[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Anti-Empire Report, May 12, 2010

[C. G. Estabrook]

I think both points are correct.

And the core tea-party positions - against the banks, against Obama 
administration elitism, against the war (often more than the liberals are), and 
against the trashing of the Constitution in the both the last administration and 
this one - are admirable.

To that is added a mythological capitalist ideal and some anti-immigrant and 
anti-black elements.  While we're reflecting on historical parallels, remember 
August Bebel's acute comment on European anti-antisemitism a century and more 
ago: "It's the socialism of fools."

The foolishness of the movement is exacerbated by the Limbaughs and the Palins 
because the Left doesn't take up the points on which it is correct.


On 5/12/10 9:33 PM, E.Wayne Johnson wrote:
> It should be clear to those who look carefully that the Actual Tea Party
> movement is not a contraption of the Republican Party. Keep in mind that
> sign at the Chicago Tea Party --- "Republicans Suck Too!"
>
> Chomsky is significant inasmuch as he suggesting to the progressives
> that they pause just a moment from parroting the rhetoric of those who
> poke fun at the TP, and take a look at the grievances that drive the TP.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "C. G. Estabrook"
> <galliher at illinois.edu>
> To: "Brussel Morton K." <mkbrussel at comcast.net>
> Cc: "Peace-discuss Discuss" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2010 9:11 AM
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Anti-Empire Report, May 12, 2010
>
>
> I think it would be a mistake to include either (a) there's nothing
> unique about
> the current political situation or (b) it's all because people are stupid.
> There certainly are parallels between anti-communism and anti-terrorism
> - but
> that's because they were both massive propaganda enterprises of the
> American
> ascendancy.
>
> Chomsky's comments have certainly been misinterpreted. He makes two points,
> both correct it seems to me: (a) the grievances motivating the teaparty
> movement
> are real; and (b) the Left in this country has allowed the Right to
> offer (mad
> and dangerous) interpretations of those grievances.
>
> Simply ridiculing the teaparty movement - or dismissing it with contempt as
> simply low-class racism - is also mad and dangerous. A flood of (quite
> legitimate) popular distress - dammed up by liberal indifference and
> denied a
> political spillway - will burst through in crazy and far more dangerous
> ways.
>
> Of course the tea party movement is not a working class uprising. The
> teapartiers are, in classical terms, mainly petty bourgeois - but with
> substantial appeal to the working class, as the Nazis were. The crucial
> point
> about them is that, while they amount to about 18% of the population
> (according
> to a NYT survey), 48% of the population sympathize with their attitudes and
> beliefs (as compared with 44% for Obama).
>
> What the left should be doing is what it did in the 1930s, when there
> was also a
> very dangerous nativist movement, but it was countered by working class
> organizing - not contempt for the stupidity of the masses. --CGE
>
>
> On 5/12/10 6:19 PM, Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>>> ... *Anti-Empire Report *May 12, 2010 William Blum www.killinghope.org
>>> <http://www.killinghope.org/> *Terminally-dumb people have always been
>>> with us of course. It can’t be that we’ve suddenly gone stupid.* ... If
>>> you shake your head and roll your eyes at the nonsense coming out of the
>>> Teabagger followers of Sarah “Africa is a country” Palin and other
>>> intellectual giants like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh ... If you have
>>> thoughts of moving abroad after the latest silly lies and fantasies like
>>> “Obama the Marxist” and “Obama the antichrist” ... If you share Noam
>>> Chomsky’s feeling: "I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime”
>>> ... keep in mind that the right wing has long been at least as stupid
>>> and
>>> as mean-spirited...
>

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