Are the Tea Party Fascists?

[Andrew443]

I was doing some research and it suddenly came to me... The tea party are 100% fascist, for those who arent American, the Tea Party are a group of far right extremists that deviate even farther to the right than normal Republicans.

Lets look at some of the characteristics of a fascist
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism
5. Rampant sexism
6. A controlled mass media
7. Obsession with national security
8. Religion and government are intertwined
9. Power of corporations protected
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts
12. Obsession with crime and punishment
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption
14. Fraudulent elections

Are the Tea Party fascists? Are they Nazis? Look at those 14 points then look at their ideology. You tell me.


The Tea party and most of the Republican party ARE fascists...They deny it and theyll even call us leftists fascists (they love attempting to redefine words that describe them in an unflattering way)

Anyways rant over. Thoughts anyone?

[happytrot]

Oh yeah the republican party and fascists have extremely similar ideals. In fact they have skewed the US view of the political spectrum so far right that democrats are considered to be left-wing and socialism is considered to be an extreme far left idea by most Americans placing capitalism at the middle of the spectrum.

[Geiseric]

Short answer: yes the TP are either lower petit bourgeois effected by the financial crisis or military vets. They are part in parcel with every hate group in america. Their program calls for the expulsion of nearly all immigrants, the privatization of education, and an end to welfare. They are scum and need to be fought in the streets. Not now, because we need to bide our time and organize the most oppressed layers of the working class, which is the determining factor of our success.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

NONE of that really define Fascism or the Tea Party movement. More, the Tea Party is not Fascist more so they live in some fantasy land ala Bioshock where some invisible hand will guide humanity towards prosperity ad that the government is bad an should only exist as much as it has too or not at all.

[Slavic]

They are not a militant movement. I don't think I've ever heard of Tea Party activists purposely intimidating minorities and workers.

[#FF0000]

I was doing some research and it suddenly came to me... The tea party are 100% fascist, for those who arent American, the Tea Party are a group of far right extremists that deviate even farther to the right than normal Republicans.

Lets look at some of the characteristics of a fascist
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism
5. Rampant sexism
6. A controlled mass media
7. Obsession with national security
8. Religion and government are intertwined
9. Power of corporations protected
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts
12. Obsession with crime and punishment
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption
14. Fraudulent elections

Are the Tea Party fascists? Are they Nazis? Look at those 14 points then look at their ideology. You tell me.


The Tea party and most of the Republican party ARE fascists...They deny it and theyll even call us leftists fascists (they love attempting to redefine words that describe them in an unflattering way)

Anyways rant over. Thoughts anyone?

Those "14 principles of fascism" are way off and can be used to describe literally almost any conservative grouping. So no.

Fascism is a specific political movement. Right-wing populism isn't necessarily Fascism.

[Geiseric]

They are not a militant movement. I don't think I've ever heard of Tea Party activists purposely intimidating minorities and workers.

Many members of the police and border patrol in the south and southwest are in the tea party or an alligned hate group. Their political wing is presented by the radical republicans.

[Geiseric]

They are not a militant movement. I don't think I've ever heard of Tea Party activists purposely intimidating minorities and workers.

Many members of the police and border patrol in the south and southwest are in the tea party or an alligned hate group. Their political wing is presented by the radical republicans.

[TC]

"Fascism" means a lot of things to different people and the paradigm cases of fascism are gone (apart from far tinier rightwing sects) and arose in a very different historical context.

The Tea Party is not ideologically unified apart from being opposed to taxes. Many tea party members are actually sharply anti-corporate in addition to being pro-capitalist and anti-government - this is not characteristic of fascism since fascism is an ideology of merged corporate and governmental power. While many tea party rank and file members are anti-immigration, many are not and the tea party is distinct from the anti-immigrant xenophobic nationalist movement. Crucially the tea party financiers, the Koch Brothers, are distinctively pro-immigration. The tea party is not interested in abolishing electoral government as fascists are.

I would not regard the Tea Party as fascist. Like everything on the far the right it shares some commonalities with fascism but it is a distinctive rightwing populist movement that should not be thought of as fascist.

[Geiseric]

"Fascism" means a lot of things to different people and the paradigm cases of fascism are gone (apart from far tinier rightwing sects) and arose in a very different historical context.

The Tea Party is not ideologically unified apart from being opposed to taxes. Many tea party members are actually sharply anti-corporate in addition to being pro-capitalist and anti-government - this is not characteristic of fascism since fascism is an ideology of merged corporate and governmental power. While many tea party rank and file members are anti-immigration, many are not and the tea party is distinct from the anti-immigrant xenophobic nationalist movement. Crucially the tea party financiers, the Koch Brothers, are distinctively pro-immigration. The tea party is not interested in abolishing electoral government as fascists are.

