-Caveat Lector- http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/maxpages/faculty/merupert/Research/far-right/HARD ER.HTM ...III. Critical Ambiguities of the New Populism We are witnessing the long and painful demise of the Fordist socio-political regime through which American industrial workers were incorporated into the hegemonic bloc which constructed the postwar global order. Finding their economic security and their political identity increasingly problematic, the easy certainties of the Cold War no longer providing fixed ideological reference points, American working people are trying to make sense of a rapidly changing world. It is in this context that alternative narratives of globalization increasingly challenge the blandishments of liberal internationalists. Some of these interpretations emphasize the anti-democratic character of transnational capitalism and the need to construct popular-democratic institutions within the world economy. Others view globalization as a process infused with evil intent, the product of un-American treacheries designed to undermine the Constitutional republic and its guarantees of individual rights. These latter interpretations tend to emphasize nationalism as a first line of defense against the insidious forces of globalization. Such alternative visions of globalization are circulating among various segments of the US population, seeking to embed themselves in popular common sense and thus to define the horizons of political action in this period of tension and flux. This unfolding struggle over the meaning of globalization in popular common sense, with all its tensions and possibilities, is represented in microcosm in the story of Chuck Harder and the United Broadcasting Network (UBN), referred to by the Wall Street Journal as 'Populist Inc.'. According to a UBN promotional bulletin, Harder has been a professional broadcaster since the 1960s. As a consumer affairs reporter, he is said to have become disillusioned with 'the 'velvet hammer' of corporate media,' which dampens anti-corporate messages to avoid offending advertisers. Harder left his mainstream media job in 1987, and invested his life savings to start a radio program for 'the little guys who had no voice'. Controversially, in 1989 Harder sold a majority stake in his first venture, the Sun Radio Network, to another network controlled by the Liberty Lobby - a group which calls itself 'populist' but pushes an anti-Semitic agenda of Holocaust denial and tales of global conspiracies by stateless 'international bankers'. After a brief partnership, Harder broke with Liberty Lobby and left Sun to start the People's Radio Network (PRN). Founded in 1991 with 72 stations, PRN has grown to around 300 radio stations in all 50 states, as well as 77 TV stations. According to journalist Marc Cooper, More than 40,000 listeners pay a minimum of $15 a year to belong to [Harder's] For the People organization. For an extra $19 a year another 30,000 followers subscribe to the biweekly, full color, thirty-two-page News Reporter...From merchandise sales and memberships, People's Radio Network grossed more than $4 million in 1994. Broadcast industry surveys show Harder outperforming such high-profile personalities as Michael Reagan and Oliver North, some ranking him among America's top ten radio talk-show hosts. Harder's radio show represents itself in the following terms: 'For the People seeks to provide a forum for the average citizen to learn about consumer information and the workings of our government. Because the program is financially supported by listeners rather than advertisers, Harder speaks without fear of corporate censorship or reprisals.' Harder says: 'Our goal is to save the middle class, save the little guy'. Harder and his guests - including such heavy hitters as Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan - have routinely excoriated corporate power and a government which they represent as unresponsive to popular needs and concerns. He and his guests have, on a variety of grounds, been sharply critical of recent trade agreements such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). During the NAFTA debate, Harder excited the interest of his listeners to such a degree that seven thousand of them bought copies of the full 2,000 page text of the NAFTA agreement which Harder made available at low cost. Recently, Harder's network was purchased by a consortium of investors including the United Automobile Workers (UAW). One of the most historically progressive of American industrial unions, the UAW is investing 'several million' dollars for a share of about ten percent in the re-named United Broadcasting Network (UBN) which, according to the Wall Street Journal, is 'designed to bring Mr. Harder to a wider audience by upgrading technology and buying stations in major markets'. As UAW public relations chief Frank Joyce explained to me, the union views UBN as a broad-based effort to present diverse perspectives on themes important to American working people, especially preserving American jobs. Until he resigned to become Ross Perot's presidential running mate, the new network's chairman was economic nationalist Pat Choate. Mentioned as likely commentators for UBN are highly visible opponents of transnational corporate power: Bay Buchanan, sister and political advisor of Pat Buchanan; left-populist Jim Hightower; and, of course, Harder himself. This was intriguing to me because Harder has been characterized as a promoter of far-right conspiratorial ideologies of globalization. Revisiting Harder's brief association with Liberty Lobby, critics suggest that this might be interpreted as part of a pattern in Harder's activities. They