CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, October 7, 2002

Where have all the Commies gone?

Ever wonder who the people are who protest outside the meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)?

But before we attempt to answer that question, let’s examine the WTO and the IMF: The IMF came out of a conference of 45 governments held in New Hampshire just at the end of World War II. With Europe, Britain and Asia in ruins, the conferees were convinced that the lack of international economic cooperation in the 1930s was a major cause of the Great Depression that led to the rise of Hitler and to World War II.

Today, the IMF has 184 member nations pledged to promote international monetary cooperation, to facilitate the expansion and growth of world trade, to promote currency exchange STABILITY and to help member states that are experiencing balance of payments difficulties. But, most of all, the IMF works to ensure the STABILITY of the international financial system.

The objectives of the 144 members of the WTO are aligned with the IMF in that the WTO deals with the trade agreements between nations. These trade agreements lead to STABILITY in world markets and the promotion of economic cooperation and ORDER aimed at the prevention of another Great Depression leading to the CHAOS of another world war.

So, if the IMF and the WTO arise from the lessons learned in the 1930s and World War II, who can be against them?

The ideologues of the Far Right do not like international organizations because every international agreement contains a certain amount of give and take which means the loss of some degree of national sovereignty. But the reason the opposition of the Far Right is so minor, compared to the Far Left, is because the Far Right puts the preservation of ORDER ahead of the preservation of national sovereignty.

Thus, the overwhelming majority of the protestors are from the Far Left. Why? Because as long as there is STABILITY and ORDER in world trade and in world financial markets, the financial CHAOS needed to bring the western democracies and their allies to their economic knees is not likely to occur. Moreover, as long as the IMF, the WTO and other organs of STABILITY and ORDER continue to minister to Third World Countries in terms of financial aid and technical assistance, the work of the Far Left in destabilizing and taking control of the Third Word is made much more difficult.

So, who are these people on the Far Left? Many of them are the actual or ideological refugees of the 73-year-long failed experiment in Soviet Communism. Just because Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev negotiated the end of the Soviet Union that did not cause the true believers of Communism to vanish in a cloud of smoke. The ideological children of Marx, Engels and Lenin had to go somewhere. They have gone into the anti-IMF/WTO movement and into environmental extremism.

They are the ones who seek CHAOS by trying to destroy the organs of STABILITY and ORDER, such as the IMF, the WTO and NATO and other collective security arrangements. If the UN had not proven itself to be ineffective in its war-prevention role and only marginally effective in its post-hostilities peacekeeping role, they would seek to destroy it as well. The UN’s 16 un-enforced resolutions for the disarmament of Saddam Hussein demonstrate its irrelevance.

Others have infiltrated well-meaning environmental organizations. They seek to cripple the means of production employed by the western democracies while doing nothing about the vastly greater pollution that emits from the Third World. They are aided by non-communist tree-huggers who have a heartfelt commitment to clean water, clean air and the sanctity of animal life, with the possible exception of unborn humans.

So, where have all the Commies gone? Now, you know. Whenever the IMF and the WTO meet, you can even see them and their dupes on your TV.

William Hamilton, a nationally syndicated columnist and featured commentator for USA Today, is the co-author of The Grand Conspiracy by William Penn – a novel about a terrorist attack on the water reservoirs in the Colorado high country.

©2002. William Hamilton.

Dr. Hamilton can be contacted at:

Email: william@central-view.com