THE RIGHT, THE ULTRA-RIGHT & THE
REPUBLICANS
Buchanan tries to save himself
By Fred
Goldstein
The political landscape of bourgeois politics has received a
mild jolt with rumors of the impending defection of the
ultra-right, racist bigot Pat Buchanan to the Reform Party.
Such a maneuver, should it be consummated, would be predicated
on an alliance between Buchanan and the authoritarian,
right-wing Texas billionaire Ross Perot, the founder and
original financier behind the Reform Party.
There are a great many complications and difficulties for
both sides in this maneuver. It may not come to fruition. And
even if it does, it may end up in a debacle for both sides.
Whatever happens, the workers and oppressed in this country
should neither over estimate its immediate danger nor
underestimate its longer-range potential. Rather, they should
track its progress carefully.
Above all, while Buchanan's right-wing demagogic appeal to
the workers must be vigorously answered, the two big capitalist
parties--the Democrats and Republicans--must be recognized as
the principal enemies of the broad masses at the present time,
because they are in charge of the government.
Buchanan is an extreme rightist. He is a vicious anti-Semite
who was forced out of the Reagan administration after writing a
memo accusing Ronald Reagan of succumbing to "the pressure of
the Jews."
He denounced the Gulf War on the grounds that "there are
only two groups beating the drums for war in the Middle East:
the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United
States."
Buchanan is said to have authored Reagan's infamous words,
uttered when he visited a cemetery for Nazi SS officers in
Bitburg, Germany, that the fascist butchers buried there "were
victims as surely as the victims in the concentration
camps."
Buchanan is an arch-racist who, in a memo to President
Richard Nixon in April, 1969, urged him not to visit Coretta
Scott King on the first anniversary of Martin Luther King's
assassination because it would "outrage many, many people who
believe Dr. King was a fraud and a demagogue and perhaps worse.
... Others consider him the Devil incarnate. Dr. King is one of
the most divisive men in contemporary history." (New York Daily
News, Oct. 1, 1990)
He opposed every civil rights law and court decision in the
last 30 years and published FBI smears of Martin Luther King
Jr. as his editorials in the St. Louis Globe Democrat. "We were
among Hoov er's conduits to the American People," he wrote in
"Right from the Beginning" (p. 283).
In a syndicated column of July 26, 1988, Buchanan wrote that
"George Bush should have told the [NAACP convention] that black
America has grown up; that the NAACP should close up shop ...
and go home and ask not what your country can do for you but
what you can do for your country."
In a syndicated column on Feb. 7, 1990, about South Africa,
he denounced the notion that "white rule of a black majority is
inherently wrong. Where did we get that idea? The Founding
Fathers did not believe this. ... Why are Americans
collaborating in a UN conspiracy to ruin her with
sanctions?"
At the 1992 Republican convention Buchanan called for a
"religious war" against abortion rights and gay rights. He has
crusaded to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court decision
legalizing abortion.
He campaigns against immigrant workers and immigration in an
effort to spew his poison out to the working class. He is
called a "populist" by the capitalist press. But this is a
sanitized description. George Wallace, the racist governor of
Alabama who made a third-party fascist bid in 1968, was also
dubbed a "populist." Buchanan's political pronouncements, like
Wallace's, resemble classical fascist demagogy.
He appeals to workers who are suffering from layoffs,
downsizing, fear and insecurity about their jobs, and all the
anxieties that go with the capitalist market. But instead of
demanding an end to the layoffs; instead of declaring that a
job is a worker's right; instead of exposing the profit system
as the ultimate source of layoffs, downsizing and unemployment,
he blames immigrant workers.
This is a classic case of trying to divide the working class
and set one section of the proletariat against another.
He is anti-Black, anti-Latino, anti-gay and lesbian, and
anti-woman. But the working class is multinational, almost half
are women, and there are millions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgender workers. Buchanan's racism and bigotry is
calculated to break up all solidarity and disintegrate the
working class movement.
His message is corrosively poisonous. The only hope for the
working class is to unite and stand against national
oppression, sexual oppression and all forms of chauvinism
against foreign workers.
Buchanan talks against the rich bankers and profiteers with
typical demagogy. Yet he is a millionaire who got rich
hobnobbing with media moguls. And he is trying to make an
alliance with an anti-working class, reac tionary billionaire.
The ultimate goal of his demagogy is to crush every progressive
movement that would stand in the way of the total domination of
capital.
Buchanan has just written a book, "A Republic, Not an
Empire," in which his preference for Hitler scandalized the
bourgeoisie, causing an uproar. In it he declares that the
British, the French and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt made
a disastrous mistake by going to war with Hitler. Had they not
gone to war with Germany, "Hitler's first blows would have
fallen upon Stalin."
In the end, according to Buchanan, the British would have
retained their empire; the Japanese would have retained their
sphere of influence in Asia; Germany would have been the master
of Europe, and the U.S. would have been the mistress of the
Western Hemisphere.
