I tider med krig mot all verdas vondskap og mørkemakter kan det vera verdt å
sjå på kvar retorikken kjem frå. Her om dagen la eg ut to korte tekstar om
amerikansk kalvinisme. I desse to artiklane frå Mediamonitors.net gjev James
Zogby ei god oppdatering på dei to hovudretningane innanfor amerikansk
nymanikeisme: Dei nykonservative, og det Armageddontruande kristenhøgre.
UNDERSTANDING AMERICAS RIGHT WING
by James Zogby
Despite the fact that Jean-Marie Le Pen was soundly defeated in France's
recent presidential elections, that he made the run-off and gained almost
one-fifth of the vote set off alarm bells throughout Europe. Across the
continent, grave public concern was expressed about the emergence of a
dangerous far-right political current. Articles appearing in most of
Europe's major papers compared the relative strength of similar movements in
each of the European Union's countries.
It was in this context that a number of Arab friends have written asking me
to describe the situation of the far right in the U.S. And since I have
recently raised the issue of the role of what I have called the
neo-conservative movement and the religious right wing of the Republican
party, questions have been asked about how those two currents compare with
Europe's far right political parties.
Since I have often referred to these two U.S. currents as far-right and
extremist, I felt that it would be important to better describe them and, in
so doing, to shed more light on contemporary politics in the U.S.
It is important from the outset to note that neither the religious right nor
the neo-conservative movement represents the extreme chauvinism or
xenophobia of the Le Pen current. There are such tendencies in U.S.
politics but they are on the fringes of the political spectrum and have no
home, at this time, in either of the two major American parties. There are,
for example, hundreds of small white supremacist organizations and even
militia groups in the U.S. They are loosely connected, but remain a threat
and are closely watched by law enforcement. These groups, however, continue
to exist, in part, because of the persistence of racism in many parts of the
U.S.
On only a few of these occasions have these racist tendencies coalesced into
an electoral force. David Duke, a former Nazi sympathizer and Ku Klux Klan
leader, has run for office as a Republican in his home state of Louisiana
capturing, at one point, about one-third of the vote. He was quickly
denounced by the national party and has, therefore, remained a marginal
figure in national politics.
Similarly, when Pat Buchanan left the Republican party to run for president
on the Reform party ticket in 2000, he moved to the far right on immigration
and race issues, paralleling much of Le Pen's message. His effort, however,
failed to garner any significant support.
The neo-conservatives and the religious right were not identified, in the
main, with any of these efforts, because neither racism nor anti-immigrant
xenophobia are a part of their thinking. Let me describe what they are.
The neo-conservative movement is best characterized as an intellectual
current espoused by a small but extremely influential group of writers,
media commentators, political operatives and academics. It is not a
mass-based movement, but because of the influence wielded by its advocates,
it has been able to shape the policy debate within the Republican party.
The editorial pages of today's newspapers and the talkshows on U.S.
television are dominated by neo-conservatives. They also hold some key
policy posts within the Bush Administration.
The neo-conservative movement began in the 1960's and 1970's as a reaction
by some Democrats to the policies of the Soviet Union. Some of the early
founders of this current had even been Socialists, but were driven by
anti-Communism, especially the USSR's attitude to Israel and its own Jewish
citizens, to seek more extreme ways of confronting that regime. As they
became increasingly disenchanted with what they described as the Democrats'
"soft" attitude toward fighting the cold war, many drifted to the Republican
party. When they were welcomed into the Reagan campaign in the late 1970's,
their transformation was complete.
Interestingly enough it was at this same time that the U.S.
neo-conservatives developed a relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu in
Israel. Netanyahu had invited many of those influential writers and
commentators to a working conference in Jerusalem to discuss how to end the
Democrats' "fixation on human rights" and replace it with a campaign against
"terror" as the dominant theme in U.S. foreign policy.
Though they embraced Ronald Reagan's presidency and his no-holds-barred war
against the "evil empire" and were, in turn, embraced by Reagan, the
neo-conservatives never fully embraced the entirety of the conservative
agenda. They were not social conservatives, nor were they, strictly
speaking, economic conservatives. For example, they did not share the
social conservatives' abhorrence of abortion, and some neo-conservatives
remained liberal in their economic policy and broader social policy. What
brought them into the Republican party was their aversion to the Soviet
Union and, of course, their support for Israel.
This movement did not support the first George Bush presidency as
enthusiastically as they had supported Reagan. Bush was a traditional
conservative, more moderate in his foreign and domestic policies than his
predecessor. And so for Bush's four years in office and Clinton's eight
years, the neo-conservatives were out in the cold.
Today, however, they are back in key government posts and with their
continuing influential roles in the print and electronic media, they are
playing a powerful role in national politics.
The administration of George W. Bush is not as ideologically-based as that
of Ronald Reagan. Many currents of thought are represented within its
ranks. While these diverse views are sometimes at loggerheads, what helped
to tip the scales, at least for a time, in the direction of the
neo-conservatives, were the September 11 terrorist attacks. The almost
adolescent simplicity of neo-conservative thought formed a useful framework
to mobilize public attitudes in favor of a war on "terrorism".
Neo-conservatism essentially sees the world in absolutist terms-good versus
evil. It sees no possibility for compromise, since, they believe, any
agreement with evil, in the end, only weakens the forces representing good.
Therefore, neo-conservatism projects, as both desirable and inevitable,
permanent confrontation between good and evil, until evil is defeated.
The rhetoric of this current can clearly be found in President Bush's
description of terrorists as "evil doers", or his characterization of an
"axis of evil", or his warning to other nations "you are either with us or
you are against us".
The danger, of course, is that despite the fervent desire of the adolescent
ideologues of the neo-conservative movement, the world is not so black and
white. The more mature recognition of the world's complexity is what has
created diplomacy-that is, the need to create structures of international
relationships to protect interests in a complex world.
If the neo-conservatives were to win, all of the structures of diplomacy
erected over the past several decades would be torn down in favor of a
unilateral U.S. confrontation with "evil". One can see the internal debate
within the Administration play out as it moves between the politics of
confrontation and the withdrawal from international conventions, treaties
and conferences, then back to the pursuit of negotiations and diplomatic
initiatives.
In this context, it is interesting to note the role played by the
neo-conservatives in the media. At times, when their counterparts within
the Administration are losing the internal battle for the ear of the
President, neo-conservatives commentators will launch what appears to be a
concerted campaign in public, in an effort to sway policy. They did so
early on, for example, on the issue of Iraq, advocating a unilateral attack
immediately following what they called the "victory" in Afghanistan. More
recently, the neo-conservatives ganged up in a public assault against
President Bush's April 4th speech pressuring Sharon to end his incursion
into the West Bank. In both cases, they appeared to have some, though not
complete, success in effecting Administration policy.
In short, the neo-conservatives are a potent, thought not always decisive
force in shaping the policy of the Bush Administration. The President may
use their rhetoric, but does not always follow their strict policy of
confrontation.
In a future article, I will discuss the other major current that impacts the
thinking of the modern Republican party: the religious right.
Dr. James J. Zogby is President of Arab American Institute in Washington,
DC.
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