Angry Voters, Right-Wing Populism, & Racial Violence

[Emit]

Angry Voters, Right-Wing Populism, & Racial Violence: People of Faith Can Help Break the Linkages
By Chip Berlet
January 26, 2010

Eric Ward is nervous. He’s seen it before—the angry right-wing populist crowds, the strident calls to “Restore America” and “Take it Back.” In the mid 1990s, Ward was a community organizer for a human rights group in the Pacific Northwest. As a burly young black man with a loud voice and strange hair, Ward stood out when he addressed the predominantly white audiences of folks concerned about rising prejudice and bigotry. After April 19, 1995, people began to take Ward more seriously, as bodies were removed from the Oklahoma City Federal Building, collapsed by a truck bomb delivered by a domestic terrorist seeking to shift the right-wing populists into an armed insurrection. Timothy McVeigh failed to achieve his goal, but 168 people died in the process.

~snip~

We are in the midst of one of the most significant right-wing populist rebellions in United States history. The Tea Parties and Town Hall protests along with the “9/12” rally in Washington DC last Fall were visible proof; as are the ongoing and anti-tax “Liberty” protests. In mid-January, the overwhelmingly Democratic Commonwealth of Massachusetts elected a conservative Republican, Scott Brown, to fill the Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy. Brown was backed by some of the Tea Party groups and built his campaign using right-wing populist rhetoric. All across the country, Tea Party activists are moving into the Republican Party apparatus and pulling it further to the political right.

Right-wing populist movements appear periodically throughout US history during times when the participants feel they are being “displaced” and losing political, social, or economic power...

~snip~

Based on what we saw in the 1990s, Matthew N. Lyons and I wrote a book about the history of right-wing populism in the United States. We found that racial anxiety and anti-immigrant xenophobia is a major text or subtext of these movements. A common outcome is that lots of angry white people not only condemn callous and corrupt politicians and their wealthy allies; but also blame and then stomp on those they scapegoat for societal problems: the lazy, sinful, or subversive louts being coddled and unfairly assisted by the corrupt government and arrogant liberal elites. It is the “producers versus the parasites.”

Historically, the scapegoated groups have included Freemasons, native peoples, immigrants, Catholics, Jews, anarchists, communists, civil rights organizers, the Rockefellers, the Council on Foreign Relations, feminists, the Trilateral Commission, the Bohemian Grove society, gay people, the Skull and Bones club at Yale, and the Bilderberger banking conference. And this is the short list.

Sound familiar? It should; and not just because this frame and storyline is now on the nightly news and ubiquitous on the Internet and conservative talk radio. The elite scapegoats for right-wing populists today are liberals and Democrats trying to pass “socialist” health care schemes as a first step toward a totalitarian fascist society. The scapegoats lower on the socio-economic ladder are immigrants, community organizers, and Muslims.

~snip~

Time to Step Up

In March 2009, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich issued a clear warning:

Make no mistake: Angry right-wing populism lurks just below the surface of the terrible American economy, ready to be launched not only at Obama but also at liberals, intellectuals, gays, blacks, Jews, the mainstream media, coastal elites, crypto-socialists, and any other potential target of paranoid opportunity.
Reich served from 1993 to 1997 under President Clinton, during the height of the militia movement, at time when right-wing populists (together with Republican operatives and right-wing media) wielded conspiracy theories like a knife to gut the Clinton Administration like an Arkansas River trout.

When it was clear that Barack Obama was a serious presidential contender in mid-2008, I started writing a study about how conspiracy theories and right-wing populism were on the rise. Published in June 2009, it was titled Toxic to Democracy, and warned that:

Right-wing populist movements can cause serious damage to a society even if a significant fascist movement does not coalesce because they often popularize xenophobia, authoritarianism, scapegoating, and conspiracism. This can lure mainstream politicians to adopt these themes to attract voters, legitimize acts of discrimination—or even violence—and open the door for revolutionary right-wing movements, such as fascism, to recruit from the reformist populist movements by arguing that more drastic action is needed.

Between Obama’s inauguration in January and the time the report was printed in June, there were nine murders allegedly carried out by people who had embraced some form of white supremacist or anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

~snip~

Until the election of Scott Brown, the Democratic Party and its centrist allies delighted in calling the Tea Party protestors “wingnuts,” “crackpots,” and “lunatics.” To the left, the progressive movement spent most of its energy castigating Obama for moving to the center, while the right was mobilizing millions of angry populist voters.

“Progressives in the country have dropped the ball” complains Ostendorf. “We won an election, but we didn’t automatically win any of the policy and structural changes we were working for. Did some progressives really think everything was going to get fixed in Washington? This never happens! Our present situation compels a reexamination of how we do longer-term political organizing in our country,” suggests Ostendorf.

~snip~

What does the future hold? ... Most agree we would rather be ridiculed for our warnings than live with our silence.

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/religiousright/2218?page=1

[MisterP]

1. that Ostendorf quote is the other half of the utter lunacy ruining this country

"We won an election, but we didn’t automatically win any of the policy and structural changes we were working for. Did some progressives really think everything was going to get fixed in Washington?"
that assumes that 1) the Dems are preponderantly liberal, 2) they're genuinely working as hard as they can in the face of overwhelming, and 3) we Americans need to be more patient: he's wrong on all 3 counts! progressives aren't "upset" (read: rightfully angry) because we're getting good things at too slow a pace, it's that we're getting very bad things mixed with a few good bones that they throw at us to keep us quiet (while constantly hearing excuses or having fanatic, overwrought moderates scream at us)
a focus on electing any Dem is a big part of what's preventing progressives and leftists from picking up on that unfocused, formless anger that the Becks are seizing on: those "anyone but Bush/Palin" Dems will ensure that Americans creep closer to the economic brink and that the media remains firmly consolidated under fascistic billionaires

[Emit]

3. I hear you MisterP but the fact of the matter remains that these fanatical right wing

groups are growing, despite what the left is or isn't doing. I think his point is finding the momentum for longer term organizing, which, in and of itself, is not contradictory to your criticism. I fear the left, at the moment, is not effectively organizing against the factions mentioned in the article, nor is it organizing to find 'better' Dems(i.e., more progressive, liberal, insert whatever your definition of a better Dem vs 'any Dem').

[JoeyT]

2. Darned progressives.

It's their fault the administration's senior officials pretty much told them to fuck off as soon as they got in power.

[Emit]

4. I understand your sentiment, JoeyT

But what I got from this article is less about 'blaming the progressives' than it is a warning to us that we need to be aware of these right wing groups and the strength they are gaining. There has to be a counter to these groups.

[Number23]

5. Too late to rec but an excellent article.