The group’s rhetoric became more mainstream. This makeover, and the indefatigable efforts of the Newmanite cadres, allowed the sect to achieve a measure of success, as it fielded socialist Dennis Serrette in 33 states as its presidential candidate in 1984. Fulani, however, was largely the NAP’s standard-bearer. In 1988 she improved on Serrette’s showing and became the first black and first female presidential candidate to achieve ballot access in all 50 states.
Fulani’s ship, navigating the sump of Newman’s now-Marxist, now-fascist ideology, occasionally beached itself. As early as 1985, she began making overtures to anti-Semitic demagogue Louis Farrakhan, hoping to cobble together an NAP and Nation of Islam alliance. Fulani and company also lent early support to Al Sharpton’s race-huckstering enterprise.
Famously, Fulani carried Newman’s anti-Jewish torch with this 1989 sound bite: “[Jews] had to sell their souls to acquire Israel and are required to do the dirtiest work of capitalism – to function as mass murderers of people of color – in order to keep it.”
Things persist in this vein today. One of the various Newmanite front groups, the theatrical All Stars Project, recently staged a revisionist drama blaming the Jews for Crown Heights.
In the early 90’s, the Newmanites corralled more converts and began to colonize and subsume unsuspecting political organizations. After disbanding the New Alliance Party in the shadow of mounting fraud allegations, Newman and Fulani reconstituted their front groups, and parlayed their extensive resources, skills and contacts into controlling the elements of what would become the Reform Party.
By 2000, Newman and Fulani had enough control over Reform Party delegates to entice Pat Buchanan into a working relationship with them. The relationship was symbiotic: the Reform Party got Buchanan on the ballot in many states, and Buchanan brought a windfall of $12.6 million into the Party. The isolationist demagogue lost, and he and the Newmanites parted ways. The stage was set for a reprise with Nader in 2004.
Nader’s indulgence of populist scapegoating highlights a continuity among third party demagogues: the targeting of Israel or Jews. A couple of questions are in order: Why is Nader cavorting with anti-Semites, and why has he lately deployed Zionist conspiracy motifs? Why would he consort with the Hamas-friendly Council, and give statements about Israeli ‘control’ of the White House to Al-Khaleej, an Arab newspaper that, according to the ADL, defended Holocaust-denier Roger Garaudy?
Nader and the Green Party abandoned each other, so he is faced with greater difficulty in obtaining ballot lines than he was in 2000. This accounts for at least some of his calculus; the Fulani faction controls much of the Reform Party. But more important, 9/11 dealt a lethal blow in America to the influence of the left-wing perspective on current events. Pragmatically the fall of the Berlin Wall set the stage, but the contemporary damage to the credibility of the Left was wrought by its attempt to filter the Al Qaeda attacks through its ideological prism.
Nader’s anti-corporate activism has been a singularly American – that is, practical – application of conflict theory, the Marxist notion that the central theme of history is endless struggle between haves and have-nots. And it has met with much domestic success because it has often made practical sense. But things have changed in the post-9/11 world. And when applied to Israel, Nader’s analysis suffers from the sickness that is the shibboleth of the anti-globalization Left.
In times of crisis, revolutionary thought often has trended toward anti-Semitism, even when it bears no direct relationship to Jewish issues. And since the late 19th century, socialism and Zionism have vied for the moral imagination of the Jewish people. The victory of the latter, with its fusion of religion with nationalism, has been a uniquely discomfiting thorn in the side of irreligious internationalists – one that has long festered, proceeding through phases of Soviet, New Left and Third World demonization of Zionism. Recently we have seen the Apartheid calumny advanced by the academic Left through its divestiture campaign.
