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TechnoratiPopulism Arising—but Will It Be the Killer Kind?
I watched these competing populisms flicker Thursday night at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., when I moderated a debate between independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin. The two candidates come from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Nader, in essence, is a democratic socialist in the mold of Eugene Debs or Norman Thomas. Baldwin, a founder and minister at the Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla., is an evangelical, right-wing populist.
Baldwin, like Nader, rails against corporatism and our involvement in foreign wars, wants to repeal NAFTA and denounces the curtailment of civil liberties. But Baldwin goes on to support the abolishment of whole departments of the federal government, such as the Department of Education. He calls for U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations and NATO, the elimination of the Food and Drug Administration, the outlawing of abortion and removing all restrictions on the purchasing of firearms. One of his catchier campaign slogans is: “To help keep your family safe and your country free, go buy a gun.” He wants to seal our borders, deny amnesty and social services to illegal immigrants and end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. He calls for dismantling the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Service, overturning the 16th Amendment and the personal income tax, and returning the American monetary system to hard assets: gold and silver.
These candidates, while marginal figures in the current election, express the two forms of populism that will soon find a wide political currency. The anger toward our elites will morph into rage. These new populisms may not be articulated by Nader and Baldwin, but they will be articulated by people like Nader and Baldwin.
The ideological foundations of free-market economics and a consumer society have collapsed. This collapse is hard for us to fathom. We are still in shock and denial. We cling to old structures of meaning and outdated words to describe them. We have yet to realize that all our political science and economic textbooks have become junk. We have yet to formulate a vocabulary to describe our altered reality. We grasp, on a subliminal level, that laissez-faire capitalism is gone, but we have not viewed the corpse, scheduled the funeral and read the last rites.
“People get very clearly that Washington found hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out rich people in a way the government does not usually intervene,” said Anthony Pollina, The Progressive Party candidate for governor in Vermont. “They understand that the government came up with all this money to support the wrong group of people. People get that in their gut. There is anger. It is not rage yet. There is still a little bit of disbelief. I may be running for governor, but all people want to talk about is how did we come up with all this money to give to rich people on Wall Street and why didn’t they let them pay their mortgage off.”
Millions of people will lose their homes. Jobs and savings will vanish. The government will continue to lurch from crisis to crisis. The greed of huge corporations, especially as they continue to cannibalize the country, will see them, and our elites, become the enemy. Exxon, to give one example, made $40.61 billion in profits last year while we struggled to fill the tanks of our automobiles and trucks. Oil and gas corporations, despite these profits, ruthlessly refuse to fill furnaces in winter when people cannot pay the bills. AIG, the insurance giant, after being saved with an infusion of $85 billion in taxpayer money, squandered $440,000 on an executive visit to a California spa. It spent $86,000 for its executives to hunt partridges in the English countryside and then blithely asked the U.S. government for an additional $38 billion.
Elites, when they confuse the artificial court life of Versailles with the real world, die. These capitalist entities, grossly out of touch, incompetent, blinded by greed and power and morally and intellectually bankrupt, are committing collective suicide.
“People are beginning to understand that when the economy is weak you have to put people to work,” Pollina, who is now outpolling the Democratic candidate, said. “We have a crumbling infrastructure in the state and a need for affordable housing. I have put forward three or four different ways to raise revenue to put people to work, including closing a loophole in our capital gains tax. I think people are attracted to me because they are realizing that this is now the most important thing we can do. We have to put people to work. We cannot continue to abandon them.”
The flagrant corruption of our political system—hostage to the hundreds of millions of dollars handed out by the corporations and elites to Democratic and Republican candidates—will become clearer as our initial shock wears off. The new American will be about the basics—jobs, food, health care and a place to live. We will discard the old vocabulary, the one still used by the Democratic and Republic parties, and learn to speak in the fiery language of populism. We will turn with a vengeance on the 1 percent that has amassed more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. The populist conflict will see a battle between a frightened and dispossessed majority and the corporations and elites who seek to ruthlessly cling to power and wealth.
