[Peace-discuss] Hate is good for business

[C. G. Estabrook]

A year ago Alex Cockburn wrote accurately of the Threat from the Right:

      "What is the arch-salesman of hate-mongering, Mr. Morris Dees of the 
Southern Poverty Law Center doing now? He’s saying that the election of a black 
president proves his point. Hate is on the rise! Send money! Without skipping a 
beat, the mailshot moguls, who year after year make money selling the notion 
there’s been a right resurgence out there in the hinterland with massed legions 
of haters, have used the election of a black president to say that, yes, hate is 
on the rise and America ready to burst apart at the seams, with millions of 
extremists primed to march down Main Street draped in Klan robes, a copy of Mein 
Kampf tucked under one arm and a Bible under the other, available for sneak 
photographs from minions of Chip Berlet, another salesman of the Christian 
menace,  ripely endowed with millions to battle the legions of the cross..."

Now the aforementioned Berlet has resigned form a mailing list of left 
economists (called LBO) because they won't take the Threat seriously enough:

      "I find much of the conversation on this topic here at LBO elitist, glib, 
and frankly disgustingly over-privileged and uncaring about the real suffereing 
of others in the real world.  Forgive me if I choose to not participate any 
longer. Enjoy your armchair pontificating."

To which the list-owner, the economist Doug Henwood, responds appropriately:

      "Oh please. What a bunch of grandiose high-horsery. There's a reason that 
the likes of the Ford Foundation, that bastion of the common folk, likes to fund 
research on the far right. It focuses attention on a threat that is as old as 
the hills, thereby deflecting critical attention from the kinds of Democrats 
supported by the Ford Foundation. It would be a lot more fruitful to develop a 
progressive movement that's independent of the Democratic Party and foundation 
program officers. Getting all hot and bothered about the far right just 
encourages a deadend of lesser evilism."

Yea, verily.  --CGE


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