The trade negotiations have been marked by the sharpening political tensions between Washington and Beijing. The U.S. capitalist rulers seek to extract trade concessions from China, while developing nuclear missile systems and other military moves aimed at the workers state there.

Buchanan has taken advantage of the anti-China propaganda that dominates the big-business debate over this issue to push his American nationalist demagogy.

"This is the latest administration capitulation to Beijing at the expense of working American families, and for the benefit of transnational corporations," he said in a November 15 campaign statement, referring to the U.S.-China agreement. "By bringing China into the WTO, America will surrender all the economic leverage we have over the Communist Chinese regime to a collection of global bureaucrats."

Earlier, at a November 4 meeting of his supporters at Philadelphia's City Tavern, the rightist politician announced he would take part in the anti-WTO protests in Seattle and urged his backers to do likewise.  
 

Praises Hoffa's protectionist campaign

Replying to a question from a supporter who identified himself as a member of the Teamsters, Buchanan endorsed the class-collaborationist campaign by the Teamsters officialdom to maintain restrictions on trucking from Mexico. The union bureaucrats are opposed to a provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that will allow truckers from Mexico to drive into the United States beginning January 1.

Buchanan repeated the union officials' protectionist arguments. He evoked the specter of unsafe Mexican drivers and added, "Under NAFTA they can all come in and take the jobs of American truckers. And an American truck driver can't work at a buck an hour the way they have to work in Mexico."

Praising Teamsters president James Hoffa, the ultrarightist told his assembled Buchanan Brigades, "Jim Hoffa is a good man and he's a friend of mine. And I am going to Seattle.… I know he's going to go out there. We're all going to get our Teamsters jackets on and speak to some troops."

Supporters of Buchanan, who along with other presidential candidates had met with the Teamsters General Executive Board in July, have fed speculation that he is considering Hoffa as a running mate.

In late September Hoffa issued a statement that he was "not interested at this time" in such an offer. Hoffa however, played right into the hands of the fascist-minded demagogue. "Mr. Buchanan is a strong advocate of tough trade policies that would protect American workers and the middle class. The Teamsters union supports those basic policies, and as Teamsters General President I will continue to work with him and anyone else interested in stopping the flow of good jobs to cheap labor havens abroad," he said.  
 

Fulani named campaign co-chair

Buchanan, who formally broke with the Republican Party in late October, is running to become the Reform Party's presidential candidate. Unlike all the other capitalist politicians in the presidential race, he is not simply out for votes. Since at least the 1992 elections, Buchanan has been on a longer-term course of recruiting cadres to his incipient fascist movement — a popular, street-fighting movement that will act as a tool for big business in a time of social crisis.

Feeding on the growing insecurity about the future among millions in the United States, he seeks to scapegoat sections of the working class for the social problems caused by the capitalist system itself — from immigrants to Jews to workers relying on welfare.

Buchanan rails against the traditional capitalist parties and "Beltway elites" and poses as a champion of the "American worker." His rhetoric has become increasingly anticapitalist, anti-imperialist, and national socialist.

It was not surprising, then, when on November 11 the ultrarightist introduced his latest supporter, Lenora Fulani — "a socialist, an African-American woman," as he pointedly identified her later in a television talk show. He announced that Fulani will be one of his campaign co-chairs along with his sister Angela Buchanan and Reform Party figure Pat Choate.

"This moment opens a new page in this campaign and it sends a new message. And it is that this coalition is open to all," Buchanan said in welcoming Fulani's endorsement. "This campaign is going to be a voice for the voiceless, and its objective is to give power to the powerless in America."

Fulani declared in kind, "Pat Buchanan and the Reform Party offer the black community the opportunity to join in new alliances — in particular, in an alliance with white blue-collar Americans.… Pat Buchanan is not a racist or a fascist or a bigot. He is not a hater. He has a great passion for America and a great disgust for the institutions that oppress ordinary Americans."

She concluded, "We're going to integrate that peasant army of his. We're going to bring black folks and Latino folks and gay folks and liberal folks into that army."

"Welcome aboard. Your pitchfork has been assigned," responded Buchanan.  
 

Rightist convergence

Fulani is a former leader of the New Alliance Party, a middle-class group that over the years developed fascist-like politics. The organization, which initially used Marxist rhetoric, turned increasingly to the right over the years. It distinguished itself by legal moves to throw communists and other third-party candidates off the ballot. The grouping, which in 1973–74 briefly joined Lyndon LaRouche's fascist outfit, relies on conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism, and cop-baiting. In the early 1990s Fulani and other New Alliance cadres joined supporters of Ross Perot to form the Patriot Party. Today they function inside the Reform Party, founded by Perot.

At their November 11 joint press conference, Buchanan and Fulani stated that they were subordinating their differences on issues such as abortion and gay rights in the name of breaking "the two-party monopoly on power in America," as Buchanan put it.

"Lenora," Buchanan said November 14 on Fox News Sunday, "is dead right that young, black Americans should be taught self-esteem, not that they're victims." He added, "African Americans are the ones who are going to die in these imperial wars, as well as working-class white kids, and we both agree they ought not to go to these imperial wars."

The Reform Party presidential contender announced that in addition to Seattle "I will also go to Harlem" accompanied by Fulani.

Explaining his new alliances, Buchanan said that Vermont Congressman "Bernie Sanders is a Socialist, just like Lenora is. And Bernie and I worked together in harness, as did [Minnesota senator] Paul Wellstone, to stop that miserable NAFTA deal, which was going to sell out the industrial independence of the country and the sovereignty, as well as the jobs of American workers."

Appearing together on Fox News Sunday, Buchanan let Fulani make the anti-Semitic statements while he posed as an opponent of bigotry. Asked about well-known remarks by Fulani mentor Fred Newman that "Jews are the storm troopers of decadent capitalism," Fulani finished the quote, "…and participated in oppressing groupings of people of color." She then declared, "What is anti-Semitic about that?"

Buchanan voiced disagreement. "I do not believe it's fair to say that Jewish Americans have oppressed people," he said. "There are bad people of all groups. And there are good people of all groups."

In a related development, the fascist-minded politician joined the debate over an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Taking advantage of the campaign by liberal New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani to censor the art showing and cut off public funding to the museum, Buchanan denounced it as the work of "decadent British artists" and argued that the mayor's response was not enough.

He explained what he would do if in the White House: "When we get control of that National Endowment for the Arts, you'll see how it ought to be done. You shut it down, fumigate the building, and put the IRS in there."  
 
 
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