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.
On January 19, the people of Massachusetts elected a conservative Republican backed by the Tea Party movement, Scott Brown, to the Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy. Scott will try to shift the right-wing populists back into an alliance with the Republican Party, which itself is already moving to the political right.
After Scott was elected, President Obama began using populist rhetoric to try to regain support for Democratic Party reforms. Progressive activists urged a campaign to win back the populists from right-wing ideology. Conservative icon Pat Buchanan, wrote the Scott victory meant that Republicans should target the white vote by vowing an “end to affirmative action and ethnic preferences, an end to bailouts of Wall Street bankers, a moratorium on immigration until unemployment falls to 6 percent, an industrial policy that creates jobs here and stops shipping them to China.”
The mainstream media suddenly began to take the angry right-wing populist fervor more seriously; but while the coverage was intense, it has been overwhelmingly superficial, for the most part failing to consult historians, social scientists, and human rights groups about what happens to a society when it is buffeted by the gusts of populist anger. Is it fair to mention Republican Scott Brown, the right-wing populists, and the Oklahoma City bombing in one article? Can there be a role for people of faith and their allies in ensuring that no such linkage develops and that history does not repeat itself?
To find out I turned to the Center for New Community (CNC), a national nonprofit that helps build local alliances among congregations from different faith traditions and other institutions seeking to resist bigotry and build “a democratic future based on human rights, justice, and equality.”
Eric Ward now works at the CNC. From his office outside Chicago, Ward asks people to consider to whom is America supposed to be “restored?” When Ward hears a white protest leader tell a predominantly white crowd to “take it back,” he has no doubt that some in the audience want America “taken back” from people of color and “restored” to white people. And he heard this rhetoric increase after Obama was elected.
“[When people who] oppose the Obama reform of health care claim we are losing our country they are using racialized, coded rhetoric,” says Ward, whether they are aware of it or not. Some pundits who backed the Tea Bag protestors and Town Hall criers were well aware of the racialized content of their rhetoric. Ward complains that “we see Pat Buchanan on television claiming that our country was built by white people… Really?” He wonders, “Why is this acceptable commentary on any television station?”
Ward believes “folks need to be held accountable for their racism. Too many people are hearing this coded rhetoric and deciding that the real problem with the economy must be folks of color, immigrants, and the Jews.” During the last period of Patriot and militia growth in the mid-1990s, Ward witnessed this coded racist rhetoric being tested in the margins of the right-wing media, though it has since moved into the mainstream. In the past year I’ve interviewed dozens of activists and scholars who see the same dynamics. All of us are worried.
“What I find surprising is the lack of an appropriate or effective response. Decent people need to stand up,” says Ward. “The Democratic Party pundits seem to think this is some sort of game; they act as if there are no legitimate grievances at all out here. They have to realize that the other side is not playing a game—they are playing with the lives and livelihoods of real people,” Ward points out. “Meanwhile, across the country, people are being pulled into right-wing populist movements, and from there, some of them are being recruited into white supremacist movements.”
I catch up with the Rev. David Ostendorf by cell phone while he is waiting for a plane at an East Coast airport. He is the executive director of the CNC where Ward works. Ostendorf, A United Church of Christ minister, once led PrairieFire Rural Action, a group that tried to save family farms during a major agricultural economic crisis in the 1980s. “Back then we helped build a popular economic political movement among family farmers across the country seeking debt relief along with fair and sustainable government agricultural polices,” explains Ostendorf.
“Around 1984, we saw right-wing and racist organizers try to move in and take advantage of our movement. They were trying to capture the emerging populist sentiments and steer them into the anti-Semitic and racist right. So we publicly took that on in our organizing efforts,” Ostendorf recalls. “After a few years we managed to push the racist right back under their rocks; and we also retained our focus on helping keep rural communities alive and struggling for economic justice.”
“At the Center for New Community, our work approach is built on a foundational understanding of the importance of race in America,” says Ostendorf. “We build on the ground in local communities along with states and regions to mobilize progressive populist sentiment that we hope will turn into movements for effective political change. We juggle social, racial, and economic issues, and we constantly are pushing back against the organized racist movement.’’
“What I am seeing as I crisscross the country is that we are in a similar period to the 1980s,” Ostendorf observes. “There is so much political anger and dissatisfaction, but I sense that it is much broader than what we faced in the 1980s. It crosses economic, class, race, and geographic boundaries. The challenge we face is that populist sentiment can go either way, toward right-wing regressive and potentially racist forms of populism; or toward a more progressive movement. That’s the dilemma on the table right now.”
