Occupy Wall Street: How GOP Critics Grossly Misrepresent The Tea Party & The Occupy Wall Street Movement
The GOP and its Tea Party kin have been busy verbally beating down the Occupy Wall Streeters. All manner of insult thrown – and thereby caught in the perpetual irony – this provides the publicity needed to keep the OWS movement growing. One of the themes used by their critics revolves around the OWSers’ (imagined) propensity for violence. Often, as Republicans do, they object to minor property damage, resistance – usually passive – when police intervene, or a tendency to messiness. “The Tea Party,” they maintain (most notably, Gingo), “cleans up after itself, they demonstrate peacefully.” Model citizens. This characterization hides the Tea Party’s essentially aggressive nature. Very few in the media dare discuss it. Democrats hide behind self-defeating “civility.” Why do we let them, and the Tea party, get away with it? . . .
no rank and file members that condone violence, period.”
Eric Cantor, March 2010,
Responding to a spate of violent rightwing acts after passage of the health care bill.
This included broken windows at campaign offices,
threatening phone calls and faxes,
and a severed gas line at the home of a lawmaker’s brother.
“. . . you [reporters] didn’t hear — and some of the reports were inaccurate — you didn’t hear most of them [Tea Party protesters] encouraging any type of violent behavior. . .”
But Cantor’s correct, “most” of the TPs do not overtly encourage violence, but just short of “most” is “many.” Here’s just a few examples (click on each for larger pic). All of these were seen at the D.C. “Obamacare” rally Cantor referenced above, and still appear regularly:
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Fortunately (or unfortunately), I recall the ’60s, the 70s. I lived it. Our anti-Vietnam war protests were often laced with violence, many times in reaction to tear gas and police “over enthusiasm.” Our signs and posters were scarily provocative. We felt obligated to push the envelope, so disgusted were we with our country’s leadership and values. And it wasn’t simply the war. Remember the civil rights marches, the spate of assassinations, the widespread riots in Detroit (still, this day, recovering), D.C., and Los Angeles. The Kent State killings, the Yippies, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and on and on, all were considered inevitable at the time. We marched with extreme purpose, often to provoke mayhem. We too ignited easily.
Consequently, I’m hard pressed to criticize any group for encouraging force in service of a strongly and widely held belief that their government no longer works. Tea Partiers feel grossly alienated and frustrated, perhaps those are reasons to excuse the signs and posters, the verbal assaults. But, just as the rightwingers among us deride the (imagined) violent behavior of the Occupy Wall Streeters, labelling them violent anarchists, unlawful vagabonds, and potentially riotous bums, we too need to regularly, forcefully, and loudly expose the Tea Party’s essential nature, and its quick resort to threats of violence, in their signage, their subtext, and their personalities.
Why do so many let them get away with it?
