The Politics of Lee Atwater.

It took some time, but I finally got around to watching Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story (2008) by Stefan Forbes. It's well worth a watch if you're fascinated by the drama of American politics. In its focus on Lee Atwater the film individualises a serious problem, which is actually systematic, within the US political scene. This is both its weakness and strength.

It shouldn't be a surprise. After all, individualism has long been the dominant character of American politics. Personalities carry more significance than parties. Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan and Sarah Palin coexist in the same party, but represent very different ideas, constituencies and interests. But this can obscure ideological and economic problems.

Undoubtedly, Lee Atwater is a significant figure in American political history. He arose just as the civil rights struggle had defeated Jim Crow in the Southern States and the anti-war movement was challenging US hegemony. Out of this period the gay liberation and feminist movements emerged in the 1970s. The executive power of the presidency was put under strain with the fall of Nixon in the wake of Watergate. It looked as if the establishment was seriously threatened.

What came next has to be understood as a period of reconsolidation for the American ruling-class. Jimmy Carter came into office as a candidate to win over the counterculture and bring them back into mainstream liberal politics. Once in office, President Carter installed Paul Volcker in the Federal Reserve, where Volcker hiked interest rates to soak the poor, and in foreign affairs pledged CIA support for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and the Contras in Nicaragua.

Once in office, Reagan inherited and expanded the Contras and the Mujahideen deepening the American commitment to devastating Nicaragua and Afghanistan. The Reaganites went as far as to sanction CIA drug trafficking to fund the illegal and immoral campaign of terrorism against the Sandinistas. This was the surrounding context of Atwater's rise.

The Reagan campaign recycled the planks of Goldwater conservatism: small government, individual freedom, and anti-communism. This is where Atwater entered. As one of Strom Thurmond's storm troopers he had mastered the Southern strategy, which had allowed the Republicans to seize the South after the Democrats conceded to civil rights reform. He was adept at tapping into the copious reservoirs of Southern anger, not just at the civil rights movement, but at the outcome of the American civil war.

Traditionally, the Democratic Party had been the representatives of white supremacy, as well as big business, and later the labour movement. The balance of this was first disrupted by the New Deal and then finally collapsed under the Great Society. This is the side of history that the documentary could have engaged. Instead, the film does little to critically engage with the Democrats, a flaw endemic to American liberals, which given their failures and complicity is pretty lax. The focus on Atwater allows the film to skip over the complicity of Democrats.

The film rightly focuses on the Bush campaign of '88 and highlighted the use of race as a mobilising force. Atwater engineered the notorious Willie Horton adverts, which sparked controversy, in a blatant appeal to white racial-consciousness. Atwater transformed George Bush, the wimp wasp, into the defender of the white race. However, the documentary omits that it was Al Gore who raised the case of Willie Horton against Michael Dukakis in the competition for the Democratic nomination.

In other words, the liberals played the race card first only for Atwater to wield it against them. Much like how Harry Truman initiated the red scare which would mutate into McCarthyism. The capacity of establishment liberalism to undermine itself should not be underestimated. I'm not sure if the omission of this convicts Stefan Forbes of anything particularly egregious. It could be down to ignorance, or a choice to keep the focus on Atwater. In any case, this omission folds into another problematic assumption.

Forbes attributes a diabolical brilliance to the likes of Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, and, by extension, Roger Ailes. Out of these figures Atwater may have been the most effective, but it's hard to judge as his rise and fall was so rapid. It shouldn't be forgotten that Bush I was flushed out of the White House thanks to a tax pledge he made on Atwater's watch. It's clear Karl Rove offered George W Bush highly damaging advice on more than one occasion. Alexander Cockburn pointed this out a long time ago:

Since 9/11 where has been the good news for the Administration? It’s been a sequence of catastrophe of unexampled protraction. Under Rove’s deft hand George Bush has been maneuvered into one catastrophe after another. Count the tombstones: “Bring it on”, “Mission Accomplished”, the sale of US port management to Arabs. It was Rove who single-handedly rescued the antiwar movement last July by advising Bush not to give Cindy Sheehan fifteen minutes of face time at his ranch in Crawford.

As for Roger Ailes, the emergence of Fox News has largely allowed the mainstream media to pretend it is really objective - at least with Fox News there is little such pretense - when in many ways the US press (even without Fox) is awful. The New York Times, a regular feature in the Fox demonology, has long been a custodian of the establishment and its consensus. The soi disant objective media has always been far from inclusive.

So the picture is incomplete for it lacks the ineffectuality and complicity of the Democrats. It's no coincidence that the culture wars were launched after the economic losses under Reagan were accepted as conventional wisdom. It's not all down to the Machiavellian ingenuity of a boy from South Carolina. The bicoastal elites were always vulnerable to cultural populism as class has long been a taboo subject in American politics. The assumed primacy of individuals leaves little room for systemic analysis, except for sectional interests.

When Reagan auditioned for Gore Vidal's Best Man.

 Flicking through 'I Told You So: Gore Vidal Talks Politics' (2013) you will find a great many gems and goodies. All the trappings of a life well lived, the witticism and erudition on full show for Vidalophiles. Here's an amusing swipe at Ronald Reagan:

Q: Did you know Reagan in Hollywood?

