Issue 196 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published April 1996 Copyright © Socialist Review
Patrick Buchanan gained widespread notoriety at the 1992 Republican Party convention, as the right wing zealot whose hysterical ravings against abortion and homosexuality in the name of 'family values' sent millions of voters rushing over to the Democrats. Since then most people on the left have viewed Buchanan as irritating, but largely irrelevant. But then Buchanan decided to run for president of the United States.
And when the election campaign began in February, Buchanan started to attract a fairly sizeable following within the Republican Party--especially among some blue collar workers and lower middle class voters. He actually won several of the early Republican primaries, including New Hampshire, and came second in a number of others, such as Massachusetts and Iowa. By most estimates, Buchanan took between a fifth and a third of Republican votes in the early primaries.
Since then the Republican Party has banded together behind Bob Dole and successfully prevented the embarrassment of a Buchanan presidential nomination. But Buchanan's early success is significant nevertheless. Although Buchanan is a long time Republican, his politics are those of the far right. His xenophobia and scapegoating of immigrants parallel Le Pen in France or Zhirinovsky in Russia.
Buchanan is a long standing anti-Semite and racist, who argued in 1977 that, despite Hitler's genocide against Jews, he was 'an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a political organiser of the first rank'. He has written that Jews have 'group fantasies of martyrdom', and that the Holocaust has been exaggerated. As Ronald Reagan's communications director in 1985, Buchanan wrote into a Reagan speech that Nazi SS troops buried in Germany's Bitburg cemetery were 'victims just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps,' after urging Reagan to visit the cemetery during a trip to Germany.
Buchanan continues to staunchly defend the Southern Confederate flag and the racist segregation it stands for. In his 1988 autobiography, he reminisced about the days before the civil rights movement, when 'the "Negroes" of Washington had their public schools, restaurants. bars, movie houses, playgrounds and churches, and we had ours.' Now Buchanan proposes that the US seal off its borders to non-European immigrants, warning, 'Americans have a right to decide whether the United States of the 21st century will remain a white nation.'
He routinely refers to gays as 'sodomites', arguing that 'Aids is nature's retribution for violating the laws of nature.' He has called feminists 'the butch brigade' and believes that women 'are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single minded ambition and the will to succeed.' He opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest because, he says, 'abortion is murder. Whether the pregnancy is the result of incest or rape, the abortion of that innocent life is still murder. If there is killing to be done, kill the rapist.'
A Nation editorial called Buchanan's politics 'proto-fascism with a smiley face and a good punch line'. The Manchester Guardian argued that Buchanan is 'an authoritarian populist, whose attitude to patriotism, women, homosexuals and foreigners places him in a classic psychological and ideological territory of fascism'. But his model is 'much closer to Franco's Spain and Vichy France ... than to Hitler or Mussolini'.And many of Buchanan's biggest supporters have direct ties to the far right. The Nazi David Duke endorsed him--and two of Buchanan's campaign officials were forced to resign when it was discovered they belonged to Duke's National Association for the Advancement of White People. Larry Pratt, his campaign co-chairman, turned out to be a fellow traveller of neo-Nazis such as Aryan Nation and the gun toting militia movement. And one of Buchanan's most vocal backers, right wing journalist Samuel Francis, has called for 'a white reconquest of the United States'.
Not surprisingly, Buchanan is against unions and is opposed to a minimum wage of any kind. Yet during the presidential campaign Buchanan has tailored his appeal specifically to workers, promising to 'speak out for working class Americans' and posturing as a government outsider who is standing alone against the corporate fat cats who run the Republican Party. This claim is absurd. Buchanan has an array of business backers, including Thomas Monahan, the owner of the nationwide Domino's Pizza chain (who also bankrolls the anti-abortion crusade), and Roger Milliken, a textile magnate and vicious union buster.
Moreover, Buchanan is completely at home in the Republican Party, with a career as a party stalwart spanning three decades. As Richard Nixon's adviser, he was a key architect of the 'Southern strategy' used by Republican candidates since Nixon. ('In blue collar neighbourhoods', Buchanan wrote to Nixon, Republicans should always rail against 'compulsory integration' and 'shed the "in bed with big business" image.')
Buchanan will not win the Republican presidential nomination, but his influence has already caused a shift rightward with the Republican mainstream. Dole needs to appeal to those who voted for Buchanan in the primaries if he is to have any chance of winning next November's election. The result has been the tail wagging the dog.
Dole and the other Republican candidates been all too eager to demonstrate their commitment to right wing morality. All the candidates endorsed the religious right's 'National Campaign to Protect Marriage', which charges that gay couples 'threaten the very foundation of our society.' And Dole supports a complete ban on all abortions.
But the most important feature of Buchanan's electoral success has more to do with the economy--and failing wages--than with presidential politics. For example, 2.5 million workers have lost their jobs through corporate restructuring since 1991, while the average worker reentering the job market between 1990 and 1992 took a pay cut of 20 percent. Most workers in the US have shifted leftward politically, but Buchanan's appeal to a small but significant section of Republican voters shows all too dearly that the downward mobility which is a constant feature of today's economy can be a breeding ground for the growth of the far right. That's what makes Pat Buchanan so dangerous--and the task of building a socialist alternative so urgent.
Sharon Smith