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March 1999 Cover

Further Reading
Watching the Right: Other People & Groups Worth Watching
Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., the Christian Reconstructionist heir to the Home Savings and Loan fortune,...
Watching the Right: Organizations
Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., the Christian Reconstructionist heir to the Home Savings and Loan for...
Watching the Right: Congresspeople
Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., the Christian Reconstructionist heir to the Home Savings and Loan fo...
Resources for Fighting the Right
Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., the Christian Reconstructionist heir to the Home Savings and Loan fortune, sits...

Magazine Article	Articles Archive

In a January, 1998 interview on NBC's Today Show, Hillary Rodham Clinton sparked a firestorm of ridicule by mentioning "this vast right-wing conspiracy" against her husband. Web sites like the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Homepage www.vrconspiracy.com, which sells Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Membership Kits for $12.95, blossomed forth. Belief in "vast conspiracies," sniggered her critics, signifies problems best addressed through therapy and psychotropic drugs.

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Ironically, those who scoffed loudest at the First Lady's claim are those most dedicated to the notion of a vast left-wing conspiracy against America in which her husband is believed to be a key player, if not the mastermind. Many of those conspiracy theorists are, in fact, anti-communist foot soldiers left over from the paranoid McCarthyite 50s and the Cold War. Others are members of the resurgent theocratic right who see themselves as cultural warriors pitted against the sinister forces of worldwide secular humanism.

A conspiratorial view of history is widespread on the right. The John Birch Society contends that the West is at the mercy of a cabal whose provenance they trace to the Bavarian Illuminati in the 18th century. American Nazi cults, Christian Identity sects, patriot and militia organizations, and less extreme groups on the same continuum believe in the existence of a shadow government of "international bankers" working to consolidate its grip on the world. In The New World Order, the Christian Coalition's Pat Robertson writes: "A single thread runs from the White House to the State Department to the Council on Foreign Relations to the Trilateral Commission to secret societies to extreme New Agers. There must be a new world order. It must eliminate national sovereignty."

The left has proven itself too disorganized and incompetent to achieve world domination, let alone succeed in the elaborate plots envisioned by conspiracists. As for the right, the pursuit of its goals involves a consciously cooperative effort on the part of a broad coalition. The effort is not without conspiratorial aspects, comprised as it is by disparate groups and individuals whose interests converge in a shared authoritarianism and a love of wealth.

"Let us act now to prepare and plan for the renewal of America's role as the leading force for Godly leadership in the restoration of western Christian civilization," said Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus in September, 1998 in an address promoting the superpatriot Taxpayers Party to the Council on National Policy. Phillips sums up what these individuals and groups are working toward. This process of "restoration" means the ascendancy of unfettered business enterprise, with religion serving as its mailed fist. This mandate for hypocrisy now progresses on several fronts, shepherded along by a power elite whose ranks are more populous than a thousand-page Dostoyevsky novel.

Among the cast of characters, some names-- Pat Buchanan, Jesse Helms, Newt Gingrich-- elicit instant recognition; others-- Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, Pat Mastriciana-- are barely known to the general public. Pat Robertson, star of the 700 Club, head of a conglomerate whose holdings range from Regent University to the Ice Capades, has never lost the high visibility he achieved in his abortive 1988 Presidential campaign.

But other powerful enemies of civil liberties are thriving under minimal scrutiny. Meanwhile, the "liberal" press devotes disproportionate coverage to marginal figures like professional homophobe Fred Phelps, or Neal Horsley, perpetrator of the "Nuremberg Files" anti-abortion web site that a federal court shut down recently on grounds of promoting violence against abortion providers. Analysis of issues like the 1998 Exodus International ad campaign focused more on the "ex-gay" issue than on the context from which it came.

A civil war?

But there are small, hopeful signs that media awareness may be shifting. In the aftermath of the failed impeachment of President Clinton-- whose administration, ironically, has been marked by a willingness to capitulate to conservatives-- there has been a greater readiness to expose the realities of the right. Liberty University Chancellor Jerry Falwell, best known as the president and chief spokesperson of the now-defunct Moral Majority, made headlines recently for pronouncements, routine for the host of the Old Time Gospel Hour, about the coming End Times and the possibility that the Antichrist is a Jewish man who walks among us. And when Falwell's National Liberty Journal printed a warning that the infants' TV series Teletubbies is a Trojan horse for the homosexual agenda, a chorus of derision came down from media outlets that in the past have ignored such tidbits. Who recalls the American Family Association's claim that Rocky and Bullwinkle turns children to bestiality?

But it remains to be seen whether the mainstream press will delve into the workings of the theocratic right in sustained, meaningful ways.

When the right has a setback, observers often pronounce it dead or on the decline-- only to discover that the movement bounces back alive, well, and stronger than ever. Traditional values mogul James Dobson speaks of "a new Civil War." Observes Paul Weyrich, "It's a war about our way of life. And it has to be fought with the same intensity. . . and dedication as you would fight a shooting war."

In the end, the side that wins may be the side that makes the most committed effort to inform itself about the opposition. **