A: Yes and no. I’ve been at functions with him a dozen times. Hollywood is a very small place; he was active in television and I was active in television. In ’59, I was casting The Best Man and MCA offered us Reagan to play the good guy, an Adlai Stevenson sort of presidential candidate. I said I just didn’t think that Reagan would be very convincing as a presidential candidate. Instead we hired Melvyn Douglas. As a result Douglas’ career was totally revived, he won every prize in sight and was a star from then on to his death. Reagan by then had nothing, he was by that time a host on that TV program.

Q: So if Reagan had been cast in the lead of The Best Man –

A: Melvyn Douglas would have become President – a very good President. And Ron today would probably be touring in Paint Your Wagon.

Multiple Reagasms.

For a great number of self-proclaimed conservatives Ronald Reagan was a man of great moral integrity. Yet the facts tell a story of a washed up B-movie actor who, while in office, actively vandalised the American economy for the rich to pig-out on the eviscerated entrails of civil society. It wasn't the birth of laissez-faire capitalism out of the death of New Deal liberalism, rather it was accumulation by dispossession. Reaganism only represented a shift in fiscal policy: tax-cuts for the rich combined with greater subsidies for the rich. The covert war that the US had waged against Latin America was stepped up a knotch, leaving tens of thousands of civilians dead. This was at the same time that the US government refused to withdraw support from the Apartheid regime in South Africa and placed Nelson Mandela on the terrorist list where he sat until a couple of years ago. The casual criminality of the US government reached new heights under Ronald Reagan, not least with the convenient failure to impose basic laws to protect workers, which consequently led to a massive increase in illegal firings. It got to the point that the administration was condemned by the UN for the "unlawful use of force" - meaning international terrorism.

Now Seth Rosenfeld exposes Reagan's past as a stoole pigeon in the FBI's McCarthyite campaigns against Hollywood and later the counter-revolution against student radicals and the free-speech movement of the 1960s. As an actor Ronnie was an informer, he snooped on his fellow actors and infiltrated groups that the FBI suspected of "subversive activities". The Hollywood Independent Committee for the Arts, Sciences and Professions was one such group that the FBI had Reagan infiltrate. It was a very broad-based group with many people of different political views and when Reagan proposed a resolution to repudiate Communism it divided the Committee. At the behest of the FBI Reagan went on to drive a wedge in other groups through similar propositions. This included the American Veterans Committee. He also stole the minutes of group meetings, only for the minutes to find themselves in FBI archives. As President of the Screen Actors Guild Reagan acted to oppose a strike of set-builders for the reason that he believed the Communists were behind the strike.

Reagan even had the FBI open a file on an actress who questioned his position on blacklisting alleged leftist radicals. In 1966 Ronald Reagan railed against the Free-Speech movement in California. He began "There is a leadership gap in Sacramento, a morality and decency gap," before sliming against Berkeley as a home for 'beatniks', 'radicals' and what he described as 'filthy speech' advocates. Reagan went on to spew yet more disdain on "the so-called free-speech advocates," who for him "have no appreciation for freedom" instead he thought it more important to rein them in for 'violating' law and order. Apparently the Berkeley campus had become a rallying point for 'Communists' and 'sexual misconduct' by then. To stamp out the left-wing intellectuals Reagan went on to call for the investigation of academics and demanded that the professors sign a code of conduct. He was bashing the student movement and academic Left to undermine Democrat Pat Brown. As Governor of California Reagan maintained good relations with the FBI and procured secret briefings on protests.


The Governor's office was not just interested in information on left-wing students and academics, even liberal intellectuals and Berkeley's Chancellor Clark Kerr. The right-wing campaign eventually forced Kerr out of office, it was coincidental that Kerr had been a great administrator of public education. Under Clark Kerr the university had opened its doors to thousands of people who would have ordinarily not gone on to higher education. He crafted the master-plan for higher education for this purpose. The institution became one of the most successful public universities in history. It was a model that was emulated around the country and the world. Kerr lifted the ban against socialist speakers on the campus on the grounds that the students should be made 'safe' for ideas rather than making ideas 'safe' for students. Later Kerr was not so active in crushing the Free-Speech movement, yet he was not a supporter - he was attacked by the Left and the Right.

The student movement viewed Clark Kerr as an enemy because he refused to lift bans prohibiting  activists from handing out Civil Rights leaflets on campus. Yet at the same time J Edgar Hoover and Reagan were convinced Clark Kerr was a menace because he wasn't acting to break the back of the student radicals. The FBI used background investigations as a pretext to destroy Kerr and relied on false accusations to do so. It was only Pat Brown who protected Clark Kerr from this campaign. Once the FBI had a friend in office, it was easy to force Kerr out. Unsurprisingly Reagan launched a campaign to smash public education in California and imposed tuition fees on the University of California. This was only the beginning of the New Right's counter-revolution. Rosenfeld was most shocked that the FBI was so active in the use of the exceptional laws of wartime against civilians, particularly students and academia. But it should be remembered that the US has much worse incidents of repression in its history.


