The Rise of the Tea Party
Is the Tea Party racist? Democrats who play liberals on TV say it isn’t. Vice President Joe Biden says the Tea Party “is not a racist organization” per se, but allows that “at least elements that were involved in some of the Tea Party folks expressed racist views.”
Right-wing Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has received permission to form an official Tea Party Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives. It’s official. The Tea Party matters.
So: is it racist? Certainly a sizeable minority of Tea Partiers’ “take America back” rhetoric is motivated by thinly disguised resentment that a black guy is president. As for the remainder, their tacit tolerance of the intolerant speaks for itself. “Take America back” from whom? You know whom. It ain’t white CEOs.
Yes. The Tea Party is racist. Obviously.
But racism is only one facet of a far more sinister political strain. It’s more accurate to categorize the Tea Party as something the United States has never seen before, certainly not in such large numbers or as widespread.
The Tea Party is a protofascist movement.
Robert O. Paxton defined fascism as “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”
Typical Tea Party rants fit the classic fascist mold in several respects. America, Tea Partiers complain, is falling behind. Like Hitler, they blame leftists and liberals for a “stab in the back,” treason on the homefront. The trappings of hypernationalism—flags, bunting, etc.—are notably pervasive at Tea Party rallies, even by American standards. We see “collaboration with traditional elites”—Rush Limbaugh, Congressmen, Republican Party bigwigs (including the most recent vice presidential nominee)—to an extent that is unprecedented in recent history.
Tea Partiers haven’t called for extralegal solutions to the problems they cite—but neither did the National Socialists prior to 1933. Then again, they’re not in power yet. Wait.
One major component is missing: aggressive militarism. Certainly most Tea Partiers support America’s wars and the troops who fight them. But Tea Partiers focus on domestic issues. Similarly, the Nazis didn’t make much of their aggressive intent until after they seized power.
Because it has no central leadership and because it’s easier to attract new members if you never say anything specific enough to turn anyone off, ideological vagueness is a defining characteristic of the Tea Party movement. Indeed, ideological imprecision tends to increase as you move from left to right on the political spectrum.
On the left, communists are specific to a fault. (This is why the Left is factionalized.) Programmes, five-year plans and one tract after another are the (increasingly boring) order of the day under socialism. Moving right, bourgeois organizations such as the two major U.S. political parties have platform planks and principles, but tend to be mushy and flexible. As we move to the far right, as under Hitler, ideas become grand, sweeping, meaningless slogans (take the nation back! death to the traitors!). What should be done is nominally whatever needs doing (i.e., whatever the Leader orders).
Umberto Eco’s 1995 essay “Eternal Fascism” describes the cult of action for its own sake under fascist regimes and movements: “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
Note Republican Senator John Cornyn’s choice of words when he defended Tea Partiers against charges of racism: “I think it’s slanderous to suggest the vast movement of citizens who have gotten off the couch and showed up at town hall meetings and Tea Party events, somehow to smear them with this label, there’s just no basis for it.”
Tea Partiers deserve praise for having gotten “off the couch.” They’ve shown up. That’s what matters! Never mind that they’re stupid. Never mind that many—those who get quoted in the media, anyway—are painfully ignorant and uneducated.
As an added bonus, Senator Cornyn’s statement both demonstrates “effective collaboration with traditional elites” and another entry from Eco’s checklist: “Disagreement is treason.” Or slander. Whichever Ann Coulter book title floats your boat.
Eco also discusses fascism’s “appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.” Guard the borders! Deport the immigrants! Mexicans are stealing our jobs!
So much anger. It’s too bad that the (justifiable) rage of the white male middle-class is directed against their fellow victims. It’s worse that they’re playing into the blood-soaked hands of their own oppressors.
(Ted Rall is the author of “The Anti-American Manifesto,” to be published in September by Seven Stories Press. His website is tedrall.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2010 TED RALL
79 Comments.
Do you leftists have anything besides “your racist”?
