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Outcrazying The Crazy: How A Prankster Plans To Infiltrate And Destroy The Tea Party Movement
Meet Jason Levin: possibly the scariest man in the tea party universe. An Oregon technology consultant, Levin is the leader of Crash The Tea Party, a plan to take down the tea party from the inside. Levin says he's got a growing cadre of supporters across the country, and conservatives from the message boards to the set of the Sean Hannity's show are getting nervous.
Jason Levin, leader of Crash The Tea Party "Our plan is not to shout them down," Levin told me yesterday, "but
to infiltrate them and push them farther from the mainstream."
The scheme reads like a sequel to "Being John Malkovich": Levin's
group of protesters plan to get in the heads of tea partiers at the Tax
Day Tea Parties nationwide Thursday and manipulate them right out of
relevance. They'll dress like tea partiers, talk like tea partiers and
carry signs like tea partiers. In fact, according to Levin they'll be
completely indistinguishable from tea partiers, except for one thing --
they won't be out-crazied by anyone.
"Our goal is that whenever a tea partier says 'Barack Obama was not born in America,' we're going be right right there next to them saying, 'yeah, in fact he wasn't born on Earth! He's an alien!" Levin explained. He said that by making the tea parties sound like a gathering of crazy people -- his group's goal -- the movement will lose its power.
Levin said he got the idea from a counter-protest to the infamous Westboro Baptist Church group held outside Twitter headquarters in January. Levin said the Westboro group broke up after counter-protesters showed up holding signs "even crazier" than the ones held by the Westboro group. "They realized they couldn't get their message out, so they just left" Levin said.
On the Crash The Tea Party website, managed by Levin, he explains how the plan will work. "Whenever possible, we will act on behalf of the Tea Party to exaggerate their least appealing qualities (misspelled protest signs, wild claims in TV interviews, etc.)"
[TPM SLIDESHOW: Top 10 Tea Party Signs]
"The lower the public opinion of them goes, the less coverage they're going to get in the mainstream media," Levin said when I asked him about the plan. "Then the GOP stops listening to them and they disperse and they go back to their militias and cabins in the woods."
He emphasized that his group is non-violent, and not interested in "perpetuating racism, homophobia or misogyny." Levin said that "members are free to do as they wish," but if violence breaks out at a tea party rally on Thursday, or more epithets like the ones thrown around during the health care debate are heard, it won't be because of his group.
He explained the distinction to me this way: If you see someone wearing a Nazi uniform at a tea party, it could be one of his members. If you see some one wearing a Nazi uniform throwing a rock, it's definitely not one of his members.
I asked him if he was worried publicly proclaiming that the most extreme people at the tea party rallies could be plans plants might help the movement he's trying to destroy. The tea party movement is struggling with its own identity, and some in the movement have already claimed that some of the darker chapters in its history (such as the death threats that came after the health care vote) were fantasies created by liberal infiltrators. Levin said no matter what the tea parties say about his plans, it's a "win-win" for his group.
"What can they say?" he said. "Either we've infiltrated their group so pervasively that they might as well hang it up, or we haven't infiltrated them that much they really are just racists."
Levin said he has 66 member groups (and growing) across the country planning to fan out at tea party gatherings on Thursday.
And while it's not clear how big the group actually is, or how serious the effort will be, the idea has already set off a small panic among tea partiers and their supporters. Upset tea partiers have posted Levin's address and phone number on the FreeRepublic.com message boards, leading, he said, to "silly threats" against him and his family. On Friday, Sean Hannity attacked the group in a segment on his radio show. And tea party groups across the country are warning their members to be on the lookout for the infiltrators. In Oregon, a tea party group has said it plans to get the police involved if they catch any of Levin's organizers.
Levin said all the attention just serves to make his plan more successful.
"How do you spot a fake tea partier? Do they have a tea bag tattooed on their forehead?" he said. "Thanks to us, the next time you're at a tea party and you see a guy with a misspelled sign you'll have to say 'is this guy an idiot? Or is he just an infiltrator?"