Tags: militia, patriot movement, populism, racism, right wing, tea party movement, teabaggers, town hall meetings
It will take time but the message that has to be spoken everywhere (political, social and religious) is that we're all part of the human race.
Race issues will disappear when there's a recognition of our common ground as human beings.
If a society doesn't see colour, race, or religion, it creates equality and there will be little to fight about.
Yes, I know, it sounds utopian but change takes place in the mind first.
I think you make some very good points and that they are true about some people, but overall I wonder if you aren't setting up a straw man with your generalizations in order to avoid the real concerns of the tea party group. Scott Brown was my state senator, but I did not see him as fundamentally different from the Democrats in the Massachusetts State government. He got along with them just fine. I don't think he is that much of a conservative, and even if he is, once in Washington he is overwhelmingly likely to ignore his core constituency. They have nowhere else to go. If he wants to be reelected, he will have to please his marginal supporters. There are many people such as myself who believe that growth of government is counterproductive to the good of the people, and many of us are neither scared nor angry. I voted libertarian. I do not see that act as having anything at all to do with promoting racial violence. Obama has done little to change the factors that I consider indirect but substantial sources of violence in this country - an illegitimate war, sanctioned torture, and the war on drugs, which is fertile ground for racism in its enforcement and which sends the message to the people of our country that drug dependency is a moral failure rather than an unfortunate biological condition.
>>" I voted libertarian. I do not see that act as having anything at all to do with promoting racial violence."
Precisely my point. I understand that you do not see the connection. I am not trying to suggest that Scott Brown is a conscious racist.
What I am trying to point out is that throughout U.S. history, populist movements have more often veered to the far right, engaged in scapegoating, and ended up fueling racist attacks.
That's not an overgeneralization about Brown, it is a historic fact.
The question for us people of faith is:
How do we keep this populist moment from leading toward increasing attacks on immigrants and people of color (as in too many past historic right-wing populist movements) and help move it towards a civil society movement for actual dialogue and substantial economic reform based on the concepts of economic and racial justice?
One of the foundations of my own libertarian views is the belief that economic freedom for all is a prerequisite for prosperity for all. This includes the advocacy of a completely unrestricted immigration policy and immediate, unconditional amnesty for all undocumented immigrants. To imply that there is an unconscious racist motivation underlying this position is simply absurd. In case there is some confusion, populism is not a doctrine of free trade. It is generally isolationist in terms of trade and immigration, in this respect compatible with some forms of American liberalism.
I think the way "we keep the populist movement from leading to increasing attacks on immigrants and people of color" is by engaging the populist ideas in public debate rather than postulating unconscious racism on the part of the people who hold them. This cannot be done without an attitude of respect on our part.
My positions are grounded in the belief that all members of our society, aside from the few who are truly physically or mentally compromised, are capable of taking care of themselves, their families and their communities without the assistance of the benevolent hand of a privileged elite. Most of my liberal friends do not share this belief. At least two women I know personally view the conditions among the impoverished sectors of society as resulting from the deficiencies of the people who comprise them. They want the government to help them because they don't think they can help themselves. One man I know, who is extremely liberal, told me that he doesn't believe in argumentation because he thinks "the oppressed" aren't capable of rational discourse. I see a subtle racism in their points of view. Maybe we need to consider the danger of projecting our own racism onto the populist "other."
In my church I try to promote the idea of debating the topics that concern us. However most of my fellows base their opinions on emotional feelings. If there is any analysis, it is generally superficial. I don't know if it is just bad luck that I find myself in such an environment, but it does resonate with what I read and hear in the media. So I think if we can encourage more clarity of thought amongst ourselves and engage others in respectful public debate, great things could happen.
...from what I've seen (in terms of coverage, to be fair), these folks do a lot of yelling and screaming, so what chance is there of having a reasonable conversation with them?
Since last Fall I have been in many states talking with people drawn toward the Tea Party and Town Hall protests. Many of them are angry, but will engage in serious conversations if you give them half a chance.
Given Obama's full spectrum betrayal of the American people, widespread religious hysteria, economic panic and social vengeance are probably inevitable. If progressives want to offer a credible alternative, they have to attack the neoliberal state's anti-democratic agenda that Obama has embraced wholeheartedly.
Hooey.
Pres. Obama made the GOP talking points sound pathetic yesterday in debate.
This "conspiracy theory" rhetoric is foolish.
