ELITES
TO VOTERS –
TUNE OUT, TURN OFF, DROP DEAD
The
Bush camp would like to be able to move leftward without having
to shore up their right flank – which is endangered as
long as Buchanan remains a factor. The Gore campaign would
dearly love to see Nader disappear, so they can pull off another
feat of Clintonian "triangulation" and move rightward. The
culmination of this convergence will no doubt be the presidential
non-debates, which will be reduced, as Nader puts it, to a
battle between "the drab and the dreary." This deadly dull
performance is likely to put the American people to sleep
– if they tune in at all. But the elites are hoping that
you won't be tuning in: voter turnout this year is
expected to be at an all-time low, and for the people who
rule this country that is really good news. They don't want
you to tune in, or to vote, or to get too interested in or
excited about the election, or politics in general –
that is their domain, and they want to keep it that
way. But this year trouble is brewing: both the left and the
right are challenging the elites' chief asset, and that is
their legitimacy.
A
CLOSED SYSTEM?
The
mandarins of the Establishment, in government and the media
– or do I repeat myself? – are outraged, and fearful.
Their fear is fully justified. This election-year charade,
instead of preserving the illusion of popular consent, could
backfire by exposing the ironclad exclusivity of a closed
system – and that could lead to trouble (big trouble)
not too far down the road. The people who really rule this
country – the corporate interests who profit from state
intervention in the economy, both at home and abroad –
are rallying the troops to defend their positions, because
a full-fledged two-pronged assault on the fortress of Privilege
has been launched. The first salvos were fired by Pat Buchanan,
who is filing suit in federal court to stop the corporate-sponsored
"debate commission" from excluding him. The commission is
an ostensibly "private" group co-chaired by former GOP national
chairman Frank Fahrenkopf and Paul Kirk, his Democratic equivalent:
their criteria for inclusion in the debates is geared to exclude
all dissenting voices and foster the duopoly of the Republicrats
(or is that Demopublicans?). To receive an invitation to discuss
the future of the country on the national stage, a candidate
must average at least 15 percent in 5 polls. Now here's an
interesting coincidence . . .
AN
OLD TECHNIQUE
These
polls, two of which are run by the Washington Post
and the New York Times (in cooperation with major networks),
are paid for by the same media organizations which have shown
a visceral hostility to both Buchanan and Nader, not only
on their editorial pages but in their reporting. A classic
example is a piece in yesterday's Washington Post by
Thomas Edsall, "Buchanan's
Bid Transforms Reform Party" – classic in the sense
that it uses a shopworn (yet very effective) technique deployed
by character assassins down through the ages: guilt by association.
The method is simple: first, you find some obscure slob sitting
in a basement somewhere churning out racist claptrap and half-baked
conspiracy theories for the delectation of his dozen or so
followers. You then call him up, and say: "Hello, this is
Thomas Edsall of the Washington Post" – pregnant
pause – "and I'd like to get your opinion on the Buchanan
campaign. Do you have a moment to talk?" A moment?
The crank in the basement has plenty of time to pontificate
not only on Buchanan, but on the world-historic importance
and burgeoning influence of his tiny – and, on the whole,
mostly imaginary – organization.
REVERSE
McCARTHYISM
This
is essentially what Edsall did in his vicious, deliberately
misleading piece. Even the title is polemical "Buchanan's
Bid Transforms Reform Party" – designed as grist for
the mill of the Stop Buchanan wrecking operation inside the
Reform Party. The party, once "centrist" – i.e. without
any ideology whatsoever – has now become "a magnet attracting
leaders and activists of such extreme right organizations
as the National Alliance, the Liberty Lobby, the Council of
Conservative Citizens and the League of the South." This would
be called "McCarthyism" if the left could think of itself
as being guilty of such a crime. Unlike McCarthy, however,
whose
accusations were eventually proved essentially correct,
the smear tactics of the "get Buchanan" crowd are without
any basis in fact. Edsall reports a "flood of support from
the extreme right" for Buchanan and the Reform Party: he then
cites a gaggle of fringies who are more than happy to inflate
their significance – which is nil. Thus, the heretofore
completely unknown Reform Party "leader," one Will Williams,
gets his fifteen seconds of fame when his "e-mail to members
of the National Alliance" is cited by Edsall as the number
one bit of evidence for his conspiracy theory. Says Williams:
"It's
our job to get out there in our areas, to raise consciousness,
attract and radicalize 'those very people' – OUR people – then
organize them into a majority. Many good people will have
joined a much more radicalized, White-friendly Reform Party
come November. . . . It is going to be a very interesting
year with the Jews constantly screaming 'NAZI!' at PB [Pat
Buchanan]."
