Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2001 18:55:46 -0800
From: radman <resist-AT-best.com>
Subject: The Far Right Targets The Left 


DRY ROT -- The Far Right Targets The Left

By Will Offley

Canadian Dimension, January/February 2001
Volume 35, Number 1
<http://www.canadiandimension.mb.ca/>

Like most huge events in history, the fall of the Berlin Wall shook our
world.  In doing so it also changed the ground rules of politics.

Whether you call it paradigm shift or merely the temporary triumph of
neo-liberalism, the dust from the Wall's collapse has clouded our vision
for nearly a decade.  Without exception, currents of the left around the
world have found themselves disoriented and scrambling to create a new
vision and a new political framework within which to organize and to
fight.  This has not only been true for the traditional Communist Parties,
but for the non-Stalinist and anti-Stalinist left as well.

The left has not yet been able to reconstitute a coherent vision of the
new world we want to see issue from the ashes of the old, nor have we
articulated the strategy or programme or organizations necessary to make
that happen.  As a result, radical left politics have remained largely
confined to "anti" politics for a decade or more: anticorporate,
anti-globalization, anticapitalist.  We have remained locked down behind
the relatively easy bulwark of what we're against, rather than venturing
out into the exposed and more dangerous terrain of defining what we're
for.  In addition, in some sectors there have been marked tendencies to
view the capitalist system through the lens of conspiracism and
irrationality, where plots and conspiracies replace class interests and
mass politics as the motor forces of human society.

This weakening of its culture, institutions and politics have rendered
some sectors of the broad left vulnerable to the conscious and organized
predation being carried out in Canada by a specific current of the far
right. In the U.S. this dates back as far as the Gulf War, where
neo-fascist currents like the Larouche organization and Spotlight sought
to attach themselves to the movement against the war.

Is the Canadian left immune from this sort of targeting?  No.

Is the situation any different now, a decade later?  Yes and no.

Yes, because Seattle has led to Washington, and from there to Philadelphia
and L.A. and Windsor and Prague.  Quebec will be next, and it won't be the
end.  The rise of the struggle in the streets against globalization marks
the end of ten years of demoralization and confusion.

There is a new dynamism and a new optimism, and if the path ahead is only
partially visible, at least we're collectively underway again.

However, one has only to look at Seattle to see that the growth of far
right currents within and alongside the left and progressive movements has
increased visibly over the decade.  There are also indicators that point
to a change - during the Gulf War, the far right was active on the
fringes, but by Seattle it seemed to be active at the very centre of
things.  While the young militants faced down the cops and the gas in
downtown Seattle, on a leadership level elements of that movement were
being increasingly compromised politically by a de facto convergence
between Ralph Nader and the most important far-right leader in the United
States, the semi-fascist Pat Buchanan.  Five months later during the April
16th mobilizations in Washington, Buchanan shared a stage with Teamster
leader Jimmy Hoffa Jr. as an invited guest of the AFL-CIO.

Antiglobalist politics are not the exclusive preserve of the left.
Though it springs from different roots, Buchanan's opposition to
globalization and free trade is as genuine as ours.  He just takes it in a
direction diametrically opposed to everything else we stand for:
protectionism, racism, exclusion.  Not only that, there have been plenty
of examples this century to show the far right can be anti-corporate too.

Throughout the 1920's Hitler's Nazi Party contained a minority current led
by Gregor and Otto Strasser that was inalterably opposed to the German
trusts... as well as the Jews, the Communists, Social Democrats, gays and
lesbians, unions, etc.

Nor is the far right confined solely to the hardcore neo-Nazism of the
Heritage Front or the Northern Hammerskins.  It's relatively easy to ward
off the interventions of groups that put swastikas on their literature.
It's considerably more difficult when the politics of the groups in
question are cloaked in progressive rhetoric and hidden behind coded
language. Between Wolfgang Droege and Stockwell Day there is a whole swamp
of currents and organizations - conspiracist, anti-Semitic, some with
hidden fascist agendas, some totalitarian, some merely far right.