86 Comments so far
Show AllALERT: CORPORATE MEDIA DIVERSION SCAM: The Tea Party diversion scam, and many others, are propagated by corporate media to prevent the public from focusing on the catastrophic climate disruption emergency, the end of the oil era, and holding war criminals accountable for their atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan. -- http://ClimateCodeRed.net : The Case for Emergency Action on Climate Disruption -- http://ClimateEmergencyNetwork.org -- http://world911truth.org/ -- http://www.warcriminalswatch.org/ -- The brutality with which the US government exercises its war of terror is condemned both by the court of international public opinion and by the principles of international law governing human rights. Wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan and the torture of detainees are clearly defined as war crimes by the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions, the Convention against Torture and other treaties to which the United States is a signatory. Under the cover of "national security," other countries in the region are being drawn into the on-going wars.
Obamacare is another example of using the tea party to distract attention from the 2500 page Obamacare document that is one of the biggest corporate welfare programs in history that will increase health care costs and decrease access to and quality of health care.
You are absolutely right. This is a major distraction - by design.
Divided we fall. All empires know how well that works on their behalf.
Hey! lefties, look over there! ....but not at us. A trick older than the hills.
These people know you and me far better than we know ourselves. They are manipulating again. They need to know we won't fall for it!
These right wing teabaggers, birthers, etc. are a fomented, tiny minority who should be ignored. Call their bluff and move away.
This is the psyops workin' overtime, folks. And they have a powerful media to help them along. Ignore it.
So true.
THIS MESSAGE BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE CAMPAIGN TO DISTRACT PEOPLE WHILE WE ROB THE PLACE BLIND.
You have to admit that the tea party is a cleaver fear tactic.
Keeping voters in fear of Palin winning the White House will net the Democrats lots of votes and support for their corporate welfare programs.
"is this guy an idiot? Or is he just an infiltrator?"
an infill traitor?
Way to go,Jason! Those Westboro Phelps nuts need to shrivel up and blow away in the Kansas dust.
correction Jill - the US already is #1 for incarceration.
motherjones.com/mojo/2010/02/incarceration-nation
Good one, let's infiltrate them instead:
"Let's help out wall st because we want our money to trickle down"
"Deregulate business and they will make us all rich"
"What happened in the past is past"
"Make sure we always take the middle road"
"Let's work with Republicans, by giving them what they want"
For the record, the u.s. already has for many years been the global leader in incarceration, both per capita, and in real numbers as well.
Oh for Christ's sake, if you wanna kill the Tea Party, give the people progressive populists and watch the Tea Party membership shrink. All this building up a noisy party, crashing it or building a coffee party, and endless politicking is further making matters worse. Can't people just stop and think what a lost soul this nation really is rather than play all these silly political food fighting games? What good does all this do anyway? We can peacefully defeat the Tea Party by quietly leaving the Democratic Party and paying homage and respect towards electing real progressive populists for a change. This article is just pissing me off !
This infiltration provides additional evidence that the Tea Party was put inplace as another Wedge Issue, which is why I suggested co-opting it to promote the goals of the Left. These people are determined to destroy any chance that the Left and genuine consevative Right can unite to defeat their common enemy--the Big Government Warfare State.
The Anti-War movement gets/got no media exposure, whereas the Tea Party does. I think it a no-braainer that this basic fact be used to advantage by showing up at Tea Party rallies with signs denouncing the Big Government Warfare State, continued congressional and presidential obstruction of justice, and the preferrence of Wall Street over Main Street. That the idiot highlighted in this item is unwilling to see that posibility tells me he is himself an infiltrator, the leader of yet another astroturf movement designed to go against the greater public interest.
Don't forget another function of heavy coverage of the Tea Party (especially the nuttiest end of it) and no coverage of a larger Anti-War/Anti-Imperial Movement:
Keeping the majority convinced they are the minority.
All Tea Party, all the time, is essential to maintaining the illusion in the minds of Urban and Suburban "Liberals" that they are outnumbered, that the U.S. is a "Conservative country".
-matti.
Exactly.
There was an article here on CD, within the last year, I believe. The author - darn, I can't remember who it was - gave a rather educated figure that around 2% of the population actually agree with these right wing nut jobs, yet the media portrays it as a huge movement. "Oh I'm so scared. And Sarah Palin too. Only Democrats can save us!" Ha!
It's fake. They're fake. "Yes We Can," ... fake. It's pure manipulation. They use it because they know it works.
Time to get smart.
