Of Tranzis and Fog

TRANSNATIONAL PROGRESSIVISM
(Part One)

by Ralph Maddocks


There's a mouthful for you. It meant nothing to me either, until recently when I came across a rather lengthy article by John Fonte, written in 2001, and entitled "The Future of the Ideological War Within the West."(1) To make a very long story short, Fonte claims that elite institutions ranging in size and influence from the National Council of Churches to the United Nations are pushing the notion that "the nation-state and the idea of national citizenship are ill suited to deal with the global problems of the future." They propose abolishing nations and replacing them with a single, global government. Fonte says that, for reasons that are still not completely clear, practically every government in the world appears to have embraced Transnational Progressivism and is working around the clock to make global government a reality.


Of Tranzis and fog

It was David Carr, a London-based Libertarian, who provided the memorable nickname for Transnational Progressivists when he called them "Tranzis." He explained, "A lot of us have known for some time there was something wrong in the world but it was difficult to pin down and put our fingers on. It was something that has no face and no name. Like fog it swirled all around us but not being corporeal we lashed out in all directions, landing blows on nothing. It was like an itch we could never scratch." We used to call these people "the left," and still do I suppose, but many of those pushing this apparently "left-wing" agenda seem to be high-level statesmen, the wealthy and the heads of multibillion-dollar corporations. Their behaviour cannot be explained away in terms of the Marxist "Class struggle." If the Tranzis are indeed leftists, they are so only in the sense that a frog was once a tadpole, having emerged long ago from its pond and jumped on to dry land.

Fonte is quick to forewarn us that this coming global administration will be no respecter of our freedoms and suggests that some form of racialist police state will be imposed. A state where the elites will encourage the historically oppressed to get even with their former oppressors. He claims that "dominant" groups will be obliged to yield power to "oppressed" groups, with the former being displaced from their jobs in the economic sphere until each category of task reflects the proportion of "oppressed" people in the population. Fonte believes that this will not be the end of it either. The proportion of "oppressed" people in the population will grow constantly. That's because another tenet of this Tranzi-ism holds that "dominant" countries must welcome immigrants from "oppressed" countries in unlimited numbers. Furthermore, if any "dominant" people protest, they will be jailed for "hate speech."

Looking around our world we can see this beginning to happen with all kinds of laws being enacted to punish those who offend, even just by thinking something the authorities think you shouldn't. It is becoming clear too that these laws are applied to the native "dominant" population rather than to the "oppressed" new arrivals. Examples abound of assaults by "oppressed" people on the persons of "dominant" people being ignored by police. Even replying in kind to a racist comment from an "oppressed" person brings instant arrest and the imprisonment of the offender. The "hate" laws apply to crimes against other groups and to quote a senior policeman, "homophobic and transphobic crimes are seen as particularly serious because they are motivated by prejudice, discrimination and hate, and undermine people's right to feel safe in their sexual orientation and gender."

As defined by the UK Crown Prosecution Service, "homophobic" means "a fear of or dislike directed towards lesbian, gay or bisexual people, or their perceived lifestyle, culture or characteristics." Incidentally, the word "homosexual" is no longer to be used, apparently because it is seen as offensive. "Transphobic" was not a term I had ever heard before. Apparently, it means "a fear of or dislike towards trans people." And what might they be? "Trans people," again according to the CPS, is "a phrase which is intended to include transsexual, transgender and transvestite people." A "transgendered" person is someone "whose biological gender is not the same as the gender they own as theirs." So now you know, although how you will ever be certain remains a mystery.

Third Way actions

Perhaps it is all an outcome of Tony Blair's Third Way view as an international response to the end of Thatcherism and a philosophical claim which he asserts brought the centre-left back into government across the world. Third Way actions though seem to be more like those we saw in Stalin's country, to say nothing of Hitler. It isn't surprising that even comments mentioning Hitler are now found offensive let alone direct comparisons. Judging by the way oppressive "hate" laws are applied in the UK, using the police to investigate your home for evidence to support government paranoia the future does not look promising for any of us who believe in such archaic concepts as "free speech."

