0 comment Thursday, June 26, 2014 | admin
Over the last year or so I have been watching the 'progress', if it can be called that, of the Tea Party movement. It's obvious that the Tea Partiers are seen as alarming by most of this country's ''respectables'', whether on the left or on the ''right''. There is an interesting take on the Tea Partiers here (H/T Mencius Moldbug)
Lee Harris in the linked article describes how our society has become dominated by those who control the discourse by more or less quarantining or ignoring anything that strays outside the established boundaries of what is acceptable under the label ''free speech.'' A significant number of people have managed to resist the conditioning which keeps the more docile people on the reservation, and it is these people who are making all the noise in the Tea Parties, thus alarming the elites who thought they had all rebellious thoughts contained.
Harris in the essay says, of the Tea Partiers
...it is precisely their status as marginalized outsiders that allows them to defy the monopoly of prestige possessed by the cultural insiders. This fact may put them beyond the pale as far as the conservative intellectuals are concerned, but it is precisely what makes them a force capable of resisting the liberal elite�s efforts to achieve cultural hegemony � a resistance that conservative intellectuals had hoped to mount but which they have not mounted, which explains why the Tea Party movement has so little use for them as a whole. As the Tea Partiers see it, what is most needed right now are not new ideas � we have already had far too many of those. What is needed is the revitalization of a very old attitude � the attitude shared by all people who have been able to maintain their liberty and independence against those who would take it away from them: "We do not need an elite to govern us. We can govern ourselves."
Harris, despite his skeptical and somewhat disparaging remarks about the Tea Parties, ends up giving them a grudging compliment, seeing the Tea Party participants as embodiments of the old ''Don't Tread On Me'' attitude. It is this defiant attitude, he says, which offers the only hope of thwarting the plans of a domineering elite which hopes to tamp down all resistance.
However, much as I would like to agree with him that the ''Don't Tread On Me'' attitude lives on, I am afraid I don't see it in the Tea Parties.
Back when these gatherings were first beginning, I wrote a post here about the phenomenon:
I wonder if any of the patriots who are participating in this movement will be able to notice that it is pretty much only White America that cares about these issues. There was a remarkable lack of 'diversity' in those protests today.
One way we will know if the movement is selling out: if, in response to the inevitable cries of 'racism' (any movement that is made up mostly of Whites will be called 'racist), they respond by trying to 'diversify' the movement and bring in black or other nonwhite spokesmen. (Cf. the recent behavior of the Republican Party, with their new RNC chairman and their touting of Jindal).
So if this nascent 'grassroots movement' starts making politically correct disclaimers and putting 'diversity' front and center, we will know that it's just another co-opted political dead-end, which is unwilling to look at the unexamined issues which are part of the crisis: massive nonwhite immigration and our loss of majority status -- both of which play major parts in our country's dire situation.
These protests could be a sign of a potential stirring of the old American spirit or they might be just a flash in the pan, a dead end, which will focus exclusively on the 'safe' issues like taxes and big government. Those are symptoms; they are not the crux of the problem.
The libertarian right, which seems to be making a lot of hay on these protests, can only relate everything that is wrong with America to the economic nexus, to the 'free market'. That is a willfully blind position to take, and it will not lead anywhere.
So what will come of the Tea Party movement, if anything, remains to be seen.''
It seems my skepticism was warranted, because things have played out exactly as I said I feared they would: the Tea Parties are rendering themselves irrelevant, if not absurd, by their efforts to prove their lack of ''racism.'' They do, in fact, seem to be the dead end that I thought they would be.
The best piece I have seen on the subject of the Tea Parties' pathetic display of political correctness was this one by James Edwards.
Does anyone else see the complete absurdity of this situation? A movement that�s 95% white has somehow become solely focused on black people. They like to "brag" that one survey found that the Tea Party is only about 75% white, but that�s nonsense, as anyone can see for themselves. It�s a white movement. They used to stand for something�limited government, lower taxes, no bail outs, etc. They came together to do something about their concerns, and their meetings were open to all. But blacks don�t care about that stuff, so very few of them show up. And because they believe that white people have no legitimate interests, Tea Parties started bending over backwards to pander to blacks and fill their podiums with them, so liberals would stop calling them the R word.
