Theory on Tea party

[Comrade_Stalin]

I would like to know everyones theory on the Tea Party.

[Raúl Duke]

I'm of the opinion that the tea party, while it started out initially as a bunch of libertarians and such group who opposed Obama's/Democrats' policies that seemed to be against ideas of free trade and/or "liberty" has now degenerated into a somewhat of a mass movement (or so it appears in the media) that seems more like an auxiliary bloc for a section of the GOP. This section of the GOP, perhaps with some help of this tea party movement and some talking heads (Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck in particular) has allowed this section of the GOP gain more power over other "moderate/more sane" sections in the party.

Recently, a "Coffee Party" movement has "started" but either it will fizzle and die (or never really become any semblance of a mass movement) or it will eventually become an auxiliary movement for mostly Democrats and/or non-obstructionist candidates.

I'm not sure, but I'm persuaded to think that the reason why these movements, in particular the tea party movement, is being formed/transformed into, its backing, and its media attention is so to funnel people unto these nominally under political elite (GOP, etc) control movements so people don't end up in other actually potentially dangerous to the status quo movements. However, to the other sections of the GOP outside of the lunatic one they're a bit worried about the tea party. This has already manifested itself in the right-wing media...hell, there's another thread with a video of Billy chiding Glenn Beck over his big hoo--rah about "communists, nazis, in the White House, under our beds!" Plus I heard of a few right-wing media figures (or maybe just Bill) make criticisms of the tea party.

In terms of whether it's a fascist movement or not...well it isn't one yet. Perhaps it won't become one. For now I'll say it's "proto-fascist" in the sense that they do have potential although at this point it seems marginal. They may wish to stop "progressives, communists, socialists, etc", to stop "evil labor unions", to roll back progressive policies and put in place "traditional values" but whether they can do all that, and do so in a degree that could be considered fascistic (i.e. ban labor unions or co-op the official union to the state, imprison/execute activists, leftists, etc, scale back big time social programs) is yet to be seen. However, they're definitely reactionary and something to be cautions about.

[Comrade_Stalin]

In terms of whether it's a fascist movement or not...well it isn't one yet. Perhaps it won't become one. For now I'll say it's "proto-fascist" in the sense that they do have potential although at this point it seems marginal. They may wish to stop "progressives, communists, socialists, etc", to stop "evil labor unions", to roll back progressive policies and put in place "traditional values" but whether they can do all that, and do so in a degree that could be considered fascistic (i.e. ban labor unions or co-op the official union to the state, imprison/execute activists, leftists, etc, scale back big time social programs) is yet to be seen. However, they're definitely reactionary and something to be cautions about.

Many people have a hard time defining for me what fascism even is, are you sure that they are not all ready a fascist group? They nare after all reactionary, pro-god, right wingers. And if you look at the history of fascist they go out of their way to mask what there ture goals are.

[Raúl Duke]

People tend to focus on content and form but I'm focusing on their social relationship to politics and society as a whole.

In content, they're not exactly fascists by its original understanding. In form, they are vaguely/tenuously similar to the "SA" but notice that the tea party isn't exactly running candidates who are vying for power. In effect, they're auxiliaries for an establishment party (the GOP) although they have had the influence of giving the crazy and perhaps most reactionary section of that party more influence and power in the party.

That's their social relation...they're just mere auxiliaries for an established party that no one really considers fascist per se. Now whether the faction in that party which the tea party has enabled is fascist-inclined is unknown.

[¿Que?]