DUBIOUS
SOURCES
How
interesting that, in employing neo-Nazi rhetoric rather freely,
Williams would descry the charge against Buchanan in the very
act of buttressing its credibility. Another hint that there
is something very fishy about this particular accusation
is the information, provided by Edsall, that "the e-mail was
provided to the Post by the Southern Poverty Law Center."
The SPLC specializes in "extremist"-baiting (exclusively on
the right); its pronouncements are often accepted as gospel
by the mainstream media: but its agenda is hard-left, and
it invariably attacks Buchanan and the repulsive David Duke
in the same breath. The Reform Party has no rules for excluding
people, and indeed boasts of its openness as the reflection
of its populist spirit: anyone can join and participate
– including Commie psycho-cultist Lenora Fulani, the
followers of the Giggling Guru, and any number of agent provocateurs,
both paid and volunteer. The complete phoniness of this email
canard is proved by the fact that Williams is not a
Reform Party official, nor does he have any connection
with the Buchanan campaign – other than in Edsall's imagination.
But our intrepid reporter is not going to let mere facts get
in the way of his "investigative" reporting.
THE
HOWARD PHILLIPS FACTOR
Edsall
interviews William Pierce, fuehrer of the "National Alliance,"
a neo-Nazi organization which the SPLC estimates has a grand
total of 1500 members nationwide. Pierce rails against the
Jews, and is quoted as saying that "the overwhelming majority"
of his National Alliance members will be voting for Buchanan:
"Among Bush, Gore and Buchanan, Buchanan would be a hands-down
winner." Yes, but what about Howard Phillips, the Constitution
Party candidate, who will be on the ballot in at least 38
states? Edsall cites a survey taken of members of the Council
of Conservative Citizens – a small Southern-based organization
that has not and will not endorse Buchanan – indicating
"Buchanan had 55.5 percent. Texas Gov. George W. Bush was
second at 12.5 percent." But what about the other 32 percent?
A few contrarians will vote for Harry Browne, the Libertarian
Party candidate, but you can bet that Gore and Nader both
got zero. That leaves Howard Phillips and the Constitution
party breathing down Pat's neck, but for some reason this
goes unmentioned by Edsall.
TO
THE RIGHT OF PAT!
The
reason Phillips is dropped out of the picture is that his
campaign wouldn't fit in with the thesis of this piece –
that the wackos are flocking to Buchanan. For Phillips criticizes
Buchanan from the right, incredibly enough, claiming
that Pat has sold out the One True Cause of constitutionalism;
his party at its last national convention had a rather heated
debate about whether or not to make a rule forbidding any
but Christians from being Constitution Party candidates or
holding party offices. Furthermore, the activist types in
any movement tend to be purists, and to "far right" purists,
Phillips has a natural appeal. Hmmm . . .This, it would
seem, is the real ideological home for Pierce and his National
Alliance crowd – but if I were Howie Phillips I wouldn't
get too excited. Contrary to the SPLC, which has raised tens
of millions exaggerating the threat of imminent "fascism"
on the rise – and which habitually inflates the membership
numbers of "radical right" organizations – the National
Alliance has no more than a few hundred active dues-paying
members, at most, and, according to the SPLC, has recently
lost two chapters. So much for the "flood" of support from
the "far right."
IN
MY EXPERIENCE
Edsall
goes on to cite a number of other phony connections between
Buchanan and such groups as the Spotlight newspaper,
run by anti-Semitic godfather of the Far Right, Willis Carto,
and his front group, "Americans for Pat Buchanan," a rather
obvious attempt by Carto to cash in on the popularity of Pat's
good name without asking for or receiving permission. The
idea that Buchanan is responsible for the activities of a
madman like Carto, whose racial theories are un-Christian
and un-American, is patently ridiculous. But the real argument
against Edsall's thesis that such groups are "transforming"
the Reform Party via the transmission belt of Buchananism
is my own experience at the Colorado convention of the Colorado
Reform Party, renamed the Freedom Party. I was a speaker at
their organizing convention, and when I walked in the hall
practically the first person I met was a nice but rather strange-looking
fellow who immediately handed me a copy of the Spotlight.