point out (correctly) that Harder's radio show For the People has offered a receptive atmosphere for far-right organizers and militia activists such as John Trochmann, Linda Thompson, and Ken Adams, and even provided a forum for the noxious anti-Semitic conspiratorialist Eustace Mullins. Further, Harder has marketed an array of far-right conspiratorial literature to his listeners (including for a time several of Mullins' books). Critics allege that Harder has told his listeners that the Council on Foreign Relations 'controls the world' and that he routinely promotes the view that America is being led toward incorporation into the New World Order by 'New York power brokers,' 'New York bankers,' 'the global elite', suggesting that Harder speaks to his audience in the lexicon of far-right conspiratorialists. Harder maintains that he does not promote conspiracy theories or anti-Semitism. And he disavows any association with far-right armed militias: 'I have never been to a militia meeting'. I have no idea who they are. I have no idea what they do'. He claims that his radio network presents a forum for a variety of populist voices - including, for example, both Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader - which 'promote American core values, morality and economic nationalism'. Critical of politicians from both major parties whom he characterizes as 'puppets of the multinational corporations that have brought this country to its knees in the name of profits and globaloney', Harder describes himself as 'non-partisan,' 'politically neutral': 'I'm on no side. They all despise me. The left-wingers hate me. The right-wingers hate me....It's very simple. I'm for what's right for the American people'. Harder and his network, it seems to me, represent the tensions and ambiguities of the new populism, a confluence of such currents as the far-right conspiratorial ideologies of the 'Patriot' movement, the economic nationalism associated with Buchanan and Perot, as well as the more progressive and potentially cosmopolitan world-views of Naderites and unionists. It is precisely this sense that the ambiguities and tensions of popular common sense are being played out in the productions of Harder's network that leads me to a closer reading of some of those materials. Reading the new populism: The News Reporter Chuck Harder and Richard Osborn of For the People made available to me the complete print run of the program's biweekly tabloid, The News Reporter, which was first published in August, 1992. Most the paper consists of articles and commentary reprinted from Knight-Ridder and other news services, but each edition also contains commentary by Harder, Osborn, and/or others associated with For the People. My interpretations here are based primarily upon a perusal of articles authored by Harder between August, 1992 and November, 1995. I read this material as an embodiment of the tensions and possibilities which have historically resided in the American populist tradition. According to Michael Kazin, the primary characteristic of populist discourse in the American political tradition is its claim to speak for 'the people' - represented as citizen-producers, the social foundation of the American republic - against arrogant and malevolent elites. On this view, populism is 'a language whose speakers conceive of ordinary people as a noble assemblage not bounded narrowly by class, view their elite opponents as self-serving and undemocratic, and seek to mobilize the former against the latter'. Kazin describes successive instantiations of populist language in American political history, speaking on behalf of (often white, male) farmers, craftsmen and small businessmen whose arduous labors are seen to create the material wealth of the republic. The great 'other' of these populist narratives is an aristocratic (and hence implicitly 'un-American') elite, producing nothing and living off the sweat of the average man even as they mocked his manners and mores. American populist movements have been 'rooted in contradiction,' Kazin suggests: 'they championed 'individual enterprise' or equal opportunity in the marketplace but decried the division between haves and have-nots as a perversion of democratic spirit'. Thus they have on the one hand envisioned a small town main street version of capitalism as their social ideal, while, on the other, they have railed against the undemocratic social power implicit in capitalism's core structure. The former position seems less likely than the latter to serve as a vehicle for the construction of a broad-based social movement encompassing the poor as well as the 'working middle class' and which might aim at the democratization of economic relations. The construction of such a movement, and of cross-border alliances with other people's movements for economic democracy, seems to me a prerequisite for effectively challenging the power of transnational corporate capital. To the extent, then, that the new populism can be reconstructed in such a way that it contributes to this agenda, I would assess its impact as potentially progressive. If, on the other hand, it scapegoats the poor as parasites on the middle class, and takes refuge in an economic nationalism which represents underpaid and underprotected workers in other countries as somehow to blame for deteriorating conditions in America, then the new populism is serving to divide rather than unite the dispossessed and its effect is to enhance still further the power of transnational capital. In attempting to sort out the various currents of neo-populist ideology running through For the People, it seems to me important to ask questions such as the following. Who