I don't know anything about this fascism thing. It seems a semantic argument anyway. What I do know is that a person sympathetic to the tea party movement (you could say apologist) explained to me that the tea partiers were originally truthers more sympathetic to Alex Jones than say Glen Beck. This is probably where they get their label as being lunatics and crazies. Eventually, though, Fox news and/or the Republican party proper co-opted the "movement" by hosting $600 dinners as Tea Party events. Naturally, this alienated a lot of the working class base and the original truthers, however, it left a hodgepodge of different sectors of the right, mostly privileged, but ideologically fractured. You essentially have two camps, the religious wingnuts, who perpetuate the stereotype of lunacy, and the libertarian moderates, who really hate Obama for perceived economic reasons as opposed to seeing him as a cultural threat. There's probably more sub groups, but that's the basic makeup. So for example, the libertarians are not too keen on the whole birther movement, which is partly affiliated with the religious crazies, and partly affiliated with the alienated truthers. On the other hand, with the passage of the health care bill, they now have a common ground on which to fight Obama, ultimately being reinvigorated by the legislation.

And here's the rub. The truthers are very much the type of people who would advocate directly confronting the powers that be. They are very pro gun, somewhat religious, and very anti government. Let's not forget that truthers were as vehemently against the Bush administration as they are against Obama, although both times for misguided and confused reasoning. Another thing to consider is that for truthers, groups like the Branch Dividians are (or were at one time) for the most part somewhat martyrs. So there is a likelyhood many of them support to a greater or lesser extent different militia groups, or the idea of militia groups in general.

So somewhere between the truthers and the Republican party proper, you have several sub movements who have taken on the label or have sympathetic tendencies, for example, right wing militia's, birthers, Ron Paul libertarians, maybe even some anarcho capitalists (this last one is just conjecture), all probably at some point or another, pandered to by the people pulling the tea Party's strings, which ultimately, will probably be insurance companies, or some other combination of business interests.

The end.

[Comrade_Stalin]

People tend to focus on content and form but I'm focusing on their social relationship to politics and society as a whole.

In content, they're not exactly fascists by its original understanding. In form, they are vaguely/tenuously similar to the "SA" but notice that the tea party isn't exactly running candidates who are vying for power. In effect, they're auxiliaries for an establishment party (the GOP) although they have had the influence of giving the crazy and perhaps most reactionary section of that party more influence and power in the party.

That's their social relation...they're just mere auxiliaries for an established party that no one really considers fascist per se. Now whether the faction in that party which the tea party has enabled is fascist-inclined is unknown.

I think that if we ever should talk about fascists, we should focus on their economics, that the real reason they do thinks, everthing else is a mask to hind that fact.

[The Ben G]

Their angry Bourgeois nationalist conservatives that worship Glenn Beckkk and Sarah Palin that think that people like us like Obama and that they are Libertarians.

They obviously failed political science.

[Comrade_Stalin]

Their angry Bourgeois nationalist conservatives that worship Glenn Beckkk and Sarah Palin that think that people like us like Obama and that they are Libertarians.

They obviously failed political science.

And so was fascism

[Die Neue Zeit]

do so in a degree that could be considered fascistic (i.e. ban labor unions or co-op the official union to the state, imprison/execute activists, leftists, etc, scale back big time social programs)

Well, if it's about co-opting the business unions and their collective bargaining parochialism to the state apparatus, what's wrong with that?

These idiots want to ban them, not co-opt them.

[Comrade_Stalin]

The tea party also wish to destory the department of education. If it was around 1900 they may as well burned book instead.

[Klaatu]

I think a large part of that movement are simply racists. They are disappointed that a black man became president.
Believe it or not, there is still a latent element of racism in the U.S.

The tea partyers may care about taxes, for sure, but judging from some of the blatantly racist signs in the crowd,
and the fact that they dare not utter racial comments, they use, instead of the N word, cry out "socialist," not even
knowing what that word means.

[Jimmie Higgins]

As to the fascist question - I don't think they are currently fascist simply because they are not organized - I think the Minutemen were the true potential fascists and the Patriot militias are probably fascist already.

So the tea-parties are potentially "Future Fascists of America" clubs. I think the same social forces and problems in capitalism that drive fascism are also driving these people. I posted a NY Times poll of tea-partiers and it proves that most are ideologically driven and more white and well-off than Americans in general. So they are petty bourgeois reactionaries - the raw materials of fascism.

