Stephen Davidson
Stephen Davidson reports on the Tea Party movement in the US – a dangerous new right wing force pushing reactionary ideas further into the mainstream
Today, it is inevitability in American politics that you come across the Tea Party, a blanket name for a number of right-wing populist groups. They represent an increasingly crazed movement connected with a wing of the Republican party, made up of radical libertarians who hate any central government, to fundamentalist Christians and far right ‘interest groups’. These people blame the economic crisis on everything from immigration to socialists to Obama, who they call either a Muslim, a communist or a fascist.
Right-wing populism has been encountered throughout American history, its purpose is to turn the grievances of the middle classes into a form that best suits the profits of corporations. Irrational movements like this can grow in times of deep economic crisis when confused middle class people need answers, however incoherent.
Billionaires David and Charles Koch, along with other well-heeled conservative groups, have provided much of the funding for this alleged grassroots movement. The Tea Party pays for buses, organisers and running political candidates – so it is hardly surprising that it has had an immediate ability to put forward a national presence, nor that its agenda has so closely aligned with the ruling elites of the United States. It is backed by right-wing political groups like Move America Forward, bankrolled and organized by right wing Public Relations firm Russo Marsh & Rogers. Capitalists like Sal Russo are using the Tea Party movement to frustrate progressive political action and hand the senate back to the Republicans.
So who is in the Tea Party? To some degree, they represent simply the traditional core of the Republican Party, the hardened 18% or so of the population that genuinely embraces far right politics. However, it has made itself a spectacle in the media, and proven quite capable of pushing the Republicans farther to the right. Even the feeble “public option” in the health care bill was considered beyond the pale in an American political scene beset by Tea Party protests.
What does the Tea Party stand for? These are the people that denounced Obama’s healthcare reforms and In economic policy, they have nothing new to offer: complaints about the deficit are combined with a near-religious devotion to tax cuts, the same economic policies that failed under Bush. Any spending other than on the war is hysterically labeled as “socialist”. This movement is promoting the very agenda that creates the tremendous wealth gap that we see today. Claiming to stand against “special interests” they attack unions, particularly teachers’ unions, which are the last bulwark of the American working class. They repeat the snake oil that giving tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy will create jobs.
In California they are spearheading a multi million dollar campaign against legislation designed to cut greenhouse gases.
Racism
Like much right-wing populism, the Tea Party has a strong element of racism, both open and hidden. Part of this is a simple reaction to the election of the first Black, seen most clearly by attempts to deny that he is a US citizen of claims he is a Muslim, believed by a disturbing 18 per cent of the population. Islamophobia, of course, runs deeply throughout the American right wing and has recently been the center of the debate over the Park 51 community center near Ground Zero in Manhattan. And the Tea Party has also embraced the nativist opposition to Latino immigrants, which has found vicious expression in Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070. Less blatant but still racist are the attacks on social services, much of which is motivated by a racial animus – the idea that has circulated in conservative circles for decades that most social programs are for the benefit of people of color.
Sexism, likewise, finds welcome expression in the Tea Party. Senate candidates associated with the movement such as Rand Paul and Christine O’Donnell support banning abortion even in cases of rape, incest and risks to the health or life of the mother. The sexism of the modern American right is in its deep-seated opposition to women’s rights, and conservatives like Sarah Palin are spearheading this attack.
Crazy middle class movements like theTea Party feed on human misery. They are being used by the Republicans to oust the Democrats from power, but the people involved can easily be drawn into violent and fascist forces. The Tea Party movement is growing because of the crisis of American capitalism. Workers and youth need a revolutionary party of their own to combat not only the Tea Party’s increasingly insane political ideas but to fight against the social crisis and the system which is breeding it.