Wojtek
On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 8:45 PM, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
>
>
> http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175247/tomgram%3A_greg_grandin%2C_does_the_tea_party_run_on_race
>
> From a Tom Dispatch by Greg Grandin:
>>
>
> <begin excerpt>
>
> The 1040 Archipelago
>
> At the heart of Tea Party history is the argument that "progressivism
> is fascism is communism." Conceptually, such a claim helps frame what
> many call "American exceptionalism," a belief that the exclusive role
> of government is to protect individual rights -- to speech, to
> assembly, to carry guns, and, of course, to own property -- and not to
> deliver social rights like health care, education, or welfare.
>
> At Tea Party rallies and on right-wing blogs,
> it's common to hear that, since the time of President Woodrow Wilson,
> progressives have been waging a "hundred-year-long war" on America's
> unique values. This bit of wisdom comes directly from Beck, who has
> become something like the historian laureate of American
> exceptionalism, devoting many on-air hours to why progressivism is a
> threat equal to Nazism and Stalinism.
>
> Progressives, he typically says, "started a hundred-year time bomb.
> They planted it in the early 1900s." Beck has compared himself to
> "Israeli Nazi hunters," promising [8], with language more easily
> associated with the Nazis than those who pursued them, to track down
> the progressive "vampires" who are "sucking the blood out of the
> republic."
>
> <end excerpt>
>
> In other words they agree with us that, compared with other advanced
> Western economies, the US stands out for how much less it provides to its
> citizens collectively, and even more for how little there is in our
> categories of thought to legitimate such collective provision (no category
> of solidarity, for example). So US stands out -- it's an exception -- for
> being relatively "anti-collectivist," in thought and deed. The only
> difference is that TP conservatives *embrace* this "american
> exceptionalism." And they see progressivism as a century old organized
> effort to overthrow it -- to make the US more like other civilized countries
> in this regard. Which put like that, doesn't sound entirely wrong either.
>
> So all you have to do now is replace "organized effort to" with "conspiracy
> to," which in many sentence is just the rhetoric of hyperbole. And then
> rename the progressive goal from "fundamentally improve things" to "betray
> the principles that define American exceptionalism" -- and hence define
> America.
>
> If you grant the premises -- which from a different POV we certainly can
> arguendo -- that makes a certain coherent sense.
>
> This also explains very simply why they lump together fascism, communism,
> socialism and liberalism. The first two are forms of collectivism, and the
> latter two are forms of collective provision. And at least in their dreams
> they're against all that. They realize the country will always fall short
> of their individualist utopia. But for them the important thing is to never
> give up the fight.
>
> Michael
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