At the same time that the FBI was acting to destroy Clark Kerr and backing Reagan's bid for Governorship the Bureau was running COINTELPRO. The target of the operations included the Socialist Workers Party, Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. It went from surveillance and attempts at subversion to outright assassination. The Black Panther organiser Fred Hampton was murdered Gestapo style by the Chicago Police in collusion with the FBI. This was exposed around the same time as Watergate and yet it is virtually unkown by comparison. The mainstream liberal commentariat was far more concerned by the sight of Richard Nixon trying to destroy the Democratic Party than an active campaign by the Establishment against Civil Rights and the New Left. COINTELPRO went as far back as Eisenhower and ran right up until Nixon. This shouldn't really surprise anyone. The FBI was founded during Wilson's Red Scare, a shameful period in America's history, as a national political police force to crush dissent.

Crime Pays!

We live in fictitious times where Thatcher and Reagan are a lot like Gods for the present-day conservatives of Britain and America. It was demonstrated well when Reagan gave up the ghost in 2004 and we could see that the Republicans had succeeded in their efforts to elevate Ronald Reagan to almost deified heights. Of course, the death was just what George Bush needed to take the heat off the administration as the horrors of Abu Ghraib shook the world. The Reagan administration had some great tacticians, who had the sense to wage war on Grenada just as the US Marine Barracks in Beirut had been bombed. But the timing of Reagan's demise was a masterstroke that not even the Reaganite tacticians could have pulled off. It came at just the right moment. As if the funeral had not demonstrated just how far the deification had gone - how deeply the termites had feasted - Obama marked the 100th year since Reagan's birth with the words "President Reagan helped as much as any President to restore a sense of optimism in our country."

Perhaps it was the moment when Reagan added Nelson Mandela to the terrorist list (where he would remain until 2008) that restored so much optimism in America. The South African government only murdered 1.5 million people in their African neighbour-states. No wonder the Hoover Institution noted that Ronald Reagan is revered as a colossus whose "spirit seems to stride the country, watching us like a warm and friendly ghost." It can barely be muttered today that Reagan was perched as ornament to a criminal government. You might be called a conspiracy theorist for recalling that they gave the CIA permission to deal in guns and drugs in the funding of terrorist groups in Latin America. And if not then you will be called an extremist for recognising Reaganomics for what it was - a monumental disaster. For the reactionaries on both sides of the pond the post-war period was the real disaster, with its steady rates of growth, development and productivity. The crises of the 1960s and 70s opened up a space for the life to be snuffed out of this model.


The post-Thatcher period in which we are currently held captive holds that the time before the Iron Lady was a time of stagnant mediocrity. There were plenty of problems in Britain that had been a product of the post-war settlement. But we can't seem to see the mediocrity of what we're currently living in. The average growth rate of the 1980s was 2.4% which is what it was in the 1970s and even less than it was in the 60s. Supposedly Thatcherism rejuvenated sickly Britain and restored Greatness to its shores. Even though the same pathetic worries lingered around such topics as European integration, immigration, anti-social behaviour and crime alike. The English mind was still obsessed with the decline of status it had endured since the Empire fell. And in many ways, we the British are still in the fits that inevitably come with a disordered understanding of the past. It was actually decades of steady growth and significant development which were brought to a close in the 1980s. The golden age of capitalism was no more.

We now endure the society that the Thatcherites have laid waste to and the people who have done so well out of the devastation now tell us that the real problem are the immigrants and the dole queue. The old aim of full employment was dumped and the government effectively acted to increase unemployment in order to smash the trade unions and pacify the working-class. Before there had been a time when we were close to full employment and the wealthy paid a rate of tax which was relatively progressive. Incomes for workers had tended to rise alongside productivity which was partly driven by a strong labour movement. The bedrock of institutional power for the working-class could be found in a variety of industrial sectors and the extraction of natural resources. The Thatcherites embarked upon a savage deflation which destroyed a fifth of the industrial base in two years and oversaw a 30% decline in employment in manufacturing. The unions were blown away one by one, most famously with the mines shut because it was cheaper to import.

Since the Thatcher government smashed the unions the workers' share of national income has either stagnated or declined. With the defeats of trade unions in the 1980s the right-wing mutation of the Labour Party easily picked up pace. The socialist codger Michael Foot was soon replaced with the Welsh windbag Neil Kinnock, under whom the Labour Party served as an incompetent and hopelessly complicit opposition to Thatcherism. There was no serious opposition to take over the government, just as there wasn't in the Blair years and today under the Coalition. And yet these governments have each played the populist game, the Thatcherite mantra was "power to the people" as British Telecom was sold-off for £3.7 billion. In that decade the government transferred £14 billion from the tax-payer to the investors and paid banks £3 billion to handle these transactions. The programme consisted of giving away state assets to private companies at a reduced price to ensure maximum profits and to safeguard the interests of the private sector.

The Tories handed over a lot of public money to banks from 1992 onwards as part of the Public-Private Partnership, which sold-off public aid and gave greater power to bankers. As Michael Hudson wrote "The financial giveaway had the effect of increasing prices for basic infrastructure services by building in heavy financial fees – guaranteed for the banks, who lent the money that banks and property owners used to pay in taxes in more progressive times." The theory goes that the banks will create jobs as they invest the funds in British infrastructure, specifically public transport, but it was really a way for real estate speculators to get even richer. The extension of the Jubilee Line to Canary Wharf cost £3.5 billion as it raised property values along the route by £13 billion. The public investment in transport could pay for itself simply with a tax on the higher rent-of-location and the site value. But the government would rather the banks rake in the cash.