“Over the years people became disengaged,” Pollina said. “They stopped paying attention. This crisis has forced them to pay attention. It directly affects their economic future and ability to put food on the table. Outrage will lead to more involvement. This outrage could, however, fuel a right-wing populism around the country, although not in Vermont. Here I think people will move more to the left. In Vermont they have somewhere else to turn—I am here, Bernie Sanders is here, the Progressive Party is here—but on the national level this could see people turn to the right wing.”
A victory by Barack Obama may embolden right-wing populists. They will be able to use Obama and “liberal Democrats” as a lightning rod for the failings, growing poverty and incompetence of the state. The elite, as happens in all such moments of confusion, revolt and social chaos, will probably be forced to make an uncomfortable alliance with right-wing populists if they want to survive. The center of the political spectrum will melt.
“A lot of people feel the two parties have reached a consensus that all they have to do is support rich people to protect their hides,” Pollina said. “The two parties have come together to throw money at people who do not need it. People are beginning to understand they are no better off and probably their grandkids will pay for this. There is a great deal of resentment over the fact that Republicans and Democrats will risk everything to prop up rich people.”
We have begun a socialist experiment. George W. Bush and John McCain, in stunning repudiations of all they claimed to believe, call for massive state intervention in the financial markets and the use of billions in government funds to buy major stakes in banks. The question is not whether we will build state socialism. This process has already begun. The only question left is whether this will be right-wing or left-wing socialism.
The left, with a few exceptions, like the Progressive Party in Vermont, has largely thrown in its lot with the Democratic Party. Right-wing populists, as is evidenced by the acrimonious split in the McCain campaign, remain clustered around the fiefdoms of large megachurches that stoke hatred and frightening totalitarian visions of a Christian state. The left has no correlating centers of activism, organization or mass support, especially with the decline of labor unions. If left-wing populists do not rapidly build local organizations, as was done in Vermont, to compete with the right-wing populism of the Christian right, the most dangerous mass movement in American history, they will be easily swept aside.
There is not much time left. A Democratic victory in November may signal not a reversal of our fading fortunes but the start of a precipitous slide toward the Christian dystopia peddled by people like Baldwin.
30 Comments so far
Show AllChris Hedges writes:
"A victory by Barack Obama may embolden right-wing populists. They will be able to use Obama and “liberal Democrats” as a lightning rod for the failings, growing poverty and incompetence of the state. The elite, as happens in all such moments of confusion, revolt and social chaos, will probably be forced to make an uncomfortable alliance with right-wing populists if they want to survive. The center of the political spectrum will melt."
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I doubt that it's "a moment of confusion" for the elite -- OR that the political spectrum has a "center" NOW. (There's a comment to this effect, more or less, over at Norman Solomon's "new" Democratic cheerleader piece.)
Get ready for Republican-lite Stalinism, kids. By next summer, everybody who isn't IN the administration of the supposed Democrats will be wishing the old white guy, dissent against whom could hardly be dismissed as "racism" or class clinging, had won the election.
Hedges was great at the Nader/Whoosie debate.
Here's a question: is there some way by which Cynthia McKinney can be brought to support Nader? It's late in the day, now that the former Election Day is the voting-event season. But still ... //
Nader has ruminated on this concern of the lack of a left-wing populist organization.
This year he has suggested that every Congressional District should organize 2000 people who donate $200 each to carefully monitor and report their MOC's voting and prepare to field an alternative candidate. He is sure that Congress would wake up and listen much more carefully than, say, they did in the runup to the obscene gift to New York City's other mafia.
I'd love to believe we could pull that plan, or something similar, off. It might have a chance with Nader's energies focused on the task after the election.
Nat Hentoff recently authored a piece suggesting a similar approach, now underway in several cities. We need leadership, creativity, enthusiasm, and money, that's all. ;^)
Thanks for your writing, Chris Hedges.
If I can get a waiver on the $200, count me in!!! (:
I tried very hard to get local progressives together in my neighborhood, but it's very difficult to get people to work together - everybody's BUSY just surviving! If anyone can organize it where I live, I'm IN!!
The $200 threshold issue could be lessened by allowing "shared stakes" whereby a group of citizens buy a "shared stake" for $200, with each person investing, say, $20, into the stake. This would seem to be a reasonable way to get more folks involved.
If this approach were used in just a few districts, it might catch on. But it certainly would help the overall effort if Nader or other national figure would serve as a national spokesperson.
