic darling of the West. There was
no more enthusiastic cheerleader of the Kosovo war than Shevardnadze.
He has been clamoring for NATO membership and has been granted
associate status, with Azerbaijan being given the lowly status
of "observer." Shevardnadze has used the Kosovo
precedent to call for NATO intervention with his own troublesome
separatists in the Georgian province of Abhazia. In his weekly
radio broadcast on June 7th he said "the operation for
coercing peace in Kosovo is based on principles... which are
fully acceptable to Georgia … these 'principles' may
become a significant precedent for a peace process in some
other conflict zones, for instance in Abhazia." On June
10th Shevardnadze revealed that a senior NATO official had
told him "it is time we contemplated the possibility
of internationalizing the peace process in Abhazia" and,
again, he talked about establishing peace by "coercion".
LIGHTNING
ROD
Ethnically,
religiously, and proudly distinct from their Georgian overlords,
the Abhazians have set up their own breakaway republic, and
at one point caused President Shevardnadze to evacuate his
palace and set up a "national" government elsewhere.
The rebels have close ties to the Russian military, and as
a leading Gorbachevite, who was foreign minister at the time
of the USSR's self-dissolution, Shevardnadze is hated in Russian
military and nationalist circles. The latest story is that
the Russians were in on an abortive coup attempt that never
got off the ground. Shevardnadze is a living lightning rod
for trouble in the Transcaucasus. He is clearly hoping for
thunderbolts in the form of NATO airstrikes on those obstreperous
Abhazians – and soon.
IS
EVERYBODY HAPPY?
This
will be done in the name of "humanitarianism," of
course. 250,000 Georgian refugees fled Abhazia at the peak
of the fighting in 1992-3, and these people are still languishing
in camps. If and when the NATO-crats decide to start the bombing,
there is a whole new "refugee crisis" for Christiane
Amanpour to discover. This will pull in the Clintonian leftists,
who will be appalled at this display of Abhazian "racism"
against their Georgian brothers and would-be rulers. The oil
profits will pull in the foreign policy "realists"
in the Republican party, several of whom have extensive business
interests and direct investments in the Caspian Sea oil projects
undertaken by multinational firms. Here is a war all wings
of the War Party can agree on.
DANGER
AHEAD
The
danger to world peace could not be greater. Russian troops
are currently stationed in Georgia, as a buffer against the
Abhazians, and also in Armenia, where they had a hand in fighting
off the Azeris in Nagorno-Karabakh. Moscow, which is still
armed with nuclear weapons would fiercely resist the NATO-ization
of Georgia, and the Russian bear is already growling. The
Foreign Ministry has warned that "Azerbaijan should beware
of whipping up tensions in the Transcaucasian region,"
because such attempts "are fraught with serious consequences."
Addressing broader regional issues, the Russians declared
"we cannot fail to be alarmed by NATO's claims to ascribe
to itself the main role in settling conflicts outside the
zone of its responsibility, statements concerning its intention
to proclaim Transcaucasia a sphere of its interests. If NATO
tried to create military bases in the region it would create
a direct threat to Russia's security on its southern borders
and would upset the traditional balance of forces in the region."
FAST
AS LIGHTNING
If
it happens, it will be quickly. Who knows what the next presidential
election will bring? Even more problematic is the next Congress.
Furthermore, with Yeltsin on his last legs, no one can predict
who is going to be in power in Moscow. It could be someone
like General Lebed, now the governor of Siberia, who would
put up a fight. Don't be surprised to wake up some day real
soon to discover that U.S. troops are on their way to some
Central Asian country as obscure as its name is unpronounceable.
ON
THE HOME FRONT
On
the international front, the NATO-crats are proclaiming their
glorious "victory," and positioning themselves for
the next war, while on the home front their pet pundits and
propagandists are seeking to marginalize any and all opposition
to the wisdom and benevolence of the war-makers. Yesteryear,
it was the Right that led the effort to smear and demonize
the antiwar movement. This year the Left is leading the charge:
Democrats in Congress rail against Republican "isolationists,"
openly challenging their loyalty. As the war seemed about
to go into high gear, with ground troops being readied, the
War Party took off the gloves and assailed their opponents
as "extremists" – right-wing extremists, naturally,
since all the left-wing extremists are either dead or in power.