As Noam Chomsky has pointed out when politicians prefer to talk about 'jobs' than even utter the filthy word 'profits'. The allies of the super-rich then moved to sell-off British Rail and saw to it that the railways carry an over-flowing gravy train for the wealthy. It is standard practice in a privatisation for the state to make sure the buyers are well served with comfy pillows stuffed with the taxes of working-class people. Last year Richard Branson gobbled up £18 million of tax-payer's money as the system underwent a multi-billion state upgrade. The privatisation opened up a space for private ownership safeguarded by public investment and, even as standards of service have slipped, there has been no attempt to re-nationalise the railways. The government contributes £4.6 billion to the railways as the private sector pays just £459 million into the set-up, most of which goes towards stock rather than anything in the real world.

Looking back on it all, its clear that it was just the beginning. We shouldn't forget the real content of such policies when David Cameron talks the same way about hospitals and schools. The same goes for the talk of selling off the woods and the exposed plans to sell bits of the police even. The first decision of New Labour was to abandon the last lever of the state to the markets, the Bank of England became 'independent' of the government. It was clear that there would be no dramatic shift from the post-Thatcherite line that has been safely established to stand its ground. The pillaging and the pig-out for the rich has yet to cease, the same can be said for the pains of the poor. We may live to see the state reduced to a slither of what it once was before we see a change in paradigm. It isn't clear just how far this model can be pushed before something has to give, but it can be said that this is not the final crisis of neoliberalism.

Reagasm!

This week a statue of Ronald Reagan was unveiled near the US Embassy in London on American Independence Day, it was built to commemorate the man who supposedly "won" the Cold War without firing a shot (at least not at Russians). Apparently the Iron Curtain fell because Reagan stood up and asked Gorbachev to "tear down this wall", it had nothing to do with the internal situation of the Soviet Union. Though we know that the Berlin Wall fell because of people power, it had nothing to do with American foreign policy, the Soviet Union was a house of cards and it collapsed from within. The statue will stand beside Franklin D Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, who look left-wing compared with the wasp-ish ferocity of Reaganomics. Supposedly the 10ft Reagan will remind us of the "power of freedom", which the Reaganites loved so much they supported Apartheid and Nikolae Ceaușescu right up until the bitter end. The irony being we have a statue of Nelson Mandela in Parliament Square, Mandela was condemned as a "terrorist" by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

I have written about the deification of Ronald Reagan in the past and now the time has come to remind people about the reality of Reaganism as the media fawn over him once more. We can read at Sky News about how Thatcher shared his "idealism and conviction". In the comments you'll notice references to a "golden era" heralded by the Reaganites, for which there is no substance. You have to notice that the praise of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan is always particularly shallow and characterised by vague language, preferably with the Union Jack and the Old Glory in the background to symbolise trans-Atlantic unity. Back in February, President Obama praised Reagan for the way he "restored" a sense of optimism in America and "transcended" politics. It seems as though people are a bit lost as to why there should be a statue to this man in London. The reasons range from a centenary (in which case it's only 5 months late) to Reagan accomplished "Peace through Strength" by killing thousands of Latin-Americans and propping vile despots all over the world.

Thatcher's words were read out by William Hague "'Ronald Reagan was a great president and a great man - a true leader for our times. He held clear principles and acted upon them with purpose. Through his strength and his conviction he brought millions of people to freedom as the Iron Curtain finally came down." The Reagan years were marked out by a slaughter of thousands of people in Latin America and the Middle East, whilst dictators oppressed millions more on his watch. The Iron Lady finished with this "It was a pleasure to be his colleague and his friend and I hope this statue will be a reminder to future generations of the debt we owe him." The only debt incurred by the Reagan era was in the form of a $3 trillion debt which turned the US from the biggest creditor to the largest debtor in the world. All of it was used to pay for enormous tax-cuts for the rich, unprecedented protectionist barriers to foreign competition and a bloated military budget. The fawning British press is a disgrace.

It is appropriate that this man joins other overrated and misguidedly praised politicians as John F Kennedy and Jan Smuts as immortalised statues. Though it is most unfortunate that we build statues of such people in juxtaposition to statues of great men like Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. It is more of a testament to the warped age in which we live, I suppose in twenty-odd years we'll be building statues of George Bush and hearing about how he fought so valiantly for freedom and democracy against Islamo-fascism. We find ourselves in Britain worried to death about the fucking Eurocrats in Brussels whilst Trident is a part of the US nuclear command system and we have been led into six "humanitarian interventions" in the last 20 years. Have we even made an independent foreign policy decision since Harold Wilson refused to send British troops to die in Vietnam? We are America's Trojan Mule in Europe, the British elite are aware that without the "special relationship" we have no role in world affairs.

Peace through War.

War without Honour.

In the 1970s there was a power struggle in Washington between realists and idealists over foreign policy. Though it should be noted that there is very little practical difference between the two factions. Watergate had sunk public belief in politicians along with Nixon, whose administration had sought a balance of power in the world between the Soviet Union and the United States. This involved making peace with China, slaughtering millions of people in South-East Asia for the sake of "peace with honour", and propping up dictatorships around the world. After Nixon resigned, a caretaker administration followed with Henry Kissinger retained his dual roles as Secretary of State and National Security Adviser. The nationalists Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, both idealists, were introduced into the White House around the same time. As Kissinger attempted to seize all levers of foreign policy from President Ford, Cheney and Rumsfeld acted to ostracise and remove Kissinger from the government.

The Reagan administration turned away from the detente approach of realpolitik that had been a key-part of American foreign policy for many years by that time. This could not have been done had Kissinger won the power struggle in the 70s. The White House was heavily influenced by neoconservatives, self-described "democratic revolutionaries", who felt that America should lead the way for freedom and democracy in the world. Reagan had soon declared the "War on Terrorism" and went on to describe the USSR as the "Evil Empire". All of this provided a justification for increasing military spending, which is not just about pouring money into high-tech industry but also about expanding the influence of the US government and its economic interests around the world. Of course, spreading freedom and democracy around the world to defeat Communism involved propping up extreme right-wing governments.

As part of the new strategy, dubbed without irony as "peace through strength", the Reagan administration quickly acted to support General Zia ul-Haq, in his support of the Mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan whilst turning a blind-eye to the General's nuclear ambitions and radicalisation of Pakistani society - the consequences of which we are still living with today. This policy succeeded in driving the Russians out of Afghanistan but it left the Mujahideen to tear apart Kabul, carrying out mass-rapes and slaughtering thousands, which in turn led to the rise of the Taliban - one of the most reactionary movements in the history of the Middle East. Incidentally, the US supported the Taliban  with aid from the time it took power in 1996 until 2001 when the US invaded. Though it was not just Pakistan which received such support from the US under Reagan, there is a long list of undesirable regimes supported by the US government.


The justification given for supporting such regimes is that these governments were anti-communist. Apartheid in South Africa was supported because the state was fighting Communism, specifically in the form of the ANC. General Pinochet and Suharto violently suppressed leftist elements in Chile and Indonesia, with total support from the US for the sake of "containment". The same can be said of General Zia ul-Haq, Hosni Mubarak, the House of Saud and the Taliban in Afghanistan. But what about Vietnam? The official justification for the Vietnam war was the "containment" of Maoism. The US used this to justify supporting the autocrat Diem, the nationalist regime was later overthrown and Diem was executed on orders from Washington in 1963. South Vietnam was subjected to a horrendous campaign of bombing from the US, far worse than the campaigns which the Communist North was subjected to. Where's the logic here?

The Perpetual War.

The Cold War was not really a conflict between two superpowers, between capitalism and socialism, a grand narrative which is a part of national myths - e.g. a white man's burden, democracy promotion and internationalism. The Cold War was real in the sense that it was violent and brutal, mostly for the people of places like Vietnam and Nicaragua, but the battle between two superpowers was almost nonexistent. If anything there was a competition between America and Russia over spheres of influence. All currents of independence are a threat, regardless of the political tendency of independence, so a country like Vietnam had to be torn apart not for any political reason. The suppression of independence in South and North Vietnam, to prevent the emergence of a state which might inspire others, was given the narrative of "containment" of Maoist China to provide a justification.

The Reaganites backed the Contras in Nicaragua in an attempt to bring down the Sandinistas and bring back the economic policies that led to impoverished Nicaraguans selling their blood at $1 a litre. The Reagan administration argued that if the left-wing movement triumphed in Nicaragua that could bring Communism to America's back yard and even fed deluded fears that Nicaragua could invade the US. Of course, the Sandinistas had no intention to take on the US as that would mean suicide and was a grass-roots reaction to the murderous regime led by Somoza with the complete support of the US government. The support the Reagan administration gave to the Contras went as far as outright violation of law. As Congress cut off funding to the Contras, the Reaganites permitted the CIA to use unscrupulous means to raise funds which went as far as running drugs and selling arms to Iran in exchange for hostages (all the while pouring arms into Iraq to fight Iran).

The Iran-Contra scandal rocked Washington to an extent not seen since Watergate and its rightful exposure brought into public view the disgraces of the Reagan administration. Though it was only "exposed" in the West after it had been picked up by a Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa after Mehdi Hashemi arranged demonstrations in opposition to the dealings between the US and Iran. The White House would go on to admit only that $30 million was handed over to the Contras, actually the funding was probably far higher if you consider the millions of dollars that could be made from cocaine trafficking. Naturally President Reagan and Vice President Bush (who watched over the operation) were not indicted, the convicted would later be pardoned by Bush and only Oliver North served any prison time for the crimes. On an interesting side-note, today Oliver North often appears on Fox News and still holds that the illegal sales were justified by the cause of fighting Communism.

The idea that the US government backed right-wing extremists to contain and ultimately to defeat Communism is laughable considering, not only the bombing of South Vietnam, that the US government was actively supporting Ceauşescu in Romania right up until the end. Though it's certainly true that the Reagan White House acted to crush movements for independence wherever they emerged, but the Soviet Union should not be equated with such grass-roots movements. The ANC in South Africa and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua were the kinds of target that the US government acted to suppress because these were grass-roots emancipatory movements. If you want to know how much Washington really "feared" that the Russians were coming, you should consider the implications of the fact that since the fall of the Soviet Union military spending has increased considerably in the US and accounts for 50% of military spending in the world today.

Relevant links on Reagan:
Carter-Reagan-Bush: The Bipartisan Consensus
Noam Chomsky on Financial Markets and Bailouts
The Center Cannot Hold
Reagan and Friedman Economics
Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialised Healthcare 
Vietnam: What Really Happened
A Time for Choosing
Cornel West - The End of Reagan Era Politics  
Nicaragua - A Nation's Right to Survive
The Cold War summed up in 5 mins  
Proposals to Improve the US government 
Stoking the Beast 
The Trap
The Power of Nightmares

Reaganomics Review.

 Voodoo Economics.

On January 20th 1981, following the disappointment of Carter's administration, the Reaganites were rushed to power on a platform that attacked "big government" as the source of America's problems. It was an easy answer to grievances of ordinary Americans going back to the early 70s. As President, Ronald Reagan implemented an economic policy that would go on to be known as "Reaganomics" which could be said to consist of four pillars: reduction in government spending, reduction in the income rates and capital gains tax, reduce government regulation of the economy and control the money supply to reduce inflation. "Reaganomics" was presented as a return to the glory days of free-market capitalism before the Great Depression and the New Deal reforms. Supposedly, President Reagan was working in accordance with the economic principles of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek.

The economic policies of the Reagan administration are often described in ecstatic terms, as if such policies were the edicts of a free-market papacy, but what should be noted is that capitalism in its laissez-faire variant does not exist in the US. The Reaganites did not act to bring back the mythical halcyon days of the free-market and were a radically statist administration. For instance under Reagan protectionist measures doubled and at one point were three times higher than most other industrial countries. During these years state-expenditure increased significantly - breaking post-war records - in response to calls for "re-industrialisation" and the means to accomplish this was mostly Pentagon spending. By increasing the defence budget and cutting taxes the Reaganites effectively increased subsidies to the markets, specifically to lower the costs of firms - socialising costs and privatising profits.

A pillar of "Reaganomics" was the trickle-down theory which stipulated that cuts to the top rate of income tax and corporation tax, the state can encourage investment and expansion by entrepreneurs which leads to greater job creation and keep unemployment low. In fact, the opposite happened and the cuts lead to higher unemployment, lower wages and greater inequality. The wealth was hoarded as productivity has increased by around 45% while wages for working-people stagnated. The amount of debt per household doubled from 1982 to 2008 as workers substituted the cuts to their wages with credit cards, loans and mortgages - which later led to the $8 trillion housing bubble that caused the financial crisis of 2008. The number of illegal firings increased by a factor of six, as the state failed to enforce the laws that protected workers and unions from abuse. As a result, there are on average 65,000 deaths due to work-related injuries and illnesses in the US today.
 

At the same time, corporate profits surged from the early 80s to the late 90s and by 2007 the ratio of financial assets to GDP had doubled. By 2000 the richest 1% of Americans owned 40% of stock, while the bottom 80% owned less than 10%, this is indicative of the massive increase in the gap between the rich and the poor which resulted from "Reaganomics". There is a correlation between inequality and social deprivation, in more unequal societies there is typically greater signs of social deprivation such as illiteracy, obesity, teenage pregnancies, violent crime, drug addiction, alcoholism, mental illness and depression. During the Reagan years, there was an increase in mental illness and depression among workers which later led to the anti-depressant boom of the 1990s. The rate of incarceration has increased and today over 2 million Americans are in the prison system, mostly for drug-related offences whilst drugs became stronger and cheaper than ever before.

Starve the Beast.

The richest 1% of the American population, who were paying an income tax rate of 70% had that rate chopped down to 50% and then to 28% under the Reagan administration. The Democrats were complicit in these massive tax-cuts and the increase of tax-breaks for the ultra-rich. Between 1978 and 1990 the government lost $840 billion in tax revenue whilst 1% of Americans accumulated $1 trillion. When Reagan first entered the White House the national debt was at around $700 billion, by the time he left the debt had exceeded $3 trillion. The US had become the world's leading debtor, as opposed to the world's leading creditor as it had been prior to the Reagan years. The massive tax-cuts for the wealthy enacted by Reagan to necessitate cuts in public spending at a later date, a strategy known as "starving the beast", left the state borrowing to make up for the losses in the meantime. Incidentally the projected interest burden of the debt is equal, as a proportion of GDP, to the interest of the debt incurred by Obama's "fiscal irresponsibility".

The debt was a result of "Reaganomics" specifically the "too big to fail" bailout of Continental Illinois, the doubling of protectionist barriers, the deregulation of industry which led to mass-redundancies for short-term profits and the massive increase in military spending - which is a way of discretely pouring money into high-tech industry and enriching the likes of Bill Gates. It is likely that the collapse of tax revenue, which the Reaganites were responsible for, contributed greatly to the budget deficit as the economy descended into recession. This later led to the first Bush administration to raise taxes in a pragmatic move to secure the recovery, but as a result George HW Bush lost the election to Bill Clinton - who immediately followed up the tax-rises with massive spending cuts. Of course, the savage cuts furthered the ongoing decline of the  New Deal reforms, while spending in areas such as defence increased because only social programmes that are beneficial to the poor should be slashed.

