"Bogus, Misdirected and Effective": Monbiot on the Tea Party and 'progressive cringe'

[friendly_iconoclast]

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/06/14/bogus-misdirected-and-effective/

Bogus, Misdirected and Effective
Posted June 14, 2010
The Tea Party movement is steeped in misinformation and denial. But it has a lot to teach the left.


By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 14th June 2010


....The rightwing movements thrive on their contradictions, the leftwing movements drown in them. Tea Party members who proclaim their rugged individualism will follow a bucket on a broomstick if it has the right label, and engage in the herd behaviour they claim to deplore. The left, by contrast, talks of collective action but indulges instead in possessive individualism. Instead of coming together to fight common causes, leftwing meetings today consist of dozens of people promoting their own ideas, and proposing that everyone else should adopt them....

....Though most of what they claim is false, one of the accusations levelled by both the Freedom Party and the Tea Party rings true: the left is effete. This highlights another contradiction in their philosophy: liberals are weak and spineless; liberals are ruthless and all-powerful. But never mind that: the left on both sides of the Atlantic has proved to be tongue-tied, embarrassed, unable to state simple economic truths, unable to name and confront the powers that oppress the working class. It has left the field wide open to rightwing demagogues.

The great progressive cringe is only part of the problem; we have also abandoned movement building in favour of Facebook politics. We don’t want to pursue a common purpose any more, instead we want our own ideas and identity to be applauded. Where are the mass mobilisations in this country against the cuts, against the banks, against BP, unemployment, the lack of social housing, the endless war in Afghanistan? In the US the radical right is swiftly acquiring ownership of the Republican party. In the UK the left is scarcely attempting a reclamation of the Labour Party, even as opportunity knocks.

Bogus and misdirected as the Tea Party movement is, in one respect it has an authenticity that the left lacks: it is angry and it’s prepared to translate that anger into action. It is marching, recruiting, unseating, replacing. We talk, they act....

I hate to say it, but Monbiot pegged it. Too many progressives act like the worst sort of fundie Christians: They only hang out with their
own kind, fear and distrust outsiders (non self-identified progressives), and don't evangelize at all.

I've seen it working in "blue" Massachusetts- the lefties form a loose network of like-minded talking shops, the center-right Democratic coalition that really runs the Commonwealth pays them enough lip service to get their votes- and Scott Brown wins a US Senate seat.

[zipplewrath]

1. Now Brown is the progressives fault?

He runs against a HCR bill the progressives hated, but that is somehow their fault. The DNC candidate campaigns like an idiot an that's the progressives fault. Next thing we'll find out is Monica was a progressive.

[mrcheerful]

2. Wellllll hasn't the wing nut brigade already pegged the Texas fake as a liberal?

Which is why the economy crashed in 2008.

[friendly_iconoclast]

4. The wingers are oblivious to revisionism, it seems.

Hold your nose, and go back and look at Free Republic's views on Bush Jong-Il. They've changed positions more times than the cast
of a porn movie...

[friendly_iconoclast]

3. The ones I've run into in MA usually don't 'do' retail politics.

Street theater- cool.
Position papers- cool.
Going out and talking with, like, actual voters that you may not be 100% copacetic with?- Way uncool!

Progressives mostly just don't want to mix and mingle with the suburban and exurban voters that decide most statewide elections, so the
Democratic oligarchy put up a blatant apparatchik like Martha the Merciless- with the results we've seen.

[zipplewrath]

6. Funny, they keep winning elections

Sestak, Marshall, heck, almost Halter. Considering the DNC support these folks have, it is hard to blame the progressives for failures. Especially in the Brown case where it was a decidedly UNprogressive HCR bill that got him elected (mostly because of the process crap that the conservadems conducted in writing it). Your primary justification seems to be that you just don't like them.

[friendly_iconoclast]

8. I'd like them to change their ways and become more effective.

The local progressives do act in the ways Monbiot describes, imo- they don't really seem to want to reach out to the type of people who voted for Brown.

