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  • Alas, we who wished to lay the foundations of kindness . . .

    …Alas, we
    Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness
    Could not ourselves be kind.

    But you, when at last it comes to pass
    That man can help his fellow man,
    Do not judge us
    Too harshly.

    — Bertolt Brecht, “To Posterity”

             When the great left-wing poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht penned these lines in 1938, the world was in crisis and cataclysm. In the Soviet Union, the Purge Trials of the Old Bolsheviks were underway, and Stalin’s arch-nemesis, Leon Trotsky, was seeking refuge in exile. Japan had invaded China, and the impending threat of World War II loomed across Europe. In the United States, the CIO was being born, the New Deal was underway, and the country was still reeling from the Great Depression that had begun in 1929. There was reason for gloom and pessimism, as fascism was rising and socialism was divided and fratricidal. Especially for socialists such as Brecht, the hounding of Trotsky and the show trials of Lenin’s associates for counterrevolution and treason were troubling for many; for the Stalinists, however, these were causes for glee. Under these conditions, Brecht penned these troubled and lamenting lines.

             Yet overlooked by Brecht, and many socialists both before and after 1938, was the very fundamental question: “If we ourselves can’t be kind, but only doctrinaire and self-assured, how can we honestly lay the foundations of kindness? Aren’t we being as bricklayers who don’t know how to lay bricks? And why should we not be judged too harshly for this failing? Haven’t we, by this failing, let the masses down, betrayed their trust in us?”

             My answer is Yes, and it is one shared by other socialists as well. If we of the left can’t ourselves be kind, we can’t lay the foundations for kindness in a serious way; we can only accomplish Political Correctness, and that is indeed a failing, a betrayal of trust we foist on the masses, for which we can’t be judged too harshly.

             I write thus as a forty-five year veteran of the left who has himself tried to be kind, only to frequently have others on the left treat him none too kindly. Same as others on the left have experienced. Left-wing sectarianism and heresy-hunting are unfortunately all too well known, and all too common, and stem from the same flaw—self-assurance degenerated into self-righteousness, desire for truth degenerated into cruelty toward those who differ with us. All too many of us on the left have endured such, and rare indeed is the leftist who hasn’t had to endure these at least once. In an important way, it’s what’s turned many a former leftist into a rightist, many a socialist or communist into a virulent enemy of both.

             Not all of us on the left who’ve endured these have abandoned the left, and I am one who has not, although I often feel the left has abandoned me. More important, since these serious flaws can’t be easily hidden, the working people the left is trying to reach end up feeling abandoned by the left also, of being used and manipulated in internecine witch-hunts and doctrinal squabbles, of being pawns in a chess game of interest and relevant only to sectarian chess players. They thus lose faith in the left too.

             The antidote is for the left to realize that people count just as much as programs, and without kindness to our fellow human beings, we of the left can’t lay the foundations of kindness. Without caring, without empathy, what we try to build will not be humane, despite what our now merely abstract programs say. We will be as bricklayers who cannot lay bricks, and it won’t matter even if a thousand bricks are laid before us. We will render them useless.

             So the left’s first need is kindness. Kindness toward ourselves, and kindness toward those outside our circles. Or, in other words, simple human decency. And the essence of that is caring what people really think, what they really care about, and honestly dialoguing with them about it, not preaching our own particular nostrums and programs at them. For we are not so infallible that we of the left know for all time what the masses need, and what we can give them that will fulfill those needs. Nor should we be so arrogant to assume we do.

             But this does not lead to not having programs and proposals, strategies, principles and tactics, nor to a solipsistic skepticism. There are basic ground rules that have been proven to work and work well, and one of the most basic of these was articulated by Engels at Marx’s graveside: “Marx proved that man must first of all eat before he can do philosophy, the arts, etc.” Or engage in politics, or organize a union, or do anything at all. Another way of saying, Economics is paramount. But we of the left have too often forgotten that, and tried to replace it with ideology. When the masses spurn our preoccupation with ideology as lacking relevance, we become angry and unkind toward them, as though they were fools for rejecting our wisdom. But they are the ones who are right, not we.

             Certainly that’s true now, true overwhelmingly, especially given that we of the U.S. and worldwide are in an economic crisis where the people are basically reeling and hurting for strictly economic matters: unemployment, job insecurity, low and stagnant wages, decline of trade unions, foreclosures, high gas and food prices, unaffordable education, and the rich gobbling up the lion’s share of the wealth. All economic. That’s what the people are concerned with now, that’s what’s on their minds, not leftist abstractions many of the left feel more comfortable talking and theorizing about. But they also come down to economics. Think how much wealth would be available for jobs if the war in Afghanistan weren’t being waged. Think how much Green Jobs and building Green Infrastructure could both put people to work, and work in meaningful ways that would positively address global warming and the polluted environment. And this only begins the list! So economics is paramount to the left’s being kind, considerate of people’s real needs, not our abstract wishes.

             Last, in terms of kindness, it’s crucial to remember that people are diverse, messy, not always articulate, and, especially now, hurting and fearful; this is most important to remember, for many of us radicals are from more secure backgrounds, are more affluent and less troubled. We are thus given to more impatience toward those who are not “like us.” And people have emotions as well as brains, disturbances as well as serenity. All needing, and deserving of, kindness. Finally, we of the left are people too. We need to be treated with kindness by our fellow leftists same as the masses, the working people. We may work more with our brains than with our hands, we may be looking for our first job while others are in despair because they’ve been unemployed for months or even years, and yet we’re all brothers and sisters under the skin. We all need kindness. And if we of the left can’t provide it, we can’t be judged too harshly.

     

    GEORGE FISH is an anti-authoritarian socialist writer living in Indianapolis, Indiana whose work has appeared in several left publications He has also published extensively on blues and other pop music, has published poetry, and does Lenny Bruce/George Carlin-style stand-up comedy. He may be reached at georgefish666@yahoo.com. This article was first published in the June 2011 issue of The Movement, formerly the Indianapolis Peace & Justice Journal.

  • Sense and Nonsense in the Balanced Budget Debate: A Socialist Response

         The Republicans have successfully changed the economic debate from jobs to deficit control. Why the urgency? After all, this anemic “recovery” has been marked above all by the lack of job growth. Growth needs to considerable exceed 3% per annum if the private sector is to make any significant headway in reducing unemployment. Instead growth is actually trending downward from its post Great Recession peak. The intractability of long term unemployment now exceeds the duration experienced in the 1930s. Combine this with the fact that economy wide wage gains in the past decade have even lagged those in the Great Depression, when adjusted for deflation, and one can easily appreciate why workers’ portion of the national income has continued to drop consistently, since the recession was declared to have ended.
         Yet the American right wing, including of course the business community, insists that deficit spending is already entirely excessive and is leading the country inadvertently down the path to socialism, by which they mean “statism.” This may appear absurd on the face of it, but let me try to put their argument in a coherent form, something right wingers — including right wing economists — seem incapable of doing, and to explain why this is a well-grounded fear.
         The theory is that when government finances its activities by borrowing, for instance to alleviate unemployment, it increases the national debt. The increased national debt invokes additional interest payments necessitating government to jack up taxes still further to raise the money to meet its mounting interest obligations. This may not be in the immediate offing, but is, at any rate, eventually unavoidable. The higher taxes, or threat of higher taxes, in turn make investment still less profitable, by reducing the anticipated after tax returns. The private (nonfinancial) sector recedes, adding to the problem of private sector unemployment while generating a spiral of additional government sector borrowing, state expansion and private sector shrinkage. A willingness on the part of government to raise the debt ceiling moreover signals to the markets that the administration is not willing to arrest this cycle. This, in turn invokes a capital strike, wherein the private sector liquidate its inventories, and sits on its revenues, but refuses to broaden investment beyond, say, certain tech industries or foreign markets that promise exceptional short term returns sufficient to offset the anticipated additional tax burdens to come. In the context of a stagnant private sector, bond holders will come to fear a state default and therefore demand additional premiums in the form of higher interest payments before they will relinquish additional funds to the government. This eats further into the net profitability of the non-financial sector — which is now squeezed both by higher taxes (or the immanent threat of higher taxes) and the increased costs of financing its capital formation through recourse to the credit markets.
         A mild depression is therefore postponed by government spending, only to give rise either to a more dramatic downturn or prolonged stagnation and paralysis.
         Most leftish answers to this scenario are designed to appease the business community. As a practical political imperative, straying too far from this common understanding is expecting too much from political elites educated by the business class to view political economy in these terms. Political economy is fundamentally ideological. Its consequence is to present an evolving picture of reality that reflects how the ruling class perceives its place in the social order. Its basic thrust is to suppress the aspirations of the working class, which, as a propertyless class, can only challenge entrenched interests by wielding political force; by winning the battle for democracy. This means clinging to a framework in which the state is limited to maintaining a general legal and infrastructural framework favorable for accumulation with the flexibility to grant limited concessions needed to secure social peace, without abdicating terrain directly useful to the democratization of economic power. The principles of “sound finance” tethers the growth of state functions to that which can be financed out of profits without threatening capitalism’s ability to accumulate. So long as state finances find their immediate limit in the profit system, private property can hold the pretensions of the working class in check largely through instilling a sense of self-restraint and discipline in the face of overwhelming and impersonal market power. The threats of “outsized” deficits, “run away” entitlements, and unemployment consequential to wage demands nonresponsive to downward international competition are so much a part of the internalized view of society’s rank and file that they are largely drained of the capacity for fight back. It is the market itself that disciplines democracy.
         Even progressives such as Paul Krugman, have found fit to work within this narrow compass of understanding — that there is no alternative. It is argued quite rightly, that in the short term the fundamental political and social problem that liberals and the Democratic Party face is chronic unemployment. Mainstream liberals have largely accepted the framework that as long as a reasonable (i.e., manageable) ratio can be established between additional employment — as a result of deficit spending — and debt, the interest payments on the national debt can easily come out of future taxes paid out of a growing national income. This therefore means that both taxes on the wealthy and reductions in spending will both be needed. The former now, with additional taxes to come from a broadened base; the latter down the road when economic momentum has been reestablished. This sort of Laffer curve Keynesianism, in which deficits are said to pay or largely pay for themselves through the economic expansion that deficits breed, still operates within the world view — if not the priorities — of the business class. But in the long run, the consensus of both wings of the establishment is that servicing an outsized state debt is unsustainable. It will be met — if not reined in — by draconian limitations imposed by a punitive bond market acting in preemptive fear of runaway inflation. The question is when to cut, not the certainty of doing so.
         So too, the endless arguments over the health of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, one proposal no less unpalatable and reactionary than the next. Should taxes be raised in anticipation of future shortfalls? But what then becomes of an already anemic recovery? Should the age requirements be augmented or means testing be invoked to limit access to these programs or will a shift to private markets be preferable because it controls state costs by passing them on to the individual? But what then of the permanent spike in poverty among the elderly and infirm that will surely result from a market based voucher system? The Obama administration has fully accepted the premise that the budget deficit is an immanent flashpoint and has offered a program for reducing the debt by $4 trillion, while placing all social programs “on the table.” Even AARP has given the green light to throwing Social Security under the bus.
         And if we don’t tackle these problems, aren’t we facing a sovereign debt crisis such as Greece and Ireland now experience with even more dramatic consequences to ourselves and world capitalism?
         There is no satisfactory way out within the confines of the dominant parameters. And without an adequate and believable alternative, which socialist ideology no longer provides, the working class will acquiesce to its own victimization, each defeat further sapping its regenerative powers of resistance.
         And yet on the face of it, this entire line of reasoning — which encompasses the omnibus of alternatives from A to B — is utter nonsense. Borrowing or taxing, the prior appropriation of funds, in order to finance government spending, is a self-imposed system constraint. So too are government imposed debt ceilings. They are not operational constraints. The ability of a society including a capitalist society to provide a decent existence for its elderly and disabled as well as for its working class wealth producers is not based on the ability of capital to finance state activities out of private revenues. Capital’s ability to keep economic demands held hostage to its priorities alone is. That is the reason for such prior constraint. Society’s actual ability to provide a decent and secure existence is only limited by its accumulated productive capacity, a capacity that is currently unused to the tune of approximately 25%. Even under the best of times 15-20% of capacity lies fallow. No economy can be said to be living beyond its means as long as there is excess capacity — unused factories, idle machines, and unemployed labor. So while the mainstream debates the level of austerity and sacrifice “we” should be willing to accept being imposed upon ourselves — naturally, for the sake of our “grandchildren”, the accumulated surplus labor extracted from the working class has produced a sufficient and ever growing productive structure that, if fully tapped, could readily be the source of more generous social benefits, including universal health care, deep anti-poverty programs and ample Social Security remunerations. Capital is unwilling to unlock that capacity simply because it lacks current profitable potential and because the resulting tight labor markets would embolden the working class to abandon its habits of submission and subservience to power. It has therefore so constrained the system through legal encumbrances prohibiting it for operating beyond these limitations.
         More central is the ruling class concern that the output of idle capacity, once consumed by the state as a result of deficit spending, no longer functions as capital in process. Or worse still, if it were to be used by the state for commodity production, such production would introduce a form competition that would enjoy an enormous inbuilt advantage against the private sector. The bail out of the auto industry — which represented a crimped, anti-working class, microcosm of this possibility, generated howls of fear and outrage on the part of the broader business community. Either way, if consumed as revenue or put to use in state production, that excess capacity impressed into state service would be largely lost to the private accumulation process. Taxing idle balances(or borrowing, which assumes future taxes) and rechanneling them back to the private sector in the form of state purchases will, it is true, have a multiplier effect that will expand economic activity. But unless the additional profits generated through that activity exceeds the taxes needed to finance the process, the exercise has little attraction for capital beyond the immediate beneficiaries of state contracts.
         And this is the crux of the matter. These constraints paralyze the public debate.
         What is not clearly appreciated by the public is that current state operations are in no way operationally dependent on the prior withdrawal of funds from the private sector. Whatever may have been the true when currencies were backed by a fixed metallic content, modern money is a state issued, state enforced, fiat currency. It is no longer commodity money and is not exuded by the system through the spontaneous interfunctioning of the private sector. The historic function of the capitalist state, when currencies were gold backed, was to guarantee convertibility and thereby preserve the “soundness” (the commodity integrity) of its currency. This meant that the issuance of currency was constrained by the supply of gold in the state’s treasury. This tied the hands of government requiring it to appropriate funds (gold) from the private sector before undertaking or continuing any activity. The gold standard effectively subordinated the state to the needs of private accumulation and prevented the outsized growth of the state for fear of strangling the source of its revenue. A state which did not toe the line and debased its currency would ultimately face the prospects of insolvency. It would be compelled to transfer state properties to the financial system, thus allowing private capital to put such properties to profit-making use, before it could regain its ability to access credit markets. This reestablished the “proper” equilibrium between the state and capital.
         But fiat currencies shatter and invert the inherited logic of the metallic based monetary system. Fiat currencies are not a byproduct of private commerce. They are a creature of the state, which has a monopoly on its issuance. Of course, the point of reference here are political entities that are sovereign, not in the juridical sense, but with respect to the issuance of currency. Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain for instance are no more capable of issuing fiat currency than are California or Wisconsin. That being understood, fiat issuing entities — such as the US, Britain, China and the EU — have to spend in order to inject liquidity into the system in sufficient quantity to accommodate the interests of commerce. They have to spend, that is, prior to their ability to tax; reversing the polarity of economic causality. With the advent of fiat money, taxation and borrowing no longer exist as necessary adjuncts of state appropriation.
         That is, payment due for state wages, for the rental of state buildings, for the purchase of infrastructural products, to fund Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, to finance the interest due on the national debt, to share revenues with local governments, or, unfortunately, to fight imperialist wars do not require the state to mobilize funds, either in the form of additional taxes or by selling state bonds to the private sector — or foreign governments — prior to meeting its obligations. These obligations can be met simply by computer generated entries from the state into the ledgers of its private sector customers or its own self-administered trust funds, its private and foreign bond holders, and its employees’ payrolls. This adds to the budget deficit in a way that never has to be repaid, or paid down and does so at a zero rate of interest. This, as a practical fact, is how wars are financed until, that is, they become so unpopular or counterproductive that politicians conveniently awake to the discovery that the treasury is “out of money.” All of which suggests that even ruling class functionaries can with the proper motivation come to recognize that there is no functional requirement to maintain the fiction that a complex network of taxation and borrowing is the precondition for the state to function. The modern state cannot go bankrupt. The interest owed on the trade deficit is an accounting problem, not a social crisis waiting to happen. The state does not have to sell bonds to run a deficit. It does not have to tax its populace or borrow from them to pay the interest. The entire idiotic kabuki performance of haranguing over debt ceilings, debt defaults or government shutdowns, or of acquiescing to mass unemployment, or of negotiating down social benefits to keep the state afloat can all be dispensed with. There is no more imperative for the debate we are currently suffering through than there is a functional requirement to tie one’s hands behind one’s back and lap up food from a bowl like an animal. Unless, of course, one wants to experience life as a dog. Even so, reasonable individuals acknowledge that this is not a requirement of human existence. So too there is no functional requirement for workers to be kept at the level of animal insecurity merely to satisfy capital’s social need for a “sound financial policy,” a policy that periodically grinds the state under its heel, arbitrarily checking its ability to expand public consumption at the expense of capital accumulation. Once fiat money replaced commodity money, the genie of state reorganization was already released from the bottle.
         This is not meant to imply that there is no further need for the state to tax and borrow. It is rather that these activities properly fulfill different functional requirements; namely to cool down an overheated economy by draining excess demand for consumption and assets that may have been induced by additional state spending. Functionally, these should be tools not for the appropriation of operating funds, but for the regulation of aggregate demand and the adjustment of interest rates needed to preserve price stability including an access to investment capital commensurate with cyclical moderation. The size of the government budget, in short, should only be determined by the shortfall of aggregate demand at levels that would otherwise accommodate full capacity utilization, with the understanding that there are no intrinsic financial constraints on federal spending, beyond those artificially imposed by capital and the political inertia yoked to it. Were these shackles not in place, resources idled by the lack of adequate profit potential could readily be translated into additional decommodified public goods and services with no cost to the consumer. Within this context, the struggle over budget priorities would take on an entirely different cast, not least of which would be the need to combine fiscal stimulus with progressive redistribution.
         And if government estimates were to overshoot, building inflationary pressures, excess demand could be skimmed by introducing taxes starting at the top of the income/wealth chain and working their way down on a sliding scale, and through the sale of bonds to drive up interest rates. The government can, in other words, also run budget surpluses. But to reemphasize — the question of surpluses (or deficits) should relate solely to the management of aggregate demand, not to the financing of government operations.
         The lack of aggregate demand is primarily a function of an insufficient rate of capital formation due to the chronic lack of adequate profitability. The Bush era boom masked this by means of a massive speculative housing bubble. This, like other financial bubbles, imparted to the falling rate of profit — the developmental trend of capitalism — a wave like character. But, the collapse should have been entirely predictable. The boom was based on asset stripping of the American working class, rather than on the buildup of productive capacity. Home equity was exchanged against surplus value so that declining wages could be offset and supplemented by debt fueled consumption. What remained was canalized into small business expansion and stock market purchases. The profit crises remained latent by the injection of an estimated $2.3 trillion in supplemental demand extracted from the housing market between 2003 and 2008. When this deflated, that is when the issuance of financial instruments outstripped the ability of capital to extract sufficient surplus value to service the accumulated pyramid of obligations, the financial system was forced to the brink of collapse. The hastily cobbled TARP program — a stunning exemplar in itself of ex nihilo money creation — recapitalized the hemorrhaging banks, but the restored financial system had no further interest in injecting capital back into a failing system of private production. The expansionary potential of almost half of the stimulus was thereby neutralized at inception.
         Consider what might have occurred if the state had stimulated the economy from the bottom up: if the state had, for instance, abolished all taxes on the working class, including payroll taxes. And this is the most modest, most right-wing of populist friendly proposals. This would have constituted a massive wage increase at no additional expense to employers. Of course, this is simply a thought experiment. No wing of the ruling class would dare do that, unless it could also exploit the opportunity to defund the Social Security and Medicaid/care trust funds as a pretext to later abolish or diminish future benefits. But let us follow this through. Had the improbable happened, workers would have gained sufficient additional income to massively obviate the mortgage debt crisis, pay down credit cards, expand consumption out of income and build savings. As the financial intermediaries of the private sector, the banking sector would have been indirectly recapitalized and the economy massively stimulated. The imaginary responsive state would simply credit the trust funds electronically to compensate for the engineered shortfall insuring no future sacrifices could be retrofitted on a working class as it ages or becomes infirm. And, if the recapitalization of the banking system was not deep enough to penetrate up the ladder to the investment bankers and hedge fund jockeys, a layer of social parasitism would simply have been wiped out with minimal impact on the broader public.
         Consider alternatively or additionally, if the federal government temporarily or even permanently assumed the financial obligations of state and local governments. These are entities that cannot create money. Again this would have involved a key stroke on the part of the federal government; entering a credit into the bank accounts of states, cities and municipalities. Like the tax holiday for payroll taxes, this proposal too would further recapitalize the banks and contribute to a meaningful reversal of the mortgage crisis as knock on effects. Demand would again be created by the feds without incurring additional tax or borrowing liabilities. There would be no loss of services, no layoffs, and no pension shortfalls. No raison d’etre for the Christies, Walkers, Kasiches and Cuomos. No answerability to Wall Street bond traders. The current capital strike would have been very effectively broken by the avalanche of additional aggregate demand that would compel idle capacity into play.
         The state has the ability not to prevent but to radically reshape the character and impact of capitalist crises. But this requires in the first instance making proper use of the economic latitude accorded by the state monopoly over currency. It is this monopoly that fundamentally alters the mechanism of state operations. It liberates the state from the constraints of revenue, breaking the functional parallel between itself and the private sector where the necessity of financing its spending remains an inescapable constant. It is elite interests working their way through the political process that saddles that restraint on the system, long after its functional necessity has expired. Maintaining that symbiosis is crucial in preventing the emergence of the state as a semi-independent social factor. The point is to make that clear and to break that symbiosis. It requires the real democratization of the budget process.
         And there is a mass constituency for this. It appeals not only to the working class, but to that section of the anti-tax crowd, not so drunk on racist poisons that it has lost its capacity to respond to overwhelming self-interest. It is the left and the labor movement that can provide a crucial role for this message by acting as a ginger group for this agenda. But it is equally unlikely that this will find resonance with Democratic Party elites. The Democratic Party remains a ruling class institution, not a rank and file controlled membership organization. Its pro-business agenda is set primarily by its financiers, who pepper its platform with sufficient offers of largess and decorative concessions needed to assure itself a reliable electoral base. It performs what the Republicans cannot: keeping society’s working and lower classes docile, lest their unruliness unleashes the far greater repression of Republican social thuggery. It has no interest in loosening the grip of entrenched interests over the state. The DP is a steam valve on the pressure cooker of capitalist society rather than an agent for fundamental redress. Failure to break with the Democrats, in part attributable to a lack of an independent economic perspective, chains labor to the hamster wheel of permanent retrenchment — where all previous social gains are both perpetually negotiable and all new gains vexingly provisional.
         But the rationalization of the budget process combining all the modern financial tools at the state’s disposal, even if it were to open new terrain for public participation, would not be socialism. And we should be clear about this. Production and distribution would still not be managed democratically from below by society’s constituent elements. Market generated inequalities would continue to exist, though they could to a large extent be shrink fitted, and markets would continue to act in response to these disparities assuring that class privileges are faithfully reproduced. Neither would have capital relinquished its tentacled grip over the forces that shape public opinion and define the feasibility of social alternatives. And to the extent that political space is expanded, any vacuum not filled by greater democratic participation from below will be filled by managerial or bureaucratic “experts,” with the potential to develop and propagate their own independent class interests and to impose them on society. Though no panacea, unlocking the potential of modern monetary system nevertheless has the raw potential for a civilizational upgrade within capitalism.
         More crucially, it in no way dispenses with the need for socialism. The functional basis of the entire system still rests on capital accumulation. The state can therefore never attain full independence from the laws that govern the contradictory process of value-expansion. The tendency to replace living labor with ever more automated production processes tends to drive down the rate of profit. Each unit of capital becomes associated with an ever declining base from which surplus value can be extracted. The NY Times, for instance, recently reported that spending on machinery and technology has increased by 26%, while spending on employees has inched up by just 2%. And the goods producing sectors of construction and manufacturing in particular have actually shed 26% of its workers. Still, as long as the rate of accumulation is sufficiently high, the fall in the rate of profit can be offset in practice by a rise in the mass of profits. When this is no longer possible, it signals the need for a purgative of excess capital values. This is the necessary deflationary function that accompanies economic downturns. It recalibrates the system by devaluing capital, allowing the aggregate production structure to recombine on a more efficient, leaner basis which leads to rationalization and the intensified exploitation of labor power. When this process works its way sufficiently through the system, it removes the previous barriers to production and reestablishes the ability to again accumulate on a profitable basis.
         Effective countercyclical activity such as proposed here would paralyze that function. Removing the downward pressure on prices allows the least efficient capitals, which would otherwise first feel the brunt of the crisis, to maintain their pre-crisis values. Rather than be reorganized into a more productive capital complex, the equivalent output value of these sectors would be indirectly converted into public consumption. But capital formation is critically determined by the excess of production over consumption. The expansion of consumption without a parallel increase in productivity and capacity hinders the process of capital formation and moderates the critical rate of accumulation. And it does so in a context in which state buttressed demand creates tight labor markets compounding further the urgency to replace living labor throughout the reproduction process.
         The crisis mechanism is part of the biological functioning of the system. It is the automatic feedback mechanism, the high fever, of capital that forces upon itself the need to exude the toxic poisons of excess capital before it can be restored to health. So too, the budget crisis, as it is currently waged, is an historic outgrowth of the genetic need for capitalism to suppress nonproductive state consumption and to reconcentrate, when called upon, economic resources from the state to the accumulation process. The modern state can temporize the nature of economic crises — as has been argued here — by directly, realizing a portion of produced goods outside the mechanism of the market. And it can do so effectively while dispensing with the entire labyrinthine and functionally superfluous process of budget appropriations now underway. But at length this neutralizes and reverses the function that crises otherwise perform of converting currently unprofitable capacity into conditions where its redeployment will again allow it to participate in the process of capital self-expansion
         The state, therefore, can at length only expand the sphere of decommodified use-values if the accumulation of total capital is not impaired by their production. If capital cannot resume accumulation on its own terms, state-induced production will lose its driving force and become an obstacle to its resumption. This means that the state cannot avoid consciously assuming responsibility for the restructuring process that the crisis mechanism now periodically performs organically with such massive social disruption and dislocation. The alternative is long term stagnation. This of course would be a new type of stagnation — stagnation without mass unemployment, spikes in poverty and idled resources and, therefore, from an historical perspective, — a monumental step forward. But it would still be ultimately characterized by pitiably insignificant improvement in aggregate living standards; virtually a stationary state. The already low rate of capital formation in the Unites States exasperated by the claims of war, armaments production and the meager social benefits now in place have long enticed American capital to export surplus value to where more favorable investment opportunities await. A rationalized process of restructuring that supplants the haphazard social chaos of the business cycle necessarily requires a degree of social planning, an industrial policy, capital controls, aggressive infrastructural initiatives and a massive retraining program supported from below by an equally effective educational policy.
         The question then unavoidably presents itself. If all this planning is needed to avoid the crisis mechanism of capitalism and to manage aggregate demand, while expanding the sphere of decommodified production and mass consumption, why should society continue to suffer the indignities, the inequalities, the oppression and exploitation of capitalism? Why not take democratic control over the sum total of surplus value and put it directly to social use?