PORTRAITS
OF THE WAR PARTY: MORRIS DEES AND THE SPLC
In
the vanguard of this rhetorical shift is the veteran witch-hunter
and professional character assassin Morris Dees, whose Southern
Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has become the premier rightist-baiting
outfit in the country. Dees has constructed an elaborate conspiracy
theory in which virtually all of the groups and individuals
to the right of William F. Buckley, Jr., are part of some
vast interconnected network of cells, a "leaderless resistance"
allegedly invented by Louis Beam, an obscure right-wing "theoretician"
who Dees and his "researchers" imagine to be a kind
of far right Svengali. The SPLC peddles a brand of conspiracism
just as garbled and elaborately wrongheaded as some of the
wackos they "investigate," and in this sense the
group is a scam, a fundraising machine that pays Dees an exorbitant
salary. As his former partner, Millard Farmer, put it to the
Progressive:
"I thought he was sincere. I thought the Southern Poverty
Law Center raised money to do good for poor people, not simply
to accumulate wealth." In another sense, however, the
SPLC is deadly dangerous, a private spy agency that runs an
"intelligence project" aimed at political dissent,
This was brought home in an
article in their quarterly Intelligence Report, "Kosovo
and the Far Right" – a vicious attempt to smear
the antiwar movement as racist, anti-Semitic, an evil plot
by the Ku Klux Klan and Slobodan Milosevic to subvert the
Allied cause.
IMAGINE
THAT!
"The
NATO-led attacks on Christian Serbs in Kosovo and Yugoslavia
have given the radical right a new ideological battleground,"
Intelligence Report breathlessly relates, "a battleground
that some believe may become as important a rallying point
as the conflagration in Waco, Texas." While Dees may
not know the connection between General
Wesley Clark's role in the Waco massacre, the implication
of this opening sentence is clear enough: like Timothy McVeigh
and whoever else was involved in the bombing of the Oklahoma
City federal building, right-wing terrorists will one day
exact vengeance for NATO has done to Serbia. Why? Because
Serbia is Christian, and "white": "On scores
of Web sites, in the extremist literature and in the speeches
and conversations of far-right leaders, the Kosovo war is
increasingly seen as an attack by the 'New World Order' on
white Christian ethnics that is designed to force multiracialism
and multiethnic states on the world over the protests of patriots
everywhere." But how could anyone possibly believe
such a thing: why, the very idea is too absurd to even
contemplate!
THE
ART OF THE SMEAR
Notice
how the SPLC conflates "multiracialism" with multiculturalism:
the main thrust of SPLC propaganda is to smear its opponents
on the Right as racists: only a racist could oppose the war
in Kosovo, or stand up for the concept of national sovereignty,
or oppose something so obviously benign as the "New World
Order." This technique is as old as the hills, and was
used (successfully, I'm afraid) to smear the antiwar movement
of the 1930s, the America First Committee, which opposed US
entry into World War II. The antiwar opposition was called
every name in the book, and then some, by the intellectual
ancestors of Morris Dees and the SPLC, the Smear Brigade of
yesterday. In league with government agencies, such as the
FBI, professional provocateurs such as John Roy Carlson (author
of Under Cover and The Plotters) spied on and
smeared the opposition to FDR's war drive. His technique was
to pick out obscure individuals, cranks with no real influence,
and minuscule groups with extreme views, as if they were representative
of the America First movement. His book, Under Cover,
was touted by Walter Winchell – the journalistic trumpet
of the War Party – and became a bestseller. It led directly
to the Great Sedition Trial of 1944, in which 36 alleged "seditionists"
were dragged before a federal judge and charged with conspiring
with the Nazis to overthrow the US government and cause insubordination
in the armed forces. Although the government later backed
down, the first indictments named every organization opposed
to the war of any significance or influence, including the
America First Committee (composed of the chairman of Sears
and Roebuck, as well as Norman Thomas and the veteran old-style
liberal John T. Flynn). The technique back then: smear `em,
and then jail `em.
AN
INGLORIOUS TRADITION
The
SPLC is carrying on in the same perfidious tradition: violence-baiting
the antiwar Right, and crudely framing the issue in racial
terms: "Although voices opposing the war have come from
across the political spectrum, the debate is seen in explicitly
racial and religious terms by the hard right. Like the 1993
tragedy in Waco, which extremists saw as revealing the true,
repressive nature of American government, the US attacks on
Serbian forces have emerged as a new right-wing battle cry.