*** JOURNALISTS PLOT TO CALL CONSERVATIVES “RACIST” TO DEFEND OBAMA *** – Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright
http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/20/documents-show-media-plotting-to-kill-stories-about-rev-jeremiah-wright/
It all looks like “Triumph Of The Will ” to me.
US 395’s response validates Ted’s entire piece.
“Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
That line alone couldn’t have described US 395’s response better.
According to Wikipedia, Fascism has lost all meaning. Originally, it was Mussolini’s term for his style of government, which was NOT National Socialism, Hitler’s term for HIS style of government. But (as Wikipedia says) it gradually became a generic term of disapproval, used to disparage any government of which one disapproves.
According to Beck, Fascism requires private ownership of the means of production but government regulation of how the owners can operate their means of production, a definition that Beck claims applies to the US (it doesn’t, because some of the means of production are owned by the various governments; Beck’s definition, if extended to economies with less than 100% private ownership of the means of production, includes all except strict Maoist economies with all private ownership strictly prohibited).
And it’s not at all clear to me that the Tea Party populists fit Paxton’s definition in full. Many say they’d like to string the traditional elites up on the same lampposts as the liberals.
No ex, my response does not validate Ted’s entire piece. You leftists have zero arguments except to call those with whom you disagree racist. There’s no arguing of facts. Just yell Hitler and feel good about your brainless selves. Try to use your brains, not bumper stickers.
Michael: Beck is no historian. As for the Tea Party, remember that the Nazis too claimed to despise traditional elites. Note that the cooperation is supposed to be “uneasy.”
US395: You can disagree with my piece, but in 800-plus words I argue that the Tea Party is a protofascist movement. That is not a bumper sticker. I am arguing facts, Now it’s your turn.
>>>No ex, my response does not validate Ted’s entire piece. You leftists have zero arguments except to call those with whom you disagree racist. There’s no arguing of facts. Just yell Hitler and feel good about your brainless selves. Try to use your brains, not bumper stickers.>>>
Highway, if you’re going to sink to this level, you might as well leave this website and not post here anymore. I personally have never called anyone here a racist, including you, and I don’t recall anyone here calling anyone else a racist either.
That said, calling people “brainless” would be grounds for deleting your post if this was my website. But it’s Ted’s website, so I have no choice but to merely leave you with the admonition to be civil.
Ted, I need to clear my responses through Susan. Susan, please provide me your email address.
Perhaps Susan is dumpster diving, so I will post my reply and pray she approves.
Ted,
Here is the fact is disagree wit h: “The Tea Party is racist. Obviously.” I understand in the leftist brain stem a fact is anything posted on Media Matters or recited by Keith Overbite. However, in the rest of the world, that is not a fact. I never bothered reading the rest of your column (think of it like voting for Barry because is a black man regardless of his lack of intelligence or experience).
LOL. US 395′s LATEST response validates Ted’s entire piece EVEN FURTHER.
“I never bothered reading the rest of your column.”
Most people would be embarrassed about that sort of admission. Not a conservative Tea Partier though. No siree. They are PROUD of ignorance, as Ted notes in the piece. The dumber the better.
Seriously, that Ted could write a piece which describes how Tea Partiers hate facts and embrace ignorance – and then we have an admitted example of that on this thread! – that’s too good to be true.
exkiodexian, please take it easy. I still hold out hope that 395 is a delicate young mind in need of some nurturing.
US395, are you ok? You might want to sit down, you just got owned pretty hard… Listen, dear, we all feel it would be best if you did a little more reading before posting here. You will get so much more out of it.
US 395.
Proudly ignorant.
Have fun stormin’ the castle!!!
offered without comment:
http://www.examiner.com/x-12278-Louisville-Independent-Examiner~y2010m7d3-Yup-Im-a-racist-tshirts-sold-at-Lexingtons-July-4th-Festival
I made a comment on the part of Ted’s column I read. It’s like Oleg’s posts. She/he rarely get’s the first assumption correct, so why read the rest. For example, when Oleg kept insisting that I believe businesses hire people they don’t need. That position was so asinine and ignorant, I don’t bother wasting the rest of my time reading the rest.
kwol,
Did you watch the entire video? They are mocking leftists.