Some of these are targeting the left.  There is reason to be concerned.
******

Although they're based at different ends of the country, they seem to be
made for each other.

The Radical is a monthly tabloid published in Quesnel, B.C. since June
1998 by Arthur Topham, a self-described anarchist who regards himself as
"a natural, sovereign and unique critter who doesn't need any centralized
forms of authority telling me how to run my life."

Discourse and Disclosure is a more irregularly-published bimonthly, also a
tabloid.  It has been put out by editor Sue Potvin since May 1996.
Potvin, formerly a resident of Ottawa, now resides in Greenwood, Nova
Scotia. Potvin is considerably less forthcoming about herself than is
Topham.

Both publications share common positions on many different issues.  Both
are opposed to globalization, the WTO, the MAI, NAFTA, the World Bank, the
IMF, and now to the FTAA.  Both are opposed to the increasing corporate
domination of the economy and most other sectors of everyday life.  Both
have editorially supported the mobilizations against globalization, from
Seattle to Prague.  Both have condemned NATO, and the West's aggression
against Yugoslavia.  Both oppose clearcutting and support many
environmental causes.  Both are strongly supportive of Canadian
nationalism.  Both have even run articles endorsing gay and lesbian
rights, and have been outspoken in support of native struggles from
Ipperwash to Gustafsen Lake. When you realize that each has survived
hand-to-mouth for years, with very shaky finances, the announcement in the
November 2000 issues of each publication that they were moving towards
appearing as a joint publication makes a whole lot of sense.  The Radical
is distributed widely throughout the hinterland of B.C; Discourse and
Disclosure appears to have a broader national distribution.  Both share a
number of regular contributors.  To move toward joint publication is a
completely logical step in extending the reach of two papers which have
essentially identical editorial approaches.

In fact, the similarities go far deeper, but this requires you to get out
a fine-tooth comb and start a much closer examination of both
publications.  Both papers are riddled with conspiracy theorists.  Both
have supported the politics of David Icke, the new age anti-Semite who
argues the world is being run by a conspiracy of blood-drinking lizards.
Both regularly feature and support the activities of the far-right Detax
movement.  Both exhibit numerous links to various prominent anti-Semites,
militia supporters and white supremacists.  And because of these
similarities both have become important vehicles in English Canada for the
politics of the third position current of Canada's far right, third
position because this current of the right rejects capitalism AND Marxism.

Although a definite current of the far right, the third position current
is distinct and apart from the mainstream of the neo-Nazi movement, which
has attacked it in vitriolic terms.  D&D's editor has herself been
directly criticized by a fascist web site in the following terms: "Sue
Potvin publishes a Canadian tabloid titled Discourse and Disclosure
...[which] believes aboriginals (Native North Americans) are the planet's
chief (no pun intended) victims and contains an enormous amount of White
guilt and rants about not only what Whites have "done" to these sacred
aboriginals, but to the world in general.  There is also so much ranting
about corporations that it's hardly distinguishable from your local
Marxist/communist publication."  Clearly it would be a misrepresentation
to equate Potvin's publication with mainstream neofascism, as this is
simply not the case.  However, it's also undeniable that the political
content of both The Radical and Discourse and Disclosure extensively
overlaps the politics of neonazism, anti-Semitism and some of the most
crazed conspiracy theorists on the planet.  Judge for yourself:

** On more than one occasion D&D and Potvin herself have quoted
extensively from the U.S. newspaper, The Spotlight , which has been
described as "the most significant voice of the far right".  It is
published by the Liberty Lobby, itself described as "the major source of
anti-Semitic propaganda in the United States" , and whose leader, Willis
Carto, has been publicly quoted as stating that "only a few Americans are
concerned with the inevitable niggerification of America" and "the Jews
came first and remain Public Enemy Number One."

