Looks like the U.S.A. has a nasty case of gangrene.

Frankly I'm a little surprised. Isn't this essentially a population density map of the US? I thought there would be more regional concentration among the red states, but the map suggests these folks are pretty evenly spread across the country. Or am I missing something? Maybe it would be more effective if it was a per capita by county map. By tabulating by city you inevitably get a lot of colour wherever there are lots of cities, even if the relative political influence is weak in those places.

Maz: I am not surprised by the even distribution. The "Tea Party" is, as one racist commentator correctly pointed out, a "white reactionary traditionalist protest movement."

There is a segment of ideological racists that feel very disempowered at present due the symbolism of a non-Euro-American president, which fans the flames of their panic at demographic changes which will render them a "minority" at some point nationally. Imperialism is evolving, and leading circles wants to integrate non-Euro-Americans into its social base, and close one of its weak spots.

Even in Democratic areas, there are these cultural retrograde forces, and the media promotion of the "Tea Party" has given them the opportunity to come out and semi-cryptically parade their politics. And make no mistake: this is media PROMOTION, not coverage.

And sitting just to the side of the "Tea Party," are the pre-existing organized "white nationalist patriot" forces. They are armed, if largely incompetent.

The interesting thing is that this is a VERY different situation than, say, 1994 or 1980. Though the Republicans may make large electoral gains, this is largely a function of WHO will vote rather than changed voter preferences. There is not a sizable faction of Obama voters that will rush into the arms of the Republican Party; rather, they are possibly not voting, while, on the other hand, the right is whipped into a frenzy over the "Marxist communist foreigner" Obama.

someone with time should check this against the distribution of ross perot votes. i think there's probably a significant overlap, despite the time lag from then - now.

Jp: I think that a spatial analysis wouldn't be possible given the crude nature of the graphical data presented. If we actually had reliable numbers by zip code or something, we could do something with it. Furthermore, the "organized" contingent only accounts for a small portion. "ResistNet" is a white chauvinist, fascist website with many posters. Who knows if they are merely quantifying virtual "members" by IP address or some such thing.

That said, the Perot constituency indeed has a big overlap with the "Tea Party" constituency. Perot's support of the GOP in the 1994 elections was important in delivering the voting group to the Republicans. It should be remembered that Clinton was elected with only 43% of the vote in 1992, whereas Obama won 53%.

There is some divergence, however. Maine and California both gave strong support to Perot, but I do not believe it was principally from the "traditional right," but rather some people with "social liberal" views who wanted to break the partisan duopoly. Lenora Fulani and her New Alliance Party supported Perot from the "Left," precisely using such logic. On the other hand, there are no explicitly non-rightist forces supporting the "Tea Party." Unless you count the LaRouche characters, who both court the "Tea Party" (comically using Rosa Luxemberg's term "mass strike" to herald "Tea Party" activity), and also refer to them as fascists.

It would be nice if one or both parties disintegrated in the midst of this.

on perot v. tparty: it's also a lot harder to quantify the tparty than perot, who actually had his own party; depends on how you define them and their 'sympathizers.' i sympathize with their inability to see the world around them.

also, the rightwing fundamentalist vote was less a part of perot's camp, as i remember it - he was too secular for them.

but a lot of similarities, including a willingness to bolt from the republicans. increased sophistication in media manipulation has allowed the tparty people to be more easily channeled into anti-Democratic focus.

allowing, of course, the obama supporters to tell us how the tparty is a greater threat than those actually dropping the bombs (etc), who are seen as 'pushable' without evidence. good intentions don't prevent delusions.

This whole Tea Party phenomena is a highly complex one and I believe deserves much greater consideration,study and evaulation.Having said that I think it is too bad the left doesn't apply the same intensity of criticism and vigilance to Democrats and the Democratic Party as they do to Tea Party people. At this point in time,I find myself reluctant to adopt a tendency of branding all Tea Party people as enemies of the revolution,to brand them all with a political <i>mark of the beast</i>. Furthermore,I think if we were to look deeper below the surface we would see both comparable and contrastable dynamics of racism and xenophobia existing in Democrats as does exist in Tea Party people.This is worthy of study.Though expressing themselves through different organizational vehicles we would also see the similar levels of frustration,sense of betrayal and rage resulting from the treachery,betrayal abandonment by the government and rulng class. Of course,we must bring all of this out in a dialectical way-point out the connections which affect all workers.We should also criticize and point out racism and xenophobia,but do so from a principled Marxist position avoid falling into the all-too-easy and in many cases understandable emotional trap (self-criticism here) of demonizing white workers en masse and characterizing the struggle as a war between white workers/middle class vs workers of color/undocumented workers because this is precisely what the ruling class desires.Ending this post I'd like to add this relevant quote from Mao which should motivate and guide us-
"Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution."
<i> Mao </i>

