V. The Electoral Opposition: Ralph Nader/La Duke At first reaction, it seems impossible to even consider the difference between Bush and Gore, since the contention between them is not over their shared aim of
U.S. world domination. In that light, a serious engagement with the Greens and the Nader/La Duke campaign seems exciting, especially with the promise—or at least very real possibility—that a large vote for
the Greens will open the future for a Left third party. Therefore, our more lengthy consideration of Nader begins with a question, "Is the Nader/Green candidacy a challenge to Gore and the Democrats from the
left? Nader is a crusading muckraker, a liberal Democrat who has broken with the Democratic party. He is not a Leftist and does not
claim to be. Ralph Nader is, as he named one of his organizations, a Public Citizen. He has organized a national network of
Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) to challenge corporate abuse of power, particularly when it injures the consumer. Nader's fundamental strategy is the creation of a progressive capitalist regulatory
state, buttressed by consumer advocacy groups in Washington D.C. whose front line tactics would be class action lawsuits and administrative complaints: By adopting the liberal vision of "countervailing
power" proposed by John Kenneth Galbraith, that is, protecting capitalism from capitalists, Nader is a man who believes in the system and demands that it works. Nader supports state's rights Nader argues that the state's rights movement of
Republican judges is in many ways positive, for he does not fear the violation of constitutional protections against blacks and Latinos at the state level as much as he fears the overturning of environmental
and consumer initiatives at the state level. This position trivializes the danger of racist terror at the state level, and is totally out of synch with the essential weapon of federal intervention to enforce
civil rights at many critical points in U.S. history. Nader claims, in an interview with Harold Meyerson of the L.A. Weekly, "There's never been a retrenchment in civil rights since the Dred Scott decision.
These things are not going to be pulled back—and if they are it would probably be the greatest source of revival of civic action in our generation." Despite being an attorney, Nader has a chilling ignorance
of the law when it deals with race and racism and an arrogant white chauvinism when he conveys a flippant reassurance to black, Latino, Asian, and indigenous peoples that they can depend upon the states to
protect their civil rights. Nader's support for "U.S. workers" is based on a chauvinist U.S. protectionism against Third World
competition. Nader's appeal to "labor" is in actuality a narrow appeal to the most privileged, white, and male sectors of the
U.S. working class—in direct contradiction to the interests of the international working class. Nader's politics on trade focus on "protecting" U.S. workers from the ravages of international competition.
Nader's opposition to granting Permanent Normal Trade Relations to the People's Republic of China is based on chauvinist arguments. He asserts that the U.S. is a democracy, that China is a dictatorship, and
that the U.S. can be the arbiter of the social systems of the nations with which it trades, in this case singling out China for "human rights" abuses when the U.S. is directly and through its organized
proxies, among the worst human rights violators in the world.Nader has focused his appeal to the most protectionist, chauvinist, xenophobic trade unions—such as the United Auto Workers, the
Steelworkers, the Teamsters—whose members work for companies that compete with Third World producers. Officials of these unions often work hand in hand with their own corporations, fight against every
environmental law that would possibly threaten one of their jobs, suppress union militancy and democracy in their ranks, and attempt to block imports into the U.S. and break down the doors of any nation that
imposes tariffs to protect its domestic industries from U.S. exports. These trade union aristocrats want complete control over the U.S. market and complete control over the world market.
Nader, quoted in the New York Times, told a group of workers, "You're the guys who work hard. You're the guys who pay the taxes. You're the guys who fight the wars. And then they say, `Tough. We're
closing down the factory—it's globalization.' And then they use factories overseas where dictators repress the wages to compete against you." Nader's "you're the guys" accepts the maleness of the workforce
as a given. He shares Bill Clinton's appeal to conservative workers, calling them taxpayers, a code word to Reagan Democrats. He commends them for fighting the wars—the invasions of Korea, Vietnam and
Grenada, the bombing of civilians in Iraq and Kosovo? He plays into the image that all nations in the Third World are run by dictators, an assertion that the U.S. is a democracy against which the social
systems of others can be judged. The issue Nader uses to motivate these workers is not class struggle with their own employers and union bureaucrats, or an international movement of workers and oppressed
nationality peoples against imperialism, but rather, a xenophobic hatred of foreigners.
