NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #20/NN_1992_20.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/6370

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From: New Liberation News Service <[e-mail]>
Subject: Fascism with a Friendly Face...
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Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 20:16:59 GMT
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Fascism with a Human Face? The Oregon Citizens Alliance and the
Rise of the Christian Right David Jarman and Jason W. Moore, NLNS

(NLNS)--No matter how much joy liberals may feel at the impending
schism within the Oregon Republican Party, progressives more than
ever need to look closely at Oregon's political future.  The
likelihood that the Democratic Party will benefit from the new
electoral math is trivial compared to the fact that the emergence
of the Oregon Citizens Alliance as a new political party will
serve only to strengthen, not weaken, conservatism.
    The OCA's current pet project, the Abnormal Behaviors
Initiative (Measure Nine), seeks to, in effect, legalize
homophobia by prohibiting government from "promoting, encouraging,
or facilitating homosexuality," which the OCA kindly equates with
pedophilia.  Yet, the OCA is interested in more than queer-bashing
these days.
     The origins of the OCA lay in Joe Lutz's 1986 Republican
primary challenge against Sen. Bob Packwood as a protest against
the Republican Senator's pro-choice record.  The next year, Lutz,
Lon Mabon, Dick Younts, and then chair of the Oregon Republican
Party T.J. Bailey, founded the OCA in Klamath Falls primarily as a
support network for anti-choice and "family values" activists.  It
quickly established itself as a fiercely ideological movements
with a strong grass-roots base, quickly winning support from the
increasingly threatened resource-dependent working class in
Oregon.
     With the impending establishment of its American Heritage
Party, the OCA seeks to build on its successes in the 1988
election, where it sponsored an initiative that struck down
then-Governor Neil Goldschmidt's executive order banning
discrimination against lesbian and gay state workers, and Al
Mobley's 1990 independent gubernatorial candidacy which
successfully "punished" the supposedly "far left" David
Frohnmayer.  The OCA's transformation from the narrowly-based
single issue politics of the late 1980s to an independent
electoral force capable of winning broad-based support is at the
vanguard of a nation-wide ultra-right Christian grab for political
power, a process which in motion since the mid-1970s.
     At stake in Oregon, and across the country, is more than
protecting under law (laws which currently provide only minimal
guarantees) the rights of lesbians and gays.  The OCA and its
Christian Right brethren across the country do not just want their
views on homosexuality, or abortion, or some other single issue,
enacted into law -- they desire a massive reconstruction of
society.  As ultra-right fundraiser Paul Weyrich articulated in
the early 1980s
-- "We are different from previous generations of radicals.  We
are no longer working to preserve the status quo.  We are radicals
[sic], working to overturn the present power structure of the
country." Weyrich, though not affiliated with the OCA, represents
one of the extreme right's dominant ideological currents, and
certainly the views of a majority of OCA members.
     Often posing as anti-establishment, the pseudo-populism of
the Christian Right sets its cross-hairs not on big business but
on the remnants of the liberal welfare state and on weakened
progressive movements seeking to preserve such radical ideas as
public education, job training, and basic civil and reproductive
rights.  Using racist, sexist, and homophobic themes not only
captures significant support for a broader ultra-right program,
but serves to destabilize progressive and Left movements by
pushing them on the defensive and dividing their base of support.
     This strategy has evolved beyond the crude racism of, say, a
George Wallace or even a David Duke, in delivering what appears to
be an empowering political message which serves to cripple the
long-term ability of these same people to control their lives.
For instance, earlier this year the OCA attempted to place a
measure on the ballot mandating voter approval for all state tax
and fee increases.  At first glance, this appears to expand
democracy.  In reality, it further centralizes power in the
federal government -- which even the Christian Right says is out
of touch with the average citizen -- by depriving local
governments of the ability to raise revenue.
     In pushing a political program which addresses, if even
superficially, the real concerns of middle and working class
Americans, the Christian Right successfully pushes the political
"center" dramatically to the right.  In pushing a political
program, which seeks to tap widespread disillusion and
dissatisfaction with government, they are no longer perceived as
single-issue cranks, but as a force to be taken seriously.  This
development allows the Christian Right to pass off its own