This sends a signal to at least two audiences. First, to all
the ultra-right militia and KKK/Aryan Nation types who revere
Hitler. But also to the right-wingers in politics for whom this
debate is well known and ongoing.
Buchanan is an admirer of the America First Committee, a
prominent so-called "isolationist" group in the 1930s. It
attracted right-wing elements who hated foreigners and did not
want U.S. imperialism to be bound by any treaties or
commitments to any country.
But the center objective of this so-called "isolationist"
current was to make sure U.S. imperialism did not interfere
with Hitler's rearmament or his seizure of Austria,
Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland and Poland. They wanted to be sure
Roosevelt would do nothing to stop Mussolini from invading
Ethiopia or to stop the fascist Franco from succeeding in his
counter-revolutionary civil war against the Spanish Republic
and the working class.
Above all, they did not want to stop Hitler from directing
his first blows against the Soviet Union and socialism.
Their historical orientation was to foster a victory by
Hitler over the USSR. This was not only anti-Semitic but was an
endorsement of full-scale, capitalist counter-revolution in all
of Europe.
Of course, the British government and Neville Chamberlain
did sign the Munich Pact, which was an invitation for Hitler to
march to the East.
And Roosevelt did not open up the second front against
Hitler until long after the latter had invaded the USSR,
slaughtered 20 million people, been defeated at the battle of
Stalingrad, and was in full retreat before the Red Army.
So what's the difference between Buchan an and Roosevelt?
Buchanan wanted Hitler to win, whereas Washington wanted Hitler
to destroy the USSR, but be so weakened in the process that
U.S. imperialism would reign supreme when the smoke had cleared
and the dead were buried.
Shortly after the pro-Hitler section of Buchanan's book was
made public, Gov. George Bush Jr. said he disagreed with
Buchanan but asked him not to bolt the Republican Party. Bush
said, "I need every vote I can get." Bush panicked in rushing
to embrace this ultra-rightist scum.
This left the road open for arch-militarist Sen. John McCain
to call for Buchanan's ouster from the party. McCain was
outraged that Buchanan had the audacity to tamper with the
mythology of World War II, which all U.S. history books depict
as a democratic war against fascism.
In fact, U.S. imperialism spent most of its war effort
trying to conquer Asia from the Japanese imperialists. It
loaned the British vast sums for war material and in return
took over much of the British Empire.
It was only when they feared that the USSR would liberate
all of Europe that Washington and London rushed to launch the
Normandy D-Day invasion in June 1944. Thus McCain's rebuff to
Buchanan is strictly from a pro-imperialist perspective, and is
meant to reinforce the lie that the U.S. had progressive aims
in World War II.
In estimating the immediate danger of Buchanan's move,
should he go through with it, it is important to note that it
arises out of his weakened situation within the Republican
Party. Every time the moderate, mainstream establishment
triumphs in the Republican Party, the extreme right wing faces
the problem of whether to stay in or break.
From its earliest days, the ruling class in the U.S.
contrived an electoral system designed to minimize or shut out
altogether the independent electoral representation of the
working class. The winner-take-all, two-party system is the
most reactionary form of bourgeois parliamentarism, as opposed
to proportional representation. It insures the electoral
domination of the rich as against the workers, but also has the
effect of stifling the political representation of the
ultra-right.
Within the right, all but the most extreme fascist currents
are drawn to the Republican Party--although when the South was
solidly Democratic, the Dixiecrat wing of that party was also
on the far right.
The far right within the Republican Party are engaged in a
permanent struggle to try to take it over, or at least become a
major force.
In 1964, after a virtual civil war between the Goldwater
wing and the Rockefeller wing, the far right captured the
presidential nomination. The extreme right and fascist elements
rallied around the candidacy of Barry Goldwater, an extreme
militarist and racist senator from Arizona. But the biggest
bosses and bankers were not ready for Goldwater. They got
behind Lyndon Johnson, who won by the biggest landslide in
history.
Nixon and Reagan, because they were in the right wing of the
party leadership and at odds with the establishment, were able
to keep the far right in the party. But then George Bush Sr., a
former CIA director and establishment figure from an Eastern
banking family with oil ties to Texas, won the nomination. The
struggle with the right wing took on a renewed intensity.
Buchanan opened up that struggle at the 1992 Republican
convention with his infamous speech attacking abortion, gay
rights, immigrants and every progressive cause he could
enumerate.
Buchanan lost the primaries to Bush in 1992. Democrat Bill
Clinton was subsequently elected. But the hopes of the extreme
right were lifted by the Republican takeover of the House of
Representatives. Newt Gingrich became Speaker and announced the
Contract on America.
Gingrich mobilized the right. The ruling class used him to
drive Clinton to the right and demolish welfare, the keystone
of the New Deal, while increasing the level of repression.
Millions were thrown off welfare; new prisons were built; more
police were put on the streets; the death penalty was restored;
education, housing, child nutrition and all social services
were slashed; healthcare reform was defeated and the system was
made worse for the workers.
