The rise of reactionary activists.
Republicans and their conservative allies insist that racism is a
thing of the past. But their party still serves as the bastion of
anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-black, and anti-feminist activism. Not
since the Great Depression has its lower-middle class base experienced
such disorientation and disruption. President George W. Bush left them
with two failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the bursting of the
sub-prime housing bubble and the crashing of the derivates market in
2007. And then, on top of it, came the electoral defeat in 2008 that
produced the first black president of the United States. Military
miscalculation abroad, economic collapse at home, and burning political
humiliation fueled the stubborn radicalism and small-minded resentment
of what would become the Tea Party. Coming from non-urban areas mostly
in the South and the Mid-West, but also from white immigrant enclaves in
some big cities, its members have their own forms of moral cognition.
They have little use for globalization, the welfare state, new social
movements or the "adversary culture" inherited from the 1960s. Wearing
revolutionary garb and tricorn hats, disrupting town meetings devoted to
healthcare and other social issues, bullying progressive congressional
representatives and holding rallies of their own, they constitute a new
generation of reactionary activists calling for "revolution" - though,
naturally, only one that will protect their privileges and interests.
The coming together of Libertarians, bigots and religious fanatics in to the Tea Party.
The Tea Party meshes libertarian capitalists preaching
the gospel of the free market and reactionary populists intent upon
rehabilitating "family values," rehabilitating religion, and a parochial
vision of community. Over the last century, for the most part, these
trends were diametrically at odds with one another: Libertarians had
little use for rabble-rousing bigots, religious fanatics or the like,
while populists hated big business, open markets, and the scientific
culture of modernity. Ronald Reagan initially brought these
contradictory trends together. He blended the anti-union and
de-regulating interests of elites committed to the classical principles
of the free market with the cultural conservatism and hyper-nationalism
of the old "moral" majority and burgeoning religious movements. George
W. Bush built on that coalition. But there was new urgency for an
organizational alliance between liberations and populists following the
economic collapse of 2008 and subsequent presidential victory of Barack
Obama. Fears of dramatic state intervention into the economy blended
with horror over the symbolic implications of having a black president
for the image of community associated with old television shows like
Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, and Happy Days. Out of this
alliance and these anxieties, indeed, the Tea Party was born in 2009.
The GOP embraces and then succumbs to the Tea Party.
The GOP was quick to recognize its importance.
Seasoned operatives of the Republican Party were soon offering their
advice and leadership. They originally thought the Tea Party might be
manipulated. But the opposite took place: the tail wound up wagging the
dog. There is an old saying: styles make fights. The new rhetoric was
supplied by Fox News and a score of feral media demagogues, among whom
Glenn Beck and Michael Savage were merely the most venal. Evangelicals
and far-right groups associated with them and others like them, and the
Tea Party routinely began referring to President Obama as the
Anti-Christ and as an Imam. The bigot applauded. Advertisements compared
him and his family to chimpanzees, portrayed the White House with rows
of watermelons on the lawn, and implied that the president is a crack
addict. But the problem apparently was not the bigot's friends who
supposedly hate blacks: it was rather Obama who clearly hates whites.
The new president was seen as the advocate of the (black) welfare cheat,
the (Latino) immigrant, the anti-Christian (Arab) terrorist, the
supposedly overpaid (lazy and shiftless) union worker, and anti-family
(feminist and gay) forces. The Tea Party channeled the bigot's
prejudices. It would become easy for him to identify with the (white)
business elite whose (seemingly color-blind) policies attacking the
bureaucratic welfare state appeared intent upon recreating a patriarchal
world of white privilege.
Capitalist fundamentalism.
Lingering economic recession, fear of radical social
and economic reform, and fanatical mobilization (coupled with
disillusionment of those expecting yet more radical changes by the new
regime) brought about the sweeping victory of the far right in the
Congressional elections of 2010. Now it was the Republicans' turn to
applaud. The Tea Party was not simply nuts. Challenging the seemingly
sacrosanct image of FDR and the New Deal, whatever its racist and
intolerant elements, the Tea Party had become the agent of what might be
termed capitalist fundamentalism. This meant highlighting the
"invisible hand" of the market and the individual (not the accumulation
process and class) as the units of social analysis. The state budget
could now be equated with a household budget and everyone would now echo
the mantra of Margaret Thatcher: "There is no society, there are only
individuals." The welfare state would now be condemned (once again) not
merely as wasteful - but immoral. Hard work brings rewards. Individuals
are responsible for themselves, not others. Lack of ambition and
foresight by individuals are the causes of unemployment and poverty. No
free rides! Evangelicals know the "truth": no abortions, no condoms, and
no gay marriage - women back to the kitchen and gays to the closet.
White is Right!