“Yup, I’m A Racist” T-Shirts
A long time ago, in a cyber world far, far away (Usenet), there lived a creature called the Whoosh bird, so named for the sound that was made as it followed a bit of obvious information right over the head of the clueless.
I am quite happy to report that apparently it isn’t quite extinct, because I absolutely heard it again today:
And it isn’t like he went home and realized we were laughing at them. No, he wrote his column and made it perfectly clear that the entire left is just a dumb as he is.
Seriously, the vendors’ next t-shirt should say “Liberals Are Mentally Superior.”
http://redstateeclectic.typepad.com/redstate_commentary/2010/07/yup-im-a-racist-tshirts.html
For example, when Oleg kept insisting that I believe businesses hire people they don’t need.
But you also said you don’t believe the opposite. You are bewildered. We are here to help you. It’s going to be okay. You are safe here. Try to stay calm.
Ted, this is an absolutely brilliant essay! It’s one of your best in a long, long time. It is concise, accurate, and does not digress into typical 60s-leftist style platitudes. Fantastic.
I think it’s beautiful. Future academics will make entire careers out of studying the rise of fascism in the United States. It is remarkable how much history can repeat itself century after century. As for the Darkness of the Future we are about to endure, just embrace your tiny part in the great human tragedy of the early 21st Century. I mean, what’s a few hundred million lives in the grand scheme of human history? Baliwood will get a good 50 years of movies out of it when the dust settles.
“Tea Partiers haven’t called for extralegal solutions to the problems they cite—but neither did the National Socialists prior to 1933.”
I would consider the threats of gun use to be “extralegal.” Also remember that Hitler and the Nazis tried to overthrow the government before 1933.
Of course the Teabaggers CLAIM that everything they want to do is above board, but when you listen to their rhetoric, it’s clear that they don’t have a firm grasp of what’s legal and what isn’t. I think it’s a bit too gracious to say that they haven’t called for anything extralegal, especially given a large portion of them still think that Obama wasn’t born in the US.
Heh, heh, well I offered it without comment, but let’s just say that “mocking leftists” and “trying to mock leftists” are not always the same thing. Saying “I’m not a racist” while wearing a shirt that says “Yup I’m a racist and I want to close the Arizona border” is, shall we say, an uphill battle.
I don’t think the tea party folks are racist. They want to take back the country “from the liberals” (or “from the Democrats”). I think they would have treated John Kerry or Hillary Clinton the way they are treating Barack Obama.
I think the tea partiers don’t dislike the undocumented Mexicans because of the color of their skin or the language they speak, but because they have stereotyped these undocumented as mooches who want something for free. That the facts don’t quite line up, tells us that there is value in educating the tea partiers about: (1) these undocumented workers tend to pay their withholding taxes, but never get any tax refunds, earned income tax credits, or child tax credits, (2) these undocumented workers tend to provide services to US citizens at below market rates, (3) even those undocumented workers who are good drivers tend to pay much more in traffic tickets because they can’t legally get drivers’ licenses, etc. In short, we citizens are the mooches relative to them.
The tens of millions of demonstrators that tried to stop the Iraq war were more-or-less completely ineffective in achieving their goals. Likewise I think the much smaller tea partiers are wasting their time and effort. Rubin, Paulson, Geitner, Summers and their Wall Street ilk run the show, with some lesser control going to non-financial corporate behemoths such as Haliburton. The only way out is to up public financing of campaigns so much that we the people can outgive these rich corporations — and then we the people will end up owning the politicians, as it should be.
Lee, when you look at a whole range of people, and you single out the brown ones as mooches, you just might be a racist.
