American Right-Winger Wants to Impose Fascist Dictators

Bit of American politics, which shows how the mask slips occasionally from the faces of respected conservative political pundits to show the real Fascist underneath.

In this video from Secular Talk, host Kyle Kulinski discusses recent tweets from Eric Erickson and what this says about the right-wing bias in the supposedly liberal media. Erickson’s been a fixture of the American news media for years. He had a job as contributor at CNN, in October this year, 2018, he was on Meet The Press, and was the subject of a glowing article in the New Yorker, a supposedly liberal paper. Kulinski points out that, especially in contrast to himself, who has only been on Fox News twice, Erickson’s certainly isn’t a fringe figure. He is very definitely a part of the mainstream media. The lamestream media love him because he’s nominal anti-Trump. But he posted a series of tweets stating that he wanted American to impose another dictator like Pinochet on the countries of South America.

Erickson tweeted:

The US spends $618 million in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico. We could double that and it’d still only be 11% of the cost of the wall. And we cold deploy the money to find and prop up the next generation of Pinochet types.

These countries are corrupt. We will not exterminate that corruption. But let’s not pretend we should let corrupt autocrats thrive who work against our hemispheric interests and cause refugee caravans to approach our borders.

Support strong leaders who will force through free market reforms and promote economic stability even with a heavy hand.

In reply to Josiah Neeley’s comment that there might be holes in this plan,
Erickson responds with ‘I think there might be some helicopters in this plan’.

Kulinski explains that the last comment refers to Pinochet’s habit of murdering his political opponents by throwing them out of helicopters. He then reads out a piece from Think Progress, which explains that Pinochet was the Fascist dictator, who seized power in Chile after overthrowing the democratically elected socialist president, Salvador Allende, in a CIA backed coup. He ruled from 1973 to 1990. Pinochet tortured, murdered and exiled his political opponents. In at least 120 cases they were killed by being thrown out of helicopters into the sea. Pinochet’s thugs also assassinated Orlando Leteiler, a former Chilean diplomat, and two other bystanders in car bomb in Washington D.C. in 1976.
But all this is fine in the eyes of the far-right, because he also brought in free market reforms.

Kulinski goes on to warn his audience that this is what lies underneath the façade of respectability the next time they hear a right-winger sanctimoniously declaring that they believe in freedom, democracy and human rights. The next time Erickson is cheering on America’s next intervention in Latin America, it will be because it has nothing to do with freedom and human rights. Erickson has told everyone that he prefers Fascists like Pinochet, who rule through terror and institute free market reforms.

Kulinski states that this brings him back to the point he made at the beginning of his piece about the bias in the American media. They will run extensive pieces on the right and extreme right, because they view them as inherently sexy and interesting. It’s the age of Trump, and they want to provide some insight into a growing right-wing movement. That’s why they’ll publish features on Trump supporters and real neo-Nazis in the mid-West and Richard Spencer, but won’t cover the resurgent socialist and progressive left in America. Neither he, Cenk Uygur, Chakyaborti, or Zack Exley, the founders of Justice Democrats, have got glowing individual reviews in the press. Left-wing groups like the Justice Democrats, Our Revolution and a number of others named by Kulinski, have won 41 per cent of their primaries, and there are now 13 candidates backed by them going to Washington. They’re moving the Democrat party left, and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has also defeated another right-wing opponent. These groups didn’t exist an election cycle ago. But they’ve got no coverage, because the press sees left-wing activism as boring. He mocks them, saying that they wave away people demanding proper healthcare as boring, but get terribly excited when they find someone who believes in an ethno-state and wears a suit. Which is clearly a reference to Richard Spencer, the very conventionally dressed founder of the Alt Right.

Kulinski argues that this imbalance is due to the media overreacting to accusations of liberal bias. They’re so terrified of it that they go overboard to be kind to the right. And so there are no articles giving positive coverage to the idea that Bernie Sanders might run in 2020. Instead they try to shove on American voters establishment types like John Kerry, who lost to George ‘Dubya’ Bush and Hillary Clinton. But when it comes to the left there’s silence. And so the chickens have metaphorically come home to roost when Erickson makes his Fascist tweets.

Kulinski concludes by observing that this won’t stop Erickson appearing on the news media. But he asks his audience what kind of system allows and actively promotes loathsome clowns like Eric Erickson, while downplaying Social Democrats and those on the populist left. A broken system, a s****y system, a corrupted system, he answers.

In some ways it’s really not surprising that someone like Erickson should hold such horrific views. As William Blum has shown in his books and website, the Anti-Empire Report, this has been America’s policy in Latin America and elsewhere in the world since the end of World War II. America has supported Fascist coups and dictators in Chile and Guatemala, where the democratic socialist president, Jacobo Arbenz, was overthrown and smeared as a Communist because he dared to nationalize the plantations owned by the American United Fruit Company. Reagan backed the murderous Contras in Nicaragua, the right-wing Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, and the brutal Samosa regime and the leader of its death squads, Rios Montt, in El Salvador. And Hillary Clinton is no better. She endorsed the Fascist regime that seized power in Honduras in 2012. A regime that has rounded up and killed indigenous activists, trade unionists and left-wingers. Perhaps the only thing surprising about Erickson’s comments on twitter was that he’s honest about his support for Fascism.

