Tea Party radicalism is misunderstood: Meet the “Newest Right” - MUST READ

[malaise]

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/06/tea_party_radicalism_is_misunderstood_meet_the_newest_right/
<snip>

Sunday, Oct 6, 2013 05:59 AM -0500
Tea Party radicalism is misunderstood: Meet the “Newest Right”
Our sense of the force currently paralyzing the government is full of misconceptions -- including what to call it
By Michael Lind

The Newest Right, then, cannot be explained in terms of abstract ideological extremism, working-class populism or ignorance and stupidity. What, then, is the Newest Right?

The political strategy of the Newest Right, then, is simply a new strategy for the very old, chiefly-Southern Jefferson-Jackson right. It is a perfectly rational strategy, given its goal: maximizing the political power and wealth of white local notables who find themselves living in states, and eventually a nation, with present or potential nonwhite majorities.

Turning over federal programs to the states allows Southern states controlled by local conservative elites to make those programs less generous—thereby attracting investment to their states by national and global corporations seeking low wages.

While each of the Newest Right’s proposals and policies might be defended by libertarians or conservatives on other grounds, the package as a whole—from privatizing Social Security and Medicare to disenfranchising likely Democratic voters to opposing voting rights and citizenship for illegal immigrants to chopping federal programs into 50 state programs that can be controlled by right-wing state legislatures—represents a coherent and rational strategy for maximizing the relative power of provincial white elites at a time when their numbers are in decline and history has turned against them. They are not ignoramuses, any more than Jacksonian, Confederate and Dixiecrat elites were idiots. They know what they want and they have a plan to get it—which may be more than can be said for their opponents.
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[Roland99]

1. I think that article overestimates the power and intellect of the teabagger congress critter

Now, the powers and the money *behind* those teacritters would be a better topic.

I mean...look at northern FL. There's a former large animal vet/taxidermist with no political experience who had some issues w/his career and saw an opportunity to jump into the ring (or, more likely, was encouragee to jump into the ring). The guy is a complete fooking moron. Literally. This guy's not thinking that deeply! He's thinking, "Hey, I've got a fat paycheck right now and I can ride this wave of white man power as long as I can."

[pangaia]

5. I agree. It is the power behind

the morans who are the real danger.

[supernova]

6. I think he's still clarified

the correct segment of the population who call themselves tea partyers though.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

[freshwest]

43. I've met these guys on their home turf and it is as they say. Even the NASA engineer wants default.

That's in an OP here, he's educated and well-off and has enough of our tax money in his bank account to weather this, like others who follow this ideology.

These are not the ones you see protesting with hand written signs in the streets. They supply the muscle to intimidate voters and are rich enough to travel the country. To them, all the people being hurt should just FOAD.

It's shocking how many government workers have this attitude. Even though it's a small minority, they do not see themselves as public servants, but quite entitled. Many are civilian contractors and believe they are better than the people that pay them.

[SaveAmerica]

14. I think he's suggesting pure racism is their fuel, not intelligence

and that the money from the Kochs and Popes are making it happen. Those big wigs are fueling their racism and using it for their gain, too, but ultimately the fear and hatred from the people on the ground are giving them power to say and do whatever it takes to change their situation. They're scared, they see the balance change, they see reality as they think it is on the verge of such a huge change they're messing their pants from it.

Pure fear, and when you're scared and backed into a corner you lash out and do insane stuff.

[Roland99]

15. That's true...wrote about that just the other day

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023762851

[SaveAmerica]

21. Your thoughts on the poorest whites being OK with keeping richest whites

in power to maintain the image they want no matter how it hurts them are very interesting. They just don't see reality as it is.

Love how our comments about their cornered and irrational fear are almost exactly the same...

[Roland99]

23. yeah...that's what they are, though! Cornered animals

They fear change, truly. Esp. change that comes from self-awareness. That's the most dreaded of all.

[bigbrother05]

27. They, TPTB, are feeding that fire, the smoldering racial resentment/fear

The ones funding and organizing this know the racist embers have never died. With the right fuel and careful tending it has erupted in the current situation.