  • CPD Statements on Syria and Israel

    The Campaign for Peace and Democracy issued two statements on June 9, one on the movement for democracy in Syria and the other on Israel’s brutal response to unarmed demonstrators.

     

    CPD Salutes Syria’s Courageous Democratic Movement

    June 9, 2011

          The Campaign for Peace and Democracy expresses its deep admiration for the amazing courage shown by the people of Syria, struggling for democratic reforms in the face of horrific repression. Though they have been subjected to lethal force time and again, unarmed demonstrators have repeatedly taken to the streets.

          Syria has been under brutal authoritarian rule for decades, and many Syrians, and others, had hoped that Bashar al-Assad would move to democratize the system. However, the past three months have shown that Assad is determined to maintain his dictatorial grip on power no matter what the cost in Syrian lives.

          Despite the attempt by authorities in Damascus to prevent information from getting out, enough has been documented to show the criminal behavior of the regime.

          Amnesty International has evidence of 120 people killed this past weekend alone and “has the names of 986 people reported to have been killed by the Syrian security forces during the past 11 weeks. Thousands have been arrested, with many held of them held incommunicado.”[AI, “UN urged to act following deadly weekend in Syria,” June 6, 2011.]

          Human Rights Watch has reported: “Since the beginning of anti-government protests in March 2011, Syrian security forces have killed hundreds of protesters and arbitrarily arrested thousands, subjecting many of them to brutal torture in detention¼.The nature and scale of abuses, which Human Rights Watch research indicates were not only systematic, but implemented as part of a state policy, strongly suggest these abuses qualify as crimes against humanity.” [HRW, “‘We’ve Never Seen Such Horror,’” June 1, 2011.]

          Among its more cynical pretenses to legitimacy, the Assad regime claims to protect the rights of ethnic and religious minorities. In response, opposition forces meeting in Antalya, Turkey, have affirmed that the Syrian people are of many ethnicities, and called for “the legitimate and equal rights of all under a new Syrian constitution based on national unity, civil state and a pluralistic, parliamentary, and democratic regime. “[Text.]

          We stand with the people of Syria in their remarkable struggle for democracy.

    CPD Condemns Israel's Murderous Attack on Unarmed Palestinians

    June 9, 2011

          Twice now, unarmed Palestinians demonstrators and their supporters from the refugee camps around Israel, adopting the tactics of the Arab Spring, have challenged the Israeli occupation and their own historic dispossession by marching on Israel’s occupation borders. And on both occasions, Israel has adopted the vicious tactics of the most ruthless Arab regimes by responding to these unarmed demonstrators with lethal force.

          On May 15, Israeli officials hid behind the excuse of being unprepared for massive protests — as if they couldn’t read the same social media that the demonstrators used to organize their actions. Human Rights Watch reported: “In a too-familiar pattern, Israeli troops responded to stone-throwing youths with live bullets, with predictably deadly consequences. The evidence shows a disturbing disregard for protesters’ lives.”[HRW, “Israel: Investigate Killings During Border Protests; Troops Responded to Stone-Throwing With Live Bullets,” May 20, 2011.]

          On June 5th, Israeli officials charged that the Syrian regime was responsible for the deaths because it didn’t keep people away from the Israeli-controlled frontier fence. No doubt, Damascus was happy to divert attention from its own atrocities. But this doesn't negate the fact that Israel's brutal actions were morally unacceptable — whatever Syria's motives might have been in allowing Palestinians to approach the territory that Israel has annexed in violation of Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. The demonstrators were killed in cold blood by Israeli snipers who were in no danger, acting on the orders of their superiors.

          Washington too directed all its criticism at Syria. A State Department spokesperson declared: “we condemn what appears to be an effort by the Syrian Government to incite events and draw attention away from its own internal issues…. And I just would add that Israel, like any sovereign nation, has a right to defend itself.” A reporter asked, “Even if the people are unarmed?” to which the spokesperson replied in full: “But again, this is clearly an attempt by Syria to incite these kinds of protests, and they [the Israelis] have a right to protect their — this disengagement line.” [U.S. Dept. of State, Daily Press Briefing (Mark C. Toner), Washington, DC, June 6, 2011.]

          The cruel and unjust Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories conquered in 1967 as well as of the Golan Heights must be ended. And so must U.S. support for the occupation.

  • A Thousand Platitudes: Liberal Hysteria and the Tea Party

    [Comments by Marvin and Betty Mandell and others are posted below the article.]

         Noam Chomsky is afraid. Addressing a crowd at the Orpheum Theatre in Madison last April, the left's leading intellectual sent out a warning. "I'm just old enough to have heard a number of Hitler's speeches on the radio," he said, "and I have a memory of the texture and the tone of the cheering mobs, and I have the dread sense of the dark clouds of fascism gathering here."[1] Chomsky continued, "The level of anger and fear is like nothing I can compare in my lifetime." The impetus for the professor's alarm is the Tea Party, the latest in a long line of right-wing social movements. The emergence of this movement in 2009 rattled the parameters of the American national discourse and shook commentators on the liberal-left into a frenzy. MSNBC ran specials on Timothy McVeigh and right-wing militias, while The Nation columnists like Melissa Harris-Perry invoked the specter of "a vicious new Jim Crow terrorism." The Tea Party was, from the outset, targeted with invective designed to isolate and marginalize.

         This strategy is not surprising. The American left's response to grassroots activity on the right has historically been punctuated by hysteria, exaggeration, and appeals to the coercive power of the state. This article aims to identify the dominate narratives spun by the liberal-left, as represented by its major intellectual organs and prominent commentators, which have ranged from identifications of a proto-fascist movement animated by the resentments of downwardly mobile white workers to, on the other extreme, apologias for the political activity of a besieged and embittered petit-bourgeoisie. Furthermore, an alternative reading of the Tea Party will be offered, a movement that is not fascistic, racist, nor particularly novel, but rather a new expression of a venerable American right-wing populist tradition. Finally, this essay endeavors to reveal the roots of reigning liberal-left analyses in the historic lack of a national labor party, a particularity that has focused the left's vitriol onto their opponents on the right rather than the true stakeholders of power.

    Misreading the Tea Leaves

         In March 2010, just days before Chomsky's speech, The Nation's subscribers were e-mailed their own breathless appeal. The message noted the "bigoted language," allegedly encouraged by GOP officials, of right-wing protesters outside the Capitol. It warned that, "There are historic lessons to be learned. But they are the lessons of the 19th century not the 20th. We must now guard against the descent of a vicious new Jim Crow terrorism."[2] Readers and potential donors were reminded that "since 1985, subscribers have known The Nation as a kind of early warning system." This call-to-arms matched the tenor of a swath of the left that saw the Tea Party as a threat to be confronted using the language of the anti-fascist and anti-racist movements of bygone eras.

         The content of this particular attack on the "Tea Party resistance" was the product of Melissa Harris-Perry, an intellectual who has become increasingly prominent on MSNBC and in the liberal print press over the past two years. Her commentary on the Tea Party, alongside those of other Nation contributors like Richard Kim, can be regarded as representative of dominant liberal opinion during this period, an opinion that, through the launching of a regular column "Sister Citizen" in The Nation and the marginalization of more radical, dissident voices like Alexander Cockburn, represents an effective editorial shift to the right, as the liberal press, strident in their opposition to Bush, transformed itself to play the role of critical supporter during the early years of the Obama administration.

         This critique of the Tea Party, harping on the movement's rhetoric and supposed "extremism," comes from the political center and not the left. The legitimacy of insurgent popular protest itself, as opposed to tactical lobbying and electioneering has been explicitly called into question by Harris-Perry. Writing in late 2009 for The Nation, in a piece titled "Lose the Love/Hate, But Keep the Hope," Harris-Perry expounded on ways to "hold onto hard won optimism while still demonstrating emotional restraint in the public sphere."[3] Progressives, she argues, have been too confrontational, apt to adopt a posture of "holding Obama's feet to the fire," a strategy that represents "an old fashioned way to approach being part of a governing coalition." The rise of the "screaming" Tea Party, with its "town hall shouting matches," Harris-Perry argues, shows the limits of this adversarial form of politics.

         In place of "outsider angst," Harris-Perry proposes that members of the working class who wish to effect change should remember the lesson of the Obama campaign, which saw unprecedented numbers of donors successfully fund his push to the presidency. "[Getting] friends to commit $50 to Obama 2012 if he commits to saving the public option," or creating a blog or YouTube videos are proposed tactics in this new political strategy. The left is urged to "Put down the hammer and try a screwdriver" and to "ask what we can do to help Obama achieve a new direction for America." Even these tactics, however, should be used tepidly. The election of Obama opened up new avenues of political engagement, but did not give progressives the mandate to fulfill the policy agenda that Obama ran on. Lambasting "a winner-take-all mentality that has led to tyrannical governance, which fails to protect the interests of political minorities," Harris-Perry reminds readers that, "We won an election; we did not stage a coup. The left will get some, but not all of what it wants, and that is OK. It is better than OK, it is the heart of democracy. Winning does not give us a mandate to ignore the interests of those we defeated." This style of political engagement is a corollary to U.S. labor's focus on insider lobbying and fundraising, as opposed to the street mobilizations seen in Europe. Speaking to the New York Times, Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, postulated that all labor needed was enough expert lobbying in Washington to attract the support of a few more senators.[4]

         Harris-Perry's frequent evocation of the Civil Rights movement is used in this context to damn the radical forces thwarting, rather than facilitating, President Obama's agenda. In an essay written for the occasion of Martin Luther King Day in 2010, "How Barack Obama is like Martin Luther King, Jr.," she attempted to deconstruct the left's false burnishing of King.[5] She presents King as a pragmatic political strategist who shrewdly turned his back on Bayard Rustin, among other leftists, specifically because he was a homosexual socialist. Furthermore, King's undercutting of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party is lauded by Harris-Perry as a precondition for the passage of the Civil Rights Act. The piece is indicative of a shift in The Nation from the scathing denunciations of the "war crimes" of the Bush administration to one that urges patience and faith in the Obama White House.

         This ethos also displays a hostility to the popular democratic expression exemplified by the Tea Party movement, as well as far-left activism, and an allegiance to the capable administrators of American capitalism found in our own era's vital center. Harris-Perry's critique of the Tea Party is fundamentally conservative, defending institutionalized power against the forces she perceives as threatening it. In "Is this the Birth of a Nation," the article excerpted in the aforementioned Nation e-mail appeal, the professor offers her conception of the state: "The state is the entity that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, force and coercion.… To the extent that a state is challenged as the sole, legitimate owner of the tools of violence, force, and coercion, it is challenged at its core."[6] Harris-Perry concludes that the Tea Party is an existential threat to the U.S. state:

    "The Tea Party is a challenge to the legitimacy of the U.S. state. When Tea Party participants charge the current administration with various forms of totalitarianism, they are arguing that this government has no right to levy taxes or make policy. Many GOP elected officials offered nearly secessionist rhetoric from the floor of Congress this weekend. They joined as co-conspirators with the Tea Party protesters by arguing that this government has no monopoly on legitimacy."

    The very ethical and legal legitimacy of right-wing protest is called into question in the context of the racial slurs allegedly hurled at Representative John Lewis, a veteran of the Civil Rights movement, at a Tea Party mobilization in March 2010. Harris-Perry argues that such animus directed at " duly elected representatives of the United States government is more than an act of racism. It is an act of sedition."

         Whereas the John Lewis of the 1960s was just a dissident, now an elected official, Harris-Perry sees him as an "embodiment of the state." MSNBC contributors Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow paralleled scenes of overwhelmingly white throngs of protesters heckling the representative to the iconography of the Civil Rights-era. Harris-Perry, however, prefers an even more provocative analogy: that of mid-nineteenth century Reconstruction. Harris-Perry describes how the precarious equality of the post-Civil War period was only maintained by the coercion of the federal government. She claims that once the government withdrew, following the Hayes-Tilden compromise of 1877, terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan were able achieve almost a century of violent hegemony in the South. The Tea Party reminds Harris-Perry of these reactionary social forces, real-life manifestations of the mobs in D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation:

    "[That] 1915 film depicts the racist imagination currently at work in our nation as a black president first appoints a Latina Supreme Court Justice and then works with a woman Speaker of the House to pass sweeping national legislation. This bigotry assumes no such government could possibly be legitimate and therefore frames resistance against this government as a patriotic responsibility."

    It is assumed, without sustained analysis of the actual social forces and ideological composition of the Tea Party, that their opposition to the Obama administration is rooted in its diversity rather than the content of the "sweeping national legislation" that liberals champion. The Tea Party, by virtue of opposing an African-American president, is condemned to an original sin of racism. They are criticized not for their specific policy goals — revolving mostly around the federal budget, the defense of Second Amendment rights, and taxation — but simply for their alleged opposition to the mainstream consensus and its respected doyens, such as Representative Lewis.

         The cries of treason and sedition are striking, but not without precedent in the history of American liberalism. In particular, the "brown scare" of the 1930s saw liberals and communists complicit in not only the demonization, but the denial of personal liberties of their right-wing opponents.[7] Such tactics were used again in the McCarthy-era, only against communists and their alleged "fellow travelers." But the allegiance to an Establishment political consensus is not at odds with the legacy of an American left that has long, in all but its most petty and marginal quarters, ceded legitimacy to the bourgeois state. It was in this context that Harris-Perry argued in a Nation piece on the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that "Military service is at the heart of citizenship."[8] She continued, "The implied social contract that binds a nation to her people is most fully realized in two primary acts: tax paying and military service," defining the military as, "Those who willingly risk their lives to protect the borders and ideals of their country." Such rhetoric does not contradict the corporatist class compromise that sustains the center-left's political and economic agenda. But The Nation, the self-proclaimed "flagship of the left," was described by its former editor, Victor Navasky, as a debating ground between liberals and radicals. With the global collapse of the anti-capitalist movement, the debate has seemingly ended, as well. I will discuss below the historic factors that encouraged facile analysis, centered around cursory and unsubstantiated allegations of racism, as well as questions of "legitimacy," in The Nation and other left-wing outlets commenting on the Obama administration's right-wing opponents.

