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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lazarre who wrote (24475)	12/25/1998 2:41:00 AM
From: Borzou Daragahi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

I found a fascinating analysis of the Clinton haters. publiceye.org It's very long, so I've just posted the beginning. See if you can spot any similarities between the phenomenon he's describing and the rhetoric of the right. Clinton, Conspiracism, and Civil Society by Chip Berlet Political Research Associates updated 2/12/98 Right-wing attacks on President Clinton flow from a large and diverse network of individuals and organizations that share a distaste for Bill and Hillary Clinton on a political and personal level. This is not so much a secret conspiracy against President Clinton as a loosely-knit coalition among several sectors of the political right that share an anti-Clinton agenda despite wide differences in political outlook and style. However, the vigorous and relentless nature of allegations of misconduct leveled against President Clinton do involve conspiracy--the charges against Clinton are influenced in part by historic right-wing conspiracist theories linking liberalism, sexual immorality, statist collectivism, and treason.1 The increasing tolerance of these and other conspiracist claims in our society is damaging the ability to carry on meaningful political debate in the US. The Conspiracist Subculture Conspiracism is the irrational idea that history is controlled by evil cabals plotting against the common good.2 Conspiracism is widespread and flourishing in US culture, and involves not just the political right but center and left constituencies as well.3 There is an entrenched network of conspiracy-mongering information outlets spreading dubious stories about Clinton and other public figures and institutions through printed matter, the internet, fax trees, radio programs, and video/audio tapes.4 This conspiracist subculture has a long historical pedigree, and makes a periodic appearance on the US political scene, usually accompanying a right-wing populist upsurge such as the country is currently experiencing.5 Conspiracism is not merely an extremist phenomenon among a "lunatic fringe" of the radical right, but is deeply imbedded in our culture.6 As the political scene shifted to the right over the past twenty years, and the culture of conspiracism spread into prime time, the prophets of the right-wing paranoid style reintegrated themselves into the Republican Party.7 The conspiracist wing of the Republican right had been pushed back following the disgrace of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his reign of error and false accusation, and again after the Barry Goldwater campaign where their alarmist charges about Lyndon Johnson and liberalism helped make Goldwater's candidacy a dud.8 Academic studies have shown that conspiracist groups on the right such as the John Birch Society are not "marginal" to the electoral process, but have members with above average income, status, and education who are longstanding activists within the Republican Party.9 The resurgence of the conspiracist subculture has created a political constituency that supports official investigations such as those of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr into claims of Clinton wrongdoing. During the Cold War, Starr's political patron, Jesse Helms, was in the forefront of purveying conspiracist allegations of a global "red menace" allied with domestic subversives to undermine the US. Those who are immersed in hard right conspiracist discourse might easily acquire a predisposition to believe that liberals are engaged in criminal conspiracies...