I would not regard the Tea Party as fascist. Like everything on the far the right it shares some commonalities with fascism but it is a distinctive rightwing populist movement that should not be thought of as fascist.
Im not sure if you've seen the same tea party as me. All of the anti immigrants militias in the southwest are tea party.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

The tea party isn't "fascist" but some of its extremes might endorse certain systems which could be described as fascist or similar to it. It's a pretty diverse, albeit largely conservative group.

[Slavic]

Im not sure if you've seen the same tea party as me. All of the anti immigrants militias in the southwest are tea party.



The Tea Party is not ideologically unified apart from being opposed to taxes.

Those militia groups are not fighting for the tea party, they are fighting against immigrants.

[Geiseric]

The tea party ate the ones who blocked Obamas minor immigration reform. Republicans might of bent were it not for the tea partiers, such as Rubio, Bratt, Bachmann, and Cruz. The tea party are the most reactionary republicans, characterizing them as anything else is wrong.

[consuming negativity]

I don't even really consider fascism to be an ideological position. Neither Mussolini nor Franco were interested in anything else other than gaining power over a state and using it to their own ends, and their supporters and policies were pretty much the same as that of your typical far-right reactionary. Against immigration except when they need immigrants or soldiers, against women when they don't want to be baby machines, against X except when it's convenient to do Y, with convenience really being a product of playing to the conservative, reactionary base. Hitler was the only one who really had a philosophy or anything, and even it was just a pragmatic race-based hyper-nationalism. The difference between a fascist and a conservative is what the government make-up is, to be frank. There are few ideological "fascists" so much as just reactionary idiots who support typical reactionary shit X, Y, or Z... which is why having a list of fascist traits is self-defeating.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

The tea party ate the ones who blocked Obamas minor immigration reform. Republicans might of bent were it not for the tea partiers, such as Rubio, Bratt, Bachmann, and Cruz. The tea party are the most reactionary republicans, characterizing them as anything else is wrong.
True but there's more to being a fascist than being anti-immigrant. I consider armed reactionaries on the border to be closer to a "fascist" movement, because of the ways they try to realize their aims and the way that they organize.

[The Red Star Rising]

They're right wing populists mostly comprised out of baby boomer era fossils terrified of their own impending political irrelevancy. The Tea Party's position is best described as "Lolberterianism." They generally believe that there is nothing wrong with capitalism and that "DA FREE MURKET" will solve everything (also mixed with grotesque social conservatism despite all their ranting about "freedom", freedom to oppress others but no freedom for gays to marry or women to have control of their bodies, yeaaaaahhh). If they took over America, I'd predict that it'd collapse into a Somalia style wasteland within a decade, tops. For all their love of Capitalism they really don't seem to know how it works, I mean, these guys believed that defaulting on America's debt would bring anything other than unhappy no-fun times for all. They can't be particularly bright.

[Krasnyymir]

They're hardly fascists, and one must be careful with using words like "fascists" or "racists" to slander any political group we may not like.

Words have meanings, and one should be precise in their application as Lenin pointed out.

They're mostly disaffected bourgeois and disaffected working class Americans (I reckon about 40-50% each.) who have come to the realization that "the system" doesn't care for them, and there is little difference between the Republican and the Democratic Party.

One place where we can learn from their example, is how much influence they really hold. For a small minority group they've had a outsized, huge effect on concrete policies. Imagine if a small, but radical group of socialists stopped uncritically supporting the Democrats, and instead forced the majority of the party to concede to them on important issues.

That's probably the only way Marxists can gain anything concrete from the electoral game.

[Prairie Fire]

TC

The Tea Party is not ideologically unified apart from being opposed to taxes.

I think that Tim Wise made a pretty succinct case that the "anti-tax" pretext of the tea parties is secondary at best, when it comes to energizing their activists. While the opposition to taxes and advocacy of neoliberalism is a major part of what motivated the financiers and agitators of the tea party ( i.e. the Koch brothers, Freedomworks, etc), what actually motivated people into the streets is a whole different matter.

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Among the sentiments voiced within the tea party, there was a common thread of an idealized America that has been taken away, and within this there is necessarily a very strong white nationalist current and scapegoating.



Many tea party members are actually sharply anti-corporate in addition to being pro-capitalist and anti-government - this is not characteristic of fascism since fascism is an ideology of merged corporate and governmental power.

