In the wake of the Cold War, the world which confronts Americans seems hopelessly
complex, confusing, and impossible to master. 
Americans had become accustomed to thinking of themselves as the defenders of
liberty against the totalitarian threats of fascism and communism; but since the
disintegration of the "evil empire," it is more difficult to maintain such an
unambiguous political identity. Enemies have become friends, and allies now appear as
economic rivals. Americans are casting about for a way to make sense of the post-Cold War
world and their place within it.
As their global political identity has become insecure, Americans are also having to rethink their sense of themselves as members of a prosperous "middle class". Since the 1970s, working Americans have faced increasingly difficult economic circumstances: declining real wages and a polarization of income and wealth have led to intensified pressures on "middle class" Americans. Traditionally distrustful of centralized governmental power, many Americans feel overburdened by governmental regulations and taxes, and may blame government for the plight of the "middle class". Polls suggest that disaffection from the federal government is running very high among the US public.
This general context makes far-right anti-government ideology appealing to many more Americans than simply a tiny "lunatic fringe". According to Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates - a man who has been studying the far-right for twenty years - the armed militias which have received so much media attention in recent months are an "offshoot of the larger and more diffuse Patriot movement [which] is bracketed on the moderate side by the John Birch Society and the conspiratorial segment of Pat Robertson's audience, and on the more militant side by the Liberty Lobby and groups promoting themes historically associated with white supremacy and anti-Jewish bigotry" (Berlet, 1995: 2-3).
Variants of the basic anti-government, anti-globalist conspiracy narrative (which we have revied in previous segments of the Guided Tour) circulate within and among the following communities:
1. The John Birch Society:
2. Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition:
3. The Liberty Lobby:
4. The Patriot / Militia / Gun-Rights / anti-Tax / movements:
5. Neo-Nazi and affiliated white supremacy groups (e.g., Aryan Nations, National Alliance):
Estimates of the total number of persons in the US who are influenced by far-right movements and their conspiratorial anti-government and anti-globalist ideology vary from a few hundred thousand to several million. Whatever the actual number, it is clear that the world-view of right-wing populism has made inroads into mainstream politics through the influence of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition (Lind, 1995), members of the 1994 Republican Congressional majority who are sympathetic with far-right ideology such as Helen Chenowith (Stern, 1996: 128, 212-14), and Pat Buchanan's right-populist presidential campaigns. It is important to realize that conspiratorial ideologies of globalization are not limited to tiny sects of paranoid mountain men or platoons of weekend warriors, as sound-bite stereotypes might suggest.
One of the most important conduits
channeling far-right conspiratorial ideology toward a more mainstream mass audience is
evangelist Pat Robertson, former host of the the 700
Club television talk show and founder of the politically powerful,
million-member Christian Coalition
(see Lind, 1995a; Diamond, 1995: 228-56, 289-306, 310-12).
In his best-selling book, The
New World Order, Robertson echoes Birch Society rhetoric, claiming that
political events "are not the accidents and coincidences we are generally led to
believe". Tendencies toward globalization "spring, instead, from the depth of
something that is evil..." (Robertson, 1991: 9).
...the common strain that permeates much of the thinking about a new world order involves four basic premises: (1) the elimination of private property, (2) the elimination of national governments and national sovereignty, (3) the elimination of traditional Judeo-Christian theism, and (4) a world government controlled by an elite group made up of those who are considered to be superior, or in the occultic sense, ‘adepts’ or ‘illuminated’ (Robertson, 1991: 71).
"The Establishment" (especially the Council on Foreign Relations) seeks "to form a world system in which enlightened monopolistic capitalism can bring all the diverse currencies, banking systems, credit, manufacturing, and raw materials into one government-supervised whole, policed of course by their own world army" (Robertson, 1991: 97). This is deeply troubling to Robertson because the Constitutional order which protects the God-given rights of individual Americans rests in turn upon the foundation of US sovereignty (Robertson, 1991: 203-5, 239-47). To undermine that foundation is to imperil God's order. Yet this appears to be precisely the project of the Establishment with its cosmopolitan and Godless humanism (Robertson, 1991: 95-115, 167-85). Robertson concludes: "The stream of world order ... is clearly occultic and satanic" (Robertson, 1991: 115). Globalization is part and parcel of a diabolical plan to create "a new order for the human race under the domination of Lucifer and his followers" (Robertson, 1991: 37).
To his television audience, Robertson described the Uruguay Round of GATT as "flawed" insofar as the WTO could effectively undermine US sovereignty. He lamented that US trade negotiators and fast-track legislation had put Americans in a take-it-or-leave-it position where rejecting this problematic agreement would "blow up world trade". Pondering how we got into this mess, Robertson explained that "there are a group of people in America that just cannot stand American sovereignty. They just have to have a world government that somehow dominates America" (700 Club: November 28, 1994). Clearly, then, Robertson represented GATT as a step toward the New World Order, a step away from God's design as manifested in the US Constitution, and, in that sense, a victory for the forces of evil.
