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The Tea Party Movement: Deluded and Inspired by Billionaires
By funding numerous rightwing organisations, the mega-rich Koch brothers have duped millions into supporting big business
The Tea Party movement is remarkable in two respects. It is one of the biggest exercises in false consciousness the world has seen – and the biggest Astroturf operation in history. These accomplishments are closely related.
An Astroturf campaign is a fake grassroots movement: it purports to be a spontaneous uprising of concerned citizens, but in reality it is founded and funded by elite interests. Some Astroturf campaigns have no grassroots component at all. Others catalyse and direct real mobilisations. The Tea Party belongs in the second category. It is mostly composed of passionate, well-meaning people who think they are fighting elite power, unaware that they have been organised by the very interests they believe they are confronting. We now have powerful evidence that the movement was established and has been guided with the help of money from billionaires and big business. Much of this money, as well as much of the strategy and staffing, were provided by two brothers who run what they call "the biggest company you've never heard of".
Charles and David Koch own 84% of Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in the United States. It runs oil refineries, coal suppliers, chemical plants and logging firms, and turns over roughly $100bn a year; the brothers are each worth $21bn. The company has had to pay tens of millions of dollars in fines and settlements for oil and chemical spills and other industrial accidents. The Kochs want to pay less tax, keep more profits and be restrained by less regulation. Their challenge has been to persuade the people harmed by this agenda that it's good for them.
In July 2010, David Koch told New York magazine: "I've never been to a Tea Party event. No one representing the Tea Party has ever even approached me." But a fascinating new film – (Astro)Turf Wars, by Taki Oldham – tells a fuller story. Oldham infiltrated some of the movement's key organising events, including the 2009 Defending the American Dream summit, convened by a group called Americans for Prosperity (AFP). The film shows David Koch addressing the summit. "Five years ago," he explains, "my brother Charles and I provided the funds to start Americans for Prosperity. It's beyond my wildest dreams how AFP has grown into this enormous organisation."
A convener tells the crowd how AFP mobilised opposition to Barack Obama's healthcare reforms. "We hit the button and we started doing the Twittering and Facebook and the phonecalls and the emails, and you turned up!" Then a series of AFP organisers tell Mr Koch how they have set up dozens of Tea Party events in their home states. He nods and beams from the podium like a chief executive receiving rosy reports from his regional sales directors. Afterwards, the delegates crowd into AFP workshops, where they are told how to run further Tea Party events.
Americans for Prosperity is one of several groups set up by the Kochs to promote their politics. We know their foundations have given it at least $5m, but few such records are in the public domain and the total could be much higher. It has toured the country organising rallies against healthcare reform and the Democrats' attempts to tackle climate change. It provided the key organising tools that set the Tea Party running.
The movement began when CNBC's Rick Santelli called from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for a bankers' revolt against the undeserving poor. (He proposed that the traders should hold a tea party to dump derivative securities in Lake Michigan to prevent Obama's plan to "subsidise the losers": by which he meant people whose mortgages had fallen into arrears.) On the same day, Americans for Prosperity set up a Tea Party Facebook page and started organising Tea Party events.
Oldham's film shows how AFP crafted the movement's messages and drafted its talking points. The New Yorker magazine, in the course of a remarkable exposure of the Koch brothers' funding networks, interviewed some of their former consultants. "The Koch brothers gave the money that founded [the Tea Party]," one of them explained. "It's like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud – and they're our candidates!" Another observed that the Kochs are smart. "This rightwing, redneck stuff works for them. They see this as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves."
AFP is one of several groups established by the Koch brothers. They set up the Cato Institute, the first free-market thinktank in the United States. They also founded the Mercatus Centre at George Mason University, which now fills the role once played by the economics department at Chicago University as the originator of extreme neoliberal ideas. Fourteen of the 23 regulations that George W Bush put on his hitlist were, according to the Wall Street Journal, first suggested by academics working at the Mercatus Centre.
The Kochs have lavished money on more than 30 other advocacy groups, including the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the George C Marshall Institute, the Reason Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. These bodies have been instrumental in turning politicians away from environmental laws, social spending, taxing the rich and distributing wealth. They have shaped the widespread demand for small government. The Kochs ensure that their money works for them. "If we're going to give a lot of money," David Koch explained to a libertarian journalist, "we'll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent. And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don't agree with, we withdraw funding."
Most of these bodies call themselves "free-market thinktanks", but their trick – as (Astro)Turf Wars points out – is to conflate crony capitalism with free enterprise, and free enterprise with personal liberty. Between them they have constructed the philosophy that informs the Tea Party movement: its members mobilise for freedom, unaware that the freedom they demand is freedom for corporations to trample them into the dirt. The thinktanks that the Kochs have funded devise the game and the rules by which it is played; Americans for Prosperity coaches and motivates the team.