He was dressed in what looked to be a uniform, but which,
on closer inspection, was matching olive-green shiny slacks
and a military-style shirt – even shinier – complete
with snappy little epaulets. His shoes were shiny and bootlike,
and a complicated arrangement of keys hung from his heavy
black belt. With his handlebar mustache and earnestly brisk
manner, I expected, at any moment, to hear him to burst into
the first verse of the "Horst Wessel Lied." I noted, with
growing horror, that he had placed copies of the Spotlight,
and also the Nationalist Times – another dubious
journal from an equally insignificant nutball sect cited by
Edsall – on the desks where the delegates would sitting
when the session began. I repressed the urge to make a clean
sweep of the room, and thus give this loon the attention he
so desperately craved. . . .
I
GIVE IT A MINUS ONE
Instead,
I took him aside and told him what I thought of the Spotlight
and why it would be a bad thing if that highly entertaining
(in the sense of unintentional humor) rag became associated
in the public mind with Buchanan. What struck me, however,
was how completely isolated this character was, not only in
his wardrobe but in his views: very few showed any interest
in the Spotlight, or any of the other material placed
there by this semi-uniformed agitator, who seemed more clownish
than threatening – and hardly very effective. The earnest
young delegates were completely focused on the task at hand
– building an alternative to the two-party duopoly, and
fighting for a foreign policy of peace and nonintervention.
Instead of reaching out to the wackos of the far right fringe,
the chairman of the Colorado Buchanan group seemed more interested
in reaching out to the intelligent nonpartisan left. During
the question-and-answer portion of my talk, I was asked if
I thought the "support" the Spotlight was a plus or
a minus and I told the assembled delegates in no uncertain
terms: "a very definite minus. Their agreement with me on
this point seemed almost unanimous – except for the woeful
little man I had talked to earlier, who seemed to wilt and
sink lower in his seat.
BEYOND
THE PALE
The
real point of the Edsall smear article, aside from being the
opening salvo of Anti-Buchanan Brigades' pre-convention warm-up,
is that Buchanan's ideas are so poisonous ("toxic," says Arianna
Huffington, the daaaahling of limousine liberalism,
who is excluding Pat from her phony "shadow convention") that
they must not be given a platform. According to Edsall, Pat's
point of contention with Israel's "amen corner" in the US
– his idea that American foreign policy must put the
interests of this country first, and no other –
necessarily attracts and even generates bigotry. The implication
is that therefore such ideas must never even be raised, they
are beyond the pale, a kind of nonviolent hate crime that
must be punished if it can't be ignored. The same goes for
Buchanan's program to stop the floodtide of immigration, his
opposition to affirmative action, and his principled defense
of the cultural traditions and symbols of the Old South, which
are now being purged in an orgy of political correctness run
amok. Edsall opines that "Buchanan's harsh critiques of the
'Israel lobby,' of third world immigration and of such civil
rights leaders as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. have resonated
with groups that see Jews as corrupters of American culture
and that see blacks and Hispanics as threats to white majority
rule of the United States." But Buchanan does not single out
the "Israel lobby" for special criticism: his critique is
equally "harsh" when it comes to the machinations of other
foreign lobbyists, whose influence he has descried in his
book, A
Republic, Not an Empire. And as for "third world immigration"
– my understanding of Pat's position is that he is for
a complete moratorium, for five years, on any and all
immigration – a restriction, as I understand it, that
would extend to the inhabitants of the British Isles as well
as Mexicans, Pakistanis, and Rwandans.