And now it�s nothing but all black people, all the time. When they�re not promoting tokens to leadership positions, they�re accusing the NAACP of being racists and hating blacks, then they�re turning around and inviting the NAACP to strategize with them on the best ways to deal with the problems blacks face, or they�re screaming "Democrats are the real racists! Bull Connor was a Democrat!", or they�re bragging about kicking people out of rallies for holding up a completely innocuous sign that liberals and race hustlers don�t approve of, or they�re claiming that they�re the best political movement for blacks to belong to, or they�re holding a "Uni-Tea" rally for blacks only and calling it a national forum on race. For crying out loud, after this episode, the Tea Party movement might as well merge with the NAACP.
This is pathetic. It�s sickening and disgusting.
And I predicted it long ago. Just check my archives here on the blog and the radio show. A movement that could have been powerful has been brought to its knees because of white people�s silly, abject fears of being called a six letter word. So they spend all their time trying to attract the people who have no interest in their movement, and never will. And what do they get in return? They get called "racist" yet again, and they immediately go back to groveling.
Every Tea Partier in America needs to read Racism, Schmacism.
Racism, Schmacism is at the top of my list of books to read.
Meantime, is there any hope for the large group of ''conservatives'' who are still terrified by the word ''racism''? When I read the posts over at Free Republic, or even AmRen sometimes, I get a feeling of near-despair, because it seems that despite the efforts of many of us to break the politically correct conditioning, things go on as usual, with the FReepers and others on the right increasingly consumed with calling liberals ''the real racists'', and calling minorities ''racist,'' without ever reaching the stage where they actually begin to question the whole politically correct mindset which considers something called ''racism'' the greatest crime imaginable.
At times I have believed that our only avenue of breaking through the PC conditioning is to try to bring along those mainstream ''conservatives'' who seem almost -- but not quite -- on the verge of some kind of racial consciousness. But it seems that many of them are hopeless cases, who may never have that breakthrough into common sense. Instead they embrace a watered-down form of the liberalism they claim to loathe.
It seems that the ''respectable right'', or the "castrated conservatives" as Carleton Putnam called them, are simply going in circles.
Back during that fateful election of 2008, I counseled against the mindset of many on the racial right who said that ''worse is better'', and that people would awaken by the millions under the new regime which was 'elected' in November that year. I wonder if any of those who proclaimed 'worse is better' have recanted that belief, in the wake of all that has happened since?
If worse is indeed better, why are so many seemingly more bogged down in the quicksand of political correctness than ever before?
Lee Harris in the linked article describes how our society has become dominated by those who control the discourse by more or less quarantining or ignoring anything that strays outside the established boundaries of what is acceptable under the label ''free speech.'' A significant number of people have managed to resist the conditioning which keeps the more docile people on the reservation, and it is these people who are making all the noise in the Tea Parties, thus alarming the elites who thought they had all rebellious thoughts contained.
Harris in the essay says, of the Tea Partiers
...it is precisely their status as marginalized outsiders that allows them to defy the monopoly of prestige possessed by the cultural insiders. This fact may put them beyond the pale as far as the conservative intellectuals are concerned, but it is precisely what makes them a force capable of resisting the liberal elite�s efforts to achieve cultural hegemony � a resistance that conservative intellectuals had hoped to mount but which they have not mounted, which explains why the Tea Party movement has so little use for them as a whole. As the Tea Partiers see it, what is most needed right now are not new ideas � we have already had far too many of those. What is needed is the revitalization of a very old attitude � the attitude shared by all people who have been able to maintain their liberty and independence against those who would take it away from them: "We do not need an elite to govern us. We can govern ourselves."
Harris, despite his skeptical and somewhat disparaging remarks about the Tea Parties, ends up giving them a grudging compliment, seeing the Tea Party participants as embodiments of the old ''Don't Tread On Me'' attitude. It is this defiant attitude, he says, which offers the only hope of thwarting the plans of a domineering elite which hopes to tamp down all resistance.
However, much as I would like to agree with him that the ''Don't Tread On Me'' attitude lives on, I am afraid I don't see it in the Tea Parties.
Back when these gatherings were first beginning, I wrote a post here about the phenomenon:
I wonder if any of the patriots who are participating in this movement will be able to notice that it is pretty much only White America that cares about these issues. There was a remarkable lack of 'diversity' in those protests today.
One way we will know if the movement is selling out: if, in response to the inevitable cries of 'racism' (any movement that is made up mostly of Whites will be called 'racist), they respond by trying to 'diversify' the movement and bring in black or other nonwhite spokesmen. (Cf. the recent behavior of the Republican Party, with their new RNC chairman and their touting of Jindal).