** The December 1999 issue of Discourse and Disclosure appeared with a
guest editor, Jim McKee.  McKee has contributed frequently to the paper on
numerous topics.  Three months earlier a letter from him appeared,
condemning immigration and stating that "in recent years, we have been
bringing most of our immigrants from countries where the predominant
religions are non-Christian, and the cultures are quite different from
ours.  Integrating these people into Canadian society poses problems that
didn't exist for the British and European immigrants....Our heritage of
Christian standards is being swept aside."  McKee's racism assumes even
sharper definition when it's recalled that on May 13, 1997 he held a
public meeting in his Glenarm, Ontario home which was addressed by Paul
Fromm.  Fromm, the head of several racist organizations, gained notoriety
ten years ago when the Toronto Sun obtained a video of his appearance on
stage at a December 8, 1990 meeting of the Heritage Front, flanked by a
huge Nazi flag and giving a Nazi salute.

** D&D features a regular column on the activities of the Canadian Action
Party written by Carla Marie Dancey, CAP's representative to Elections
Canada.  In 1997, Dancey was the Reform Party candidate in Ottawa South,
where she immortalized herself on the topic of "ethnic" immigration.  An
article in the May 18, 1997 Edmonton Journal reported that "Canada's
immigration system is racially driven to ensure at least 85 percent of
people who come into the country aren't white, a Reform candidate said May
17. =91If you look at the immigration system right now... they've got it
divided according to racial lines,' said Carla Dancey....  "Eighty-five
percent of the people coming into the country have to be ethnic and 15
percent white, because before they had 85 percent white and 15 percent
ethnic and they decided that was racist."  Paul Fromm's thoroughly racist
Canadian Immigration Hotline liked this quote so much it was promptly
republished on its web site.

** Almost every recent issue of Discourse and Disclosure features at least
one article by Tom J. Kennedy, the Ottawa tour organizer for David Icke in
1999.  Kennedy's main area of activity centres around the Detax movement.
He has published material on the Internet that he has reprinted from
neo-Nazi and Holocaust Denial websites, and he has also publicly admitted
to a friendship with Ernst Zundel that goes back nearly twenty years.
Currently, Kennedy has a brief tribute on the web naming his friends,
mentors and leaders; this list includes not only Sue Potvin, but also Paul
Fromm, Ernst Zundel, David Icke, David Irving, Glen Kealey and no less
than ten leaders of the Detax movement.

** Potvin herself has editorially promoted the Detax movement, an
ultra-right tax denial movement that is in many respects the Canadian
equivalent of the Posse Comitatus, the U.S. current in the 1980's that was
one of the key predecessors to today's militia movement.  Writing in a
front-page article in the May/June 1997 issue of her paper entitled
"Canadian Challenges The Illegal Income Tax System", Potvin extensively
profiled David Butterfield's B.C,-based "Shareholders of Canada" and
echoed its claim that no one need pay income tax, since "it's illegal".
However, Potvin's editorials have rarely been as overtly far right as
those of her other regular contributors.  On occasion she has even
publicly distanced herself from some of her most extreme contributors.

** Other D&D articles continually harp on the same conspiracist themes,
whether it's on the New World Order plot that murdered Princess Diana
(Sydney White, September-October 1999), or the New World Order plot to
take away our guns (John Welham, Sept/Oct. 1998), or the conspiracy of the
Illuminati to control the world economy (Fred Kirkman, August 1998).  And
as for Canadian nationalism, contributor Ed Benson gave a flavor of D&D's
politics in the August 1997 issue when he wrote that Canada has been
"reduced to being the major financial and atomic benefactor of Red
Communism; a country which condones the jailing of people for displaying a
sign in English; a country that allows democratic votive fraud and
military sedition; and a country that permits bare-breasted women on the
streets."