They are also simply dupes that really-bought into the lies the ruling class (through the media and both parties) has been selling to the public. The coded-racism of the "war on crime" and "ending entitlements" has been bought hook, line, and racist sinker. So they are just like cult members who lived their lives believing that when a certain comet comes across they sky there will be a judgment day; but when the comet comes and nothing happens, they go crazy. These people are now raging and angry that the lie they believed turned out to be totally wrong - so some blame scapegoats (labor unions, immigrants, and so on) while others blindly believe that we just didn't pray hard enough to the gods of the market and need to make more sacrifices to appease it.

[Jerolin]

I'm not at all speaking for the Tea-Party at large, but I know several of the "Tea-baggers" in my tucked away corner of Texas are mostly racist, militant, and strongly in favor of Theocracy. :(

There have been several times I've heard some of them say how they need to "band together", "take up arms", "go kill that [insert racial slur here], and take back our country".

The funny thing is, from what I've seen and read, most of the protesters seem to be 60+ years of age. A friend of mine called it a 'geriatric revolution'. :rolleyes:

That being said, you get out of extreme 'hick-country', and they seem to be just seriously disenfranchised people who are genuinely worried about this or that.

[Klaatu]

As to the fascist question - I don't think they are currently fascist simply because they are not organized - I think the Minutemen were the true potential fascists and the Patriot militias are probably fascist already.

What if, hypothetically speaking, all of these private militias band together and take over the country? The first thing they will do is to establish a dictatorship. It would be THEIR freedom, not anyone else's (no non-whites, no non-christians, etc) This is what they mean when they cry out "take back our country." It's sedition and possibly treason. You change a country by education, not by violence. Too bad for these folks, they missed out on the former, so may resort to the latter (?)

[Znamya]

The teabaggers are basically the rank-and-file goons of the GOP (see freepers), which is composed of petit-bourgeois and rural whites from the South and Midwest. If anyone has observed the poison spewed by these kind of people, they're basically fascists reminiscient of the John Birch Society. Their rhetoric is disgusting in its anti-labor, racist venom. These are the kind of people who think that reformist labor unions and the taxation of corporations are destroying America.

They don't seem to care about policy as much as simply opposing the other side and sticking up for their team. They're against "big government" only when the Democrats are in charge.


For now I'll say it's "proto-fascist"

Teabaggers aka freepers are basically fascists. Their propaganda includes support for Franco, Pinochet, and the like. Seemingly everything for them is a "Commie plot"; even mainstream liberals of the Democratic Party are "Commies". The only difference between freepers and neo-Nazis is that hatred of Muslims instead of anti-Semitism.

[Ocean Seal]

The tea-party are essentially a few opportunist intellectuals surrounded by a bunch of mislead people. Yeah as most said they think everyone is a commie and God forbid that someone actually doesn't challenge that notion. I feel that they're going to fade following the introduction of the new Arizona law as many are going to associate the Tea Party with racism more easily. So hence begins the decline of the Tea Party.

[Animal Farm Pig]

First things first-- while the people on the streets might be relatively normal folks with very wrong views-- the funding and coordination of the Tea Party is coming from corporations and the rich. Check out the article on Tea Party funding on Sourcewatch.

It's obviously in the interest of the rich to have a Tea Party out there agitating for their interests. But, how do they get their poor dupes out onto the streets?

I think it's related to a central (perhaps the key) part of American mythology-- the idea that "anyone can get rich through their own effort and hard work." I don't think I need to tell anyone here how fucked up in so many ways that idea is, but, the truth is, a lot of people believe that shit.

What that means, is that there are a whole lot of people who are not rich, but are planning to be. After all, they're good, hard working people. So, even if their situations may be difficult now, they are opposed to any kind of policy of redistributing wealth, because when they become rich they will want to keep everything that they "earn through their own effort."

Also, this means that the rich are to be admired. After all, they got there through their own hard work. As such, they shouldn't be penalized (taxed) for their success. To force someone who pulled himself up by his own boot-straps to subsidize the existence of a bunch of loafers (who must be lazy-- otherwise they wouldn't be poor) is an outrage against justice.

