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Right Woos Left
Populist Party, LaRouchite, and Other Neo-fascist Overtures To Progressives, And Why They Must Be Rejected

Berlet, Chip
http://www.publiceye.org/rightwoo/rwooz9.html

Publisher:  Political Research Associates
Year Published:  1999   First Published:  1990
Resource Type:  Article

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

The phenomenon of the right wooing the left became highly visible during the 1990 military buildup preceding the Gulf War. Followers of Lyndon LaRouche attended antiwar meetings and rallies in some thirty cities, and other right-wing organizers from groups such as the John Birch Society and the Populist Party passed out flyers at antiwar demonstrations across the country. While these right-wing groups undeniably opposed war with Iraq, they also promoted ideas that peace and social justice activists have historically found objectionable. Many people seeking to forge alliances with the left around anti-government and anti-interventionist policies also promote Eurocentric, anti-pluralist, patriarchal, or homophobic views. Some are profoundly anti-democratic; others support the idea that the U.S. is a Christian republic. A few openly promote white supremacist, anti-Jewish, or neo-Nazi theories.

While there is inevitable overlap at the edges of political movements, the far-right and fascist sectors being discussed in this study are separate and distinct from traditional conservatism, the right wing of the Republican Party, libertarianism, anarchism, and other political movements sometimes characterized as right wing. The John Birch Society, for instance, is a far-right reactionary political movement, but it attempts to distance itself from racialist and anti-Jewish theories. Other groups analyzed in this paper, such as the Populist Party, Liberty Lobby, and the LaRouchians, on the other hand, represent a continuation of the racialist, anti-democratic theories of fascism.

It is important to differentiate between the fascist right and persons on the left who in a variety of ways have been lured by the overtures of the fascist right and its conspiracist theories, or who have ended up wittingly or unwittingly in coalitions with spokespersons for the fascist right, or who have contact with the fascist right as part of serious and legitimate research into political issues.

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