Discourse and Disclosure functions as the public voice of a far right
current that first came clearly into sight during the 1993 campaign of the
National Party of Canada.  Since the National Party's demise, many D&D
supporters have remained active in its successor organization, the
Canadian Action Party, particularly in CAP's leadership.  Regular
contributors to Discourse and Disclosure include party leader Paul
Hellyer, CAP's national president Connie Fogal, at least three CAP
regional directors , and more than 10% of CAP's candidates in both the
1997 and 2000 federal elections.  D&D supporters have also been visibly
active in and around numerous other organizations since then, including
several PIRG organizations, Concerned Citizens Against Free Trade, David
Orchard's campaign for the leadership of the Progressive Conservatives,
the Council of Canadians, various anti-globalization groups and others.

The Radical appears to have taken a completely different trajectory, only
to wind up at the same spot.  Where the D&D current appears to have set
out to penetrate various sectors of the left, The Radical appears to have
engaged in a process of political evolution away from anarcho/green
politics towards those of the far right.  Both papers share both a common
editorial approach and a common pool of writers.  David Icke has appeared
repeatedly in both papers, and has been listed on the masthead of both as
a contributor.  (The May/June 2000 issue of Canadian Dimension features an
assessment of Icke and his backers in greater depth than is possible
here). Numerous other writers besides Icke appear regularly in both The
Radical and Discourse and Disclosure.  Including Bev Collins, Joseph
Duggan, Robert Rodvik, John Welham, Eva Lyman, Pat Bennett, Kevin Annett,
and Connie Fogal, among others.  Joseph Duggan is David Icke's main
Vancouver organizer, whose speakers' bureau Strong Eagles Productions
organizes tours in Vancouver and B.C. for much of the conspiracist right.

Bev Collins made the cryptic comment in the April 1999 issue of The
Radical, "are you prepared for an American military officer under United
Nations command to enter your home and remove you and your family because
of Y2K?", and went on to hint darkly about a battalion of British troops
on "training exercises" at the time outside Rossland, B.C.  This has been
one of her main preoccupations for a long time.  In August 1996 she
authored a long piece in D&D entitled "U.S. Militia Victim Of Negative
Image Makers", which stated that "more than three million patriots in the
U.S. today have joined with law enforcement and a cross-nation militia
organization network".  She went on to add that "the militia is not, as
those in power would have you believe, some extremist band of thugs."  On
the contrary, she wrote, "militia members are said to be everyday,
ordinary American citizens who care enough to take steps to protect their
country against corrupt government."  She pooh-poohed the armed Freeman
standoff taking place in Montana by simply declaring the Freemen were not
really militia, after all, which probably came as news to them.

Collins' links to militia activity do not seem to be confined to
ideological support alone, either.  According to David Lethbridge of the
Salmon Arm Coalition Against Racism, "not long before the 1997 federal
election, Collins attended and spoke at a secret meeting of the Texas
Light Infantry, one of the earliest militias to be set up after the [1992]
Estes Park gathering which founded the contemporary militia movement."
Bob Holloway, one of the key organizers of the Texas Light Infantry, is an
associate of Louis Beam, Grand Dragon of the Texas Knights of the Ku Klux
Klan.

John Welham has written for both papers as well.  He authored a piece in
the July 1998 issue of The Radical entitled "Why Federal Income Tax Is
Illegal" which stated in part "Revenue Canada has done a fantastic job of
brainwashing Canadians into believing that federal income tax in legal.
Nothing could be further from the truth....No one has to pay income tax to
the federal government.  It's illegal...."  The following month his
article was picked up by Discourse and Disclosure and reprinted verbatim.

And not least, both paper have given extensive publicity to the various
leaders of the Detax movement, including Eldon Warman, Tom J. Kennedy,
Byrun Fox, Hans Krampe, David Butterfield and others.  On more than one
occasion Discourse and Disclosure has published four-page supplements on
Butterfield's group, and The Radical has also repeatedly run ads for
various Detax seminars and public events.