There you have the ideological basis of the Tea Party. As Marxists, we shouldn't be surprised by any of this. The dominant ideology is the ideology of the dominant class. That ideology justifies and maintains existing mode of production.

With that said, we have to wonder why these people are appearing right now. Why not fifteen or fifty years ago?

Part of it is, I think, technical. The people running the strategy and providing the tactics for the Tea Party built their skills over the last decade by running the color and flower revolutions in Europe and Asia in which social democratic and bourgeois nationalist government were thrown out through "popular movements" and replaced by governments friendlier to international capital. They've discovered the methods of organizing, the propaganda techniques, the protest tactics that are most effective. Now, they try their methods here in the USA for the same goal.

The situation is ripe for such an attempt.

Wealth is more polarized now than it has been for the past fifty years. People are worried about losing their jobs, losing their health coverage, losing their homes, etc. People are in personal debt up to their eyeballs. The average working family is worse off now than it was ten years ago.

A rational analysis of the situation would point towards the problems of the capitalist system. Unfortunately, we're not dealing with something that can be rationally analyzed. We're dealing with articles of almost religious faith in capitalism. I think that this is especially strong in the generations that lived through the political, economic, and (occasionally) military war against the Soviet Union and the "world communist conspiracy."

When capitalism as such is beyond criticism, how do people explain why so many people are in bad shape today? As I mentioned above, one way is to simply dismiss poor people as dumb and lazy. This dovetails nicely with racism, xenophobia, and other divisions that the ruling class tries to introduce to split the workers. But, what if your brother is poor? Or your best friend? Or you? Clearly, it's not your own fault that you're poor. If it's not your fault, and capitalism is beyond question, how do you explain it? The only possible explanation is the the government is not letting capitalism work. Otherwise, someone as clearly worthy as you would be rich. And, the only way you're going to become rich (and therefore have worth in society) is by getting the government out of the way.



So, that's my perspective on the Tea Party. I don't like them. I think the people running it are a bunch of evil motherfuckers. I hope one day they will face a people's trial for their political, economic, and social crimes. I wish I could feel solidarity with the poor folks who have become wrapped up with the Tea Party and help guide them to understand who their real enemy is. I can't. I wish I could at least pity them for being dupes. I can't. All I want to do is punch them.

[automattick]

Very simply, it the Tea Party constituency is undergoing proletarianization: the local lawyers, real estate agents, the petit bourgeoisie of smaller towns and cities in America are losing out as capital escapes their hands and draws back into fewer and fewer hands. Naturally, they'll find every excuse but will ironically cite the very problem as a solution to the way out of it: more free market capitalism.

As for the charges of fascism, I am reminded of the Nazi's obsession with 19th century Romanticism--an obsession with the past--and how every fascistic movement ultimately constructs an alleged "Golden age ideal" from the past and uses it as a rallying point for the others who feel dispossessed of their former wealth.

This past never existed, and yet they insist in digging out whatever imaginary concepts they felt they once had but lost (i.e., the traditional heterosexual, non-dysfunctional family unit; strong moral values; acceptance of one's lot in life as fixed; etc.), which, like Frankenstein, composed of human parts but ultimately a monster, are brought to life as even more perverse. They are perverse for several reasons, though I want to focus on (3) in particular:

1) That is, they were an ideal that never existed.
2) Social conditions have changed, one cannot simply recreate history.
3) They become couched as critiques to current social conditions (2), something which, if one were to even believe these ideas to have existed, never addressed because they never existed!

For (3) what I mean to say is this: blacks, women, minorities in general, had virtually no voice in the so-called democratic parliamentarian process in the US until the 1960's onwards. In the 1950s, which I take it to be the time when most Tea Partiers would like the US to return to socially and financially, only white, straight males really possessed these rights. Letting minorities have their voice basically opened the floodgates for other oppressed and/or repressed minorities (such as homosexuals) to also air their grievances against the traditional structure of power in America. Thus when we hear today of "traditional moral values" what I take that to mean more than anything is a roll-back of sexual rights (abortion), sexual orientation (homosexual marriage) etc.