ILL
WILL, OR HABIT? YOU DECIDE
And
as for Martin Luther King – a man who plagiarized
his doctoral dissertation, collaborated with well-known
Communist party members and sympathizers, and did more
to overturn private property rights and deliver America to
socialism than any other figure in American history –
well, we'd better not go there, lest I, too, am blacklisted
as a dangerous "extremist," perhaps a "white supremacist"
or even a nefarious "neo-confederate," as the League of the
South is termed by professional "extremist"-baiters. Edsall
puts them on the same terrain with the neo-Nazis, but this
is a low blow and completely untrue. The League is nothing
but a romantic gesture: it is not racist (indeed, they boast
of black members), intent on preserving the genteel traditions
and symbols of the Old South, a project of the paleoconservative
rather than the national socialist wing of the Right. The
League is headed up by Professor Michael Hill, a scholarly
type who holds summer schools in conjunction with the paleoconservative
Rockford Institute in which the subject of a seminar is likely
to be "'I'll Take My Stand': The Influence of the Southern
Agrarians on the Literature of Protest" or the historical
revisionism of Eugene Genovese. The League's political position
is utopian but by no means sinister: they are rather charming
Southern secessionists, who really want to restore not the
old South (and certainly not slavery!) but the Articles of
Confederation. In that sense, they are "neo-confederates."
Their thesis is that the radical decentralization of power
– in the former Soviet Union, in places like Italy, where
the North wants out, and throughout the Third World, in, say,
Indonesia – must also take place in this country.
A startling thesis, yes – and an intelligent one. This
is not about "racism." Yet Edsall and the editors of
the Washington Post put them in the same category with
the nutball William Pierce and his neo-Nazi ravings. This
is an out-and-out smear, or else just plain ignorance
of the willful variety. A simple search on Google.com
would have turned up the truth about the League of the South
as an organization that explicitly opposes racism.
Whether Edsall's laziness was born of ill will, or habit,
I leave to my readers to judge.
AND
NOW NADER!
It
isn't just Buchanan who is getting the "extremist" treatment.
The latest assault by the New York Times – which
editiorially chastised Ralph for "cluttering up" the presidential
contest – comes from their most obnoxious columnist,
Paul Krugman, the celebrator of globalization who steps out
of his role as resident economist-in-chief of the Times
op ed page to play the part of DNC hit man – and he plays
it quite well. He dares to quote George Orwell on Gandhi to
buttress his view that Nader is a dour (and possibly dangerous)
"extremist." "Saints should always be judged guilty until
proved innocent." What he leaves out, in truly Orwellian fashion,
is the rest of Orwell's sentence, which reads: "but the tests
that have to be applied to them are not, of course, the same
in all cases." The test that Krugman applies is a weird one,
indeed. The news that the ascetic Nader is a millionaire did
not shock Krugman: indeed, we ought not to be worried about
his "vices, if he has any, but his virtues – and his
determination to impose those virtues on the rest of us."
RALPH
NADER, WILD MAN?
Wow!
So old Ralphie is now being caricatured as a kind of Gandhi-Torquemada,
who would "impose virtues" on us high-living heathens with
the same forcefulness and alacrity as the Taliban or a liberal's
caricature of the "Moral Majority" and the Christian Coalition.
Will the Gore campaign manage to pin the nascent Green Party
with the "extremist" charge – or will Nader have to wind
up quoting large sections of Earth in the Balance,
perhaps reprinting it in the special Green Party edition?
This really is a joke, and a pathetic one at that.
Krugman acknowledges Nader's almost mythic status as the original
reformer and battler against bigness, but avers that "somewhere
along the way the practical radical disappeared." In his place,
an "extremist" (and possibly racist) spirit apparently took
over Nader's body and led him to oppose a bill removing barriers
to Africa's exports. Nader even disapproved of South Africa's
new constitution – "the one that ended apartheid," Krugman
helpfully reminds us – because it places corporations
in a separate legal category from individuals. But Krugman's
piece begs the obvious question: just what kind of
"extremist" is the calm, reasonable, self-deprecating Nader,
whose tone and personality are anything but demagogic?
SPOOKED
Krugman
is vague on this point: no, Nader isn't the Unabomber, nor
is he a closet Mussolini: the source of his "extremism" is
"general hostility toward corporations." Omigod, this is terrible!