are 'the people' in whose name claims of injustice are being made, and who are represented as the people's oppressors? Are 'the people' understood in the fashion of a narrowly ethnocentric 'Americanism' - as, for example, the white 'middle class' burdened not only by the exploitation of super-rich bankers but also by an unproductive underclass? Or are 'the people' broadly construed as those whose life chances are constrained by pervasive social inequalities, within the US and transnationally? Is that oppression represented as being rooted in a particular socio-political order, or is it attributed to the intrinsic characteristics of malevolent individuals or groups? What kinds of political strategies seem to flow from these analyses; what kinds of possible worlds do they point toward? Who are 'the people' addressed by Harder and For the People ? In a statement of 'editorial and broadcast philosophy', the News Reporter put it like this: 'It is our simple belief that all Americans of all colors and creeds must work together to face the problems and rebuild our country and regain our previous standard of living'. Unlike racist elements of the Patriot movement who (more or less explicitly) address 'White Americans,' Harder's brand of populist Americanism appears more inclusive. For example, rather than drawing on the familiar racist trope which associates crime and violence with non-whites, Harder suggests a more sociological perspective in which crime is linked with poverty and desperation. Constructing prison cells for non-white citizens thus seems less important than rebuilding the productive base which supports all working Americans. This approach is also reflected in Harder's comments on the roots of the Los Angeles riots: 'Unless all people in the USA have a fair and equal chance at the American Dream, there is no way to avoid more riots of the kind that swept through Los Angeles'. Such language contrasts markedly with Pat Buchanan's call for military suppression of those he characterized as a lawless 'mob'. Harder's representation suggests instead that issues of social justice uniting middle-class and poor Americans of all races are more fundamental than their differences, thus keeping open the possibility of cross-race solidarity. Harder's version of 'the people,' however, does not seem to be a concept sufficiently elastic to encompass workers in the third world, who are often characterized in the News Reporter as 'coolies' and 'peasants,' language suggesting that the labors of such unsophisticated peoples could not be worth more than some bare minimum (sub-American) wage. To the extent that American workers are brought into competition with 'coolies' and 'peasants,' this seems to imply, their standard of living will inevitably suffer. Accordingly, For The People consistently advocates a more militant economic nationalism, urging its audience to 'fix America first' and to 'buy American'. At a minimum, this does little to encourage cross-border solidarity amongst those dominated by the growing power of multinational corporate capital. In the worst case, it could be interpreted by the racist right as validation of their view of white Americans and Europeans as genetically superior and thus entitled to a higher standard of living than the rest of the world. Similarly ambiguous are Harder's representations of the causes of popular oppression. While occasionally disavowing conspiratorialism, Harder consistently uses language which lends itself quite readily to interpretations grounded in far-right conspiratorial ideology. 'The people' are seen as being oppressed by an elite whose disproportionate power is based in finance, and whose interests diverge from those of 'middle class' Americans. Responding to published critiques which associated him with far-right conspiratorialism, Harder's language took on an analytical, almost sociological tone: 'Wall Street has come to dominate national policy-making in Washington, both through the way we finance our elections and the force of money in the economy. The decision-making, moreover, is highly concentrated. It is not a conspiracy theory...but a well-documented reality'. Yet, Harder repeatedly tells of an antidemocratic 'shadow government' in which 'David Rockefeller and his power group' stealthily influence government policy through such organizations as the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations. 'These groups serve as a 'Chamber of Commerce' for the ultra-rich industrialists and the world's elite,' writes Harder. 'Our concern is that the everyday citizen has no voice, input, or real opportunity to balance their doctrines and goals that, historically, become law and official US policy'. According to Harder, American electoral democracy is hollow insofar as 'both parties are controlled and owned by the David Rockefeller crowd - the global greedsters and world industrial overlords who love slave labor and big profits'. Rhetoric of this latter sort moves away from a more sociological perspective focusing on structured imbalances of social power and moves back toward the scapegoating of nefarious individuals or groups who are held to be ultimately responsible for the deteriorating circumstances faced by ordinary Americans. Thus in another discussion of globalization and deindustrialization, Harder asks: 'Who's doing this? The answer is the global bankers and influence peddlers'. Globalization, and the concomitant deindustrialization of America, is seen as the financial elite's deliberate policy of self-enrichment at the expense of American working people - 'the disposable victims of global corporations chasing larger profits and lower labor costs' by moving factories abroad to take advantage of 'desperate people' in impoverished countries. Free trade agreements (NAFTA and GATT) are viewed as instruments of this elite strategy: 'It's obvious to us that the bankers, who control our USA public policy via their front organizations, have implemented deals like NAFTA'. 