Are you an environmentalist? Like sustainable growth? Historic Preservation? You'd better watch out for Tom DeWeese. It's hard to keep track of all the crazy coming from the right wing these days. That doesn't mean we can ignore them though.
One of the things they do much better than people on the left is organize and fund their craziness. One reason for that is, of course, is that it's a lot easier to be crazy if you have lots of money - and there's something about having lots of money that does make people crazy. Or sociopathic. Or both. You don't get to be a rich S.O.B. (or B.) by playing nice and sharing. Not in the America of today.
FWIW, I just ran across one I hadn't heard of before: Tom DeWeese. At the risk of giving him and his organization exposure, I thought it worth putting up a post here so we can be on the watch for him and his message. If you're serious about wanting to deal with major problems the world is facing - growth, energy, climate - you need to know about DeWeese. Because he's bound and determined to keep anything effective from being done. He's a classic case of Libertarian paranoia gone toxic.
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If you're someone interested in seeing your local community adopt policies that save energy, conserve resources, and plan for the long run, Tom DeWeese is there to make sure it's not going to happen. He'll turn you into a communist/internationalist/socialist seeking to tell people what they can and can't do. He'll accuse you of brainwashing their kids, trying to take away their guns, driving jobs out of town, and just about anything he can get away with. He'll help organize all of the local low-information, paranoid folks to stop you. And he'll portray it all in terms of doing the Right Thing, the Patriotic Thing, the American Way.
If you're not prepared to keep him from framing the issues that way, you're going to get hammered - and odds are the local opinion makers, politicos, and media will fall for it. He's got money behind him and lots of practice, so be warned and be prepared.
Here's a sample of DeWeese from an email I got via another Right Wing 'news' operation I follow to keep track of things like this. The message was sent out to raise membership and funds. I'm adding emphasis for some of the key points:
Agenda 21 is a threat coming from the United Nations that is invading every city and town in the nation. It leads to control over private property, energy use, water use; it means government will control how hot your shower may be, how much air conditioning or heat you may use, controls on owning and using your car, controls on food production, controls on population growth, and so much more.
The policy of Agenda 21 comes in many names, such as Sustainable Development, Smart Growth, historic preservation, diversity, open space, heritage areas and comprehensive planning.
It all means locking away land, resources, higher prices, sacrifice and shortages and is based on the age old socialist scheme of redistribution of wealth.
Here we go, the standard wingnut propaganda machine at work. Take the kind of activities you want to target, and tie them to things with strong negative emotional connotations. Frame them in a context to make them appear threatening. Make people scared so they stop thinking rationally. That's how you create a mob mentality - and then lead that mob around by the nose where you want them to go.
Agenda 21 is being implemented in your community by a hoard of Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with private political agendas. They surround your elected officials and pressure them to accept these policies.
The most prominent NGO is called the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI). More than 600 American cities are paying dues to ICLEI to set up Agenda 21 plans and policies that control your life.
Through the enforcement of non-elected boards, councils and regional governments, Agenda 21 is the blueprint to turn your community into a little soviet. Our nation is being transformed into a centrally-controlled planned economy – the exact opposite of America’s unique Republic.
There you go again: stir up the locals with talk of a global conspiracy where evil outsiders come in to overturn the lives of normal people, deprive them of their rights and their property.
The American Policy Center is one of those organizations the right uses to push it's agenda. I haven't dug into it's financials to find out where its funding comes from, or much about DeWeese, but the hallmarks of a right wing astroturf organization are all over this. I suspect if you follow up their board of advisors, the links would be fascinating.
The email goes on to boast about what DeWeese is doing:
As a direct result of APC’s efforts, we are winning some astounding fights.
Let me give you just a sample of what has happened across the nation in battle after battle in local communities to remove ICLEI and stop the spread of Sustainable Development – in just the past 6 months:
In February, Carroll County, Maryland elected 5 new county commissioners. Their first act was to close the county’s Sustainable Development Office and fire its manager. They then ended their contract with ICLEI and rejected the county’s ICLEI-written comprehensive development plan – telling the planning commission to re-work it to protect property rights and assure the plan was in compliance with the U.S. Constitution.
Carroll County Commissioner Richard Rothschild called me soon after his election and told me it was APC materials that he used to educate the other commissioners and lead the fight.
Also in February, Amador County, California was the second community to reject its contract with ICLEI and begin to dismantle the Sustainable Development policies that had been put in place. The effort was led by the “Mother Lode Tea Party.”
