Re: [Marxism] An Interview with Chip Berlet

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Barry Brooks wrote:
> This was posted to PSN.

PA: Some on the left use the label of fascism and deliberately confuse 
the picture to say, well Bush and Kerry are both fascists, so it doesn’t 
matter what we do in this election.

CB: If you had your choice would you rather walk across hot coals or 
jump into a blast furnace? They are both forms of fire. The answer is 
there is relative repression, relative aggression, there are relative 
kinds of cultural oppression. Insofar as things are going to be opened 
up more by defeating Bush at home and abroad – to give people some 
breathing room here, some time to recover from the dramatic assaults 
that we’ve seen on the Constitution and on international law and other 
things. I think it is an entitled and privileged point of view that says 
well I can say Bush and Kerry are both fascists, but if you’re locked up 
in Guantanamo, or you’re being deported against your will, or you’re 
facing military arms carried by US soldiers in Iraq, the argument might 
be that we have a better opportunity to stop that when Bush is out. I 
recognize all the flaws of Kerry and he doesn’t represent my goal, but 
we have been pushed so far back under Bush that just to have a little 
breathing room to recover and have the chance to counter organize would 
be a useful moment even if that is only a small opening that we’re being 
given, it is better than what we’re facing now.

===

Comment: This makes perfect sense when you stop and think about it. 
Although Chip Berlet does not spring to mind when you consider the ABB 
phenomenon, the outfit he works with dovetails very much with their 
agenda--and the CPUSA as well, whose magazine is interviewing him.

Berlet's employer, Political Research Associates (www.publiceye.org), is 
basically a watchdog over the ultraright in the USA. Implicitly the main 
danger to "democracy" is skinheads, Larouchites, Pat Buchanan, etc. To 
strengthen "democracy", you need to expose people such as this. It is 
also important to call attention to any leftists who drop their guard 
and appear to making alliances with the ultraright. This has led them to 
call attention frequently to Ralph Nader. For example: "When populist 
consumer groups, such as those led by Ralph Nader, forge uncritical 
alliances with business nationalists to rally against GATT and NAFTA, an 
opportunity emerges for the anti–elite rhetoric of right wing populism 
to piggy-back onto a legitimate progressive critique."

The PRA is basically a less corrupt version of something called the 
Southern Poverty Law Center, run by a hustler named Morris Dees. 
Mounting hysterical direct mail campaigns about a looming Klan or 
fascist threat to our "democracy", Dees has raked in millions.

Alexander Cockburn had these choice words about Dees in "The NY Press":

"I've long regarded Morris Dees and his Southern Poverty Law Center as 
collectively one of the greatest frauds in American life.  The reasons: 
a relentless fundraising machine devoted to terrifying its mostly 
low-income contributors into unbelting ill-spared dollars year after 
year to an organization that now has an endowment of more than $100 
million, with very little to show for it beyond hysterical bulletins 
designed to raise money on the proposition that only the SPLC can stop 
Nazism and the KKK from seizing power."

Getting back to the PRA, what's missing entirely is an understanding of 
the affinity of the Democratic Party for the ultraright. They make much 
of Nader's meeting with some protectionist, old-line conservative 
textile manufacturer but have little to say about the really big-time 
connections between the DP leadership and some of the worst scumbags in 
American politics.

As I am now reading St. Clair and Cockburn's "Dime's Worth of 
Difference," the evidence is very fresh on mind. In fact I was reading 
chapter 12 on Republican Senator Rick Santorum written by Jeff St. Clair 
on the bus to work today. Now Santorum is a negative poster child for 
the ABB crowd. The whole idea of electing Kerry is to reject people such 
as Santorum who are supposedly destroying the environment, punishing 
minorities, weakening the labor movement, etc.

St. Clair writes:

>>Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz, despises Santorum. He inherited the 
senate seat left open when her previous husband, John Heinz, perished in 
a plane crash. "Santorum is critical of everything, indifferent to 
nuance, and incapable of compromise," Heinz said.<<

But St. Clair adds, "when it comes to the Middle East, liberal Democrats 
race to co-sponsor legislation with him. Most recently, Santorum and 
Barbara Boxer teamed up to introduce the Syria Accountability Act, which 
would inflict trade sanctions on Syria like those which gripped Iraq for 
12 years, killing nearly one million children. Talk about family values."

At some point I am going to try to find the time to relate the ABB 
phenomenon to its historical precedent, the German Social Democracy's 
electoral strategy vis-a-vis Hitlerism, which can be reduced to the 
formula we are all familiar with: "the lesser evil".

Now it should come as no surprise that the CPUSA would subscribe to 
these views since it has occupied center stage for them since the 
Popular Front turn. Why 1960s radicals such as Chip Berlet would be 
drawn to them is another story altogether. I suspect that to a degree it 
is a question of material interest. The people who fund it are exactly 
the sort of people who fund the Sierra Club, the National Organization 
for Women, Global Exchange and every other nonprofit that has lined up 
behind the Kerry campaign. To stand up to your funders takes more guts 
than Chip Berlet obviously possesses. It is far easier to piss on the 
Nader-Camejo campaign, the only one that is truly fighting for democracy 
in the USA.

--
The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org



_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism