Welcome!
Eric Covington and I started this blog in the Spring of 2010 as we prepared to see Sarah Palin speak at the first Tea Party National Convention in Nashville, Tn. Thanks to the generosity of then MTSU Associate Dean of Liberal Arts, Mark Byrnes, we had been able to purchase two tickets to the dinner and her keynote speech at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. We started this blog as a place to talk about our ideas and refer others who might be interested in what we were studying, too.
This all grew out of a class project that developed in my COMM 4650 (Rhetorical theory, history, and criticism) class in the Spring of 2009. On April 15th, the first ever "Tea Party" rallies were held around the country, and I was fascinated - pretty soon everyone was. What on earth were they protesting? Why? What was their goal?
What immediately caught our attention were the anti-Obama signs that dominated these events. Was the Tea Party FOR something or were they just AGAINST newly elected President Obama?
I assigned the class to read Eric Hoffer's work on "the True Believer" and his theory of Mass Movements. We had some great discussions looking at the Tea Party as well as the "Hope" campaign of Obama. Did they fit the criteria Hoffer described? How so? Why or why not? And who cares, anyway?
We had also already discussed in class the Republican party's challenge to re-brand themselves following their defeat in the 2008 Presidential election. How would they use rhetoric to constitute a new identity? What would they include, what would they change, who would be the voices of leadership?
So naturally, these discussions led us to consider if the Tea Party was going to be the new face of the Republican party. Little did we know in the Spring of 2009 how our curiosity about these topics would become political reality in the U.S. throughout the summer at the HealthCare Town Hall meetings and then throughout the next year as the Congress debated Health Care Reform. And then, in the Fall of 2010, the Tea Party made its formal debut in American politics by capturing a number of Congressional seats.
So the initial insight that prompted me to involve my students in the study of this (then completely) new movement turned out to be amazingly prophetic. And long before the 2010 mid-term election, we had some insights and predictions gained through rhetorical criticism papers completed for the rhetoric class. Eric's paper - an analysis of Tea Party ideographs - won the top undergraduate paper award at TCA in 2009. He continued his research with me during an Independent Study in the Fall of 2009 and the formal paper he finished and submitted was accepted for presentation at the annual Theodore Clevenger Undergraduate Honors conference at the annual SSCA regional convention.
My own work was focused on the application of Hoffer's ideas to the Tea Party movement. First this required me to turn Hoffer's thoughts about audiences and rhetorical strategies into a theory of fanatical rhetoric. Then I had to determine how or if it fit the Tea Party movement (and later the OccupyWallStreet movement). This research and rhetorical theory development is what I am working on now and my papers working through this development have been competitively selected for three major regional conferences (SSCA and CSCA).
I was also interviewed for the NCA online journal, Communication Currents, in the Spring of 2011 about my theories and my perspective on the Tea Party and their "violence-flavored rhetoric" (which was my term for it). You can watch that interview here:
So throughout the years since we started it in 2010, this blog has become a "dumping ground" of sorts for things we/I found in research and internet journies that related to the study and the development of the fanatical rhetorical theory. We also share it with others who are interested in studying the Tea Party movement as a "library" of sources. It is certainly not complete nor does it even have any organization at this time; but the blog gets a significant amount of traffic every month, so somebody must find it useful.
If you search the archives you will find the actual blog posts I wrote along the way describing and explaining what we were seeing rhetorically in the Tea Party. Most of those posts were in early 2010, but there have been a number of them since then, commenting on signficant developments as the Tea Party gained power.
What tickles us is how right we were. Our insights may seem like "common sense" now, but they surely weren't in 2009-2010 when this study began. It's a useful reminder for us about following that "hunch" when it strikes. I thought this was going to be a huge rhetorical development in American politics, and it was. It still is.
It's not over. So stay tuned . . .
Feel free to leave us comments!
p.s. if you want to know the story behind the name, you can find it at the very beginning of the blog - February, 2010.
Showing posts with label Movements. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Movements. Show all posts
Monday, May 20, 2013
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
"The Poignantly Frustrated" . . .
Over and over I keep coming back to this quote by Eric Hoffer about Mass (fanatical) Movements:
Although I am still neither a supporter or opponent of OWS, I am still also puzzled by their lack of practicality and their refusal to engage the democratic process as a mechanism of change. In this sense they are significantly different from the Tea Party who doggedly and successfully used existing democratic processes to effect changes they desired by electing candidates who would represent their values and working to defeat candidates who do not. OWS, however, identifies and prides itself on standing outside of the democratic process. In this sense, OWS more fundamentally fits Hoffer's profile of the True Believer and "the poignantly frustrated."
It also earns them the label of "radical" by non-supporters and presents a significant credibility challenge for attracting "mainstream" supporters.
Hmmm....
“A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness, and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring on them an absolute truth or remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves – and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole.” (p. 41)
Although I am still neither a supporter or opponent of OWS, I am still also puzzled by their lack of practicality and their refusal to engage the democratic process as a mechanism of change. In this sense they are significantly different from the Tea Party who doggedly and successfully used existing democratic processes to effect changes they desired by electing candidates who would represent their values and working to defeat candidates who do not. OWS, however, identifies and prides itself on standing outside of the democratic process. In this sense, OWS more fundamentally fits Hoffer's profile of the True Believer and "the poignantly frustrated."
It also earns them the label of "radical" by non-supporters and presents a significant credibility challenge for attracting "mainstream" supporters.
Hmmm....
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Yeah...I think I called that one.
I previously commented on the inadvisability of a Dem alliance with OWS.
"As radicalism creeps in, credibility retreats from OWS" by Michael Gerson highlights some of the problems that have given me pause all along.
"As radicalism creeps in, credibility retreats from OWS" by Michael Gerson highlights some of the problems that have given me pause all along.
At what point does a protest movement become an excuse for camping? At what point is utopianism discredited by the seedy, dangerous, derelict fun fair it creates? At what point do the excesses of a movement become so prevalent that they can reasonably be called its essence? At what point do Democratic politicians need to repudiate a form of idealism that makes use of Molotov cocktails?
The emergence of Occupy Wall Street raised Democratic hopes for the emergence of a leftist equivalent to the Tea Party movement. The comparison is now laughable. Set aside, for a moment, the reports of sexual assault in Zuccotti Park and the penchant for public urination. Tea Party activists may hate politicians, but they venerate American political institutions. Veneration does not always involve understanding. But the Tea Party’s goal is democratic influence.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
The Tea Party's frustrated state of mind . . .
This weekend, the front page of USA Today features a story on the Tea Party. The reporters, Page and Jagoda, open the article by noting:
"The Tea Party is less a classical political movement than a frustrated state of mind."
I've been saying since April 15th of 2009 that the Tea Party is what Eric Hoffer describes as a "Mass Movement" comprised of "True Believers." This was my original hypothesis and theory that my students set out to investigate with me in COMM 4650, and I specifically addressed the issue of frustration as a key element of their rhetorical movement when Eric and I were preparing to attend the first annual Tea Party convention in Nashville in February, 2010.
Hoffer specifically states in the introduction to his work, "The True Believer: Thoughts on the nature of Mass Movements" (1951) that:
Eric's study of the rhetorical ideographs that structure and inspire the Tea Party movement was one piece of the puzzle for understanding HOW the frustrated are being persuaded to join this particular mass movement. One of the primary rhetorical strategies of Tea Party advocates is the use of a new political ideograph he identified as "security". By fueling an already frustrated public with repeated and ever greater fears for their economic and homeland security, popular Conservative pundits like Savage, Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck and Palin have been very successful in promoting and growing the Tea Party mass movement.
The Tea Party really has no consistent or coherent political agenda other than to fanatically oppose the current political status quo and many members "...acknowledge they aren't really sure what that allegiance means". However, I realized early on (ala Hoffer) that this particular movement mostly creates identification specifically and consistently through antithesis to President Barack Obama more than any other theme or goal, making him the scapegoat and target for their insecurities and frustrations. Whatever else the Tea Party may be, our first-hand experience with members at the first national Tea Party convention in Nashville confirmed for us the personal and vehement hatred and opposition to the current POTUS by members attending the convention.
While some have chalked this anti-thesis and opposition up to racism or fascism, those answers are too simple to explain the growing membership and rise of the Tea Party movement. Not all of the Tea Party members are racist per se, but racists are certainly an easy target audience for this particular mass movement. And certainly the members of the Tea Party do not consider themselves fascist, instead projecting this quality onto Barack Obama (another fear tactic).
Instead, the more comprehensive answer to the question of the Tea Party movement must investigate the antithetical rhetorical identifications and the FANATICAL nature of its rhetoric as well as the insecurities and frustrations of its "true believer" membership.
"The Tea Party is less a classical political movement than a frustrated state of mind."
I've been saying since April 15th of 2009 that the Tea Party is what Eric Hoffer describes as a "Mass Movement" comprised of "True Believers." This was my original hypothesis and theory that my students set out to investigate with me in COMM 4650, and I specifically addressed the issue of frustration as a key element of their rhetorical movement when Eric and I were preparing to attend the first annual Tea Party convention in Nashville in February, 2010.
Hoffer specifically states in the introduction to his work, "The True Believer: Thoughts on the nature of Mass Movements" (1951) that:
“This book concerns itself chiefly with the active, revivalist phase of mass movements. This phase is dominated by the true believer the [person] of fanatical fairth who is ready to sacrifice his life for a holy cause - and an attempt is made to trace [their] genesis and outline [their nature]. Starting out from the fact that the frustrated predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and that they usually join of their own accord, it is assumed: 1) that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing prompting from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics of the true believer; 2) that an effective technique of conversion consists basically in the inculcation and fixation of proclivities and responses indigenous to the frustrated mind.” (p. xii)
Eric's study of the rhetorical ideographs that structure and inspire the Tea Party movement was one piece of the puzzle for understanding HOW the frustrated are being persuaded to join this particular mass movement. One of the primary rhetorical strategies of Tea Party advocates is the use of a new political ideograph he identified as "security". By fueling an already frustrated public with repeated and ever greater fears for their economic and homeland security, popular Conservative pundits like Savage, Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck and Palin have been very successful in promoting and growing the Tea Party mass movement.
The Tea Party really has no consistent or coherent political agenda other than to fanatically oppose the current political status quo and many members "...acknowledge they aren't really sure what that allegiance means". However, I realized early on (ala Hoffer) that this particular movement mostly creates identification specifically and consistently through antithesis to President Barack Obama more than any other theme or goal, making him the scapegoat and target for their insecurities and frustrations. Whatever else the Tea Party may be, our first-hand experience with members at the first national Tea Party convention in Nashville confirmed for us the personal and vehement hatred and opposition to the current POTUS by members attending the convention.
While some have chalked this anti-thesis and opposition up to racism or fascism, those answers are too simple to explain the growing membership and rise of the Tea Party movement. Not all of the Tea Party members are racist per se, but racists are certainly an easy target audience for this particular mass movement. And certainly the members of the Tea Party do not consider themselves fascist, instead projecting this quality onto Barack Obama (another fear tactic).
Instead, the more comprehensive answer to the question of the Tea Party movement must investigate the antithetical rhetorical identifications and the FANATICAL nature of its rhetoric as well as the insecurities and frustrations of its "true believer" membership.
"Starting out from the fact that the frustrated predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements . . . "
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Former POTUS Bill Clinton on radical anti-government rhetoric . . .
Bill Clinton looking back at the rhetorical climate of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to compare and contrast with 2010 Tea Parties.
Interesting but seemingly rare example of someone on the left explicitly countering RW rhetoric with a direct argument rather than mockery or silence.
I have trouble seeing the Tea Party as a social movement as long as there are so many anti-government radicals associated with it. Defining our democratically elected government as anti-American or making a false analogy with Britain''s King George is damaging our ability to find any common ground. To limit "American" to those on the right - or to identify the right in anti-thesis to the "un-American" left = is to spur a fanatical patriotism for many radical conservatives who may ultimately choose to take violent action against this supposedly "un-American" and uber-liberal government.
There is perhaps a fine rhetorical line between advocacy for better ideas and conditions to help groups and the kind of propaganda that merely seeks to demonize and destroy groups. I think as long as the Tea Party crafts and performs a political identity from what they are against rather than what they are for, and as long as their anti-thetical demon is this administration and government, then citizens will have to be extra alert to the possibility of hyperbolic rhetoric gone too far awry - and be prepared to speak more directly and firmly in return about common grounds and "American" values in the United States.
There can be no mere difference of opinion on this issue it seems to me. To turn Americans against one another by demarcating an "us" and a "them" and to refuse to share our common grounds as Americans is to open ourselves to civil warfare - be it verbally punishing or physically violent.
I think that rhetorical state of affairs in the United States today is unacceptable in light of our history and traditions - and the efforts of the Founding Fathers to provide us all with a SHARED democratic republic - and an enduring plan of harmony and unity - liberty and responsibility - reason and real debate. And any useful debate on the policies and future of the United States must begin at least with the common ground and understanding that we are ALL Americans. As such we have a right and a responsibility to pay attention to our government, but to portray the democratically elected government as un-American is outside the frame of useful or rational debate. It hurts us all.
Interesting but seemingly rare example of someone on the left explicitly countering RW rhetoric with a direct argument rather than mockery or silence.
In an interview with the New York Times on Friday, Clinton warned of the affect that angry political rhetoric might have on antigovernment radicals like Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh; he pointed to Rep. Michele Bachmann calling the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress "the gangster government" at a tax day Tea Party rally on Thursday.
"They are not gangsters," Clinton told the newspaper. "They were elected. They are not doing anything they were not elected to do."
Clinton said that demonizing the government with incendiary language can have effects beyond just rallying a crowd.
I have trouble seeing the Tea Party as a social movement as long as there are so many anti-government radicals associated with it. Defining our democratically elected government as anti-American or making a false analogy with Britain''s King George is damaging our ability to find any common ground. To limit "American" to those on the right - or to identify the right in anti-thesis to the "un-American" left = is to spur a fanatical patriotism for many radical conservatives who may ultimately choose to take violent action against this supposedly "un-American" and uber-liberal government.
There is perhaps a fine rhetorical line between advocacy for better ideas and conditions to help groups and the kind of propaganda that merely seeks to demonize and destroy groups. I think as long as the Tea Party crafts and performs a political identity from what they are against rather than what they are for, and as long as their anti-thetical demon is this administration and government, then citizens will have to be extra alert to the possibility of hyperbolic rhetoric gone too far awry - and be prepared to speak more directly and firmly in return about common grounds and "American" values in the United States.
There can be no mere difference of opinion on this issue it seems to me. To turn Americans against one another by demarcating an "us" and a "them" and to refuse to share our common grounds as Americans is to open ourselves to civil warfare - be it verbally punishing or physically violent.
I think that rhetorical state of affairs in the United States today is unacceptable in light of our history and traditions - and the efforts of the Founding Fathers to provide us all with a SHARED democratic republic - and an enduring plan of harmony and unity - liberty and responsibility - reason and real debate. And any useful debate on the policies and future of the United States must begin at least with the common ground and understanding that we are ALL Americans. As such we have a right and a responsibility to pay attention to our government, but to portray the democratically elected government as un-American is outside the frame of useful or rational debate. It hurts us all.
Friday, February 5, 2010
"We need to read Eric Hoffer . . . "
This particular rhetorical criticism project began April 15th, 2009 - the day I was late to my rhetoric class because I was fascinated watching the tea party protests on the noonday local news in Nashville. I was also following blogger Oliver Willis as he began live tweeting from one in Washington, DC. And all I could think about this rhetorical phenomenon as I drove to class was: "we need to read Eric Hoffer."
I began reading and discussing Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements" with my rhetoric classes in the Fall of 2001. After 9/11, we spent a great deal of time talking and making sense. And one thing that just didn't make sense was the fanatical nature of Al-Qaeda. It also seemed to me that we needed to be mindful of our own nationalism; that our collective bonding in the face of such horror must not deterioriate into blind fanatical rhetoric and behavior of our own. So, because it helped us make sense of this rhetoric of our time, we would read Eric Hoffer's classic analysis of fanatical social movements at the end of every semester through the spring of 2004.
I've since changed Universities, and I've been teaching other courses since then, so I didn't include Hoffer in my course syllabus when I was assigned to teach a rhetoric course again last spring. It simply didn't seem as necessary to consider his work that winter because fanaticism per se was not so much in the public eye then. Mostly it was celebration and exultation following the election of Mr. Barack Obama as POTUS. And President Obama's rhetoric is not True Believer/fanatic rhetoric. It may be many things, but it is not that. So, I edited Hoffer readings and discussions out of my syllabus in favor of trying some different learning activities that are currently more in vogue with educators (i.e. group projects).
But then came Rush "I hope he fails" Limbaugh . . . and the army of True Believers that followed him. They had a very clear fanatical "devil" = any and all things un-American. And that's fine as far as it goes - I am pretty passionately patriotic, too. But they weren't standing up for American values, they were standing against a very specific un-American devil = the President of the United States, Barack Obama (and his leagues of evil liberal minions).
Jon Stewart captured and confronted the spirit of this developing rhetorical community quite well when he said on the April 7th Daily Show episode "Baracknphobia": "I think you might be confusing tyranny with losing...See, when the guy you disagree with gets elected, he's prob going to do things you disagree with...That's not tyranny, that's Democracy. See, now you're in the MINORITY. It's supposed to taste like a shit taco."
This demonization rhetoric characteristic of True Believer movements intensified throughout the spring, reaching it's first peak and public organization with the Tea Party protests on April 15th, once again prompting a "perspective by incongruity" from Jon Stewart on "Tea Party Tyranny".
To make the President of the United States and the US Government into an Un-American rhetorical devil like this is the hallmark of True Believers and Mass Movements, ala Eric Hoffer. And it was this rhetoric - this increasingly vehement, vitriolic, vengeful and intensely political action - toward our constitutionally elected leaders in the spring of 2009 - that made me throw out the vogue but bland course syllabus and start seriously discussing rhetorical current events with my students again. We voted to scrap the group projects and read Eric Hoffer and take a closer, academic look at this rising mass movement against the POTUS and US Government as our real time rhetorical criticism for the remainder of the semester.
My co-blogger, @coviner, was one of those students - and he has done great research on this topic with me since then, culminating in two conference papers that have used the tools of rhetorical criticism to dispassionately and academically investigate this rhetoric. He began by analyzing popular Conservative pundits, and then turned his attention to the tea parties and other rising true believer voices. His analysis of their ideographs and my application of Hoffer's ideas to this rhetorical discourse community form the core of our ongoing rhetorical criticism project seeking to understand the new social movements that have grown since the inauguration of President Barack Obama.
As luck would have it, the first Tea Party Nation convention is being held in Nashville, and we have the opportunity to study some of the discourse first hand. Thanks to our generous and adventurous assistant Dean of Liberal Arts, and the University mission to support student-faculty scholarship, we have two tickets to their dinner, to enrich and extend the rhetorical analysis we've established this far. We'll share that experience here - as well as some other insights from our ongoing rhetorical criticism project. We invite and welcome your thoughts and ideas, too.
Next up . . . a summary of Eric Hoffer's theories of True Believers and Mass Movements as a method for rhetorical criticism.
I began reading and discussing Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements" with my rhetoric classes in the Fall of 2001. After 9/11, we spent a great deal of time talking and making sense. And one thing that just didn't make sense was the fanatical nature of Al-Qaeda. It also seemed to me that we needed to be mindful of our own nationalism; that our collective bonding in the face of such horror must not deterioriate into blind fanatical rhetoric and behavior of our own. So, because it helped us make sense of this rhetoric of our time, we would read Eric Hoffer's classic analysis of fanatical social movements at the end of every semester through the spring of 2004.
I've since changed Universities, and I've been teaching other courses since then, so I didn't include Hoffer in my course syllabus when I was assigned to teach a rhetoric course again last spring. It simply didn't seem as necessary to consider his work that winter because fanaticism per se was not so much in the public eye then. Mostly it was celebration and exultation following the election of Mr. Barack Obama as POTUS. And President Obama's rhetoric is not True Believer/fanatic rhetoric. It may be many things, but it is not that. So, I edited Hoffer readings and discussions out of my syllabus in favor of trying some different learning activities that are currently more in vogue with educators (i.e. group projects).
But then came Rush "I hope he fails" Limbaugh . . . and the army of True Believers that followed him. They had a very clear fanatical "devil" = any and all things un-American. And that's fine as far as it goes - I am pretty passionately patriotic, too. But they weren't standing up for American values, they were standing against a very specific un-American devil = the President of the United States, Barack Obama (and his leagues of evil liberal minions).
Jon Stewart captured and confronted the spirit of this developing rhetorical community quite well when he said on the April 7th Daily Show episode "Baracknphobia": "I think you might be confusing tyranny with losing...See, when the guy you disagree with gets elected, he's prob going to do things you disagree with...That's not tyranny, that's Democracy. See, now you're in the MINORITY. It's supposed to taste like a shit taco."
This demonization rhetoric characteristic of True Believer movements intensified throughout the spring, reaching it's first peak and public organization with the Tea Party protests on April 15th, once again prompting a "perspective by incongruity" from Jon Stewart on "Tea Party Tyranny".
To make the President of the United States and the US Government into an Un-American rhetorical devil like this is the hallmark of True Believers and Mass Movements, ala Eric Hoffer. And it was this rhetoric - this increasingly vehement, vitriolic, vengeful and intensely political action - toward our constitutionally elected leaders in the spring of 2009 - that made me throw out the vogue but bland course syllabus and start seriously discussing rhetorical current events with my students again. We voted to scrap the group projects and read Eric Hoffer and take a closer, academic look at this rising mass movement against the POTUS and US Government as our real time rhetorical criticism for the remainder of the semester.
My co-blogger, @coviner, was one of those students - and he has done great research on this topic with me since then, culminating in two conference papers that have used the tools of rhetorical criticism to dispassionately and academically investigate this rhetoric. He began by analyzing popular Conservative pundits, and then turned his attention to the tea parties and other rising true believer voices. His analysis of their ideographs and my application of Hoffer's ideas to this rhetorical discourse community form the core of our ongoing rhetorical criticism project seeking to understand the new social movements that have grown since the inauguration of President Barack Obama.
As luck would have it, the first Tea Party Nation convention is being held in Nashville, and we have the opportunity to study some of the discourse first hand. Thanks to our generous and adventurous assistant Dean of Liberal Arts, and the University mission to support student-faculty scholarship, we have two tickets to their dinner, to enrich and extend the rhetorical analysis we've established this far. We'll share that experience here - as well as some other insights from our ongoing rhetorical criticism project. We invite and welcome your thoughts and ideas, too.
Next up . . . a summary of Eric Hoffer's theories of True Believers and Mass Movements as a method for rhetorical criticism.
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