One result of the enormous deficit accrued by "starving the beast" under Reagan were the pragmatic actions undertaken by Bush I and Clinton, namely the tax hikes that helped elect Clinton and the spending cuts that followed under him. The economic policies of Bush I, Clinton and Bush II sustained and furthered the changes made by Reagan, which all together amounted to the financialisation of the economy. In short the impact of budget deficits on politics has been to stifle radical change in favour of the kind of "pragmatism" we saw under Clinton, massive public spending cuts to shrink the deficit. The same is being seen under Obama, the enormous deficit accumulated by the second Bush administration functions to constrain any progressive tendencies left in the Democratic Party. Now that Obama has renewed the Bush tax-cuts which could cost $4 trillion and no doubt continue to "starve the beast" thereby justifying even greater cuts under whoever wins in 2012. 


The impact of "Reaganomics" is a shift to neoliberalism and supply-side economics, which are inclusive of all forms of driving economic growth by pumping money into 'Big Business' but don't see the need to fund welfare provisions or public education. All the theory behind this is reliant on the assumption that markets are innately efficient and will always clear without government intervention. A consummate nonsense, as supply and demand are in nearly constant flux which means that there is always disequilibrium - e.g. unemployment. Nonetheless, you'll find this ideological sewer running beneath theories of "trickle-down" and "starve the beast" in which tax-cuts pay for themselves and cash runs downhill for some reason. This sophistry meant that conservatives no longer had to worry about cutting spending before cutting taxes, it provided an intellectual gloss to slashing taxes for the highest earners whilst cutting spending on welfare.

Revolution and Reaction.

A Rich man's Revolution.

In a nostalgic moment, John McCain once described himself as a "foot soldier" in the "Reagan Revolution". The tenure of Ronald Reagan is often described as a revolution for the Republican Party, but it should be considered part of an ongoing counter-revolution against the American working-class. Gore Vidal once said "Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid." The political discourse in the US is framed as if there is only one class, the middle-class, which involves anyone who owns a car. But the fact that there is a middle-class presupposes that there is an upper-class and a working-class. The global shift in paradigm from social democracy to neoliberalism, a counter-revolution in itself, that commenced with the changes to monetary policy made by Paul Volcker under Carter after Nixon pulled apart the Bretton-Woods system.

With the famous adept timing of the Reaganites, the US government was able to seize on the overwhelming disillusionment with government. The source of this disillusionment went back to the 1960s when the US embarked on the war in Indochina and President Kennedy was assassinated. The Democrats had made a desperate lunge to capitalise on a disillusioned electorate and pander to the radicals roused by the Vietnam war. Jimmy Carter  was put forward as a candidate for President as token to the generation of Americans who protested against Vietnam, Carter would serve one term and made some gestures to black people and the poor. But overall the Carter administration abandoned New Deal liberalism and paved the way for the Reaganites. The Reagan administration, with the Democrats in Congress, merely furthered the transition to neoliberalism. Thus, no one but reactionaries should idolise Jimmy Carter.

From 1978 to 1990 the richest 1% of the American population accumulated $1 trillion, $840 billion of which was a result of massive tax-cuts as part of an active attempt by the Reagan administration to "starve the beast" in order to justify massive cuts in public spending. In 1984 alone the tax-cuts amounted to $190 billion, the majority of which went to the wealthy, in the same year that $140 billion was cut and defence was increased by $181 billion. In the 1960s and 70s led to the share that the richest 1% held of assets collapsed dramatically to almost 20%. In the late 1970s the share of assets for the wealthiest Americans began to increase, a trajectory which was furthered throughout the 1980s and eventually peaked at around 1990 at 40%. Since this explosion can be traced back to the Carter administration, out of a partisan agenda Forbes have written off the inequality produced by "Reaganomics" as the consequence of Carter's economic policy.

In the US Budget of 1986 we can see that out of $794 billion in tax-revenue a total of $294 billion was to be spent on social security. $286 billion was spent on defence, $12 billion for foreign arms to client states and $8 billion on energy (e.g. nuclear weapons). $27 billion on benefits for war veterans and $142 billion for interest on loans on money spent to prop up the national security state. So out of the remaining $500 billion, left over once social security is taken out of the picture, $475 billion was spent on the national security state and fed the military-industrial complex. Other federal spending came to $177 billion, which would contribute to the size of the deficit. Naturally Alan Greenspan, a devotee of Ayn Rand, called for social security and medicare to be slashed in order to balance the budget. The billions poured into wars is a sacred cow no politician is willing to slaughter to avoid confronting the military-industrial complex.

During the "Reagan Revolution" it was not just a "revolution" in domestic and economic policy but in the discourse itself. The Fairness Doctrine, which was introduced in 1949 to ensure liberals and conservatives would be given a fair amount of airtime in political commentary, was repealed in 1987 and we're still living with the consequences. The rise of Rush Limbaugh and the Right would lay claim to talk radio in the 1990s. Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes injected the political debate with right-wing populism that championed the GOP through campaigns of appeals to bigotry, vilification and red-baiting. The same tools are used today, we can see them in the accusations hurled at Obama. Fox News was launched as the propaganda wing of the Republican Party as the so-called "liberal" media is complacent and sets the limits on criticism of government. The lack of meaningful discourse has hollowed out what little hope elections held for Americans.