         Melissa Harris-Perry was not the only self-avowed member of the left adopting the lexicon of nationalism. Justine Sharrock's "Oath Keepers and the Age of Treason,"[9] a narrative piece starring Private First Class Lee Pray, is a riveting account of a blue collar delinquent turned soldier who became radicalized by conspiracy theories. Pray is a member of the Oath Keepers, a group formed by former Ron Paul aide and Yale-bred constitutional lawyer Stewart Rhodes. The Oath Keepers pledge to not obey any future "un-Constitutional order" — from warrantless searches to herding citizens into internment camps. The group has been surprisingly well-received by figures on the right. Pat Buchanan, Glenn Beck, and Lou Dobbs, in addition to more radical voices like Alex Jones have sung its praises. The reception from the Anti-Defamation League and liberal commentators like Chris Matthews was, as expected, less than cordial. In a combative interview with Matthews, Rhodes stated that members of his group would not have been complicit in many of the crimes of the 20th century — the My Lai Massacre, the internment of Japanese-Americans, and the rise of Nazism in Germany, among them. Does the reaffirmation of a Constitutional oath constitute treason? Sharrock's charge against the Oath Keepers — "treason" — is significant, because it charges the group with presenting a danger to the state, rather than ordinary citizens. It is an allegation that fits within the organization's own ideological framework — loyal Oath Keepers versus a potentially tyrannical government. The piece also deliberately plays up the Oath Keepers involvement in the Tea Party movement, while presenting no empirical documentation of its membership size or how popular it is within the wider social movement. It is significant that Mother Jones devoted so much space to a group of little discernible import. The operative effect was to stoke fears of a rising and vengeful right, a group Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi calls "nativist freaks, village idiots and Internet Hitlers," at a time when both houses of Congress and the presidency were in Democratic hands.[10]

         But these liberal publications were just part of a larger trend. The New York Times' Frank Rich responded to the murder-suicide of Andrew Joseph Stack III, the terrorist who flew a small plane into a Texas Internal Revenue Service office building, by summoning the memory of the Oklahoma City bombing.[11] Drawing upon the Times' own David Barstow's "chilling, months-long investigation" of the Tea Party movement, Rich identifies an "axis of the obsessed and deranged," writing, "Anyone who was cognizant during the McVeigh firestorm would recognize the old warning signs re-emerging from the mists of history." The author points to the far right's resurrection of familiar conspiratorial tropes, as well as an alleged uptick in white supremacist and paramilitary militia activity. Rich cites an August 2009 publication, "The Second Wave: Return of the Militias," from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which documents the resurgence of the anti-government "Patriot" movement, a hodgepodge of militia members, tax defiers, and self-proclaimed "sovereign citizens." Another article produced by the organization, "Nativists to 'Patriots,'" contends that the border vigilantes of the Minuteman Project have shifted their attention from "border security" and defense against "reconquista" plans by the Mexican government to retake the American Southwest to the anti-Washington politics of the "Patriot" movement.

         An important source for Rich's missive, the Southern Poverty Law Center was founded as a civil rights law firm by Alabama lawyer and businessman Morris Dees and his associate Joseph J. Levin Jr. in 1971. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the group engaged in litigation against, and monitored the activity of, the Ku Klux Klan and its affiliates. Its original Klanwatch project, now Hatewatch, has been expanded to include new types of discrimination. More recently, the Law Center has documented and publicized the 75 supposed plots, conspiracies and acts of terrorism engaged in by the American right since the Oklahoma City bombings. Their annual "The Year in Hate & Extremism" reports have also claimed to register a massive uptick in the number of hate groups, which now stands at "926, up 4 per cent from 2007, and 54 per cent since 2000." However, their definition of a "hate group," as "one with beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people," is broad. By this criteria, the advocates of class struggle and industrial action on the left are engaging in the same kind of hatred as biological racists and white supremacists. Harper's Ken Silverstein has called the Law Center "essentially a fraud [that] has a habit of casually labeling organizations as 'hate groups'," with the effect of stifling free speech and debate.[12]

         Silverstein and a group of other journalists, including Alexander Cockburn, have also scrutinized the Law Center's finances and the tone of their appeals for donations. The organization's treasury stands at $168 million, close to the annual GDP of Tonga, spending twice as much on fundraising than legal services.[13] This is despite the fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center only spent $29 million out of the $44 million it brought in throughout 2005. Eight million of the dollars spent were allocated to compensation, in the form of benefits and salaries, to its small staff. The disparity became even more exaggerated as the decade progressed, but as Cockburn notes, "The 990 non profit tax record for the SPLC indicates that the assets fell by about $50 million last year, meaning that like almost all non profits the SPLC took a bath in the stock crash."[14] Money donated by people, not all of them wealthy, to combat discrimination and racism vanished without a trace. The warnings of an organization — determined to recoup its losses and struggling to retain relevance in an era of mollifying race relations — about budding right-wing insurgencies should be regarded, Cockburn argues, with suspicion. Regarding the Ku Klux Klan, Cockburn writes that:

    "[D]espite the SPLC's predictable howls about an uptick in its chapters, is a moth-eaten and depleted troupe, at least 10 per cent of them on the government payroll as informants for the FBI. As Noel Ignatiev once remarked in his book Race Traitor, there isn't a public school in any county in the USA that doesn't represent a menace to blacks a thousand times more potent than that offered by the KKK, just as there aren't many such schools that probably haven't been propositioned by Dees to buy one of the SPLC's 'tolerance' programs. What school is going to go on record rejecting Dees-sponsored tolerance?"

    Commentators like Rich uncritically use Law Center broadsides to present a view of the United States' political landscape that is ravaged by racial animus and filled with menacing foes doing combat drills in the woods, preparing for a coming insurrection. Such a national portrait, I argue, is distorted, misrepresents the Tea Party mainstream, and illustrates a disconnect from the hardships and threats actually facing working families.

         More exhaustive than Rich's, Barstow's more sympathetic account of the Tea Party describes the movement as sprawling, loosely structured, and defying easy definition.[15] The shared commonalities are worrying, however: paranoid views about government activity, opposition to existing public services, and a fear of co-option through "hijack attempts" from more moderate state and county Republican Parties. Not all Tea Party "patriots" are newly politicized. Barstow notes coalition work done with cadre from established fringe organizations such as the anachronistic John Birch Society and the Oath Keepers.

         The Birchers in particular, a group that hasn't entered the public imagination since the height of the Cold War, have caught Sean Wilentz's attention. In "Confounding Fathers," a New Yorker essay from October 2010, Wilentz connects Glenn Beck's view of American history and that of the Tea Party to the "paranoid politics" of the 1950s.[16] Wilentz's analysis is indebted to Richard Hofstadter's Cold War-era historical essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," which surveys "movements of suspicious discontent" throughout American history.[17] For Wilentz, one of the "defenders of national cohesion and tempered discourse in our politics, it is an alarming state of affairs," that the "extreme right-wing," represented by Beck, the Birchers, and their fellow travelers in the Tea Party, might achieve a measure of clout in Congress. He invokes the struggle of William F. Buckley, Jr., the editor of National Review and an intellectual guidepost for anti-Bircher conservatives during the Cold War. Such an analogy represents an explicit attempt to differentiate between a "legitimate" right-wing and an extremist one, echoing attacks on Goldwater Republicans during the 1960s.[18] It seeks to marginalize and isolate the Tea Party by placing its rhetoric and demands outside of the mainstream of acceptable politics, instead calling for a conservative force capable of playing the role of "loyal opposition."

         Commentary from the far-left of the political spectrum has been even more effacing. New Politics, an independent socialist journal with a "Third Camp," democratic Marxist editorial bent, features an editors' note in their Winter 2010 issue that epitomizes leftist fears about a more visible right. The editors describe the progressive's dilemma at the present conjecture. They are "disappointed" with the initiatives of the new administration and feel like "Obama has sold short his progressive supporters," but they also "are appalled by the neofascist right wing assaults on Obama."[19] These assaults are said to have support from millions. To combat this threat the editors urge leftists to not despair or relent in resisting right-wing enemies of the Obama administration for fear of "[replicating] the actions of many German leftists of the early 1930s who directed their main fire not at the Nazis, but others on the left." Though opposition to the administration from the left is still encouraged, it is made explicit that the left's "main fire" should be directed at their mirrors on the right and not policy makers in Washington.

         This analysis, however, does not go uncontested in all the forums of the American left. Editor of CounterPunch and Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn, for one, has offered a different interpretation of the Tea Party phenomenon. Cockburn sees the profiles of the right offered up by liberals as seething with class hatred and hysteria. He offers a class-based interpretation of the Tea Party's rise, finding its social base in the lower middle class, "people who own auto repair shops, bakeries, bicycle shops, plant stores, dry cleaners, fish stores and all the other small businesses across America — in sum, the 'petite bourgeoisie,' stomped by regulators and bureaucrats while the big fry get zoning variances and special clause exemptions."[20] Cockburn believes that the left had traditionally neglected the petit-bourgeoisie, designating the urban proletariat as the agent of revolutionary change. The situation hasn't changed now that the left "doesn't believe in revolutionary change." Cockburn doesn't think there is anything to fear from this group. "Ninety-five percent of all the firms in America hire fewer than ten people. There's your petite bourgeoisie for you: not frightening, not terrifying and in fact quite indispensable." The Tea Party's complaints are presented as legitimate grievances:

    "Whatever backwash they got from the stimulus often wasn't readily apparent. They can't afford health plans for themselves or their employees. They're three or four payrolls away from the edge of the cliff, and when they read about trillions in handouts for bankers, trillions in impending deficits, blueprints for green energy regs that will put them out of business, what they hear is the ocean surge pounding away at the bottom of that same cliff."

    With no one in establishment politics in their corner and a left oozing with disdain, the Tea Party is this class's only outlet for political articulation. While acknowledging the "nuts and opportunists" within their ranks, Cockburn contests that these types are found in any social formation. In his conception the Tea Party aren't the heirs to "Jim Crow terrorism," but can trace some of their ideology to another nineteenth century movement of the right: the Know-Nothings, an anti-Catholic nativist group that espoused "Protestant republicanism." The core of Cockburn's critique of the left is that they are wasting valuable column space and political capital scaremongering about the right at a time when the center-left is nominally in power and the only political ferment is coming from the Tea Party.

         There are other left-wing commentators willing to commiserate with the supposed grievances of the new right. In an interview with the radical quarterly Jacobin, literary theorist and critic of "identity politics" Walter Benn Michaels, identified the Tea Party as a reaction against neoliberalism.[21] Michaels doesn't view the challenge as a serious one, but also stresses that the movement, "is not simply a reaction against neoliberalism from the old racist right." He contests the American left's desire to summarily reduce the Tea Party to racists: "They're thrilled when some Nazis come out and say 'Yeah, we support the Tea Party' or some member of the Tea Party says something racist, which is frequently enough." Michaels finds the subversive content of their political program in an opposition to illegal immigration. The Tea Party recognizes that "one of the primary sort of marks of the triumph of neoliberalism in the U.S. is a very high tolerance of illegal immigration, and that illegal immigration is the kind of ne plus ultra of the labor mobility that neoliberalism requires." The rise of illegal immigration represents a new form of capitalism, as opposed to the old "meritorious" capitalism of the post-war period. When right-wing ideologues attack "communism," the argument goes, they are actually conceptualizing neoliberalism.

          Michaels concedes that the Tea Party is a disproportionately upper middle class movement, but argues that even segments of the top twenty percentile of Americans by income have been hit hard in recent decades. The top one percent have been the big winners of the neoliberal-era, while the other 19 percent in that bracket anxiously see their position falter in comparison. Responding to those who place the roots of this angst in the growing diversification of the elite, Michaels says:

    "… people in the Tea Party movement have a problem that is realer than 'White male status anxiety,' that the economic shifts that are taking place, the more and more extreme inequality, the more and more going to the top, no doubt some people may be unhappy because of loss of status, but many millions more are going to be unhappy because of the loss of actual money. So my point isn't really to deny the phenomenon of status anxiety, it's just to point out the extraordinary eagerness of American liberals to identify racism as the problem, so that anti-racism (rather than anti-capitalism) can be the solution."

    Michaels' conclusion is, in sum, that students of Friedrich Hayek and exalters of Ayn Rand are the most visible source of resistance to neoliberalism on the American scene. Such a view, I believe, is as contradictory as it appears. Furthermore, Michaels' attack on the concept of "open borders," which he believes is a neoliberal construct to be combated, is representative of a left-nationalist outlook that opportunistically plays to xenophobic tendencies in American politics. A truly radical political discourse would be one that confidently defends the right of people to free movement, while critiquing the economic pressures that cause social dislocation in the first instance.

    An Alternative Analysis

         Dispassionate examination of contemporary movements is not an easy task. With little empirical evidence and only a few surveys to rely on, with the contradictions endemic to any inchoate movement on display, the task becomes almost impossible. Still, the impressionistic and polemical quality of the majority of the liberal-left's coverage of the Tea Party has been striking. So too has been the reply of dissenters like Cockburn and Michaels, who have made sweeping pronouncements about the social basis, grievances, and political aims of the new right with little substantiation.

         Several significant national surveys of the Tea Party movement have been conducted. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released in February of 2010 indicates that Tea Party activists heavily favor Republicans over Democrats, despite describing themselves as "independents," and tend to be male, rural, "upscale," and conservative.[22] The "upscale" descriptor refers to both above average educational attainment and annual income. Nearly three quarters of Tea Party cadre have attended college, compared to the 54 percent national average. Three quarters of them also self-identify as conservative. The study places active support — those donating money or attending a rally or meeting — for the movement at 11 percent of the population. 24 percent more have a favorable disposition of the movement. This group can also be described as disproportionately male, high-income, and conservative. A plurality, 45 percent, don't know enough to form an opinion on the protests, while only 20 percent oppose the Tea Party.

         With a sample size of only 1,023, including just 124 Tea Party activists, the CNN study is by no means definitive. A survey from the conservative Winston Group, a firm headed by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, however, came to similar findings, demonstrating the conservative nature of the group and their alignment behind key planks in the G.O.P. Platform.[23] The most exhaustive study on the movement, a New York Times/CBS News poll from April of 2010 also shows the Tea Party to be loyal Republicans, conservative, as well as more affluent and better educated than the public at large.[24] The study makes clear that their opposition to the Obama administration is rooted in political ideology and not personal anxiety about household finances.

         Tea Party activists see themselves as speaking for a large cross-section of the country. 84 percent claim, as opposed to 25 percent of all respondents, that the views of people in the movement reflect the views of most Americans. They also overestimate their political visibility. 50 percent of activists say that the movement is active in their local communities compared to just over a fifth of those others surveyed. Tea Partiers show a heavy preference to prioritizing the reduction of federal government size as their main political objective. Nearly all of them, not surprising for an opposition movement, hold unfavorable opinions about President Obama's job performance and believe the role of government has expanded too much during his administration. Almost all, 92 percent, believe the country is moving towards socialism and pursuing policies that favor the poor. Tea Party activists also believe the economy is continuing to deteriorate, but less of them hold Wall Street and financial institutions culpable for the state of the economy than their peers. The vast majority, all but 17 percent, believe the financial bailout to be unnecessary. Similar majorities hold unfavorable views of the stimulus package and want the government to spend money to reduce the budget deficit rather than create jobs. (As a point of reference, the majority of Americans prefer job creation.)

          Public trust in government institutions hovers near historic lows and the Tea Partiers reflect this trend. The 92 percent of them would like to see a smaller government even if it means fewer social services. This is despite the fact that activists were more likely to be directly benefiting from Social Security and Medicare. They, not surprisingly, share the general public's support for those two programs.

         Surprisingly, only 40 percent of Tea Partiers polled in the New York Times/CBS News study think that Sarah Palin would make "an effective President." Large majorities, however, hold favorable opinions of both George W. Bush and Glenn Beck. On race relations, a point of important contention for Tea Party critics, cadre, 89 percent of whom are white, were more apt to think that blacks and whites already have an equal opportunity to succeed. 52 percent venture to say that too much has been made of the issues facing African-Americans in recent years. A strong 65 percent, however, think the policies of the Obama administration do not disproportionately favor either blacks or whites.

         Significantly, Tea Party "patriots," like their fellow citizens, care more about economic issues than social ones. Activists are split, making them almost exactly in line with the general public, on legal immigration. Yet 82 percent see illegal immigration as a "very serious" problem. But the majority, 57 percent, favor gay marriage or civil unions. Most also favor abortion rights, while at the same time believing the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade to be a "bad thing." This meshes with data indicating that activists are older, more religious, and likely to be married.

         The Tea Party identifies as "middle class" and focus on bread-and-butter economic issues. These are concerns that liberal writers like Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas?, thought would drive the rural "middle class" back towards the Democratic Party.[25] On policy, however, they stand firmly on the libertarian right. They oppose universal health care and any increases in upper-bracket ($250,000 and up) taxes to fund health insurance for the less fortunate.

         Judging from this data and the protesters' rhetoric, there is no basis for warnings of a rising tide of racism or sightings of a nascent fascist threat. Nor is there cause to see the Tea Party as the political articulation of a downwardly mobile white working class. The implication of this last thesis is to imply that, if not for disorganization and elitism on the left, anti-tax protesters could have been lining the streets in favor of a European-style welfare state. Concerning racism, there has been no evidence that Tea Partiers support policies that would reintroduce structural forms of racism — in the form of literacy tests, segregation, etc. Whether or not Tea Party activists are prone to holding racist views within their subconscious or to what extent the opposition to Obama is due to his racial background, cannot be ascertained and any attempt to do so would be irresponsibly speculative. One only needs to look back as far as the response following Caucasian Bill Clinton's election in 1992, which mirrors in terms of demands and social base, if not media attention, the "Tea Party tempest" today, to see that opposition to Obama is based mainly on perceptions of his liberalism rather than race. Similarly, Tea Party views on immigration are in-step with the mainstream. The attempts of Neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan elements to benefit from mobilization on the right represent a predictable opportunism and there is no indication that their rhetoric has wider resonance in the movement.

         Claims of fascism are indicative of the wild and speculative way that word has traditionally been bandied about on the left. Though many of its shock-troops have come from lumpenproletarian elements, fascism has historically been a petit-bourgeois movement that can only be understood within the context of a militant left. German and Italian fascists disrupted strikes and physically attacked left-wing meetings. This historically specific brand of reaction implies that there was a vibrant workers' movement challenging capitalist class rule, forcing elements of those on top to attempt to gamble on empowering the fascists in order to ultimately preserve the existing class structure.[26] The American left is a marginalized and besieged political force, not exactly ready to storm the barricades. It's also worth remembering that fascism's economic policies were wildly interventionist, while the John Galt fellaters in the Tea Party trumpet their fear of "big government." The Tea Party's own critique of Obama often invokes images of fascism — an ideology they connect to welfare state corporatism.[27]

         The data also indicates that members of the new right are not disgruntled members of the working class. Nor are they social conservatives duped by straw man arguments into supporting policies that go against their economic interests, but rather individuals primarily concerned with policies that limit the scope of government, especially redistributive measures that benefit low income families. They push for conditions that would facilitate capital accumulation — deunionization and a small national debt, for example. The Tea Party stands firmly in a well-established libertarian tradition that draws from the inherited "common sense" of Americans. As Seth Ackerman writes, "At the center of the Tea Party lies this stolid Taft Republicanism. It's leagues away from the passions of the noisiest fringe types, the birthers and deathers and tenthers who fret about masturbation and the gold standard. It's a politics about the man who stands alone, about life as a solitary struggle, about society as a silent stream of elementary particles."[28] Neoliberalism and the erosion of old forms of social integration have only fostered this philosophy. With a moderate stance on social issues, an economic program that meshes well with hegemonic neoliberal ideology, and a discourse rooted in a venerable American ethos of self-sufficiency and rugged individualism, it is unclear what "extremism" liberal commentators are alluding to.

         Finally, one has to question the actual reach of the Tea Party and its long-term prospects. Even at their widely acknowledged peak, the 2010 Tax Day protests, it was not politicizing a particularly large number of activists from outside traditional right-wing constituencies nor were they well received among growing demographic groups — the young and ethnic minorities. Large Republican gains in the 2010 midterm elections, which gave the party control of the House of Representatives and threatened the Democratic leadership of the Senate was taken to be a sign of the Tea Party's sway. This is another misreading. Republican victories in 2010 should have come as no surprise, even without the emergence of the Tea Party.[29] The party that commands the Executive normally loses seats in midterm elections and poor economic indicators are sound predictors of ruling party electoral collapse. Public confidence in both parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, has dipped, but a poll has shown that a Democratic message focusing on the middle class and job creation would garner more public support than a Tea Party-esque one based around spending and the deficit.[30] The perception of the Tea Party as an anti-immigrant movement has also helped alienate Hispanic voters, a key component in Karl Rove's strategy for building a right-wing majority coalition. Even with dozens of representatives in the so-called "Tea Party" caucus, it remains to be seen what tangible legislation the movement will push through. If the history of the 1990s — which saw Democratic gains in 1998 in the best showing for an incumbent president's party since the Great Depression — is any example, then the right's electoral gains may be short-lived.

         Despite the media attention, from FOX News' adoring coverage to hysterical denunciations on MSNBC, the Tea Party's real importance is still up for debate. Other social movements, those of the left, that barely garner media attention — the immigrant rights movement, the protests against austerity in Wisconsin, and union mobilizations like the One Nation rally held last fall in Washington — certainly seem better positioned demographically to make a lasting impact. The tale of the Tea Party, full of sound and fury, may signify nothing.

    The Agony of the Left

         If the Tea Party is part "media event" and part the resurgence of a trite anti-government populism among conservatives of relative wealth, some will question the pedagogic value of a sustained analysis of it. In my opinion the liberal-left's response to the Tea Party "tempest" is of interest, because it points to a political paradigm and ideological climate that is uniquely American. These features are indebted to the United States being the only advanced capitalist nation without a labor-based party.

         Traditional explanations for the lack of a working class political formation — Werner Sombart's Why Is There is No Socialism in the United States?, for example — argue that there was too much prosperity and too few economic grievances to catalyze such a party.[31] Other accounts focus on the impact racist ideology had on the development of class consciousness or the structural constraints the American electoral system places on third party efforts. Louis Hartz's thesis in The Liberal Tradition in America is that a prevalent egalitarianism of social status in a country without a feudal legacy meant that a liberal ideology of "Americanism" could serve as a substitute socialism for the masses.[32]

         However, it is more likely that a party could have been formed but was not. Robin Archer argues in Why Is There No Labor Party in the United States? that the aforementioned theorists were making a mistake by comparing "virginal" America with the Old World.[33] A comparison to Australia is more apt. That country was also prosperous, had entrenched racial divisions, and in the late nineteenth century boasted a single-member district plurality system. Though American activists faced more repression than their Australian counterparts and their country was more rife with religious differences, it stands to reason that the lack of independent class representation for American workers was a result of conscious political decisions and defeats in industrial confrontations rather than a preordained outcome.