There was already the demographic change looming and Obama's success has made their nightmares seem the more plausible. It doesn't matter that he has governed from the center- right, they view anything from this administration as attacking their "birthright" to rule.

The Newest Right understands that the tide is turning and they are pulling out all the stops to lock in whatever advantages they can to delay the inevitable sharing of power that will come.

That is their real fear, sharing with those they consider to be inferior.

[xchrom]

2. du rec.

[Laelth]

3. k&r for the truth, however depressing it may be. n/t

-Laelth

[Benton D Struckcheon]

4. Oldest right is better

There was a book about Greece, The Ancient City, which pointed out that the elite were made up of people who could trace their families back to a god/goddess, with long, elaborate family trees, not unlike the Brahmins of India, who allegedly keep their family trees on old scrolls. These elites in those city-states tried their best to keep the power of the central authorities of their states as weak as possible, because the stronger the central authority was, the more it interfered with their own power over the proles.
This is no different. The Southern elite and the Northern one are both largely made up of families that can trace their roots back a long way, and will tell you all about it with enthusiasm if you ask them. The proles are made up of former slaves who by definition can't, except back to Emancipation and maybe a generation or two before that, and immigrants who's family history lies elsewhere. There's some poor whites in the mix who can trace their history back a long way, but we know who they mostly identify with; they cement the power of the elites who lord it over them. These elites are, once again, irritated by any central authority that can interfere with their own power over the proles. Hence the opposition to Federal gov't and the never-ending insistence on states' rights.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

[malaise]

7. Nice post

Brand new second hand????

[Benton D Struckcheon]

8. What BMW calls it: pre-owned. n/t

[malaise]

9. Same thing

[HereSince1628]

10. Yes, it's the new Federalism--government by a coalition of billionaire controlled states

following billionaire co-ordinated agenda.

[malaise]

11. Better known as

Fascism

[underpants]

12. Also, it is much cheaper to get someone elected at the state level

Even collectively it is cheaper to control a state body then to elect one congressman let alone a senator. Much more bang for your buck....and you get to gerrymander to districts every 10 years.

[philly_bob]

13. Wonder what aristocratic Sen. Robert Byrd would have said about shutdown?

I know he was about the only sane voice in the Bush/Cheney pre-Iraq stampede. He is certainly a member of an old Southern ruling family.

If OP thesis is right, he would have supported Teabaggers.

I realize this is a rhetorical, unanswerable question.

[Jackpine Radical]

19. There are always a few outliers, people whose conscience eventually redirects their lifecourse.

Byrd certainly started as a racist Dixiecrat

[Oilwellian]

26. Actually, it is answerable

Senator Byrd began his political career as a perfect example of the Southern White Aristocrat.

He filibustered against the 1964 Civil Rights Act and supported the Vietnam War, but later backed civil rights measures and criticized the Iraq War. He was a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s, serving as a recruiter and leader for his chapter, but later left the group and denounced racial intolerance.

Wiki

Somewhere along the way, Byrd saw the light and it had to take a great deal of courage to stand against his compadres agenda. Logically, one can conclude he would stand against the Teahadists today, and continue being that rare Byrd in the circle of Dixiecrats.

Most political junkies know he was an anomaly and doesn't fit the typical profile of a Southern White Aristocrat. I'm not sure why you would even bring him up. It's just so, silly.

[philly_bob]

45. Silly? What do you mean silly?

Do I amuse you? Huh?

-- Goodfellas

[SaveAmerica]

16. Their treatment of Obama matches their treatment of blacks in NC down east

around the turn of the last century. After emancipation and the re-build of the south and help to get slaves on some kind of positive path, black people were beginning to do very well there. They were getting educated, some got degrees and were doctors, business owners, home-owners. Through a series of accusations that were similar to the treatment that Obama gets and, ultimately, actual destruction of their livelihoods and lifestyles that way of life was stopped. They got uppity. They were taught a lesson.