(the proverbial ‘you’, that is…)
>>>Perhaps Susan is dumpster diving, so I will post my reply and pray she approves.>>>
I’m not the only one here who has a problem with your attitude, Highway.
>>>I understand in the leftist brain stem a fact is anything posted on Media Matters or recited by Keith Overbite.>>>
Nothing on cable television is even remotely leftist. Phil Donohue found that out the hard way when his show was canceled even though its ratings were increasing. Never mind that he took care to have right-wingers on his show like Rich Lowry in order to provide what the mainstream media considers “balance”. Never mind that the show was much the same format as his former talk show except for the audience, a talk show that had lasted for twenty-five years. It was deemed “outside acceptable discussion” and had to go. Donohue’s brand of fair play was no longer acceptable, even though it had been in the past. So don’t give me that “leftists in the media” crap, Highway. They don’t exist, except on websites and other formats where they will not reach a mass audience.
And as far as Teabaggers being racist. I am old enough to know what the word “spending” means when used by anyone right-of-center. The word “spending”, since the days of Ronald Reagan, is a code word for Black people or any other people considered not one of the elect. It’s short for “we are spending too much money on *those people*”. The words “cut spending” mean “we need to cut funding from *those people*” When the Teabaggers say “trim Social Security”, they mean “take Social Security away from *those people*” They certainly DON’T mean take it away from people like themselves.
The Moral Majority used the phrase “cut spending” in the 80s, and the Angry White Males used the same words in the 90s, and the Teabaggers are using it today. It means the disempowerment of anyone not themselves.
Thank you Susan, you made my point.
“I think they would have treated John Kerry or Hillary Clinton the way they are treating Barack Obama.”
I don’t think anyone would have tried to claim they weren’t born in the country. A lot of the racism that comes from the teabagger fucks is related to the birther lies.
Oh, am I making your point US 395?
Aggie,
I don’t agree, it’s a very poor column, and one which resonates with the theme of the week for most leftist web sites, blogs etc. As much as Rall likes to brag about facts, what the article is full of is his own opinion. What does this even mean:
Certainly a sizeable minority of Tea Partiers’ “take America back” rhetoric is motivated by thinly disguised resentment that a black guy is president.
Translated, it seems to say: I think what some of these guys mean when they say “take America back” is that they like OhBummer because of the color of his skin ERGO, the whole Tea Part is racist. This doesn’t pass muster in a class in basic logic. Lee sounds a note of reason above. Rall also abuses the tired old leftist cliché of calling anybody you don’t like a Fascist. Since he seems to be cherry-picking quotes from Wikipedia to further his point, why not quote something from the very horse’s mouth (not mine, mind you):
“Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”
By that quote and from all he’s written on politics, if I were as intellectually dishonest as Rall’s article I would conclude that Ted Rall is a fascist (as most of the posters here. And all neocons. And Bush Il-Jong etc etc ad infinitum). This is silly, obviously.
Looking at the Tea Party from afar, and based on blogging bloviations from the Left, the Right and from folks I take seriously, the Tea Party seems to be composed of the following:
Libertarian-leaning folks, energized by Ron Paul’s campaign in 2008;
Sore-loser Republican militants (Christian Rightists, mostly), who would oppose any Democrat administration;
Folks afraid that any new entitlement Obama creates will cut into their entitlements;
Folks wary of Obamacare;
Unfortunately, the last three seem to vastly outnumber the first group, and they’re not willing to face the simple fact that the militaristic adventures of the American Empire are the greatest and costliest (in both lives and resources) cause of the burgeoning of the state. Until the first group manages to get the rest to come to their senses about jingoism and militarism, the Tea Party is doomed. And the Repugs are already at work to co-opt the movement and just turn it into an electoral windfall.
Susan, sometimes you’re reasonable, but this talk about “code words” and magically guessing what the other party really instead of what he’s actually saying is no way to carry a rational conversation.