So if this nascent 'grassroots movement' starts making politically correct disclaimers and putting 'diversity' front and center, we will know that it's just another co-opted political dead-end, which is unwilling to look at the unexamined issues which are part of the crisis: massive nonwhite immigration and our loss of majority status -- both of which play major parts in our country's dire situation.
These protests could be a sign of a potential stirring of the old American spirit or they might be just a flash in the pan, a dead end, which will focus exclusively on the 'safe' issues like taxes and big government. Those are symptoms; they are not the crux of the problem.
The libertarian right, which seems to be making a lot of hay on these protests, can only relate everything that is wrong with America to the economic nexus, to the 'free market'. That is a willfully blind position to take, and it will not lead anywhere.
So what will come of the Tea Party movement, if anything, remains to be seen.''
It seems my skepticism was warranted, because things have played out exactly as I said I feared they would: the Tea Parties are rendering themselves irrelevant, if not absurd, by their efforts to prove their lack of ''racism.'' They do, in fact, seem to be the dead end that I thought they would be.
The best piece I have seen on the subject of the Tea Parties' pathetic display of political correctness was this one by James Edwards.
Does anyone else see the complete absurdity of this situation? A movement that�s 95% white has somehow become solely focused on black people. They like to "brag" that one survey found that the Tea Party is only about 75% white, but that�s nonsense, as anyone can see for themselves. It�s a white movement. They used to stand for something�limited government, lower taxes, no bail outs, etc. They came together to do something about their concerns, and their meetings were open to all. But blacks don�t care about that stuff, so very few of them show up. And because they believe that white people have no legitimate interests, Tea Parties started bending over backwards to pander to blacks and fill their podiums with them, so liberals would stop calling them the R word.
And now it�s nothing but all black people, all the time. When they�re not promoting tokens to leadership positions, they�re accusing the NAACP of being racists and hating blacks, then they�re turning around and inviting the NAACP to strategize with them on the best ways to deal with the problems blacks face, or they�re screaming "Democrats are the real racists! Bull Connor was a Democrat!", or they�re bragging about kicking people out of rallies for holding up a completely innocuous sign that liberals and race hustlers don�t approve of, or they�re claiming that they�re the best political movement for blacks to belong to, or they�re holding a "Uni-Tea" rally for blacks only and calling it a national forum on race. For crying out loud, after this episode, the Tea Party movement might as well merge with the NAACP.
This is pathetic. It�s sickening and disgusting.
And I predicted it long ago. Just check my archives here on the blog and the radio show. A movement that could have been powerful has been brought to its knees because of white people�s silly, abject fears of being called a six letter word. So they spend all their time trying to attract the people who have no interest in their movement, and never will. And what do they get in return? They get called "racist" yet again, and they immediately go back to groveling.
Every Tea Partier in America needs to read Racism, Schmacism.
Racism, Schmacism is at the top of my list of books to read.
Meantime, is there any hope for the large group of ''conservatives'' who are still terrified by the word ''racism''? When I read the posts over at Free Republic, or even AmRen sometimes, I get a feeling of near-despair, because it seems that despite the efforts of many of us to break the politically correct conditioning, things go on as usual, with the FReepers and others on the right increasingly consumed with calling liberals ''the real racists'', and calling minorities ''racist,'' without ever reaching the stage where they actually begin to question the whole politically correct mindset which considers something called ''racism'' the greatest crime imaginable.
At times I have believed that our only avenue of breaking through the PC conditioning is to try to bring along those mainstream ''conservatives'' who seem almost -- but not quite -- on the verge of some kind of racial consciousness. But it seems that many of them are hopeless cases, who may never have that breakthrough into common sense. Instead they embrace a watered-down form of the liberalism they claim to loathe.
It seems that the ''respectable right'', or the "castrated conservatives" as Carleton Putnam called them, are simply going in circles.
Back during that fateful election of 2008, I counseled against the mindset of many on the racial right who said that ''worse is better'', and that people would awaken by the millions under the new regime which was 'elected' in November that year. I wonder if any of those who proclaimed 'worse is better' have recanted that belief, in the wake of all that has happened since?
If worse is indeed better, why are so many seemingly more bogged down in the quicksand of political correctness than ever before?
Labels: Anti White Racism, Conservatism, Freedom Of Speech, Political Correctness, Tea Party, Thought Police