[Reader-list] Obama vs Right Wing Frenzy

[Paul D. Miller]

Obama, Right Wing Frenzy -- and the Left

By Mark Solomon

Some have pointed at past attacks on Democratic
presidents to contend that there is every little about
the current hysteria that has not been seen before. But
there is something different about the frenzied and
relentless right wing assault on Barack Obama. The
vitriolic fear mongering and lies about Obama's health
care reform, the calculated fanning of racism and anti-
communism, organized disruptions of congressional town
meetings replete with gun-toting intimidators,
slanderous and frenzied attacks without boundaries --
constitute a qualitative leap into an abyss of violent
rhetoric and occasional violent acts that have rarely
been seen before.

Fueling that frenzy is significant right wing corporate
money that has heavily financed emerging groups that
have galvanized protests on the right. Among those
formations, some have cynically appropriated symbols
from the American Revolution to manipulate and sustain
anger against Obama and the government through
contrived "tea parties" and vitriolic demonstrations
freighted with racist smears.

The most reactionary sectors of the corporate elite
(especially oil, gas coal and insurance money) are not
impressed by Obama's cautious and at times temporizing
policymaking. Obama's appeals to bipartisanship
regularly fall on deaf ears. The right is not
encouraged by centrist policies that fall well within
sustaining the institutional domination of capital.
Rather, it senses that the country is at a dangerous
transformational moment -- symbolized by the Obama
presidency. Eight years of right wing rule brought
severe blows that led to the right's defeat in 2008.
The toll of Wall Street's financial collapse and the
economic crisis of rising joblessness and social
dislocation, the drain of resources from the hopeless
Iraq war and the more hopeless Afghan venture, health
care and environmental crises, assorted scandals that
shredded Washington's claim to moral authority -- all
led to a powerful convergence of various forces --
labor, youth, women, African Americans, Latinos and
other nationalities that responded to Obama's call for
change.

It is both the potential to advance a more democratic
and egalitarian society inherent in the Obama
presidency and the power of an emerging progressive
majority that is the target of the right wing assault.
Both represent for the right a frightening promise of
social transformation. Whatever the insufficiencies of
Obama's health proposals, the right wing (abetted by
assorted "moderates") senses in those proposals an
historic effort to undermine vast privately held wealth
by effecting a major redistribution of that wealth. The
right rails against a tepid "public option" because it
perceives an historic precedent -- a "slippery slope"
according to their house intellectuals at the Weekly
Standard --to government "socialist" control of the
health care industry.

The heavy infusion of funds into the campaign against
health care reform and against the Obama presidency has
abetted the rallying of a large constituency
representing a complex and often bewildering array of
ideologies and programs. But some elements of that
convergence of right wing forces are clear. The
historic ascendancy of an African American to the
presidency has stirred deep wellsprings of racism
grounded in paranoid fear that racial and national
minorities are taking wealth and power from whites --
ironically wealth and power that they never possessed.
The wail of a demonstrator in Washington that "we want
our country back" was a plea for the return of
unmitigated white supremacy -- for a world unaltered by
irresistible social and demographic change, for
reversal of African American advance symbolized by
Obama, for ending immigration spawned by the upheavals
of globalization. Immigration has now broadened the
range of racism, stoking the anxieties of a major
sector of the right wing movement.

Anti-communism, another weapon of the right wing
arsenal, deeply embedded in the country's history, has
been revived to paint Obama as variously a communist or
socialist (or perversely as a fascist, a hypocritical
manipulation of a most frightening image by a fascist-
tinged current). Anti-communism has been resurrected as
"big government" driven by jack boots running health
care and enforcing a a reversal of the "natural order"
of white supremacy.

Finally, right wing populism has been reintroduced to
exploit genuine anxieties of those who fear impending
economic collapse, long-term joblessness, and a
government that has, especially in the last decade,
remorselessly lied to them. Right wing trends in
populism of the late 19th century berated banks and
railroads while directing the rage of white farmers and
workers towards on African Americans (actually abetting
those banks and railroads). Current rightist populism
demagogically mimics working class anger at multi-
trillion dollar bailouts to banks. It utilizes the old
McCarthyite tactic of attacking "liberal elites" that
allegedly manipulate the powers of government to coerce
the mass with unwanted and repressive programs. Beneath
the anti-corporate rhetoric is the real objective--to
cultivate searing hatred for government --- at least
government that has been obliged to seek social
cohesion by pursuing modest steps towards equality.

