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Today's Top News
GOP Leaders Match Up Message to Violent Talk
Words matter--and they matter even more when they are violent words. Apparently, GOP leadership agrees.
Sarah Palin via Twitter told her Republican followers to "reload" and "aim for" Democrats, directing GOP activists to her SarahPac website where they found a map of the country festooned with rifle scope cross-hairs over Congressional districts held by Democrats.
Palin's rifle scope map is the kind of image one might expect to see in an ad for a violent, first-person shooter video game Despite the unwillingness of mainstream media to connect the dots,
the base and leadership of the GOP are matching their rhetoric to the
disturbing rise of violent talk at Tea Party rallies and amongst
conservative anti-government groups. The conclusion: rather than recoil
at violent language, GOP leadership seems to see it as a chance to turn
out votes.
Most notably, Chairman of the RNC, Michael Steele, issued a recent call to Republicans to put Nancy Pelosi on the "firing line" because of the health insurance reform bill.
By using the phrase "firing line," Steele encourages Republican activists to think of the next election as an execution of the opposition or a violent killing. The language Steele uses is not neutral. "Defeat" is defined as "kill." "Voting" is linked to "shooting." Winning the election is couched in an image of bloodletting.
In a similar violent vein, Sarah Palin via Twitter told her Republican followers to "reload" and "aim for" Democrats, directing GOP activists to her SarahPac website where they found a map of the country festooned with rifle scope cross-hairs over Congressional districts held by Democrats.
Palin's rifle scope map is the kind of image one might expect to see in an ad for a violent, first-person shooter video game. Again, neither the language nor the imagery Palin uses are neutral. For Palin, the concepts of political "organizing" and "volunteering" are recast as the functions of a rifle. "Campaigning" is re-imagined as a counter assault on a war battlefield. Even more disturbing, Palin re-imagines the traditional U.S. map as a military kill list. Engaging in election politics is framed as violent assault.
When seen in the context of this violent rhetoric by the highest-profile figures in the Republican Party, recent calls for gun violence seen at Tea Party rallies on Capital Hill take on new meaning.
If the GOP leadership is truly appalled by calls for violence in response to legislation passed in Congress, their language would reflect that abhorrence for violence. Instead, GOP leadership seems to be shaping their messages to match the violent turn in the rhetoric from their base.
Even more disturbing, however, the violent framing from GOP leadership has suddenly sprung up in a context where anti-government conservative groups are inciting their members to engage in physical acts of violence against Democrats, resulting in bricks being thrown through windows of Democratic Party offices and vandalism against the house of a Democratic Congressman's family member.
Mike Vanderboegh, former leader of the Alabama Constitutional Militia, recently called for hundreds of thousands of gun owners to "point their muzzles at the hearts of tyrants" when discussing ways to oppose recent congressional legislation. Reports have come out linking Vanderboegh's statements to recent violence against Democratic Party offices.
What should be done?
First and foremost: The mainstream media has an obligation to connect the sudden use of violent rhetoric and imagery by GOP leadership to the various incidents of violent language and actions by political activists. Telling viewers that right-wing violence is "isolated" or "fringe" is inaccurate at best, misleading and dishonest at worst.
Second: GOP leadership needs to make unequivocal statements condemning all explicit use of violence and violent rhetoric in politics. Silence is consent.
Third: GOP leadership needs to demonstrates constructive ways for their supporters to express their disagreement with the opposition's ideas or legislation. Brandishing weapons--either literally or on posters--is not constructive. Death threats are not constructive.
When Americans threaten to use firearms to enforce their political views, the violent threats carried by that language undermines the system of public debate on which our system depends. Healthy political debate can sustain a great deal of anger and passion, but it cannot sustain repeated threats of violence and calls for violent assault as a form of political engagement.
It is time to for right-wing political violence to stop before passions turn to bloodshed.
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176 Comments so far
Show All"The people want wholesome dread. They want to fear something. They want someone to frighten them and make them shudderingly submissive."
--Ernst Rohm, leader of the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung (SA Brownshirts), later assassinated to make way for the even more virulent Schutzstaffel (SS).
This is the way it starts and Amurka has already been infotainment programmed to see violence and cruelty as entertainment. Amurka as dumbed-down bloody thriller movie audience, on their ass shaking in comradely fright over their fast food snacks before they walk out into the new submission. Is that really the direction we want things to go in here? See the other article on this subject on CD today entitled, 'Severed Gas Line Found at Home of Rep. Perriello Brother After Tea Party Activists Post Address Online.' This is attempted murder against a sitting member of Congress. A severed gas line could have killed several people in its vicinity.
Only a united and determined new umbrella progressive movement/Party can halt this Tea-Bagger nascent SA in its tracks. Time to write all the progressive groups in your area and request they convene a national progressive leadership summit for the purposes of creating a new united movement and/or Third Party. What do we have to lose? What did this Congressman have to lose?
