After Seattle: Understanding the Politics of Globalization

Abstract

The "Seattle Shock"—as Business Week called it in an editorial that warned of a popular backlash against "our very economic system"—reflects heartfelt indignation by the financial press at the intrusion of mass democracy into an elite discourse. In the New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman raged at anti-World Trade Organization (WTO) protesters, whom he presents as "flat-earth advocates" duped by knaves like Pat Buchanan. Friedman, perhaps the most obtuse of the big-time columnists, complains that "What's crazy is that the protesters want the W.T.O. to become precisely what they accuse it of already being—a global government. They want it to set more rules—their rules, which would impose our labor and environmental standards on everyone else."

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