If you judge a book by its cover, you'd have to conclude that The Radical
is radical - after all, every issue is festooned with peace symbols,
anarchist A's, hemp plants and (cruelest joke of all) little pictures of
Che.  It would be much more accurate to say that while the layout may be
radical, the editorial content's been taken so far to the right that it's
off the page.  And it's not like Arthur Topham is the first, either.
Throughout the last century, every single current in the broad left has
seen defectors from its ranks crossing over to the far right.  Benito
Mussolini left the Socialist Party to lead the Italian fascist movement.
Many sections of the Comintern experienced losses to fascism during the
1930's, like the split of the Jacques Doriot wing from the French
Communist Party.  Lyndon Larouche came out of the Trotskyist SWP.  Why
should we expect hippie anarchism to be any different?

The problem is, The Radical, like D&D, has connections and it has
influence.  The current November issue demonstrates this clearly.  It
contains articles by militia supporter Bev Collins, Detax activist Tom
Kennedy and Wiebo Ludwig supporter Allan Johnston. It has a column by Hans
Krampe stating that this federal election "may very well be our last
chance to deal with despotic and treasonous systems in a democratic and
relatively peaceful manner.  After that, who knows what will happen." ,
accompanied by an editorial calling on readers to refuse to register their
guns.  But others are present as well.  There is an article by the Prince
George Green Party.  There is an article by Vancouver Parks Board
commissioner Roz Cassels, elected on the Green Party slate.  There is a
letter from 72-year-old Betty Krawczyk, currently serving a one-year
prison sentence for her participation in the logging blockades in the
Elaho Valley.

This is where we find the danger from this current.  They have a hearing
within our ranks, and it looks like a pretty big one.  Both papers have
systematically courted sectors of the left, the greens and anarchist
currents, most spectacularly in the case of The Radical.  Over the last
year Topham's paper has featured front-page articles on the Elaho
blockades, Toronto Green mayoralty candidate Tooker Gomberg, the Vancouver
Mayworks Festival and the David Suzuki Foundation.  The March issue
featured a full-page ad on the back cover placed by the World March of
Women for International Women's Day.  Articles and letters have been
printed from and about the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, Friends of
the Earth, the Cariboo Green Party, Vicki Husband of the Sierra Club of
B.C., Veterans Against Nuclear Arms, the Valhalla Wilderness Society, the
Council of Canadians, Amnesty International, SPEC, Check Your Head, the
New Internationalist, Greenpeace, Leonard Peltier, the Sierra Legal
Defence Fund and others.  Articles by Noam Chomsky appear regularly.  And
the paper continues to be distributed not only by the progressive Magpie
Magazines, but by the leftie Peoples' Coop and Spartacus bookstores.

Third-position politics are a threat to the left, the green movement and
progressive organizations in general.  To counter them, first and above
all we need to expose them to the light of day.  Many of the cases above
have a very simple explanation, that Potvin's and Topham's politics are
largely concealed from public view, and therefore neither known or
understood by many who associate with these papers.  This is pretty common
with crypto-right currents..  But there will undoubtedly be those who
defend The Radical and Discourse and Disclosure, just as there are at
least some who appear prepared to accept Wiebo Ludwig as an ally, and
David Icke as a guru.  This will require not only exposure, but political
struggle as well.

In the final analysis, the rejection and marginalization of third position
politics require many of the same political discussions that will be
integral to any process of rebuilding the left.  What is at stake?  A
rejection of irrationalism, of conspiracy theories, of scapegoating.
Repudiating Canadian nationalism.  Moving beyond a reflexive
anti-capitalist politics to begin to develop a broad vision of the world
we want to be able to leave to our children.  Articulating what we're for,
and how we intend to get there.  Redefining socialism. And reconstructing
the left.
++++++      ++++++

The article above deals with the Nader/Buchanan convergence only briefly
and in passing, in order to situate the Discourse and Disclosure / Radical
phenomenon within a broader set of political coordinates.  Space
considerations prevented the inclusion of the facts and reasoning
underlying this characterization and as a result the text of the article
on this point is quite sketchy, only making assertions without proving
them.  However, the criticism of Nader is both fair and accurate.

