We Have an Authoritarian Left in the US and It is Starting to Take and Interest in Elections

 

It get that it is not exactly news that the US has an authoritarian Left as well as our authoritarian Right.

And just to be clear, I am not talking about past historical instances of an authoritarian Left, such as 19th century anarchists and radical socialists, or the Communist Party, or 1960's terrorists..

I am talking about the authoritarian Left in its current incarnation. Also to clarify, by authoritarian I roughly mean a movement that does not respect the rules of democratic fair play, that does not respect the rights of people who disagree with it, that engages in violence, that is aggressively hostile and punitive, or that dehumanizes groups of people.  And, yes, the term is relative.  Not all authoritarian are equally authoritarian.

When did the current authoritarian Left get its start? Do anti-globalization protests in the 1990's that turned into riots count?  When did Antifa originate?  My understanding is that it began in the Pacific Northwest out of the clash between liberal coastal residents and conservative interior residents, including some genuine neofascists.  Violently breaking up right wing events, smashing windows and the like is certainly authoritarian.  And yes, it goes without saying that right wingers grossly exaggerate the extent and menace of Antifa and project many of their own authoritarian tenancies onto it.  But none of that should excuse Antifa's real authoritarianism, by which I mean not just its violence, but its desire to shut down opponents.

Occupy Wall Street was clearly not authoritarian in the sense that it had no leaders and no structure and required consensus before doing anything.  It was authoritarian in the sense of having a violent fringe, and having an offensive sense of entitlement that rules did not apply to it and it did not have to respect others or care about the disruptions they were causing.  

Black Lives Matter originated in 2014 to protest police brutality.  It clearly had a violent fringe, including cop killers, from the very start. It is not clear to me the entire movement was violent.  Riots broke out in 2014 in Ferguson and Baltimore, but they were short-lived and mild riots, that movement leaders did their best to quell. The 2020 riots were a different matter altogether.  The 2020 riots were widespread and massive (though still not as bad as many right wingers claimed).  Much of the violence was just random lawlessness, best characterized as opportunistic looting by people who were eager to seize any excuse.  But there was a decidedly ideological fringe to the outbreak, and all too many people on the left who were willing to excuse it. And there were also disturbing scene in with Black Lives Matter protesters demanded that random bystanders endorse their cause.

But all these authoritarian Left-wing movements of recent vintage had one notable thing in common.  None of them were much interested in electoral politics.  Like Trump supporters, they believed in the "uniparty" and saw any disputes within it as mere attempts to distract the masses.  Their difference from Trump supporters was that they saw Donald Trump as the very embodiment of the uniparty.

Well, this latest wave of anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protesters is a different matter altogether.  These ones are definitely interested in electoral politics and determined to set the terms of orthodoxy for Democrats.

I can definitely imagine right wingers responding with an impatient snort, and saying I am willing to condone the most violent and coercive behavior so long as it is targeted at regular folks, but get all upset when people in the corridors of power are targets.

And I will concede that I do not expect these pro-Hamas protests to break out into widespread rioting and mass looting of the kind we saw in summer of 2020.  We are unlikely to walk down the streets and see every store window smashed and the contents stolen.  And I agree that is all to the good.  I would also not expect pro-Hamas protests to lead to the sort of crime wave that followed the 2020 riots, again, very much to the good.

But violent (or potentially violent)  movements that target the corridors of power create a different set of problems.  Attempts to intimidate policy makers do affect policy making, after all, and in ways that affect a lot more people than just the policy makers being threatened.  They can also drive responsible people out of office and leave power to dangerous authoritarians.  Such has been the goal of the more violent precincts of MAGA.  

And, in any event, the distinction between targeting regular folks and targeting the corridors of power is not as clear as some people might think.  MAGA members and now pro-Hamas protesters don't just target the powerful in Washington, or even in state houses.  They also threaten and harass city counsel, school boards, and other organizations much closer to regular folks.  MAGA members have harassed and threatened rank and file election workers and volunteers and pulled over an AC repairman on the belief that he was smuggling fake ballots.  Hamas supporters are harassing and threatening Jewish students, random Jews, and businesses like Starbucks and Google that have stood up to them.  