Astroturfing is now taking off in the United Kingdom. Earlier this month Spinwatch showed how a fake grassroots group set up by health insurers helped shape the Tories' NHS reforms. Billionaires and corporations are capturing the political process everywhere; anyone with an interest in democracy should be thinking about how to resist them. Nothing is real any more. Nothing is as it seems.
• A fully referenced version of this story can be found at www.monbiot.com
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20 Comments so far
Show Allfunded by Koch = Astroturf
funded by Soros = Grassroots
Yep, thanks for reminding me of H. Ross Perot, who had a lot of "supporters" in the intel community (hippie types). The purported pictures of his daughter in certain photographic poses was the end of his campaign. Follow Perot Systems and EDS from start to present. Chameleon, this one is for you too.
Not really. All Soros is doing is working both ends of the stick.
More like the other way around. If ever a genuine grassroots progressive movement emerges, you can bet the Koch-suckers will be screaming about Soros funding, whether it has any or not.
"The Tea Party... is mostly composed of passionate, well-meaning people who think they are fighting elite power, unaware that they have been organised by the very interests they believe they are confronting."
I'm sorry, but I just can't bring myself to grant this much legitimacy to this ever growing group of nutcases. I've found most of them to be neither well meaning, nor passionate (unless spittle shouting Fox News talking points and ridiculous bumper sticker slogans in peoples' faces somehow qualifies as passion). I think that we're all wasting way too much time trying to figure them out, trying to understand what makes them tick, and what their common core values are when the answer is actually quite simple. Ignorant, hateful people are easy to manipulate. Ignorant, hateful people just need to be given a target for their pent up hatred and be pointed in whatever direction you want them to scream... no... I mean it... it's really that simple.
Pretending that their disjointed and irrational “message” stems from some "strange bedfellows" demographic convergence is complete nonsense. Sometimes the truth is so much simpler than we want it to be. If you want to create a distraction and make allot of political noise, and you have the disposable cash to organize them, just trot out the crazies in front of the cameras. In no time at all, the 24/7 corporate news cycle will make it look like a movement and talk it right up into legitimacy. Could we please stop giving so much credit where absolutely none is due?
It may have started well intentioned but grew into a really bad production of a batman movie featuring a little lizard (maybe a geico). That changes appearance at will.
I'm sick of the mangy mobs, too, but...
Watch what happens when somebody gives them all uniforms and a bit of fake "authority". The fact that they have sawdust for brains makes them ideal weapons on the ground. Putsch, Gauleiter, Kristallnacht. More effective than SWAT teams.
just as the left was deluded and manipulated by the same group to elect o-bomber.
I don't think Mr. Monbiot did his research very well and therefore is writing a bit of false history here. The movement actually began a couple years earlier by Ron Paul supporters while Ron was running for President and was mostly comprised of libertarians who were sick of the Federal Reserve/bogus money system and sick of Government intrusion on our privacy and Ron Paul was just about the only Washington politician speaking some truth about the Fed etc... It actually was a true grassroots movement at the start (which I am sure made the elites nervous) so then Koch and Palin and Beck all swooped in like crazy vultures and co-opted the movement and made it into the nonsense it is today.
Exactly, I've been posting this sort of clarification to every article about the Tea Party here on CD for a while and I'm glad someone else has pointed it out also. As a matter of fact, the original founders of the Tea Party have been very outspoken recently about how their legitimate nonpartisan grassroots movement has been taken over and corrupted by the usual gang of liars. Palin being the number one phony.
Also progressives should recognize this and be defending the original Tea Party movement because it suffered the same fate they always do. So even if you don't agree entirely with them you should at least sympathize with them. What happened is the Republicans took it over and removed the real Tea Party issues from the table by calling themselves the Tea Party, the same way Obama destroys the progressive movement by calling himself a progressive. How about a little sympathy instead of bashing a movement which you agree with on issues like the bailouts, military spending, civil liberties, the bogus democracy of the two-party system? There's reason why Nader and Paul are sometimes seen working together to fight the two-party system. These articles about how the Tea Party is completely astroturf is actually what the Democrats and Republicans want you to think. They also want you to think Obama is progressive. How about a little unity against a common enemy instead of all these smears of what was a legitimate grassroots movement? Which by the way is still out there.
"How about a little unity against a common enemy instead of all these smears of what was a legitimate grassroots movement? Which by the way is still out there."
