“The Tea Party is better understood as a reactionary conservative force.”

“The Tea Party is better understood as a reactionary conservative force.”

University of Washington political scientist Christopher Parker, a co-author of Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America:

"In our survey research, a list experiment also revealed how Tea Party conservatives think differently than other conservatives.  We randomly divided survey respondents into two groups and asked them how many of a list of statements — but not which statements — they agreed with.  The only thing that differed across the two groups was whether the list of statements included the proposition that “Obama is destroying the country.” The results showed a striking divergence: 71 percent of Tea-Party conservatives agreed with this statement but six percent of non-Tea Party conservatives did."  (Emphasis mine)

"We also explored the roots of identification with the Tea Party.  We found that, even after controlling a host of factors — including ideology and attitudes toward African-Americans — Tea Party identifiers were more common among those believing that Obama actively promotes socialism.  This again suggests motives more akin to reactionary conservatism."

Once again, we see the identification against a devil (Obama) as the primary basis of Tea Party membership and movement.  Parker calls them "reactionary".  We call them fanatical.  I'm going to tentatively suggest that being fanatical and being reactionary are not exactly the same.  In a fanactical group there is a specific rhetorical devil.  This is not necessarily the case in a reactionary movement.  Fanatical movements are motivated by fear - not necessarily so a reactionary m0vement.  This is a tentative conclusion - I'm still thinking about it...

The wisdom of Lincoln . . .

I recently finished reading Gore Vidal's "Lincoln" and re-reading all of Lincoln's most important speeches. (See www.Americanrhetoric.com for transcripts).

If there was ever a voice that wisely appeals to our common grounds, who helps us to identify with being AMERICAN despite all of our many disagreements, it was President Lincoln who steadfastly, stubbornly, and successfully refused to let our Union be destroyed.

His first inaugural address in 1861 lays out his logic and reasoning on the matter, and it is wise and relevant in our rhetorical climate today as it was then - and perhaps just as politically unpopular to the same kinds of divisive voices and groups we encounter today.

"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

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.

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.

Summary - Eric Hoffer "The True Believer" (1951)

Pasted below is the summary handout I've used in my rhetoric classes to begin the discussions of Eric Hoffer's work on True Believers and Mass Movements. I invite you to read through it and see if you think any of these characteristics apply to popular Conservative Talk Radio/Fox News personalities (aka "wingnuts") and/or the Tea Party movements we have witnessed since Barack Obama became President of the United States. Note particularly Hoffer's key insights at the end - and the essential insight that a mass movement need not have a god, but it MUST have a devil. It is this rhetorical anti-thesis that creates their primary identification as a group. "We are who we are because we are not THAT."

For Hitler's Nazi Germany, they were who they were because they were not Jewish (or any other non-Aryan group). Hitler himself remarked that if the Jews had not existed, he would have had to invent them (to be the devil) for the Nazi identity.

So . . .I wonder: who would Tea Partiers be if there was no Barack Obama?

My friend Genma related her experiences at the convention to me last night...and she was simply amazed that the group was so tightly focused on Obama as the (un-American, un-Christian) devil.

Indeed, this morning the keynote address at the convention is titled: "A comparison of the current administration to Marxist dictators of Latin America." (Okay, I'm stumped. Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama is like a Marxist dictator because . . . ???)

Note the determination to associate President Obama with anything "un-American" . . . birthers say he isn't American outright. Others simply keep calling him a "socialist" while still others refuse to believe the man is a Christian. This repeated mantra of "un-American Obama" serves a clear purpose in the identity (and motivation and fervor) of the movement.

I'll leave it to @coviner to tell you about what he found in his ideograph research and the connection between popular Conservative pundits and these movements and the rhetorical motivation that works to fuel this association and fanatical opposition to the President.

_____________________________________________________________

COMM 4650 – Long

Hoffer, E. (1951). The true believer: Thoughts on the nature of mass movements. New York: Harper and Row.

Definition: The true believer = “. . . the man of fanatical faith who is ready to sacrifice his life for a holy cause” (p. xii)

Rationale:

“It is necessary for most of us these days to have some insight into the motives and responses of the true believer. For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping up the world in his own image. And whether we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities. (p. xiii)

“The assumption that mass movements have many traits in common does not imply that all movements are equally beneficent or poisonous. The book passes no judgments, and expresses no preferences. It merely tries to explain…(p. xiii)

Hypotheses:

“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)

“ . . . a mass movement . . . appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.” (p. 12)

Potential Followers and ‘True Believers’ = The Disaffected

“Though the disaffected are found in all walks of life, they are most frequent in the following categories: a) the poor, b) misfits, c) outcasts, d) minorities, e) adolescent youth, f) the ambitious, g) those in the grip of some vice or obsession, h) the impotent (in body or mind), i) the inordinately selfish, j) the bored, k) the sinners.” (p. 25)

Content vs. Form:

“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)

Preface: Part III - United Action and Self-Sacrifice (pp. 58-61)

When we ascribe the success of a movement to it faith, doctrine, propaganda, leadership, and ruthlessness and so on, we are but referring to instruments of unification and to means used to inculcate a readiness for self-sacrifice. It is perhaps impossible to understand the nature of mass movements unless it is recognized that their chief preoccupation is to foster, perfect and perpetuate a facility for united action and self-sacrifice. To know the processes by which such a facility is engendered Is to grasp the inner logic of most of the characteristics attitudes and practices of an active mass movement.

“The reader is expected to quarrel with much that is said in this part of the book….this is not an authoritative textbook. It is a book of thoughts, and it does not shy away from half-truths so long as they seem to hint at a new approach and help to formulate new questions. ‘To illustrate a principle,’ says Bagehot, ‘you must exaggerate much and you must omit much.” (pp. 60).

Factors promoting self-sacrifice (pp. 62-90):

1. identification with a collective whole (44-46)

2. make-believe (47)

3. deprecation of the present (48-55)

4. “things which are not” -

5. doctrine – not meaning but certitude (58-59)

6. fanaticism (60-63)

“What surprises one, when listening to the frustrated as the decry the present and all its works, is the enormous joy they derive from doing so. Such delight cannot come form the mere venting of a grievance. There must be something more – and there is. By expiating upon the incurable baseness and vileness of the times, the frustrated soften their feeling of failure and isolation….(p75)

“The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude…presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth. If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable. One has to get to heaven or the distant future to determine the truth of an effective doctrine….simple words are made pregnant with meaning and made to look like symbols in a secret message. There is thus an illiterate air about the most literate true believer.” (pp. 80-81).

“The fanatic is perpetually incomplete and insecure. He cannot generate self-assurance out of his individual sources – our of his rejected self – but finds it only by clinging passionately to whatever support he happens to embrace. The passionate attachment is the essence of his blind devotion and religiosity, and he sees in it the sources of all virtue and strength….He sacrifices his life to prove his worth.” (p. 85)

“The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to reason or his moral sense. He fears compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and righteousness of his holy cause.” (p. 85).

Mass Movements vs. Armies (p. 88-90).

Unifying agents (pp. 91 – 128):

1. hatred

2. imitation

3. persuasion and coercion

4. leadership

5. action

6. suspicion

Key insights/Summary from The True Believer (P. Bsumek, James Madison University, 2000)

• 1. We may be godless, but we are not irreligious.

• 2. Mass organizations appeal to us through appeals of self- advancement.

• 3. Mass movements offer and in fact require self-renunciation.

• 4. The logical content of the message is irrelevant.

• 5. A mass movement should have a god, but it must have a devil. (p.91)

• Characteristics of a devil:

• Devil is ugly.

• Devil is powerful

• Devil is strangely attractive

• Devil is omnipresent

• 6. If you want to stop a movement, you cannot argue against it logically.

• 7. Movements offer freedom, but only deliver brotherhood.

• 8. Proselytizing as a sign of doubt not of truth.