And it’s America’s brutal policies in Latin America, that are partly responsible for the migrant caravan of refugees seeking to flee countries that have been denied freedom and prosperity by America.

Erickson’s tweets show what’s really underneath the mask of moderate respectability worn by American right-wing pundits. Which makes you wonder if our own Conservatives and Conservative media figures are any different. I very much doubt it. They’re just better at hiding it.

William Blum’s List of American Foreign Interventions: Part 2

Jamaica 1976
Various attempts to defeat Prime Minister Michael Manley.

Honduras 1980s
Arming, equipping, training and funding of Fascist government against dissidents, also supporting Contras in Nicaragua and Fascist forces in El Salvador and Guatemala.

Nicaragua
Civil War with the Contras against left-wing Sandinistas after the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship.

Philippines 1970s-1990
Support of brutal dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos

Seychelles 1979-81
Attempts to overthrow country’s leader, France Albert Rene, because he tried to turn his nation and the Indian Ocean into nuclear free zone.

Diego Garcia late 196-0s to Present
People of the largest of the Chagos islands forcibly relocated Mauritius and Seychelles so that Americans could build massive complex of military bases.

South Yemen, 1979-84
CIA backing of paramilitary forces during war between North and South Yemen, as South Yemen government appeared to be backed by Russia. In fact, the Russians backed North and South Yemen at different times.

South Korea
Support for military dictator, Chun Doo Hwan, in brutal suppression of workers’ and students’ uprising in Kwangju.

Chad 1981-2
Political manipulation of Chad government to force Libyan forces of Colonel Gaddafy to leave, aided Chadian forces in the Sudan to invade and overthrow Chadian government installing Hissen Habre as the ‘African General Pinochet’.

Grenada 1979-83
Operations against government of Maurice Bishop, and then invasion when Bishop government overthrown by ultra-leftist faction.

Suriname 1982-4
Abortive plot to overthrow Surinamese government for supporting Cuba.

Libya 1981-89
Attempts to overthrow Colonel Gaddafy.

Fiji 1987
Prime Minister Timoci Bavrada of the Labour Party overthrown as neutral in Cold War and wanted to make Fiji nuclear free zone.

Panama 1989
Overthrow of Manuel Noriega, long-term American ally in Central America for drug trafficking. The real reason to was intimidate Nicaragua, whose people were going to the elections two months later and stop them from voting for the Sandinistas.

Afghanistan 1979-92
Backing of Mujahideen rebels against Soviet-aligned government then Soviet forces.

El Salvador 1980-92
Backing of right-wing dictator and death squads in country’s civil war against dissidents, after first making sure the dissidents got nowhere through democratic means.

Haiti 1987-94
US government opposed reformist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, aiding Haiti government and its death squads against him. However, after he won the 1991, they were forced to allow him back in. They then extracted a promise from him that he would not aid poor at expense of the rich and would follow free trade economics. Kept army there for the rest of his term.

Bulgaria 1990-1
Massive campaign by the US through the National Endowment for Democracy and Agency for International Development to aid the Union of Democratic Forces against the Bulgarian Socialist Party, the successor to the Communists.

Albania 1991
Another campaign to keep the Communists out, in which the Americans supported the Democratic Party.

Somalia 1993
Attempts to kill Mohamed Aidid. The motive was probably less to feed the starving Somali people, and more likely because four oil companies wished to exploit the country and wanted to end the chaos there.

Iraq 1991-2003
American attempts to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Colombia 1990s to Present
Aid by US to suppress left-wing guerillas.

Yugoslavia 1995-99
Campaigns against Serbia government during break up of the former Yugoslavia.

Ecuador 2000
Suppression of mass peaceful uprising by indigenous people of Quito, including trade unionists and junior military officers on orders from Washington, as this threatened neoliberalism.

Afghanistan 2001-to Present
Invasion and occupation of country after 9/11.

Venezuela 2001-4
Operations to oust Chavez.

Iraq 2003-to Present
Invasion and occupation.

Haiti 2004
President Aristide forced to resign by Americans because of his opposition to globalisation and the free market.

For much more information, see the chapter ‘A Concise History of United State Global Interventions, 1945 to the Present’ in William Blum’s Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, pp. 162-220. I realise that many of the Communist regimes Washington sought to overthrow were hardly models of virtue themselves, and often responsible for horrific acts of repression. However, the US has also sought to overthrow liberal and Socialist governments for no better reason than that they sought to improve conditions for their own peoples against the wishes of the American multinationals. And the regimes Washington has backed have been truly horrific, particularly in Latin America.

So it’s actually a very good question whether America has ever really supported democracy, despite the passionate beliefs of its people and media, since the War.