Orchestrated by corporate and Republican operatives and
Fox media, the racists, anti-communists, anti-
environmentalists, anti-choice and anti-gay rights
elements, "birthers," "tea baggers," religious
fundamentalists, anti-taxers -- and some driven by
confusion, fear and desperation in an imploding economy
-- are bound together by a single, overriding factor:
resentment and anger at Barack Obama as the symbol of
unwelcome change and the power of liberal government.
That animus towards Obama enabled a distinct minority
to nevertheless galvanize its splintered
constituencies, to frame the political debate and to
overshadow the broad forces that drove Obama to the
White House. While analogies are never perfect, it is
instructive to recall that a clear minority, driven by
paranoia, anti-Semitic scapegoating, racism and
nationalism in early 1930s Germany was able to take
power in the face of a paralyzed center and a divided
left. The stakes in the current right wing drive to
decapitate the Obama presidency and restore the Bush
nightmare (or worse) require clear-eyed resistance to
the right wing's attempts to undermine Obama and
crucially, to topple the broad social movement that
brought him to the presidency.

On the left, there appears to be a general
understanding of the importance of stanching the right
wing offensive against the present administration --
while subjecting that administration to grass roots
pressure to steer it in a progressive direction.
However, some influential left voices are engaging in
an one-dimensional attacks on Obama that sow confusion,
demoralization and demobilization that however
unintentional, detract from the primary need to combat
the right wing. (The pseudo-left fringe that defines
Obama as a stalking horse for a ruling class conspiracy
is not considered in this article.)

For example, a prominent peace activist, demonstrating
against Obama at his Martha's Vineyard vacation site
declared that in calling Bush a war criminal we must
also call Obama a war criminal. Another voice on the
left recently published a more sophisticated, but no
less disorienting attack in an article titled "Bush's
Third Term? You're Living It." Faithful to its title,
the article, posted on prominent left websites, recites
a catalog of deeply institutionalized imperial and
national security polices passed from administration to
administration -- the largest military budget in
history, defense of executive privilege, continuing
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a "Bush third term"
honeycombed with Wall St. operatives that orchestrated
the massive bailout of the finance industry. The point,
of course, is that Bush's third term is Obama first
term.

To reach that conclusion a selective scalpel had to be
applied to Obama's brief record as President. Some
comparisons with Bush ("continuing his policy of
extraordinary rendition") are questionable. Torture
have been formally ruled out by the present
administration. But rendition, though not clearly
rejected,  is nearly paralyzed by hesitancy. Other
aspects of military and national security policy such
as complete withdrawal from Iraq, escalation in
Afghanistan,  release of White House visitor logs,
torture indictments, claims of executive privilege --
are either yet to be finalized or are frozen for the
moment by internal conflicts within the administration.

The "Bush third term" analogy also requires the
omission of Obama policies that reflect the influence
of the  multilateralist wing of the military and
foreign policy establishment -- to an extent the
influence of progressive forces. Can one imagine George
W. Bush opening the door to the elimination of nuclear
weapons? Would Bush have canceled the provocative
European missile shield that has riled the Russians?
However tenuous and cautious the Obama approach, would
Bush have opened the door to Cuba? Would he have
condemned the Honduras coup? In the domestic sphere, it
is unimaginable that George W. Bush would launch a
major stimulus, however short of overwhelming need, to
boost a shattered economy, to call for Wall St. re-
regulation, for institutionalized consumer protection
and for urgent attention to the environmental crisis?

Pointing out positive aspects of Obama's brief record
is not meant to negate justified criticism or to offer
a mechanical balance sheet devoid of analysis of its
principal elements.Some of his administration's policy
choices are riven by serious contradictions such as its
claim to re-ignite a Latin American good neighbor
policy that is undercut by a plan to establish military
bases in Columbia or its demand for a freeze on Israeli
settlements that is countered by its retreat before
Netanyahu and its obstruction of the Goldstone report
on Israeli crimes in Gaza. However, to close our eyes
to the positive and to offer one-dimensional
condemnation is to perilously neglect the internal
splits in ruling circles that provide openings for
progressives and to weaken the spirit and resolve of
progressives to reinvigorate the social movement that
brought Obama to the presidency.