         Without a labor party, the bulk of the American left has been tied to the Democratic Party, a social liberal, not socialist, formation. The dominant intellectual climate has, similarly, favored liberals rather than radicals. The growth of highly organized, mass membership political parties was a development of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, starting first in Germany. It was a conscious advance by the proletariat. That the Democratic and Republican parties retain a looser political structure than their counterparts elsewhere finds reflection in their relatively inchoate, and at times self-contradictory, politics. They are only parties in the broadest sense.[34] Open to all, they have no ideological requirements for membership. Anyone can register as either a Democrat or a Republican, making them little more than coalitions of social forces in which various groups contest for influence under a common banner.

         Class interests are watered down in the big tent of the Democratic Party, a party that has historically stood in the political center. Reeve Vanneman and Lynn Cannon's study, The American Perception of Class, showed that self-identified "working class" voters in the United States, without a party like Labour to flock to like their British peers, simply do not vote.[35] The Democratic Party, which has a monopoly of left-of-center social forces, finds its support among those who self-identify as "middle class," hampering class consciousness. The left, without a natural base and condemned to support the "lesser evil," has traditionally conceded ground to "legitimate" forces governing in the center. Their enemy has never been systemic — capitalism or the state — but rather the political right.

         Coverage at The Nation during the past two decades shows this logic at work. Clinton was critically supported by the publication, despite his position at the vanguard of neoliberal restructuring through his pursuit of "welfare reform" and other entitlement cuts. Democratic policy could be wrong, but the idea that all segments of the diverse Democratic Party were good faith partners with "progressives" was rarely questioned. The result was a synthesis of dull policy-based objections to individual Democratic Leadership Council proposals only occasionally interrupted by the magazine's few radical voices like Christopher Hitchens and Alexander Cockburn, writers who pitched their criticisms of the Clinton administration at a polemical, personal level. In the 2000s, the magazine was once again an opposition force, but its hyperbolic rants against the new Bush administration never articulated a clear critique of the structures and social forces that brought to bear on that presidency.

         Today, it should come as no surprise that the left has wedded its analysis of the right to examinations of "paranoid styles," or "false consciousness," as if right-wing political opinion were a disease to be treated or a form of mass hallucination. The preponderance of identity politics epitomized by Melissa Harris-Perry's examination of the Tea Party through the prism of race and racism has filled the void of class analysis. Moralizing bombast and guilt by association have taken root over concrete examination and good-faith argument, as the American liberal-left press has settled for impressionistic pieces filled with contempt. There is nothing novel about this hysteria. Nor is there anything novel about the Tea Party, a loud but fleeting explosion of right-wing populism.

    Notes

    1. Matthew Rothschild, "Chomsky Warns of Risk of Fascism in America," The Progressive, 12 Apr. 2010.

    2. The Nation ("Health Care's Bitter Opponents," 7 April 2010).

    3. Melissa Harris-Perry, "Lose the Love/Hate, But Keep the Hope," The Nation, 28 Sept. 2009.

    4. Steven Greenhouse, "In America, Labor Has an Unusually Long Fuse," New York Times, 5 Apr. 2009: WK3.

    5. Melissa Harris-Perry, "How Barack Obama is like Martin Luther King, Jr.," The Nation, 17 Jan. 2010.

    6. Melissa Harris-Perry, "Is this the Birth of a Nation," The Nation, 22 Mar. 2010.

    7. Leo P. Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right: the Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War, Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1983.

    8. Melissa Harris-Perry, "End Don't Ask, Don't Tell," The Nation, 2 Feb. 2010.

    9. Justine Sharrock, "Oath Keepers and the Age of Treason," Mother Jones, March/April 2010.

    10. Matt Taibbi, "The Truth About the Tea Party," Rolling Stone, 28 Sept. 2010.

    11. Frank Rich, "The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged," New York Times, 27 Feb. 2010: WK10.

    12. Ken Silverstein, "'Hate,' Immigration, and the Southern Poverty Law Center," Harper's Magazine, 22 Mar. 2010.

    13. Ken Silverstein, "This Week in Babylon," Harper's Magazine, 2 Mar. 2007.

    14. Alexander Cockburn, "King of the Hate Business," CounterPunch, 15-17 May 2009.

    15. David Barstow, "Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right," New York Times, 16 Feb. 2010: A1.

    16. Sean Wilentz, "Confounding Fathers," New Yorker, 18 Oct. 2010.

    17. Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and Other Essays, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1965.

    18. Mary C. Brennan, Turning Right in the Sixties: the Conservative Capture of the GOP, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1995.

    19. Marvin and Betty Mandell, "From the Editors," New Politics, Winter 2010: 5.

    20. Alexander Cockburn, "Move Over, Axis of Evil," The Nation, 22 Mar. 2010.

    21. Walter Benn Michaels, "Let Them Eat Diversity," interview by Bhaskar Sunkara, Jacobin, Winter 2011: 17-22.

    22. "Who are the Tea Party activists?" CNN Politics, 17 Feb. 2010.

    23. "Behind the Headlines: What's driving the Tea Party Movement?" The Winston Group, 1 Apr. 2010.

    24. Kate Zernike and Megan Thee-Brenan, "Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated," New York Times, 14 Apr. 2010: A1.

    25. Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, New York: Metropolitan, 2004.

    26. Leon Trotsky, Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It, New York: Pathfinder, 1972.

    27. Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism: the Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, New York: Doubleday, 2007.

    28. Seth Ackerman, "The Politics of Being Alone," Jacobin, Winter 2011: 25.

    29. "How To Tell If Obama Blew the Election, Or If It Was Blown At All," New Republic, 29 Oct. 2010.

    30. "Can Democrats Still Win?" New York Times, 23 Oct. 2010: WK12.

    31. Werner Sombart, Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? White Plains, NY: International Arts and Sciences, 1976.

    32. Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought since the Revolution, San Diego: Harvest Book, 1991.

    33. Robin Archer, Why Is There No Labor Party in the United States? Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007.

    34. Jason Schulman, "On 'Realignment' and the Left," New Politics, Winter 2002.

    35. Reeve Vanneman and Lynn Weber Cannon, The American Perception of Class, Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1987.

     

    BHASKAR SUNKARA is the editor of Jacobin and an undergraduate at The George Washington University.

  • Hundreds of Bahrainis join call to end US support for Bahrain gov't

    NEW YORK, N.Y., May 24 2011 — In a response that surprised U.S. organizers of a campaign calling on the United States government to repudiate its partnership with the Al Khalifa regime in Bahrain, hundreds of people from Bahrain joined in signing the Campaign for Peace and Democracy’s launching statement “End U.S. Support for Bahrain’s Repressive Government.”

           “The statement was originally circulated for signatures in the United States, but we have been deeply moved by the fact that hundreds of Bahrainis have added their names,” said Joanne Landy, CPD Co-Director. “Given the violent government crackdown in Bahrain, the very act of signing is incredibly courageous. Bahraini signers have implored us to pressure the Obama administration to decisively repudiate its support of their brutal and authoritarian government.”

           On May 16, the New York-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy (CPD) began circulating its statement, which has thus far gathered more than 1200 signatures including those of Ed Asner, Medea Benjamin, Noam Chomsky, Martin Duberman, Daniel Ellsberg, Mike Farrell, Chris Hedges, Adam Hochschild, Jan Kavan, Kathy Kelly, Dave Marsh, Frances Fox Piven, Katha Pollitt, Alix Kates Shulman and Cornel West. The statement is below and on the CPD website. Signatures are still being accepted. The statement will be sent to President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and key members of Congress, as well as to domestic and international media.

           In the United States, Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR) gave organizational endorsement to the statement. Stephen Soldz, PsySR president, stated, “We cannot be silent. Many of our members are health providers. The government of Bahrain has arrested nearly 50 doctors and other health providers, many of whom have been tortured. Their ‘crime’ is refusing to let injured protesters die and informing the world press about the abuses they witnessed.  [See the report by Physicians for Human Rights.]

           In the face of mounting complaints against Washington for muting its criticisms of repression in Bahrain, President Obama did say in his May 19 speech on the Middle East, “…we have insisted both publicly and privately that mass arrests and brute force are at odds with the universal rights of Bahrain’s citizens. The only way forward is for the government and opposition to engage in a dialogue, and you can’t have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail.” However, in the same speech Obama referred to Bahrain as a “friend” and partner” of the U.S., thus signaling that the massive human rights violations in that country would not stand in the way of continuing U.S. support for the regime or the continuing presence of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, a naval force supporting an interventionist foreign policy.

         In words reminiscent of the Administration’s disgracefully neutral stand on the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt up until the last moment, when the Ben Ali and Mubarak regimes were clearly no longer sustainable, President Obama has called on both the government and the opposition in Bahrain to “engage in dialogue.” What is needed now, however, is not episodic toothless reprimands to Bahrain’s government or pressure on the opposition to engage in dialogue with the regime, but a clear U.S. break with the Al Khalifa government. This would involve:

    • An unambiguous statement from Washington that because of the atrocious government repression, Bahrain is not a “partner” or “friend” of the U.S.
    • An immediate end to all U.S. aid to Bahrain
    • Vigorous condemnation of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for sending in forces at the request of Bahrain’s government to back up the repression

        CPD has launched this campaign in order to build pressure on Washington to stop propping up the Al Khalifa government. The brave people of Bahrain deserve no less.

    For the full statement, click here.

  • Swiss Labor Activists’ “Think Network” Proposes Alternatives on Public Policy

             Swiss German labor activists on the left have over the last few years undertaken a project which might be of interest to those of us in North America. Denknetz or Think Network is a leftwing think tank created in 2004 by a group of labor union activists, staff members, and others to address policy issues. The fundamental principles of the group are the promotion of freedom, justice and solidarity and the view that those three things must be fundamentally linked to each other.

             “We think that a collective like Denknetz can make a real contribution,” says Beat Ringger, staff member of the Swiss Public Employees Union and the Director of the project. “We recognize that some people work through building leftist political organizations and parties, and we think that’s fine—some of us are members of such groups. But we think this sort of project, that is, organizing political discussion and carrying out serious analyses, and developing alternative proposals an make a unique contribution. Since the 1990s, the Swiss German-speaking left has been fragmented, and we believe that this sort of project can help re-establish a common language, methods and ideas. We develop analyses and alternatives and off them to the left.”

             The group now has 750 members, most of the German-speaking Swiss but also some French-speaking Swiss and others from Germany and other places. The group publishes articles and books and organizes about 5 to 10 forums a year on social issues of importance to the Swiss labor and social movements and to the Swiss people in general.

             Since its founding Denknetz has created working groups on various issues which have published articles, position papers and books. The working groups tackle issues such as a guaranteed national income (called a “conditional income” in Europe), taxation policy, education issues, social security, informal and precarious work, the status of women and the “care economy”—child care, elder care and other issues.The organization has published a variety of position papers, six yearbooks, a book dealing with social insurances and a book on taxation to appear this summer.

             “For twenty years we have had attacks on our social security system,” says Ringger. “We have a big problem with the general direction our society is heading. We argue that we have to take back money from the financial institutions and redistribute it to the society as a whole. Our first two books take up these issues.” The Great Reform: A General Earnings Insurance (Die grosse Reform: Die Allgemeine Erwertsversicherung) analyzes the current, complex Swiss workers’ insurance system and argues that it be streamlined and simplified by creating one insurance for unemployment, on-the-job injuries and health issues. A second book which is in the works The Right Course—The Right Taxes (Richtig Steuern) argues that the the Swiss people should take back five percent more of the annual GDP of the wealth of the rich to pay for social and ecological programs.

             The Denknetz group also published proposals for the reorganization of the financial markets. “We believe that regulation is not enough,” says Ringger. “We think that basic banking functions such as savings and checking accounts should be in the hands of publicly owned financial institutions,” meaning something like our American credit unions.

             “We need a new direction in our society,” says Ringger. “We believe that this project will help to begin to set us on a better course.”

  • End U.S. Support for Bahrain's Repressive Government

    [This sign-on statement organized by the Campaign for Peace and Democracy, “End U.S. Support for Bahrain’s Repressive Government,” will be of interest to many NP readers. Please support the statement by adding your name to the signer list by clicking here.]

    End U.S. Support for Bahrain’s Repressive Government

    Statement by the Campaign for Peace and Democracy

    May 2011

         On Feb. 13, 2011, inspired by the forced resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, peaceful democratic protests erupted in Bahrain. Protests grew and, in response, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa invited other Gulf states to send security forces into the country to assist in violently suppressing the demonstrators. The March 15 invasion by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates brought an intensification of torture, secret trials, demolition of Shia mosques, and repression against human rights activists, journalists, labor, lawyers, medical professionals, students, political figures, and others. On March 18 the regime destroyed the Pearl Monument that had served as the protest center.

          Like many other autocracies in the region Bahrain has been a key U.S. partner. It has provided a home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, responsible for naval forces in the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, and the coast of East Africa as far south as Kenya. This is why Washington’s response to the vicious repression in Bahrain has been so muted and pro-forma, in contrast to forceful denunciations of repression in countries outside the U.S. orbit, such as Iran and Libya.

          Richard Sollom from Physicians for Human Rights says health care workers in Bahrain have been targeted on a scale he has never encountered. Government forces have invaded hospitals; doctors have been dragged out of the operating room, abducted and detained for giving care to wounded protestors. The government says it will try 47 medical workers it accuses, incredibly, of causing the deaths of protesters by inflicting additional wounds on them.

          Hundreds of workers, including union leaders, have been fired for striking for democratic change. Security forces closed down the General Bahraini Federation of Trade Unions headquarters. The Bahrain Center for Human Rights writes, “Bahrain is currently considered a dangerous zone for the freedom of press and journalists.” On April 3 the government suspended the country’s only independent newspaper, Al Wasat. On May 2 it arrested two politicians belonging to the opposition Al Wefaq party.

          Bahrain’s population is 60 percent or more Shia, with the government dominated by a Sunni minority. There is systematic discrimination against the Shiite majority in political representation, employment, wages, housing, and other benefits. The government has tried to split the opposition along Shia-Sunni lines, but uprising leaders insist their struggle for democratic rights is non-sectarian.

          Zainab Alkhawaja wrote to President Obama after her father, Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, former head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, was beaten unconscious in front of his family and arrested by masked men: “if anything happens to my father, my husband, my uncle, my brother-in-law, or to me, I hold you just as responsible as the Al Khalifa regime. Your support for this monarchy makes your government a partner in crime. I still have hope that you will realize that freedom and human rights mean as much to a Bahraini person as it does to an American, Syrian or a Libyan and that regional and political considerations should not be prioritized over liberty and human rights.”

          Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, the International Crisis Group and many others have exhaustively documented the brutal terror of Bahrain’s government. No further evidence is needed. As long as the repression continues, the promise to lift the state of emergency is only an empty public relations gesture. The United States should end all aid to Bahrain, condemn the invasion by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and sharply denounce Bahrain’s horrific suppression of democratic rights.

          As the Arab Spring has swept through North Africa and the Middle East, the role of the United States has been truly shameful. Washington’s rhetoric cannot conceal a deep fear of democracy. Its first instinct was to stand behind its old friends. Only when it became obvious that Ben Ali’s and Mubarak’s days were numbered were they abandoned. As for Saudi Arabia, this ultra-reactionary monarchy, with its appalling treatment of women and religious minorities, is almost never criticized by U.S. officials.

          There are those who, while deploring repression in Bahrain, justify continuing U.S. support for that country’s brutal tyranny as “realism”; in a dangerous world, they argue, our security depends on having a Middle Eastern state willing to host the Fifth Fleet. This argument is profoundly mistaken. Interventionist naval forces are part of a foreign policy that, by siding with despots and pitting the United States against the Arab people’s longing for responsible government and a better way of life, guarantees endless terrorism and bloodshed and an even more dangerous world for everyone. For good reason, democratic movements around the world today do not trust the United States, which they see as motivated by imperial interest. That is why the U.S. desperately needs a new foreign policy, one that welcomes democratic forces — not hypocritically, in order to manipulate them and blunt their impact, but to stand in solidarity with their struggles to win political power for the people and achieve social and economic justice.

     

    Ervand Abrahamian, Bashir Abu-Manneh, Frieda Afary, Janet Afary, Michael Albert, Greg Albo, Elahe Amani, Kevin B. Anderson, Stanley Aronowitz, Parvin Ashrafi, Ed Asner, Rosalyn Baxandall, William O. Beeman, Medea Benjamin, Ruth Benn, Norman Birnbaum, Blase Bonpane, Ph.D., Eileen Boris, Sam Bottone, Joan G. Botwinick, Laura Boylan, MD, Frank Brodhead, Stephen Eric Bronner, Richard J. Brown, MD, Gene Bruskin, Steve Burns, Beth Bush, Leslie Cagan, Antonia Cedrone, Noam Chomsky, Marjorie Cohn, Blanche Cook, Margaret W. Crane, Charles D’Adamo, Hamid Dabashi, Gail Daneker, Bogdan Denitch, Manuela Dobos, Tina Dobsevage, MD, Stephen R. Early, Carolyn Eisenberg, Michael Eisenscher, Daniel Ellsberg, Gertrude Ezorsky, Richard Falk, Samuel Farber, Thomas M. Fasy, MD, Dianne Feeley, John Feffer, Barry Finger, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Ron Forthofer, Ph.D., Jean Fox, David Friedman, Bruce Gagnon, Barbara Garson, Irene Gendzier, Jack Gerson, Joseph Gerson, Suzanne Gordon, John Gorman, Jules Greenstein, Arun Gupta, Ernest Haberkern, Mina Hamilton, Thomas Harrison, Nader Hashemi, Howie Hawkins, Chris Hedges, Judith A. Hempfling, Doug Henwood, Monadel Herzallah, Michael Hirsch, Adam Hochschild, Madelyn Hoffman, Nancy Holmstrom, Doug Ireland, Marianne Jackson, PhD, Melissa Jameson, Mark Johnson, Sally Jones, Toby Jones, Temma Kaplan, Jan Kavan, Kathy Kelly, Assaf Kfoury, Mina Khanlarzadeh, Ynestra King, Dan La Botz, Micah J. Landau, Joanne Landy, Roger E. Leisner, Jesse Lemisch, Traven Leyshon, Nelson Lichtenstein, Martha Livingston, Staughton Lynd, Betty Mandell, Marvin Mandell, Dave Marsh, Scott McLemee, David McReynolds, Deborah Meier, Martin Melkonian, Marilyn Morehead, Molly Nolan, Mary E. O’Brien, MD, Derrick O’Keefe, David Oakford, Rosemarie Pace, Mike Pattberg, Christopher Phelps, Charlotte Phillips, MD, Frances Fox Piven, Katha Pollitt, Charles Post, Danny Postel, Psychologists for Social Responsibiity, Bill Quigley, Saeed Rahnema, Judy Rebick, Leonard Rodberg, Richard Roman, Bruce Rosen, Ruth Rosen, Elizabeth R. Rosenthal, MD, Peter Rothberg, Matthew Rothschild, John Sanbonmatsu, Jennifer Scarlott, Jay Schaffner, Jason Schulman, Peter O. Schwartz, Azadeh Shahshahani, Stephen R. Shalom, Cindy Sheehan, Alix Kates Shulman, Gar Smith, Stephen Soldz, Stephen Steinberg, Cheryl Stevenson, Paul L. Street, Bhaskar Sunkara, David Swanson, William K. Tabb, Jonathan Tasini, Peter Tatchell, Chris Toensing, Bernard Tuchman, Adaner Usmani, Judith Podore Ward, Lois Weiner, Peter Weiss, Naomi Weisstein, Laurie Wen, Cornel West, Billy Wharton, Reginald Wilson, Sherry Wolf, Kent Worcester, Julia Wrigley, and Leila Zand.

  • Human rights activist Mazin Qumsiyeh has been arrested by Israeli soldiers

    Human rights activist, Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, was arrested by Israeli soldiers along with two other Palestinians on early May 15, 2011 (Israel time) as he took part in non-violent, peaceful civil disobedience with people from many countries. Mazin’s newsletter is one of the most valuable sources of information about the Palestinian struggle for justice I’ve come across. I think his courage, integrity, and empathic way of discussing the terrible treatment of the Palestinian people is a model for social justice activists throughout the world. Elsewhere in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and Golan Heights, dozens of people were wounded, including more that 150 at Qalandia checkpoint, during the Nakba events. (Nakba marks the creation of the state of Israel and is the occasion for protests against Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians.) The Israeli government is now debating legislation that would ban Nakba protests.
     We are asked to contact the US State Department, Senators, and Congresspersons about Israeli  violations of human rights during Nakba and  Mazin’s continued detention.
    A video of Mazin being arrested is on youtube.

  • Lessons from Industrial Disaster in an Unpredictable Age

         As the Gulf oil spill of April 2010 came and went — public outcry now quieted and offshore drilling now resumed — so too seems the case with the nuclear fallout of Japan. Currently, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) are determining the future of more than a dozen aging nuclear reactors in the United States, some of which are of the same design as the Fukushima Daiichi reactors that exploded and melted down last month. The bureaucrats at NRC however, have never denied a nuclear plant application for renewal. No other time is more appropriate to reconsider the sensibility and safety of nuclear energy than now, and yet, no other time was more appropriate to reconsider offshore drilling than after the Gulf oil disaster.

