[lbo-talk] Who are the Teabaggers? Call for assistance.

[Bhaskar Sunkara]

Among some fellow student activists here in DC (mostly of what I'd like to
call the anarcho-liberal variety) the question of who the Tea Party Movement
members are (in terms of class composition, etc) and whether or not they
should be viewed as some sort of nascent fascist movement was posed to me
(because I've read Marxists and not Crimethinc., I suppose).  I'm guessing
the upcoming blitz on our neighborhood by these folks on April 15th
triggered it.  It'll be a topic at a meeting of a few progressive student
groups next week and I don't like to knowingly peddle bullshit... So here's
some of my still inchoate views on the topic (largely derivative I'm sure),
any criticisms would be appreciated.
***
Not much has changed in the past year and half, but the mere* perception* of
change during the Obama presidency has helped to spawn a right-wing
opposition movement, an opposition whose real roots lie in the continued
fragmentation of capitalist society in the neoliberal age. Discontent has
only now been accentuated due to the election of an African-American
president who has come to be a symbol for the metamorphosis of the last
quarter century among a not-so-insignificant quadrant of the petit
bourgeoisie and their allies.  To say that the Tea Party Movement is rooted,
like all reactionary movements, in real contradictions and grievances is not
to yield too much ground.

To speak sweepingly: Tea Partiers have an idyllic dream of a society in
which wealth is available to all who strive to earn—as opposed to receive or
“make”*—*it and the overburdened petit bourgeoisie aren’t outmuscled by big
business’ lobbyists or the natural tendency of capital to monopolize.  For
them their identity as “Americans” is a source of pride and prestige that
globalization and the obvious decline of the United States’ hegemony
threaten.  They are white, mostly male and ‘middle class,’ and misdirect
well-justified anger towards those groups whom they perceive to be
beneficiaries of the declining social status of the white male; feminists,
people of color, “welfare cheats,” and immigrants, all undeserving of
status as “real Americans.”  Many of them were “Reagan Democrats” who helped
to  undermine their own economic position by allowing themselves to be used
as weapons in the neoliberal offensive of the 1980s.  It was not so much the
bureaucratic grey of the welfare state that aggrieved these Reagan voters,
but its use as an instrument of civil rights and social integration for a
diverse group of Americans in the 1960s and 1970s.  Today, distilled to its
most coherent elements, their political program calls for a “purer”
capitalism that is fair, meritorious and free of government.  Since
this fantasy cannot be realized and these utopians of the right will
continue to alternately amuse, infuriate and worry us with their trademark
“anti-establishment rhetoric to serve the establishment” ironies.  Yet even
the most noxious of petit bourgeois utopians, in the form of domestic Tea
Partiers or Islamists abroad, should never been the *prime *target of
composed progressives.  My main point is to stress to
student progressives that the real enemy is the intelligent, affable black
man in the White House and the society in his charge, not your Ayn Rand
quoting, libertarian cousin or some idiot doing combat drills in the woods
in West Bumblefuck Nowhere America. I have a decent understanding of what
fascism (Trotsky's writing from the 30s, etc) and wouldn't have a problem
explaining why the Teabaggers aren't the Blackshirts.