Hence "traditional moral values" in America today becomes less about a Norman Rockwell painting than a vicious counter-critique of whatever advances non-white Christian males have made today.

[Comrade_Stalin]

.
As for the charges of fascism, I am reminded of the Nazi's obsession with 19th century Romanticism--an obsession with the past--and how every fascistic movement ultimately constructs an alleged "Golden age ideal" from the past and uses it as a rallying point for the others who feel dispossessed of their former wealth.


But don't we do the same thing of a "Golden age ideal" ideal with primitive communism?

[automattick]

But don't we do the same thing of a "Golden age ideal" ideal with primitive communism?

No, only the bourgeoisie are content to use the past in order to justify the future. "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon" by Marx and Engels outlines this idea, particularly their discussion on why bourgeois revolutions rely on images, language and symbols in order to assert their power, while proletarian revolutions use the language and analysis of the day to critique and improve revolutionary efforts thereby coming to power.

Primitive communism was only stage, perhaps a glance back at how human society evolved together as an objective community, not as alienated subjective individuals per capitalism. Unless you're an anarcho-primitivist, the goal is for communists is to take the world as we know it today with its technology and transform it into a more just society.

[Zapatas Guns]

The Tea parties have serious racial issues. All you need to do is look around at their rallies. It is not a coalition of different ethnicities and backgrounds. It is mainly middle class caucasians. What is interesting is how they are slowly losing their wealth and status... they are starting to turn on their neighbors. These people fly Confederate flags and have the fucking nerve to call it a symbol of freedom and heritage.

They think it is whatever minority draining the system that is causing all these problems. They think 'greedy' unions are screwing up heavy industry. They want government gone so capitalism can flurish. If that happpens they will lose everything and all they will have left is their racism. They never stop to think that capitalism as an institution has utterly and so completely failed in every way.

[GreenCommunism]

No, only the bourgeoisie are content to use the past in order to justify the future. "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon" by Marx and Engels outlines this idea, particularly their discussion on why bourgeois revolutions rely on images, language and symbols in order to assert their power, while proletarian revolutions use the language and analysis of the day to critique and improve revolutionary efforts thereby coming to power.

Primitive communism was only stage, perhaps a glance back at how human society evolved together as an objective community, not as alienated subjective individuals per capitalism. Unless you're an anarcho-primitivist, the goal is for communists is to take the world as we know it today with its technology and transform it into a more just society.

still i think he has a point , i will read that text. but i think that we glorify primitive communism as organisational structure. it's not like america wants to go back to the technology of the 1800s either.

of course our structure will be different too but that golden age is still our references as to how humans were really meant to be organized. though of course marx and engels say that other form of organisation had their role in developping history.

[Purple]

It seems that the Tea Party movement has been founded on arguments that doesn't seem to hold any credibility, hence it is only natural to assume that they are objecting to the general change of values that the Obama-administration seems to symbolize. One of the big things that they were demonstrating was the economic strangling of the middle class, yet their taxation does not seem to indicate any worsening in their subjection to increased taxations, it actually seems to be going the other way. As Zapatas Gun said, the racial issues are clear in this group, and it is very clearly a value-based protest.

It is also fear mongering, whereas, as previously stated, it seems that everything is blamed whatever minority is suitable to blame in any given situation. Whether it be the physically sick or Mexicans.

The entire motive and behaviour of this group seems to be provoked by some value changes in the US and the most natural course of action for these people are to lash out as a pure reflex.

Worst thing is that the media keeps talking about them, which makes them seem like they are a much larger group than they actually are. Especially annoying when they are just not that interesting.

[automattick]

still i think he has a point , i will read that text. but i think that we glorify primitive communism as organisational structure. it's not like america wants to go back to the technology of the 1800s either.


of course our structure will be different too but that golden age is still our references as to how humans were really meant to be organized. though of course marx and engels say that other form of organisation had their role in developping history.