"Time to write all the progressive groups in your area and request they convene a national progressive leadership summit for the purposes of creating a new united movement and/or Third Party."
I second that motion! It's long past time for us to join together - social justice advocates, feminists, gay rights activists, anti-war & anti-U.S. Empire activists, human rights activists, humane immigration reform proponents, environmentalists, anti-globalization & anti-corporate activists, minority rights activists, advocates for a real 9/11 investigation, and all others who oppose oppression and domination -to become a force for REAL CHANGE in this regressing, Corporate-Militaris (fascist) nation before it is too late for all of us.
It must be a true People's Movement dedicated to social and economic equality for working class, middle class, and poor USans, all of whom have been crushed by the New World Order since Ronnie Reagan began the planned destruction of the middle class and the massive shift of wealth to the upper 10%.
A People's Movement Chapter in every one of the 435 Congressional Districts is one way of organizing.
Something ya'll are failing to recognize...these idjits have been trained to hate "libruls" as much as Obama. Now considering the fact that Obama is no "librul" how do we diffuse the anger in these stupid motherfuckers?
The fools have been indoctrinated to hate anything other than sag dangler mentality. How, other than an occasional punch in the nose, does anyone expect anything other than blind servitude to their economical masters?
I have to agree. Most rational people on the left really don't understand what they are up against. Many/most of these people are clueless and driven by emotion and faith, not reason. For example I have one in-law who listens to Rush Limpballs and takes every thing he says as gospel. He talks to his radio when Rush is on, and flies into a rage if you challenge anything that Rush or the Republican party says.
Folks this is the kind of people we are dealing with.
When will liberals figure out that they can't oppose this nonsense by holding a conference? When the time comes, I hope there are more than the 500 folks who turned out to protest the Iraq war to stand up to these nuts, or the country is theirs and it will just be a matter of what color shirts, neckerchiefs, and boots they chose to wear.
Don't hold your breath waiting for either the "mainscream corporate media" or the Repulsives Party "leadership" to be adult or responsible.
Both care only for ratings and votes, respectively.
If Obama were a true leader, not merely a smooth-talking, telegenic Corporate Tool, he would long ago have denounced the outrageous, hate-mongering Repulsives, their extremist, racist, homophobic, women-hating Tea Party ignoramuses, and the fawning corporate media which long ago threw democracy under their greedy, corporate bus in return for blood-stained profits.
Rather than criticize the tea partiers, Obama has criticized the people who voted for him (single-payer advocates, for example) while pandering to Glenn Beck and the tea partiers (dumping Van Jones, for example). The cited examples occurred within the same week.
Obama and Glenn Beck both answer to the same corporate masters. They just exploit different groups of brain dead voters for petty cash to supplement the big hauls they get from corporations.
Straight up! Thanks. As horrible as this is IMO we ought to be focused mainly on outing how corporations are ruining the lives of all Americans. IMO the more time we spend on the outrageous rhetoric of a crazy few is the more time the real power in the country has to work in the dark arranging ever more political theater to keep people on all sides divided and afraid as oppsed to directly confronting concentrated wealth power that has for example killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq and will cause thousands more to die with this health are travesty that leaves tens of millions uninsured. Lets keep the spotlight shined on the real killers the ones in the suits not the poor sad ignorant fools whipped into hysteria by Glenn Beck who are victims IMO more than power holders,
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
"Lets keep the spotlight shined on the real killers the ones in the suits not the poor sad ignorant fools whipped into hysteria by Glenn Beck who are victims IMO more than power holders."
Why not keep a spotlight shined on both? A large enough violent mob IS power. Roman and Weimar German politicians knew that well.
Because the number of hours in a day are limited and a zero sum game, every moment spent discussing the tools of Glenn Beck is one less moment we could be reading Chomsky and gaining a systemic understanding on how the propaganda on behalf of corporate power system works. This is in essence personalizing the issue by turning it into conflicts between agitated groups of Americans *both* of whom are being manipulated by the MSM supplied corporate written propaganda. To really understand the issue we need an economic and institutional analysis not a mere personal analysis. Stop the propaganda at the source, the root cause, and you not only stop the Glenn Beck tools but also the Obamabots who think forcing poor and lower middle class citizens to buy a shoddy product from a profiteering corporation is some kind of victory.
As horrendous as racist rhetoric is in actual empirical fact it's naive acceptance of corporate and imperial power by Obamabots that is going to kill hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. due to lack of healthcare and in the expanded wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and maybe Iran. As disgusting as the rhetoric of the Glenn Beck fans is the amount of actual damage they will cause compared to the establishment is .00000000000001%, thus a rational allocation of time demands we address those causing 99.999999999999% first and foremost and not get distracted IMO. Personalizing issues and getting people to lose site of the whole is a big problem in the U.S. from the simplistic level of "Court tee vee" reality shows where all issues are personalized and root causes are never addressed up through the more sophisticated level of getting distracted by the political theater the Glenn beck fans engage in. To the extent that we circle the wagons around bad policy a a reaction to proto-facist hysteria being whipped it is the extent that we too become tools in the political theater being arranged to benefit concentrated wealth and power.