I'd love to see groups like this form in Pelosi, Hoyer, and Emanuel's districts for starters, but realistically it is the districts with smaller media markets that would be the most productive for a populist move from the left. Of course, this strategy would be equally has productive for a rightwing movement.
I think the best approach to take is one that embraces a Nader-Paul spectrum of issues, using their agreed upon four principles as the base of the movement. The key is to keep mainstream party influences to a minimum and focus on principles.
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So what has his presidential candidacy accomplished in the meantime? Nader offered a modest list. His presence encouraged others to run independently for public office and showed them ways to do it. He identified the many barriers to ballot access for third-party candidates as an important issue of civil liberties as meaningful as access to voting. He brought young people into clean politics and helped them develop their skills. What else? "We kept the progressive agenda alive for the future."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081110/greider
Nader's Stubborn Idealism By William Greider October 25, 2008
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Thanks for linking to this article.
I appreciate many things about Ralph Nader (having voted for him in 2000), perhaps nothing so much as his honesty--a quality he displays here in acknowledging that "[h]is conviction...that third-party campaigns could help mobilize a popular counter-force to leverage the Democrats and break up the two-party monopoly" has proved wrong.
Unfortunately, the article shows Nader still to be fixated on the success or failure of third-party candidates in presidential elections. His hope for an end to the corporatist duopoly still focuses (perplexingly) on the rise of a successful third-party presidential candidate: ""My personal preference is a grassroots movement," he said, "but more likely it's going to be some billionaire--a progressive or liberal billionaire who makes it a three-way race."
In this, Nader is not so different from the vast majority of Americans. Throughout much of the country "politics" means presidential politics and little else. We--and I mean progressives and leftists too--have become obsessed with the executive branch, to the point that it has become a consuming focus and a considerable drain on our poltical energy. Oliver Stone's "W" is symptomatic of this obsession, a 2 hour travesty that preoccupies itself with trying to discover the motivating core of our current president (Hint: it has to do with his relationship to his father) and ends up humanizing and rehabilitating him in the process.
Given the efforts of the current occupant of the white house to aggrandize the power of the executive, it isn't entirely surprising that much attention is being paid to this presidential election. But this is a longstanding trend in American political life, and not, in my opinion, a healthy one.
Americans generally and progressives and leftists especially need to purge themselves of the toxic tendency to reduce politics to casting a vote for the executive every four years.
I really like that idea. How much do Congressional races usually run?
In Oregon, a small state, a minimum of $100,000 to even be a factor. Feet on the ground help, but you have to advertise, too. And lawn signs, buttons, and bumperstickers cost money.
Oregoncharles
Arming yourself against the crazy christians won't work. They're better shots. We need to start building an alternative economy now.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Banking-system-is-not-by-Ann-Kramer-081024-65.html
I think Greg R is right. Different localities will act differently. That scares me. I live too close for comfort to the South. But my little community is a pocket of progressivism in a sea of Bible thumping mouth breathers.
Not the mayor, though. Susan Sunshine, the mayor is a Republican and he hates me. I have confronted him too many times. And I know he'd be all about the death squads. Today the city manager announced that he is in charge of what gets released as news in this city, and if he decides to keep secrets, it's up to him. Whew. Shades of Cheney!
Alan MacDonald
Chris accurately observes, "Elites, when they confuse the artificial court life of Versailles with the real world, die. These capitalist entities, grossly out of touch, incompetent, blinded by greed and power and morally and intellectually bankrupt, are committing collective suicide."
These ruling elites constitute the 'corporate financial Empire' that actually controls our country behind the facade of their two-party, 'Vichy' sham of faux-democracy.
Like all empires, it will collapse of its own un-sustainability.
The 'economics of empire' is essentially an unsustainable Ponzi scheme (pyramid) hierarchy based solely on undeserved elite status conferred to incompetents through rotten and unproductive wealth.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_alan_mac_070319__22economics_of_empire.htm
Fortunately, Hedges' preference for a left, non-violent, populist, progressive movement supplanting this dying corporatist Empire can be achieved non-violently by forming a new democratic economic model, based on extensions to the socially responsible investment (SRI) evolution already occurring.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_alan_mac_070324__22with_their_own_rope.htm
I think we will need -- ironically -- to become the upholders of "law and order" as we have already become the upholders/defenders of civil liberties, the RIGHTS of both the accused AND the convicted ...