         When industry fails — and history recounts it always has — our response needs to be an innovative outlook into the sensibility of the industry accountable. Too often however, industry complies with middling safety improvements and well-clad public relations campaign. Take, for instance, the Bhopal disaster of 1984, in which a Union Carbide pesticide plant leaked methyl isocyanate gas and other chemicals, exposing hundreds of thousands of people to its poisons. In response, Dow Chemical purchased the company in 2001, and launched a $US10 million public relations campaign, introducing such marketable notions as "the human element", assuring the public that the company's ethics have changed for humanity's benefit. British Petroleum's response to the Gulf disaster created further environmental disruption. Rather than turning to any of the other innumerable non-toxic methods of cleanup, BP treated the Gulf with two highly toxic dispersants, Corexit EC9500A and Corexit EC9527A, both of which are well associated with Exxon and BP.

         With a history of disreputable industrial-led cleanup, one understandably grows concerned over the recent response to the nuclear fallout of Fukushima Daiichi. When radiation levels above reactor 2 continue to increase to 6,500 times over the legal limit, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spends afternoon tea with Emperor Akihito, one doubts the legitimacy of solutions underway.

         Safety standards prove incompetent to contain the unpredictable and volatile. Two weeks before the Gulf disaster, President Obama had reopened much of coastline to drilling, stating, "It turns out, by this way, that oil rigs generally don't cause oil spills. They are technologically very advanced." Having to sheepishly recount this statement after the oil platform exploded, Obama assured the nation that he would only lift the moratorium "under the assurance that it would be absolutely safe."

         Now, I'm not sure what President Obama's criteria for "absolutely safe" is, nor do I know under what measures the NRC has determined that every single nuclear plant is safe for renewal. But I do know this: the unpredictable is inevitable. In an age of rapidly changing climate, when unpredictable weather is the new normal forecast, we cannot consider industry in the same manner that we originally exercised in order to build our current industrial era. Following the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, President Obama called for a safety review of the 104 nuclear power reactors in the United States. Yet, no safety review can possibly be comprehensive enough to secure against a hostile, most unpredictable era of climate change. In today's broadcast, when fires rage across Arizona, and tornados flatten much of the South, even the unlikeliest of hazards become high risk.

         The signatory warning of a failing industry however, should not depend on disasters like the Bhopal leak, the Gulf oil spill, or the nuclear fallout in Japan. Even if these industry sectors performed with perfect records, meeting the most rigorous standards of safety, they would still be the primary cause of species extinction, climate change, acid rain, ozone depletion, and a whole list of other irrevocable planetary disasters. In the words of the environmental economist E.F. Schumacher, "Man talks of a battle with Nature, forgetting that if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side." President Obama's "absolutely safe" standard seems not to include these inevitable effects, nor does the NRC seem to consider the 10,000-year half-life of nuclear waste or the horizon of volatile storms, nor does Dow Chemical seem to include real human life in their "human element" campaign.

         And though a swelling bandwagon is bustling towards the likes of solar, wind, and geothermal energy, the central problem is still left unconsidered. With global population topping 7 billion, and the level of consumption ever-growing — developing nations pursuing the equivalent quality of life as the United States, and the United States demanding still better and more — these alternative energy sources cannot fulfill their demands. A "small is beautiful" era is needed. A retirement, not a safety review, is most needed for the oil, nuclear, and pesticide industries — idealistic, wishful thinking, of course, yet not nearly as naïve as the industrial assumption of infinite resource exploitation, unlimited population growth, and unregulated dumping.

         The rare disaster is only a phase of debate and outcry. Time pushes each disaster back into a hazy memory until the next adversity of unpredictable strikes. This age needs to be different. Public outcry cannot die because climate change is not going away anytime soon. The more industry expands its sectors to meet energy needs, the more at risk are public health, public safety, and planetary security.

     

    Guy Walker is a young environmental activist from Idyllwild, California. The summer of 2011, he will bicycle across the United States, confronting corporate agricultural powers, helping to return food democracy to the people.

  • Harvard’s embrace of Christie – shameful but not surprising

    Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) at one time had space for progressive ideas, (that’s where I earned my doctorate) but it was never a “liberal bastion.” True HGSE had space for critique of US society, but the culture and institutional structure were dominated by the very wealthy annoyed that their children had to be exposed to critiques of US society in order to get the Harvard credential to which they consider themselves entitled. As neoliberal thinking has permeated US society, HGSE has been making its ideological contribution to the struggle, on behalf of the advantaged, masking its shift in the rhetoric of supporting equal educational opportunity. HGSE gets much of its money from foundations funded by what Diane Ravitch has termed the “Billionaire Boys Club” (BBC hereafter) and directly from the guys themselves.

    So the term BBC accurately conveys the class nature of the attack on public education. However, there’s much more to this mammoth social engineering we’re witnessing. As I explain in a panel with Ravitch and a piece for NP,  this is an international political project that aims to satisfy capitalism’s most ardent desire, a compliant workforce. The project requires destruction of teachers unions, which are the most stable and potentially powerful force to protect the structures of public education and teachers’ potential to convey ideals of democracy and social justice that threaten the behemoth. Howard Stevenson puts this well:

    “Teachers deal with ideas, and the importance of their ideological function is well understood. There is of course nothing inevitable about what teachers do or how they work – education has the power both to reproduce and transform, and will always contain elements of both and be a struggle between both. Teachers do not automatically work in progressive ways – but it is their potential to work in critical and transformatory ways that mean they are always a threat to the established social order.”

    In welcoming a governor who has built his political career by bullying teachers and making clear his goal of destroying teachers unions, HGSE does not surprise. Of a piece with inviting an avowed union-buster is the refusal to tenure Mark Warren, a faculty member whose research and activity demonstrated commitment to democratic school reform. The sort of bastion HGSE is and has always been is one of social privilege. HGSE’s contribution on the wrong side of the class struggle has just changed along with the rich and powerful who have always controlled the media and institutions. They no longer think they have to allow space for critique.

  • How the Islamic "virus" broke out of the imperialist laboratory

    [Editor's note: This article continues Richard Greeman's series about Islamism.] Over the years, the British-backed Moslem Brotherhood’s activities spread far beyond Egypt. Not by coincidence did the first Arabic translation of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” still in circulation today, appear in Egypt the 1920"s. This anti-Semitic forgery was created by the Imperial Russian secret services around 1905 in order to designate a scapegoat and divert the growing Russian revolutionary movement into reactionary channels (pogroms, Black Hundreds). Today, as in the 1920’s, it serves to divert the anger of the Moslem masses away from their despotic governments toward Zionism and the Jew-dominated West. However, in the 1970’s this did not stop the Israelis from encouraging and financing the Brotherhood’s evangelical and social activities in newly occupied Gaza and the West bank through its “Moslem Center” front in a “tactical alliance” against the Palestinian resistance led by the secular PLO. These activities were directed by the Brotherhood’s Palestine Apparatus as a base on which to prepare the creation in the 1980’s of the Islamic political party Hamas and for its future armed struggle against both the PLO and Israel. Divide-and-rule continued to bear fruit for the Israelis in the Twenty-First Century, when actual armed hostilities broke out between Fatah- and Hamas-oriented militias in the West Bank, demoralizing the Palestinians and paving the way for fresh Israeli incursions. Similarly, the “Islamicist” tactic of attacking civilians by placing car bombs in front of mosques was first introduced by the CIA in Lebanon in the 1970’s, according to award-winning journalist Allan Nairn. In the 1980’s we find the CIA playing the Islamic card against the Communists in the Great Game between Russia and the West over control of Afghanistan. If Osama bin Laden didn’t personally work for the CIA in the 80s (as did Saddam Hussein) his fighters received U.S. arms and money through the Pakistani secret services (ISI) to combat the Russians and the Afghani Communists (who incidentally had brought secular education, female equality and relative lack of corruption to Afghanistan during their years in government). Throughout ME/A history the imperialist West has consistently preferred to support pliant reactionary despots over democrats and nationalists for the simple reason that it is cheaper and more profitable to pay off a small ruling group and keep the lion’s share of the profits than to submit to popular demands for better wages, local development and a fairer distribution of the oil revenues. By and large, these divide-and-rule tactics have worked. And although the Clash of Civilizations paradigm presents the Islamic world as an aggressive, expansionist, ideological and military threat to pacific Western democratic liberalism, the historical record shows that the Western governments have consistently crushed every attempt at democracy or secular nationalism in the ME/A lands. One needs only to recall the 1953 CIA-organized overthrow of the elected government of Iran and its mildly nationalistic prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, who had dared to impose partial nationalization of Iran’s oil-fields (while offering to pay 25% royalties to the British). Or the 1956 French-British-Israeli invasion of Egypt, when the secular pan-Arabist government of Nasser threatened the Suez Canal. The reason secular strongman and former CIA “asset” Saddam Hussein suddenly got transformed from cherished ally in the war against the Ayatollahs into an Islamic “Hitler” had nothing to do with religion. As the surviving regional power after the defeat of Iran in their bloody 1980-1988 war, the Iraqi dictator got too big for his britches and tried to take a bigger cut of the profits. This would have set a very bad precedent, and it took the West two wars and an invasion to cut him down to size – naturally in the name of “democracy” and the “liberation” of the Iraqi people. And although the Bush II Administration attempted to link Saddam Hussein with the religious fanaticism of Osama bin Ladan as a pretext for invasion, Baathist Iraq was arguably the most secular, progressive, technically advanced state in the region. One recalls that under Saddam women occupied roughly half the jobs in the Iraqi civil services as well as in education and medicine. Well-trained Iraqi engineers and administrators were able to successfully repair the infrastructure after the devastations of the first Gulf War, despite the continuing U.S. embargo – something Halliburton has been unable to do after spending billions. Not surprisingly, in 2003 the U.S.-British occupiers immediately pushed aside the actual democratic forces within Iraq – women, organized labor, and the educated middle class of doctors, lawyers, engineers – and based themselves exclusively on the reactionary religious and tribal elements whose reign of Islamic terror went viral andcontinues to this day. Another case of divide-and-rule imperialism playing with fire, “creating” Islamism – and then getting caught in the “blowback.”

  • Rising Above the Herd: Keith Preston's Authoritarian Anti-Statism


    "Perhaps what I champion is not so much the anarchist as much as the 'anarch,' the superior individual who, out of sheer strength of will, rises above the herd in defiance and contempt of both the sheep and their masters."

    — Keith Preston, "The Thoughts That Guide Me: A Personal Reflection" (2005)[1]

     

    Introduction

         Freedom from government tyranny has always been a central theme of right-wing politics in the United States. From the original Ku Klux Klan that denounced "northern military despotism" to the Tea Partiers who vilify Barack Obama as a combination of Hitler and Stalin, U.S. rightists have invoked the evil of big government to both attract popular support and justify their own oppressive policies. Witness the rise of so-called National-Anarchism (NA), an offshoot of British neonazism that has recently gained a small but fast-growing foothold in the United States. National-Anarchists advocate a decentralized system of "tribal" enclaves based on "the right of all races, ethnicities and cultural groups to organize and live separately." National-Anarchists criticize statism of both the left and the right, including classical fascism, but they participate in neonazi networks such as Stormfront.org and promote anti-Jewish conspiracy theories worthy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Anti-statism is a key part of National-Anarchism's appeal and helps it to deflect the charge of fascism.[2]

         Keith Preston, who calls himself a "fellow traveler" of National-Anarchism, is in some ways even more dangerous. Preston is a former left-wing anarchist who advocates a revolutionary alliance of leftist and rightist libertarians against U.S. imperialism and the state. Unlike many far rightists who claim to be "beyond left and right," Preston actually incorporates many leftist ideas in his political philosophy and apparently is still in touch with some actual leftists. An intelligent, prolific writer, Preston has established himself over the past decade as a respected voice in libertarian, paleoconservative, and "Alternative Right" circles. His "anarcho-pluralism" represents a sophisticated reworking of far right politics that is flexible, inclusive, and appeals to widely held values such as "live and let live." Unlike most rightist ideologies, it also has the potential to serve as a bridge between a wide variety of rightist currents such as white nationalists, Patriot/militia groups, Christian rightists, and National-Anarchists — and even some left-wing anarchists, liberal bioregionalists/environmentalists, and nationalist people of color groups.

         In this article I will outline the major features of Preston's political program, strategy, and underlying philosophy. Although Preston claims that implementing anarcho-pluralism would result in an expansion of freedom, in reality it would promote oppression and authoritarianism in smaller-scale units. Although Preston is an individualist who does not directly advocate the racial determinism and separatism of his friends the National-Anarchists, he has made it a priority to (in his own words) "collaborate with racialists and theocrats," claiming that leftists who oppose such collaboration are the true bigots. Digging deeper, Preston's opposition to the state is based on a radically anti-humanistic philosophy of elitism, ruthless struggle, and contempt for most people.

         Preston offers a window into the larger issue of right-wing decentralism. This article will trace both the historical roots of the phenomenon and its various branches of recent decades, including libertarian, Christian rightist, neonazi, and Patriot movements in the United States. Preston blends these U.S.-based influences with ideas drawn from the European New Right, a decentralist offshoot of classical fascism, and from German Conservative Revolution figures of the 1920s and 1930s, who influenced but mostly stood outside of the Nazi movement. Preston's own relationship with fascism is much closer than he acknowledges. While he lacks fascism's drive to impose a single ideological vision on all spheres of society, he offers a closely related form of revolutionary right-wing populism. Above all, Preston and his rightist allies embody the main danger associated with fascism — to preempt the radical left as the main revolutionary opposition force.

    Anarcho-pluralism: Let a hundred authoritarianisms bloom

     

         Keith Preston is the moving force behind the Attack the System website/blog [ATS] and its affiliate organization, American Revolutionary Vanguard [ARV]. He is a contributing editor at AlternativeRight.com and has written for a number of paleocon and libertarian sites, including Taki's Magazine, LewRockwell.com, and Anti-State.com. Yet his early political years were spent on the left. In "Learning the Hard Way: My Life as an Anarcho-Leftoid," Preston writes that he became an anarchist at age twenty-one and was active for several years in "hard leftist" circles, including the Industrial Workers of the World and the 1989 founding conference of the Love and Rage network, but became alienated by what he saw as the movement's dogmatism and sectarianism. He then joined the Libertarian Party and began to read libertarian and conservative theorists such as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, Thomas Sowell, and Charles Murray. Gradually he developed a highly eclectic political philosophy:

    I like to think of my political views as being analogous to an architectural work. Classical Proudhonian-Bakuninist anarchism is the foundation. The classical liberalism of the Enlightenment thinkers and American founders is the soil on which the foundation is laid and modern free market economics provides the overall structural framework of the building. Traditional American populism is the general external design. Ideas on strategy and infrastructure acquired from the militia/patriot milieu are the nails and screws. Traditionalist conservative emphasis on intermediary institutions as a bulwark against the state, Third Positionist and "national-anarchist" criticisms of the pernicious influence of international Zionism and the need for cross-ideological alliances against globalism and those elements of Marxism and Maoism that I find useful comprise the remainder of the interior decorating and external trimmings. Confused yet?[3]

         The product of Preston's eclectic synthesis is "anarcho-pluralism," a vision of revolutionary change that centers on replacing centralized nation-states with a diverse array of small-scale political entities. Anarcho-pluralism, Preston writes, "is 'anti-universalist' because it rejects the view that there is one 'correct' system of politics, economics, or culture that is applicable much less obligatory for all people at all times and in all places." Instead, any group of people could organize and govern themselves as they wished, as long as they leave other groups free to do the same. These self-governing units could be based on ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, political philosophy, or cultural practice. This, Preston argues, is "the best possible method of avoiding the tyrannies and abuses of overarching Leviathan states, and accommodating the irreconcilable differences concerning any number of matters that all societies inevitably contain."[4]

         To achieve his revolutionary vision, Preston advocates a broad alliance of all political forces that want to dismantle the U.S. central government. More specifically, he calls for a "pan-secessionist" strategy, based on a coalition of those across the political spectrum who want to carve out separate, self-governing political enclaves free of U.S. government/imperialist control:

    Within the domestic US, the ranks of separatists include Christian Identity, Nation of Islam, Aztlan Nation, Christian Exodus, Free State Project, Neteuri [sic] Karta, American Indian Movement, Republic of Texas, Confederate State Project, Black Panthers, Green Panthers, Earth Liberation Front and many others…. A military/political/economic confederation of these various resistance forces would prove quite formidable, particularly when the struggle is taken internationally to include the EZLN in Chiapas, FARC in Colombia, Shining Path in Peru, Peoples' War Group in Nepal, Baathists in Iraq, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, etc.[5]

         This is certainly a broad array of potential partners, encompassing Marxist-Leninists, white separatists, libertarians, neo-Confederates, indigenous rights activists, Christian rightists, Islamic rightists, militant environmentalists, and anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews.

         Preston even envisions support for his pan-secessionist coalition from a block of "rogue states." "Preferably, a future revolutionary Russia, perhaps led by the National-Bolshevik Party, leading a confederation of anti-NWO regimes from North Korea to Venezuela, would to some degree play the same role as the old Soviet-sponsored Warsaw Pact as a bulwark against Western imperialism…"[6]

         Preston's vision of a pan-secessionist alliance can be seen in embryonic form in the recent series of North American secessionist conventions sponsored by the Middlebury Institute, which is led by bioregionalist author Kirkpatrick Sale. These gatherings have brought together representatives of such varied currents as the left-leaning Second Vermont Republic, ethnically based sovereignty movements in Hawaii and Quebec, and right-wing groups such as the Alaska Independence Party and neo-Confederate League of the South. Preston has helped to promote these conferences and attended at least one of them.[7]

         Bringing together left and right against the U.S. state and empire is a central thread running throughout Preston's work, as evidenced in American Revolutionary Vanguard's "Twenty-Five Point Program." Some points in the program borrow from the rightist libertarian or Patriot movements, such as support for building civilian militias to resist "creeping domestic and global tyranny," "common law courts supervised by volunteer juries and private judges," and local currencies based on gold or silver. Other points draw from the left, such as advocating labor militancy, affordable health care, reliable consumer information, tenant organizing, and abolition of jails and prisons. Still other points seem designed to appeal to both leftists and rightists, such as promotion of alternative media, tax resistance, the right to bear arms for self-defense, and opposition to U.S. military aggression against other nations.[8]

         Preston often blends leftist and rightist themes in a pragmatic effort to build coalitions. On race relations, for example, he advocates "sovereignty, reparations [for slavery] and amnesty [to most prisoners] for the advancement of the interests of blacks and the elimination of race-based favoritism, affirmative action, ant-discrimination laws, etc. for the advancement of whites." Similarly, he argues that "we should be tough on crime, but equally tough on cops, courts, and laws." This means a "liberal" position on defendants' rights and prison conditions, but a "conservative" position on the right to bear arms and form private organizations for protection against crime.[9]

         Leftist influence on Preston's politics goes beyond tactics and bullet points in a program. His critique of the "partnership between the forces of state and capital" draws largely on the historical work of Gabriel Kolko. Although mostly hostile to Marxism, Preston sometimes discusses it favorably, arguing for example that Marxist analysis of crime in terms of class conflict "has much validity," although it needs "sharp revision" when applied to an advanced industrial society. In discussions with conservatives, he periodically invokes thinkers such as C. Wright Mills, Max Horkheimer, Sam Dolgoff, and others likely to be outside his readers' comfort zone. His essay "What Maoism Has To Offer Anarchism" could have been written by a leftist and cites many aspects of Maoism as valuable, such as its emphasis on criticism/self-criticism, revolution as an ongoing process rather than a one-time event, and the need for revolutionary activists to maintain close contact with "the masses."[10]

         Despite all this, Preston's politics are fundamentally right wing with a leftist gloss. Preston has made right-wing circles his political home, embracing the project to build a radical Alternative Right rooted largely in paleoconservatism and white nationalism. While defending his choice to "collaborate with racialists and theocrats," he has called for "a purge, if not an outright pogrom" to drive anti-racist whites, feminists, and queer activists from the anarchist movement in order to "attract more young rebels into our ranks." (He later claimed that critics had taken this statement "way too seriously.") By presenting white separatists and religious rightists as valuable allies in the struggle against U.S. imperialism and the state, Preston misportrays them as positive contributors to social and political change, and obscures or trivializes the harm they do now and the vastly greater harm they would do if given control of autonomous, self-governing territories.[11]

         Preston embraces "a philosophical conservatism regarding human nature and the nature of society," whose tenets include "natural inequality of persons at both the individual and collective levels, [and] the inevitability and legitimacy of otherness…"[12] He is harshly critical of the left's egalitarianism and universalism. Instead, he offers an elitist, anti-humanist philosophy that echoes Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernst Jünger, and Ayn Rand:

    those who obtain the upper hand in the ongoing power struggle will almost always be the most ruthless, cunning and merciless of the competitors. The wolves will always win out over the sheep. Within the bleak framework of a perpetual war of each against all, there from time to time arises the exceedingly rare individual whom Nietzsche referred to as the "ubermensch." This is the individual of superior will, strength, mind, spirit, discipline, intelligence, intuition, perceptiveness, shrewdness, wisdom, creativity, inventiveness, generosity and other such characteristics that set the human species a half step above the other animals. It is this individual who becomes the "anarch," the "egoist," the one who rises above the perpetual fog in which both the sheepish people and their vicious masters dwell…. It is persons such as these who carry with them the seeds of cultural and civilizational growth. For any sort of human existence to emerge beyond that of the merely animalistic, this type of individual must thrive…[13]

         Preston argues further that "the first purpose of any politics or ethics beyond the purely material or defensive" must be to protect and foster these rare, superior individuals, the anarchs. "It is apparent that the political framework most conducive to the advancement of the anarch is some sort of anarchism." In other words, the main reason Preston supports anarchism is not to liberate all people — but to help a handful of superior individuals rise above the bestial mass of humanity.[14]

         It would be a mistake to see Preston's elitism as a mask for bigotry against any specific group of people. Still, standard right-wing prejudices periodically creep into his prose. He argues that "multiculturalism will not work out in the long run because human beings are by nature tribal creatures. Feminism will implode because males and females have different biological destinies and therefore different social destinies." He endorses claims that non-white immigrants threaten to destroy Western civilization and argues that white nationalists have many "legitimate grievances," such as racial preference schemes, hate crime laws, and welfare programs that benefit people of color at the expense of whites. He portrays homosexuality as weird and somewhat distasteful but "not a problem" as long as it's kept private; any efforts to challenge heterosexism collectively and publicly are, at best, trivial distractions from the important job of overthrowing the U.S. empire.[15]

         Although Preston is an elitist who expresses contempt for most people, he is also a populist. More specifically, his anarcho-pluralism represents a form of right-wing populism — that is, it seeks to rally "the people" against established elites based on a distorted analysis of power that both masks and reinforces oppressive social relations. Right-wing populism offers a plausible target for anti-elite rage that channels it away from a thoroughgoing attack on the oppressive order. Some right-wing populists target a specific ethnic group (such as Jews) or even a specific sub-group within the elite (such as bankers or multinational corporations). Preston targets the state. More precisely, he falsely equates oppression in general with the large, centralized state, in a way that both obscures and promotes other forms of social oppression and political authoritarianism.

