Sarah Palin 2012 'with Lou Dobbs. To add a bit of gravitas'

[Antid Oto]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Cees Binkhorst wrote:
> REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl
>
> Lijkt me een winnend duo, Lou voegt een hoop gewicht toe ;)
>
Dan weten we ook meteen weer waar we Binkhorst moeten plaatsen...


Anti-immigrant demagogue Lou Dobbs speaks in Detroit
By Jerry White
6 December 2007

CNN anchorman Lou Dobbs spoke at a business breakfast November 29 at
the Ritz Carlton Hotel in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn. The speech,
entitled, “The Middle Class and the American Spirit,” is part of a
series of speaking appearances throughout the US, to promote his new
book Independents Day: Awakening the American Spirit and test the
waters for a possible run as an independent candidate in the US
presidential race.

Dobbs is a long-time admirer of right-wing economist Milton Friedman,
who has described himself as a “lifelong Republican and a strong
believer in free enterprise.” As the head of CNN’s financial news unit
for nearly two decades he regularly presented fawning profiles of
corporate CEOs and enjoyed the closest relations with Wall Street. In
the last few years, however, the multimillionaire anchorman has
reinvented himself as an “independent populist” who rails against the
“business-political elite” and poses as a champion of the American worker.

Dobbs’s specialty is diverting social anger—produced by corporate
downsizing, falling living standards and a two-party system dominated
by big business and oblivious to the concerns of masses of working
people—down the reactionary path of nationalism and anti-immigrant
chauvinism.

His daily CNN show “Lou Dobbs Tonight” is a platform for nativism and
xenophobia. During his segment on “Broken Borders,” Dobbs denounces
the Bush administration and the Democrats for allowing the US to be
overrun by “illegal aliens,” which he blames for everything from the
loss of jobs and lower wages, to the overburdened public schools and
health-care system, to terrorism, crime and disease. According to the
Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report, several of Dobbs’s
past guests have been leaders of “hate groups,” which seek to incite
violence against Mexican immigrants and have connections to white
supremacist organizations such as the Council of Conservative
Citizens. Of the Minuteman Project—a paramilitary group that is
attempting to “seal” the Arizona border—Dobbs calls them a “terrific
group of concerned, caring Americans.”

In front of the audience of mid-level automotive industry managers,
local reporters and local politicians at the Dearborn meeting November
29, Dobbs refrained from his anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant rants. He
began his remarks, however, by denouncing immigrant rights advocates
who had gathered outside the hotel to protest his appearance, claiming
they wanted to stifle free speech, while he only wanted to “create a
dialogue” about issues the two political parties and the media were
unwilling to address.

Dobbs pitched his remarks towards the widespread disgust—even in this
establishment audience—with the Bush administration, the
Democratic-controlled Congress and the political “malaise,” as he put
it, in Washington.

Dobbs said the political system was dominated by corporate America and
pointed to estimates that candidates for the 2008 presidential race
would spend a total of $2 billion. The Republicans and Democrats, he
added, were “bought and paid for by corporate America,” while CEOs had
“abdicated their leadership” and “civic and corporate
responsibilities” to the American people in order to pursue
ever-greater profits.

Dobbs presented this situation—not as the inevitable product of the
capitalist system—but as the “betrayal” of American values and
“national sovereignty” by the country’s corporate and political leaders.

Dobbs decried the advocates of “globalization,” such as New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman, who claimed “free trade would be beneficial
to the US” when, in reality, it had led to record trade deficits, the
decline of American industries, such as Detroit’s automakers, and the
outsourcing of millions of jobs. “Michigan,” Dobbs said, was a
“metaphor for a country that can no longer clothe and feed itself” but
was dependent on foreign imports and the injection of billions of
Chinese dollars to pay for the national debt.

Dobbs does not urge workers to mount a struggle against the
unrelenting attack by the global corporations on their jobs and living
standards. Instead he explicitly seeks to turn US workers against
their counterparts in other countries by insisting that American
workers and US corporate bosses have the same “national interests.” He
insisted, for example, that the destruction of jobs among technical
workers in the US was not the product of vicious cost-cutting and
profit-making but the importing of lower-paid software engineers from
India, under the government’s temporary H1B visa program.

(In his book Independents Day, Dobbs argues that illegal immigrants
are the reason why the wages of meatpacking workers have fallen from
$19 an hour in 1980 to current wages of $9. In fact, the destruction
of wages and working conditions in the industry was the result of the
corporate-government union-busting drive of the 1980s and smashed
strikes at Hormel, Cudahy, Iowa Beef and other companies. The influx
of Latin and Asian immigrants in the industry chiefly followed the
decimation of meatpacking workers’ wages.)

