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--- Begin Message --- -Caveat Lector- http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=14495
Bill Berkowitz
WorkingForChange
February 12, 2003
'Investigate 'Communist-style' peaceniks'
Founding father of religious right
urges government crackdown
against 'neo-Communist' 'front groups'
As the administration inches closer to war, it's cranking up the Fearometer: A few days after Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations arguing for military action against Iraq, President Bush raised the Homeland Security Advisory System threat level to High Condition -- otherwise known as the color Orange.
With fear in the air, the administration was hit by revelations aired on Bill Moyers PBS program, NOW, that it was preparing to unveil the "Son of the Patriot Act" -- formally called the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003. According to NOW's press release, the draft of a bill coming from the Justice Department -- provided to the Center for Public Integrity by a confidential government source -- "outlines significant broadening of law enforcement powers, including domestic intelligence gathering, surveillance, and law enforcement prerogatives, while decreasing public access to information and judicial review authority."
Will Patriot Act II, should it pass Congress, unleash a period of red-hot McCarthyism against the peace movement?
An editorial dated February 6, in the conservative New York Sun argues that anti-war protesters may be committing treason. It referred readers to Article III in the Constitution which says, "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court." The editorial then suggested that "'anti-war' protesters -- we prefer to call them protesters against freeing Iraq -- are giving, at the very least, comfort to Saddam Hussein."
"So the New York City police," the editorial goes on, "could do worse, in the end, than to allow the protest and send two witnesses along for each participant, with an eye toward preserving at least the possibility of an eventual treason prosecution. Thus fully respecting not just some, but all of the constitutional principles at stake."
On January 30, James Gordon Meek of the New York Daily News' Washington Bureau reported that a secret government report "prepared by an intelligence unit in the Homeland Security Department" has come up with information that "Iraq sent spies from Canada to New York and Washington this month to snoop and stir up anti-war demonstrations."
According to Meek, "A source identified as a member of the Iraqi opposition told U.S. agents that Iraqis in Canada were ordered to recruit Arabs and other foreigners for espionage missions in the U.S., the report said."
Twenty-first century McCarthyism
I've long expected that the twenty-first-century version of political witch-hunts would, like most things right-wing these days, come down the pike in a more measured fashion. Unlike 1950's Senator Joseph McCarthy-like ranting or government-orchestrated break-ins embodied by the FBI's COINTELPRO project of the sixties and seventies, this epoch's version appeared to be more along the lines of John Poindexter's "Total Information Awareness" -- a monumental invasion of privacy.
Paul Weyrich, widely recognized as one of the "founding fathers" of the Christian Right, is approaching the question of dissent by advancing a "modest proposal" that bridges the gap between the cold-war's anti-Communist hysteria and TIA. Weyrich wants the Department of Homeland Security's Tom Ridge, or Congress, to investigate the funding sources behind the "neo-Communist" groups organizing the anti-war movement.
Weyrich's charge that Communists are leading the movement charge is nothing new -- the Center for the Study of Popular Culture's David Horowitz beat him to that by several months -- but Weyrich is the first to call for widespread investigations eerily reminiscent of when the House Un-American Activities Committee ran amuck.
"It seems that no matter what the cause, some of these groups have the money to go wherever there are demonstrations," Weyrich wrote in a recent column for the online conservative NewsMax.com. "If you read the names of the participating groups, you will see that they are hardcore leftists. They are the front groups created by the Soviet Union when it was pouring millions of dollars into the Communist Party USA, which in turn dispensed it to these phony organizations."
Weyrich, the chairman and CEO of the Washington, DC-based Free Congress Foundation, is determined to discredit the anti-war movement. How can these "phony organizations" make ends meet, he asks, when they don't even use "direct mail?"
"Even the liberal foundations don't want to associate with these folks. Even left-wing money types prefer to donate to environmental or socially radical groups." Since the Soviet Union collapsed, and with no money coming from other Communist countries, where in heaven's name "do they get their money?"
Further, Weyrich inquires: "How can these demonstrators be available to come to events from one end of the country to the other all year long? How do they support themselves? Who is supplying the money?"
Civil libertarian and Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff was outraged by Weyrich's proposal: "Suggesting the return of the House Committee on Un-American Activities is constitutionally un-American."
In a phone interview, Hentoff said, "From September 11 on, the President, the Attorney General and the Defense Secretary have been saying that whatever we have to do to keep the country secure has to be done and will be done within the bounds of the constitution. Paul Weyrich ought to re-read the Bill of Rights which starts with the First Amendment."
