If you want a vision of the Tea Party....
....imagine a white sneaker, stomping on a human head, forever (on the internet).
For those who can't or don't want to watch the video: At last night's Ron Paul/Jack Conway debate in Lexington, Kentucky, a Paul supporter grabbed a MoveOn.org protestor and wrestled her to the ground, while another one stomped her head. The protestor, Lauren Valle, suffered a concussion and some sprains.
SECTION UPDATED
A conservative blogger, going by the claims of a female teabagger who wished to remain nameless (I wonder why), claimed that the stomper might be a guy named Mike Pezzano. She got the photos on which she based this premise from liberal Kentucky blogger Bob Layton, whose blog is back up and running.
The stomper turned out to be former Rand Paul volunteer Tim Proffitt. Pezzano was the main guy who forced Lauren Valle to the curb.
The story has been all over the place today: TPM, The Atlantic, Gawker, etc. Note the tea crackers in the first two threads spinning conspiracy theories and other FUD.
(Just to be fair here, before anyone else brings it up: The male Conway supporter who stomped on the surgically booted foot of a female Rand supporter, reopening her incision, isn't any better. The victim in that incident declined to press charges. ETA: However, I'll echo Amanda Marcotte to say that there is no real equivalence between "the two sides," no matter how much Rand Paul wants to pretend there is.)
Coincidentally, I was just reading this article by Sara Robinson, who, with her Orcinus co-blogger David Neiwert (now writing mainly at C&L and FDL), is one of the left's best commenters on incipient fascism:It's fair to wonder if the Tea Party deserves to be taken this seriously. After all, there's always been this faction in US politics - the 10-12% rightwing authoritarian hard core that fueled McCarthyism and the Bircher movement and the Moral Majority; that voted for Goldwater and then George Wallace and even put KKK leader David Duke into office for a time. The far right has always been with us. It's one of the constants in our political landscape.
But they've always been a fringe movement, and it's mostly kept to itself. What's different now is that all the crazy ideas of the radical right - climate and evolution denialism, banning contraception, sovereign citizenship, End Times theology, white nationalism, all of it - have been catalyzed by the magic of the Internet and widespread economic disaster into one coherent mass subculture that, according to a Wall Street Journal poll released yesterday, has attracted a full 35% of the country's likely voters...
This unification of right-wing forces around radical far-right ideas has never happened on anything like this scale in modern American history. And it's why we need to recognize the Tea Party as something unique under the political sun - and seriously evaluate the future that awaits us if it becomes any more powerful.
ETA: Speaking of Neiwert, one of his latest posts is about some siblingfucker in Missouri whose Halloween lawn display features a KKK figure "alongside an effigy of a black man hanging from a noose," which was visible from the nearby interstate. He claims to have had visitors come by to shake his hand, saying "they're glad to see a little white pride is still left in this country."
Neiwert: "The most striking aspect of this is just how bold these people are becoming. It used to be they hid their Klan robes in the closet. Now they're coming out. Gee, wonder how that could be happening."
Unlocked.
This entry was originally posted at http://ms-daisy-cutter.dreamwidth.org/1518046.html. Please comment there using either your DW account or OpenID.
Click to viewFor those who can't or don't want to watch the video: At last night's Ron Paul/Jack Conway debate in Lexington, Kentucky, a Paul supporter grabbed a MoveOn.org protestor and wrestled her to the ground, while another one stomped her head. The protestor, Lauren Valle, suffered a concussion and some sprains.
SECTION UPDATED
A conservative blogger, going by the claims of a female teabagger who wished to remain nameless (I wonder why), claimed that the stomper might be a guy named Mike Pezzano. She got the photos on which she based this premise from liberal Kentucky blogger Bob Layton, whose blog is back up and running.
The stomper turned out to be former Rand Paul volunteer Tim Proffitt. Pezzano was the main guy who forced Lauren Valle to the curb.
The story has been all over the place today: TPM, The Atlantic, Gawker, etc. Note the tea crackers in the first two threads spinning conspiracy theories and other FUD.
(Just to be fair here, before anyone else brings it up: The male Conway supporter who stomped on the surgically booted foot of a female Rand supporter, reopening her incision, isn't any better. The victim in that incident declined to press charges. ETA: However, I'll echo Amanda Marcotte to say that there is no real equivalence between "the two sides," no matter how much Rand Paul wants to pretend there is.)
Coincidentally, I was just reading this article by Sara Robinson, who, with her Orcinus co-blogger David Neiwert (now writing mainly at C&L and FDL), is one of the left's best commenters on incipient fascism:It's fair to wonder if the Tea Party deserves to be taken this seriously. After all, there's always been this faction in US politics - the 10-12% rightwing authoritarian hard core that fueled McCarthyism and the Bircher movement and the Moral Majority; that voted for Goldwater and then George Wallace and even put KKK leader David Duke into office for a time. The far right has always been with us. It's one of the constants in our political landscape.
But they've always been a fringe movement, and it's mostly kept to itself. What's different now is that all the crazy ideas of the radical right - climate and evolution denialism, banning contraception, sovereign citizenship, End Times theology, white nationalism, all of it - have been catalyzed by the magic of the Internet and widespread economic disaster into one coherent mass subculture that, according to a Wall Street Journal poll released yesterday, has attracted a full 35% of the country's likely voters...
This unification of right-wing forces around radical far-right ideas has never happened on anything like this scale in modern American history. And it's why we need to recognize the Tea Party as something unique under the political sun - and seriously evaluate the future that awaits us if it becomes any more powerful.
ETA: Speaking of Neiwert, one of his latest posts is about some siblingfucker in Missouri whose Halloween lawn display features a KKK figure "alongside an effigy of a black man hanging from a noose," which was visible from the nearby interstate. He claims to have had visitors come by to shake his hand, saying "they're glad to see a little white pride is still left in this country."
Neiwert: "The most striking aspect of this is just how bold these people are becoming. It used to be they hid their Klan robes in the closet. Now they're coming out. Gee, wonder how that could be happening."
Unlocked.
This entry was originally posted at http://ms-daisy-cutter.dreamwidth.org/1518046.html. Please comment there using either your DW account or OpenID.