I'm testing my hypothesis that the Tea Party can be accessed by the Left to promote the issues that are common to both sides, yet find little articulation by most Tea Partyites until now. Almost every state now has a web-based Tea Party site that one can join and post commentary to its list, pending moderator's approval. I'm now testing Oregon's.
Right on the head Matti. We need to make our proposals as much as the wingnuts do. We need to get past "Hooray for our side" and elaborate our statements of position. I also think we need to be conscious that America is the rape victim of several right wing presidents in a row, and that we should get the train on the tracks before racing the engine. Win bigger in 2010 and a couple more layers of onion can be pealed off. We need to become involved with our local apparati and for great general election candidates. All politics is local. Come together.
"which is why I suggested co-opting it to promote the goals of the Left."
I suggested the same thing about the Coffee Party, which I volunteer for in my spare time, but it wasn't well received here.
I would support the Coffee Party but if all it intends to do is simply play that game of politics counter to the Tea Party just to create a silly dumbshow, then it's a useless party. I'm sorry to say this but you're looking at only the symptom and not the problem itself. I'll tell you what though. If the Coffee Party can turn itself into an outstanding progressive populist party, then I guarantee you by the word of the Almighty, and I'm not joking, that most of us here will overwhelmingly support it.
I might agree with you Max, if we could somehow similarly split the repluguglican vote by having teabaggers in a 4th row on the ballot. You're talking the same talk that got Nixon elected. You're also echoing Barry Goldwater's "I'd rather be right than President." Politics is not a succesful endeavor for ideological purists. Democracy is about getting enough voters together to prevail. I do wish Obama was as far left as the Teabaggers say, but we're dealing a rape victim of GWB, his Daddy, Ronny Raygun and Tricky Dicky. Let's first get the train actually on the tracks before we gun the engine.
How much actual time have you spent working in a political organization at the local level. You'd be surprised how much impact you can have at a formal convention. I'd sure like to see more of your persuasion around, that's for sure.
I can't say that either my wife or I have successfully gotten a political organization done at a local level despite our limited attempts at just getting our locals to pay attention to local elections. The locals are nice and that but get them to listen to local elections and they scoff at it as frivolous. They're too absorbed with their big ones in Washington and think that only presidential elections are important. Maybe after this summer when both my wife and I are finished with each of our job contracts and go into self-employment might we see what local progressive politics we might actually find in this somewhat conservative suburb of VA Beach. As far as tea baggers are concerned, I don't feel like getting mad at them because they're a symptom of what's wrong in 200 miles north of my place. In the Far East, even the not as developed nations have a lot of good basic safety nets that this nation lacks and it just angers me and puts me in jealousy that our nation won't even try to play catch up on any of it. The meetup.com website might eventually help me find locals in my area who I just might be able to get better conversations with on the issues.
The writer doesn't make me angry at all. This is funny.
Another 'clever guy'.
The dems are gonna try everything to subvert the Peoples attention from the Turkey-In-Chief Obama, and all his Lies about what he claimed he stood for.
Little games like this won't affect much of anything.
Z-zzzzzzzzzzzzz
:)
I think this is actually pretty bleepin' funny.The Ghost of Abbie Hoffman checking us out.Don't take my word for it, though.
It is well overdue that finally someone whom is presumably progressive is using a classic tactic from the right wing, an agent provacateur, against the latest manifestation of the Sturmabteilung in America. The only thing I really disagree with is the timing of their publicizing themselves: they should have had a few "disruptions" (preferably recorded on digital video and uploaded to YouTube, thus giving them the potential to go viral) to their credit before "going public." Anyway, the fact that this serves to distract and confuse the Tea Baggers is a strategy straight out of "The Art of War" by Sun-Tzu, whose advice progressives really needs to start taking to heart.
'"The Art of War" by Sun-Tzu, whose advice progressives really needs to start taking to heart.'
You said a mouthful. I bought the book and used its philosophy against and on my NEW boss before I left my job in the time of my own choosing. It drove him crazy that he could not get his lies to work. Three months after I left, he was fired.
Strategy is everything!
"The lower the public opinion of them goes, the less coverage they're going to get in the mainstream media,"
Well, there's a totally wrongheaded sentiment.