Stop it already!
P.S. I think another thread of what is going on is the elite establishment is trying to divide mainly caucasian rural poor people against poor people in the cities. While it is unfortunate that disenfranchised rural poor people are vulnerable to regressive and even racist rhetoric, isn't it more in our interest as poor activist left people to try to educate them why racism and labeling crony capitalism as socialism is wrong rather than treating them as the enemy thus neatly dividing poor oppressed Americans against each other? The elite would like nothing better than violence between rabid and sadly a few racist Glenn Beck fans and the left as it saves them bullets and manpower from them having to put us and the Beck fans down down themselves if they spring a full on police state on us. Again try to keep your eyes on the big socioeconomic picture and not get caught up in the passion of the moment for the win IMO.
Hint, Earth Firster! Judi Bari was able to organize "redneck" loggers to Unionize and even oppose clear cutting because she showed them it was in their interest and she hung out with them in working class bars. I have done environmental activism in that part of the country northern Cali and there are a lot of hard cases there like meth freaks and racists but through hard work and persistent outreach she was able to turn hard cases into better people, to such an extent that it threatened the powers that be enough that they blew up her car nearly killing her and boyfriend. And those of us who buy into the demonization as in this article, and on* both* manufactured "sides" how much do we threaten the status quo? Not so much, in fact the elite grin and rub their hands together every time a "teabagger" incorrectly smears mild crony capitalist "reform" as socialist and every time in response someone on the left gnashes their teeth and returns hate for hate.
Cut it out! Stop playing the elites game on their turf.
http://www.judibari.org/
raydelcamino
Now we are getting somewhere. Who is the enemy indeed.
The republicans should really think this through, if they are capable of such critical and nuanced thinking. Once you insight a fairly large group of people to violence things can quickly become quite unpredictable. They may find themselves with one very ugly genie that they can't put back in the bottle.
I'm still undecided about this approach. It seems like the pattern here--especially on the right but to some extent also in the Dem center--is that resistance is legitimate and should be reserved for when your political opponents are in charge. In other words, the GOP are gaming that if they win the elections, they'll just stuff the Tea Tools back into the little box, claim victory, and then let the Democrats resume their silly little marches. And on and on and on with nothing changing.
It's a reasonable gamble, if that's the case, because so far, that seems to be what's been happening the last 15 or so years.
We wait, debate, and protest their leaders. Unfortunately, they shoot ours -- Lincoln, Kennedy, King, Kent State Students, etc.
And what do you suggest as an answer martial law?
Good points, Jill.
Nice post, Jill.
As a result of the tea persons, all of a sudden people who might contemplate resistance to corporate rule--to include direct action and conceivably property damage--are now reducing themselves *again* to advocates for a strong, establishment police response to their opponents. And as you say, in the end, only the cops come out okay to use violence as always.
On the other hand, this kind of lament was produced by our friends at HuffPo, and now that their guy's in, marches, protests, etc. are no longer necessary modes of resistance. Just as the teapot domers felt no compelling reason to resist the previous 8 years of police statism.
I tell you what: those tea nutters have been a complete gift to the Democratic party. If they weren't funding them, they should have.
And Obama doesn't care what party controls congress...he gets his agenda passed and tells us the Republicans are the culprits no matter who controls Congress.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
To raydelcamino: I don't understand your post. Are you saying that if the Republcans regain control of both Houses of Congress in November that Obama will still get his agenda passed? Are you saying that the Democratic and Republican agendas are identical? [An argument can be made that they are almost identical in substance and only differently framed for public consumption.] I haven't heard Obama directly criticize Republicans except on the mildest terms outside his State of the Union Adress.
Come on people, let them be so loud and obnoxious, with violent mental bully speak, because 80% of the people in this country do NOT approve of violent actions against normal people. They will bite their own asses with serious words that many many conservatives do not approve of. My family, who is very right wing and mostly voted Bush, don't approve of this sort of stuff. They are even embarassed by it. Get a grip on your fears. The whole point is to scare people...don't you remember the whole terror/nuke thing? We are being dazzled by the fear and loosing common sense.
Get your shit straight and look at the reality of the politics and who is influencing America, the corporations and their money. Who do you think has put these people up to this nonsense...Sesame Street??? The violent bozos are feeding off your being consumed with their rhetoric. Knock it the hell off.
YOU ARE BEING DUPED...READ THE NEXT POST
PS Does anyone here know the laws about extortion and terrorizing the citizens? Why don't you charge her and her buds for being a terrorist? DUH!!!
