The Public Eye: Recent Issues

The North American Union
Right-wing Populist Conspiracism Rebounds
By Chip Berlet

The same right-wing populist fears of a collectivist one-world government and new world order that fueled Cold War anticommunism, mobilized opposition to the Civil Rights Movement, and spawned the armed citizens militia movement in the 1990s, have resurfaced as an elaborate conspiracy theory about the alleged impending creation of a North American Union that would merge the United States, Canada, and Mexico.¹ 

No such merger is seriously being contemplated by any of the three governments. Yet a conspiracy theory about the North American Union (NAU) simmered in right-wing “Patriot Movement” alternative media for several years before bubbling up to reach larger audiences in mass media when callers to talk radio and cable television news programs began asking about the alleged plans for the North American Union, and what was dubbed the “NAFTA Superhighway” linking Mexico to Canada through the American heartland. ²

Read more…

First Amendment Blues
Police Tactics Suppress Free Speech
By Heidi Boghosian and Abby Scher

Miles Swanson was a legal observer at the 2003 protests in Miami against the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas when he became victim of a “snatch squad,” a new police tactic where officers drag protestors off, having singled them out based on their perceived political ideology. It is unconstitutional to target someone for arrest based on their political views, but snatch squads are only one of many new government tactics that are chilling Americans’ free speech rights. These measures are rarely passed by Congress or a state legislature, but are devised and adopted informally through expanding networks of police agencies. Now lawyers are learning from past abuses to try to protect protestors attending the Republican and Democratic conventions next summer.

Legacies of Lynching
An Interview with On the Courthouse Lawn author Sherrilyn Ifill
With Tarso Luís Ramos

The memories and legacy of lynchings of African Americans fifty years ago still shape the politics and lives of those living where they happened. So discovered civil rights lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill while she was trying a discrimination case in Maryland. The Public Eye explored the impact in this exclusive interview.

Gay Conservatives
Unwanted Allies on the Right
By Pam Chamberlain

In the high-adrenaline, and heavily heterosexual, world of Beltway lobbyists, the gay Log Cabin Republicans have their work cut out for them. Ostracized by the Republican Party which continues to receive their fierce loyalty, the LCR is the group that represents the dilemma of gay conservatives: they want to be players on the Republican team, but who is willing to put them in the lineup?

History is Powerful
Why the Christian Right Distorts History and Why it Matters
By Frederick Clarkson

The notion that America was founded as a Christian nation is a central animating element of the ideology of the Christian Right. It touches every aspect of life and culture in this, one of the most successful and powerful political movements in American history. The idea that America’s supposed Christian identity has somehow been wrongly taken, and must somehow be restored, permeates the psychology and vision of the entire movement.

Tav Revolt as a Family Value
How the Christian Right Is Becoming A Free Market Champion
by Richard J. Meagher

Over the course of the 1990s, the economic conservatives successfully recast the estate tax as a "family" issue, using language that appealed more directly to conservative evangelicals. And the Christian Right, primed by years of describing themselves as a "pro-family movement," and spurred on by a group of intellectuals who put forth a Christian economics of the family, jumped at the bait, becoming staunch supporters of repeal.

Cruising on Military Drive
By Roberto Lovato

If you want to understand how Homeland Security influences us, go to south Texas and take a walk around neighborhoods whose streets were paved by the "clash of civilizations" in cities and towns at or near the border. One such street is San Antonio's Military Drive where, on any Friday, Saturday, or Sunday night, you can, if you pay close attention, watch some of the directions Latino identity is taking in times of war.

Today, with a simple keyword search such as "Aryan" or "white power," websurfers can easily find a growing number of white power websites where acidly racist and anti-Semitic themes replete with visions of racial separation or even violent racial extermination are the norm.

Dover is over, for now. Beginning in 2004, an elected school board attempted to change the Dover, PA, science curriculum so that it cast significant doubt on the evolutionary hypothesis.

In the spring of 2005, Georgia's Republican-controlled legislature passed a law requiring all voters to appear at their proper polling place carrying either a Georgia driver's license or an official photo ID issued by the Georgia Department of Motor Vehicles.

How many individuals would be disenfranchised by the new voter ID law?

Growing Pains or Arrested Development?
To judge by the amount of media attention, the campus Right had a good year. Or a good two years.
Students staged a Capture an Illegal Immigrant Day, published increasing numbers of campus newspapers with decidedly right-wing editorial policies, and lobbied for a Student Academic Bill of Rights on multiple campuses and in several state legislatures to bring attention to what they saw as silenced conservative voices on campus.

Fascist or Mainstream?
Parties of the extreme Right now have a role in the governments of several European countries. What was widely once feared has to a significant extent become the reality. And, as power went from democratic hands to these new parties, the words used to describe these parties were changed: the neo-Nazis became "parties with extremist trends"; the fascists became the radical Right or national Right...

It wasn't simply economic and social tensions that underlay the New Right's success in promoting its message on crime. "Law and order" resonated with a powerful ideological strain within the U.S. populace- the conservative worldview. You might think of this worldview as the ideological default to which many White Americans return when they are anxious, confused, or resentful....

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Although they have always been located in Washington, DC, people in the United States very often do not know much about what they do. People in Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Asia know a great deal about them, however. When a delegation from either institution arrives in a country in any of these regions, it's often front-page news; when economic crises hit, people protest outside the local offices of the IMF/WB...

On June 11, 2003, an international group of right wing think tanks organized a conference held at the American Enterprise Institute offices in Washington, D.C. The conference laid the ground for the launch of "NGO Watch," a website and political campaign designed to monitor and critique "liberal" U.N.-designated NGOs. This campaign will undoubtedly be applied to other nonprofits with similar liberal politics...