The mainstream media hijacked the tea party movement and props it up.. it's nowhere near the size of the anti-war movement, and it's completely crazy but gets all kinds of coverage because it's manufactured and managed opposition. The Anti-War movement gets zero coverage even though their demonstrations are hundreds of times bigger.
Anyone trying to "get the attention" of the mainstream media is tilting at windmills. Mainstream media in the US is a key part of the global fascist movement - they're not just missing the point on progressivism. They're actively working against us.
100% correct, Markov.
"Jason Levin..... possibly the scariest man in the Tea Party universe...... conservatives from the message boards to the set of Sean Hannity's show are getting nervous..... by making the tea parties sound like a gathering of crazy people....." I don't believe a single word of this spin.
This latest wrinkle to the Tea Party sideshow deflects public attention and "respectable mainstream media" coverage away from focusing upon serious issues like ongoing war crimes abroad, the steady erosion of civil liberties, and the hijacking of the domestic economy by Wall Street banksters. It also serves to inoculate the truly dangerous, true believer nutcakes out there from accountability for their worst antics, by creating a handy veneer of deniability.
Back in the early 30's, didn't the Nazis used to sometimes claim that they were being falsely accused of taking part in acts of political violence by Communists who were just posing as Nazis?
Layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of disinformation. Double agents, triple agents, quadruple agents. The more smoke and mirrors and confusion there is created, the more audacious the crimes that can be pulled off.
Bill from Saginaw
Hey Bill from Saginaw, great rant, I loved every word of it. We certainly live in a time where we have to be suspicious of everything we are told, no matter how seemingly benign the source.
No question that Tea-Partying activity, for or against, operationally defines Divide and Conquer.
Agents provacateur abound.
what a waste of fucking time...
you are actually treating Fox news stories as a serious threat?
Of course they are!
TalkingPointsMemo is on the Blue team and FOXNews is on the Red team in the Great Distraction Game.
Blue always punts it back to Red. Red always punts it back to Blue. That's what the Game IS. If "the leftist media" just ignored "the rightwing media" the Game wouldn't work properly, and people might stop being distracted.
-matti.
Nice metaphor, but one thing you didn't mention although I'm sure you meant to: FOX is like the Yankees as far as capital is concerned and TalkingPointsMemo is well,...like the Toronto Blue Jays. Little bit of a difference in scale there.
Watch Keith Olbermann treat this as one of his five top stories while rarely if ever having on any genuine activists who will have the temerity to criticize Obama from the left.
"Our goal is that whenever a tea partier says 'Barack Obama was not born in America,' we're going be right right there next to them saying, 'yeah, in fact he wasn't born on Earth! He's an alien!"
Well, personally, I think he is telling the truth said in jest.
Ever heard of David Icke and the Reptilian bloodlines?
Yep, them Tea Party folks are just knuckledraggers and a very small minority dredged up in a conspiracy to keep people from realizing that its an illusion that progressives and liberals are "outnumbered and its an illusion that America is really a conservative country.
That only "2% of the population actually agree with these right wing nut jobs"
Whoa guys....
If you put the Liberals and Progressives together you only get about 30% on the high side, we are outynumbered 3 to 1 pretty much.
And yes, America is pretty much a conservative country when about 3/4 of the population are conservative. (estimates of course, could be 10% lower)
The latest Gallup poll shows that around 25% of Americans agree with them.
Isnt the number of people in America who think that the Earth created 6000 years ago and man walked with dinosaurs higher then that 25 percent?
It's probably at least 50% -- Gallup had it at 46% a decade ago, and I'm sure that percentage has only risen since then.
This guy gets it wrong, from a tactical POV, announcing that you plan to infiltrate and pickle the message, kinda gives away the game. Giving an AP interview to that effect seals it. Now the TeaBaggers can disavow their looniest members by pointing to CrashTheParty.org saying: "It was THEM, not US". Makes me wonder if this is a plant for that specific purpose.
I think it's a great move. Check out the tea baggers in Oregon mentioned in the article. They're already freaking out.Stay tuned, they may start busting themselves as infiltrators.
Yes, you get it.
I actually happened to be listening to Hannity when he was getting apoplectic about all this. He presented the whole thing as if it was a government, Democratic, Obama plan. ::rolls eyes::
Hannity gave advice to his listeners. They were to confront anyone at a Tea Party rally with a misspelled sign, a racist statement or anything too goofy.