Another important vehicle for the injection of New World Order ideology
into the political mainstream has been the populist oratory, journalism and presidential
campaigns of Patrick J. Buchanan.
Buchanan has been a strong critic of NAFTA, Gatt, and globalization more generally. While
he made much of the impoverishment of American workers by globalizing corporations, for
Buchanan - as for the conspiratorial far-right - the primary significance of NAFTA was
that it brought with it "the virus of globalism" (Buchanan, 1993b).
Though advertised as "free trade", [NAFTA] is anti-freedom, 1,200 pages of rules, regulations, laws, fines, commissions...setting up no fewer than 49 new bureaucracies...it is part of a skeletal structure for world government (Buchanan, 1993a).
NAFTA is about America's sovereignty, liberty and destiny. It is about whether we hand down to the next generation the same free and independent country handed down to us; or whether 21st Century America becomes but a subsidiary of the New International Economic Order (Buchanan, 1993b)
In his 1996 presidential campaign, Buchanan vigorously denounced globalization and declared: "When I raise my hand to take the oath of office, this whole New World Order is coming crashing down" (New York Times, October 8, 1995).
Describing
what he meant by "New World Order", Buchanan explained: "The UN is its
political arm. The so-called International Monetary Fund is going to be the Federal
Reserve of the world. The World Bank will provide the income transfers from the United
States all over the world... The World Court will prosecute and convict people and their
countries, take their citizens and try them in international tribunals. The World Trade
Organization...will eventually get...more and more control of world trade, until one day
we wake up like Gulliver, find ourselves tied down...with tiny silk strands that by the
thousands have been done up during the night, with the strongest nation on earth suddenly
immobile" (New York Times, March 8, 1996).
Buchanan calls Americans to ride to the sound of the guns in his "second war of American independence, to recapture US sovereignty from faceless global bureaucrats who view our country as but a vast, rich province to be plundered and looted on behalf of their New World Order" (Buchanan, 1994).
How is it that the US, with its extraordinary Constitutional system and its exceptional power, has "handed off its sovereignty" to global institutions? Who "is pulling the strings"? Buchanan points the finger at "the multinational corporations and the Wall Street financial elite".
Buchanan has said: "Real power in America belongs to the Manhattan Money Power, the one power to which neither party is any longer able to say "No!" According to Buchanan, " [Treasury Secretary Robert] Rubin said, 'There must be a broad understanding that we really and truly are in a new world where we are dependent on other nations in ways that we never were before.' That is the authentic voice of Goldman Sachs, and regrettably, of our own Republican elites. They are saying, all of them, that America's sovereignty, independence and liberty are things of the past. ...We must all accept our dependency on the New World Order. ...But we never voted our sovereignty away. If it is gone, they sold us out; they traded it away, without our permission" (Buchanan, 1995).
Asked by interviewers if his rhetoric included far-right "code words", Buchanan responded directly: "There is nothing code-word about it, I don't need to speak in code...there are embryonic institutions of world government being formed even as we speak" (New York Times, January 25, 1996). Buchanan denies anti-Semitism or links to far-right or white supremacist groups, but his campaign has been plagued by a series of revelations about unseemly statements and unsavory connections among his staff (New York Times, February 23, 1996). Whether or not Buchanan actually subscribes to the conspiratorial vision of the far-right, he clearly speaks in terms which lend themselves to a conspiratorial interpretation. In his language, far-right anti-globalists can readily situate themselves and find reflections of their xenophobia. Thus, his candidacy has drawn the endorsement of the Liberty Lobby's Spotlight and is supported by members of the John Birch Society, various self-described Patriots, and some white supremacists.
In 1996, Buchanan stunned the Republican Party with his wins in Louisiana and New Hampshire, and his strong second-place showings in the rust belt states of Michigan and Wisconsin, but the significance of his campaign cannot be summarized in terms of vote counts. At a time when average Americans are under economic pressure unprecedented in post-World War II experience and when they are looking for answers to their deepening problems, Buchanan delivered conspiratorial ideology to their doorstep along with their morning paper, and propelled it into areas of public discourse where it might otherwise not have seen the light of day. And he's back again for 2000.
Far-right conspiratorial ideology has gotten a lot closer to the maimstream of American politics than we might like to admit. It is important for students of American politics, and American citizens in general, to understand the fundamental ideas of this ideology so that they may recognize it, and be aware of its potential implications, when they encounter it.
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