Yeah, but the same thing can be said historically for the Nazi SA. Many of those motivated into the SA, explicitly racialist and anti-worker as they were, also saw themselves simultaneously as "anti-capitalist".

These early Nazi storm troopers saw what the German national-socialist party was advocating as at odds with capitalism. To them, much of their denunciations of Jews were indivisible from denunciations of banks and finance capital. Strasserite rhetoric was fairly common among the primarily working class base of the SA, with advocacy of wealth redistribution, addressing poverty and even advocating the breaking up of large estates and cooperative workers' control in legislation. A form of class analysis even prevailed, and there was much talk about unseating Germany's elite.

Should we argue then that the Nazi SA of the 20's and 30's weren't fascist?

Now, of course, the actual movers and shakers of the Nazi party, especially their bourgeois financiers, held no such views themselves. It was with good reason that the one Strasser brother was exiled, and the other killed during the night of the long knives. Following the victory of the Nazi party in achieving state power in Germany, the primarily working class SA insisted on a second revolution, to remove the German elite. For this, SA leader Ernst Röhm and 200 other SA leadership were arrested and executed. The SA itself, with it's largely working class base, was superseded by the more middle-strata SS; most SA were reassigned to the Wehrmacht, and the organization was effectively marginalized by 1939.

The naked bourgeois rule that is the impetus for and that results under fascism is never how fascism is sold to the rank and file. Even contemporary neo-nazis are more concerned with eugenics and racial paradigms than handing all legislative power to the barons of industry and finance.

Fascists make large use of street soldiers in their ascension to power, but once the ascension is complete, they largely have no use for these people. The more populist ideas that often permeate even the most reactionary of right-wing movements are strongly at odds with the goals that the financiers and agitators of said movements are trying to achieve; the same can be said for some of the more ridiculous notions that permeate these movements at the grassroots level as well (i.e. superstitions and prejudices that aren't conducive to commerce). Once the rise to power is complete, the grassroots of a fascist movement become a liability, and their desires are disregarded.

The scandal in which the IRS was revealed to be monitoring Tea Party organizations demonstrates that the bourgeois state is wary of any populist movement, even a right wing populist movement that is currently under the manipulation of a sector of the bourgeoisie.

To address whether or not the Tea Party are fascist is a difficult question. As it was said, ideologically it is an eclectic and diverse movement (as any mass movement always is,). While they have libertarians among them who have no love for any kind of state paradigm, they also have explicit fascists amongst them as well. I certainly think that the potential for a fascist movement exists in the social base that the Tea party was drawn from; the Tea party is just a transitional form, like the minutemen before them, the militia movements of the 90's, going all the way back to the Klan ( is the Tea Party even a viable movement anymore? When was the most recent Tea party rally/event?).

What is noteworthy about the Tea party, as with every right-wing populist movement, is that none of them ever get anywhere without the patronage and direct intervention of the bourgeoisie. Historically, the Nazi party had a total membership of about 60 people before they became the champions of capital in Germany. The Tea Party is exactly the same in this regard, rising to prominence when bankrolled and agitated by certain sectors of the bourgeoisie, and then receding again when their efforts were no longer required.

While in every fascist movement it is the street-soldiers who do the leg-work, it is of the utmost importance that we always place the emphasis on the hand of the state and the bourgeoisie in engineering and deploying these types. In Canada, whenever we talk about our local neo-nazi gangs, we always remind people of the historical precedent of the Heritage Front, and the founding role of Canadian CSIS agent Grant Bristow within it. No matter the grassroots composition of these movements, we must always highlight the role of the the ruling class in bringing these movements into being and elevating them to prominence.

[Krasnyymir]

Should we argue then that the Nazi SA of the 20's and 30's weren't fascist?


To a certain degree thats not incorrect.
With the important qualifier that we're talking about a small part of the left wing of the party, who also recruited among former and on occasions current communists.
(Some SA members had a background in KPDs armed wing, just like the Red Front Fighters wing had members who used to be in the SA, and later switched their allegiance again.)

The left wing of the NSDAP was mostly marginalized in the late 20ies, and completely destroyed after 1934 though.

In regards to the Tea Party however, one of the main (but not only) differences from fascism, is the Tea party's worship of free enterprise and capitalism, complete sanctity of private ownership, and insistence on as little government control and intervention in business as possible.

There are members of the Tea party who are working class (many in fact), and Tea party members who are so libertarian, that they have more in common with anarchists than with anybody in the Republican Party. That doesn't make it a fascist movement however, far from it.