Right on! Thanks for making more or less my point in a succinct fashion. Concise is not my best virtue. :)
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
What are you and Stonepig so afraid progressives are going to do in response to the media hype around Tea-Baggers? Go back to sleep? Organize? Elevate their blood pressure? Walk and chew gum at the same time?
What I am afraid is what is *exactly* happening in this item itself which wasting hours on the stupid ass Glenn Beck fans instead of developing a deeper analysis of how the MIC is fucking us all without any lube. But if hating on poor lost soul ignorant Glenn Beck fans floats your boat go for it, just don't delude yourself that they are the real problem. The real problem is the fucking drone planes likely *murdering* people in Af-Pak as we type ordered there by preznit Obummer, the real problem is the moveon dupes who are *celebrating* right now the fact that Obummer sold us don the river to the insurance companies and because of that decsion thousands of American *will die.*
Again as horrendous as the Glenn beck fans are they haven't caused anyone to die, unlike the Obamabots propping up our imperialist Preznit. I for one am interested in what people do, not what they say, which in neo-con (like Bush) Obama's case is kill. The "teabaggers" just foolishly flap their lips which IMO is much less damaging than the actions of the MIC. Keep in mind too in hating on the teabaggers as opposed to trying to educate them to be better more accepting educated people you are betraying Joe Hill's and Judi Baris glorious vision and diving the poor against itself which is exactly what the elite want. Preznit Obummer is a *far* bigger problem than some powerless Glenn Beck fan loser.
Think about it...
And p.s. to head off any baby talk Dim fan talk at the pass, I voted for Obummer so had no axe to grind against him initially. Mea culpa!
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
OK, Stonepig? What is your plan for improving the present condition of our country or our world? Anything? Or just, "Stay calm! All is well!" [ROTC buffoon Kevin Bacon's line near the end of Animal House.]
I think we all know what to do which is support Greens or socialists, support co-ops, support CSAs, support farmers markets, support wind and solar power and mass transit, support justice in our communities for *all* people, look to Mondragon Spain and Curitiba Brazil for ideas, work for single payer health care etc. But we should do that as a positive good not as some negative reaction to Glenn beck manufactured hysteria among a *very few* people. And I for one would like to drag a few paleo-cons, Libertarians and gasp maybe even "teabaggers" along for the ride for they at least realize America is headed down the wrong path unlike the complacent yuppie Obamabots who support empire and crony capitalism when done by Dims just exactly like horrendous neo-con Repigli-con fans.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
"...all of a sudden people who might contemplate resistance to corporate rule--to include direct action and conceivably property damage--are now reducing themselves *again* to advocates for a strong, establishment police response to their opponents."
What people? Where? Are you sure it's the SAME people who are (1) contemplating resistance to corporate rule-to include direct action and conceivably property damage and (2) reducing themselves *again* to advocates for a strong, establishment police response to their opponents? I think for the most part these are 2 very different groups and have been for decades.
Regardless of the questionable idea that the tea nutters have been a complete gift to the Democratic party (because their McMovement vs. Team Obama & the DLC is a game that hasn't been played out yet), that still does not mean that progressives shouldn't organize a new umbrella movement and/or Third Party to obviate the need for the failed Democratic Party and stand up more strongly across every front line against Republicanism and laissez-faire global "free trade" capitalism.
metal sayz: "that still does not mean that progressives shouldn't organize a new umbrella movement and/or Third Party to obviate the need for the failed Democratic Party and stand up more strongly across every front line against Republicanism and laissez-faire global "free trade" capitalism."
Well, you're right. It doesn't mean that. And that's good, because nowhere do I suggest that. Careful reading too much into a single post. We're not enemies, here, 'kay?
If you had actually asked me what I thought about a third party coalition, I would agree. I've been on that train for quite a few years, now. That just wasn't what I was posting about in this instance.
All good?
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
All good. I'm just very tired of every time I mention the urgent need for America's authentic progressives to unite their scattered energies behind a new umbrella movement or Third Party, most of the regulars who post on this site ignore me or change the topic to some flurry of BS that scrupulously avoids describing a plan to actually DO SOMETHING to positively alter what they are on about.
i understand and share that sentiment. there are different politics reflected on sites like this, but if you want to form a significant umbrella, that requires a certain amount of patience and diplomacy as well as accepting the limitations of your perspective on others. You're obviously bright, so you can do that.
one of the biggest problems here is that really, there are no communication options aside from posting anonymously (or not in some cases), and so we tend to talk at each other without being able to really pursue the relationships necessary to speak openly as people with each other. That's why it's always an endless circle of rants.
i think it best to first find those closest to where you're at and develop those ties. i agree, we do need to start finding each other in real space, not virtual space. this mode is as much an obstacle as it is a benefit.
there are lots of good people here, and I wish I had the opportunity to start developing networks with them in another forum, and if anyone has any ideas, start dropping them. once those connections are made, things get easier.
i don't know how you see things, but I get the sense there are a lot of people pretty ready to get started, but are not always sure how to do it. and by do it i'm talking about organizing the social elements of resistance first, not necessarily the action aspects of resistance.
in short, make friends! :)
Third party, yes, hopefully Green if they can get their act together absolutely, but on our own terms and not as mere reaction to the Glenn Beck nutters who as ignorant dupes with no real power aren't worth your or anyones time worrying about than other as a fly like annoyance buzzing faintly in your ear.
