SPLC

Jeffrey L. Beatty wrote:

>I am willing to concede the possibility that selective
>perception on the part of the media may have caused the right-wing elements
>to get more attention than their actual presence entitled them to.

Any more than microscopic attention would be excessive. They were 
essentially invisible.

Here's a recent WSJ piece on the same topic.

Doug

----

Wall Street Journal - April 19, 2000

Left and Right Converge
On Economic Globalization
[by Gerald Seib]

YOU'D THINK PAT Buchanan and the protesters in Washington's streets 
this week would feel some real bonds, given that they share a hatred 
for runaway economic globalization.

You would be wrong.

Consider Brendan O'Sullivan, who should be Pat Buchanan's kind of 
guy. He's deeply suspicious of big international financial 
organizations, leery of free-trade rhetoric and wary of trade deals 
with China. Ditto for Mr. Buchanan.

Mr. O'Sullivan feels strongly enough about all this that he traveled 
to Washington from Madison, Wis., this week to stand shivering in the 
rain and protest outside World Bank headquarters. Mr. Buchanan feels 
strongly enough that he left the Republican Party to carry his views 
into the Reform Party.

Given this harmonic convergence, Mr. O'Sullivan is thinking about 
supporting Mr. Buchanan for president on the Reform Party ticket, 
right? Not a chance. "I think basically he's a right-wing fascist," 
Mr. O'Sullivan declares.

There, in a nutshell, is the problem faced by Mr. Buchanan on the 
right and all those protesters on the left. They happen to come 
together to oppose the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund 
and unfettered free-trade policies. But each side considers the other 
a flawed messenger.

It's trendy to say that the far right and the far left have moved so 
far away from the establishment on international economics that 
they're actually coming together. But that sounds more true than it 
really is. In talks with several dozen protesters on Washington's 
streets this week, not one volunteered praise for Mr. Buchanan. The 
presidential candidate of choice, for those who might vote, is the 
reliably leftist Ralph Nader.

IN REALITY, MR. BUCHANAN and the demonstrators may arrive at similar 
positions, but do so for strikingly different reasons. "Many of them 
are globalists and interventionists, and I'm not," Mr. Buchanan 
acknowledges.

Mr. Buchanan is an economic nationalist. His goal in opposing trade 
deals and international economic organizations is, first and 
foremost, to protect the well-being of American workers. He feels the 
International Monetary Fund and World Bank are sucking away American 
workers' tax dollars to bail out international bankers and line the 
pockets of corrupt oligarchs, so he opposes them.

The demonstrators this week oppose the World Bank and IMF as well, 
but more out of concern for workers internationally. They think the 
institutions pay too little heed to the human and environmental 
rights of workers in other countries as they finance the work of 
multinational corporations. "There are some profound differences when 
it comes to motivation," says Mark Stout, a Green Party member from 
California, who showed up at the protests wearing a Nader button.

Those differences eventually come to the surface. They lead Mr. 
Buchanan to oppose forgiving Third World debts, for fear the bill for 
unpaid debts will be shifted to American taxpayers through higher IMF 
and World Bank dues. The protesters, by contrast, chant for forgiving 
Third World debt to ease the burden of development.

SIMILARLY, MR. BUCHANAN opposes many trade deals because he thinks 
they put American workers at a disadvantage by allowing in imports 
produced by cut-rate overseas labor. The protesters oppose the same 
kind of trade deals, but more out of concern that they fail to help 
the foreign workers whose paltry wages and unsafe working conditions 
produce those cheap imports. Mr. Buchanan and his compatriots "have a 
protectionist attitude," says Amber Martin, a protester from Albany, 
N.Y. "Our view is that we want other countries in the world to have 
the same economic benefits we have in the U.S."

Sometimes, of course, there is a real convergence. Mr. Buchanan says 
that he had more in common with the protesters who disrupted the 
World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle earlier this year. By 
opposing the WTO, he says, both he and the street protesters "were 
standing up for America's right to decide her own laws, and not have 
them revoked or rescinded by some international organization."

So both he and the protesters oppose the U.S.-China trade deal that 
is to open the way for China's entry into the WTO. But Mr. Buchanan 
does so in part because he thinks American workers will be hurt as 
big multinational corporations move American jobs to Chinese 
factories. The protesters object largely because they think Chinese 
workers' rights will be violated in those same factories.

And good luck trying to get Mr. Buchanan and the street people to 
agree on, say, immigration policy. It's cool to talk about how right 
and left converge in the New Economy. But so far, talk outstrips 
reality.