De Fabel van de illegaal quits Dutch anti-MAI campaign
De Fabel van de illegaal has played a very active role in
the campaigns against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment and the
World Trade Organisation in the Netherlands since the end of 1997. The
sympathy of the extreme-right for the campaigns has been bothering De Fabel
for a long time. Intensive discussions have led us to the conclusion that
this interest is not a coincidence, but is caused by structural flaws in
the campaigns. In June 1999 De Fabel therefore decided to quit the campaigns
against the MAI and the WTO. In the following articles we explain why.
We invite all those who are interested to co-operate in the research and
discussions to develop explicitly left-wing analyses and campaigns connected
to international solidarity.
MAI niet gezien!
At the end of 1997 De Fabel van de illegaal together with
several other organisations initiated the grassroots activist network "MAI
niet gezien!" (MAI, didn't see it / MAI, don't want it) in the Netherlands.
De Fabel van de illegaal ran the secretariat of the network. "MAI niet
gezien!" has produced and spread tens of thousands of leaflets and posters
and organised dozens of public meetings, street actions, occupations, etc.
Since the beginning of 1999, we have started to transform our campaign
against the MAI into one targeting the Millennium Round in the WTO. We
have spread the "declaration of members of the international civil society
against the Millennium Round" to hundreds of NGOs and grassroots organisations
in the Netherlands. We were co-ordinating the sign-ons for organisations
in the Netherlands and were planning further actions.
Undocumented people
De Fabel van de illegaal is a radical left grassroots organisation
that strives for a socialist, feminist, and anti-racist society. The main
activities of De Fabel consist of anti-fascist work and involvement in
the struggle of undocumented people against the racist government policies
of selection, exclusion, detention and deportation. We saw our involvement
in the anti-MAI campaign as a way of putting international solidarity into
practice and of making a connection with the struggle for open borders
and the support for both political and economical refugees. On top of that
we thought that the anti-MAI campaign could enable us to connect the radical
left-wing struggle in the imperialist countries in the North with the struggle
of left-wing movements in the countries in the South. De Fabel therefore
also sought contact with Peoples' Global Action against "Free" Trade and
the World Trade Organisation (PGA), an alliance of various radical movements
mainly in the South.
Secondary problems
As time went on we became aware that the political character
of the campaigns against the MAI and the WTO is not really left wing. The
campaigns can easily fit into a conservative and nationalist agenda. Through
our antifascist activities we came across an article by the right extremist
Rüther in the summer 1998 issue of the Dutch new-right magazine Studie
Opbouw en Strijd (S.O.S.). Rüther opposes "mondialisation" and sympathises
with the struggle against the MAI. He even recommended the anti-MAI campaign
by "MAI niet gezien!" to his readers and explained to them how to subscribe
to the electronic mailing list. His comrades from the new-right Dutch student
organisation were so enthusiastic about our campaign that they linked their
web site to that of "MAI niet gezien!". See also our article "Together
with the New Right against globalisation?" The problem with the international
anti-MAI campaign is that clear anti-patriarchal and anti-racist positions
are absent. Racism and sexism are considered to be secondary issues. De
Fabel van de illegaal cannot accept this. In September 1998 "MAI niet gezien!"
organised the seminar "Globalisation of poverty". In the workshops and
in the reader much attention was paid to international population policies,
forced sterilisation programs, illegalising of migrants and refugees and
the situation of women in the free export processing zones (FPZ). In an
extensive response containing a critique in solidarity of the founding
manifesto of the Peoples' Global Action, De Fabel made a plea for integrating
anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal and anti-racist analyses in the campaign
against free trade. See also our article "Peoples' Global Action, an inspiring
network of resistance".
Natural order
In the reader we made for the seminar, we published the article
"Development as colonialism", written by Edward Goldsmith, the editor-in-chief
and owner of The Ecologist. A few months later we discovered that Edward
Goldsmith is a regular guest at international meetings of the New Right,
the intellectual elite of the neo-Nazi movement. In 1997 the complete editorial
team of The Ecologist left the magazine because of a political conflict
with Edward Goldsmith over ethnicity and gender issues, and because Goldsmith
was unwilling to end his collaboration with the New Right. Goldsmith makes
a plea for a green policy that will re-establish a "natural social order"
and "the traditional relations between people". "The real problems are
caused by the disruption of natural systems as family, society and the
ecological system", he wrote recently in The Ecologist. Only when the human
relations are again organised by "the laws of Gaia" is a stable society
possible according to him. Goldsmith describes some political conflicts
as "natural" or "ethnic" problems. He believes "different ethnic groups"
cannot live together in one country, and is a supporter of Apartheid and
ethnic cleansing. For example in Ruanda or in Northern Ireland. Goldsmith
sees the Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants "as two different ethnic
groups", which should be set apart. He also is a fan of Ataturk's who,
according to Goldsmith, "separated Greeks and Turks very successfully,
although there was a terrible outcry at the time and it undoubtedly caused
considerable inconvenience to the people who were forced to migrate. But
should we not be willing to accept measures of inconvenience in order to
establish a stable society?"