Weyrich acknowledges that he knows "some people who voted for President George W. Bush who marched in the demonstration in Washington." And it's difficult to tell which organizations exactly that he wants investigated. His column only refers to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), a group he disagrees with but "would nevertheless defend their right to express their beliefs," and the Workers World Party, "the chief organizer of the anti-war event in Washington and San Francisco," by name. It's apparent that the latter group would be one of the first targets for investigation.
Weyrich chatters on about unnamed "groups which are dedicated to the overthrow of the United States [that] should not be treated as legitimate," and "Communist front groups [that are out] to destroy our democratic republic," but didn't mention any of the dozens of groups who endorsed the two demonstrations.
Andrea Buffa, Peace Campaign Coordinator at the San Francisco-based Global Exchange, said that it appear as if red-baiting peace activists has become the national pastime of certain elements of the right in this country.
"Every time there is a huge anti-war protest there are immediate attacks on the groups that organized it. While it is not surprising it is totally offensive," she said. "Anyone who was at the demonstrations on January 18 knows that most of the people in attendance were not affiliated with any organizations -- let alone Stalinist groups or Iraqi spies. The red-baiting isn't surprising, but if it gets to the level of the US government investigating anti-war groups it would be absolutely unconscionable."
Weyrich insists that "No legitimate group should be intimidated if Congress goes after true enemies of America." Which groups are legitimate and which aren't appears to be up for grabs.
Weyrich also argues that investigating the financial support behind "these neo-Communists" is well within the purview of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and, if he refuses, Congress should take up the task.
Conservative Kingpin
Why take Paul Weyrich's proposal seriously? After all, even the Bush administration has acknowledged that people have the right to express themselves in a free society.
Chip Berlet, senior analyst with Political Research Associates, a Massachusetts-based organization tracking right-wing movements, argues in his article, "Re-Framing Dissent as Criminal Subversion: Paradigm Shift and Political Repression," that "one of the earliest and most overlooked warning signs that a campaign of political repression is underway is 'paradigm shift' ... [defined as] a major negative change in the way the public perceives the political movement that is ultimately victimized. Paradigm shift frequently is associated with episodes of political repression, and frequently precedes more overt signs of attack such as assaults, break-ins and surveillance. Political repression telegraphs its punches."
Paul Weyrich is no ordinary conservative political figure; he is more than the Zelig of late twentieth century Christian Right politics. He is, as Political Research Associates has said, a "key strategist for [both] the secular and religious right."
Weyrich is the real deal, and a far more significant figure in the Christian Right's inner circle than even someone as media-genic as Jerry Falwell. While Falwell gets maximum media exposure, you rarely hear about Weyrich. Weyrich's letters and e-mail communiqués to his constituency are combinations of conservative wisdom, fanciful prognostication and overheated rhetoric. Unlike the late-great sportscaster Howard Cossell who claimed to "tell it like it is," Weyrich tells it like he thinks it should be, and his ideas frequently come to the forefront.
In 1973, Weyrich helped raise the money to create the Heritage Foundation; he is also the founder of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate-sponsored organization that according to its Web site is an "association for conservative state lawmakers who share a common belief in limited government, free markets, federalism, and individual liberty."
A 1999 Christianity Today story credits Weyrich with being "instrumental in the development of the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition." Through the Free Congress Foundation he's organized numerous political campaigns, was a major supporter of Reagan's Central America wars and right-wing death squads, and a longtime backer of reactionaries in Africa, including UNITA's Jonas Savimbi. In a March 2002 column eulogizing Savimbi ("UNITA Leader Gave Life for Faith") Weyrich wrote: "I am always pleased to tell those who inquire that the picture [on my desk] is of Jonas Savimbi, leader of the freedom forces in Angola. I might now call him Saint Savimbi since he was martyred for his faith by the communist forces in that country."
Weyrich has been a long-term member of the Council for National Policy, a semi-secretive body made up of hundreds of conservative leaders.
He also founded National Empowerment Television, a television network totally devoted to conservative organizations.
Don't expect either Tom Ridge or Congress to respond quickly on Weyrich's call for investigating the anti-war movement. As with other right-wing ideas that often on their face seem dreadfully outlandish, my guess is that we haven't heard the last of this notion.
When the president declares war on Iraq those in the forefront of demonstrating and speaking out against it will likely become targets of the both the administration’s and conservatives’ well-oiled hit machine.
When that day comes, the rebirth of a Senate Internal Security Subcommittee or a House Committee on Un-American Activities, both abolished in the 1960s, may not be far behind.
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