In March, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania became the third community to reject its ICLEI contract and send them packing. The effort was again led by local activists Ruth Miller and Maggie Roddin, armed with APC materials. I had talked several times with these leaders before they led their successful effort.
In April, Edmond, Oklahoma became the fourth community to reject ICLEI and its policies. The Edmond City Council was confronted by nearly 200 citizens demanding that the city end its contract with ICLEI.
In May, Las Cruces, New Mexico became the fifth community to out ICLEI and I have been invited to be the keynote speaker at a conference there this summer, sponsored by the group that led the ICLEI fight.
In June, Spartanburg, SC became city number 6 to oust ICLEI by a city council vote of six to zero.
Also in June, Albemarle County, Virginia Board of Supervisors voted
4–2 to reject its contract with ICLEI. I spoke there just two months ago.
Daily I receive notes and calls from leaders in communities across the nation who seek to be the next city to defeat ICLEI and Sustainable Development. Currently there are battles waging in Titusville, Florida; Cleveland, Tennessee; Waterloo, Iowa; Wabash, Indiana; Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska, Elkhart County, Indiana; Santa Cruz, California; San Antonio, Texas, Chesterfield County, Virginia, and many more.
APC has been involved in almost every one of these fights. If not directly, at least activists are using APC materials and articles to educate the community and engage in the battle.
And for the very first time I am getting phone calls from elected officials who want to talk to me about these policies they are being forced to put into place. They want to understand and learn how to fight back.
You can find more just by going to the APC website, and searching DeWeese on the internet. Here's a biography with links to some of his messages. Here's how it starts:
Tom DeWeese is one of the nation's leading advocates of individual liberty, free enterprise, property rights and back-to-basics education. For over thirty years he has fought against government oppression.
If you want a slightly different perspective on DeWeese and those like him, you'll find him in
this report from the
Southern Poverty Law Center.
Shaw's fearful call to arms against environmentalism was sucked in whole hog during the Ninth Annual Freedom 21 conference held in a Dallas-area Crowne Plaza hotel. Co-hosted by the Texas Eagle Forum, a hard-line Christian Right organization, and the anti-"New World Order" American Policy Center (APC), the three-day convergence included such right-wing heavyweights as the error-prone conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, gay- and feminist-hating Phyllis Schlafly, and the far-right Constitution Party's presidential candidate, Chuck Baldwin.
One former popular Freedom 21er was disinvited. Bob Barr, a former conservative Republican congressman from Georgia, was asked not to return by the head of APC, Tom DeWeese, because Barr had talked to Al Gore about global warming. "This is not some nice little debate," DeWeese said he told someone in Barr's office. "This is war."
DeWeese and APC are just one more patch of nasty on the quilt of Wingnut crazy spreading across America. While posing as a grass-roots organization, want to bet how much of his money comes from people like the Koch Bothers? Exxon-Mobil? All the usual suspects lurk in the shadows while people like DeWeese make a lot of noise about defending 'little people' - while screwing them over instead.
Similar rhetoric came from Tom DeWeese, a long-time PR professional who runs a think tank called the American Policy Center that specializes in appeals to the looney fringe of the far right. DeWeese called the government's water policy "an attack on sanity itself. It lacks all rationality. It is an attack on these farmers, but it is also yet another example of the way radical environmentalists continue to attack on the most essential elements of the West's economic life; farming, ranching, mining and the timber industries. It is ultimately an attack on every American's property rights because ownership of any land anywhere can be destroyed by simply asserting that an endangered species exists on it or may at some time use it. ... The agenda of these radical environmentalists is aimed directly at the destruction of our nation's economic base."
Repeat:
If you're someone interested in seeing your local community adopt policies that save energy, conserve resources, and plan for the long run, Tom DeWeese is there to make sure it's not going to happen. He'll turn you into a communist/internationalist/socialist seeking to tell people what they can and can't do. He'll accuse you of brainwashing their kids, trying to take away their guns, driving jobs out of town, and just about anything he can get away with. He'll help organize all of the local low-information, paranoid folks to stop you. And he'll portray it all in terms of doing the Right Thing, the Patriotic Thing, the American Way.
If you're not prepared to keep him from framing the issues that way, you're going to get hammered - and odds are the local opinion makers, politicos, and media will fall for it. He's got money behind him and lots of practice, so be warned and be prepared.