Like Chris, I fear vigilantism of the old fashioned kind... the kind that led to lynchings and regional "martial law" declared county by county and enforced on a state level. I fear the "loyal employees" of the local big-wigs playing enforcer ... exactly in the footprints of the last century's attacks on labor organizers... Americans are infatuated with the wild-west "We take care of our own" vigilante gun culture... both left and right ... without realizing that those pitchfork wielding mobs acted -- generally -- with the approval of the local bosses.
Look around. Find out who are "bosses" in your county ... they'll be on the donor lists of the city council, the state representatives, on the boards of the local hospital and nonprofits. Many will have impressive resumes. Watch them.
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http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_.
..
Third Party Presidential Candidate Debate
Thank you CSPAN....IT was Great, Fantastic
Ralph Nader and Chuck Ballwin Debate on Oct 23rd
Chris Hedges Moderator
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(continued)
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/uselections2008/2008/10/2008102443523...
US third parties fight to be heard
By Omar Chatriwala in Washington, DC Source: Al Jazeera IT.
Two US presidential candidates have gone head-to-head over issues including the economy, the "war on terror" and flaws in the nation's healthcare system.
But neither man represented the Democrats or the Republicans.
Although they run much lower-profile campaigns than the two presidential contenders, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, they are the third-party candidates in this year's race for the White House.
Ralph Nader, a longstanding consumer activist, and Chuck Baldwin, a former Baptist priest, took to the modest flag-rimmed stage in Washington DC's Mayflower Hotel on Thursday as cameras fed their images live.
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I have looked hard to find any news about the debate and this was all I could find.
The silence is such a mockery to all Americans. Shame...
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The fact that this excellent analysis by Chris Hedges -featuring an interview with a well-polling PROGRESSIVE PARTY candidate for Governor of Vermont- has only a SEVENTEENTH of the comments that Chernus' ridiculous race-baiting article does says a lot about the condition of the "progressive left" to me.
Exactly right, matti. I was just thinking that, the moment before I saw what you wrote here.
When driving, you can't turn a corner (change direction) without slowing down. If we can use this slowdown as an opportunity to move to green solutions, health care, and other needed things. It may be painful but hopeful.
Why not have a society where people waste money on health care instead of consumer junk?
Yes, I'm a dreamer and, as the author says, if those with the weapons become impatient, it could become a nightmare. Still, Obama can convince and that's the true power of a leader -- chart a course and convince people to follow. However, it's not possible to make both a left and a right turn at the same time...
"...by the Democratic and Republic parties,"
Nice touch, inverting the usual right-wing mispronounciations. Although I would suggest "Publican", with all its tax-collector animus connotations.
mildred, grab my pitchfork!
Never before in history has the necessity of studying non-violence been greater. It aligns with the relatively slowly developing vision of renewable energy. I would disagree with Chris Hedges on this single point. That progressives (and I am damn tired of the false dichotomy of left/right. Thats part of the lexical shell from which progressive evolution occurs. Left and right are both strong and weak. I place faith and effort in centering, not a single center. We will need to know diversity as we need to know biodiversity - multiple centers - mutually supportive, exploratory, experimental, focused and the joy of witnessing human nature AS IT IS - not as some deflated excuse for a neoliberal shadow.
As things turn on their head, remember that we also see the inversion and crumbling of long standing delusions, false divisions, emergence of a beauty that has been denied for a long time.
I dream of the day when I can see women with gray hair again - not some chemically altered wanna-be. How many aspects of the market driven culture are designed to make you what you are not!! EMERGE!!!
I dream of seeing front yards of chemically treated astro turf turned into Edible Forest Gardens _ yes there is a book by that name by an ingenious New Englander by the name of Dave Jacke - look up the newest spin on urban/suburban/forest REALLY sustainable gardening.
Look into Van Johnson's elegant seed being planted on notions of Green collar jobs.
Call for the ecological NGOs to come together and if they don't, you can bet that their memberships will be looking for a way to form coalitions. Press for broad based coalitions for renewable energy New Deal type legislation.