extremist agenda as acceptable, even humane; at the same time the
mainstream right (George Bush, even Pat Buchanan) becomes more
"normal" and "moderate."
     This right-wing dynamic allows the ruling class to have it
both ways -- "mainstream" conservatives can call for compromise
and moderation while their junior partners on the far right serve
as the establishment's action arm.  OCA-style movements throughout
the country, and even the world, have been mobilized to accelerate
the erosion of the welfare state through attacks on taxation,
public assistance, public education, and health care.  This in
turn benefits the ultra-right when workers find themselves without
jobs, and then without social services.  Disheartened citizens,
anxious for some kind of solution, understandably turn to what is
usually the only political voice they can hear speaking to their
experience -- that of right-wing movements.
     While Weyrich's and much of the Christian Right's talk about
fundamentally altering the power structure is only so much empty
rhetoric, it does resonate with an increasingly impoverished
working class and an increasingly frightened middle class  -- both
eager for explanations of today's social crises. These are the
people who the Democrats and "moderate" Republicans have abandoned
in their mad scramble for the votes of white suburbanites.  As
media pundits trumpet the "suburban century," everyone from the
rural poor to the fall-out from the shrinking middle class to the
residents of the decaying inner cities are left without a role in
the new political era.
     The right sees the danger in allowing workers to think too
much about the set-backs of recent decades and views right-wing
populism as a means of preventing the working class from drifting
back to the populism of the Left.  Their job is made that much
easier by the virtual absence of any Left voices.
     The OCA's restlessness and the ascendancy of the Christian
Right raises the question of a schism occurring at a national
level in the Republican Party.  This is always a possibility,
though unlikely -- and it is just as unlikely that if it did
happen, the two would rarely be at loggerheads.  The Oregon split
occurs in a state with both a Republican party that is
comparatively liberal on social issues, and an ongoing debate over
management of dwindling resources that the right has constructed
to win the support of workers, pitting them against the "liberal
establishment."  Certainly, the national Republican Party is not
perceived by the Christian Right as either socially liberal or
anti-worker.  Chances for a split would most likely arise from a
potential Republican strategy which would favor a more "moderate"
social and economic package capable of wooing back the
middle-class suburbanites that Bill Clinton and Ross Perot have
eagerly courted this year.
     More likely is that the rightward shift of the center will
only push the Republican Party further right, with the Democratic
Party in tow.  As George Bush moves to placate his party's right
wing, and as Clinton shuns the Democrats' traditional
constituencies, the power of the Christian Right to frame
mainstream political debate will continue to grow.
     As long as the Left remains essentially defensive and
reactive, we can expect at best stop-gap victories.  Even if
Measure Nine goes down to defeat, Oregon will not be any more
just.  A proactive stance against right-wing strides toward
seizing political turf must be taken.  While the Portland-based
Coalition for Human Dignity (Box 40344, Portland OR 97240,
232-5070) has made significant efforts towards defeating Measure
Nine, they have yet to propose any initiatives which go beyond
beating back OCA-led attacks on human rights.  Progressive
movements need to deal with the OCA's political program as much as
their particular cause of the day.  Only by seeking to grapple
with and alter the social relations which provide fertile ground
for fascist-minded Christian Right movements like the OCA can the
Left seize the high ground.  Only then can there be any hope of
reversing the political climate's ominous rightward march.
     An active approach must include more than just ballot
initiatives, though -- the Left must learn a lesson from the OCA's
ability to connect with the dislocated worker and dissatisfied
suburbanites.  Measure Nine will not be defeated if activists
continue to focus on urban populations; this struggle will be won
or lost in resource-dependent, working class communities like
Springfield, Albany, Roseburg, and Medford.  As the citizens of
these towns desperately seek alternatives to the pabulum they are
constantly fed by the two parties and the mass media, the only
alternative voice they hear is that of the OCA's ultra-right
demagogic manipulations.  Until progressives and radicals actively
organize these communities, and counterpose a populism of the Left
to the pseudo-populist proto-fascism of the Christian Right, we
can only expect the insidious rightward shift to continue.

DAVID JARMAN, former managing editor of the Amherst Student at
Amherst College and JASON W. MOORE, Editor of the Student
Insurgent at University of Oregon, serve as co-directors for the
Center for Contemporary Activism.