Politico gave a platform the other day to a couple of teabaggers who, predictably, used that platform to hurl predictable attacks at, predictably, liberals:
A clear pattern of behavior has emerged over the last 16 months. According to liberals, if you disagree with their thinking, and if you disagree with the Obama administration, you are not only wrong, you are a "racist."
The latest strike by the left comes from the NAACP, which has resolved that the tea party movement is inherently "racist." At its most simple, this is a direct attack on the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans.
The only surprising thing about this attack is that the authors, Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler, the co-founders of some right-wing group called Tea Party Patriots, restrict their horizon to 16 months. After all, this is the sort of thing we've heard from conservatives for years and years (if not decades and decades), the implication being that there is no racism on the right (or, here, in the Tea Party "movement") and that liberals play the race card simply in order to discredit conservatives.
The authors are right that their "movement" is quite large -- and I use "movement" in quotes because it isn't a unified front but rather a loosely connected collection of fringe groups that share much of the same extremist right-wing ideology (and while they're fringe in terms of the political spectrum, they're far more mainstream in terms of conservative and Republican politics).
But the NAACP is right that there are "racist elements" among the teabaggers. "You must expel the bigots and racists in your ranks or take full responsibility for all of their actions," NAACP president Benjamin Jealous has said." Note that Jealous did not say that all teabaggers are "bigots and racists," just certain "elements." There's a big difference there, but the hostile defensiveness of teabaggers is telling: either they don't want to own up to the racism and bigotry of their own kind, out of ignorant denial or willful suppression of the truth, or they agree with it but are smart enough not to be so outspoken about their real views.
There is extensive evidence of racism and bigotry among teabaggers, much of it directed at President Obama. Like so many conservatives before them, the teabaggers may try to turn it around on their critics, claiming that allegations of racism are part of some nefarious liberal smear campaign, but they cannot escape the undeniable truth -- that is, undeniable for any reasonable person who lives in reality -- that there is an ugly strain of racism and bigotry in their ranks, a strain that taints the entire "movement."
Defenders of slavery, opponents of civil rights -- they were racists, not the victims of liberal propaganda. The same goes for the racists in the KKK and the neo-Nazi movement, just as it goes for the various racists in the Tea Party "movement." No, that "movement" isn't the KKK, and not all teabaggers are racist, but to deny the existence of widespread racism in the Tea Party "movement" is to deny a fairly significant element of what that "movement" is all about.
Helpfully, Think Progress has put together "a short video demonstrating the vile racism that has been exhibited at some Tea Party events." I encourage you to watch it:
(Cross-posted from The Reaction.)
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-08-12/the-gops-misplaced-rage/full/
(to the melody of Stairway to Heaven)
There's a 'Bagger who knows
From her head to her toes
That she's buying her way into 'Bagger heaven.
When she gets there she'll say,
"Where is my black valet?
You can't count on those people for nothin'."
ooooooooh and she's buying her way into 'Bagger heaven.
In the field where she stands
'Midst the Mexican field hands,
She becomes like the Gadsden coiled snake, hissing
For no reason or rhyme:
"Can't you people be on time?
Look at all of the parsnips you're missing!"
She feels her new dress blouse needs some fresh starch
So then she'll march
Right down there to her local cleaners.
She says, "Koreans there will clean them
If you demean them.
There happiest when they are suffering."
Ooooooooh and she's buying her way into 'Bagger heaven.
(Insert Jimmy Page guitar solo here)
And as she winds on down the road
Obama just makes her head implode.
Irrational thought gets a stranglehold.
That's why she's such a big a-hole.
And she's buying her way into 'Bagger heaven.
No one's calling me racist. But then again, I'm not waving racist signs, making racist claims, pretending that racist death threats weren't issued against African-american congressmen, or posting racist screeds to blogs, either. The Tea Party people are doing that. So, own up to it.
Someone is twisting the truth in an effort to discredit the Tea Party movement.
Also, please ignore any comments (as well as the slob who wrote this article)
using the term "teabagger" as this is a crude and vulgar reference to a sex act
that has nothing to do with Tea Party Patriots.
Crooks and Liars
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/tea-party-leader-mark-williams-mocks-naacp
There is no surprise in the ugliness of the tirades against President Obama. The same or similar things are easily spouted with regard to Revs. Sharpton, Jackson or Wright, not because there is principled opposition to their work, but simply because they are Black.
These are the same people who terrorized civil rights marchers, a generation removed.
Basically, it is like the difference between slapstick and a wisecrack. (no pun intended)
It's a rather complex argument I will try to make here; I'll probably run out of words or bulldoze some nuance.
It is a common rhetorical trick to insist that the person on the other side of the debate condemn some portion of the people who are walking with them. The implication is that failure to condemn is approval. It succeeds to some degree, which is why it was employed against the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s and the Communists who supported the goals of integration and equality. Isn't that a form of divide and conquer?
As near as I can tell, all revolutionaries make use of supporters who adopt the cause to act out their personal issues of misogyny or hatred of authority. If the revolutionaries win, those elements are expelled because the day-to-day running of government requires bureaucrats, not guerrillas. (As I think about it, sometimes the bad folks are diverted into the internal security agencies, so as to spy, harass, and imprison regime opponents as counter-revolutionaries.)
Which is not to say I disagree with the NAACP's point. As conscientious participants in politics, we need to hear everyone so as to understand how much is pill and how much is sugar coating.
I do suspect those who idolize the exemplary but flawed men of 1789. For consistency, shouldn't small-government freedomists be for retroactive granting of Confederate secession?