Every epoch of historical, every historical stage, i.e., historical materialism, understands that there are unique social conditions which rise from a given mode of production. To attempt to go backwards is tantamount to fascism, in the sense that an economically devastated Germany looked to its heyday in 19th century Romanticism (which is where one gets the obsession with Wagner among the National Socialist movement) and attempted to recreate a great German Empire, but in an entirely different social condition (this time, no meddlesome Jews or "undesirables"!). And that's really it: they wanted to return to the past, but with all of the modifications made in the present. The problem is that, these "unwanted" consequences as we see them were necessary in order to have the benefits of modern technology or even ways of reacting against patriarchal, sexist or racist attitudes.

The same goes for anarcho-primitivists. In their rejection of modernity, are they not also attempting in a similar fashion, to have the egalitarian, anti-sexism, anti-homophia the current left has fought for, but in a tribalized forest setting? I would say it is about as impossible as it was for the Nazis in their horrific re-creation of Frederick the Great's Prussian Empire.

Communism, at least how it stood when one applies Marx's method, is meant to be a un-positively defined entity, meaning that we know what will not be there--wage slavery, surplus extraction, etc. Only through the negative do we begin to grasp the contours of the positive--a world where men and women work in economically egalitarian conditions. As for referencing human nature, I agree with you up to a point, I think when you look a the Third World, for example, you see people and communities acting in solidarity with one another, even in the poorer parts of the developed countries you can see solidarity, but we see that less and less, because we've been in a long period of sustained victories by capitalism.

[Karl Marx AK47]

You alluded to the American mythology of bootstrapping wealth creation. I've read and heard this concept developed before but unfortunately I'm having a mental breakdown developing it today.

Could you please point me in the direction to get this straight in my head.

Today Milwaukee is being visited by Peter Buffet, the son of a high-priest of capital, Warren Buffet. He's coming to promote his book "Life is what you make it".

Peters story made front page news in both large and small publications; as well as an independent, corporate sponsored radio station he helped establish that I've been quite suspicious about since it's early inception. I'm guessing it's a SIGINT psywar exercise, to defuse the city, turning their corporate sponsored transmitter against Milwaukee residents with revolutionary sounding themes and music for counter-revolutionary purposes.

Thanks and Red Salutes!

[Lenina Rosenweg]

The liberal writer Frank Rich had an op-ed article in the New York Times about 6 months ago showing how the Tea Party movement is a creation of the corporate interests, lock, stock, and barrel. He mentioned how Sarah Palin was invited to speak, gratis, before the Conservative Caucus. She turned it down but eagerly accepted an offer to speak before the Tea Party convention for, if I remember, $200,000.

Corporate Amerika has "branding" and viral marketing down to a science.Corporate interests have nurtured the movement thoughout the past 20 years or so w/right wing shock jocks and the Tea Party itself has been very skillfully crafted. Its far from being a grassroots organization.

Although the TPM is full of subtle coded racism (hockey Moms-few black people play hockey) the ruling class doesn't want fascism or overt racism right now. The minute Palin or anyone else trays too far from their cue cards, the media will pull their plug.

I am not sure how big overt racism is in the Tea Party movement. The entire movement though, can be understood using Noel Ignatiev's and Loren Goldner's theory of the US as a "herrenvolk" society. Class struggle has traditionally been played out within a privaleged white working class. There is a deep seated fear of small business owners and some suburbanites that a "corrupt government will steal from us hard working Americans to appease the black and brown mobs out there".The ruling class needs work force and military cohesion, overt racism isn't tolerated (GOP leaders recently took Rand Paul down a few pegs) but its useful to keep the pot boiling.

As other posters haves said, fascism isn't in the cards yet. If the ruling needs this, the Tea Party will morph very rapidly.

[Karl Marx AK47]

NY Times? Have you seen Paul Street and Anthony DiMaggio tear this down?

Google "mrzine what populist uprising?"

The NSM organizing in Arizona covered by Al Jazeera's "People & Power - White Power USA" sure are making a good whack at wedging themselves in there.