Pres. Obama's attempting the agonizing process to turn the ship of state in a governable direction. He correctly pointed out that every representative, Dem. or GOP thinks the spending in OTHER districts is wasteful. Not their own.
but a few points.
1. Chip rightly points out that many liberals and leftists are dismissive of the tea party protestors, calling them stupid, racists, and/or fascists but is it necessary to call them "Tea Bag protestors," a reference to a crude sexual term (see here for a NSFW definition http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tea+bag ) .
2. Is it irresponsible for right-wing politicians to use populist rhetoric like "Take America Back" or "Restore America?" One of Obama's main campaign themes was "Change" or "We are the change that we seek." Presumably many right-wingers do not want the "Change" that Obama promised during the campaign and is trying to implement http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/ObamaBlueprintForChange.pdf . Populist rhetoric certainly is not confined to the right only. Many people voted for Obama and Congressional Democrats in 2008 to "Take America Back" after two terms of GWB. Other progressive writers and leaders have used similar rhetoric in books, for an example see this cover http://www.davidsirota.com/images/uprisingcover.jpg .
3. I'm not sure that the right-wing populism that we are seeing right now has to do with Obama's race, rather than his party. Chip's essay notes that the previous surge in right-wing populism occurred in in the 1990s when a white (and not very liberal, I might add) Bill Clinton was President. Is it more likely that having Democrats in power in Washington, particularly the Presidency, rather than a politician's race, is responsible for the rise of right-wing populism?
4. Is there any concrete evidence that white supremacist violence is increasing? I know PRA found that since Obama's inauguration in January 2009 there have been 9 murders across the country that can be reasonably tied to white supremacy, but is this an increase? What if, and I do not know that this is true, there were 11 such murders in 2008, but no one at the time was tracking this so it went unnoticed? Has anyone looked across a larger time span to see it this is so, or has done more comprehensive research? I know that one widely circulated claim, that death threats made against the President have increased 400% since Obama's inauguration have proven to be false http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh120409.shtml .
I have avoided the term "teabagger," for the reasons you mention, but they held protests using tea bags and after awhile it is hard to use the term "Tea Party Protestors" over and over.
Most Black people find the calls to "Take America Back" or "Restore America?" issued to predominantly White audiences to be deeply racist. I do too. The inabilty of White people to see the racist subtext of rhetoric is well studied.
I interviewed people in a dozen states across America and found that there was a growing fear among organizers that at least a significant portion of the right-wing populism was directly tied to persons who clearly thought Obama was not a "real" citizen, and was perhaps a Muslim. This is just plain White racism. I agree that some of this is about the economy, but do you serious want to claim that racism is not a key component?
Yes, having a Democrat in office is a factor, So is racism. Stop trying to push aside the issue of racism and implying that other issues are more important. There are several factors involved, including gender anxiety. Racism is still a key factor.
There is clear evidence that there were a series of incidents of violence between the nomination of Obama and June 2009 in which the alleged perpetrators suggested to family, friends, and police that the election of Obama meant that they needed to act before it was too late. Too late for what? The answers were a series of claims rooted in White supremacist and antisemtitic conspiracy theories in which Obama and his race played a central role.
Race Matters.
[I also posted my initial response on www.talk2action.org http://www.talk2action.org/story/2010/1/27/124531/794 . I also posted the same response here because I wasn't sure if Chip would see it there. Chip has posted the same response to my initial response on talk2action.org . I'll posted my response to this comment here, but won't put anything else here. Sorry for being confusing and convoluted.]
To be honest, if HRC had been elected President instead of BHO, I don't think the response from the right would have been much different. Maybe there would be more misogyny instead of coded racism, but that is about it. Bill Clinton was white, but that didn't stop right-wing populists from demonizing him and coming up with absurd conspiracy theories about him being a possible soviet agent/asset when he visited the USSR in college, taking over American students minds with "Outcome Based Education," ordering the murder of Vince Foster, ending Western Civilization as we know it, etc. If HRC was elected President instead of BHO, would cries from right-wing populists to "Take America Back" be racist, too? Do you think they would be saying something different?
Race does matter, but I think it is secondary in this situation.
I posted the same thing over at religiousdispatches.org . I wasn't sure which one you might see.
No state government (or the federal one) has considered a public works project to curb joblessness. You know what would keep people from needing welfare or payday loans, or unemployment? Jobs! (Surprising, huh?)
As Obama sends more troops to Afghanistan and promotes a nuclear arms buildup, resisting American empire requires shedding any notion he is a man of peace. As a warmonger hungry for power, Obama must be stopped. Civil resistance is the only way.
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