Perhaps most tellingly, Louis Beam, probably the revolutionary
right's most important theoretician, recently broke a long
silence to attack the war." Aha! There is the
omnipresent Beam, again, with a direct line to all us nasty
extremists. But why blame poor Beam, a man who has next to
no influence on the actual course of events, for casting the
Kosovo issue in racial and religious terms? Didn't the President
declare that this is a war against racial and religious hatred?
After months of hearing the same line over and over again,
not only from Clinton but from Tony Blair, Madeleine Albright,
Jaime Shea, James Rubin, and the whole repulsive crew, do
we really need Louis Beam to tell us that this was a war for
political correctness?
THE
"FASCIST" BOGEYMAN
The
really dirty smear, however, is reserved for the middle of
the article: "At the same time, in Serbia and around
Europe, people demonstrating against the NATO attacks have
included large numbers of neo-Nazis, and many have been seen
giving fascist salutes. There are also reports of European
neofascists making their way to Serbia to fight for President
Milosevic. Some extreme-right Web sites have called for volunteers."
This is the real meaning of the leftist attack on the antiwar
movement: since this is a war against a supposedly resurgent
"fascism," rightist opponents of NATO's hegemonistic
ambitions are "fascists." But who and where are
these alleged fascists? In France, the National Front marched
against the war, but these are hardly "fascists":
they are simply opponents of unlimited immigration who garnered
15% of the vote in the last national elections. The National
Alliance and the Lega Nord, the two major parties of the Italian
Right, marched in the massive antiwar demonstrations held
in Rome and throughout the country, but neither of these groups
could credibly be called fascist: the Alliance is nationalist,
and the Lega Nord is radically decentralist and classical
liberal in its philosophy. In today's lexicon, however, anyone
who opposes the cult of multi-culti is a racist, if not a
fascist. Naturally, the chief defining characteristic of fascist
ideology, militarism, is left completely out of the equation
– which is how NATO and its cheerleaders, such as Morris
Dees and the SPLC, escape that designation.
THE
TWISTED WORLD OF MORRIS DEES
And
once again we are confronted with the specter of Louis Beam,
he who knows all and sees all, the puller of invisible strings,
the master of us all: "Beam, like the Belgrade-based
Serbian Hammerskins and other far-right organizations here
and abroad, is especially angered by remarks attributed to
NATO's supreme commander, Gen. Wesley Clark: 'There is no
place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That's
a 19th-century idea and we are trying to transition it into
the 21st century, and we are going to do it with multiethnic
states.'" If Beam and the so-called "Serbian Hammerskins"
– a group that certainly sounds evil and scary,
but which remains otherwise mysterious – are the only
ones who are angered by El Supremo's inane remark, then we
are really in trouble. As the KLA pillages, rapes,
loots and murders its' way across Kosovo, driving the fleeing
Serbs before NATO's conquering army, the chief result of NATO's
war – aside from the death and destruction inflicted
on the people of Yugoslavia – has been the creation of
an ethnically pure Albanian Muslim state in Kosovo. The American
people, the American Congress, and people all over the world
are angered by this gross hypocrisy and the brazenness of
NATO's lies. Are all these people "right-wing extremists"?
In the twisted universe of Morris Dees, where there is a Klansman
under every bed and Louis Beam is the evil mastermind behind
a worldwide conspiracy of racist isolationists, the answer
is: yes.
BEAM
ME UP, MORRIE
"To Beam," writes the
SPLC, " independence-seeking Kosovars – seen by most
of the world as the victims of President Milosevic's genocidal
campaign of "ethnic cleansing" – are 'Albanian
Muslim terrorists backed by American cruise missiles and B2
bombers.'" Who is this guy Beam? After all this,
I am beginning to like the guy: Dees and his crew, far
from discrediting the "extremists" they excoriate,
are often their best recruiters. "Characterizing the US
as a 'terrorist country,' Beam also slams President Clinton
for recent American attacks in the Sudan and elsewhere. "Though
you may feel no responsibility for violent acts of your government,"
says Beam, "it is still your government and others certainly
hold you responsible. While it is true an Arab avenger cannot
bring the desert to you and show you the blood of his loved
ones, he can bring you pain, and the terror he knows so well.
And he will." The condemnation of Clinton's bombing of
the Sudan pharmaceutical plant was well nigh universal: even
the US government now admits that the bombing was a "mistake."
Beam is hardly the first to suggest that it was no "accident,"
but a ploy to divert attention away from his legal, marital,
and political problems, i.e. the Lewinsky scandal. While the
explicit message of the above paragraph is patently and obviously
absurd – after all, who cares what Louis Beam thinks
or writes? – the implicit message has to be taken seriously.