Dobbs warned that the US was falling behind its economic competitors
in industrial output, public infrastructure, educational standards,
just as the growth of the world’s population, he said, was leading
nations to “compete for ever scarcer resources.” Like every other
politician or union bureaucrat who peddles this snake oil, Dobbs
insists it is workers who must suffer the greatest deprivations to
“save” the country.

He made this clear in his comments about the Iraq war. “Why is it that
none of the Democratic or Republican candidates for president are
standing before the American people and saying, ‘Yes, Iraq,
Afghanistan and the war on terror will have to be prosecuted—and we’ll
have to win—and I want you to know that it shouldn’t just be the
military but our whole nation at war.... the American people should be
sharing equally in the sacrifices that our young men and women are
making in the military.”

In other words, the full cost of these criminal wars must be borne by
working people through ever-greater cuts in social programs and living
standards. Moreover, this sacrifice no doubt would also include a
national draft to provide even more cannon fodder for US wars aimed at
dominating the oil-rich Middle East and Central Asia.

Dobbs blamed much of the national debt on “uncontrollable consumer
spending” and “extravagant programs” like Medicare, Medicaid and
Social Security. He complained that only two candidates—Republican
Fred Thompson and Democrat Barack Obama—had “stepped forward” on
Social Security and called for a reduction in benefits and extending
the retirement age. Both proposals, Dobbs said, were necessary but
they were woefully inadequate and expressed the reluctance of
Washington to deal with these “unsustainable” and “unfunded” obligations.

In response to a question from the audience about his intentions in
the 2008 president elections, Dobbs told the audience he was not
considering running, but added that he would consider himself a “great
candidate of last resort.” He then predicted, “We will see an
independent candidate for president in the next 90 days, like Ross
Perot, who will push back against both political parties.”

The Reform Party has reportedly approached Dobbs to run as its
presidential candidate in 2008. This would be in line with the
right-wing nationalist politics of this group, founded by Perot when
the Texas billionaire made the second of his two presidential
campaigns, running in 1996 on a platform denouncing the free trade
agreement with Mexico and calling for slashing the national debt. In
2000, former Nixon speechwriter Patrick Buchanan was the Reform
candidate, running on an anti-Chinese and anti-immigrant platform. In
2004, the Reform Party endorsed the independent campaign of Ralph
Nader, another nationalist opponent of “globalization.”

Dobbs’s virulent nationalism has won him the support of sections of
his fellow chauvinists in the American trade union bureaucracy. The
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union
has presented the immigrant-baiting anchorman with the George J.
Kourpias Excellence in Journalism Award.

During the question and answer period at the Detroit area event, Joe
Kanan, a staff organizer for the Michigan Regional Council of
Carpenters, complained about the influence of lobbying firms from
“foreign countries like China” on Michigan politicians. “Why not ask
all the presidential candidates if they receive money from foreign
lobbyists,” he said, and his comments were met with approval from Dobbs.

For his part, Dobbs praised the United Auto Workers union—which
recently agreed to slash the wages of new workers at GM, Ford and
Chrysler by half—as “doing the best they can” given trade imbalances
with Japan and other countries. While criticizing the AFL-CIO for
trying to sign up “illegal aliens,” he said organized labor had an
important role to play as a “partner with business.” For its part,
Dobbs said, US businesses must understand the “unions are not the enemy.”

One thing must be said about Dobbs. He is not a fool. He understands
that the growing social tensions in the US are leading to an
inevitable social explosion that could coalesce into a challenge to
the entire economic and political system.

After his speech this reporter was among several others who questioned
Dobbs. The following exchange took place:

WSWS: What would you say if someone compared your politics to LePen in
France, who seeks to divert social tensions away from the social
inequality and concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich by
scapegoating immigrants and workers in other countries, and blaming
them for unemployment and falling wages?

Dobbs: Anyone who would ask that question first of all doesn’t have
any understanding of LePen, who is a political figure. I am, in fact,
an advocacy journalist. Secondly, you raise the question as if you are
some sort of radical left-wing ideologue. I am not interested in your
ideology; I’m not interested in the ideology of the right; this is a
time for the American people and we have to take extremists in terms
of your position on the political spectrum and push back against you.

This response is noteworthy. First of all, Dobbs did not take offense
with the suggestion that his politics are comparable to the fascist
LePen, whom he describes benignly as a “political figure.” Most
importantly, his virulence against “radical left-wing politics”
suggests that Dobbs recognizes his most dangerous enemies are those
who expose his efforts to defraud the working class and counterpose to
nationalism a perspective of the international unity of the working
class against the global capitalist system.

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