         In keeping with right-wing libertarian thought, Preston portrays the state as the only significant source of oppression, and sees "corporate plutocracy" purely as a result of state interference in the market economy. It's quite true as he argues that the state has actively promoted the concentration of wealth and economic power, but his assumption that "natural" markets can be separated from "unnatural" state involvement is a libertarian myth. Both state and market are institutions created by human beings, and the two are closely intertwined. Market relations have expanded enormously under capitalism — not in spite of, but largely through, state intervention (forcing subsistence farmers across the globe to become wage laborers, for example). "Freeing" markets from the centralized state would certainly reshape capitalist power, but would not abolish it. Rather, it would benefit certain forms of capital and certain business factions over others.

         Similarly, Preston only acknowledges oppression along lines of race, gender, sexuality, or other factors to the extent that these are directly promoted by the state, particularly through formal, legal discrimination against specific groups of people. Arguing that "the state is a unique force for destruction," Preston ignores or trivializes the dense network of oppressive institutions and relationships that exist outside of, and sometimes in opposition to, the state.[16] It is these societally based systems of oppression, not state intervention, that perpetuate dramatic wealth disparities between whites and people of color, widespread domestic violence that overwhelmingly target women, and suicide rates much higher among LGBT teens than heterosexual teens, among many other examples.

         Dismantling the central state won't abolish other systems of oppression. It will simply create a power vacuum where they can function in a more fragmented, unregulated way. This is a recipe for warlordism, a chaotic society where anyone with enough physical force can make the rules. As Kersplebedeb has argued, "There is an organic tendency towards warlordism in communities that have tasted capitalism and patriarchy and colonialism. Even oppressed communities."[17] This is a problem if your goal is to dismantle systems of hierarchy and oppression, but not if your goal is to help a handful of superior individuals rise up through ruthless struggle.

         Authoritarianism doesn't require a large centralized state, but can operate on any scale, such as a region, a neighborhood, or a family. With no program for liberation except ending big government, pan-secessionism would foster many smaller-scale authoritarian societies. For example, one of the political currents that Preston hopes to include in a pan-secessionist confederation is Christian Identity. This doctrine, which has been embraced by a number of neonazi groups such as Aryan Nations, holds that Anglo-Saxons are God's chosen people; many Christian Identity advocates also believe that people of color are soulless "mud people" and Jews are children of Satan. Another current on Preston's pan-secessionist list, Christian Exodus, advocates an independent Christian nation based on a right-wing interpretation of biblical law. The Christian Exodus website prominently features the writings and speeches of Matt Trewhella, leader of Missionaries to the Preborn, who has publicly endorsed the murder of abortion providers as "justifiable homicide." A third secessionist current, the League of the South, advocates a society "structured upon the Biblical notion of hierarchy," where "Christ is the head of His Church; husbands are the heads of their families; parents are placed over their children; employers rank above their employees; the teacher is superior to his students, etc." The league's ideal society also "stigmatizes perversity and all that seeks to undermine marriage and the family."[18]

         While claiming that anarcho-pluralism would raise the overall level of freedom, Preston himself acknowledges that "there might also be a proliferation of a number of relatively or intensely closed communities, particularly among those operating within the framework of some sort of racial, religious, or cultural exclusivism or some sort of overtly authoritarian political ideology." He has no problem with the idea of "anarcho-feudalism" or "anarcho-monarchism."[19] As far as I know, he has not directly addressed the question of "anarcho-slavery," but it's unclear why this would be any more objectionable.

         Preston portrays secession as a voluntary process, in which many varied groups of people decide to go their own separate ways and coexist peaceably side by side. But what does "voluntary" mean in a context where wives are expected to submit to the authority of their husbands, workers to obey their bosses, or homosexuality is regarded as a perversion and a crime? And how long would peaceable coexistence last in the face of absolutist ideologies that are inherently expansionist? The leaders of a Christian Right statelet would believe that homosexuality and feminism are wrong not only within the statelet's borders, but everywhere, and they would feel a religious duty to enforce this belief as widely as possible.

    U.S. roots of right-wing decentralism

         Preston has invoked the heritage of the American Revolution, claiming that the "highly decentralized, largely libertarian regime" of the Articles of Confederation (1776-1789) — if it had not been replaced by the "state-capitalist class dictatorship" of the U.S. Constitution — would have given us "a decentralized federation of sovereign territories and communities with a worker-farmer-inventor-artisan-merchant dominated economy with localized production for local use," as well as a neutralist foreign policy and moderately integrated ethnic groups coexisting amicably.[20] This romanticized view of the nation's origins hides an uglier reality: Throughout U.S. history, political decentralism has often been a vehicle for intensifying oppression, not reducing it.

         The most obvious example of this is the Confederacy's secession in 1861, which was engineered by the South's elite to defend and expand their region's slave-based economy. Contrary to Preston's simplistic portrait of a U.S. ruling class wedded to the central government, different capitalist factions have varied widely in their relationship to federal authority. As historian Mike Davis has pointed out, "in contrast to the geo-financial centralism of other capitalist countries, the dominance of Wall Street has always been qualified by competition with financial centers in Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco and, more recently, Los Angeles and Houston." Davis notes that regionally based business factions, exercising political power at the state or city level, have repeatedly challenged older capitalist factions for national primacy.[21]

         The United States is also distinctive in the degree to which business has taken on what are normally thought of as government functions — including the supposed monopoly of force. Between the 1870s and 1930s — the critical period in the development of U.S. industrial capitalism and industrial class relations — business relied on private armies and police forces more than the state to repress labor activism. During the late nineteenth century, the Pinkerton Detective Agency alone had more men than the U.S. Army. And in thousands of "company towns" across the South, Midwest, and West, a single business either economically dominated or owned outright an entire community, effectively controlling all trade, services, politics, and cultural life.[22] Many of these towns — which were virtually free from any central state oversight — came nearer than anything created by Hitler or Mussolini to the classic Comintern definition of fascism as "the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital."[23]

         Not only capitalists, but also middle- and working-class white men have engaged in "highly decentralized, largely libertarian" armed activity through much of U.S. history. Volunteer fire companies in nineteenth-century Philadelphia, in Noel Ignatiev's words,

    fought continuously over control of territory within the working-class districts of the city or suburbs. Arson was high on their list of weapons: one of their favorite tactics was to set a fire near the territory of a rival company, and then lie in wait to attack it when it showed up; they also extorted money from nearby homeowners who had good reason to anticipate fire if they failed to contribute… [Each fire company] became identified with a particular ethnic group and played an important role in establishing the place of that group within the city…. only the free Negroes were without their own fire company.[24]

         In the absence of a strong central state, non-governmental armed organizations have often played a vital role in imposing social order and hierarchy. The citizen militias of the 1990s, the anti-racist newspaper Turning the Tide has argued,

    are the descendants of the armed settlers who banded together to take land from the indigenous people. They are descendants of the slave posses that enforced the slave codes before there was any law enforcement apparatus. The white supremacist Arizona Rangers who plotted to bomb federal buildings in the '80s are descendants of the 19th century Arizona, Texas, and California Rangers, which developed from lynch mobs terrorizing the conquered Mexican population in the 1840's into the rudimentary apparatus of law enforcement by the Euro-American state in those territories conquered from Mexico.

         Turning the Tide also cites similar vigilante enforcement organizations in nineteenth-century Missouri, Idaho, and Montana, as well as the 1920s Ku Klux Klan, which "enforced Protestant 'Americanism,' family values, anti-immigrant hysteria, and Prohibition."[25]

         These examples of vigilante repression have often been accepted, if not actively aided, by the state. But other repressive forces have worked in opposition to the state. This primarily reflects the United States' history of colonial conquest and system of racial oppression, in which whites of all classes have participated actively but in different ways. For over 300 years, American hostility to "big government" has often been driven by European Americans who wanted freer rein to conquer or dominate people of color without the limitations that central authorities imposed for pragmatic reasons. For example, Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 began with a massacre of Occaneechee Indians by Virginia frontier settlers; the American Revolution was motivated partly by opposition to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which banned colonial settlement west of the Appalachians. Both the New York City "Draft Riot" of 1863 and the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan combined anti-black terrorism with irregular warfare against the established central government. In the 1880s, the white labor movement in the western U.S. was built largely through anti-Chinese racism, including several pogroms. After World War I, even the refounded Klan often challenged local elites and sometimes aided striking workers. In the 1930s and early forties, a sizeable network of fascist and pro-fascist groups called for overthrowing the government. In the late 1950s, Southern politicians promoted a "Massive Resistance" campaign against federally mandated school desegregation.[26]

         Several interrelated branches of right-wing decentralism have grown from these roots. Libertarianism coalesced after World War II among advocates of free market capitalism, who denounced New Deal programs such as Social Security as socialistic. Libertarianism drew on broad-based U.S. traditions of individualism and a mythology of self-reliance associated with the frontier. Yet right-wing capitalists played a key role in funding libertarian institutions such as the Foundation for Economic Education and, later, the Cato Institute. In recent years, corporate-backed outfits such as the American Legislative Exchange Council have been instrumental in promoting the privatization of government functions such as education, social services, public transportation, and prisons.[27]

         Libertarianism's development has also been intertwined with the Christian Right. In the 1950s, conservative Protestant organs such as Faith and Freedom promoted a biblically based message of capitalist individualism, which has become one of the central tenets of Christian Right ideology. Hostility to big government has helped to shape one of the most hardline Christian Right factions, known as Christian Reconstructionism. Rooted in Presbyterian theology, Reconstructionism advocates a totalitarian application of biblical law but would administer it mainly through local governments and private institutions, especially the church and the family. This has led one scholar to describe Reconstructionists as "libertarian theocrats."[28] Prominent figures associated with Christian Reconstructionism include libertarian author Gary North; Matt Trewhella of Missionaries to the Preborn; and Howard Phillips, three-time presidential candidate of the U.S. Taxpayers Party/Constitution Party. The secessionist group Christian Exodus is influenced by Reconstructionism.

         New forms of political decentralism have also emerged within the white nationalist far right. During the 1980s, neonazi doctrines including Christian Identity and Third Position largely supplanted Klan-style segregationism among paramilitary rightists. Although classical fascists had promoted a highly centralized state, many of the new groups called for fragmenting or subdividing political authority. Aryan Nations, for example, advocated a separatist white homeland in the Pacific Northwest, while Posse Comitatus rejected all governmental authority above the county level as illegitimate. Also during this period, much of the U.S. far right was influenced by Louis Beam's promotion of the concept of "leaderless resistance."

         By far the largest recent example of militant, right-wing decentralism is the Patriot movement, which attracted an estimated five million supporters at its height in the mid/late 1990s and has experienced a partial resurgence recently. Encompassing a diverse array of groups and ideas influenced by neonazism, the Christian Right, libertarianism, and John Birch Society-type conspiracy theories, the Patriot movement represented the United States' first large-scale coalition of fascist and non-fascist activists since World War II. The movement developed out of fears that globalist elites were plotting to impose some sort of tyranny on the United States, and many members formed armed militias to defend against an expected crackdown. Although most Patriot groups disavow ethnic bigotry, ideas rooted in white supremacism have circulated widely within the movement, such as bogus constitutional claims that African-Americans hold "14th Amendment citizenship," which is inferior to the "Sovereign citizenship" held by white Christian Americans.[29]

         Of these various right-wing decentralist currents, libertarianism is the one that has had the biggest influence on Preston's politics. This is the source of his simplistic claim that the fight against oppression can be reduced to dismantling big government. Preston is neither a white nationalist nor a Christian anything, and his affinity to the Patriot movement is based on militant hostility to globalizing elites, not conspiracism or crackpot legal theories. Yet all of these currents have contributed to a broader right-wing discourse that blends decentralism with a belief in social hierarchy, populism with elitism. Preston's work is important, in large part, because of the ways it touches and blends with these other currents in Alternative Right circles. Moreover, Preston's big-tent approach to radical change supports and promotes all of these currents, and all of them would play a big role in shaping the society he hopes to create.

    The European New Right

         Another important element in Preston's eclectic politics is European New Right (ENR) ideology. Like Aryan Nations or Posse Comitatus, the ENR is a decentralist offshoot of traditional fascism, but it has gone much farther than these U.S. counterparts in distancing itself from explicit ethnic bigotry. Preston has written that he regards ENR philosophy as one of the best foundations for modern anarchism, and that "more than any other contemporary intellectual current, the ENR has developed a critique of the philosophical underpinnings of totalitarian humanism, as well as a rational response to the question of threats posed by demographic transformation."[30]

         The European New Right began in France in the late 1960s with the founding of GRECE (Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes pour la Civilisation Européene) and then spread to other European countries, among them Italy, Russia, Germany, Belgium, and Britain. Its founders (most prominently Alain de Benoist) began as traditional far rightists who set out gradually but systematically to rework fascist ideology. While classical fascism had relied on paramilitarism and political mass mobilization, the ENR focused on transforming intellectual and cultural discourse. In place of the classical fascist ideal of a highly centralized, authoritarian nation-state, the ENR envisioned a federated "empire" of regionally based ethno-cultural communities. It espoused anti-imperialism, not expansionism, and cultural authenticity, not biological purity. Disavowing fascism and its familiar icons, many European New Rightists have resurrected lesser-known far rightists of the interwar period, notably writers associated with the German Conservative Revolution (a term coined by Swiss far rightist Armin Mohler, who called them the "Trotskyites of the German Revolution"). At the same time, the ENR carries forward traditional fascism's hostility to individualism, egalitarianism, and ethnic or racial mixing, as well as the paganism shared by some classical fascists.[31]

         A key feature of ENR ideology is the doctrine that Benoist has called "differentialism." European New Rightists claim to be champions of "biocultural diversity" against the homogenizing effects of globalization and liberalism. They argue that true anti-racism means honoring and defending racial and ethnic differences through separation. (Thus Benoist advocates immigration restriction, although he concedes that a mass departure of immigrants already in France is unrealistic.) Similarly, Benoist and Charles Champetier have argued that true, "differentialist" feminism means defending natural gender differences. Neutralizing these differences represents "a twisted form of male domination" because it requires women to "divest themselves of their femininity." Differentialism also means rejecting the principle of universal human rights as "a strategic weapon of Western ethnocentrism," since all rights depend on cultural context.[32]

         Many observers have argued that the ENR's political shifts are intellectually dishonest. Guillaume Faye, a former comrade of Benoist who criticizes him from the right, charges that GRECE's embrace of ethnopluralism began as a "rhetorical ruse" to allow Europeans to defend their identity without being accused of racism. This criticism is seconded by white nationalist Michael O'Meara, author of one of the few book-length English language studies of the European New Right, who argues that Benoist appropriated "the pluralist principles of contemporary liberalism — to defend Europe from its biocultural enemies."[33]

         While Faye and O'Meara argue that GRECE's deception backfired and led it to compromise its anti-liberal principles, critics further to the left point out that the ENR's pluralist rhetoric masks cultural chauvinism and authoritarianism. Anton Shekhovtsov argues that the ENR has turned the UN-recognized "right of all peoples to be different" into an imperative and "a way of legitimizing European exclusionism and rejection of miscegenation." Alberto Spektorowksi notes that while Benoist claims to regard all cultures as equal, he considers technological development to be "authentic" only for Indo-Europeans. Thus "by encouraging other cultures to remain confined in their own culture and their own 'nomos,' [Benoist] condemns them to a 'proud' underdevelopment." Roger Griffin argues that the French New Right remains true to fascism's "fundamental historical mission: to replace the decadence of liberal democracy with a 'new order' in which national/ethnic identities are intensified rather than diluted, and the differences between peoples enhanced rather than eroded."[34] He also warns that any attempt to realize the ENR political vision

    would in practice involve social engineering by an autocratic (super-)state pursuing policies of cultural and ethnic homogenization and exclusion. These policies…would deliberately set out to reverse the effects of many decades of liberal pluralism, multi-culturalism, multi-ethnicity, secularization, and individualism. The quest to restore "difference," "identity," and a pagan sense of the sacred on the basis of a claimed xenophilia would inevitably turn nationalism into ultra-nationalism, and introduce measures of social exclusion and ideological indoctrination…[35]

         The European New Right has had relatively little impact in the United States, at least until recently. Although the movement resonates with U.S. paleoconservatism in a number of ways, interchange between the two has been limited by the ENR's paganism and anti-Christianity, as well as its animosity toward the United States as the driver of globalization. The ex-leftist journal Telos has played a key role in bringing ENR texts and ideas to an English-speaking audience since at least the early 1990s. More recently, National-Anarchists have emerged as another important transmission belt. The ENR was a major influence guiding NA-founder Troy Southgate away from explicit racism toward a more sophisticated "ethno-pluralism," and National-Anarchists have also followed the ENR's lead in celebrating German Conservative Revolutionaries, above all Ernst Jünger, whose later work centered on the concept of the "anarch."[36]

         Preston has written that National-Anarchism was his introduction to European New Right philosophy.[37] Among many points of agreement, Preston has embraced the ENR's critique of cultural homogenization and "totalitarian" universalism, and its claim that ethnic separatism — including immigration restriction — is vital for preserving cultural diversity. He also took up the ENR's project to resurrect the work of non-Nazi far rightists from Weimar Germany, citing Jünger as a model of meritocratic elitism and producing an extended study of Carl Schmitt as liberal democracy's most insightful critic.[38] In addition, despite the differences in terminology, Preston's anarcho-pluralist vision closely resembles the ENR's federated empire of decentralized communities.

         Preston's main differences with the European New Right center on two issues: religion and liberalism. Most European New Rightists are neo-pagans who long for a "return of the sacred" and denounce Christianity as the root of universalism, egalitarianism, and other ills. By contrast, Preston is a pragmatist willing to work with people of any religious views, who mostly treats his own atheism as a personal matter. Even more importantly, the ENR criticizes not only modern welfare state liberalism, but also classical liberalism, individualism, and free markets, while Preston embraces all three. These disagreements inform an important difference in their political ideals. While the ENR utopia emphasizes "organic" communities rooted in a specific culture and region, Preston's vision emphasizes individuals choosing the communities they want and not bothering other people.

         By blending the ENR's differentialism with American pragmatic libertarianism, and by translating high-brow ENR discourse into more accessible prose, Preston may help to make ENR ideas more appealing for U.S. audiences. Discussions of ENR works and ideas are periodically featured not only on Preston's Attack the System website but also on AlternativeRight.com and other U.S.-based sites. The close ties between the ATS/ARV network and National-Anarchist groups further accentuate the ENR's growing influence in U.S.-based right-wing discussions.

    Why Preston matters

         Keith Preston is a right-wing revolutionary whose hostility to the U.S. ruling class is just as strong as his hostility to the left. He calls for dismantling the existing state and replacing it with a radically new political order. This revolution would take political and cultural power away from the representatives of the U.S. ruling class, but it would not directly challenge the systems of capitalism, white racial oppression, patriarchy, or heterosexism, and would promote other (ethnic, religious, and Nietzschean) forms of elitism and social hierarchy. All this Preston shares with fascism, yet he does not share fascism's totalitarian vision, the belief that all spheres of society should be subordinated to one top-down, unifying doctrine. Anarcho-pluralism is a dangerous and deceptive ideology, but rather than impose one comprehensive repressive order, it would foster a multiplicity of repressive orders.