'Good jobs in the US are exported to sweatshops where frightened, docile, unarmed peasants do exactly as they are told. This slave-labor force...establishes the base line for the economic yardstick called "global competitiveness." It is where the US is headed'. Global competitiveness may then be used by corporate employers to batter down the middle class aspirations of American working people: 'War was silently declared on the "American Dream," as the wealth and lifestyle of the middle-class was drained and turned into profit for a select financial global elite in New York and Tokyo'. In 'corporate America's New World (fascist) Order,' Harder warns his readers in language which resonates even more strongly with far-right visions of imminent enslavement, 'People in America could literally be forced to live in poverty at gunpoint in a federal police-state'. Harder cautions, 'Don't call it a conspiracy because it was just consensus by the elite to do good business.' Yet, there is little analysis of the social conditions under which such practices could be seen as 'good business', or of social reforms which might redefine the conditions of 'good business'. Instead, echoing The Spotlight - the hard-core conspiricist tabloid of the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby - Harder refers to this New World Order as the elite's 'global plantation dream'. In language which would warm the blood of any far-right 'Patriot' or armed militiaman, he has condemned globalization boldly and simply as 'TREASON'. >From formulations like this his audience might readily infer that the solution to America's problem is to neutralize the perpetrators who are usurping governmental power in order to victimize 'the people'. Resistance to such treason and tyranny may require an armed and militant citizenry as the final defense of freedom, as Harder's friendly reception of militia-related guests seemed to imply. On this view, constructing broad-based social movements could appear less relevant than building heavily armed bastions from which to strike against the forces of globalization and tyranny. Despite Harder's disavowal of violence and calls for peaceful political resolution of America's problems, anecdotal evidence suggests that For the People has contributed to the environment in which far-right ideology has incubated. For example, an officer of the Michigan Militia told the St Louis Post-Dispatch that Harder's show 'gives people like me... a chance to call in and talk about...the fear they have of their government... They are trying to destroy this country...some of the people who are in power...some of the world bankers... If they break my constitutional...rights to come into my house, to take my weapons, yes, I feel like I have the right to resist'. Also suggestive is the fact that Patriot, militia or other far-right sites on the world wide web sometimes recommend For the People or provide links to the show's home page. Chuck Harder and the new world order Whether or not Mr. Harder sympathizes with the far-right, what is important to me is the fact that his growing network of around 300 radio stations serves as a vehicle for the contending counter-ideologies of globalization. In this populist stew, the Americanist anti-globalisms of Pat Buchanan, the Patriot/militia movement and Eustace Mullins are juxtaposed with the more cosmopolitan democratic ideology of Ralph Nader and Jim Hightower. In venues such as this, the world-view of neoliberal internationalism - in which states and corporations create the rules for global economic integration - is facing challenges which emphasize different aspects of popular common sense in order to envision alternative possible worlds. Drawing on the democratic strains of popular common sense, what I have called the left-progressive position would construct a world in which the global economy is explicitly politicized, corporate power is confronted by transnational coalitions of popular forces, and a framework of democratically developed standards provides social accountability for global economic actors. The antiglobalist position of the far-right, on the other hand, envisions a world in which Americans are uniquely privileged inheritors of a divinely inspired socio-political order which must at all costs be defended against external intrusions and internal subversion. In these ideological contests, the future shape of transnational political order may be at stake. The emerging historical structure of transnational capitalism may generate the potential for the construction of political identities and projects which transcend state-centric understandings of politics and facilitate transnational movements to contest the global dominance of capital. To the extent that the ambiguities of the new populism are resolved in ways which reconstruct political identities on the basis of economic, cultural, or racial/ethnic nationalism, this potential will be undercut. If, on the other hand, this ambiguous populism can be reconstructed in ways which broaden its core understandings of 'the people' and affirm core values of popular self-determination, it could provide a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the emergence of transnational social movements oriented toward the democratization of the world economy. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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