Tea Party Poses Threat to Democracy
Tea Party Poses Threat to Democracy
There have been ugly incidents at Tea Party events as well as openings for progressive dialog
The Great Recession has yielded at least two unexpected paradoxes. First, the nation's leading right-wing movement draws its name and inspiration from the anti-corporate Boston Tea Party in 1773, which was actually a guerrilla action to destroy the property of the world's first multinational corporation, held in response to the Tea Act, under which the British government granted East India privileged access to the U.S. market at the expense of small importers and shopkeepers. Nonetheless, the "pro-free market" Tea Partiers of today glorify this early blow against corporate globalization. Second, the most vociferous and visible protest activity hitting the streets of America has emerged not from those most victimized, but from a stridently right-wing Tea Party whose base is relatively affluent, well-educated, overwhelmingly white, and racially resentful.
Chip Berlet, co-author of Right-Wing Populism in America and a long-time student of rightist movements for Political Research Associates, notes, "They grew up in families and social clusters where these ideas are considered common sense and what America is all about. Their ideas are based on what they are hearing from inside their 'information silos.'"
However, stressed Berlet, "Many in this group are white middle class and working class" whose real-life experiences with corporate power could potentially make them receptive to progressive appeals so the left cannot afford to wish them into non-existence...
Full text: http://www.zcommunications.org/tea-p...by-roger-bybee
