Better Believe It (659 posts) Sun Jul-06-08 02:40 PM
Original message
Jesse Helms, American Bigot
Jesse Helms, American Bigot
by Lisa Duggan
The Nation
July 6, 2008
In death it's easy to dismiss Jesse Helms as a colorful buffoon or a relic of the bad old days of segregation and sexism, but that doesn't do Helms's bigotry justice.
Jesse Helms was an important bigot. He didn't just fume and huff. He used the language of cultural politics--called "morality" or "values" or just "freedom"--to shrink the state, reduce the social wage, enhance the interests of ruthless corporate profit mongering and promote US military interventions around the world. He's the poster boy for how cultural politics works, not as an arena separated from the "real" political economy but as the site of the language and emotion through which people live politics and economics everyday.
Helms began his political career in North Carolina as a reporter, with ties to the banking and tobacco industries. As a "newsman" on WRAL radio and television in Raleigh, North Carolina, he didn't just hammer opponents with red-baiting accusations like every other demagogue, he laced his commentaries on radio and television with the kind of creative rhetorical jihads against the New Deal and the civil rights movement that later gave the Rovian Republican Party its bad name. But he didn't rest on his laurels as a rhetorician. He ran for Congress, built a record-breaking Senate campaign war chest, and went on to become a central architect of the New Right network of corporations, foundations and committees.
Malicious rhetorician and image maker, major fundraiser and creator of the modern big-money electoral campaign, networked right-wing institution and movement builder--Jesse Helms was so much more than just another bigot. He was a stalwart supporter of anti-union policies, and active in US foreign policy debates. In his career on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he pursued US imperial policies both overt and covert. He supported inequality at home and violence abroad and gave it all the name Morality. He wasn't just that annoying Senator No, tying up the Congress and stalling judicial nominations and all that. He both reflected and shaped, and helped legitimate and enshrine, a metastasizing array of virulent anti-democratic forces in American politics in the post World War II period.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080721/duggan
From the title, I expected some groundbreaking news about a secret membership with the KKK or ties to skinheads or something...but no, Jesse Helm's bigotry... "shrink the state, reduce the social wage, enhance the interests of ruthless corporate profit mongering and promote US military interventions around the world"..."stalwart supporter of anti-union policies, and active in US foreign policy debates."
Very "bigoted" of him, I'm sure.