Ralph Nader has been engaged in a political convergence with Pat Buchanan
on issues to do with globalization and the WTO for quite some time.  He
admits this publicly.  On November 28, 1999, Buchanan and Nader appeared
on a chat room session hosted by Time Magazine entitled "The Battle In
Seattle".  Both stated their current relationship in the following terms:

"QUESTION: Have Messrs. Nader and Buchanan discussed WTO-related issues in
depth together? Or is it strictly a marriage of convenience - "the enemy
of my enemy is my friend" sort of thing?"

Ralph Nader: "Nonsense. We've discussed this for five years. We've held
press conferences. And it's a cooperation of convictions that we must
defend and improve our democracy so that we can agree to disagree freely."

Pat Buchanan:  "Ralph and I have been in this battle for almost six years
since the great NAFTA fight. And we stand together firmly on one
principle, that whatever the decisions about the economic destiny of
Americans are, they will be made by the American people and not by the
trans-national corporations in collusion with this embryonic institution
of world government."

<http://www.time.com/time/community/transcripts/1999/112899buchanan-nader.html>

One left wing web site carries an article from last June stating much the
same thing:  "That Nader is tailoring his campaign to reach potential
Buchanan voters was underscored by comments made by an official from
Nader's camp in the presence of this reporter. The official predicted that
Buchanan would be the "first to break the truce" between the two
third-party candidates.  When this reporter asked the official about this
truce, he replied that while there was no written pact, Nader and Buchanan
had worked together since the anti-NAFTA campaign in the early 1990s, and
that there was a "mutual agreement" not to criticize one another. Nader
has, in fact, refrained from attacking Buchanan's right-wing positions on
abortion and immigration, and remained silent on Buchanan's long-standing
ties to anti-labor textile bosses in the South."

(Jerry White, U.S. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader courts Buchanan
supporters", World Socialist Web Site, June 27, 2000,
<<www.wsws.org/articles/2000/jun2000/gpl-j27_prn.shtml>

Significantly, Nader's organization reportedly refuses "to confirm or deny" 
persistent
allegations it is being funded by U.S. textile billionaire Roger
Milliken, one of Buchanan's key corporate backers.  See Ryan Lizza,
"Silent Partner: The Man Behind The Anti-Free-Trade Revolt",
<<www.thenewrepublic.com/011000/lizza011000.html>)

Nader's positions on globalization permit this convergence.  His
acceptance speech for the Green Party presidential nomination last summer
pointed out that his goals "are also conservative goals.  Don't
conservatives, in contrast to corporatists, want movement toward a safe
environment, toward ending corporate welfare and the commercialization of
childhood? Don't they too want a voice in shaping a clean environment
rooted in the interests of the people? Don't they too want a fair and
responsive marketplace, for their health needs and savings? Let us not in
this campaign prejudge any voters, for Green values are majoritarian
values, respecting all peoples and striving to give greater voice to all
voters, workers, individual taxpayers and consumers. As with the right of
free speech, we may not agree with others, but we will defend their right
to free speech as strongly as we do for ourselves."
<http://www.votenader.org/press/000625acceptance_speech.html>

One of Nader's group spelt this out more bluntly in March 1999.  Mike
Dolan, field director for Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch stated in a
PGA listserve discussion that "the populist movement against the so-called
"free trade" agenda of the transnational corporate elite transcends
partisan politics; whatever else you say about Pat Buchanan, he will be
the only candidate in the 2000 presidential sweepstakes who will
passionately and unconditionally defend the legitimate expectations of
working families in the global economy."
(Email to PGA listserve entitled "Trade Patriot Buchanan", February 3,
1999, quoted in Mark S., "The Progressive Left's Dirty Little Secret:
Public Citizen, IFG and the Far Right",
<www.tao.ca/~resist/theleft'sdirtylittlesecret.html>)

