Freedom Writer - April 1996 Buchanan's narrow vision of America By Chip Berlet Persons con

Freedom Writer - April 1996

Buchanan's narrow vision of America

By Chip Berlet

Persons concerned about separation of church and state, 
equal rights, and civil discourse have good reason 
to be worried by the candidacy of Patrick J. Buchanan 
in the Republican presidential primaries. He has a 
decade-long record of intolerance and insensitivity 
on issues of race, religion, ethnicity, culture, sexuality, 
and civility. He is the quintessential demagogue for 
the TV age, whose undeniable charm, selectively displayed, 
disarms serious scrutiny of where his brand of right-wing 
populism would lead the country.

Having read scores of Buchanan columns dating back 
to the mid-1980s, I think it is fair to conclude that 
his ideal citizen is a straight, white, conservative 
Christian male whose ancestors came from northern Europe. 
Everyone else is biologically, culturally, or politically 
incapable of carrying forward the torch of civilization. 
Buchanan's brand of scapegoating and demagoguery is 
toxic to democracy, but in a mass-media age where electronic 
and print pundits are more concerned with reporting 
elections as sports contests or Machiavellian intrigues, 
Buchanan until now has easily sidestepped serious questions 
about his ideology.

The biggest myth about the Buchanan campaign is that 
his fiery rhetoric at the 1992 Republican Convention, 
along with the speeches by Pat Robertson and Marilyn 
Quayle, cost the Republican Party the votes that elected 
Bill Clinton. This is false. According to political 
scientist John C. Green, distaste for these speeches 
was not as significant a factor in the defeat of Bush 
as were fears over unemployment and the general state 
of the economy. On balance, he believes, the Republicans 
gained more votes than they lost in 1992 by embracing 
the rhetoric of the theocratic right.

Another myth is that nobody expected Buchanan to do 
well in the primaries. Not so. Among those who feared 
the success of Buchanan's scapegoating and right-wing 
populism were David Corn writing in _The_Nation_, Adele 
M. Stan in _Mother_Jones_, Sara Diamond in _Z_Magazine_, 
and Holly Sklar in her columns and her book _Chaos_
or_Community?:_Seeking_Solutions,_Not_Scapegoats_for_
Bad_Economics_.

Some of us, including Fred Clarkson and the staff of 
the Institute for First Amendment Studies, tried to 
the raise the warning flags. We have been building 
a pro-democracy movement because we saw the growing 
dangers of theocracy, scapegoating, and demagoguery. 
The book _Eyes_Right!_Challenging_the_Right_Wing_Backlash_, 
available through the IFAS bookstore, is one outcome 
of that collaborative effort, as is the new Democracy 
Works online project of the Institute for Alternative 
Journalism (IAJ), and a new democracy curriculum unveiled 
at the recent IAJ conference on media and democracy.

Unfortunately, Buchanan's politics still leave many 
people confused. On some issues he seems to lean to 
the right, on some issues he seems to lean to the left. 
He is against abortion but for protectionism; he wants 
to open the doors to teaching creationism while closing 
the closet doors on gays and lesbians. One reason for 
this confusion is the false notion that when looking 
at the political right, there are conservatives and 
neo-Nazis — and nothing in-between. As readers of _Freedom_
Writer_Magazine_ know, however, there is a tremendous 
range of political viewpoints between conservatism 
and neo-Nazism, and it is to those audiences that Pat 
Buchanan has pitched his rhetoric, especially the religiously 
orthodox theocratic right, racialist nationalists, 
right-wing economic populists, and authoritarians.

Theocratic rightists. Buchanan clearly has the loyalty 
of a large segment of theocrats on the Christian right. 
He has also attracted the support of a tiny portion 
of the Jewish community with ultra-conservative political 
views or orthodox religious beliefs. His base among 
conservative and right-wing Catholics is also strong. 
Buchanan's attacks on reproductive choice and defense 
of creationism are celebrated among theocrats, even 
though leaders of the Christian Coalition have urged 
that such hot button issues be de-emphasized in favor 
of base-building pragmatism around conservative stands 
on taxes and jobs. Many of these theocrats are reactionaries 
— part of a backlash against the 1960s social liberation 
movements that sought more equal distribution of wealth 
and power.

Racialist nationalists. Buchanan exclaims: "We are 
old right and old church" to describe his support for 
what has become known as the paleoconservative movement, 
with its emphasis on hierarchical social structures, 
Eurocentrism, isolationism, orthodox Christianity, 
and male dominance. He quickly defended the paleoconservative 
think tank Rockford Institute after one of its own 
staff was fired for suggesting the organization was 
insensitive to anti-Semitism. Racial nationalists are 
often concerned with national sovereignty, and resist 
the internationalism of major global corporations by 
calling for protectionism, isolationism, and unilateralism 
in overseas military involvement. Buchanan's stump 
speech attacking the New World Order attracts support 
from this sector, as does his opposition to immigration 
based on race:

"The burning issue here has almost nothing to do with 
economics, almost everything to do with race and ethnicity. 
If British subjects, fleeing a depression, were pouring 
into this country through Canada, there would be few 
alarms. 

"The central objection to the present flood of illegals 
is they are not English-speaking white people from 
Western Europe; they are Spanish-speaking brown and 
black people from Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean."