I was searching for links to this part of our horrible history and found this paragraph that reaches back into that time and connects to the Tea Party of today. I see this exact mentality every day in their posts:

"Lynchings occurred most commonly in the smaller towns and isolated rural communities of the South where people were poor, mostly illiterate, and where there was a noticeable lack of wholesome community recreation. The people who composed mobs in such neighborhoods were usually small land holders, tenant farmers and common laborers, whose economic status was very similar to that of the Negro. They frequently found Black men economic competitors and bitterly resented any Negro progress. Their starved emotions made the raising of a mob a quick and simple process, and racial antagonism made the killing of Negroes a type of local amusement which broke the monotony of rural life. Although most participants in the lynching mobs were from the lower strata of Southern white society, occasionally middle and upper class whites took part, and generally condoned the illegal activity. Many Southern politicians and officials supported �lynch-law�, and came to power on a platform of race prejudice."
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1979/2/79.02.04.x.html

If you need more examples you can search for Wilmington, NC and 1898, I think it was. This article by Lind is right on.

[heaven05]

18. I love when the

real, vicious and evil racist underbelly of amerikkka is exposed. It's still here except lynching are replaced with out and out shootings of unarmed innocents. Thanks for the link to disseminate among friends and associates.

[SaveAmerica]

24. You're welcome. Sadly there is so much more but I don't have time for

looking for them. It's disgusting what they did but it looks like (based on our history) that approximately every 50 years they try to take us back to slave days and we just have to remind them it's not gonna happen.

[heaven05]

25. yepper!

with a vengeance!

[malaise]

29. Good post

Thanks for the link

[heaven05]

17. right on, the mark

[riderinthestorm]

20. A MUST READ article. Wow malaise! Thanks for posting. Big K&R

Another snip from the article:

Although racial segregation can no longer be employed, the tool kit of the older Southern white right is pretty much the same as that of the Newest Right:

The Solid South. By means of partisan and racial gerrymandering—packing white liberal voters into conservative majority districts and ghettoizing black and Latino voters–Republicans in Texas and other Southern and Western states control the U.S. Congress, even though in the last election more Americans voted for Democrats than Republicans. The same undemocratic technique makes the South far more Republican in its political representation than it really is in terms of voters.

The Filibuster. By using a semi-filibuster to help shut down the government rather than implement Obamacare, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is acting rationally on behalf of his constituency—the surburban and exurban white local notables of Texas and other states, whom the demagogic Senator seems to confuse with “the American people.” Newt Gingrich, another Southern conservative demagogue, pioneered the modern use of government shutdowns and debt-ceiling negotiations as supplements to the classic filibuster used by embattled white provincial elites who prefer to paralyze a federal government they cannot control.

Disenfranchisement. In state after state controlled by Republican governors and legislators, a fictitious epidemic of voter fraud is being used as an excuse for onerous voter registration requirements which have the effect, and the manifest purpose, of disenfranchising disproportionately poor blacks and Latinos. The upscale leaders of the Newest Right also tend to have be more supportive of mass immigration than their downscale populist supporters—on the condition, however, that “guest workers” and amnestied illegal immigrants not be allowed to vote or become citizens any time soon. In the twenty-first century, as in the twentieth and nineteenth, the Southern ideal is a society in which local white elites lord it over a largely-nonwhite population of poor workers who can’t vote.

Localization and privatization of federal programs. It is perfectly rational for the white local notables of the South and their allies in other regions to oppose universal, federal social programs, if they expect to lose control of the federal government to a new, largely-nonwhite national electoral majority.

[malaise]

28. It's how they stole Kucinich's seat

for example.

[Eleanors38]

22. The last 2 sentences. nt

[Thinkingabout]

30. As pointed out this morning on GPS, when a small portion of a body refuses to allow the

majority to operate as we should be doing it becomes a dictatorship and it appears Cruz is attempting to become America's Castro. This needs to stop immediately and not be allowed to continue.

[wildeyed]

31. Exactly what is going on in NC.

Glad someone laid it out so succinctly.

