Paul Schwietering
Mark Kelly, the astronaut who is the husband of Gabrielle Giffords (the Congresswoman who was shot by a right-wing extremist) has written a book about Giffords’ attempts to re-learn how to walk and talk. The book is scheduled to be released on Nov. 15. I did not originally intend to mention this book in my column, but the sequence of events that occurred at a “Town Hall” meeting held by Elizabeth Warren, the candidate for U.S. Senate, changed my mind.

Elizabeth Warren is the former federal regulator who tried to stop some of the financial deregulation that was done during the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Her testimony was instrumental to getting some meaningful regulations into the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and she was President Obama’s first choice to administer the new office concerned with consumer protection. The Republicans in the Senate, who raise much of their campaign funding from Wall Street, filibustered the appointment because Wall Street hates her. The daughter of an Oklahoma maintenance man, she made it to Harvard on merit. Wall Street is afraid of her because she cannot be bribed or intimidated, and she understands even their most complicated swindles. Obama finally withdrew her name from consideration (he substituted former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, who also cannot be bribed or intimidated and therefore is also being filibustered by the Republicans). Warren then decided to run against Scott Brown, the Republican Senator from Massachusetts.

Brown has raised more campaign contributions from Wall Street than anyone else in either House of the U.S. Congress (about $10 million so far). Warren announced her candidacy a few weeks ago and was holding a meeting with voters this week when a man rudely interrupted her to ask if she had organized the “Occupy Wall Street” protests. She replied courteously that she had not organized the protests, but that the protesters had every right to protest as long as they obeyed the law. This individual then shouted that she is a “socialist whore” and screamed that “her boss” (presumably he meant President Obama) was “born in Kenya.”

The far right in this country has historically consisted of two parts. The first part is comprised of some (but not all) of the extremely rich (heirs and heiresses, hedge fund managers, corporate executives, etc.) and some (but not all) of the upper middle class (doctors, etc.) who find the policies of greed and corporate special privilege to their liking because they benefit from these policies personally. The second part is composed of the low information voters of the far right (currently characterized by the “Tea Party”), which is funded by right wing billionaires like the Koch brothers. The Koch brothers’ father funded the John Birch Society, which claimed that Dwight Eisenhower was a secret agent for the Soviet Union. This gives you some idea of the “Tea Party” target audience.

However, the “Tea Party” is made up of not only the low information voters but also, as we have seen with the experience of Elizabeth Warren, the emotionally distraught. Both types tend to have low self esteem, resulting in a much greater susceptibility than the general population to any political movement that scapegoats people who are different from themselves (racial or ethnic or religious minorities, or people who hold different political views). This is because having some other group to scapegoat makes them feel like there are people of lower social standing than themselves, thus temporarily reducing their anxiety caused by low self esteem.

Political and social movements of the far right often spring from economic crisis (such as we have now) or as a reaction to fundamental social change (such as the revitalization of the Ku Klux Klan in the Deep South during the 50’s and early 60’s). Two case studies of far right movements that resulted from economic crisis are from the 1920’s – the Nazis in Germany and the Fascists in Italy. Both of these movements sought a scapegoat for the crisis (in Germany it was the Jews, in Italy it was the political parties of the left). As long as a far right movement does not identify the elites as an economic class for being responsible for the crisis (usually they blame a minority group or the political left) these movements are likely to be co-opted by the financial and industrial elites and receive funding from them (as happened eventually in Germany and Italy and happened almost immediately with the “Tea Party”). Thus in one stroke the people who own almost everything are provided with a convenient scapegoat to distract the rest of the people from focusing on them and they have also driven a wedge between people of other economic classes by causing a split along ethnic, racial, religious, or political lines.

The Ku Klux Klan was opposed to the fundamental social changes brought about by the civil rights movement. They saw the civil rights movement as the source of their discontent, and blamed not only a racial minority (African-Americans) but also blamed “outsiders” (“northern agitators”) for changing their “way of life” (segregation). They hated reporters in general and television reporters in particular (sound familiar?). They seemed to realize that film footage of schoolchildren being knocked to the ground by the spray from fire hoses was not beneficial to the cause of segregation.

The common threads that run through these far right movements are their anti-democratic tendencies (we know the direction these parties took in Germany and Italy) and their tendency towards violence (witness the experience of Gabrielle Giffords). Due to these characteristics we can conclude indisputably that the “Tea Party” doesn’t live up to American ideals.

Paul Schwietering is a resident of Union Township.