God forbid that anyone should not believe that what's good
for the corporate oligarchs is good for the country –
why, that's "extremism"! Krugman is horrified to learn
that Nader once gave a speech that attributed the Columbine
killings indirectly to the "corporate influence" on American
culture. But this is not such a unique stance to take, nor
is it limited to the left: indeed, after Columbine, the right
was also condemning the cultural context of Columbine: a culture
shot through with violence, hedonism, alienation, and the
decadent nihilist anti-values promoted by Hollywood –
which is, I might add, the very apex of American corporate
culture. By the way – don't confuse "anti-corporate"
sentiment with anti-capitalism: it means resentment of the
behavior of certain capitalists, and not necessarily
opposition to laissez faire as an economic system. Nader is
not anti-capitalist, he is not a Marxist: neither does he
speak the language of extremism in any sense. He is that archaic
rarity, a true American progressive in the tradition of the
Robert
LaFollette, a crusader against bigness and the impersonality
of the modern managerial state. I don't agree with Nader's
politics: a great many of his proposals are anathema as far
as I am concerned. But he is no extremist. Yet Krugman is
practically beside himself with the sheer spookiness of it
all: "Am I the only person who shuddered when Mr. Nader declared
that if he were president, he would not reappoint Alan Greenspan
– he would 're-educate' him?"
PSYCHOLOGY,
AMATEUR AND SCIENTIFIC
As
a libertarian – and one who listened to Greenspan
lecture ("The Economics of a Free Society") at the Nathaniel
Branden Institute, years ago, on the subject of why we need
a gold standard and why the Federal Reserve ought to be abolished
– I, too, would like to "reeducate" Greenspan. Or, rather,
remind him of how he re-educated me about the
US banking system in his lecture course – that it ought
to be completely privatized. But that is another story, and
another column: suffice to say that that, too, would
no doubt make Krugman shudder. But then he seems to be easily
spooked. Almost any challenge to the conventional wisdom,
and the limited knowledge of his middle-brow readers, throws
him into a fit of convulsive shuddering – especially
the prospect that Nader could derail Gore and delay the final
triumph of the Third Way in America. That nasty Nader, we
are told, who used to be "the moderate humane activist of
the 1960s" is "a changed man" – he has turned into an
"extremist" monster. Why? How? "Your amateur psychology,"
says Krugman, "is as good as mine." If what Krugman has done
– or tried to do – to Nader is "amateur psychology,"
then get ready for the professionals. Because this slimeball
is but the first of several that the Gore camp intends to
send Nader's way.
PREDICTION
The
Democrats and Republicans have a natural interest in uniting
to eliminate the competition, and set the stage for their
convergence, ideological as well as tactical – so they
can divide up the goods. This is the very nature of a corrupt
regime: a self-serving and self-enriching elite that puts
its own interests against and above the interests of the rest
of the nation. This elite is now fighting to preserve its
legitimacy in the face of assaults from every quarter. Their
strategy is to take the focus off their own lack of legitimacy
by de-legitimizing and marginalizing their opponents, on the
left as well as the right. Keeping independent and third party
candidates off of the ballot through onerous ballot access
laws; excluding dissident candidates from semiofficial debates,
and smearing them in their partisan press – our rulers
will stop at nothing to stifle this double-barreled
challenge to their power. From Edsall in the Post to
Krugman in the Times, the Popular Front against Extremism
extends all the way to the "neoconservatives" on the Respectable
Right to the Clintonian liberals of the limousine left, who
are appalled that Nader came out for the impeachment of their
Priapic hero. Will the new Pop Frontiers succeed in exiling
all dissent to the margins, and label Buchanan and Nader "extremists"
and political pariahs? They didn't succeed with Buchanan,
who is still wildly popular with conservative Republicans
and commands respect if not agreement in the mainstream media,
and they'll fail with Nader, too. Perhaps their failure, and
their viciousness, will even lead to a bit of a backlash among
thinking voters. The more they attack Nader, the more popular
he will become – and the more support will be forthcoming
from Nader's followers, who will be energized by the attention
and the reality that their candidate is making a difference.
I know that is the case with the Buchanan Brigades. So, bring
it on, guys, we need more easily-refuted and desperate
attacks like this on both candidates – the more the merrier.
And, you know what? In the weeks and months to come, I'm sure
I won't be disappointed.
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