In the UK, a well known TV presenter and Daily Telegraph columnist, Robin Page, was arrested on suspicion of using insulting words that were likely to stir up racial hatred. His supposed crime? He told a rally in September that the rural minority in favour of hunting (a subject of great political interest in the UK these days) should have the same rights as blacks, Muslims and gays. As Mr Page himself pointed out, after six burglaries and break-ins on his farm – when no policeman was prepared to travel the four miles from Cambridge to his farm to take a statement – he found it odd that a policeman was prepared to travel nearly 200 miles to his home to investigate an incident which the policeman seemed reluctant to discuss on the telephone. The policeman then arrested him because Mr Page refused to answer questions without his solicitor being present, questions about what he was not told at the time. Mr Page was then taken to the local police station and thrown into a cell. Unable to feed his cattle from a cell, Mr Page had to agree to be interviewed because his solicitor could not arrive until the next day.

The interview began with the policeman alleging that Mr Page had "...started your speech with racist comments." When Mr Page asked what these comments were, the policeman could not supply them but said that they had received a complaint from someone in a nearby town. This is the new Britain, the country where a man was presumed innocent until proven guilty; now – through the power of political correctness – a man is assumed to be guilty until he proves himself innocent. Regular readers will not be surprised to read this since I have been saying this for some time. It is truly surprising though how quickly a supposedly free country can slide into the habits of a police state and how easy it has become to intimidate those who object. As Pierre Lemieux has remarked, in an article written in 1994, "Giving public policy goals – like anti-racism – precedence on individual rights amounts to admitting that individuals have no rights but the ones that are congruent with the government's, or the majority's, agenda."(2)

Our southern neighbours aren't much better when it comes to the pursuit of those they presume offensive. In 1999, there was an incident in Washington D.C., when one David Howard, an aide to the mayor, was pressured to resign because he uttered the innocuous word "niggardly" to describe a fund he was administering? People, however, chose to be offended by the word's phonetic resemblance to the "N Word," despite Howard's insistence that he "would never think of making a racist remark." As even those with limited literacy skills know, the word's meaning is totally unrelated to the one denoting a racial slur. "Niggardly" means "grudgingly mean about spending or granting," or "stingy." The N word (spelled differently anyway) is a pejorative to describe blacks.

« Among the main concepts of Transnational Progressivism is the notion that the key political unit is not the individual who forms voluntary associations and works with his fellow citizens regardless of their race, sex or national origin, it is the ascriptive group – racial, ethnic or gender – into which one is born. »


Any etymological dictionary would have revealed instantly that there is no connection at all between the evolution of the two words. Yet, presumably showing his own ignorance or perhaps settling some old score of his own, D.C.'s Mayor Anthony Williams accepted Howard's resignation, explaining to reporters, "I don't think that the use of this term showed the kind of judgment that I like to see in our top management." Williams added that he was "committed to representing all of the people of our city and making sure my administration truly reflects the city's diversity." Our Mr Williams' views on diversity are surely not niggardly.

Creating a cohesive nation

The recent clamour over Trent Lott's encomium at Strom Thurmond's retirement party proves – if proof is needed – that the First Amendment has been replaced by the race-based privileges of the so-called "oppressed" groups. Ignored in all this furor, in which the Republican pundits and the President were quick to take part, was that Thurmond's main party plank was in favour of "State's Rights." As the libertarian writer, Lew Rockwell, pointed out, fundamentally states' rights are about the Tenth Amendment, not segregation. Strom Thurmond's political movement was looking for a return to the enumerated powers guaranteed to the states by the Constitution. If Thurmond had won, then we may not have to witness today the spectacle of people being incarcerated by the Federal government for using marijuana to quell their cancer induced vomiting when their home state has legalised its medical use. One is constantly being reminded of Napoleon Bonaparte's remark that, "In politics, stupidity is not a handicap." Nor, apparently is ignorance of history.

Canada's Criminal Code imposes sanctions against publicly and wilfully promoting hatred (section 319) against an identifiable group. It also allows judges to seize hate propaganda (section 320). But the primary criminal provision available to combat hate propaganda is Section 319 (2), which prohibits the promotion of hatred by "communicating statements, other than in private conversation." This has resulted in a man being fined more than $6,000 for running a newspaper advertisement in which he quoted a verse about homosexuality from the book of Leviticus.