This is a time for beaudacious, audacious, creative, loving energetic elbow grease and a howdy neighbor.
Sioux Rose
OLD GOAT: Your optimism is refreshing. Certainly necessity becomes the Mother of invention, but I also fear the rabid bloodlust of the Christian Reich. These people could have common cause with actual progressives IF they were not as brainwashed as they are, and that process began before they had time to form their own thoughts... there are MILLIONS of them, and yes, most are armed from what I see in the Bible belt.
Big Smile Old Goat! Thank you.
Don't Republicans realize that every time they accuse Barack Obama of wanting to "spread the wealth", most people are thinking "Fine with me!"? What a brilliant strategy to get the hard core right wing media to do all that free advertising for them going down the home stretch. Who says that guy doesn't have any skills?
"The ideological foundations of free-market economics and a consumer society have collapsed."
I would disagree only with the passive construct of this assessment. I believe they were intentionally destroyed.
It was systematically designed and planned, precisely engineered and so well executed and championed by Democrats, that those who conceived the plan most likely could not believe the successful outcome... and of course, their fortune.
Obama's legacy.
"The anger toward our elites will morph into rage."
Ah, hope springs eternal. But, let's face it, the majority of Americans are too fat, dumb, brainwashed and drugged to get angry enough to do anything but channel surf between FOX "news", dancing with whomever, and ESPN.
yes, exactly. hope can only get one so far.
meanwhile it's back to cracking open that bear can and watching CNN for the latest groundbreaking news about the corporatocracy in charge. can't wait!
I feel so smug and lucky living in Minnesota, a state with a history of pogressive populism not too unlike Vermont. Yet it is scary to consider what kind of rough beast might emerge from the South.
Hmmmm...don't count yourself too lucky. After all, you've got Michele Bachmann in the 6th district.
We Minnesotans have to try everything. We gave America Wellstone. Somehow we elected an amazingly ignorant Jesse Ventura. I would hope Ms Bachmann is on her way out. Looking at her pasted on smile kinda creeps me out. Anyway a couple of years ago my district threw out the long time Republican and now we have a good down to earth Democrat, Tim Walz, none too progressive, but a big improvement at least.
Last I heard, Nader was polling at 2.5%, Baldwin at about 1%, so it appears progressive populists are ahead (also: McKinney about 1%, Barr about 1.5%). Not that this is cause for complacency - the totals are 3.5 vs. 2.5, not a huge difference. The problem, once again, is that most progressives just can’t give up the Democratic Party, no matter how often or badly they’re betrayed.
I don't understand why Hedges ignores the Green Party: it’s the only national progressive populist organization. (Being in Oregon, I also don’t know why the Progressive Party in Vermont hasn’t joined us.) Nader is presently more prominent, having name recognition and a cadre of loyalists; but at 74, he’s unlikely to run again. The return of his loyalists to the Greens, even if it means a takeover, would help unify the Left for the contest Hedges foresees.
I do think there will be a battle for the soul of America. I just hope it’s political, not violent; for one thing, the Right has us hugely outgunned. One effect of privatization has been to build up private armies like Blackwater, a key element of Fascism.
The Democrats proved with the Bailout (if further proof was needed) that they have abandoned progressive populism and the New Deal. It’s conceivable that an economic crisis will force them back to progressive ideas, but so far, they are clearly the kind of honest politicians who stay bought.
So without a national party that represents the Left, the religious right would indeed have a free hand when things get nasty. Over the next few years, it will be crystal clear what the Dems’ real agenda is. They will stand naked, with no Republican fig leaf, because they will completely control the federal gov’t. I think those will be very good years for the Greens.
We have to have a national party that represents us. At present, there is only one: the Greens. This is a call to unity. We must stand together, or fall together.
Oregoncharles
The Greens are terribly disorganized with internal bickering. And McKinney is a lousy candidate. We've got to move beyond political parties in general.
You want a real movement, I suggest The National Initiative so the American People can vote on federal ballot initiatives like they have in Switzerland.
Majoritarian rule will avoid this far-right Christian populism and enact the vital legislation that Congress will always hedge on so long as they do not truly have to answer to the wishes of We The People.
VOTE TO EMPOWER YOURSELF
www.nationalinitiative.us OR www.ni4d.us