There will be no infiltration. This is all about punking the Tea Party types into turning on themselves. It's genius.
"They were to confront anyone at a Tea Party rally with a misspelled sign, a racist statement or anything too goofy."
When I was filming the protest at the Capitol on the day of the health care reform vote, I saw a sign that lines out steps of how to isolate and deal with anyone who shouts a racist comment, hah. And this was nearly a month ago, well before this effort seems to have become public knowledge.
This is a brilliant and necessary act of guerrilla theatre - and very funny (Emma Goldman would approve). I can't believe the critical comments here. Here's someone actually DOING something and he gets shit from the left. What's wrong with you people? No wonder the Left is so powerless. The Right, at least, is organized and unified.
Honestly, it isn't that brilliant. I identify with the concept, however the likely outcome will be from now on, the most crazy signs from actual Tea Baggers, will be blamed on them thar liberals who infiltrated their group. Thus, zero sum gain, or less.
Hmm. I sympathize with Levin and his goals, but irony and satire work only when your audience is smart and informed enough to recognize that you're being ironic or satirical.
Since Levin's audience is ultimately the American public, I'm less than confident.
So Levin et al infiltrate one of the most paranoid groups on the face of the planet! Isn't that apt to make them even more paranoid! Playing One Tin Soldier in the background as I type this.
I say that whether we have attended a teabag rally or not, let's just join Levin's message board and say we did. Let talk about how we fooled that little old lady with the "Obama is Hitler" t-shirt (I'm sure there are a few people fitting this description at every teabag rally) into thinking that we were just as angry about Obama's plan to exterminate old people as she was. Next time she won't be taken in so easily. I wonder if she carries a gun.
"irony and satire work only when your audience is smart and informed enough to recognize that you're being ironic or satirical."
I totally agree, corvo. One man's (or woman's) satire is another's "Great idea!"
What a goofball. Yea, there are extremes in each, and their moderates will soon cast them to the side. But the groups have more in common than even they realize.
See http://moneyedpoliticians.net/2010/04/13/the-parties-tea-and-coffee-and-me/
I think this guy Levin is kind of smug and self-involved. Why go to all this trouble but announce it first? Why feed ammo to the fanatics cover story (the liberals did it, not us)? Why, maybe more importantly ignore the legitimate grievances of the teabaggers. Like some poster said already, deliver progressive change, deliver at least something people can hold on to (jobs, real healthcare reform, mortgage relief) and the teabaggers will have less to appeal to their base, the disenfranchised working class, small business class Americans who have been slammed by the successive crises of the corporatocracy. Levin's "outcrazy" gag lines aren't funny either. Accusing Obama of being an "alien" instantly identifies you as one of his guys or just somebody out for a not-very-funny laugh. To "outcrazy" them would mean mouthing racist and fascist slogans - that's the crazy part of the teabag "movement". The anti-corporate, anti-govt part actually has a serious basis in the real world. We ARE getting screwed by our govt! Does anybody doubt that?
I generally agree with you.
Without even considering the controversial fundamental issue of the Tea Party phenomenon's true nature and purpose, and apart from Levin's personal attributes, I'm skeptical of the idea that the "Tea Party Movement" can be thus shamed, embarrassed, humiliated, ridiculed or otherwise LAUGHED out of existence.
That approach might work for a single one-time event that makes or breaks public opinion, but let's say Levin's approach results in mass confusion and consternation among assembled Partiers.
It's not at all clear what the payoff is supposed to be to this scheme of luring the Tea Party off the edge of the cliff of its own absurdity. And not much indication that the attendant risks and dangers have been thought through.
Is it anticipated that they won't go away mad, just go away? Surely the pranksters don't expect the pranked to be good sports about it, or have their consciousnesses raised by being contemptuously shown up.
Regardless of who's in charge and who pulls the strings for this group, at some point they'll catch on to the game and be obliged to counteract it.
I expect that among other things, elements angry and resentful at being made fools of by pranksters would regroup in much more paranoid concentrations. What happens if after initial success, the hyper-craziness just escalates, polarizes, and enrages the target?
I think several people have already done this, so he's going to get "credit"?