New Right ideologist
The love between Edward Goldsmith and the New Right is closely
connected to his plea for re-establishing "the natural social order" and
the separation of "different ethnic groups". Goldsmith makes a connection
between ecological thinking and the conservation of traditional cultures
and identities. Comparing human societies with biological organisms, Edward
Goldsmith even argued: "What is today regarded as prejudice against people
of different ethnic groups is a normal and necessary feature of human cultural
behaviour, and is absent only among members of a cultural system already
far along the road to disintegration." Many people in the New Right see
Edward Goldsmith as one of their most important ideologists. A few years
ago, Goldsmith was a speaker at the conference for the 25th anniversary
of GRECE, the think tank connected to the extreme-right Front National
in France. At the end of 1997, Goldsmith was the main attraction at a meeting
of TeKos, the think tank of the extreme-right Vlaams Blok in Belgium. The
Belgian ex-anarchist Guy De Martelaere wrote about this in his occult new-right
magazine Gwenved: "The conservative-ecological thesis of Edward Goldsmith
received enormous interest and approval from the new-right public, who
is yet to discover the green thinking. Alain de Benoist, one of the foremen
of the 'Nouvelle Droite' (New Right) and GRECE, and Luc Pauwels, editor-in-chief
of TeKos, are heading more and more in the ecologist direction, inspired
by contacts with and ideas of Edward Goldsmith. The European new-right
alliance Synergies Européennes has even adopted Goldsmith's theories
into their ideology with regard to ecology and globalisation. Recently
the millionaire also wanted to join the French right-extremist party Mouvement
Écologiste Indépendant for the 1999 European parliamentary
elections.
Defending national culture
The new-right ideologist Edward Goldsmith is also an influential
person in the international NGO and activist circuit. Goldsmith is the
manager of the James Goldsmith Memorial Foundation and subsidises international
campaigns against the European Union, the MAI, the WTO and genetic engineering.
Additionally, Goldsmith is the president of Ecoropa and a member of the
board of directors of the International Forum on Globalisation (IFG). The
IFG is a mixture of left- and right-wing opinion leaders and unites foremen
and -women of Ecoropa, the International Society for Ecology and Culture,
the Council of Canadians, the Third World Network and Public Citizen. The
IFG describes itself as "an alliance of sixty leading activists, scholars,
economists, researchers, and writers formed to stimulate new thinking,
joint activity, and public education in response to the rapidly emerging
economic and political arrangement called the global economy." The IFG
was set up in 1994 to develop strategies to "reverse the globalisation
trend and redirect actions toward revitalising local economies." Half way
1997 the IFG initiated the international anti-MAI campaign. During the
next Ministerial conference of the WTO in November 1999 in Seattle (USA)
the IFG will organise a counter conference at which among others the new-right
ideologist Edward Goldsmith is invited to give a speech. In a recent IFG
briefing the Council of Canadians advises NGOs and activists to give the
issue of defending national culture a more prominent place in their campaigns
against the MAI and the WTO.
Legitimising authoritarian interests
The blurred organisational and ideological boundaries between
the New Right and the campaigns against the MAI and the WTO shows the vulnerability
of the leftist movement and ideology in its ongoing crisis. According to
the New Right the major political conflict in society is not any more between
the left and the right. One of the strategies of the New Right is to look
for conservative and nationalist tendencies in supposedly left-wing ideologies
and to adopt these ideas for their own growth. Nicholas Hildyard, one of
the former editors of the Ecologist, warns about this in the article "Blood
and Culture: Ethnic Conflict and the Authoritarian Right", which was published
by The Cornerhouse in January 1999. "A platform shared with authoritarian
interests inevitably legitimises those interests, giving them a credibility
that they might otherwise not enjoy." He argues: "Anti-racism should be
placed at the centre of movement building, not tacked on as an optional
extra." Hildyard ends by stating: "The alliances that progressives enter
into will inevitably influence the outcome of their opposition, (...) for
whom we chose to walk with ultimately plays a large part in determining
where we end up walking." We think this description characterises very
well what has happened since the start of the international campaigns against
the MAI and the WTO. The motives of the former editors of the Ecologist
to leave the magazine have been known for a long time by organisations
co-operating with Edward Goldsmith, but so far very few groups have followed
their example. Instead, many groups are still defending Goldsmith by relativising
his collaboration with the New Right. This is unacceptable for us. We don't
see any common ground with organisations that refuse to clearly distance
themselves from the political ideas and praxis of Edward Goldsmith and
the New Right in general.
Lack of left wing positions
During last year De Fabel van de illegaal has tried to integrate
anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal and anti-racist analyses in the campaigns
against free trade. Now we have to conclude that it has not worked and
will not work. The problem lies in the focus of the campaigns: free trade.
Ideologically separating and criticising international or foreign capital
simply does not fit into left-wing politics. Our criticism of the focus
of the campaigns that we have tried to formulate is described in more detail
in the article "The campaign against the MAI is potentially anti-Semitic".
We are still expanding on this. De Fabel will not continue a campaign which,
because of a lack of left-wing positions and analyses, contributes to preparing
the ground for a further growth of the New Right. We have therefore decided
to discontinue our involvement in it. In the coming months we will do further
research on how big the organisational and ideological influences of the
New Right is in the international campaigns against free trade. We will
publish a number of articles and hope to contribute to an international
discussion about these issues. Hopefully such a discussion will contribute
to the development of clearer left-wing analyses and campaigns in the field
of international solidarity. We think it will be crucial for the survival
of the radical left to make a serious effort to integrate anti-patriarchal,
anti-racist and anti-capitalist analyses and make them together the core
our politics.
Eric Krebbers
Merijn Schoenmaker
De Fabel van de illegaal
July 1999
Koppenhinksteeg 2, 2312 HX Leiden, Netherlands
tel: +31-71-5127619, or 5144217, fax: +31-71-5134907
e-mail: lokabaal@dsl.nl
website: http://www.dsl.nl/lokabaal/english.htm
Some editing of the English translation by Alain
Kessi
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Last updated 2000-04-13