Excellent points Jill. Looking in from Canada I was flabbergasted that Peace Activists are arrested and fined while folk carrying assault rifles and signs that suggest Violence be committed against the State are left alone.
It is mind boggling.
It boils down to "Arrests warranted if Corporate profits at risk" and little more from EITHER party.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
The media hype about the Tea-Baggers serves as a timely smoke screen to obscure & protect various interests of the corporate oligarchs who own both dominant political Parties more than it serves the interests of the Democratic Party in real or faux opposition to the Republican Party per se.
Consider the fact that while much of that hype is positioned as mildly critical of the Tea-Baggers, it also serves to publicize them and their persistent efforts (much more unified in theme & effort than anything coming from the American Left in recent years). So that hype is a double-edged sword: It is an effective smokescreen covering up the crimes of the Big Banks, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Oil & Coal, Big Weapons, etc. But it is also potential recruiting video for millions of anxious, angry Americans who see that at least the Tea-Baggers stay on their message and are persistent.
The origin of the Tea-Bagger movement has been sufficiently tied to Republican operatives including Dick Army (Newt Gingrich's former House lieutenant) and his PR firm who, along with Clear Channel Radio and Fox News, helped advertise and organize rallies for this originally astro-turf McMovement so that I doubt the DLC has operatives running it in concert with those GOP operatives. Within a month of the first stories about the Tea-Baggers making TV news, public rallies featuring "special guest speakers" like Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity were being advertising on rant-right media. Why would these corporate entities needlessly duplicate their efforts by hiring DLC operatives to do the same work that propaganda masters like Newt Gingrich, Dick Army, Sean Hannity, Fox News and Clear Channel were already doing?
Media and police bias against left-wing protesters vs. how they treat right-wing protesters is old news. That's a problem that has existed re: the police for over a hundred years. It has increasingly noticeably existed re: Big Media since the era of Slick Willie Clinton--especially since the WTO protests in Seattle.
There has NEVER been enough press ink covering the crimes of the U.S. ruling elite. They are the least discussed, let alone least intelligently discussed class in the U.S. in either news coverage or entertainment programming. If that were not the case, then the bankrollers and intellectuals of every major right-wing think tank of the last 45 years would be well publicized common knowledge, along with their agendas, including the origin and development of neo-conservativism. Why would you expect similar corporate media coverage of the sensationalist, racist, semiliterate Tea-Baggers and the major crimes of the ruling corporate elite when it is that very same corporate elite's corporate media arm that is providing most American McNews coverage?
Obama, the quintessential DLC Democrat, has publicly said that he wants the Democratic Party "to be the Party of business." Of course he's not going to be as likely to crack down on still scattered right-wing nutballs, many of whose anti-socialist sentiments are similar to his own and whose antics offer him political cover to move a little marginal legislation so the American sheeple can remain convinced that they live under a Two Party system, vs. true Leftists who protest things like the G-20 or WTO that could directly & intensively affect the bottom lines of the ruling elite's global capitalist core agenda and therefore must be cracked down upon HARD--as they have been since the late 1990s.
The Tea-Baggers are still a potentially very dangerous movement and could align themselves with right-leaning unemployed veterans of the oil/terror wars as well as other pro-Bush, pro-war, pro-authoritarian local and federal police to form a movement very similar to the Nazi Brownshirts. The ongoing condition of the economy with respect to jobs is the key factor here.
I strongly encourage using the term "Tea Partier" rather than "Tea-bagger." The Right considers Tea-bagger an egregious, sexually-loaded insult, so using that term cuts off any chance of talking with these guys. Although much tea party leadership is out and out fascist, the rank-and-file (including some local-level leaders) is a very mixed bag. Most of them are white working class and some of them can be talked with. (They would probably say the same thing about us.)
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
I consider that rabbles' misappropriation of the label "Tea Party" from the original Boston Tea Party an egregious, fascistically hypocritical insult, so using that label makes me not want to deliver unpaid several hours worth of lectures on history to even begin to correct the parallel historical mythology that most of them have been raised on by Rush Limbaugh and his ilk. I've attended three of their functions in my State and every one of them with whom I have attempted to have a conversation was a complete and total reactionary idiot, an ignorant bigot or a threatening thug. They have no one but themselves to blame for their predicament and they lack social compassion for anyone besides people who fit their own demographic. I do not pity them and I have nothing but disdain and contempt for most of them.