Throughout the 1980s the Republicans succeeded in transforming the federal judiciary into a conservative institution and had filled over half of federal judgeships with right-wingers by 1991. This was a way for the Reaganites to overturn the rulings of liberal judges and harden a reactionary base along populist lines, which have had a long-term impact on the discourse particularly the attempt to appoint Robert Bork. Whether it takes fundamentalist or nationalist forms, in rulings it takes the form of supporting the death penalty, opposing affirmative action, gay rights and abortion. Following this transformation the death penalty was reinstated, the constraints over police power reduced whilst the legal protections of unions have been dismantled. Education was deemed not to be a "fundamental right" so poor people had to pay for public education. A recent ruling by Supreme Court removed the limits to how much corporations can spend on campaign donations.

30 years after Ronald Reagan came to power, the man's legacy can be clearly seen but is rarely understood for what it is. The vast gulf between the rich and the poor has led to social deprivation on a massive scale, from the way drugs have become a substitute for welfare to fear-driven politics that have led to lone-wolf terrorism and skyrocketing rates of gun crime. Again and again the GOP revives the notion that the government is the source of problems and not the solution as the economic system becomes increasingly dysfunctional and unconstrained. Millions of Americans are now superfluous, left jobless and abandoned by the government with no sufficient medical care and barely enough welfare to get by. The counter-revolution has succeeded in rolling back social democracy and pouring billions into warfare.

The Myth of Ronald Reagan.

Fact and Fiction.

February 6th 1911, exactly 100 years ago today, Ronald Reagan was born in an apartment in Tampico, Illinois into a devout Christian working-class family. Ronald Reagan, or "Dutch" to his friends, went on to become the 40th President of the United States and is considered by some as one of the greatest Presidents. Since he took power in 1981, Reagan has been a subject of adulation by Republicans and is widely revered on the American Right. Reagan is now being held up by the Tea Party as a figure of immense integrity and ideological purity. The Tea Parties emphasise small government and fiscal responsibility, family values and a strong defence. For the Tea Party, Reagan belongs to the most noble of political traditions going right back to the American Revolution. This is the first of a series of articles that are aimed to dispel the myth of Ronald Reagan through a critique of the impact of Reagan's policy in foreign, economic and social spheres.

For the GOP Ronald Reagan is an icon of American conservatism and have succeeded in crafting a folkloric Reagan, to an extent which would impress Kim Jong-il. Take the story in which Reagan invites a black family to his home for the night, having dinner and breakfast with them, because they were refused rooms in the local inn. This is a story for anyone eager to glorify Reagan as a man ahead of his time. In reality Ronald Reagan opposed the Civil Rights act, tried to veto the Civil Rights Restoration act, on the grounds that the acts imposed too much regulation on small business and churches. He also opposed the Martin Luther King holiday but reluctantly voted for it given the level of popular support. Reagan later added Nelson Mandela to a list of terrorists in 1988 as he propped up Apartheid. These facts mean much more than the story of the anonymous black family and the friendly white man, which would have us believe he was everything we'd want from a President.

Reagan is often described in glowing terms as a man of humble origins who earned his privileged position in society through sheer hard-work. Of course, the fact that Reagan was a star of the B-movies who became the biggest corporate spokesman of the 1950s is downplayed. As a politician Reagan began his career as a Democrat and was a proponent for the social democratic policies of Roosevelt's New Deal. But in the 50s he made the transition to the right-wing of the Democratic Party, endorsing Eisenhower and Nixon along the way, before completing the transition and defecting to the Republican Party in 1962. Reagan began to espouse the core principles of American conservatism: small government, free-markets, anti-communism, family values and individual freedom. Reagan's success as a politician was down to his ability to present policies favoured by "Corporate America" as good for all sectors of society.

Ronald Reagan is still revered as an apostle of the free-market, small government and fiscal responsibility. There is a clear difference between the Reagan dreamed up by the public relations industry and Reagan the man. Even though under Reagan the size of the federal government increased relative to GDP, enormous protectionist barriers were hoisted up against foreign competition, whilst corporations were allowed to close plans all over North America and spending on the military increased rapidly under his administration. The systematic deregulation of the financial sector led to the Savings and Loans crisis, to which the Reaganites responded with bailouts for companies that were "too big to fail". In foreign policy the Reagan administration led a brutal crusade of violence and terrorism in the name of promoting democracy, which thousands in Latin America and the Middle East slaughtered.

The last 30 years have been heavily influenced by the events that took place in the Reagan era. The discourse was redefined in the 1980s by the likes of Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes, who created the GOP playbook of mudslinging and outrageous lies, we have them to thank for right-wing media - e.g. Fox News and Rush Limbaugh - that has crudified debate. Millions of Americans don't even vote because the elections look meaningless, as the candidates smear one another as "Nazis" and "anti-Americans". The culture wars are still raging in America, wedge issues like abortion and immigration remain a rallying call against liberals on the Right. At the same time "Reaganomics" has led to an enormous gulf between the rich and the poor, with the most basic aspects of the welfare state being torn up for the sake of "small government" and the "free-market".