With the increasing influence of the Tea Party upon
the Republican Party, indeed, the once modest home afforded the bigot
turned into a mansion. Rooms would prove available especially for
someone who is neither white nor male and who seemingly represents the
less privileged. Women like former Republican vice-presidential
candidate Sarah Palin or Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (R-Minnesota)
reaffirm the house-wife or the "soccer mom" in the face of an economy in
which the single breadwinner has become an anachronism. A gay couple
(two male earners) is trotted out occasionally to congratulate the Tea
Party for its libertarian values. There is the Latino Senator Marco
Rubio (R-Fla), who is apparently terrified by the immigrant mob
threatening to invade from South of the border. The bigot has also made
friends with an African-American or two. Hermann Cain received his
applause for insisting that Blacks were "brain-washed" into supporting
the Democratic Party, thereby confirming the bigot's old belief that
they are too stupid to favor egalitarian and redistributive policies on
their own. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas champions tough love
while his (white) wife champions the Tea Party. Then there is
Congressman Allen West (R-Fla), whose idea of tolerance is to tell
liberals "to get the hell out of the United States" and then identify
the Democratic Party with the Nazi propaganda machine. This cast of
characters, it should be noted, is not simply useful for propagandizing
the undecided: it also reinforces the bigot's idea of what makes a real
person of color or a real woman. These political figures validate the
benevolent image of a bygone America in which taxes were low, government
was small, women were in the kitchen, and the only important color was
white.
US low among nations for Social Justice.
The clock has already been turned back. A study
released on October 29, 2011, by the Bertelsmann Stiftung showed that
the United States has plummeted into the bottom five among the thirty
nations comprising the industrial world in "Overall Social Justice
Rating," "Overall Poverty Prevention Rating," Overall Poverty Rate,"
"Child Poverty," and "Income Inequality." Libertarian economic policies
championed by the Tea Party endanger democratic deliberation, diversity,
and cosmopolitan ideals. New socio-economic burdens and constraints
also threaten disadvantaged groups. People of color will
disproportionately suffer from a flat tax as well as other regressive
attempts to shrink the tax base and, subsequently, bankrupt the welfare
state. African-Americans and Latinos will be disproportionately impacted
by attempts to demand photo-ID, literacy tests, and the like in order
to vote. Redistricting and racist zoning regulations are recreating
segregation while the uncurbed use of private money in election
campaigns is disenfranchising the working people and the poor.
Privatizing the prison system has sharply increased incarceration,
especially among minority groups: people of color constitute 70% of
inmates, nationally, and one in three African-American males is
currently either awaiting trial, in jail, or on parole. Since convicts
cannot vote, hundred of thousands of primarily African-Americans and
people of color are currently being disenfranchised by what has been
called the "new Jim Crow."
Bigotry is accepted by the Tea Party GOP.
There is hardly a policy proposal forwarded by the GOP
that does not disadvantage people of color, women, and working people -
and, worse, there is hardly a single major Republican politician
willing to publicly challenge the rhetoric or the proposals of the far
right and the Tea Party. The mainstream has justified the extreme. All
candidates for the Republican presidential nomination of 2012 seem to
worry about a "disappearing white majority" as they take turns in
attacking the Civil Rights Act of 1964, "food stamp presidents," and
critics of religious dogmatism (as well as the Crusades). White
supremacists of varying shades try to recruit and mix with luminaries of
the Republican Party at conferences like that hosted by the American
Conservative Union. Fragments of half-baked conspiracy theories float
around in the minds of many grassroots activists in the Tea Party. Obama
may look like he is in charge but (especially since he is black) the
more paranoid insist that he is being controlled by more powerful
interests and organizations like the Bilderberg banking group, the
Trilateral Commission, Freemasons, Islamic terrorists, or Jews - or all
of them working in concert. Conspiracy theory is common currency in the
Tea Party and, again, there is hardly a single Republican willing to
condemn it. Such talk makes no sense and thus frustration grows,
resentment increases, and rage intensifies. It is taken out not merely
on African-Americans but on other outsiders as well: gays, immigrants,
Arabs, and Jews. Bigotry has become a commonplace of political life in
the United States. The jargon of prejudice, sometimes veiled and
sometimes not, is now so prevalent that most people simply shrug their
shoulders. And the Tea Party has been in the vanguard. The influence of
their words on action may be indirect: but it is, nonetheless, palpable.
"Racism is alive and well in the United States."
Everyday violence (that mostly goes unreported)
against homosexuals, immigrants, and minorities is simply a routine fact
of American life. Doctors performing abortions outside the larger
cities do so at their own risk. The virtual obsession of the Tea Party
with the right to own firearms (including AK-47s) does not merely
express a desire to hunt ducks. Mainstream politicians of the Republican
Party again fall into line. Sure: explicit calls for the use of
violence come only from the margins. Just as the conservative mainstream
has helped legitimate the Tea Party, however, the Tea Party is giving
new hope to fanatics who stand even further on the right. The Republican
Party has lacked the courage to take on the bigots in its own ranks -
and its toleration of the Tea Party validates precisely what its
ideologues wish to deny: racism is alive and well in the United States.
And, all the while, the bigot is smiling. The approving winks that he
gets are evident everywhere. What one reaps is what one sows. The
prejudices of times past have not disappeared. One just needs to know
where to look. Talk about the "end of racism" has become a bad joke.
Conservative politics attests to its continuation. The Tea Party will
probably find itself in the trashcan of history once Republicans suffer
some serious electoral defeats. But its mass base will undoubtedly
survive and take new organizational forms as it always has in the past -
from the "Know-Nothings" to the KKK to McCarthy to the "Silent
Majority" and the "Moral Majority" and God knows what other fringe
groups. For the foreseeable future, however, the bigot has no need to
worry. With the Republican Party, indeed, he has once again found
himself a happy home.