"Rabble" is a classist insult, get real! It's exactly calling working people who may not speak like you "rabble" that unfortunately allows the elite themselves and their spokesmodels like Beck and Limbaugh to mislabel some of us on the left as "elitist" even though we are the ones fighting on behalf of the poor and often poor ourselves. If you are going to ding on people fro misusing words look in the mirror first. Again cut it out!!!!!!
GreenDragon
Reasonable and practical suggertion. Why people that spent 8 years condemning Rovian demonization of political opponents want to nopw use the same tactics I don't know. I can't see emulating them.
And yet it's even more complicated than that. The teabagger movement was started by Ron Paul Libertarians who while they have very noxious views on corporate power actually agree with us on stopping war abroad, police state at home, and opposing bankster bailouts. Now unfortunately the Sarah/Palin/freedom works/Glenn Beck Republican astroturf corpate slime has moved in on he movement and IMO they are the ones encouraging racism and hate IMO as well. The point is, that seeing the teabaggers as some monolithic neo-Nazi movement is a mistake IMO. While there are some *very* nasty hateful people in that movement my sense is also that it is every bit as divided as we are sadly on the left, and that some of the Ron Paul people can be reasoned with and are even potential allies in opposing imperialism even if they are not so much allies against corporate power. So lets think before we simplify and broad brush too much OK?
I frankly find for example more to agree with in Libertarian Ron Paul fan anti war activist Justin Raimando's columns against Obama's imperialism than I do from most Dim fan apologists for war and crony capitalism. Remember as A Ron Paul fan Rainmondo is one step removed from the dreaded (oh my knees are shaking) "teabaggers."
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/03/21/springtime-for-obama/
See also this article in the very militant left counterpunch about a left right meeting to oppose empire. And no I am *not* a Libertarian but rather somewhere vetween a Green and Bolivarian socialist but I also think we ought not turn our noses up at potential allies at this point in history and IMO anti imperialist Libertarians are better allies than pro empire and pro crony capitalist Obamabots.
http://www.counterpunch.org/buhle03012010.html
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
There are certain factors of political persuasion, class, race, education and cultural background that make the Tea-Bagger movement a potentially proto-fascist movement. While it is not sufficiently organized to become a Brownshirt movement yet, depending on rapidly changing economic circumstances over the next few years several components of it may merge with the militia movements, white supremacists, returning unemployed veterans and pro-war, pro-authoritarian elements within the local and federal police to metastasize into one. That is a realistic threat that must be taken seriously in my opinion.
Even as disparate in structure and geography as they are, the Tea-Baggers are more organized and consistently on message about a limited number of themes than the egregiously scattered American Left.
I disbelieve that you can effectively oppose imperialism without simultaneously effectively opposing corporate power. The two are inextricably wed. That is why I believe authentic progressives and libertarians are fundamentally politically incompatible and that the libertarians' belief in their "free market" mythology and in the further deregulation of capitalism and its corporations would directly undermine the core objectives of progressive reform or revolution. I view the DLC/Obama apologists as similarly destructive of true progressive ends. I don't think we need to reach out to right-leaning Americans of any kind. I believe a substantial voting coalition can be built from the far-Left to alienated Democrats if they also include the roughly 80 million eligible, mostly poor and minority American voters who routinely do not vote because they were abandoned by both the GOP and right-wing Democrats 30 years ago.
Did you even bother to read the article in the hard left counterpunch before firing off that missive?
Here it is again:
http://www.counterpunch.org/buhle03012010.html
I really suggest you rad and think long and hard before firing off another missive, for I have to say for someone preaching tolerance you are *far* more intolerant than any people I know who respect Ron Paul on facebook some of who are in fact African American and consider themselves on the left but *open* (you know that tolerance thing you preach but not practice) to Paul's ideas. Again I agree with you corporations are perhaps the root problem and IMO the way to convince say Libertarians of that is to engage them not to just write them off hatefully as you claim they do to others. Above all I really suggest you research how Judi Bari organized loggers to join Unions and oppose clear cuts, hint it wasn't by hatefully being dismissive of working people who may speak differently than you do, like you seem to be. When you set yourself up as an enemy of poor mainly rural people you play into the plans of the elite 100% :( Cut it out!
“If you want to say something radical, you should dress conservative.”
--Steve Biko (South African anti-apartheid activist, murdered in police custody)
I saw Bill Moyers' interview with Justin Raimondo--a libertarian who cheered the recent Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United vs. FEC that will flood the American election process with even more torrents of corporate campaign finance money with which the capitalist corporate plutocrats can consolidate their ownership of our political process and political institutions at every level. "Anti-war" libertarians like Raimondo are fools because they deny the fact that they don't call it the run amok military-INDUSTRIAL complex for nothing. You cannot end, let alone meaningfully mitigate modern military imperialism while pretending the self-incentivising aspect of capitalist, corporate war profits is not its economic and political prime mover.
