Re: Globaloney

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect wrote:

> To be fair to Doug, I don't think his views on the economic questions have
> changed at all. He just seems less interested in exposing purveyors of
> "globaloney."

Up to a point.

>  (Globaloney is a term that Doug coined to describe the view
> that what's wrong with the world is corporations and outfits like GATT,
> WTO, NAFTA, etc. superseding the national state.)

Actually Bob Fitch deserves the credit for coining it I think.

> His main target in the past was an outfit called the International Forum on
> Globalization upon whose board of directors and associates sit the movers
> and the shakers behind the Seattle protests: Maude Barlow, (the "Ralph
> Nader of Canada"), Lori Wallach, Ralph Nader himself, David Korten, Jerry
> Mander, et al. This constellation of 'globaloney' figures teamed up with
> the AFL-CIO and local Seattle anarchists to make the whole thing happen.

I think the IFG crowd is pretty hopeless. I find that lots of younger
people are pretty receptive to my message on globalization; the talk
I gave to a NYC crowd of people preparing for Seattle was very well
received (pretty much the same text that circulated as a ZNet
commentary a week or two ago, and I got lots of good reactions to
that). The people energized around this issue have mainly been
hearing from IFG types; one of the reasons I think it's so bad for
self-identified Marxists to denounce anarchists is that it will only
make the IFG line seem more attractive.

Doug