[malaise]

32. Yep - Art Pope

[nadinbrzezinski]

33. And I will note this, I have been writing about this here for years

Sorry, that I do not have Salon as a Platform.

[malaise]

34. True you have pointed out that they do have their agenda

[nadinbrzezinski]

35. And it is the sourthern agenda

[Pretzel_Warrior]

46. lol. awwwww...a journo not getting their due?

please link to where exactly you made the connection that the Tea Party is merely a new face for the Dominionist Southern State-based and local powerful. I must have missed it.

Aside from that, Salon has a certain brand. So does nadinbrzenzinski.

[Skidmore]

36. Yes and carried out

with aplomb while progressives sat on their votes and passive aggressively ceded power to the regressive factions of the nation. There is no excuse for this in my opinion.

[Zorra]

37. ALEC

Know your enemy.

http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed

ALEC at 40: Turning Back the Clock on Prosperity and Progress

[nadinbrzezinski]

38. ALEC is just an actual small facet of this

[Zorra]

40. Please, if you have time, explain why and how ALEC is only a small facet of this.

Because ALEC seems to me to be the centralized brain here.

Thanks!

[nadinbrzezinski]

42. It is the arm that tries to enforce the southern way of life

they are the tool. But the philosophy is much older than ALEC, and in a few aspects, older than the United States.

[jsr]

39. Great article.

[snagglepuss]

41. to read later

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

44. Well, you have to hand it to them. There plan is working splendidly

for the elites.

[ProSense]

47. A lot of these people are

delusional hypocrites. They're likely in the group of morons who don't realize that food stamps and Medicare are Government programs. Even if they do, they find some bullshit reason to justify their hypocrisy.

refuses to sign up for the ACA but has 10 kids on medicaid
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023790066

Truckers against fuel efficiency standards: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023801564

It's like watching coverage of natural disasters in areas where people have sworn off government, and when the devastation is overwhelming they find a reason to seek government help.

Government is government, whether federal, state or local. These hateful assholes would eventually find a way to attack their fellow citizens (each other) if they didn't get their way. They're selfish idiots.

This means something: United we stand, divided we fall.

Still, not to make light of this point from the OP piece:

While each of the Newest Right’s proposals and policies might be defended by libertarians or conservatives on other grounds, the package as a whole—from privatizing Social Security and Medicare to disenfranchising likely Democratic voters to opposing voting rights and citizenship for illegal immigrants to chopping federal programs into 50 state programs that can be controlled by right-wing state legislatures—represents a coherent and rational strategy for maximizing the relative power of provincial white elites at a time when their numbers are in decline and history has turned against them. They are not ignoramuses, any more than Jacksonian, Confederate and Dixiecrat elites were idiots. They know what they want and they have a plan to get it—which may be more than can be said for their opponents.

True enough, though I still say they're selfish hypocrites who would eventually turn on each other.

In any case, that statement is true enough. They do know what they want, and the first part of their plan is to sabotage the federal government. Their actual power, as we saw in 2010, comes at the state and local level.

"The conservative plan is sabotage "

From the piece posted here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023788963

"In this sense, conservative Washington is a botch that will keep on working even after its formal demise. It defunded the constituencies of the liberal state while constructing a plutocracy that will stand regardless of who wins the next few elections and that will weight our politics rightward for years."

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/02/reaching_for_the_pillars_the_conservative_plan_is_sabotage/

Yet people pretend it's only happening in Washington. Across the country, Republicans are digging in to help their Washington counterparts sabotage the the federal government.

Look at Wisconsin. Texas would benefit greatly if Wendy Davis won.

The Cruelty of Republican States in One Chart
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023790604

Frankly, I think Congressional Republicans have triggered a backlash

More horrendous polling news for GOP: Even in deep red Utah, voters say they've gone too far
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023799150

Poll: 70 Percent Disapprove Of GOP Approach To Gov't Shutdown
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023801936

[polichick]

48. Interesting read - they like being the biggest fish in their little ponds! k&r