I read the Paul Buhle article and nothing that I am aware of came of the meeting he described. At the end of it Buhle says, "Demo-Republican credibility is gone. Now the rest of us had better speak up and begin organizing alternatives." He doesn't say that the attendees of this meeting decided to create a united movement or, in fact, whether he was just suggesting they all go organize alternatives on their own. It sounds like an interesting meeting in the way that many early UN meetings were interesting and laudable. But the Big Corporate Crony Players still dominate both international politics and American politics.
What do you think a movement that temporarily drew together true progressives and libertarians, Tea-Baggers, etc., could possibly accomplish before such a movement dissolved from internal contradictions and internal politics? It's hard enough to organize progressives without trying to get a lasting progressive movement up and running AND additionally reach out to people who fundamentally oppose progressive ideas that advocate the regulation of the marketplace and tax-supported government programs to help the citizenry.
What I think is that too many progressives and right-leaning "independents," libertarians, Tea-Baggers, etc., ALL lack a socialist sense of cross-race, cross-income level, cross-education level solidarity sufficient to want to reach out to the potential electorate that is MOST different to their racist, class elitist, intellectually snobbish sensibilities: The roughly 80 million mostly poor and minority voters who don't even bother to vote. If you really are influenced by Bolivarian socialism you should understand what I mean here. That larger 80 million is a MUCH more important group for progressives to reach out to. It will be harder to do, but once it's successfully achieved we will have a voting coalition that neither the GOP nor DLC Dims can withstand.
Try communicating THAT to overwhelmingly white middle-class libertarians and Tea-Baggers and see how many of them avoid you like the plague. They fear those poor & minority masses are after their sacred capitalist lifestyles via government taxation (as if the reigning capitalist war mongers and bankers aren't using the government to gut their children's lifestyles even now) and they will never form any sincere political union with them. I'm worried that America lacks enough true progressives to do this either, although I think they would before those other groups would. Plenty of the prog-lites who post on this site are big talkers, but they're quietly coveting their various capitalist retirement nest eggs and investment portfolios and they really don't want to see that obscenely inequitable TARP money-inflated stock market bubble pop, either. But pop it inevitably must and when it does, progressives should be organized and organizing to seize that opportunity to reach out across race, class, income and education level.
You are the snob dude when you say shit like:
"There are certain factors of political persuasion, *class,* race, *education* and *cultural background* that make the Tea-Bagger movement a potentially proto-fascist movement."
I guess poor caucasians who never went to college are just un-people in your view eh? How is that any better than the pernicious irrational racism of the people you snidley label as teabaggers themselves? What would Dr, King say to your statement when he wisely advised people to judge people by the content of their character only and not by all the isms you listed above? You should look in he mirror and figure out your own contradictions you have a lot of hate towards people who don't exactly tow your party line and haven't gone to the same school as you. Do you think Emma Goldman would have looked down her nose at someone because their "education" or "cultural background" was different than hers? What utter discriminatory bullshit, how vile.
Let me tell you something buddy I have a first class education having gone to Oberlin college one of the best liberal arts colleges in the country *and* I live in Ypsilanti Michigan which is a mix of "Ypsituckian" "white trash," unemployed auto workers African Americans and students going to EMU. In other words it's a damn ghetto in the midst of the part of Michigan where there are serious discussions about plowing whole neighborhoods because they are depopulated. It's like eastern Europe. Also I have done activism for years shop ay my local co-op every week voted for Greens all my life, am of the right "background" and "education" to join your precious movement? How about the unemployed pickup driving autoworker across the street if they perhaps say something un p.c occasionally? It's people like you that keep the left as tiny insular choir of .01% of any town of only people that know the right p.c. buzzwords of the week to gain admission to the secret club, what a shame and betrayal of the hard work people in groups like the IWW did to organize *all working class people. The left was never intended to be a snide little club of holier than art thou people it was supposed to be a grassroots liberation *action* group for all people. And we have failed that great mission exactly because we have admission standards like an elite college now and aren't open to everyone. T
hanks a lot buddy, greetings from the fucking hood, it's people like you that make "teabag" a likelier choice sadly than lefty here because at least teabag isn't giving an entrance exam about "certain factors of political persuasion, *class,* race, *education* and *cultural background* " I am going to keep on being a leftist because it's the right thing to do to fight the corporate oligarchy and empire but I must say snide people like you make it damn hard to stay in the movement. If you aren't an actual provocateur you sure act like one out of lack of social skills and driving wedges between people and endlessly labeling them and trying to get them to fight, fuck that! Good night!
