These tea party people....

[Hassled]

Nutters? In this BBC blog, one woman says "This progressive agenda (Obama's economic policies) has progressed to the tipping point in the United States, where we either stand up for the constitution of the United States or we accept socialism, tainted with Marxism."

How can she interpret Obama's policies as socialism tainted with Marxism? Is it just down to lack of education? I really, genuinely, don't understand. I don't understand the fear they seem to have. And they're doing well - they've got the Delaware Senate nomination, NY, Nevada, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky and Alaska. Meanwhile they're being funded by billionaires who clearly have a vested interest keeping the focus on tax cuts for the rich.

I don't know what my point is really - I get that many people want smaller government, lower taxation, less govt spending etc, but that view is already well represented. I don't get this extremism.

The Tea Party thinks the government should pay for the defence of the country and pretty much nothing else. The attraction to taxpaying voters is tht they would pay next to nothing in tax as a result, would not have to support anyone in need (except through charity which the US is rather better at than ourselves) but would pay for anything they need themselves. The politics of selfishness taken to an extreme level. The hatred of taxation runs very deep in the US psyche... hence the name 'tea party' invoking the spark that triggered the wars of independence.

The USA has a track-record of a very unequal society and has made few attempts down the years to level the playing field. It's only relatively recently that skin colour stopped being a legal barrier, for example. Wealth is very unevenly divided and 'I'm all right jack' could be the national motto. Many of the very basic things we take for granted as being part of a responsible state e.g. help for the unemployed, genuinely are socialist policies. But politics being what it in the US, and ignorance of international issues being fairly standard, 'socialism' gets easily confused with 'communisim' and 'Marxism'.

The last period of world depression resulted in the rise of European Fascism & Nationalism with disastrous effect. So a far-right US party emerging in the wake of a global economic crisis is not totally unexpected.

Chil - I agree with your description of the Tea Party's politics but I'm not sure that comparing the movement to the growth of 20th Century totalitarian dictatorships is right.

As you point out the Tea Party are uber-libertarians - anti central government control.

Although, in politics things can change - didn't Hitler start out as a socialist? .

Also, in defence of the Americans, they appear to have been ahead of the UK and most of Europe, in gender equality.

Wasn't there the suggestion that the Boston Tea Party was instigated by coffee importers who wanted to break the tea monopoly? They justified it as liberation from unfair taxes and it's entered the mythology of the USA as a strike for freedom rather than an act of commercial sabotague.

Seems somewhat appropriate when applied to hese right wing nutters.

I think the comparison I'm making with totalitarian dictatorships is that, when there are crises, it's the people with extreme solutions that tend to rise to the surface. In the Tea Party case, their uber-libertarianism is only confined to those wealthy enough to benefit from it. The poor (coincidentally mostly black/hispanic) have no liberty or equality in a state where they are a despised underclass....and the creation of 'the hated other' is a totalitarian hallmark, you'd have to admit. Fortunately, their brand of nationalism is confined to parochial flag-waving rather than empire-expansion just for now.

BTW I don't think gender equality stand for much in a society that's so institutionally unequal in other ways.

On the gender equality thing, is that the higher representation of women in senior posts or something else you're thinking of?

On the senior posts, I think that they get sod all maternity leave? So people are either straight back at work almost immediately, or give up entirely. So I always take that stat with a pinch of salt.

On the gender equality thing, is that the higher representation of women in senior posts or something else you're thinking of?

On the senior posts, I think that they get sod all maternity leave? So people are either straight back at work almost immediately, or give up entirely. So I always take that stat with a pinch of salt.

whoops!

I agree that US gender equality is 'economically driven' although backed up by the US being a more litigious society. So the equality laws they have are used aggressively.

"Fortunately, their brand of nationalism is confined to parochial flag-waving rather than empire-expansion just for now."

Chil - do you know if there is much white 'blue collar' support for the Tea Party? If not - I think they'll just remain contained (somewhat uncomfortably) with the Republican party.

Yes that's probably true jackstar. I think that as with many other things the US is a country of extremes. Hyper successful business-women on one hand, producing and propogating a v sexist and hyper-sexualised view of women on the other hand. And then all of the millions of women in poverty and at risk of dying in childbirth etc sort of hidden underneath it all. I find the constant attacks on the right to abortion worrying as well.

There is blue-collar support for the Tea Party in the US, rather in the same way as there is working class support for the BNP here. Some blue collar workers in the US will be feeling hard done by in the economic crisis, seeing their tax dollars being wasted by the Obama administration to prop up the 'feckless' like the unemployed and bankers (!), racism never being far from the surface, very responsive when patriotic buttons are pushed. People with these sentiments are natural Republicans - and the more extreme among them find the Tea Party ideas appealing.

I don't know a huge amount about the tea party (other than they're nutters) but I liked this from George Mombiot in the Guardian earlier this week:

"The acceptance of policies that counteract our interests is the pervasive mystery of the 21st century. In the US blue-collar workers angrily demand that they be left without healthcare, and insist that millionaires pay less tax. In the UK we appear ready to abandon the social progress for which our ancestors risked their lives with barely a mutter of protest. What has happened to us?"

He's talking about the Tea party and he seems to think they're blue collar workers (or at least some of them are).

I don't know Mombiot but we're hardly 'abandoning social progress' at the moment. The welfare state is taken as a given, but is being scaled back to something that Beveridge et al would probably find quite familiar - not abandoned all together. And we're asking questions that haven't been asked for over 60 years i.e. 'What do we want a welfare state to do? How big a role should the state play?' That's quite a different exercise to the one the Tea Party is engaged in..