Among the main concepts of Transnational Progressivism is the notion that the key political unit is not the individual who forms voluntary associations and works with his fellow citizens regardless of their race, sex or national origin, it is the ascriptive group – racial, ethnic or gender – into which one is born. It is from this concept, Forte notes, that we find this emphasis on race, ethnicity and gender leading to group consciousness and a corresponding de-emphasis of the individual's capacity for choice and for transcendence of the above ascriptive categories, joining with others outside the confines of social class, tribe and gender to create a cohesive nation.

Many will have noticed the rise in the number of "victim" groups emerging into the national consciousness. Groups such as women, blacks, Muslims, gays, Latinos (in the USA) and immigrants or any conceivable combination thereof. This too is part of the "oppressor" groups versus the "victim" groups philosophy espoused by the Marxists, the privileged and the marginalised. As one philosopher remarked, "Multiculturalism is not ‘multi' or concerned with many groups, but ‘binary' concerned with two groups, the hegemon (bad) and "the Other" (good) or the oppressor and the oppressed." This means that "equity" and "social justice" mean strengthening the position of the victim groups and weakening the position of the oppressors – thus justifying group preferences. Equality under the law is replaced by legal preferences for victimised groups. This is illustrated by a recent decision of the US Equal Opportunity Commission which ruled that illegal immigrants as a class are discriminated against, thereby giving them victim status and entitling them to preferential treatment as a group.

Complicating all this is the assumption that the "victim" groups should be represented in all institutions of society in rough proportion to their percentage of the population. So theoretically, if women represent 51% of the population and Spanish speakers represent 10% of that same population then 51% of all executives, doctors, salespersons, professors, etc., should be women and 10% of them should be Spanish speakers. Introduce other variations such as sexual preferences, colour and physical characteristics and it is not hard to imagine the complexities which may result. Even the US Park Service has expressed concern that 85% of all park visitors are white, although whites are only 74% of the population. No consideration apparently being given to the possibility that many of those visitors do not belong to the US population in the first place. The Park Service has announced that it is working on this "problem."

The "Tranzis" insist also that it is not enough to have proportionate numbers of minorities (including illegal and legal immigrants) and women in major institutions, if these institutions continue to reflect the "white Anglo male culture and world view." These ethnic and linguistic minorities, they insist, have values and cultures which must be respected and represented in these institutions and they should not be expected to conform to the dominant culture. At a conference promoting bilingual education, SUNY professor Joel Spring was quoted as saying, "We must use multiculturalism and multilingualism to change the dominant culture of the United States." He added that, unlike Anglo culture, Latino culture is "warm" and would not promote harsh disciplinary measures in the schools.
Fonte's paper was rather lengthy and contains a great deal more material explaining how the Transnational Progressivists are challenging the existing world view, so reviewing his remaining points will have to be done in a second article to be published later.

1. John Fonte, "Liberal Democracy vs. Transnational Progressivism: The Future of the Ideological Civil War Within the West," Orbis, Summer Issue, 2002. >>
2. Pierre Lemieux, "In Defense of Hate Literature (Sort Of)," Fall of 1994. >>

PART TWO >>


TRANSNATIONAL PROGRESSIVISM
(Part Two)

by Ralph Maddocks


Each year, in a different country, a secret meeting is held which is attended by a number of prominent politicians, government representatives, bankers, industrialists and academics. The conference, known as Bilderberg, is named after the Bilderberg Hotel in Osterbeek, Holland, where the original meeting was held in 1954 under the Chairmanship of HRH Bernard, Prince of the Netherlands. Many countries are represented at each meeting which publishes no proceedings, among them Canada which in 1967 for example sent four representatives: a banker, a Toronto University professor, a former Ambassador and the then Minister for External Affairs. At that time the post was held by none other than the late Paul Martin Sr. Along with the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group is alleged to be among the prime movers in the creation of the New World Order, a collaborative effort to establish "World Government."


