So I wasn't sure whether I would call attention to some of the responses to my most recent Huffington Post item, but they're really getting interesting and worthy of sharing.
First, I should note that the majority of the responses I've received have been overwhelmingly positive. Lots of people who have witnessed the ugliness lurking just below the surface of the tea party movement first-hand and agree that while not all tea party members are genuinely racist, there is a racial motive to the movement. Unfortunately, it doesn't take much searching, either. The videos and the photographs are real.
And so is the Southern Strategy. That's what's at play here. Powerful astroturfing groups stoking racial animosity for their own nefarious ends -- inciting white people under the guise of contradictory and nonsensical "causes." Race and xenophobia is absolutely at the heart of the tea party movement. This is nothing new, and my observations aren't unique or imagined. There's a long shadow cast behind this movement. A long history dating back centuries in America.
Anyway, this News Busters piece generally represents and summarizes the outraged responses I've been receiving.
There's also this one. Though he's violating digital copyright laws by reprinting my entire essay without permission.
On the other side of the coin, Lee Stranahan's Facebook wall is, not surprisingly, all kinds of weird. There's definitely some sort of bizarre Mobius Loop connected certain elements of the left with the tea party people. And of course I don't mind it when people disagree with me, but when they, as Lee has, appear to pull a quote from my piece, slap quotation marks around it as if I wrote it, and pass it off as something I've penned, I get a little pissed. But I don't expect a correction.
I think the counterpoint I've heard most often is "not all tea party people are racists." Fair point, and I never made that specific claim. I do believe, however, that race is a major component of the movement. As I said, it's the Southern Strategy all over again. It was used during the campaign, and it's in use now. My headline, "all about race," by the way, refers specifically to what is ultimately fueling the tea party movement as its leaders attempt to reacquire political power. Racism isn't never the goal, you see, it's always a means to attaining or preserving dominance. And it's often wrapped in more innocuous packaging. But not always.
We've heard the dog whistles from the wide array of leading voices in and around the movement. If race wasn't at the core of this thing, I would like to think that maybe the tea party people would rise up against Beck and Limbaugh's "reparations" argument against healthcare, for example. Or how the president was only elected because of "affirmative action." It's the White Hands ad applied to the president. This argument doesn't occur in a vacuum, and it wouldn't be in the mix if it didn't actually work -- if it didn't actually press certain buttons -- stir up sufficient levels of anger and outrage among talk radio's predominantly white audiences.
Whether it's Limbaugh or Beck or the astroturfing lobbyist groups who are behind large chunks of the movement, they're exploiting racial biases for the sake of a political and socioeconomic agenda. That agenda: to destroy the president and return a white Republican to the Oval Office.
Some of the rank and file people, meanwhile, are being tricked into thinking that the anti-government rhetoric -- the contradictory bumper-sticker sloganeering and such -- is genuine, and maybe they deserve some sympathy for being so easily mislead. But it doesn't take much observation to realize what's going on. They've been corralled into a movement that's exploiting fear of "the other," and so therefore they've become part of a movement -- regardless of whether or not they're explicitly racist -- that exploits racial and cultural divisions.
I challenge anyone who disagrees to read up on the origins of the Southern Strategy. Read up on the southern white "fire-breathers" from the Civil War era. Then have a look at the White Hands ad. Have a look at the Willie Horton ad. Have a look at the 2006 "Harold! Call me!" ad. Have a look at the lines outside the Sarah Palin rallies. For what it's worth, I detailed many of these things in my book: the chapter titled "The Great Fear of 2008." Also read Dave Neiwert's The Eliminationists. Then take a listen to any random hour of the Rush Limbaugh show, or a wide variety of racially-motivated signs and agitprop at a tea party rally.
It's all part of the same twisted theme.