Those Obama policies that reinforce imperial strategic
interests and the dominance of the financial sector
should be subjected to criticism and opposition --
first and foremost from the forces that put him in
office. Obama the candidate promised change, but he is
a cautious, pragmatic politician who bends at times to
the left (especially when he feels the weight of that
"bottom up" movement that he talked about when
campaigning) but who carefully assesses and responds to
the pressures of powerful ruling blocs that oppose his
agenda. President Barack Obama understands a
progressive platform. His recent media interviews
demonstrated an acute understanding of single payer
health care and of various forms of socially grounded
health programs around the world. But given his
assessment of the power of insurance and pharmaceutical
interests arrayed against even tepid reform, Obama was
not going to carry the ball for meaningful universal
health care without a powerful, united push from his
left. Standing in the wings are forces, at least as
powerful as those opposed to universal health care,
geared to prevent serious measures to combat the
environmental crisis and to stop the Employee Free
Choice Act. Defeating those forces requires the urgent
unity of a reinvigorated progressive movement.

Crucial to the fight against the right wing offensive
is the need to  pressure the Obama administration to
sharpen its policies in a progressive direction.The
administration's vague and temporizing approach to
vital issues like health care undermines the clarity
and vitality of the majority on the left and center,
thus weakening the fight against the right. Organizing
for America, the 13-million-person list of Obama
supporters has had little success in urging its members
to mobilize to support vaguely-defined "quality health
care," thus stifling efforts to counter the resurgence
of the right wing and to reach out and win that large
segment on the right that is motivated by deep economic
insecurity and distrust of government. The task of
invigorating Organizing for America falls to the left
which should be involved in reawakening the progressive
agenda that largely motivated the Obama coalition in
the first place.

A way forward at this critical juncture is suggested by
an event that took place in Boston in late September to
"talk back to the G20." A packed public meeting at
Northeastern University was sponsored by the Majority
Agenda Project -- dedicated to the principle of the
inseparability of the crises in the economy, the
environment and foreign policy and need to mobilize the
majority that supports progressive policies to stem
those crises. The meeting before a predominantly young,
multiracial audience was addressed by an economist who
briefly surveyed the damaging bailout of the financial
system; by a student whose parents are now jobless and
who may be forced to leave college, by two Latina
housekeepers at the Boston Hyatt Hotel who were
replaced by contract workers at half their wages
(bringing many in the audience to tears), by two
African American women fighting foreclosure of their
homes, by a sociologist who produced data to
demonstrate the country is center-left not center-
right, by a young Iraq war veteran who made the
connection between wasteful military spending and the
crisis at home, by a medical doctor who described
through personal experience the magnitude of the crisis
in health care, by an African American environmental
activist who surveyed the fight against climate
catastrophe in his community and a by leader of the
Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party who drew together the
many strands of crisis into a coherent whole. In
reporting on the results small group discussion, a
student pointed out that the meeting had put a human
face on growing suffering, had demonstrated the
inseparability of the various crises and the compelling
need for all those  affected by those crises and
working for change to stand together.

The country is again at a critical crossroads that may
well determine the outcome of the fight against the
right wing and the fate of a progressive agenda.
Whether the war in Afghanistan will be escalated or
whether a path will be taken to ending US and NATO
intervention will impact a range of issues from a a new
stimulus to create green jobs, to solving the crisis of
health care, to serious engagement with the impending
climate catastrophe. In coming days, the rallies,
protests and lobbying to end the war in Afghanistan
should be the basis for the broadest movement to
embrace the thousands who converged in Detroit to seek
minimal aid in paying rent and utilities to the
military families, to the millions of jobless, to the
millions who are caught in the health care crisis and
to all of us facing the environmental crisis. Now is
the time to resurrect the alliance that defeated the
right in 2008. That fight goes on and so must the quest
for the unity of all progressive forces.