[DannyMorin]

5. Rampant sexism

In what way are the Tea Party rampantly sexist?

If they value the life of the foetus above the rights of a woman over her own body, I disagree, but I can understand that position. Opposing abortion rights is not sexist.

[Orange Juche]

I'd say they're proto-fascist. When the economy drops out and unemployment hits 30%, the Tea Party will start being much more thuggish in its activities and bear far greater resemblance to what we know as fascist organizations. There's already some of these people at the border with assault rifles, so they're dangerous kinds of people.

They're a seedling at this point though, not a tree.

[Slavic]

In what way are the Tea Party rampantly sexist?

If they value the life of the foetus above the rights of a woman over her own body, I disagree, but I can understand that position. Opposing abortion rights is not sexist.

Sexism isn't even ideology bound either. Hence the scandals in the SWP.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Not every rightwing populist movement is "fascist". They shared some basic prejudices and assumptions with the supporters of fascist movements, but they share these through a common conservative populism, not the ideology of fascism. Rightwing populist ideology existed well before fascism, and conflating them simply oversimplifies both.

Of course, as I said, there were people whose views could be classified as "fascist", but the tea party was/is (is it still really relevant?) diverse. Of course we can cherry pick examples of tea partiers saying things or standing up for principles which parallel quite well with historical fascist movements, but those cases do not define the movement as a whole.

[Five Year Plan]

The Tea Party shares traits with fascism, but they are not fascists. They are confused petty-bourgeois populists of a right-wing variety.

[#FF0000]

In what way are the Tea Party rampantly sexist?

If they value the life of the foetus above the rights of a woman over her own body, I disagree, but I can understand that position. Opposing abortion rights is not sexist.

I kinda see what you're saying, but how is denying a woman the ability to control her body not sexist?

[Five Year Plan]

The tea party ate the ones who blocked Obamas minor immigration reform. Republicans might of bent were it not for the tea partiers, such as Rubio, Bratt, Bachmann, and Cruz. The tea party are the most reactionary republicans, characterizing them as anything else is wrong.

No wonder tea party people tend to be heavyset. I wonder: did the Obama-blockers taste good?

[DannyMorin]

I kinda see what you're saying, but how is denying a woman the ability to control her body not sexist?

The fact that it is the female gender that births children is inconsequential to them. Many anti-abortion advocates are women. Their position is to overvalue the rights of the unborn.

This isn't my opinion, but an anti-choice activist could turn this question around on you. "Don't you know that the majority of aborted foetuses are girls? Why do you value the right of the mother not to be inconvenienced by pregnancy over the right of the unborn female not to be murdered?" Etc etc.

[Non-Aligned]

Short answer: yes the TP are either lower petit bourgeois effected by the financial crisis or military vets. They are part in parcel with every hate group in america. Their program calls for the expulsion of nearly all immigrants, the privatization of education, and an end to welfare. They are scum and need to be fought in the streets. Not now, because we need to bide our time and organize the most oppressed layers of the working class, which is the determining factor of our success.
Can you back that up with a link to where it states all of that off teabagger websites?

[The Red Star Rising]

No wonder tea party people tend to be heavyset. I wonder: did the Obama-blockers taste good?
How many contradictory epithets have the Tea party thrown at the poor man?

Nazi, Communist, Socialist, Hippie, Homosexual (even if he was gay, why does it matter?), Godless Atheist, Muslim, Fascist, Stalinist, Kenyan (this matters...why?), Liberal, Radical, Wuss, Tyrant (How does one managed to be a wuss and a tyrant at once praytell? The job kind of requires strongmanning), and more!

Oh and I'm sure they've called him the Anti-Christ and an Alien infiltrator too.

I'm almost starting to think that the Tea party is as much defined by it's hate-lust for Obama as it is any real ideology beyond paleoconservatism.

[ReindeerThistle]

Given that "Fascism" itself represents, to me, a tactic of capitalism, where a state, ruling by extraordinary means, has united all of the elements opposed to organized labor, and have routed those elements of organized labor.

Given the extraordinary legislation Teahadists pass, given their backing by the Koch Brothers and their anti-union stance... I'd say they qualify ad fascists.

[Martin Luther]

I used to think they were "fascists" but not anymore.

They mobilize most of the same sectors of society that fascism did in its high period, but the conditions that allowed fascism to grow are not even close to existing in the modern US. The closest conditions are to be found in some Eastern European countries, such as Hungary, Greece, and especially Ukraine, where they are tolerated by and in the case of the last heavily armed by the state and allowed free reign to terrorize leftists and certain ethnic groups.