&gt; This whole Tea Party phenomena is a highly complex one

That may have been partly true of the Ron Paul campaigns 3 years ago, but not of the Teabaggers. The Teabaggers crawled up as soon as a Democrat entered office, and this was clearly political hypocrisy at its finest. I can agree that people sometimes overstate the racial element in all of this. Personally, I can easily imagine Condoleeza Rice &amp; Sarah Palin running on a Republican POTUS/VP ticket some time in the next decade or so. I don't think that a white male Democrat like Bill Clinton would have been blasted any less if he had taken office in 2008. This whole shebang was cooked up after January 2009 as a way of maintaining a justification for the continued existence of the Republican Party. It's really not more complicated than that.

I deal with the Tea Party toe-to-toe here in Beaver County. They hold their rallies on the same spot we hold our weekly antiwar protests.

They are indeed complex and dangerous, and a subtext of white nationalism is the glue keeping their various factions together. While funded by the billionaires of the far right, they are largely over 50, all white, small business and professionals, and some of the better-off, more conservative-minded workers.

We make a point of standing up to them, but also talking to them. Last time, we had our two 'War is making you poor' and 'Bring All the troops home now!' banners across the street. Their banner on the war simply said 'Victory! Support the Troops.' Four or five of them, out of about 150, made a point of crossing the street to tell us that they agreed with us on the wars, and didn't care for the demagogy coming from the radio jock with the mike on their side. But they still held to the Ron Paul anti-tax messages of letting the free market cure our ills.

I think Tim Wise got their view of 'socialism' right, when he said what the word meant to them was Black people taking things from white people, ie, transfer payments to the poor viewed through a racialized lens, and Obama as the Black usurper in charge of expanding that process. This becomes very clear once you engage them.

Wherever we can, we have to make it our business to defeat their candidates. Thinking that liberal Dems are just as dangerous, or more dangerous, is way off base, although some of the Blue Dog Dems try to snuggle up with them.

You can try to drive a class fault line through them, but to get a handful on the progressive side of things, which is possible, you first have to deconstruct some chauvinism. This is rightwing populism, not an undifferentiated lower-class revolt.

<i>Having said that I think it is too bad the left doesn’t apply the same intensity of criticism and vigilance to Democrats and the Democratic Party as they do to Tea Party people. At this point in time,I find myself reluctant to adopt a tendency of branding all Tea Party people as enemies of the revolution,to brand them all with a political mark of the beast. Furthermore,I think if we were to look deeper below the surface we would see both comparable and contrastable dynamics of racism and xenophobia existing in Democrats as does exist in Tea Party people.</i>

Very good point. The Demorats are more disguised than Republicans in terms of their xenophobia, but they share the same fervent devotion to racist American nationalism as the Tea Party--albeit with a more progressive veneer.

One has only to look at the round of "China Bashing" campaign ads that Democrats have peddled in the recent campaign season with many Democrat politicos playing the "Anti-China" card against their opponents.

China Emerges as a Scapegoat in Campaign Ads
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/us/politics/10outsource.html

Campaign Demonization of China Means Chinese Americans Will Face Hostility
http://www.apimovement.com/chinese-american/campaign-demonization-china-means-chinese-americans-face-hostil

The refusal of supposed "progressives" to call out Democrats about this issue is very politically damning.

I also think the Tea Party is useful to the Democrats at one level as a bogeyman to scare their supporters into mobilizing and voting for Demorat Party candidates.

This is just a variation of the "Anybody But Bush" nonsense peddled by many self-styled Leftists and progressives in the recent past.