And what is that message? If you believe any of these things,
if you "slam President Clinton," if you consider the
KLA to be a gang of terroristic thugs instead of angelic liberators,
if you question the rationale for this "humanitarian"
disaster, then you are no better than Louis Beam, who was once
an official of the Ku Klux Klan. To marginalize, to discredit,
to smear, and to destroy the conservative opponents of the President
and his war – that is the goal of the SPLC, and not only
in this article.
AN
ARM OF THE GOVERNMENT?
What
is really ominous about Dees and the SPLC is their ability
to work with the government and law enforcement agencies to
smash dissent, infiltrate and disrupt the antiwar movement,
and threaten the civil liberties of American citizens. As
Randall Williams, the original director of Klanwatch –
the SPLC's earlier incarnation – told the Progressive:
"We were sharing information with the FBI, the police,
undercover agents. Instead of defending clients and victims,
we are more of a super snoop outfit, an arm of law enforcement."
THREAT
TO CIVIL LIBERTIES
In
this context, the SPLC's sudden interest in the growing opposition
to the Balkan intervention should set off alarm bells not
only in the antiwar movement, but among those organizations
devoted to maintaining and defending civil liberties in this
country. The war waged by authoritarian liberals on the battlefields
of Yugoslavia has its domestic counterpart in the war to delegitimize
– and ultimately to criminalize – opposition to
globalism at home. The massive opposition to the Vietnam war
provoked the US government into a series of countermeasures
designed to disrupt and discredit the antiwar movement in
the public mind. Every war has provided the US government
with ample leeway to engage in wholesale violations of citizens'
rights, as well as spying, employing agent provocateurs, and
generally making every effort to destroy domestic opposition
the War Party. Why should anyone expect that this war has
been any different? With a man known for his Nixonian ruthlessness,
his abuse of power, and his insatiable desire to win at all
costs, ensconced in the White House, it is not only possible
but highly probable that the antiwar movement has been under
surveillance by government agencies – and you can bet
they did much more than observe.
TWO-PRONGED
ATTACK
This
is where Dees and his "intelligence" operation come
in handy to the War Party: as an auxiliary of law enforcement,
a "private" political police. Dees and his ilk,
like John Roy Carlson and what John T. Flynn used to call
the "Smearbund" in the 1930s, are authoritarians
who dream of outlawing the opposition. Toward that end, their
goal is to demonize the Right, and isolate the antiwar movement,
just as NATO demonized the Serbs and isolated them internationally.
THE
NEW McCARTHYISM
The
SPLC is the advance guard of a new McCarthyism, this time
initiated and energized by the Left. Dees, for his part, is
tireless, well financed, and utterly unconcerned with the
truth or falsity of his reckless charges. As a key link in
the War Party's propaganda machine, the SPLC is working toward
the day when opposition to "humanitarian" wars will
be virtually banned as "hate speech": on a more
immediate level, Dees' group is working hand-in-glove with
government agencies and even the military. The 1977 Special
Operations School Catalog of the US Air Force lists a
course entitled "Dynamics of International Terrorism":
while we will never know the contents of this course, since
it is classified "secret," we do know that the teacher
was one Joe Roy, editor of the SPLC's Klanwatch.
THE
REAL TERRORISTS
In
a sense, of course, it can be said the SPLC are experts on
terrorism of a sort: as practitioners of a technique designed
to terrorize their opponents into silence. Smears and the
threat of outright government repression are the tools of
their trade. But this intellectual terrorism is not going
to play well in this country, especially if its' intended
victims have the courage to stand up to him. Dees and the
SPLC are classic bullies: they pick on socially marginal types,
without any real influence, usually without defenders or many
sympathizers. Dees has sued the Klan, made a name for himself,
and raised millions – but he is riding for a fall. This
crude attempt to smear the antiwar movement, and paint the
noninterventionist Right with the broad brush of "racism"
– just as Clinton is framing his warmongering foreign
policy in similar terms – could be the beginning of the
end. Remember that some elements of the Left, as well as the
Right, opposed the Balkan war, and they are not likely to
be amused by the SPLC's shilling for NATO. Now if only the
antiwar Left will take a principled stance, and boycott this
tinpot tyrant and his cadre of private spooks and professional
snitches – perhaps then Morris Dees will finally learn
his lesson.
|