Here's a final thing to think about "metal" have you ever noticed how at many peace rallies there are damn few African American people and Latinos? There are actually far more people of color I find shooting ideas back and forth amongst even Libertarian people on face book. Do you suppose that for all our rhetoric about racism that actual people of color find our snotty heavily biased towards white middle class elite college people jargon filled fractious lefty meetings to be cold and uninviting? There are exceptions of course I have heard the Greens are doing some good outreach to Afrcan Americans in Detroit which is badly needed but I also find for all the lefty preaching about how racist "teabaggers" are that our own groups are often depressingly monochromatic. Maybe we ought to fix our own damn broken house first before haughtily pointing fingers at others. Your average working class bar in southeast Michigan that gets people from all sorts of political backgrounds is *far* more racially integrated than your average meeting of lefty peace folk. Lets start practicing what we preach before unloading on "teabaggers" and others, shall we?
I think sometimes white activists are so afraid of appearing racist that we can't even talk about these issues and then they get swept under the rug which again is hardly any better than "teabagger" behavior IMO.
metal
I saw in one of your posts your description of what the Tea Partiers were like at the meetings you attended. I don't know where you live, but the only meeting I've been to was nothing like you describe. Granted I only went to one to see for myself if these folks were like the reports I kept seeing.
But I do know a number of people that are involved and they do not fit your description either. And Dick Army was NEVER involved in this bunch till the camera's started rolling.
But the people that feel the way they do are a large group of our population, people that don't Tea Party or are not even interested in their meetings and they are not Nazi's, nor Brownshirts or anything like that.
Unemployed veterans, those killers that are just waiting to turn their guns on their neighbors and families in the name of...what?
I agree with Rich M, there is a strong brown shirt element to the Tea Party and points right. I don't think we should call for their repression, but I don't think we should ignore them either. They will be turned loose on us when the time is right, if we don't work to a) reach out to them and b) build our capacity for self-defense. I would much rather have them on our side, because I fear the true repression won't come from street gangs, but from Blackwater et al.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
There aren't enough Blackwater personnel to do it. It will take a national Brownshirt movement.
I'm doing the same.... throwing in a similar comment made for the acorn article:
m60green: Your weak comments demonstrate how the country has been slowly (over the last 30 years) dumbed down to an almost autistic inability to concentrate on anything more then advertised infested slogans of sound bytes.
Good God, do you believe "Coke is the Real Thing"? Or the thousands of other mind numbing simplifications that are parotid from the megaphones of power that incessantly diminish are critical thinking and moral judgement?
We must remember that for fascism to really take hold in any society there must be a sustained and unrelenting attack on the poor, odd, and disenfranchised and anyone that champions them. The top players become pornographic with greed and seek to squeeze as much wealth upwards. First from the poor and then the middle class. The "trickle down" theory of sharing a bit of the pie -not out of generosity but really for insurance purposes to keep people from rebellion - under corporate media becomes the "piss on you" theory, or here comes the boot jack, the trazzer and the camp of endless "rehabilitation".
Any and every type of egalitarian social organization and theory must be redefined in the most pejorative light. Character assassination is carried out by the hired media tongues and if that doesn't work (has so far) the bullet won't be far behind.
Look at Sara P's blueprint map of undesirable congressmen with actual telescopic sights (logo) on the map locations and the command to "target" these individuals. Is this just a cleaver noting device or an actual priming of the people pawns subconscious for dark ops action?
But who is doing the actual killing? Answer the government now in Af-Pak I still maintain as scary as the *rhetoric* of some "tebaggers" is, that when it comes to actual destructive actions the real damage caused by them is .00000001% compared to the U.S. military and corporations, It's as though we were living in a town overrun with mob violence (the MIC establishment) and spend endless hours worrying about a few stone throwing kids (the teabaggers) while ignoring the actual mob. Which is more worth our time the actual murderous empire and corporations, or a few unhinged people? *Think* and look at the big picture don't just react emotionally that's exactly what the elite wants when they inflame political theater and on purpose IMO.
IMO this threat of "teabagger" violence is as staged by being inflamed on purpose by the elite as the Reichsatg fire, and for the same purpose to garner sympathy for a government that doesn't have our interests at heart.
Look at it this way much of the right (minus the Libertarians) was fear mongered into supporting the Iraq war with the boogeyman of terrorism and WMDs that was simply incorrect. In a similar way I believe the left is being fear mongered by the "threat" of tea bagger violence to be much less critical of the Washington establishment and crony capitalism than we might normally be. I believe we are being fear mongered into circling the wagons around Washington D.C..
IMO fuck Washington D.C. and the MIC crony capitalist insurance company lobbyist funded horse it road in on.
The Afghani mother holding the charred remains of her child murdered by "our" government must be incredulous that the big topic of conversation among the American left is not U.S. government murder but some some cut gas lines from some Glenn Beck listening fruitcakes. It's the endless murder by U.S. empire and corporate malfeasance that *kills* like 20 million Americans left without health insurance stupid, focus!