Frankly, the suburbophobia I've seen here and in in other left-y media is gratuitous and self defeating- don't hate on someone's choice
of neighborhood, explain to them which of your ideas might be in their interest.

When lefties interact on issues that do affect non-urban voters (pollution, rational land planning, health care that isn't the Romneycare
abortion the DNC likes to push), they are effective. But, not enough of them engage in the low-level electoral politicking that is necessary to build a power base around here. They don't seem to want to deal with the demographic changes that have happened since the Seventies. Large cities simply do not have the same percentage of the population of Massachusetts (or anyware else, for that matter)
that they did in 1970.

[zipplewrath]

9. They've been pretty effective is my point

If the DNC, the DLC, the conservadems, the DSCC, the DCCC and the White House weren't constantly working against them, they might be even more successful.

It was that crowd that got ya Brown, not the progressives.

I'm not sure how any of this got to be the progressives fault. They've been ignored literally from day one when Obama honored Rick Warren for gods sake. The White House has announced that they "rejected progressive ideas", that progressive strategies are "retarded" that they "waste 10 million dollars" and that their proposals are "unworkable". But somehow it's the progressives that don't work and play well with others?

[friendly_iconoclast]

10. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, or putting all blame on progressives

What I'm saying is, political power is very much a zero-sum game: those that can effectively take it will do so. The teabaggers are
doing this. The progressives, in too many instances, are not. Monbiot is pointing out something that I've seen on a state level here in
Massachusetts.


Progressives getting played by centrist Democrats? Progressives unwilling to compromise and getting 100% of nothing instead of 75% of something? Nothing new here.

There is an excellent book, The Big Test: The Secret History Of The American Meritocracy by Nicolas Lemann, that has in the second
half an account of the passage of Proposition 209 in California in 1996. It plays out pretty much like I described in the first sentence.

[zipplewrath]

11. What victories have the baggers won?

Brown is about the closest the have, and it's not clear they did. And at this point they've already chucked him under the bus. They didn't win Murtha's old seat. They're getting idiots like Paul nominated, more power to 'em.

Yes, progressives get played by centrists. What choice do they have? They get played and played, and then we get a civil rights bill. They get played and played, and then we get women's sufferage. They get played and played, and then they end a war. What do centrists get? Ultimately they get around to doing what the progressives have been telling them to do for a couple of decades. Centrists are all giddy because they just figured out that DADT is stupid.

Would you rather be dumb and in power, or right? 'Cause sooner or later you get to be both right and smart. If you're in a hurry, be a centrist. If you want to be right, be a progressive.

[friendly_iconoclast]

12. I kinda sorta agree with what you are saying here.

I do get the "give 'em enough rope' vibe from the baggers, to tell you the truth.

If they keep doing what they've been doing, the midterms will look like 2008, redux

[zipplewrath]

13. I was one of the doomsayers

In February, I didn't see how it could be much of a good fall election for us. I didn't think we'd lose control of either house, but I thought we'd take some serious hits.

Then the Arizona law passed. And the baggers started doing a "Ron Paul" on the primary process. Murtha's seat was "saved". Then Barton defended BP.


Quite honestly, if this were a movie script I'd be laughing at the absurdity. I keep saying we'll take hits this fall. But bajeezus, sometimes I wonder how. Strangely, about the only "hits" we might take are folks like Lincoln that will barely be flesh wounds.

[Tutankhamun]

5. I like how the teabagger movement was started and is supported

by the RW faux media that promotes it. Meanwhile, the left is under a constant media blackout. Here's another obscure, contortionist line of reasoning purporting to explain why the RW has so much power and the left has no voice. The real reason is much simpler: corporate money.

[Stuckinthebush]

7. Absolutely spot on

Getting the left to action is like herding cats. We are individualistic by our nature. Frankly, that is a good thing. Also, we tend to appreciate discursive nit picking. Words do matter. That is why it is hard for many of us to clearly elucidate our ideas.

The spittle-spewing right cares little about details and only about the grand philosophies. As the writer says, they will follow a broom handle and bucket if it is labeled correctly. Also, for them, facts don't matter. Feelings are more important than facts.