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 For those of us who have been observing events in Quebec City from afar, it has been all rather extraordinary, hasn’t it? Not the actual discussions which took place between the 34 leaders in attendance, nor the agreements reached on further liberalization of global trade. Those discussions, those agreements are certainly important - but, as with most meetings of this type, the final communiqués are usually finalized long before the actual event. No, what has been extraordinary has been something else entirely. Extraordinary have been the televised images seen over the past few days: images of thousands angrily - some violently - protesting against the Summit of the Americas. Images of extraordinary precautions being taken to preserve the safety of those 34 leaders. Images of arrested Canadians being found in possession - allegedly - of grenade-type explosives, smoke bombs, shields, chains, bags of steel balls, baseball bats, helmets, hammers and spray paint. It was, in some respects, the Battle of Seattle redux. Why, one might reasonably ask, is it necessary to express one’s views about globalization while carrying some sort of a grenade, or a baseball bat? That is a question that should be put to fund-raising vehicles like the Council of Canadians, perhaps, which did precious little to distance itself from those who prefer violence over discourse. But a more salient question, unaddressed in the avalanche of media coverage surrounding Quebec City, is this: how is it that extremists found on both sides of the ideological continuum - the far-left and the far-right - have joined forces to oppose liberalized trading rules? In a book I wrote in 1992, Unholy Alliances, I first encountered one of the earliest manifestations of this anti-trade coalition of the right and left. A “peace conference” sponsored by Libya in April 1987 had attracted - along with dozens of Canadians, most from the Ottawa area - neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Muslim separatists and far-left organizers. (Tragically, the conference became notorious for something else, too: the mysterious death of Southam News employee Christoph Halens, whom the Libyans falsely claimed to be a victim of a suicide.) Calling this left-right alliance the Third Position, groups such as Britain’s racist National Front - which was also in attendance at the peace conference - railed against capitalism as well as communism. Third Positionists, right and left, were vehemently anti-Israel, and did not disguise the anti-Semitism that often accompanies that point of view. And, perhaps more than anything else, the adherents of the Third Position opposed (and continue to oppose) any sort of co-operative internationalism - whether it be in respect of peacekeeping (as in Kosovo) or in respect of trade (as in Quebec City). If all of this Third Position stuff sounds dubious and obscure, recall the recent U.S. presidential contest, wherein two candidates from the left and right - Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan, respectively - both strenuously opposed liberalized trade. To the extreme rightists, globalization leads to One World Government, black helicopters, and the loss national (and sometimes racial) identity to corporations run by Trilateralists and Jews. To the extreme leftists, globalization has different meanings, but ultimately the same apocalyptic conclusion: rule by corporations run by Trilateralists and usurious bankers in the shadows. Either way, the far right and far left have come together to oppose international co-operation in trade. And, increasingly, they do so violently, or by making use of rhetoric that legitimizes the use of violence. So, on the one hand, Canadian far right leader Paul Fromm attacks Finance Minister on the Freedom Site - Canada’s most active racist Internet address - for his call to marshal the forces of globalization to assist the world’s poor (Mr. Fromm believes, apparently, that Mr. Martin should “put Canadians first.”) And, on the other hand, the Council of Canadians glossy web site depicts globalization in similarly disparaging terms, and attacks Canada’s government for supporting it. Ironically, the Council sounds a more ominous warning than Mr. Fromm and his ilk: “The stakes for the people of the Americas have never been higher; a confrontation appears inevitable.” A confrontation, quote unquote. How very responsible. After the weekend we have just experienced - after the extremism and violence we have witnessed, unfolding on the streets of one of the great Canadian cities - I suspect that ordinary Canadians are rather fed up with the sort of “confrontation” being threatened by the likes of Council of Canadians, or their equivalents on the other side of the political spectrum. I suspect, in fact, that if it has succeeded in unifying so many lunatics, left and right, globalization can’t be such a bad thing after all.
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