Third World Thatcherite Britain and the Grab for North Sea Oil

Last week both David Cameron and Alex Salmond held separate meetings in Scotland with the petrochemical companies in order to discuss the vital question of the ownership and future of North Sea oil. This is a vital issue. The Scots Nationalists I’ve talked to in the past have all been of the belief that not only should an independent Scotland have a right to the oil reserves off its coast, but that this would support the newly independent nation’s economy. Although this wasn’t mentioned in the news reports, Britain faces the same question. If Britain does not retain revenues from the North Sea if Scotland leaves the UK, then the British economy will plummet. It’s a question of economic survival.

I was taught at school that Britain has a ‘third-world economy’. This meant that Britain was like the various nations of the Developing World in that its economy was heavily based on primary industry. In the Developing World these industries were either mining – the extraction and production of diamonds, for example, or copper in the African Copper Belt, or the various nations around the world specialising in a particular agricultural product – groundnuts, bananas, coffee and so on. In Britain in the primary industry that fundamentally supports the country’s prosperity was North Sea oil.

The authors of the book Socialist Enterprise: Reclaiming the Economy (Nottingham: Spokesman 1986), Diana Gilhespy, Ken Jones, Tony Manwaring, Henry Neuberger and Adam Sharples, make exactly the same point:

Third World Britain

Under the Thatcher experiment, Britain’s underlying economic decline has continued and gathered pace. Only North Sea revenues now disguise its true extent. Without them it would be impossible to sustain the living standards which the working population currently enjoys. Britain’s present levels of employment, industrial activity and public services are all being paid for on borrowed time. (p. 20).

They then survey the way the Thatcher government effectively devastated the UK economy, while Labour unfairly got the blame for economic mismanagement.

It is worth emphasising how disastrous Tory economic policies have been for Britain in purely economic terms. The Tory Party has never succeeded in cultivating an image of compassion or concern for social justice: but at least, so the convention goes, it can be relied on to promote ‘sound’ economic policies and generally do the things that are in the interests of business growth. The Labour Party, by contrast, seems to have a acquired a reputation for economic mismanagement. The really remarkable achievement of the Thatcher Governments has been to find a set of policies which, while designed to make ‘economic efficiency’ the overriding objective in almost every sphere or our lives, has actually had the effect of making our economy less efficient – as well as having all the more predictable results such as a huge increase in social deprivation, inequality, injustice and division. As a result we are now in a situation where socialist economic and industrial policies offer the only serious hope not only of healing deep social divisions but also of reconstructing a viable and efficient economy.

Employment levels in manufacturing, construction and the public services plummeted after 1979. The international climate worsened, it is true, following the oil price rises of that year. All the major Western countries have faced increased unemployment during this period. But in Britain’s case, government policies have played an almost uniquely important part in creating a fall in national output and an increase in unemployment. By pursuing exceptionally high interest rates as part of the attempt to reduce money supply growth and inflation, and then letting the market determine the level of the exchange rate, the Tory Government precipitated a massive crisis in the manufacturing sector in the period 1979-81 – especially among companies which were relatively dependent on export markets or which had recently expanded investment or stocks in anticipation of sales growth. Meanwhile attempts to reduce public spending and borrowing resulted in a further deflationary effect: there was a particularly severe impact on employment as capital projects and welfare services were sacrificed to pay for the escalating costs of increasing unemployment – not merely a vicious circle but an insane one.

If we look at another traditional measure of economic success or failure, the balance of payments, we see a similar story. Since 1982, a surplus on manufactured goods has been replaced by large annual deficits – the first such deficits since the Industrial Revolution. Imports and import penetration have risen sharply in virtually every sector of manufacturing. These imports have, of course, been paid for out of oil revenues. But declining oil revenues will no longer be able to offset the growing manufacturing trade deficit in the late 1980s and 1990s.

They then go on to consider some of the contributing causes to British industrial decline, such as the price of British goods, lack of investment in research and development, and the lack of an education workforce, some of which is now extremely dated.

Nevertheless, I think the main point is still valid. Thatcher destroyed the British industrial base, and it is still only North Sea oil revenues, which is propping the economy up, despite the Tory and New Labour attempt to promote the financial sector. If Britain loses these revenues, then the British economy will collapse. My guess is that we would still be in the Developed World, but go from one of the most prosperous to one of the least.

The result of this would a further massive collapse in living standards, accompanied by bitter discontent. In the Developing World, mass poverty traditionally gave rise to extremist political movements – Marxist revolutionary groups, and the various Fascist dictatorships like those of General Pinochet, Manuel Noriega et cetera ad nauseam used to contain and suppress them. The same is likely to arise in Britain. This would effectively discredit all of the main political parties, as all of them have been influenced to a greater or lesser extent by Thatcher’s legacy. But those most effected would be the Tories as Thatcher’s party.

No wonder Cameron was up in Scotland last week trying to keep hold of North Sea oil. If that goes, then so does a large part of British prosperity and the Conservatives/ Thatcher’s image as the party of British prosperity.