Bucephalus,
You probably sense by now that the philosophical underpinnings of your foundational convictions derive from a tradition of thinkers who ingratiated themselves to an elite, or worse, were members of an elite. As I’m sure you are aware, approximations of Keynes’ development model were applied only in Europe and Japan. The rest of the world fell under Harry Dexter White’s influence, and we know where that has led… “But White was a Soviet spy” you might say.
“Why would a Soviet spy champion a neoliberal development policy?”
To answer that I remind you that a full blown revolution in the US was averted only by way of Keynesian policy prescriptions. After the war, we were nowhere near Bolshevism. The plan had worked. Soviet planners could not let the Keynesians duplicate this globally. But what is the best way to run the world capitalist economy into the ground the fastest? You guessed it.
Neoliberal development policy.
To answer that I remind you that a full blown revolution in the US was averted only by way of Keynesian policy prescriptions.
That is nonsense, and you know it. Full recovery from the Great Depression was only achieved after the end of the war. The US was never near a full blown socialist revolution (which is what you probably meant), neither before, nor after the war, although the Commies did indeed have their moment in the sun in the ’30s.
I don’t know for certain if Harry Dexter White was a Soviet mole or not (though it’s pretty much established), but you certainly have lost all right to scream “conspiracy theorist” at my future comments 🙂 And he was just a run-of-the-mill Keynesian, like 90% of establishment economists that populate central banks across the globe.
Hey there US 395, you and I have a lot in common. You see, I used to troll this Republican website that was chock full of mouth-breathing morons. I’d zoom in and zap them with little gotcha comments and then laugh derisively at their dismal grammar and spelling when they would attempt a concerted response.
It was some time later that I noticed an odd psychological side-effect of trolling: When I would read the news, part of my brain would immediately ascertain what the idiot Republicans would have to say about any given story. They were a decidedly predictable lot: I could concoct gotchas before I even visited their website.
In time I realized that the idiot Republicans were the winners in this equation. I was thinking like them and their idiot voices were crowding my thoughts with inanity. None of my gotchas ever budged them one iota from their hard-won fifth-grade philosophies. But their incessant stupidities were interrupting my sleep and digestion.
I finally announced to them all that I was giving them a special gift. Then I deleted my password and all access to my account. Ever since then, I have enjoyed that special gift immensely. You can too, unless filling your head with the chuntering of oppositional thumbsuckers is the pinnacle of Conservative thought or something. Your choice.
To equate Harry Dexter White’s approach to Keynes’ ignores the blood feud they were engaged in over the key concept in credit-based development schemes:
Who bears the burden of adjustment? Keynes thought the whole world should pay to adjust primitive and/or failing state economies to the modern world. He saw this as an investment in preventing what happened in Europe from happening ever again, anywhere else. White thought they should pay for their own adjustment! Essentially a close approximation to the Peace of Westphalia duplicated across the globe in every developing country possible.
Needless to say, any development scheme which relied upon predatory non-state actors was doomed (eg. Dole collaborating with Philippine elite in leasing 90% of the land while employing 10% of the population).
Apropos Susan’s inference about someone’s ulterior motives and real meaning from the use of choice “code words”, which would appear straight-forward to the untrained, but are really cryptic, I have this humble proposition to make for the sake of consistence and honesty in debate: whoever uses, like Ted Rall, vocabulary such as “late-period capitalism”, would you please stop describing yourselves by misleading terms like “liberal” or “progressive” and admit that you’re really Marxist socialists?
I don’t care if you’re Trotskyist, Maoist, neo-Stalinist or whatever Marxist sect out there. I don’t care if you mourn the passing of the USSR, of if you think those Russians got it all wrong, but the old man was right all along (I promise I want pester you all the time with questions about your opinions on Cuba). Just stand true to your colors, that’s all I’m asking.
Just like you get pissy when I lump Vienna and Chicago together, we hold absurd your attempts to lump Keynes with the Kremlin.
Where did I do that, exactly, mister?