Right-wing economic populists. The difference between 
regressive economic populists and progressive economic 
populists lies in their perception of how an exploitative 
relationship developed between the mass of the population 
and the business and political elite. Progressive populists 
tend to see institutions and systems as having caused 
the disparity, and seek a more equitable distribution 
of wealth and power through structural changes. Regressive 
populists tend to see corrupt and evil individuals 
as having created the disparity, and seek to "throw 
the bums out" and restore the previous balance of power 
that is pictured as more equitable.

Regressive populists often mobilize genuine middle-class 
and working-class anger over economic distress toward 
scapegoats at the top and bottom of the political system. 
This scapegoating is called producerism, which portrays 
deserving hard-working people in the middle as the 
victims of a squeeze play between wealthy parasites 
on the top who manipulate the economy, and lazy parasites 
on the bottom who receive undeserved benefits — welfare, 
jobs, special privileges — from the parasites at the 
top. Buchanan's attack on global elites and Wall Street 
brokers sounds the alarm for persons who embrace regressive 
populism.

In a 1992 article praising Pat Buchanan as anti-establishment, 
the John Birch Society magazine The New American cited 
with approval the Buchanan column where he blasted 
"The Trilateral-Council on Foreign Relations, Wall 
Street-Big Business elite" and those who support a 
New World Order with its "one-world, collective-security, 
UN dream." No surprise then to find the same Milliken 
family that owns textile mills that would benefit from 
trade protectionism not only buying full-page ads in 
Birch publications for a decade, but also supporting 
the current Buchanan campaign.

Authoritarians. Buchanan appeals to the authoritarian 
impulse among those who see dissent and demands for 
social change as not resulting from actual grievances 
by the dispossessed and impoverished, but as caused 
by cynical subversive agents stirring up trouble. Swift 
and strong authoritarian government action against 
the subversives and their liberal allies will fix what 
is wrong with society. Buchanan praise for the death 
squads in Argentina is one example of his appeal to 
authoritarians:

"Faced with rising urban terror in 1976, the Argentine 
military seized power and waged a war of counter-terror. 
With military and police and free lance operators, 
between 6,000 and 150,000 leftists disappeared. Brutal, 
yes; also successful. Today, peace reigns in Argentina; 
security has been restored."

In a column dismissing the importance of democracy, 
Buchanan once wrote: "The world hails democracy in 
principle; in practice, most men believe there are 
things higher in the order of value — among them, tribe 
and nation, family and faith." 

In real life the ideas spread by these core sectors 
of the hard right overlap to varying degrees in any 
individual voter. But Buchanan's coded rhetoric also 
appeals to more zealous sectors of the hard right including 
the patriot movement, the armed militia movement, as 
well as far right race hate groups such as Aryan Nations, 
the Christian Patriots, Christian Identity, the Ku 
Klux Klan, and neo-Nazi organizations. These groups 
support Buchanan because he is seen as standing up 
for the white race against the secret power brokers, 
the globalists, the Jewish bankers. 

But it misses the point — and smacks of guilt by association 
— to analyze Buchanan's right-wing philosophy simply 
by reporting that some of his aides, campaign workers, 
and supporters have ties to the far right. Buchanan 
hangs himself through his own words that show why the 
far right supports his candidacy.

One reason that Buchanan's reactionary views were overlooked 
for so long by the major news media is that the entire 
political spectrum has shifted to the right over the 
last 15 years. As author Holly Sklar has observed, 
by today's standards, the policies of Richard Nixon 
would be viewed as liberal. The agenda of the John 
Birch Society in 1964 when it backed the candidacy 
of Barry Goldwater, Jr. is now woven into the Republican 
Party platform. Even Goldwater has distanced himself 
from the right wing of the Republican Party, and some 
of the Party's most passionate critics are loyal long-standing 
Republicans who want to return their party to its core 
themes of conservatism, rather than see it promoting 
the ultra-conservatism of a Bob Dole, or the outright 
reactionary views of a Pat Buchanan.

Much confusion has resulted from the fact that Buchanan 
undeniably has friends and supporters who are Jews 
or people of color. True. But this does not resolve 
the question of his political bigotry; it confuses 
good manners with the political outcomes of his agenda. 
There is a difference between personal bigotry and 
political bigotry. And we must note that Buchanan's 
promotion of xenophobia and racial nationalism is different 
from the promotion of naked race hate and murderous 
genocide, but it is objectionable, nonetheless. On 
the basis of his written and spoken record, Buchanan 
is a racist, an anti-Semite, a sexist, a homophobe, 
and an authoritarian. That there are more vicious and 
virulent proponents of these views is true, but this 
fact does not answer the criticisms being leveleled 
at Buchanan.

Even conservative William Bennett once said Buchanan 
flirts with fascism, but we will not defend democracy 
by calling Buchanan a fascist, an extremist, or resident 
rogue of the radical religious right, as personally 
satisfying as these terms may be. We must speak to 
our neighbors about real issues including our fears 
about the future. As activist Loretta Ross of the new 
Center for Human Rights Education has pointed out, 
we must confront the right wing backlash with "a larger 
set of values" that is more inclusive and patient, 
more tolerant of political differences, more respectful 
of cultural diversity ...values that recognize all 
forms of injustice including personal and political 
bigotry as well as unfairness in the economic and political 
system. We must move our nation through hard times 
into the 21st century not by blaming scapegoats, but 
by building consensus about what it means to seek equal 
rights for everyone — nothing more, but nothing less.

_Chip_Berlet_is_senior_analyst_at_Political_Research_
Associates_in_Somerville,_Massachusetts._He_is_the_
editor_of_the_recent_book_Eyes_Right!:_Challenging_
the_Right-Wing_Backlash._

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