The way of looking at it has to be that escalating racism is an integral part of what makes the right wing so dangerous today.
It's certainly true, as Bhaskar argued in his recent New Politics article, <http://newpol.org/node/468>"A Thousand Platitudes: Liberal Hysteria and the Tea Party," that many liberals conveniently reduce the right wing to a narrowly racist phenomenon, and use this as a smokescreen for their failure to present a coherent alternative to the right's relentless promotion of the free market.
But an effective radical answer can't be either to belittle the significance of the right, or of the racist strain that pervades it.
Bhaskar's New Politics piece is brilliant in many ways, but it gravely underestimates the danger posed by the right wing today. He wrote, "Even with dozens of representatives in the so-called 'Tea Party' caucus, it remains to be seen what tangible legislation the movement will push through." Bhaskar's piece was published in June; since then the Tea Party has shown its power in the debt deal which -- with the shameful complicity of Obama and the Democratic Party leadership who have their own austerity program -- will bring terrible cuts in this country's social insurance programs unless there is a great upsurge of protest to prevent them.
Bhaskar ends his NP piece by saying "Nor is there anything novel about the Tea Party, a loud but fleeting explosion of right-wing populism." Well, perhaps the Tea Party is a flash in the pan that will burn itself out, but I wouldn't count on that. It gives a new intensity to the old confluence of right wing and racist politics in America, which is especially dangerous at a time of deepening economic crisis and a very weak left.
There is, fortunately, a growing dissatisfaction among radicals, leftists and some liberals with the corporatist politics of Obama and the Democrats. The nationwide tour of Cornel West and Tavis Smiley is calling attention to the way these compromises are a catastrophe for African Americans in particular, and for others as well.
Many left critics of Obama and the Democratic leadership hesitate to really press their criticisms and organize an alternative to the Democrats. They invoke the menace of right wing politicians gaining even greater political strength. But rather than downplaying either the right's racism or the threat that it poses to millions of Americans, radicals need to counter that argument by pointing out that Obamaist corporatism only feeds the right wing and its racism.
>>What difference does it make whether he believes it? What matters is that
>>in the present atmosphere he feels he can say it.
>
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>What do you mean the present atmosphere? Hard core racists have never
>been shy about racist talk.
>
>Whether he believes it makes a difference because I think it's worse when
>it's just a soundbite repeated without reflection. This country is full
>of politicians who aren't thinking deeply about anything at all really.
>
>LBJ was a racist, but he was more compelling, and got more done, than this
>fuck ever will. Ditto Nixon
>
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