         But anarcho-pluralist revolution is hypothetical, while oppression and exploitation are immediate, brutal realities for most people in the United States — not to mention the rest of the world. Given this, why should we care about Preston and his allies? Not because of any imminent threat that they will win power, but rather because they have the potential to "take the game away from the left," as Tom Metzger urged neonazis to do in the 1980s. Don Hamerquist's warning about emerging fascist movements applies equally to Preston-style right-wing revolutionaries: The real danger from such forces "is that they might gain a mass following among potentially insurgent workers and declassed strata through an historic default of the left."[39]

         Both sides of Hamerquist's warning — the left's historic default and the insurgent right's potential to attract a mass following that includes the left's traditional base — resonate alarmingly with Preston's own strategic thinking, as detailed in his February 2011 piece, "The State of the Resistance Two Years Into the Age of Obama." First, Preston argues, tellingly, that Obama's election accelerated the collapse of the antiwar and anti-Patriot Act movements, despite the fact that Obama has intensified the war in Afghanistan and continued President Bush's police state policies, because "the antiwar or anti-Patriot Act left was always more motivated by opposition to Bush or opposition to the Republicans than by opposition to imperialism or police statism themselves."[40]

         In contrast, Preston notes the emergence in recent years "of a 'permanent opposition Right' that opposes the establishment irrespective of what party is in power and fervently rejects so-called 'movement conservatism' of the Republican Party. The paleoconservative Right first adopted this stance during the Bush regime with its dominance by the hated neoconservatives, and the paleo movement has since evolved into the far more radical Alternative Right." Coupled with this, local groups affiliated with National-Anarchism, Preston's own ATS/ARV network, or related currents have grown significantly since Obama took office. Most of these affiliates "have appeared in areas that are solidly blue [i.e., left leaning], such as New York City, San Francisco, southern California, Ohio, Boston, Ontario, Washington state, [and] Wisconsin… Further, we have experienced grown among conventionally blue demographics such as African-Americans, Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Gays/Queers, Muslims, and others not generally thought of as being part of the American right-wing." (Although the number of people involved is no doubt small, these claims appear to be fairly accurate, and Preston is not given to bluster. I count at least 15-20 blogs and websites for N-A and ATS-affiliated groups in North America, most of which have appeared over the past year or two, along with a larger penumbra of right-wing anarchist, ENR-oriented, and secessionist sites of various kinds.)

         In conclusion, Preston argues that "the relevant future political struggles [will be] a kind of intra-Left civil war between the totalitarian humanist establishment and an anarchistic opposition that rejects the left-right paradigm, adopts a populist outlook, organizes among the lumpen elements of urban areas, is primarily though by no means exclusively youth oriented, and is allied politically with more conventionally right-wing populist sectors originating from more conservative or sparsely populated regions, and with revolutionary right-wing elements who have rejected this system in favor of a 'post-America' of more decentralized politics and seceded regions."

         Within the context of a broader oppositional right, Preston could well play a critical role in helping to make this strategic vision a reality. His background and outlook put him in an unusually good position to act as a coalition builder. He offers a political voice that is militant, analytically grounded, and strategically coherent. Although closely aligned with the National-Anarchists, his network may also attract some people, including leftists, who are put off by National-Anarchism's more obvious "tribalist" baggage. He is someone to watch carefully.

         Like other forms of revolutionary right-wing populism, Preston's anarcho-pluralism calls for a dual response from the left. Part of the response is to expose the oppressive and authoritarian reality behind Preston's claims to be promoting diversity and freedom. The other part — much more difficult but ultimately much more important — is to build a revolutionary left that functions as a serious opposition whether the government is controlled by conservatives or liberals, Republicans or Democrats. Unlike Preston's version of revolution, that means fighting not just centralized state power, but all forms of oppression.

    Notes

    1. Keith Preston, "The Thoughts That Guide Me: A Personal Reflection," New Right Australia /New Zealand (Web site), 26 April 2006 (written 2005).

    2. Craig Fitzgerald, "Note on Racial Separatism," National Anarchist Tribal Alliance — New York (blog), 14 January 2011; see posts by Andrew Yeoman of Bay Area National Anarchists on Stormfront.org; for anti-Jewish theories see "N-AM Manifesto, Part One: Anti-Zionism," National-Anarchist Movement (Web site), 18 September 2010. See also Spencer Sunshine, "Rebranding Fascism: National-Anarchists," The Public Eye 23, no. 4 (Winter 2008).

    3. Preston, "Learning the Hard Way: My Life as an Anarcho-Leftoid," AttackTheSystem.com (Web site) [abbreviated hereafter as ATS], 2002.

    4. Preston, "Anarcho-Pluralism and Pan-Secessionism: What They Are and What They Are Not," ATS, 8 August 2010.

    5. Preston, "Why I Choose to Collaborate with Racialists and Theocrats," ATS, n.d.

    6. Ibid.

    7. Preston, "Third North American Secessionists Convention — A Review," ATS, 19 November 2008.

    8. American Revolutionary Vanguard Twenty-Five Point Program, ATS.

    9. "Liberty and Populism: Building an Effective Resistance Movement for North America," ATS, 2006.

    10. Preston, "Free Enterprise: The Antidote to Corporate Plutocracy," ATS, 2008; Preston, "Crime and Conflict Theory, ATS, 30 January 2011; Preston, "What Maoism Has To Offer Anarchism," ATS, 2 June 2008.

    11. Preston, "Why I Choose to Collaborate with Racialists and Theocrats"; Preston, "Is Extremism in the Defense of Sodomy No Vice?," ATS, 20 May 2009; Preston, "The 'Purge' Revisted [sic]: Anarcho-Leftoids Unite in Hatred Against Keith Preston," ATS, 27 May 2009.

    12. Preston, "Paul Gottfried and Me: An Exchange on Left and Right and Anarchism," ATS, 7 December 2010.

    13. Preston, "The Thoughts That Guide Me."

    14. Ibid.

    15. Preston, "We Will Win: The Case for Optimism," AlternativeRight.com, 6 June 2010; Preston, "Liberty and Populism"; "Is Extremism in the Defense of Sodomy No Vice?"

    16. "The Critic Responds, and My Reply," ATS, 16 January 2011.

    17. Kersplebedeb, "Thinking about Warlordism," Sketchy Thoughts (blog), 29 August 2010.

    18. Chester L. Quarles, Christian Identity: The Aryan American Bloodline Religion (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2004), chap. 1; Christian Exodus website; "League of the South Core Beliefs Statement."

    19. Preston, "Reply to a Cultural Marxist Critic," ATS, 22 January 2011.

    20. Preston, "A Calm Anarchist Look at Race, Culture and Immigration," ATS, 2002.

    21. Mike Davis, Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the US Working Class (London: Verso, 1986), 163-4.

    22. Robert Justin Goldstein, Political Repression in Modern America: From 1870 to the Present (Boston: G. K. Hall, Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1978), 9-12.

    23. Extract from 13th Enlarged Executive of the Communist International (ECCI) Plenum (held in December 1933) on "Fascism, the War Danger, and the Tasks of the Communist Parties," reprinted in International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus, ed. Roger Griffin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 59.

    24. Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995), 143.

    25. People Against Racist Terror, "PART's Perspective on the Militias," Turning the Tide 8, no. 2 (Summer 1995).

    26. Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America (New York: Guilford Press, 2000); on massive resistance see Tom P. Brady, Black Monday: Segregation or Amalgamation . . . America Has Its Choice (Winona, Miss.: Association of Citizens' Councils, 1955), excerpts reprinted in The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader, ed.. Clayborne Carson et al. (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 83-96.

    27. "American Legislative Exchange Council."

    28. Michael J. McVicar, "The Libertarian Theocrats: The Long, Strange History of R. J. Rushdoony and Christian Reconstructionism," The Public Eye 22, no. 3 (Fall 2007).

    29. Tom Burghardt, "State Citizenship: Patriot Ties To White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis," The Body Politic 5, no. 6 (June/July 1995).

    30. Preston, "Paul Gottfried and Me."

    31. Roger Griffin, "Plus ça change! The Fascist Legacy in the Metapolitics of the Nouvelle Droite," chapter for The Development of the Radical Right in France 1890-1995 (London: Routledge, 2000); Mark Wegierski, "The New Right in Europe," Telos 98-99 (Winter 1993/Spring 1994); Anton Shekhovtsov, "Aleksandr Dugin's Neo-Eurasianism: The New Right à la Russe," Religion Compass 3, no. 4 (2009): 697-716; Franco Sacchi, "," Telos 98-99 (Winter 1993/Spring 1994).

    32. Alain de Benoist and Charles Champetier, "The French New Right In The Year 2000."

    33. Guillaume Faye, "The Cause of the Peoples?," Terre et Peuple, Winter Solstice 2003, in "The Faye-Benoist debate on Multiculturalism"; Michael O'Meara, "Benoist's Pluriversum: an Ethnonationalist Critique," The Occidental Quarterly 5, no. 3 (Fall 2005).

    34. Shekhovtsov, "Aleksandr Dugin's Neo-Eurasianism"; Alberto Spektorowksi, "The French New Right: Differentialism and the Idea of Ethnophilian Exclusionism," Polity 33, no. 2 (Winter 2000): 299; Griffin, "Plus ça change," 9.

    35. Griffin, "Plus ça change," 7.

    36. See for example the Telos Winter 1993-Fall 1994 (nos. 98-99) special double issue on "The French New Right: New Right-New Left-New Paradigm?"; On the origins of National-Anarchism, see Graham D. Macklin, "Coopting the Counter Culture: Troy Southgate and the National Revolutionary Faction," Patterns of Prejudice 39, no. 3 (September 2005).

    37. Preston, "Anarcho-Pluralism and Pan-Secessionism"; for his self-description as an NA "fellow traveler," see Preston, "Response to a Left-Anarchist Critic," ATS, 13 January 2011.

    38. Preston, "America's Left Conservative Heritage," Taki's Magazine, 16 June 2009; Preston, "Carl Schmitt" (Parts I-IV), AternativeRight,com, 27 August – 29 September 2010 (Part I is here).

    39. Metzger quoted in "Metzger Begins Move to the Top," The Monitor (Center for Democratic Renewal newsletter), January 1988, 5; Don Hamerquist, "Fascism & Anti-Fascism," in Confronting Fascism: Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement (Montreal and Chicago: Kersplebedeb, ARA Chicago, and Arsenal Magazine, 2002), 16.

    40. All quotes in this and following two paragraphs are from Preston, "The State of the Resistance Two Years Into the Age of Obama," ATS, 10 February 2011.

    Matthew N. Lyons has been writing about right-wing politics for twenty years. His review of Jeff Sharlet, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power appeared in the Summer 2010 issue of New Politics.
     

  • Rebels in Industry: A Story Told Well, and One Worth Telling

    Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below During the Long 1970s
    Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner, and Cal Winslow, eds.
    Verso, 2010. $29.95

         Wordsworth's paean to the French revolution, "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!" doesn't appear in Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below During the Long 1970s. It should.

         The notion of rising with a people risen was as true for the radical generation of the 1960s, as it was for any period when rulers seemed incapable of ruling in the old way and the ruled — certainly a significant portion of young working people — refused to play along. Historian David Montgomery called the period of working class ferment "a rebellion from below." It was.

         And it was an important decade, the long period roughly from the New York transit strike of 1966 to Reagan's crushing of the air traffic controllers' job action in 1981. In the early-to mid-1970s alone, miners, longshore, auto and railroad workers, teachers and construction workers went on both official and wildcat strikes not only for better wages and benefits but also for an end to hideous working conditions.

         Jimmy Carter's calling out the federal troops couldn't get the mines working and even the air traffic controllers, whose union (PATCO) had endorsed Ronald Reagan, walked off their jobs. It took the virtual collapse of the manufacturing sector with its millions of permanent layoffs, a shift in investment away from manufacturing and the Reagan recession to drive that movement underground. It would be a mistake to read this valuable and exceptionally informed book as glorification of one more contender for the "Greatest Generation" prize, nor is it pure validation for "industrializing," one approach to labor organizing favored by some radicals of that period. With the exception of a passing reference in two of the 13 essays, no socialist groups are mentioned.

         The emphasis is on, as co-editor Cal Winslow writes in his introduction, in words reminiscent of the late Edward Thompson, "a chapter in the history of an important decade," as well as "a rescue mission, a history of the workers movement in those years — from the bottom up." It charts, in 13 separate and well-informed essays covering industrial and social struggles and the larger national and international contexts, how an insurgent movement of workers was growing. It was a movement whose demands outstripped not just the politics of liberalism but the vision even of those labor leaders who — with the notable exceptions of the Machinists' William Winpisinger and the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers' maverick Tony Mazzocchi — called themselves progressives.

         There are lessons to be learned here for a new generation of militants, including what worked, what didn't and why. Certainly one weakness — which the authors don't adequately address because of their emphasis on self-activity, rank-and-file initiatives, and an evident reluctance to wage old wars by making convenient historical points about political strategy — was precisely the politics of the radicals who industrialized. Quite consciously guided by Rosa Luxemburg's wise maxims that "those who do not move, do not notice their chains" and that "chains must be broken where they are forged," many defined this condition narrowly, as forged only (or primarily) at the workplace.

         They also prided themselves on an anti-electoral stance even as corporate America was consolidating itself around neoliberal policies that outsourced jobs and reasserted the primacy of finance capital. In effect too much of the industrialized left gave too little thought to putting forward and organizing for alternative policy programs or engaging in local political campaigns, even as many of their own prized rank-and-file militants did. Nor did they have a vehicle for selling those programs in the cases, especially in steel, where such plans were put forward.

         But a more charitable view is that these young radicals (and I was one of them) were like Aesop's hedgehog — they knew one big thing. That big thing is common coin among community organizers today — that without a base of support the best plans of the most foresighted policy makers would die on the drafting table or in the seminar room or in a legislator's front office. They knew that government and corporations could only be forced to concede and initiate reforms with massive pressure, and at the workplace and not (or not just) at the ballot box. That's necessary if insufficient wisdom, but wisdom nonetheless.

     

    This review originally appeared in the spring 2011 issue of Democratic Left.

  • More national standardized testing is planned – but resistance is growing too

    The Obama administration is surreptitiously moving forward with its program to increase, vastly,  resources devoted to standardized testing. Stephen Krashen and Susan Ohanian explain the blueprint in their excellent post in Education Week.  A counter-movement, SOS, (Save our Schools), has emerged among teachers, who are planning a march on and in Washington to save public education, on July 30. It’s truly astounding how little news about  the growing opposition among teachers in the country, or the extraordinary resistance in the rest of the world, reaches us in the U.S. through our popular media.
    Another heartening development is that teachers who have not before thought of unions as  vehicles for organizing about  social justice – or defense of public education for that matter – are realizing they have to “own” the unions, democratize them and make them use their (still) considerable resources to mobilize against these destructive policies being in put in place by President Obama.

    SOS has called on teachers to recruit their union locals to join the march. The AFT national executive board has given the march its official approval. Put one point in the common sense column. Whether the AFT national apparatus will actually do anything to build the march is quite another question. Its usual idea of “support” is to send  staffers to appear at the rally in AFT T-shirts, have its PR people take lots of photos, especially if the union president is a speaker,  then publicize its support in the union newspaper and website, and refer to this “support” when questioned about its lack of involvement in progressive causes.
    Last I heard, the NEA national office had endorsement of the march on its agenda.  If the NEA can be pressured to endorse and actually build the mobilization, the AFT will feel pressure to do likewise.  This would be an important reversal of the “race-to- the-right” to gain political brownie points from the Democrats — and Republicans — that characterizes AFT and NEA politics.

    The July 30 march is an action that deserves support from anyone who cares about having a system of public education that does more than prepare kids to work as wage slaves, which is the real purpose of all this standardized testing. Can’t attend on July 30? Me neither so I’ve made a donation. I encourage you to do the same.

  • Once Again on Libya

         The basic issue for socialists in confronting the Libyan situation is this: we wish Qaddafi to be defeated, but we are not indifferent to who defeats him. That is because who defeats Qaddafi involves how the regime is brought down and the consequences of that downfall. We are not in support of capitalist imperialism being the agent of that defeat, even though almost any conceivable regime that replaces Qaddafi would most likely be a “lesser evil” to this, one of the world’s most horrific police states.

         It follows that any alternative that imperialism would summarily impose on the Libyan people would subordinate the ability of that nation to fully exercise their freedom to develop to the needs of capitalist accumulation. That is also why we refuse to endorse any imperialist lashup, such as resulted in Iraq or Afghanistan or which imperialists may be cooking up for Iran. These are obscene regimes, but we cannot condone actions which would replace one exploiter with another under the guise of “promoting democracy” or “humanitarian interests.” We do not, in more general terms, recognize — much less endorse — the moral or political legitimacy of one set of exploiters and oppressors to selectively displace another under whatever clever packaging imperialists currently employ to market their ambitions.

         How then do we apply these principles to a situation in which freedom fighters, heavily outgunned and struggling simply to survive, ask — in desperation — for a limited imperialist intervention on an “enemy of my enemy” basis, as opposed to offering a quid pro quo? How do we distinguish our response when imperialists are asked by a legitimate leadership group for limited assistance from those unilateral interventions in which these same imperialists simply arrogate to themselves the unquestioned right to impose their will, unchecked and unqualified, by a legitimate oppositional democratic force?

         Historically, socialists have distinguished between calling upon their own capitalist governments to give arms and aid to insurgencies that we support and the right of these insurgencies to arm themselves through whatever channels they can establish, even with imperialist powers. We reject the first alternative because it entails taking responsibility for involving imperialism in the conflict. Were we to do that, we would also have to accede in how imperialism chooses to provide this aid and to accept as legitimate the advantages imperialism seeks to attain through its involvement.

         Conversely, we accept the latter proposition in deference to the unchallenged right of all embattled democratic forces — including those fighting under authoritarian or bourgeois leaderships whose victory nevertheless does not foreclose broader democratic openings — to seek an edge wherever they can find it.

         The Irish rebels of 1916, according to third camp lore, accepted aid from German imperialism. If that were true, no revolutionist would have questioned the right of the Irish rebels to accept such arms, which the German government offered for its own reasons. That is, it would have been unchallenged as long as no strings were attached. Needless to say, this did not mean that Liebknecht and Luxemburg were called upon to request this aid from the Kaiser. Similarly, no socialist would have repudiated the right of Hungarian revolutionaries in 1956 from calling for aid from anywhere they could get it, including the Western powers. This did not oblige American socialists to ask Eisenhower and the CIA, not to mention the American military to intervene on Hungary’s behalf. The point is not our attitude towards the revolution, but our attitude toward our own imperialist government. We cannot raise demands that we cannot support.

         Along these lines, American socialists supported the call to lift the arms embargo on the Spanish loyalists during the civil war, while refusing to ask our government to send arms to the republicans.

         The capitalist democracies famously refused to answer the call from the Spanish democracy. Had they done so, the capitalists would have been free to choose who among the rebels to privilege, what arms to furnish, the schedule of deliveries they would adhere to, as well as the political terms around which they were willing to premise their aid. The desperation of the loyalists would have provided imperialism with a powerful set of tools to exact concessions from the rebels. Needless to say, we socialists would have advised the revolutionists, that unless they — like the Irish rebels of 1916 — could accept such aid as democratic imperialism was willing to offer without making a political deal in exchange, they would have our full support.

         But what if an insurgency is unable to satisfy these terms? How then would we gauge our response? What if “an enemy of our enemy” basis is insufficient and imperialism seeks concrete concessions, or seeks to shape outcomes or exploits openings to burnish its image?

         This is the crux of our dilemma with the Libyan situation. Up until now we have been successfully spared this conundrum. But that is also our problem. There are no obvious historical precedents to guide us, no historical lessons upon which we can draw. The imperial powers stated, in essence, that they would not release Qaddafi’s funds to the rebels, nor would they relax the arms embargo to the advantage of the democrats. They refused, in effect, to engage the rebels on an “enemy of our enemy” basis. Otherwise it would have been a matter of indifference to the West as to how they channeled this aid. The Western powers agreed, however, to answer the desperate call — a call to which the imperialists themselves are deeply implicated for failing to eliminate the embargo — and provide a no fly zone. We do not know what, if any, deals were exacted, but we do know, assuming that an actual NATO ground invasion is out of the question, that this is where the principle danger resides. Otherwise the refusal to lift the embargo remains — if not to exert political pressure or condition outcomes, in no small part, a mystery.

         Let us examine a few of the Left responses. Among anti-imperialist fundamentalists, Western aid in the form of direct military intervention at any level, either clarifies or redefines the dynamic. For that camp, it is Qaddafi who is seen as fighting an anti-imperialist war. And it is very difficult to understand why this conclusion would have been markedly different had imperialism simply lifted the embargo and either armed or allowed the insurgency to arm itself. It is not the nature of the intervention but the fact of intervention that is crucial to this position.

         In its most primitive form, this anti-imperialist fundamentalism entails actively politicking for Qaddafi as a genuine face of Arab independence and dignity. At a step down are those who, recognizing the repugnant nature of the regime, would have socialists extend military, but not political support to the Libyan police state.

         A somewhat weaker response along the same lines is the assertion that socialists no longer have a stake in this fight. Neither side, they argue, can any longer be relied upon to advance interests aligned to the needs of the Libyan people. The rebels by their choice of involving imperialism died a moral death and socialists have no obligation to save them from the physical destruction that they brought upon themselves.

         All factions of this anti-imperialist fundamentalism would raise the demand for an immediate halt to the imperialist intervention.

         These responses are distant enough from the traditions of third camp socialism as to not require any extended response here. This is not to claim that there are no self-identified third campists who lobby for these positions; only that they are no longer arguing within a tradition that we clearly recognize as our own.

         More pertinent are those who do not withhold their support for the insurgency, but would also, and above all else, actively intervene to demand an immediate halt to the imperialist enforced no fly zone. They have balled themselves into a knot, insisting incoherently that actions which would cleanse the perceived political stain from the rebels, that restores their unchallenged revolutionary “agency” — even if it results in their certain demise — is an act, not of treachery, but of unvarnished even unparalled solidarity.