And, of course, team Hamas is threatening to throw the election to Donald Trump.

And there is another, particularly insidious danger, noted by Jonathan Chait that happens when potentially violent authoritarians target the corridors of power.  "Because Democrats perceive some of the protesters as potential Biden voters, they have soft-pedaled their criticism of their tactics. The handful of critics have focused on the political ramifications of the protest movement."

That is, of course, exactly why Republicans are so reluctant to criticize MAGA or come out strongly against Trump -- and why their main criticism of Trump is his general unpopularity and likelihood of losing the election.

Forecast:  Rough sailing ahead.

And Speaking of Black Lives Matter

Speaking of Black Lives Matter, I am apparently not the only one to notice their recent silence in the face of police shootings and acquittals and to wonder if it hand anything to do with the Trump presidency.  This article says that the answer is yes -- that recognizing that they no longer have an ally in the federal government, the movement has moved away from demonstrating and more into local community activism.  This activism is carried out mostly at the municipal level and addresses specific issues and appropriate -- on raising money to pay bail for indigent defendants, on treating marijuana possession as a ticket rather than an arrest, on the use of body cameras, or demanding action over local incidents without taking to the streets and so forth.  And it is moving more into the realm of mainstream lobbying, mostly at the local level, with one member running (unsuccessfully) for Mayor of Baltimore and later joining the Democratic National Committee.  Another is taken to the paid speaker's circuit and proven a successful fundraiser from the usual sources.  All this flies under the local, to say nothing of the national, radar system.

It is too early to say whether this means the movement is dying or morphing into a more mainstream lobbying and activist organization is hard to say.  But to the extent that Black Lives Matter is morphing into a mainstream group, this is an entirely healthy development for a number of reasons.

One, that the article actually quotes from a scholar of social movements, is that that is how effective social movements work.  They start out on the street level, but go on to organize and to lobby within the corridors of power.  Any movement that limits itself to street level protests will fizzle out because, no matter how numerous and passionate the participants, ultimately they have lives and cannot sustain such a volume and level of protest for long.  Quite correctly, he gives Occupy Wall Street as a counter-example -- the regarded organizing and developing an actual program, to say nothing of accessing the corridors of power, as selling out and pure protest for protest's sake as ideological purity.  Well, such purity is the luxury of people who can afford to live in the realm of abstraction. For people who have actual, real-world problems and want concrete, tangible improvement, such concerns are foolish.

Another reason is that Black Lives Matter does not have good control over its street protests.  Some have led to outright ambush and killing of cops.  Others have degenerated into riots.  And even though these have been a distinct minority, a definite ugliness has been more common.  Movements of the streets tend to have their rough and rowdy side -- the Tea Party certainly did, as did Occupy Wall Street -- but this one was particularly out of control.  The sooner the movement gets off the streets, the less of a problem this will be.

Closely related is that coming in off the streets turns down the temperature on the whole movement. Yes, you can criticize police for regarding any sort of criticism as an attack, but it is simply a fact of life that the worst excesses of a movement will come to characterize it in the eyes of most outsiders. Police are more likely to be willing to listen to criticism and accept reforms in the absence of riots on the streets and protesters who seem on the verge of riot.

And finally, this is the way to build a movement -- from the bottom up.  Democrats are learning a hard lesson about the dangers of putting all their eggs in the Presidential basket -- or even in the federal basket.  Black Lives Matter's complaints are (for the most part) at the local level.  It makes sense for the movement to establish itself at the local level first.  From there it can move on the the state level, which is where most of the laws are made that the police enforce.  And by the time the federal level is within reach once again -- well, with luck the will have a broad-based, well rooted, formidable movement that is well established as part of the political system.

Congratulations to Our Side on a Job Well Done

Congratulations to our side for a job well done.  Let's face it.  Our side has a problem.  Every time we hold a demonstration, it keeps getting infiltrated with bad elements who want to riot and smash things -- or worse.  This has happened with anti-globalization protests; it happened with Occupy Wall Street; it has happened with Black Lives Matter marches; it has happened with immigrant activists protesting against Trump; it happened in the anti-Trump protests that followed the election; and it happened with Inauguration Day protests.  Very pointless it is to argue that the rioters make up a tiny fringe  minority of the protesters.  When rioters go smashing windows, setting fires, and beating police and rivals, the peaceful protesters will go unnoticed and the rioters will be the public face of the movement.  And when rioters become the public face of the movement, would-be supporters turn away and support for a crackdown grows.