I really don't think that one should ever use the term "Right-wing populism" for anything which does not decidedly break from the Republican Party. If the Ku Klux Klan were to experience a nationwide surge of membership (I don't expect that they will) then that would easily fall under the rubric of "Right-wing populism" in a true sense. The KKK is not a mere satrapy of the Republican Party, the Tebaggers are (at least for the foreseeable future).

If Ron Paul had broken from the Republicans in 2007 (as many of his supporters urged him to) then that might have been the beginning of Right-wing populism. It's not clear what the pros and cons of that would have been exactly, but one can speculate. A splintering of the Republican vote in the face of a desertion of the Party by Paul running on on antiwar Libertarian ticket might have been good in itself. Alternatively, it might also have laid the basis for a more dynamic Right-wing of the future.

The Teabaggers are not anywhere up to that level. They are at the mercy of the Republicans. That has pros and cons. Dick Cheney has openly expressed support for Same-Sex Marriage. George W. Bush readily appointed Condoleeza Rice &amp; Colin Powell to high positions, as George H.-W. Bush did with Clarence Thomas, and Ronald Reagan with Alan Keyes. It's a well-researched fact that the Rockefeller brothers, David &amp; Nelson, strongly advocated from the '60s onward that the Republican Party should break down purely racial barriers. Nothing in the performance of the Republicans for the last 4 decades has contradicted this.

The Republican Party in its upper echelons is primarily a party of the economic Right-wing. Among the voter base there are a lot of middle-class whites who vote Republican out of a sense of "cultural conservatism" which usually carries a strong "whites only" sentiment to it. The high echelons of the Republicans have learned to tap this for votes, while otherwise ignoring it. Richard Nixon deliberately appealed to a segment of potential George Wallace voters during elections. But he signed Affirmative Action into law once the elections were over.

The later attacks on Affirmative Action from Reagan onwards were all done in economic terms. While many white voters undoubtedly wished to see those attacks on AA as part of a rollback to the Jim Crow era, there is absolutely no evidence that the top Republicans have ever seen there objectives in such terms. These facts clearly place sharp objective constraints on what Teabaggers bound to the Republican Party can do. If they're still around in 20 years it's perfectly likely that the Teabaggers will find themselves campaigning for someone like Condoleeza Rice for President, because it's perfectly plausible that the Republican Party of the future will run someone like her as a candidate.

Now if the Teabaggers should ever really show signs of breaking from the Republicans, let us know. That would be an interesting development in itself, with the potential for both good and bad consequences.

Most of the above has a superficial view of both the GOP and the Tea Party, the main point being they are simply a diversion to take our fire off of Team Obama as the prime enemy, if not the only enemy we should be concerned about. What's more, it has little to offer regarding electoral tactics, other than stay away from voting and 'wait for better days.'

I think that's dead wrong, as many here know. In any case, Leonard Zeskind did a comprehensive report on the Tea Party and released it with the NAACP. It's well worth checking out:


http://www.teapartytracker.org/blog_entry/exposing-the-link-between-tea-party-leaders-and-racism

Here's part of the introduction:

<blockquote>Tea Party Nationalism is the first report of its kind. It examines the six national organizational networks at the core of the Tea Party movement: FreedomWorks Tea Party, 1776 Tea Party, Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Patriots, ResistNet, and Tea Party Express.

This report documents the corporate structures and leaderships, their finances, and membership concentrations of each faction. It looks at the actual relationships of these factions to each other, including some of the very explicit differences they have with each other. And we begin an analysis of the larger politics that motivate each faction and the Tea Party movement generally.

The result of this study contravenes many of the Tea Parties’ self-invented myths, particularly their supposedly sole concentration on budget deficits, taxes and the power of the federal government. Instead, this report found Tea Party ranks to be permeated with concerns about race and national identity and other so-called social issues.

In these ranks, an abiding obsession with Barack Obama’s birth certificate is often a stand-in for the belief that the first black president of the United States is not a “real American.”</blockquote>

&gt; the main point being they are simply a diversion to take our fire off of Team Obama

Speaking just for myself, I definitely do not see the Teabaggers that way. I rather regard them as simply a diversion to take people's eyes off of how badly the Republican Party has screwed things up over 8 years in office, while nonetheless getting out the vote for the Republicans. If Teabaggers broke away from the Republican Party and declared a new Right-wing insurgency then that would have a different meaning and would have to be analyzed anew. But so far that has not been the case, and there are no signs that it will be in the future.