Nader is soft and evasive on issues of police brutality and abuse. In a recent campaign mailer, Ralph Nader discussed "law
enforcement" without making any mention of police abuse and brutality or the racism of the criminal justice system. Instead, he again reduced the role of the capitalist state to consumer issues saying, "Law
enforcement—which is supposed to protect the interests of consumers from corporate crime, fraud, and abuse, is a farce, devoid of resources and the will to actually enforce the law." By this Nader means
government agencies like the anti-trust division of the Justice Department, EPA, and OSHA while, while for most people in communities of color and the civil rights movement "law enforcement" means the
police. He fosters the illusion that the law is "supposed" to protect the entire population when there is widespread understanding that the law protects the wealthy and white society. Nader
assumes the laws are good and proposes the most minimal reforms. This is why, when asked about police brutality in Seattle, he asserts "Don't stereotype the police." His observation, "the police in Seattle
overreacted because they had never seen a demonstration before" goes beyond naivete to hint at dishonesty for political gain. Nader actually displays hostility to an analysis of racist police violence and
has chosen to distance himself from the growing movements against police violence and brutality. Nader trivializes and deflects
serious discussion of the U.S. as an imperialist power—and does not challenge pro-imperialist ideology or policies. In the
L.A. Weekly Nader observed that "We're not very good at waging peace. We spend untold billions preparing to wage war, but you don't see a Department of Peace. This means we're weak on preventive
diplomacy and preventive defense. So we're always stumbling into crises, and having to make instant decisions that are difficult—and having to send our own troops. We don't have well trained stand-by
multi-lateral peace keeping forces. So we get into NATO and all kind of U.S. dominated situations that tend to backfire." Nader uses the imperial "we" as if he and the Pentagon are both representing the same
"national interests" but simply disagree about the tactics—an identification with the ruling class and the nation state that characterizes the populist liberalism he shares with Al Gore.With
regard to the military budget, Nader's focus is the misuse of funds. In his L.A. speech, Nader said, "We have a 330 billion dollar military budget, defending prosperous allies who can defend themselves
against non-existent enemies. We spend tens of billions of dollars to protect ourselves from the North Koreans who can barely feed their people, how could they scare the U.S.? Our defense policy is based on
who wants more and more government contracts, its an unworkable boondoggle." For Nader, the entire military-industrial complex of imperialism is a corporate boondoggle, motivated by the immediate profits of
defense contractors, the greedy militaristic tendencies of lobbyists getting rich against imaginary enemies. Nader entices gullible, often privileged, white audiences to chuckle at the waste of money and
corporate greed of the Pentagon, but does not agitate them against the U.S. blockade of Iraq and Cuba, the U.S. aerial bombardment of civilian populations in Iraq and Kosovo, the next Vietnam in Colombia. He
talks about how U.S. military policies have "backfired" when in fact they have painfully succeeded in advancing the interests of U.S. imperialism. Nader does not challenge the ideology of empire; worse, he
contributes to it by portraying the U.S. as a well-meaning but bumbling colossus that does not know how to make peace. A department of "peace" run by U.S. imperialism? Give us a break.
The Nader campaign is not a movement campaign, it represents a subset of the white progressive movement, and is riddled with white chauvinism.
Nader has done virtually nothing in the four years since he last ran as president to ally with or learn from militant social movements.