Albert,
The birthers came from the HRC campaign.
Correction, the birther movement originated in in the HRC campaign.
Want to see something really funny? Go read little Albert’s blog. You’ll be the first!
Where did I [lump Keynes with the Kremlin], exactly, mister?
“[a soviet mole] was just a run-of-the-mill Keynesian.”
-Buce H. Phallus
>>>Apropos Susan’s inference about someone’s ulterior motives and real meaning from the use of choice “code words”, which would appear straight-forward to the untrained, but are really cryptic, I have this humble proposition to make for the sake of consistence and honesty in debate: whoever uses, like Ted Rall, vocabulary such as “late-period capitalism”, would you please stop describing yourselves by misleading terms like “liberal” or “progressive” and admit that you’re really Marxist socialists?>>>
Well, “late-period capitalism” is not my term; it’s Ted’s.
I don’t consider myself a marxist, because I don’t believe putting EVERY business into the hands of government. I do favor putting anything that’s “too-big-to-fail” into government hands, but not every little mom-and-pop restaurant, deli, etc. Private business doesn’t hurt as long as it’s small and/or follows sound labor and environmental practices.
On the surface, the idea of “cutting spending” is not a bad thing, but I never hear Teabaggers (or the Angry White Males and Moral Majority before them) talk about what they mean by that. Cut what, exactly? Do they mean the super-bloated military budget, which is takes up about 50% of everyone’s taxes, if not more? Neah. I never hear them talk about that. The only thing I hear is “support the troops”. So they’re not talking about the military. Does “cut spending” mean Social Security, disability, veteran’s benefits, unemployment, Food Stamps, welfare, etc? Well then they would naturally start with themselves, since many Teabaggers receive these benefits. I don’t see that happening, so they’re not talking about social benefits. Why, what ever could they mean? What’s left? Why, it means any program which they themselves don’t benefit from. That would be programs for inner-city youth (Black and Latino people), any arts funding (Gays, Lesbians, Trans, Liberals, Leftists). You know, those types of programs. Wink. Wink.
This shit didn’t fool me in the time of Ronald Reagan, and it doesn’t fool me now.
Susan, everything fools you.
Quoth Susan:
Private business doesn’t hurt as long as it’s small and/or follows sound labor and environmental practices.
Good thing that you don’t define yourself as a social-democrat admirer of the Scandinavian welfare state, since that doesn’t sit all to well with your definition. Nothing is too big to fail, BTW.
On the surface, the idea of “cutting spending” is not a bad thing, but I never hear [insert your favorite opponent here] talk about what they mean by that. Cut what, exactly? Do they mean the super-bloated military budget, which is takes up about 50% of everyone’s taxes, if not more? Neah. I never hear them talk about that.
You chose not to listen, actually, ’cause that’s exactly what Ron Paul promised in ’08, and unlike OhBummer, he’d probably deliver. Nader would probably do it too, to be fair. Anyways, you didn’t make a convincing case for mind-reading, I’m sorry.
US 395: Sure there were racist elements in the HRC campaign, but the birther movement originated on the far right. WND even put up birther billboards. http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=98589
Thank you for visiting RICM, you aren’t the first or the last. My blog is inspired by the philosophy of the late Bill Hicks.
US395, I agree…..Susan seems very easily fooled.
On an unrelated note, I don’t know if Rall has an infallible plan to rescue his beloved paper papers, or if it entails feeding them on the taxpayers’ jugular. This (or worse) is what we should expect, if that’s the case:
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2010/07/24/sun-newspapers-fire-eric-margolis-after-receiving-canadian-govt-grants/
Al,
Is Michelle Obama racist? She said Barry’s home country is Kenya.
His dad is from Kenya, “home country” doesn’t have to mean country of birth. He still has family members there.
US395,
OKAY. HE’S FROM KENYA!!! GREAT JOB. YOU CONVINCED US. Now kindly get the corporatist apologist out of the executive office already!!! Please!