Thus it was not very surprising to read the speech by the late Paul Martin Sr's son at the University of Toronto convocation address on Tuesday 17 December 2002. The younger Mr Martin, heir apparent to the Chrétien legacy of governmental incompetence, believes that Canada is the only country on the planet able to shape the future of global government. Many may have found this surprising since we don't seem to be doing all that well when it comes to governing ourselves as a nation-state, a form of government which Mr Martin seems to believe is no longer adequate in a globalized world. He admits that the USA is not interested in a new model of global governance, the Europeans are too busy building Europe, the countries of the Far East are too busy with old rivalries and Latin America is mired "deep in economic problems" and "poverty and misery." Hence his view that Canada is the one country with the capacity to understand the direction in which the world must go. Mr Martin believes that immigration in Europe and the US has not changed their "core identities" whereas in Canada the immigrants "are in the process of changing and enriching fundamentally" Canada's identity.

The Demographic Imperative

This brings me back to Transnational Progressivism about which I wrote in my last article. Among the lengthy list of points which John Fonte raised in his article, was one he described as the Demographic Imperative. This, he explained, means that the Tranzis require Americans to alter their value system because of the major demographic changes which are occurring there as massive immigration from non-Western countries takes place. The Tranzis claim that the global interdependence of the world's peoples and the transnational connections among them will increase and that these changes will make the traditional paradigm obsolete. In other words, a society based on individual rights, majority rule, national sovereignty, citizenship, and the assimilation of immigrants must be changed to a system promoting "diversity" or group proportionalism.

The Tranzis then would redefine democracy and "democratic ideals." The system of majority rule among equal citizens would yield to power sharing among ethnic groups composed of citizens and non-citizens. Fonte provides as an example, the words of the Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castenada who wrote that it is "undemocratic" for California to exclude non-citizens, specifically illegal aliens, from voting. A view which is supported by the former US Immigration and Naturalisation General Counsel, T. Alexander Aleinikoff, who declared that "[we] live in a post assimilationist age," adding that majority preferences simply "reflect the norms and cultures of dominant groups," (as opposed to the norms and cultures of "feminists and people of colour.") In effect what is being said is that American democracy is not authentic and that "real" democracy is yet to be created when the different "peoples" or groups within America "share power" as groups.

The Tranzis have been active in recent years busily deconstructing the symbols and traditions of the Western democratic nation-states. In the UK, a Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain chaired by the Labour life peer Lord Parekh denounced the concept of "Britishness" as having "systemic [...] racist connotations." The noble peer declared too that, instead of defining itself as a nation, the UK should be considered a "community of communities." The Commission found the concepts of "Britain" and "nation" troubling. Other pronouncements from this gathering of like-minded globalists sought to recognise Britain formally as a "multicultural society," whose history needs to be "revised, rethought, or jettisoned."

The USA has not escaped similar deconstructionist activity and the view is being advanced that the US civilisation is not a Western nation formed by European settlers, but a "convergence" of three civilisations, Amerindian, West African and European. A proposition which has become dominant in America's public schools.

"Denationalised" citizenship

Another concept which is being advanced, writes Fonte, is that citizenship should be "denationalised." In the name of "inclusion," "social justice," "democratic engagement" and "human rights" some theorists argue for "transnational citizenship," "postnational citizenship" or even "global citizenship" embedded in international human rights accords and "evolving" forms of transnational arrangements. To this end, a number of books have been published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, dealing with such matters as "challenging traditional understandings of belonging and membership" in nation-states and "rethinking the meaning of citizenship." These essays by authors from countries such as France, Germany, Britain and Canada argue for new and "evolving" transnational forms of citizenship as a normative good.

Fonte believes that the theory of transnationalism will be the next stage of the multicultural ideology and he expects it to be for the first decade of the 21st century what multiculturalism was during the last decade of the 20th century. A kind of multiculturalism with a human face, a concept that gives the elites an empirical tool (a plausible analysis of what is) and an ideological framework (a vision of what should be). My dictionary defines plausible as being "apparently right, using specious (pleasing to the eye) arguments." Those who argue in favour of transnationalism believe that globalization requires some form of transnational "global governance" because, like our Mr Martin, they think that the nation-state and the concept of national citizenship are not suited to dealing with the global problems we may expect in the future.