NAFTA passed and high-paying jobs were destroyed. Tens of
billions cut from programs for the masses were shifted, either
to the bankers to reduce the deficit or to the Pentagon. The
Gingrich-Clinton combination accomplished a great deal for big
business.
But having done the demolition work, the right wing and
Gingrich were not content. They pursued the impeachment
debacle. This preoccupied and embarrassed the ruling class; it
was a fruitless struggle in light of all that Clinton was doing
for the capitalists.
The right wing in Congress tried to sabotage trade relations
with China and held up funds for the IMF that the big bankers
needed if they were to be paid back for their loans. They
defeated a bill to extend Clinton's power to sign trade
agreements. In general, they got into a conflict with the
mainstream bourgeoisie over its vital interests.
Before long, Gingrich was out. The right wing was defeated
in the impeachment struggle and George W. Bush's picture began
appearing on the front page of Time magazine as the prospective
new candidate.
The bosses and bankers began pouring money into Bush's
coffers long before the campaign even began. Having used the
right wing to smash down a good part of the social gains
achieved by the working class and the oppressed over the past
60 years, the ruling class then pushed everything back towards
the political center. Underlying this was the extended
capitalist expansion at home and the profits rolling in from
all around the world.
Buchanan has served for years as a bridge between the
ultra-right outside the party and the right wing within the
party. The Republican Party leadership and the entire
capitalist establishment has coddled and harbored this
fascist-sounding demagogue for 35 years.
He was Nixon's special advisor from 1964 until Nixon was
ousted in the Watergate scandal. He was in the inner circles of
the Reagan administration as a speechwriter. He is constantly
on network talk shows and has had his own program for
years--which he abandons only during election campaigns.
But now the Republican Party wants to get its hands on the
spoils of the capitalist state. And they think that, with Bush,
they are in clear striking distance.
Of course they have eroded abortion rights and attacked
lesbian and gay rights as well as Black and Latino people. But
they know that the majority of women are for abortion and that
millions of lesbian, bay, bi and transgendered people vote and
are determined to defend their rights.
They know that Gingrich was one of the most unpopular people
in the country after what he did to the masses, especially the
Black and Latin population. So the Republican leadership is now
waffling on abortion and welcoming gay members. Bush is now a
"compassionate conservative." All of this is anathema to the
extreme right. Buchanan and the ultra rightists are being left
in the lurch.
Buchanan, who lost in 1992 and 1996, finished a poor fifth
in this year's Iowa straw polls behind Bush, Steve Forbes,
Elizabeth Dole and right-to-lifer Gary Bauer. As of Aug. 1,
according to the Committee for Responsive Politics, Buchanan
had raised only $2.4 million compared to Bush's $37 million.
(Now Bush's fund is $50 million.) Senator John McCain had
raised $6.5 million; Forbes $9.5 million; Dole $3.4 million;
Bauer $3.4 million.
To make matters worse, elements of the extreme right don't
want to pass up their chance for a Republican victory. Several,
including Pat Robertson, leader of the Christian right, have
gone over to Bush. These elements of the Christian right were
the Buchanan troops in past years.
Buchanan's decision to bolt the party is not based on a
shift to the right in the country among the masses, nor on any
sharp shift to the right in a significant section of the ruling
class. It is based on the fact that he has become isolated by
the Bush forces; he is down on funds, and the apparatus that
would be available to him has been weakened.
Under these circumstances, the prospect of inheriting $12.6
million in matching funds available to the Reform Party, along
with a potential electoral apparatus, is highly preferable to a
humiliating defeat in the Republican race.
Buchanan's views are fully known to the ruling class. Yet
they have cultivated him and given him wide latitude to make
himself a political personality and to spew his poison on the
airwaves and in print through his syndicated columns.
This is because there is no absolute wall separating
Buchanan from the ruling class forever. Under conditions of
social crisis when the working class is in motion and poses a
threat to the capitalist establishment, a sector of the bosses
and bankers would welcome Buchanan or some one like him with
open arms and wallets.
Buchanan's move to avoid being marginalized in the
Republican Party does not coincide at the moment with any
ground swell of support for him. He is trying to attract
demoralized sections of the working class and of the middle
class in the classical fascist style. While there is at present
no social crisis that he can seize upon to become an electoral
threat, there are enough hardships among the working class and
the middle class, despite the boom, to allow him to make
progress.
If Buchanan's maneuver is not just to gain leverage inside
the Republican party, and if he can overcome all the problems
and consummates this alliance, the working class, the oppressed
communities, and all progressives should unite to disrupt and
break up this incipient fascist movement before it gets going,
while at the same time steering an independent course of
opposition to the two big capitalist parties.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
HOME :: U.S. NEWS :: WORLD NEWS :: EDITORIALS :: SUBSCRIBE :: DONATE
Email
this article
Printable
page