The only fascists we have in the US are fringe forces which at best try to ride the Tea Party wave (i.e. the 'American Freedom Party').

[Hagalaz]

I was doing some research and it suddenly came to me... The tea party are 100% fascist, for those who arent American, the Tea Party are a group of far right extremists that deviate even farther to the right than normal Republicans.

Lets look at some of the characteristics of a fascist
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism
5. Rampant sexism
6. A controlled mass media
7. Obsession with national security
8. Religion and government are intertwined
9. Power of corporations protected
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts
12. Obsession with crime and punishment
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption
14. Fraudulent elections

Are the Tea Party fascists? Are they Nazis? Look at those 14 points then look at their ideology. You tell me.


The Tea party and most of the Republican party ARE fascists...They deny it and theyll even call us leftists fascists (they love attempting to redefine words that describe them in an unflattering way)

Anyways rant over. Thoughts anyone?

I respectfully suggest that you try a little more reading.

[Martin Luther]

I respectfully suggest that you try a little more reading.

What would you suggest? The politically incorrect guide to right wing bullshit?

[Slavic]

Given that "Fascism" itself represents, to me, a tactic of capitalism, where a state, ruling by extraordinary means, has united all of the elements opposed to organized labor, and have routed those elements of organized labor.

Given the extraordinary legislation Teahadists pass, given their backing by the Koch Brothers and their anti-union stance... I'd say they qualify ad fascists.


Being Anti-Union doesn't mean that you are a fascist. If this was the case then there must exist untold millions of fascists around the world.

[ReindeerThistle]

Being Anti-Union doesn't mean that you are a fascist. If this was the case then there must exist untold millions of fascists around the world.

Being anti-organized labor, while favoring a "free-market" economy and being in favor of ruling through extraordinary means -- all of which benefit the ruling class at the expense of the working class -- makes the Teahadists fascists.

Hell, Huey Long was fascist. So was Juan Peron. It is not jackboots and swatikas.

[Црвена]

No. Being fascist isn't just being a hypocritical authoritarian asshole (if it was, then yeah, the Tea Party are definitely fascist) but masquerading as collectivist as well. Generally fascism is economically centrist, supporting corporations but never letting corporate power override state power, and historically fascist countries have had quite mixed economies. The Tea Party worships this utopian, laissez-faire capitalist fairytale that existed for a fraction of a second in the 19th century before the government realised that they couldn't have all the workers suffocating in their factories, and they pretend to value individual liberty (unless the individual in question wants any civil rights at all) while fascists pretend the opposite, so they're not fascist.

[Buttscratcher]

No, they're not fascists. And games of hot potato with terms like "fascism" that only serve to defame opponents is ridiculous, let's not stoop down to their level.

[RedMaterialist]

I was doing some research and it suddenly came to me... The tea party are 100% fascist, for those who arent American, the Tea Party are a group of far right extremists that deviate even farther to the right than normal Republicans.

Lets look at some of the characteristics of a fascist
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism
5. Rampant sexism
6. A controlled mass media
7. Obsession with national security
8. Religion and government are intertwined
9. Power of corporations protected
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts
12. Obsession with crime and punishment
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption
14. Fraudulent elections

Are the Tea Party fascists? Are they Nazis? Look at those 14 points then look at their ideology. You tell me.


The Tea party and most of the Republican party ARE fascists...They deny it and theyll even call us leftists fascists (they love attempting to redefine words that describe them in an unflattering way)

Anyways rant over. Thoughts anyone?

You forgot the most important characteristic of fascists: They believe there is a moral obligation to murder international socialists and communists. Modern fascism began in 1922 with Mussolini five years after the Russian Revolution. Mussolini, Hitler, Imperial Japan, and about a dozen other fascist governments really meant it when they signed the Anti-Comintern Pact. They wanted to kill Bolshevism, and Hitler almost did it.

Being a commie-killer is considered a badge of honor for the tea-party.

[John Nada]

There's no socialist/communist for them to kill. In the Tea Parties' mind center-right Democrats are ultra-leftist beyond the pale.

Their whole ideology is based on racism. They claim the recession was caused by Carter and Clinton forcing the poor banks to loan money to minorities. And their focus on the Federal Reserve and the deficit eludes to antisemitism("Just keeps printing money") and racism("Illegals using up all the welfare money")

I don't think it's entirely fascist yet, but could provide a nucleus for a fascist movement.