Alternet: Debunking the North American Union Conspiracy Theory

[muriel_volestrangler]

Just what is the North American Union (NAU)?

There are several ways to answer that question. First, the NAU is an increasingly popular conspiracy theory about a group of shadowy and mostly nameless international "elites" who are planning to "replace the United States" -- in the words of Jerome Corsi, a key figure in the SwiftBoat Veterans for Truth project and a leading NAU conspiracist -- with a transnational government. The theory holds that the borders between Mexico, Canada and the United States are in the process of being erased, covertly, by a group of "globalists" whose ultimate goal is to replace national governments in D.C., Ottawa and Mexico City with a European-style political union and a bloated EU-style bureaucracy.

The North American Union story is an offspring of the John Birch Society right, with its attendant xenophobia and paranoia. It comes complete with a shadowy international cabal intent on stabbing decent, hard-working Americans in the back -- Dolchstoss! Articles and websites condemning the NAU flourish in that political space where right- and left-wing populism become indistinguishable, along with a dozen other fundamentally reactionary theories of what's really going on with our contemporary political economy.

To fully understand the growing fascination with the NAU in various corners of the internet, one has to view it also as a cultural phenomenon; it's an entirely logical reaction to a process of corporate-driven global integration that feeds into Americans' very real and wholly valid economic anxieties. As David Moberg recently noted, Americans, "by a margin of 46 percent to 28 percent, that trade deals have harmed the United States," and four times as many people surveyed by Pew said U.S. trade deals had lowered wages than the number who believed the deals had raised them. According to Public Citizen, opponents of NAFTA-style trade deals picked up 37 seats over defenders of the status quo during last year's midterms.

But, despite that political landscape, one of the first things the new Democratic majority did when it got into power was cut a new "Grand Bargain" with the White House to push through more of the same kind of trade deals. As David Sirota pointed out, the Democratic leadership did it in secret, behind closed doors. And it did it over the objections of many of the freshman lawmakers that gave them their majority in the first place.

...

http://www.alternet.org/audits/54184/

[MrPrax]

1. Corporatist agit-prop...

from the OP:

With that as a backdrop, it should come as no surprise that people tend to look for a wizard working behind the curtain. The idea that shadowy forces beyond our perception are really in charge of steering the most powerful country in the world is reinforced every time a bipartisan "trade" deal with little or no support gets jammed through Congress.

Well they are hardly shadowy as they did in fact try to steer "the most powerful country in the world" to have it's ports run by a company based in Dubai. So much for that love of 'self-determination' Holland mentions as a bulwark against national sovereignty.

Holland is rather selective about what he understands as corporatism and 'the economy' or even further into his piece, the semantics of a 'political union'. He doesn't seem to think the push for integration might be entirely based on economic necessity by declining economic powers who have little choice but to 'circle the collective wagons'. Holland sees it only a xenophobia and 'racism' and those rightwingers. Apparently 'manifest destiny' isn't a factor either.

Progressives are way ahead of either the John Birch society or 'last gasp' neo-liberals like Holland who still push prosperity through 'managed trade', globalism and it's unchecked growth.

[yurbud]

2. wow--another case of the right creating a problem then profiting from it

their chamber of commerce patrons want the trade deals, want the illegal immigration, want the amnesty so they can have more legit entry level workers to depress wages, then they use all of the above to scare people to vote for republicans.

Democrats always do the opposite: they see a problem, they do something that fixes it to a degree, the GOP says the fix is worse than the original problem, the Democrats apologize, and join the effort to undo their fix, and the GOP profits from the Democrats fix in the next election.

If they do good, they then promptly hand it to their opponents as a club to beat them over the head with.

[Prophet 451]

3. Isn't this just the NWO?

Isn't this just a reworking of the New World Order stuff which the Birchers have been pushing for years though?

Given that the idea of a global or even regional conspiracy on that level is virtually impossible (small conspiracies happen all the time though), they can probably be safely ignored.

One thing does occur to me. All of these theories posit the push for a proto-fascist supergovernment and yet, they always come from and wish to push things further to the right. Strikes me as counter-intuitive. Also, I still don't see what the big problem with a properly constituted regional or global government anyway.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. There are many DUers who fall for Corsi's fearmongering

so I thought a piece from a reasonable left wing source on why it is, as you say, Bircher-type stuff might be instructive.