The Tea Party are conservative libertarian populists. They have a 40% poll approval rating in the US, higher than the traditional parties. Unlike the other parties, they are not backed by huge donors and are a populist movement. 40% of Tea Party supporters are Democrats or independents. The breakdown is roughly 57 percent Republican, 28 percent Independent and 13 percent Democratic.

They aren't racist (but certain movements are trying to hijack parts of the movement). Racist is a smear used by progressives when they lose their support base.

They are anti big government, for low taxes, against policies that harm the people of the United States, pro freedom, pro liberty, pro the Constitution, anti bullshit, anti political correctness, anti green policies that destroy the US industrial base. They are anti the kind of things that George Monbiot believes in. They have arisen because millions of Americans no longer trust their politicians and the special interests that they support. They represent a vibrant democracy in action.

They are called nutters by their progressive opponents, who fear that the population is breaking free from their control and will no longer accept progressive spin.

The blue collar workers he's talking about (I think) were up in arms about healthcare which was being introduced by Obama... I don't think it is a given that the people who were opposing healthcare (there were a lot of people interviewed at marches etc) were tea party members... I hadn't heard of the tea party when those marches were happening although possibly they were already known in US. I assumed the people marching were "normal" republican types. And even some non-republicans who had got their knickers in a twist about "socialism".

Someone recommended this book to me recently here. It's about right wing politics and america and exactly these points - why people repeatedly vote for a party which does not act in their interests. it's a bit repetitive but the basic message is very interesting and has made me understand a little more why right-wing people think as they do (I used to just think they were evil TBH, this explains the logic to their thinking, even if it's still totally repugnant to me, it's not so utterly mystifying now).

ISNT - yes the US is difficult for us to categorise. (eg - a secular society with high church attendance rate).

Chil - it is interesting if the Republican reaction to Obama is to move further to the right. The Tory reaction to Blair was (after they got over their 'rabbit in the headlights' impression) to hold ground and then move slightly left - I think.

The Tea Party are the first real challenge to the globalisation and off-shoring of jobs carried out by both left and right. They are a real opposition, unlike the unions who never challenge and stand up for the working people.

The Tea Party are against Wall Street globalisation, against bailouts, against their jobs being shipped overseas and their standard of living declining. They are against fatcats and politicians who do their bidding.

They are against the globalisation consensus of left and right and against politicians blowing their earnings via taxation. That's why the progressives call them "nutters". They have no argument against them, so they resort to smears and insults as usual. But teh American people are wise to their tricks.

In the US the politics are not so much 'left & right' as 'right and further right'. I remember watching a round-table discussion on CNN around the time when Hilary Clinton was trying to push through a national health-care system during her husband's administration (early nineties?). The NHS model was held up as an example and one of the contributors was incredulous.... "You mean anyone can get treated? For anything? No matter how much it costs? And the state pays the bill? But what happens if everyone is sick all at the same time? Do they all have to be treated?..." It was clearly a completely alien concept.

Extend that to other things we tend to take for granted and their society clearly has very different expectations as standard... even among those you'd describe as 'left-leaning'

The Americans are against socialist rationing, decided on by some bureaucrat. They fear they will not be able to receive life-saving cancer treatments as we do here due to postcode lotteries and decisions of faceless bureaucrats. They don't believe the bureaucrats have their interests at heart, they want the freedom of choice.

@Claig.... The Tea Party are 'against' and that's a very easy position to occupy. We do not know what they are 'for'. They have no proposals on how to move their country forward beyond some vague ideas of individualism and protectionism. I wouldn't call them 'nutters' but I do think they are extremely naive.

ISNT - I agree right wing political support is often driven by values (rather than pure self interest).

IMO - it's often a different flavour of 'fairness' from the left wing view of fairness - with more emphasis on social mobility and meritocracy and less emphasis on equality. IYSWIM.

Chil I'm sure they would say that the UK politics are "left and further left".

Makes me very pleased that even the tories would be unable to scrap the welfare state completely and get rid of the NHS as we are actually quite a nicey-lefty-socialist bunch of people. Even the mean ones

"they want the freedom of choice"

Bollocks. When it comes to health-care, freedom of choice in the US extends only so far as how many dollar bills you have to make that choice happen. They may be against socialist rationing but they are quite comfortable with social rationing... the poor die and the rich live. For a nation that regards Darwinism with suspicion, 'survival of the fittest' is a popular concept.

@ISNT... fundamentally, UK politics is very centrist. The main parties have very little differences if you look at them closely. It's more a difference of management style than philosophy or dogma - hence why the polling is always such a close-run thing.

The Tea Party are for the Constitution of the United States, they uphold the values of the Founding Fathers of the United States. They are for liberty, for freedom, against socialist regulation and control. They are for representative government that listens to the views of the people. They want people who represent them, not elites and mandarins produced by Harvard and Yale. They want their country back and they want their politicians to listen to the concerns of ordinary people. They are fed up of not being listened to, not being represented by the intelligentsia and progressive elites. They are like the original Boston Tea Party, they say "no taxation without representation".

The people all over Europe are the same, most are anti the EU bureaucrats and would agree with many policies of their American compatriots in the Tea Party. The difference is that there is far more freedom in the United States than in Europe. Here the Monbiots, the progressive intelligentsia, hold sway, but the US has a spirit of independence and that is why they believe so much in freedom, democracy and the Constitution. That is why they fear socialist regulation and policies that limit the rights of citizens born in the land of the free.

@claig... 'upholding the values of the Founding Fathers'. That's just the point. They might as well say they uphold Mom & Apple Pie - people can't argue with that kind of woolly crap either.