Nader has repeatedly appeared on television broadcasts with Pat Buchanan
over the last year and refused to criticize Buchanan's racist, sexist,
homophobic, xenophobic and chauvinist politics.  Take the following
exchange from Meet The Press, October 1, 2000:

"Mr. Buchanan: Millions of Americans -- majority oppose NAFTA, a majority
oppose this China policy, a majority didn't want that war in the Balkans.
They want the troops home, they want the borders defended, they want a
conservative Supreme Court, I believe."

Mr. Nader: "A majority -- yeah."
<www.buchananreform.com/library/default.asp?id=145>

And that characterizes Nader's opportunism, an opportunism that stems
directly from his attempts to elicit support from Buchanan's core
constituency, estimated at around 25 million Americans.  Nader repeatedly
shares a stage with Buchanan and politely disagrees.  He very seldom (if
ever) criticizes Buchanan's core political positions, whether on abortion,
or immigration, or much of anything else.

Nader has repeatedly shown himself ready to engage in unprincipled
coalition-building including groups from the Christian right:  "The
coalition of citizens that came to Seattle to protest the WTO in November
1999 added new partners when the anti-PNTR campaign directed by Citizens
Trade Campaign, a branch of Ralph Nader's Public Citizen, chose to rally
the anti-globalization forces against PNTR status for China. These
included such conservative groups as the Family Research Council. Straying
from their focus on economic globalization into security issues and
international relations, CTC sought to win allies by portraying China as a
security threat both to the Asia-Pacific and the United States. This
brought such America-first and decidedly militaristic groups as the
American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars into the coalition. CTC
Director Lori Wallach makes no apologies for this type of unprincipled
coalition-building. Strategizing about the upcoming battles of the fair
trade movement, Wallach is optimistic because of the movement's new
allies. "The Seattle Coalition has new friends from the China PNTR fight.
National veterans groups, such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars and
American Legion, worked on Republican House Members, often in conjunction
with local small business people. Indeed, the intense local organizing
that was developed in an attempt to counter the corporate cash revealed a
potentially powerful overlap between the memberships of VFW, American
Legion, and other fraternal groups and main street business associations
and union members."
(Tom Barry, "Seattle Coalition Has New "Friends", Foreign Policy In
Focus, (a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the
Institute for Policy Studies, June 21, 2000, found at
<www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/poogresp/vol4/prog4n25.html>

It should be apparent that a substantive case can in fact be made
regarding Nader's convergence with Buchanan.  This article centred on the
specific phenomenon of the Discourse and Disclosure/The Radical Alliance.

However, the broader issue of left/right convergences and coalitions is an
issue that will need to be addressed over the coming months and years, as
the anti-globalization movement is politically vulnerable to overtures
from currents like Buchanan and others further right of him.

 From time to time the left will find it shares a position with the right.

Even a dead watch is right twice a day.  Just look at Buchanan's current
position on the causes on the resurgence of the Intifada: the crisis was
created by the "illegal" West Bank settlements; it was sparked by Ariel
Sharon, who deliberately provoked the current situation; it's a popular
uprising; the Palestinian people "have been occupied, persecuted and
oppressed for decades" (see Pat Buchanan on Face The Nation, October 10,
2000, which can be found at
<www.buchananreforn.org/library/default.asp?id=153>).

The fact we may agree with all these theses does not alter the fact that 
for Buchanan they
are informed by an unconcealed anti-Semitism, and we can no more ally with
or converge with or work with him any more than we would Hitler.  The
problem is not that Nader shares some political positions with Buchanan,
but that he is converging with him.
----
Will Offley is a Vancouver-based researcher.
----
See also:
David Icke and the Politics of Madness: Where the New Age Meets the Third Reich
<http://www.canadiandimension.mb.ca/v34/icke.htm>