Tim Phillips, lobbyist and chairman of Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is in Europe and Oslo to endorse and teach the Norwegian right wing party (Fremskrittspartiet) how to organize so-called grassroots campaigns. But the grass root campaigns such as those the Tea Party Movement and AFP holds aren't bottom-up crowds, but pure lobbying campaigns financed by billionaires with a clear political agenda.
When the financial crisis was a fact Mr. Phillips and AFP among others funded and organized campaigns to spread disinformation, fear and hatred. Crowds called the American president a Marxist to fight against government intervention to counteract the financial crisis. To the contrary Newsweek interviewed our Party Leader and Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg this week about the financial rescue that really worked.
The campaigns have also traveled the country with a bloody hand logo to deny poor Americans the right to health insurance, and launched the "Hot Air Tour" to claim that the climate crisis is conspiracy and carbon cap and trade is the expressway to national bankruptcy. These so-called grass root movements and Mr. Phillip's salary is for the most part paid by the oil and gas company Koch Industries. This week he shared the podium with Party Leader of the right wing party Ms. Siv Jensen, called Scandinavia's Margaret Thatcher by her own International Secretary. Next week he shares the stage with non other then the Tea Party queen herself, Sarah Palin, to fight their common goal of tax cuts and limited government.
Until now we in Europe have watched this absurd political theatre from afar, but now I truly worry that the right wing party will learn from these extremely reactionary forces and adapt the same strategies, in Norway and Europe. It represents a form of campaigning that the Norwegian Labour Party fears. I am truly afraid that our society will not be recognizable in 20 years if the right wing party comes to power, with the help of a speculative American lobbyist - far away from the real grass root.
I ask you American progressives and people from the real grass root movements. How can we disclose and prevent these pure lobbying campaigns financed by billionaire's political influence? Please tip me on Twitter or Facebook.
Raymond Johansen, Party Secretary of the Norwegian Labour Party, which is the senior partner in the current Norwegian government, with Jens Stoltenberg as the current Prime Minister of Norway. The Labour Party has been the central actor in building the Norwegian Welfare State after the Norwegian Model post World War Two.
#teapartyfear
@raymondjohansen
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The strategy to use against any American-style, right-wing movement that comes to Norway is actually quite simple: keep reminding the Norwegian people about what they have, and compare that to what Americans DO NOT have.
Norwegian citizens have the guaranteed benefits of free healthcare, inexpensive university education and retirement income. Few U.S. citizens are guaranteed any of these things, and many go into debt (and go bankrupt) trying to get them.
This side-by-side comparison of American versus Norwegian politics should convince all but the most irrational Norwegians that the Tea Party movement has no place in Norway.
Thank you for caring about what goes on in the USA. Most Americans, even those like me who are of Norwegian descent, show little or no interest in what goes on Norway, or indeed even much larger countries.
Should you be afraid of the Tea Party movement? Not really. This is, as I am sure you are aware, not a real movement. It was originally organized by a Beltway PR firm. There are already many different Tea Party groups, which indicates the fractiousness of the American Right. The two main groups are Tea Party Express, which is under the tutelage of Americans for Progress, another fake grassroots movement. If you look at the Tea Party Express, almost all of their activists are sturdy and well-trained Republican operatives, who are simply doing business under a new name.Their talking points, fiscal conservatism, limited government, and opposition to taxation, are the same talking points the right wing of the Republican Party has used since the 1950s.
The other group, Tea Party Patriots, also includes some cadres from the Libertarian Party, which is a group that combines anti-statism of the right and left, so it opposes both universal health care and laws against marijuana use. Libertarians are notably ineffective political organizers, they are intellectuals who live in their heads and don't listen to any voices except those that come out of their heads.
Do not give in to fear. The method behind the Tea Party is to adopt a militant stance, so that people will be afraid of them. That is how they took over the Town Hall meetings on health care, following a well-worn script. There are people with money behind them, but expose their lies and expose their financial backing, and you will not have much to fear.
The difference between the Tea Party and a true movement of reaction is that the Tea Party is a bogus movement which was dreamed up in a Beltway PR firm. It is staffed by experienced Republican operatives and says nothing that the right wing of the Republican Party has always said, it just says it more militantly. It is also primarily a movement of old people, who are upset at the election of a President who in their view is insufficiently white and therefore insufficiently American.
Seriously, invading people and slavery happened all the time throughout world history.
Blaming them for what other people--their cruel enemies--did because they live on the same continent is immature emotional prejudice and has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Talk about "absurd theatre!"
Btw, the US ran a pretty effective campaign of genocide right here. We systematically killed over 20 million native Americans in the mid-nineteenth century. So let's not go calling any kettles black, ok?
This means 82% of Americans are not part of the "tea party" and 75% of Americans don't support the "tea party".
This small group gets way too much media attention because they are the loudest and show the most extremism. It doesn't mean they are the American majority.
The recent revelation that the GOP began the "Tea Party Express" 3 years before the election as support for Bush was waning and they knew they couldn't run future campaigns on the GOP failed policies under Bush shows that they were never a "grassroots" movement.
The GOP planned the bus tours, designed the name & logo, setup to take donations from members who joined and got Fox on board to advertise, promote and sponsor events.
After many extremists joined the group and the negative rhetoric and signs shown at "tea party" events drew enough scrutiny even the GOP and Fox are distancing themselves from this group.
America is a diverse country and the "tea party" has no diversity.
The GOP knows that after setting up this new campaign arm of the GOP and finding it didn't draw the numbers or the diversity it had hoped for they distance themselves gradually as it grows closer to election time.
Copying the "tea party" is a mistake, unless they want to copy the GOP.
Ensure they do not get away with meaningless slogans and spittle-flecked hate speech - nail them on the issues and insist they address them. If they don't understand the issues - make that clear.
Correct their lies and misinformation IMMEDIATELY - media outlets that parrot their trash without service to the truth need to be called on their journalistic bias/laziness. Otherwise a symbiotic relationship will develop between these two parasites that will eventually consume the host.
And finally, ensure that the good men who do nothing - are inspired to do SOMETHING. At the very least, vote.
From now on they are the 'Tee party", spread it around, that is the most accurate label so far.
or do they? it just makes better press and until we get our press back from news entertainment and sensationalism ratings driven drivel those with real news had better learn how to usurp this takeover.
Hitler was a genius at propoganda and looked what happened. We need to take fear out of the equation--FDR managed to from a wheelchair so it can be done. But he was an old white guy so he had that going for him with the establishment.
Am I comparing repubs to Nazis? I know and love many republicans who have been lifelong friends and have my back (I don't belong to a party--think they are divisive) but they are NOT tee partiers--they have common sense and know when they are being BS'ed.
repub leaders are the ones using this to keep their jobs so they can keep their hands in everyone's pockets. it always comes down to money and power is a way to make sure you keep the money.
Tee partiers beware of who you support, it will come back to you.
Sorry to say but: If your group of people excist of 99% white old christians and extreme right participants there is no evidence in the world going to convince me that your so-called party is inclusive to other cultures and is solely based on irrational fears and racsism to hide the fact of their ignorance.
There is no traction for a group like this in Europe. They would be exposed and destroyed by the media here, since our media are still, to some degree at least, capable of doing their job. The idiocy, incoherence and cognitive dissonance of their 'message' would be laid bare in seconds. And when the numbers at rallies dwindled to a few thousand, never mind 300, coverage would, rightly, cease in the national press. Whereas in the US, the Fox-sponsored tea party continues to generate news "stories" ad absurdum. But anti-war demonstrations attended by tens and hundreds of thousands of people are not mentioned.