Far Rights Yowls at Clinton
By Leonard Zeskind
Searchlight Magazine March 1993
There was barely a peep when President Clinton took office in January and promptly broke a string of campaign promises: Instead of lifting the racist ban on immigration from Haiti, he sent the Coast Guard to intercept any boats fleeing the military dictatorship. Scratch the new program which guarantees access to higher education for poor and working class youth. No tax cuts and no real jobs program–the budget deficit is too big.
But the howl was immediate and deafening when Clinton proposed an end to the search-and-destroy mission against gay men and lesbians serving in the U.S. military. The right-wing racket was amplified by thousands of Christian radio stations and television networks. Direct mail machinery was cranked up and millions of letters sent.
Jerry Falwell, whose right-wing evangelical empire has been operating at a deficit since the mid-1980s, started a "900" phone line to lobby against Clinton's executive order. A popular marketing tool, "900" phone lines charge callers by the length of time they are on the phone. The fee is then added directly to the callers monthly telephone account. ("900" lines are widely used by the porno industry to sell phone sex.) Within two weeks, over 100,000 people had called Falwell's phone line to place their names on a petition. The first week of the operation they were charged $.90 a minute. But after the calls kept coming in Falwell raised the rate to $1.95 a minute.
At the same time, both Trinity Broadcast Network and the USA Radio Network programs urged followers to call or write their Congressional representatives. Lou Sheldon's California-based Coalition for Traditional Values reportedly placed anti-gay inserts in the Sunday bulletins for 25,000 churches. Anti-gay issues were so popular that Sheldon is considering sponsoring a constitutional amendment which would mandate discrimination against gay men and lesbians. Similar amendments will likely be on the 1994 ballots in Washington state and Idaho, where new organizations have sprung up in the wake of the far right Oregon Citizens Alliance successes.
Control of radio and television programs were originally used by Christian evangelicals to enlarge their constituency beyond the confines of a single church. Soon thousands of churches were knit together in an electronic network which transcended denominational and geographic boundaries. During the last years of the Carter presidency, radio and television allowed right-wing preachers to directly reach millions of people in their homes and mobilize them into political action. That power has been largely dormant as the Christian Right focused its energies on Washington D.C. during the Reagan and Bush presidencies.
Now that the Democrats have total control on the Potomac, the right-wing is back to organizing at the local and state level. But this time they are following the lead of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition and building strong local organizations. Opposition to civil rights for gays and lesbians has primed the money pumps and reinvigorated some organizations. But it is only the opening battle for what will become a long war. Soon to follow will be issues such as political representation for Washington, D.C.-which will almost certainly elect African American Senators if it becomes a state. Sheldon told the New york Times: "This is a train wreck for Clinton and there will be more to come." Much of the right-wing fire will be aimed at Clinton and liberals, but a surprisingly fierce fight will also occur in the ranks of the Republican Party.
In California the battle between Republicans prompted a moderate Republican consultant to charge, "these brown shirts are not going to convert California into some kind of radical extremism…they're delusional…and they're deluding poor little old ladies who are writing checks to the Pat Robertsons of the world because he's promising them life ever after."
Beyond the edges of the Christian right are poised a collection of mean spirits hoping to resurrect the pre-World War II Right-wing. In December they met together under the auspices of the John Randolph Club–a small group of journalists and academics aimed at seizing the intellectual high ground. In the February edition of Chronicles, their flagship magazine, Tom Fleming argued that Italy's Lombardy League was suitable for imitation in the USA. In words that came perilously close to David Duke's (but only echoed Pat Buchanan's) Fleming argued: "The revolution cannot be made overnight, and the first step would be the creation of a movement devoted to political devolution, privatization, protection of the national interest in matters of immigration, trade, and foreign policy, and the reassertion of our old cultural identities as a European and Christian nation."
In the USA, where the recognition is just beginning that the country was founded on the decimation of the Indian population and chattel slavery of Africans, Fleming's remarks should guarantee his Rockford Institute remains a marginal force. In 1992, however, they spent over one million dollars. Not as large a budget as Robertson's or Falwell's, but enough to guarantee that the battle over the next four years will be as nasty as it is long.
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