         I think there is no escaping the conclusion that more crucial than the success of the rebels, from this vantage, is denying imperialism a platform to influence outcomes or repackage its image.

         Perhaps I am being overly generous here. Most of those who make the demand to halt the bombings, but who also claim to support the rebels, have not spelled out why precisely they find one form of imperial intervention and intrusion acceptable — the delivery of arms, while condemning another — the no fly zone. Both forms of intervention are limited. They do not involve an imperialist invasion and the displacement of the rebels to auxiliary status It is still the rebels who are doing the fighting and dying. The distinction is therefore only rational under the unspoken assumption that an elimination of the arms embargo alone would have signaled a “no strings attached” policy, while the NFZ is indicative of something else entirely.

         They have in any case confused themselves with the rebels. Socialists, having complete distrust in the motivations and designs of this intervention, did not call for a no fly zone and did not ask the imperialists to intervene. They are not implicated by the fact that an insurgency that they support did. They — and by that I mean, we — are similarly under no political obligation to call an immediate halt to activities that we did not call for, but which as things now stand permit the rebels to regroup, to consolidate and to extend their national alliances. And this is doubly so, if we have no viable alternative to offer.

         We would not of necessity call a halt to the delivery of arms if the embargo had been lifted and imperialism had exercised its leverage through means of extortion on that basis, as it might equally have, the semi-apocryphal case of Ireland notwithstanding. And we need not do so now. The rebels have opened the door to the imperialists to shape the conflict, but not wide enough to determine and dictate the outcome. If we accept that proposition, as I do, then we are under no obligation to politically sabotage actions, from whatever source, that may permit the rebels a slim chance of military victory, and therefore, the hope for democracy. If we do not accept that proposition, if we believe that imperialism is now in complete control, we have no further justification for continuing to support the rebellion. Political choices seldom conveniently present themselves in black and white. It is through the murky grayness that we have to feel our way to creative alternatives.

         That does not compel us to deny the real dangers that victory under such circumstances portends. This may be uncharted territory, but it is also the terrain in which the issue of revolutionary solidarity — of socialist internationalism — is decisive. We need, first, to forthrightly denounce the pretensions under which this intervention was undertaken. We must be clear that it has nothing to do with humanitarian interests and everything to do with establishing some level of imperialist credibility with the Arab masses in revolt. We can say in advance that we reject any imperialist mediation in the struggle and insist that this, should it come to a question of mediation, only be carried out under the auspices of regional elements sensitive to democracy such as NGOs from Tunisia and Egypt might provide.

         Beyond that, it is our duty to proclaim that any concessions made to imperialism in exchange for the no fly zone, were made under duress and cannot be seen as a binding quid pro quo on any future Libyan government. We will do our best to expose these conditions as we become aware of them and will fight along with honest Libyan democrats and socialists to nullify them. If economic concessions were demanded, we will fight our ruling class, with whatever meager political resources we can muster, to annul them. If political concessions in the form of future alliances or military bases are expected, we will dedicate our assistance in breaking them. If imperialism seeks to raise the Karzais and the Chalabis from the nether ranks of the insurgency and impose them on the Libyan nation, we will mount a campaign to expose this for the democratic fraud it is and mobilize domestic and international opinion against it.

         What I advocate here is that socialists show our support for the Libyan insurgency by actively fighting for the conditions under which a democratic foreign policy can be domestically understood and raise these issues in a way that clearly distinguished our position from the simple America first-ism of anti-war liberalism and the confused anti-imperialism of the “halt the bombings now” stripe. The point is to make our case to the vast majority of Americans who have no stake in the preservation of imperialism and do so in a manner commensurate with the aim of relocating them from the camp of dismissive cynics of Arab struggles to the camp of engaged allies of a democratic Libya and Arab East.

  • Nasrallah on Libya

         The left discussion on Libya has been informed by very few of the Middle East’s anti-imperialist voices. In an article posted on ZNet, I present extended excerpts from a March 19 speech by Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon’s Hizbullah, on the Libyan uprising, the Arab revolts, and the role of the West.

         Nasrallah dismisses the claim that the Arab revolts were choreographed in Washington. He expresses solidarity with the Libyan opposition, and warns of the dangers of Western intervention — whose motives are entirely hypocritical. He does not, however, condemn the no-fly zone or call for its immediate lifting.

  • Jobs for All

    Recently, George Fish had a piece on the New Politics website entitled Open Programmatic Proposal to the Broad U.S. Left for Directly Dealing with the Present Unemployment Crisis. I urge New Politics readers to read and consider Fish's proposal.

         It's refreshing for me to see an American socialist make a suggestion such as this one. Fish urges everyone who considers her/himself a part of the left, to join together and advocate a movement that would revive, in a modern version, The Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the 1930's. This is a great idea, and I'd like to explain why I think so.

         The WPA was a government jobs program that had a goal of putting to work everyone who wanted a job during the Depression. This lofty goal was never reached, but millions of jobs were created, making the WPA one of the most successful efforts of Roosevelt's New Deal.

         As George pointed out in his essay, the WPA was notable for it's flexibility in determining what jobs people could hold under its' auspices. There were all kinds of cultural workers, writers, artists, and performers earning a wage while working for the WPA at their chosen professions. A very good friend of mine, a Black woman from Kansas, worked as a librarian in her home town. She is over 90 now, and still remembers her WPA job warmly.

         This brings up an important point: The WPA always tried to put people to work close to where they lived. Other agencies, like the CCC engaged workers in projects that were far from home. Traveling a thousand miles to work on a dam, or plant trees, might have been exciting for young and unattached people, but not if you had a family and were rooted in a community.

         There were serious points of criticism with the WPA. It tended to discriminate against women, largely because it was believed that the government should hire only one person, usually the man, per family. Racial discrimination was a large factor, often due to the market influences of capitalism. In the Mississippi Delta, cotton planters complained that the WPA wages were so high(!), that it had become difficult to find workers to pick cotton at the miserable wages the planters were used to paying. Sadly, the wages were cut.

         The WPA never hired everybody who needed a job, but it was a good step in the direction of "Jobs for All," something we could use today, eh? I think Fish is right about getting the left to join together and advocate a new WPA. If we did this, we would develop strong ties to the whole working class in America, something most of us have long hoped for.

         I would like to recommend to New Politics readers that they check out the National Jobs for All Coalition. They have a website http://www.njfac.org/, and it has lots of great articles to look over. The "Jobs for All" folks are engaged in an organizing project that they call "First Fridays." On the first Friday of the month, you'll find Jobs for All picket lines in front of federal buildings in several East Coast and Midwest cities, because that's the day of the month when the Bureau of Labor Statistics announces the latest unemployment figures. It would be great to see this campaign grow to include hundreds of American cities, with large picket lines in favor of: "Jobs for All at Decent Wages — Bring back the WPA!"

         The jobs issue is vital on its' own account, but there is an important connection to an even more pressing concern

    Brian King
    Seattle

     

  • Libya: Another View

         The Libyan intervention has challenged many on the Left. Of course there are those who cheer U.S. foreign policy everywhere and those who think Qaddafi is a left hero. But for those who reject both these points of view, the Libyan situation has still been very difficult to sort out. Mike Albert and I wrote a question and answer offering our views.

         We take the position that protection of the rebels from imminent slaughter by means of a no-fly zone and a no-drive zone was justified in principle despite the sordid hypocrisy of the intervening powers. However, the actual UN Security Council resolution 1973 was far too open-ended and imposed too few constraints on the intervening powers to ensure that the moral and human benefits would exceed the moral and human costs.

  • CPD Statement on Libya

    The Campaign for Peace and Democracy has issued a statement “We Support the Libyan Democratic Revolution and Oppose Western Military Intervention and Domination.” Please circulate it widely.

    We Support the Libyan Democratic Revolution and
    Oppose Western Military Intervention and Domination

    By Thomas Harrison and Joanne Landy
    Co-Directors, Campaign for Peace and Democracy
    April 6, 2011

         The Campaign for Peace and Democracy stands in solidarity with the Libyan revolution. Even the brutal Qaddafi regime, bloated with oil wealth, defended by thousands of mercenaries, and ruling over a hollowed-out civil society, could not prevent a challenge from below. As is the case with all the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, the Libyan revolt holds the promise not only of democracy but also, along with political freedom, the emergence of a new left and labor movement that can offer an alternative to today’s violent, exploitative and unequal world order.

         At first, Libyans protested peacefully against Qaddafi’s regime. Then, in the face of a vicious attack, they defended themselves with their own arms, helped by numerous defectors from the Libyan army. As the Qaddafi forces reached the outskirts of Benghazi, the U.S. decided to support the calls from the rebels – and the British and French – for a no-fly zone. At that point, the Libyan Transitional National Council’s request was for a strictly limited intervention, explicitly excluding ground forces and aimed only at neutralizing Qaddafi’s air force. Since the Libyans believed they faced the threat of an imminent massacre, their appeal was totally understandable. Likewise, it was understandable that many progressive, normally anti-interventionist, supporters of the Libyan revolution throughout the world called for a no-fly zone as well, especially because the Libyans themselves had asked for it.

         While respecting the impulse behind this position, however, we do not support U.S. and European air and naval operations in Libya. UN Security Council resolution 1973 provided for a no-fly zone, but military intervention by the U.S. and Europe was much more than that right from the beginning, as was predictable given their history, relationship to North Africa and the Middle East, and imperial appetites. The operation, which is now under NATO command, immediately became a campaign to oust Qaddafi on behalf of western interests.

         NATO bombing is now forecast to continue for at least three more months, and an eventual invasion and occupation are possible if the situation isn’t resolved to the satisfaction of the western powers. U.S. and British secret service agents have been in eastern Libya for weeks, and appear to be assuming a growing role in military training, directing NATO air strikes, and perhaps political guidance for the National Council. Intervention may have prevented a massacre in Benghazi, but at the same time it has inserted NATO’s power into Libya, at the heart of a region in democratic turmoil, and dangerously compromised the political independence of the Libyan revolution.

         A “surgical” strike, limited to protecting civilians in Benghazi, was never a real possibility; the U.S. and Europe are not available for one-shot genuinely humanitarian intervention in a major oil-producing region. Libya’s revolution needs to remain in Libyan hands; western military intervention directly contravenes that goal and paves the way for western domination of all or part of Libya.

         In fact, NATO’s attack on Libya may well end up strengthening the hand of Qaddafi and other regional dictators by allowing them to pose as defenders of national self-determination, especially if air strikes end up maiming and killing large numbers of civilians, as they have in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

         In his relations with the west, Qaddafi went from pariah to partner, but Libya under his rule was never a dependable partner, like Saudi Arabia or Mubarak’s Egypt. There is no evidence that the United States or the European powers planned Qaddafi’s overthrow or even expected it before February 2011. But when the Libyan revolution broke out, after hesitating for a couple of weeks, they decided to intervene, reportedly working furiously behind the scenes to obtain Arab League support to legitimize their intervention – support which, incidentally, almost instantly evaporated once Operation Odyssey Dawn had begun. The western powers might well have been willing to deal with Qaddafi in power indefinitely, since he had granted plenty of access to Libya’s oil, collaborated in the sordid “rendition” program, and helped prevent African refugees from getting to Europe. However, once the situation became unstable they sought to assert more reliable control over Libya and its resources. With France and Britain pressing strongly for a no-fly zone, the United States may have felt that it was politically impossible to remain on the sidelines, both because Washington did not want to have its leadership position in NATO compromised by sitting this one out and because it wanted to assure that the U.S. would be in a position to reap the greatest gains in the aftermath of the conflict.

         The United States and Europe both want to prevent the coming to power of a government that uses Libya’s oil revenues to satisfy domestic popular needs, not to enrich itself and western corporations. The intervention was an opportunity to try to gain enough influence over the revolution to steer it in a direction favorable to western interests. This is all the more important because western powers have suffered a major setback with the ouster of friendly dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, as a result of which their power in North Africa and the Middle East is shakier than ever. It is especially true for the United States, which has also bungled its attempt to establish stable, cooperative client states in Iraq and Afghanistan, and whose credibility will likely suffer further as newly democratized Tunisia and Egypt, under the pressure of public opinion, reassess their relations with Washington’s foremost regional client, Israel.

         U.S. and European intervention is part of an emerging counterrevolution that threatens to blunt, or even reverse, the democratic promise of the Arab Spring. Despots in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman and Syria have been increasingly cracking down on popular insurgencies, and in Egypt the military is moving to safeguard its power and curb radical reform, possibly in alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian military has so far refused to end the state of emergency and has tried, fortunately without much success, to ban strikes and demonstrations. Except in the case of Syria, all of this has almost certainly taken place with the tacit approval, and perhaps the direct connivance, of Washington – and even the repression in Syria has evoked only feeble protests from U.S. officials. In Yemen, Washington is reported to be moving away from support to President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the eleventh hour, as his rule becomes totally unviable, and favoring the transfer of power to a provisional government led by Saleh’s vice president, who the U.S. hopes will follow in the compliant footsteps of the present Yemeni government. Political leaders in the United States, and the corporate, military and political elites they serve, have a deep and vested interest in containing the revolutions now sweeping the Arab world. Lending support to their armed incursions would simply facilitate their success in this reactionary endeavor.

         The Libyan National Council originally called not only for a no-fly zone, but also for western nations to hand over Qaddafi’s frozen assets so they could purchase arms. It is revealing that the U.S. and Europe have so far neither supplied arms directly nor provided an opening for the rebels to acquire the weapons they desperately need. Of course, channeling weaponry to the Libyan National Council would also be a means of acquiring political leverage for the west, but that could be mitigated by the rebels acquiring weapons from diverse sources. In any event, the Council is not definitively under the control of the west at this point; it still seems to rest on a measure of popular support and to be at least somewhat accountable to Libyans — NATO, obviously is not.

         As long as the Libyan revolution expresses the striving of the mass of Libyan people for democracy and social justice, it must command the support of progressives everywhere. But that support cannot extend automatically to every political decision the Libyan rebels make, especially when we have good reason to believe that certain decisions undermine their ability to replace the cruel Qaddafi regime with a system of people’s power and enhance the retrograde influence of the western powers throughout the region; this is the great danger of the rebels’ willingness to accept NATO as a full partner. There can be little doubt that NATO’s increasing role in the struggle against Qaddafi helps promote the most pro-western elements in the National Council – former Qaddafi officials, emigrés with CIA connections, etc. – and strengthens them in relation to more progressive, anti-imperialist forces.

         It should be remembered that other oppressed peoples have desperately called for great power intervention on their behalf – with fatal results. In 1994, in the face of ferocious repression, Haitians appealed to the United States to reinstall Bertrand Aristide; the result was an occupation (as in Libya, under the imprimatur of the UN) that persists to this day, a U.S.-sponsored coup that forced Aristide out of the country, a corrupt and undemocratic government, and ongoing desperate poverty arising out of U.S.-imposed economic policies. [Joanne Landy’s Op-Ed opposing U.S. intervention in Haiti was published in the August 7, 1994 issue of The New York Times.] Besieged Muslim Bosnians and Kosovar Albanians called for help from NATO; the results were permanent ethnic partition in Bosnia and the creation of a gangster state in Kosovo. Many Iraqis initially greeted U.S. troops as liberators from the hated rule of Saddam Hussein; but Iraq’s “liberation” immediately turned into a nightmare of bloody U.S. repression and sectarian strife.

         Since the end of the Cold War, military interventions by the United States and its allies have become more and more frequent, with disastrous consequences not only for the populations involved, but also for the left and the antiwar movement globally. To the extent that progressives and antiwar activists defend these interventions, they provide unintentional political cover for what are in fact exercises in imperial aggression – and help justify future bloody interventions.

         If our goal is a democratic world of self-determining peoples, free from imperialist domination, then the strategies we support should point with consistency toward the achievement of that goal. As long as the wealthy and powerful have the means to impose their will by force, they will prevent such a world from coming into being. NATO is one of their strongest weapons. We cannot support its incursions, even when they are disguised as efforts to protect civilian lives. This is especially important in North Africa and the Middle East, where western powers have a vital interest in preventing a real seizure of power by the Arab masses. The challenge that faces radical democratic movements around the world today is to find ways of offering meaningful solidarity and support to one another, rather than lending added legitimacy to the very forces that stand in our way. As future crises develop, this challenge will become more and more urgent.

         The insurgency in Libya, and democratic movements throughout North Africa and the Middle East will undoubtedly face painful setbacks as well as heartening victories as the revolutionary process unfolds. In Libya, we hope that it’s not too late for the popular insurgency to retrieve its independence. Its true friends in the region and around the globe are grassroots movements, unions, peace and human rights activists, with similar democratic goals.

         More than any event in decades, the Arab Spring has opened up the prospect of a better world, a world in which the fate of billions is no longer at the mercy of power-hungry, self-aggrandizing elites. At home, the wave of democratic revolutions offers an opportunity for those of us who have long opposed U.S. foreign policy and its reliance on authoritarian governments, military intervention, and reactionary economic policies to convince ordinary Americans that another road is possible and in their best interests.

    The authors are thankful to Frank Brodhead for his help with this statement.

  • Inventing Islam

    In what concrete ways can it be said that the West “invents” what it calls Islamism ? Contemporary imperialism inadvertently spreads Islamic militantism by stirring up the ME/A hornets’ nest through torture-camps and attacks on civilians. But Western agents have long supported Islamic movements in the region as a way to divert nationalism and democracy. Historically, the British Intelligence Service nurtured the Islamicist movement at its very origin. Said Aburish and Caroline Fourest among others have documented how the Moslem Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, was encouraged by the British as a diversion against Egyptian secular movements for labor rights, democracy and national independence. Likewise, and the strict Wahhabi Islam of Saudi Arabia, encouraged by the British and then the Americans, has long been the main political prop of the despotic pro-Western Saudi monarchy — itself an invention of British colonialism. This convenient relationship provides immense royalties to the U.S./British oil companies operating in Saudi Arabia as well as lucrative sales of F-16’s to protect the Saudi royals from their benighted subjects – an imperialist sweetheart deal if there ever was one. No one seems to notice that Saudi Arabia, like Hamas which it has historically financed, officially remains an Islamic state which still refuses to recognize the state of Israel. And although the Western media occasionally react to such barbaric incidents as the beheading of a young princess for the crime of kissing a boy, somehow the Saudi Wahhabi fundamentalist semi-theocracy is never counted under the heading “threat of political Islam.” Proponents of this concept also conveniently forget that Osama bin Laden and most of his September 11 hijackers were Saudi subjects and that their avowed purpose was to expel from Saudi Arabia the U.S. bases, established during Bush I’s Gulf War against Iraq, which were seen as polluting Islam’s Holy places. Another “open secret” is the longstanding relationship between the Bush and bin Laden clans which culminated in the expatriation to Saudi Arabia of dozens of bin Laden family members residing in the U.S. in the days following the 9/11 attacks – despite the grounding of all civilian aviation and without any FBI or other interrogation as to their possible knowledge of the attacks. Blood may be thicker than water, but oil is thicker than both. Where does Israel fit into this ideological picture ? I have always seen Zionism as a Hebrew remake of the American frontier movie transposed to Palestine, with the Arabs in the rôle of the Indians: a matzoh-ball Western called “How the East Was Won.” Like the courageous Euro-American colonists occupying an “empty” American continent, the Zionists fulfilled their own Manifest Destiny in an “empty” Palestine by shooting and expropriating the natives. The Zionist settlers saw themselves as “a people without land in a land without people,” creating a City on the Hill in the wilderness, making the desert bloom. The necessary ethnic cleansing was carried out by the same John Wayne methods : First encourage peaceful settlers to take over the natives’ land ; then when the natives fight back and some settlers get killed, holler “atrocity” and send in the Cavalry to exterminate the savages or drive them into camps and barren reservations to rot in idleness. When necessary, negotiate treaties you have no intention of keeping. Above all, demonize the natives so as to prevent poor or disaffected settlers from fraternizing or running off with them. Soon the only “good” Indian or Arab becomes the “dead” Indian or Arab and democracy will bloom. To me the tragedy of both the Jewish and Arab peoples is to be led by violent, corrupt, reactionary, religiously-inspired ultra-nationalist leaders who more and more resemble their opposite numbers. Their reciprocal power depends on mutually maintaining a state of crisis so as to silence internal opposition. I think the term “clerico-fascism,” originally applied to Franco’s Phalange and applied below to the Islamic Republic of Iran, is one useful way of understanding some of these reactionary religio-nationalist movements and regimes. “Clerico-fascism” is a more general (and less biased) term than than Washington’s ideological stereotype of “Islamo-fascism” since it includes the symmetrical threats to peace and democracy posed by Zionist Judeo-fascism and the Christo-fascism of the Religious Right in the U.S. not to mention the Hindu fascists in India. I can only conclude that the most urgent “Islamic threat” on the horizon is probably the threat that America's irrational Crusade against Islamo-fascism will either explode into nuclear war or seal the doom of democracy in the U.S. — where the Judeo-Christian version of clerico-fascism is looming large.

  • Nuclear armageddon and the experts

         New Politics readers will be interested in reading Mina Hamilton’s sharp analysis of Japan’s nuclear crisis in her recent article on Dissident Voice. Since the article was published on March 16, Mina has added the following note:

    “The latest: radioactive steam continues to pour out of several stricken reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex. All six reactors now appear to be in trouble. Gregory Jaczko, the Chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, appears before the US Congress. Warning of ‘extremely high radiation,’ Jaczko says one irradiated fuel pool is totally without coolant. Meanwhile, Japan desperately tries to provide sea-water coolant via helicopters and water-cannons.”