We can expect to be bombarded with all kinds of combinations of terms preceded by the word transnational such as "t-citizenship," "t-actors," "t-organisation," "t-migrants,"and "t-jurisprudence." Academics at public policy conferences will be spouting these words, just as during the last decade they wittered on about multiculturalism and education, law, literature and citizenship. A distinguished anthropologist from the University of Chicago has opined that the USA is in transition from being a "land of immigrants" to "one node in a post-national network of diasporas."

« Fonte believes that the theory of transnationalism will be the next stage of the multicultural ideology and he expects it to be for the first decade of the 21st century what multiculturalism was during the last decade of the 20th century. »


According to Fonte, the arguments about globalization which will dominate public debate during the early part of this century will use transnationalism to shape it. Those who believe in the concept of the nation-state will be castigated as backward looking anti-globalists, and those who espouse transnationalism will be praised as forward-looking globalists. Those who believe in internationalism and free market economics will have to insist that the argument is not between the globalists and the anti-globalists but over the form that Western global engagement should take in the future: transnationalist or internationalist.

Producers/popularisers/practitioners

Mr Fonte defines the social base of global progressivism as a "rising post-national intelligentsia," loosely defined as including three elements; the producers of ideas and concepts, the popularisers of ideas and values and the practitioners who implement ideas and values at all levels. He says that to belong to this group intelligence is not particularly required and could include anyone from a Western government official to a kindergarten teacher pushing the crudest form of multiculturalism. He cites as examples, John O'Sullivan's "... lumpenintelligentsia of teachers, librarians, researchers, small-town-newspaper "liberals," clergymen, and assorted ancillary brainworkers," first posited in his article in the October 15, 2001, issue of National Review.

The leaders in this post-national intelligentsia, according to Fonte, will include law professors at prestigious Western universities, activists in the NGOs, UN and EU bureaucrats and administrators, corporate executives and politicians throughout the West. Fonte cites such luminaries as Anthony Giddens, the "Third Way" theorist who has said already that he is "in favour of pioneering some quasi-utopian trans-national forms of democracy." Others include Martha Nussbaum, the Chicago University Professor of Philosophy, who calls for reinvigorating the concept of "global citizenship" denouncing patriotism as "indistinguishable from jingoism."

In addition, we have the Italian Marxist theorist – a jailed former associate of Italy's Red Brigade – Toni Negri, and Duke University Literature Professor, Michael Hardt – a former student of his – whose best-selling book Empire has been praised by the New York Times as the next big idea. Empire used Marxist concepts such as the "multitudes" (read "the masses") versus the Empire, attacking the power of the global corporations and called for a new form of "global" or transnational democracy.

On the other side he quotes Strobe Talbot – of whom we heard in QL no 115 (see SOCIAL GLOBALIZATION) – and the late Carl Gerstacker, Chairman of Dow Chermical in the 1960s and 1970s, who expressed the libertarian thread of transnationalism when he declared "I have long dreamed of buying an island owned by no nation and of establishing the World Headquarters of the Dow Company on the truly neutral ground of such an island, beholden to no nation or society."

Some kind of inevitability

While some of this may seem diffuse and uncoordinated it should not be forgotten that many of the NGOs spend a great deal of their time trying to bring about transnationalism. These social movements with their ideologies of "global governance" and "transnationalism" imply that there is some kind of inevitability about it all because it is the result of social forces or the movement of history. It isn't. If it happens at all it will be like all the previous movements such as the Bolshevik Revolution, the New Deal, the European Union and the National Socialist Revolution. It will be because of the exercise of political will by elites who mobilised their strengths and conquered all their opponents. Just like "diversity" and "multiculturalism," transnationalism and global governance are not the forces of history but simply ideological tools advocated by the activist elites.

