Re: ANYT THOUGHTS ON AMERICAN PBS SERIES

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jeffrey L. Beatty
> To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK
> Sent: Thursday, July 01, 1999 3:53 PM
> Subject: Re: ANYT THOUGHTS ON AMERICAN PBS SERIES
>
>
> At 09:20 AM 7/1/99 PDT, Elson wrote:
>
> >>I saw it too. My impression was how stupid the comparison
was:
> >>comparing religious fanatics in the US (who support the US
> >>oppression of people in the Middle East)

[Beaty]
> Well, the religious right in the U.S. may have more in common
> with the Iranian fundamentalists than you think. At least
> factions of the religious right mistrust globalization of the
> world economy in much the same way as the Iranian
fundamentalists
> opposed U.S. "imperialism."

What they don'have in common is the most important issue: the US
MM are among the oppressors, the Islamic Fundamentalist movement
is a reaction by the oppressed against the US.  This doesn't mean
that progessives support fundamentalism, obviously not.  But it
does mean we see the difference between wholy irrational (because
exploitative) religious-based collective action and less
irrational (because struggling against oppression)
religious-based collective action.

In a message I sent to Hutchinson, I pointed out that there are
dozens and dozens of other examples of religious/cultural forms
of resistance to oppression that are in themselves not
scientifically rational, but are rational scientifically in so
far as they are used as a means of collective resistance to
exploitation.  Such examples include Tokugawa-period Japanese
millenarian peasant uprisings against landlord aggrandizement,
19th century Brazilian muslim-millenarian slave revolts, or in
the 1980s, "spirits of resistance" among women factory workers in
Malaysia or Latin American liberation theologists against
dictatorships, etc.

The video we saw compares fighters to oppressors as if they are
both equally irrational because they are both fundamentalists.
But they're not equally irrational.

(I've another response below).

The obvious example is Pat Buchanan
> (cf. Buchanan 1998--I might add that, in spite of the book's
> title, ol' Pat never cared much about "social justice" when he
> was working in the Nixon and Reagan administrations).
>
> Typically, key "boogie men" in the mythology of this strand of
> right-wing thought are the international banks, who are
sometimes
> believed in some vague way to be in league with, _inter alia_,
> "globalizers" promoting world government through the UN,
> international communism and Zionism. Zionism is by no means a
> "good guy" in this mythology, and for this reason these
> right-wingers have been attacked for appealing to
anti-Semitism.
> In 1996, Buchanan was criticized by the media for attacking
> international bankers who, for some strange reason, always had
> Jewish names. Pat Robertson's book _The New World Order_ has
also
> been attacked as implicitly anti-Semitic (Lind 1995a and
> 1995b;_New York Times_, March 2, 1995; _New York Times_, April
6,
> 1995). Robertson has publicly denied the allegation (cf. _New
> York Times_ March 4, 1995), even though the gist of his
analysis
> of the international political economy, as far as I can tell,
is
> virtually indistinguishable from the explicitly anti-Semitic
> arguments emanating from the Neo-Nazi camp (cf. an ancient
tract
> once sold by John Birchers called _None Dare Call It
> Conspiracy_). Furthermore, his reliance upon the arguments of
> anti-Semites of yesteryear, especially the British author Nesta
> H. Webster, has been documented (Heilbrunn 1995). Thus, at
least
> some religious right-wingers can't be seen as unambiguous
> defenders of "the US oppression of people in the Middle East"
> (translation: support for Israel).
>
> Unlike Elson, I don't think the religious right can be said to
> have "failed", although its failure to secure President
Clinton's
> conviction in his impeachment trial represents a major setback
> for it. For now, this setback seems to have strengthened the
hand
> of the "moderate" wing of the Republican Party in the U.S.
> presidential politics of 2000 (I might note in passing that
this
> may be small comfort in an period in which the "moderate" wing
> can be said to include former Gov. Pete Wilson of California,
> whose positions on immigration and affirmative action would
have
> had him labeled a racist and a Know-Nothing in earlier eras). I
> expect the religious right, as it has done before, will bide
its
> time, downplaying its social agenda, emphasizing middle-class
> issues like crime and taxes, and attempting to win relatively
low
> visibility elections (e.g., school board races) through
"stealth"
> campaigns (cf. Lind's discussion of Ralph Reed in Lind, 1995b,
> 21). Those of us opposed to the religious right will have to
> become more adept at ferreting out the "code words" it will use
> to appeal to the U.S. public.

You points are off the mark.  Neither Pat Buchanan nor Pete
Wilson are members of the Moral Majority or fundamentalist
christians.  The latter failed because they have utterly lost the
momentum that they had in the '80s.  In fact, many of the Moral
Majority leaders have explicitly acknowledged this.  As for the
strength of the right wing, this is an entirely different issue.

> Furthermore, I do not necessarily accept Elson's argument that
> the religious right has not appealed to the post-1960s
> generations.

My fault: I left out the qualifier "most" in front of "post-1960s
generations" (though did insert it in front of "pre 60s
generations."

Beyond that, it is, I point out again, an error to equate the
right wing with christian fundamentalism, as you do below again.

I commend to his attention annual surveys of U.S.
> college freshmen that, in recent years, have shown increasing
> support for conservative social values like the right to life
or
> sexual abstinence outside marriage (_Washington Post_, Jan. 13,
> 1997). Frankly, my experience is that, right-wing complaining
> about the "liberal" culture of the academy notwithstanding,
> university campuses in the United States are veritable breeding
> grounds for Christian fundamentalists (well--maybe "breeding
> ground" isn't an appropriate metaphor where sexually repressed
> Christian fundamentalists are concerned--grin). College
freshmen
> from conservative backgrounds frequently get "picked up off the
> boat", as it were, by Christian organizations like the
> Intervarsity Christian Fellowship or Campus Crusade. To be
sure,
> these organizations are not themselves political wings of
> right-wing religion, but they do attract individuals who are
> politically conservative, and thus can sometimes serve as
> "conduits" for right-wing religious propaganda. And, of course,
> there are more explicitly "political" elements of the religious
> right on campuses, like student organizations opposed to
> abortion.