Again, I understand your point, but have to very respectfully disagree. To use a tortured expression: That’s a bit like closing the door after the horse is already out of the barn. Although I could never be unsympathetic to a group who’ve had their cause stolen from them by a bunch of slick corporate pirates, I think it’s probably safe to say that most of the well meaning people of the originally named movement have long since moved on. What’s left is an incoherent mish-mash of uninformed, loudmouthed reactionaries and religious zealots. It’s not really a group I feel allot of unity with, despite the occasional “no taxpayer bail outs for Big Business” sloganeering. As someone else pointed out here in another post, it would be interesting (by that I mean horrifying) to see what would happen if you gave them all some fancy uniforms and a little “authority”. I don’t want to indiscriminately throw around Nazi analogies, but the process of creating “Brown Shirts” is pretty much the same regardless of culture or geographic location. You can’t let a group like this rest on the laurels of a past movement to which it no longer bears any resemblance.
I don't think Nader had this in mind when he wrote Only the Super-rich Can Save Us.
AFP lit was all over the healthcare reform town meetings I attended. Health Care Savings accounts were the AFP answer along with directly negotiating best rates from providers by using a direct payout from the account. Tea party members then boasted about how they could even extend the benefits of these savings accounts to accrue to the health of their children by letting them inherit them. How much do you need in your savings account to assure your health?" I asked. "About $100,000." he replied. "How much do you think open heart surgery costs?" "About $30,000 if it were directly paid for." he replied. So there you have it. Save $100,000 in your health care savings account, probably use less than $30,000 of it and bequeath the rest to your children. Another great idea brought to you by the AFP, I mean Koch Brothers. But let's remember it wouldn't fly without the idiocy of a stupid and ignorant public who buy the propaganda hook line and sinker.
The continual examination of the Tea Party is a media ploy, a public relations stunt. I agree they should be ignored. They are not the voice of the true US citizenry, that majority who were fooled into voting in Obama, who would prefer a Swedish distribution of wealth (if no one is whispering in their ear “socialist”}, who wanted a public option, who have lost their corporate jobs, been screwed out of their pensions. That voice is muffled.
As much as most people on this site dislike Lakoff, he is right about one thing: people think from their emotions. Most of those who have been screwed slowly these last 30 some years, and then much more quickly these last few, have little idea why. The foundation of the Tea Party movement is an emotional tie to what the US “once was,” which they fuzzily see as a time when you could get a good, steady corporate job and have a good pension, until the government took all that away. That they are exactly wrong is largely beside the point: that vision of a beneficent corporate world is very powerful.
To mobilize the true majority of American feeling, there has to be a central vision. I’m ashamed to say it, but we need a public relations stunt of our own, a central vision of community pulling together. Facts alone do little good. Obama, if he had a progressive bone in his body or weren’t entirely owned by the banksters and the corporate thieves, would be expressing one now. And I agree with those who despise Lakoff for thinking him obtuse: Obama knows exactly what he’s doing. If he has to pretend to be the progressive that falls on his sword, ushering in the strongest, most punishing Corporatocracy yet, he’ll be happy to do so, accomplished actor that he is. The central irony to this narrative is this: Obama is the Koch brothers’ best ally.
"I agree they should be ignored."
In the early 1920s, the entire treasury of the Nazi Party was kept in a cigar box ... and then businessmen started to pour money in.
Wow...the Koch brothers started the Cato Institute and funded the Reason Foundation? Boy, was I naive some 30 years ago when I was a card-carrying libertarian. I had subscriptions to Cato's periodicals and Reason Magazine.
One good thing about having gone through that phase is that nobody can honestly accuse me of being a liberal/progressive only because I was raised that way or because I was somehow brainwashed.
The main reason I turned to the Libertarian Party was because I thought that Ronnie Raygun wasn't anti-government enough! Yes, back then I was young and healthy. I had a good-paying job because, as a techie, I was riding the "Hi-Tech" wave that swept into manufacturing. Who needs universal health care and Social Security? I can take care of myself without any stinkin' gubmint.
But then something happened.
Anyone for political reform?
The Marxist summation of Fascism is “Capitalism in Decay.” The Marxist analysis of Fascism posits a situation where the capitalist class harnesses the fear, anger and frustration of the petit-bourgeoisie (the ‘middle class’) and the lumpenproletariat (the unemployed, among others) to smash the organized workers, including social-democratic ones, with a view to restoring profits to ‘acceptable’ levels.
Tea, anyone?
Nothing's going to change until people stop being stupid and look past their noses. I can't believe how people can join these political cults. Yes, that's what they are. And the greedy folks take advantage of their stupidity and lead them around by the rings in their noses. (Rush is a ring, you betcha!)
The original Tea Party involved "No Taxation Without Representation." Well, we HAVE representation. The problem is, nobody takes the time to figure out who the goods guys are and who the bad guys are. We need to research and see through the thin veil of larceny. We actually need to become our own Sherlock Holmes and not believe everything we're told by the bastards who want to control everything. Who said, "We are the captains of our fate?" Yeah, we make our fate by letting others rule us ~ our fate may be as pigs lead to the slaughter. Then our children will have to, once again, fight for their freedom or live as other countries under despots.