What is being attempted is the achievement by the NGOs of political ends that cannot be achieved by democratic means. It is done by going outside the democratic framework and is exemplified by such issues as the International Criminal Court, the UN Convention on Women's Rights, the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, etc. The latter being particularly pertinent in Canada where we have just seen the Kyoto Treaty rubber stamped by a parliament whose elected Liberal majority feared the political consequences of opposing their discredited leader in his quest for a so-called legacy. In an Ipsos-Reid poll, almost half of Canadians (45%) said that the Government of Canada "should withdraw from the Kyoto protocol and develop a made-in-Canada plan for reducing greenhouse gasses." Essentially the same number (44%) said that Canada should "ratify the Kyoto Protocol," but, one in ten (9%) said they "don't know" what the federal government should do.

Dissent was even greater in the West, but objections by the Western Provinces were completely ignored and cosy deals are alleged to have been cut with industry groups located in heavily Liberal voting provinces. The electorate at large was never consulted at all of course. Perhaps not all that surprising, given that few, if any, of our elected representatives understand the treaty's implications or the economic fallout to be expected from its implementation.

The recent UN Conference Against Racism and Xenophobia in Durban is a perfect example of the NGOs at work. Some fifty of them, including the Mexican-American Legal Defense (sic) and Educational Fund, Human Rights Watch, the ACLU, the NAACP, the International Human Rights Law Group and many more, called upon Mary Robinson, then UN Human Rights Commissioner, to hold the USA "accountable for the intractable and persistent problem of discrimination that men and women of color (sic) face at the hands of the US criminal justice system." The result of this exercise in chicanery was the passing of a number of resolutions demanding reparations for the Trans-Atlantic slave trade of the 17th to 19th centuries, ignoring of course the 14 million African slaves who were sent to Islamic lands during that same period. Demands that the USA "publicly acknowledge the breadth and pervasiveness of institutional racism" which "permeates every institution at every level," accompanied calls for a declaration that "racial bias corrupts every stage of the US criminal justice process from suspicion to investigation, arrest, prosecution, trial and sentencing."

Suggesting a 4th dimension

The NGOs denounce free market capitalism as "a fundamentally flawed system" and insist that the US ratify all major UN "human rights" treaties. Although, in 1994, the USA ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) it refused to accept the restriction of certain types of speech and political activity permitted by the First Amendment

For the US to agree to these terms would mean the abandonment of constitutional guarantees of free speech, federalism, and majority rule – all the concepts upon which the US is based. What is interesting is that the language used in almost all UN conventions, such as the Convention on Women's Rights and the International Criminal Court – which ignore the guarantees of the US Constitution – was written by Western NGOs and Americans.

Many of the international law professors and NGOs advocate the elimination of the distinctions between citizens and non-citizens, vigorously opposing assimilation of immigrants into what they see as the "dominant Anglo culture." They attack what they call "archaic notions of sovereignty" and call for the elimination of the differences between the citizens and non-citizens in all federal laws. They propose dropping the hyphenated American in favour of the "ampersand" individual and suggest that those who are say, "Mexican & American" should be allowed to vote in both countries. One can imagine the damage this might do, where large numbers of people living outside their native country could destroy the policies of the government in their country of origin without suffering the consequences.

The consequences of transnational progressivism can be seen vividly in the European Union where they are moving to absorb the component nation states into a supranational post-democratic structure. The resulting denial of the authority of the nation state, as well as the transfer of policymaking authority from the governed and their elected representatives to a professional bureaucracy, is a marked change from the idea of popular sovereignty once present in Europe's democracies. That countries such as those from the former communist bloc raise little fuss about the prospect is perhaps understandable, they see little change; but that the populations of democracies such as those of France and especially England seem to be rushing willingly into this bureaucratic maelstrom is beyond this chronicler's comprehension.

Fonte ends his paper by suggesting that a fourth dimension be added to the conceptual framework of international politics. The three present dimensions are the competition and conflict between and among nation states (and supranational ones like the EU), the competition between civilisations and thirdly, the division (and conflict) between the democratic world and the undemocratic world. Fonte's proposed fourth dimension is the conflict between the forces of liberal democracy and the forces of transnational progressivism. He sees the conflicts and tensions within these dimensions as occurring simultaneously and being affected by each other, believing that they must be incorporated into any understanding of the world in the 21st century.

He concludes that Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" theory – wherein Fukuyama suggested that liberal democracy is the final form of political governance – is wrong.