Nader ran for president in 1996, and as several liberal as well as more radical activists observed, "Where the hell has he been for 4 years?" By contrast, Jesse Jackson ran for president in 1984 and did very
well in the Democratic primaries. For the next four years Jackson was seen at every picket line from the GM Van Nuys campaign, the Hormel strike, every police brutality demonstration. Nader's only
identification with activism has been the white student protests against "globalization"—but not against imperialism—in Seattle. He has essentially sat out the last four years, and his present campaign
continues his isolation and lack of connection to social movements—in particular anti-racist, anti-imperialist movements rooted in communities of color or significantly working class of color based. Further, the Seattle protestors he supported were more than 90 percent white, as were the members of the Direct Action Network at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, as were the
400 people who attended Nader's speech in Los Angeles in August, as were the more than 12,000 people in Minneapolis who heard him speak in September. A viable and historically relevant New Left must be built
on a solid multiracial base in which people of color are represented in very significant proportion, preferably in the majority, and definitely in the leadership. The Greens, the student groups among whom he
is most popular, and Nader himself, see little wrong with their virtually all white world, and instead talk about "integrating and diversifying themselves." There is no historical event, ever, in which a
predominantly white structure evolved into a majority people of color structure. The Greens do not understand the existence, let alone the profoundly reactionary nature of, white chauvinism as a culture or
an ideology, but they exude it in their every organizational and political representation of themselves. Nader and the Green Party's
white chauvinism is endemic, systematic, and dangerous. Nader, and the white Greens, are very hostile to challenges by people of color and anti-racist whites to their own chauvinism and their liquidation of
the struggle against racism. There is a growing criticism in the civil rights/anti-racist movement that Nader is downright
dangerous and harmful in the struggle against racism. The core problem is that Nader knows what he thinks. He states clearly that he sees the struggle against racial discrimination as subordinated to and
incorporated into "class" and indicates that any efforts to prioritize the challenge against racism and white supremacy, in society and in his campaign, are distracting and divisive and will be dealt with
harshly.More than 20 Bus Riders Union members went to attend Nader's August speech in Los Angeles. After Nader had spoken for more than an hour, detailing corporate abuse after corporate abuse
but avoiding any discussion of racism and national oppression in the U.S., Martín Hernández from the Strategy Center yelled out from the audience, "What about racism?" Nader countered, disdainfully, "Well,
what do you think my position is? I'm against it." He then went on to say, however, that in his view, "Race is included in class." In the question and answer period, Maria Guardado of the BRU
asked Nader what his position was on U.S. intervention and aid in Columbia, and he answered again, "What do you think it is? I'm against it." He then went on, again, somewhat sardonically, about the
hypocrisy of the drug war in Columbia, went off on a bizarre monologue about the benefits of legalizing hemp, but seemed to have no understanding of the seriousness of the U.S. intervention in Colombia's
internal affairs, the murdering of guerrillas and campesinos, or the anger that Maria, a veteran of the FMLN in El Salvador, felt about U.S. domination of Latin America. In the sum-up after the meeting, BRU
members expressed that they felt like outsiders had no interest in working on the Nader campaign, and observed that the feeling was mutual on the part of Nader's staffers.
Vanessa Daniel, in her article in Color Lines
magazine "Ralph Nader's Racial Blindspot" reports a chilling story that confirms our direct experience. In a mass meeting in Seattle, Nader scolded a leading black activist Hop Hopkins of the Brown Coalition, saying "You ask what I have done to reach out to the black community and address racial issues and I ask you how many black people did you bring here today to hear me and support this campaign." In fact, the only time Nader voluntarily talked about communities of color in his L.A. speech was when he proposed them, not represented in the room, as a tactical wedge to help his campaign. When he was asked how we planned to address his exclusion from the national debates, Nader said, "If you can go get Latino and African American groups to organize a debate, and have me invited, the other two candidates will be forced to show up, they would look cowardly if they didn't." So, the very blacks and Latinos who did not show up to hear Nader are now supposed to be organized by the white Greens to set up a debate to embarrass Gore and Bush.
There are Democrats and Republicans running for national office who are far more outspoken and courageous than Nader in confronting
some issues of racism and empire. Jesse Jackson Jr., a Democratic Congressman from Chicago, has said that he will work for Gore
while holding his nose, he will work against the Democratic Leadership Council and the Southern Dixiecrats in his own party, he will demand to open up the debates to include Ralph Nader, and he feels that
the racial divide is the central contradiction in U.S. society. Tom Campbell, a moderate Republican running for U.S. Senator in California, told a Republican fundraiser, "I am proud of my
record. I voted for the impeachment of Bill Clinton, I voted against the unlawful war in Kosovo, and I oppose the use of U.S. troops to suppress people in Third World countries like Colombia." Both Jackson
and Campbell have a lot to lose, including retaliation from their parties, and neither is positioning themselves as Left or radical, and yet they speak with an independence and radicalism far more compelling
than the repetitious rants of Nader as he rails against corporate power in the most narrow and economist manner. Since Nader is not running to win, his contribution to the election is that he
can raise issues far outside the bounds of thinkable thought, to launch a frontal challenge to the racism and world domination of U.S. society, to focus on the human rights abuses of the United States
instead of China, to challenge white activists and well-paid union workers to confront their own chauvinism and class privilege as seen on a world scale. Nader's narrow focus on challenging the corporations
for immediate economic benefit for the "consumer" is so similar to Gore's populism that Nader is reduced to saying that the main difference between he and Gore is that, if elected (which he doesn't expect),
he will really carry out what Gore only promises. There is no challenge to the system in these formulations. Perhaps, Nader is the true compassionate conservative. |