But this time our side did it.  We held massive demonstrations all across the country the met peacefully and managed to be a bit vulgar, but not hateful.  And, unlike Occupy Wall Street and the Bernie Sanders campaign, which remained overwhelmingly white, the latest protests drew people of all kinds.  So what lessons can we learn from this success?  One might be that really large-scale protests can overwhelm the trouble makers with sheer numbers.  But we can't count on sustaining crowds of this side, so what else would I suggest?

Get a permit and follow it.  Come on, folks, when the Tea Party marched, they got a permit and followed its limitations, and they were highly effective.  Is it so much to ask our side to do the same? Why do you insist on blocking major traffic arterials?  Hot news flash: needlessly snarling up traffic just makes people resent you.  I hear as a defense that you have to get people's attention somehow.  To which I answer, marching on the sidewalks and meeting in parks gets people's attention just fine. The same goes for illegally camping out in public places.  Guys, that is not going to be tolerated indefinitely.  Get a permit and stick to the reasonable conditions it sets.  Rule of law and all that good stuff.

Be feminine.  Donald Trump is basically an attack of testosterone poisoning.  So are the rioters.

Pussy hats

The last thing we need is to counter one fit of testosterone poisoning with another.  Is it too much to assume that rioters and anarchists aren't attracted to events that call themselves "women's marches," and call on the participants to dress in pink and wear "pussy hats"?  Yes, granted, plenty of men participated, too,  That is fine.  We don't mind men in our marches.  We just want to keep out the kind of men who like smashing things and beating people.  A strongly feminine vibe should discourage them and, if it doesn't, maybe it can at least clearly dissociate the trouble makers from peaceful marchers. Incidentally, I would encourage immigrant rights activists and Black Lives Matter people to do the same thing.  Granted, most black victims of police brutality are male, but black men killed or wounded by police have wives, sisters, girlfriends, mothers, etc.  Encourage black women's events to protest police abuse of their men.  Try senior events also, with younger people welcome, but, again, elderly-themed events will presumably discourage the sort of young men who are out for trouble.

Humor and eccentricity are fine, if not overdone.   Rioting is a deadly serious activity.  Being a bit light and fluffy and silly can also discourage it, or at least dissociate from it.  But for the love of Mike, don't become a freak show like Occupy Wall Street.

An occasional man leading his llamas down the street in the middle of a protest is kind of cute and gets an innocent and amusing sort of attention.  A sustained freak show turns people off and mostly serves to prove that you are not normal, relatable people.  John Oliver did a charming piece on why freak shows are worse than useless.  If a man dressed up as a Viking explains why banks need to be be better regulated, it makes no difference how reasonable his words may be.  No one will hear a word he has to say; all they will see is a man dressed as a Viking.  Also, no flag burning, no masks, no general anti-Americanism.

Organize.  Outrage alone cannot sustain a movement.  Only organization can create something with real staying power and political clout.  That was the difference between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street.  The Tea Party got organized; Occupy Wall Street treated any sort of organization as a violation of basic principle.  The result: the Tea Party took over the Republicans and much of the country; Occupy Wall Street fizzled out.

Move beyond the streets.  Once again, large scale street demonstrations are a good start, but the passion is not sustainable.  The people most likely to keep showing up are the trouble makers.  We need to move beyond marching and protesting and start doing other things.  Organize voter registration drives, calls to one's Congressmen, showing up at meetins, letter writing campaigns.  Yes, be so old-fashioned as to write a letter with paper and ink.  The more personal and individually crafted the letter, the greater an impression it will make.  Start up candidate campaigns.  And don't just rely on government, start building non-governmental organizations to fill in the gap Republicans are leaving in services.  These are less glamorous than marches and protests, less dramatic, and less grass roots feeling, but they are where real power lies and things get done.  And they are a whole lot harder for the rioters to infiltrate and start smashing.

Wanted: A New Liberal Policy on Immigration and Trade

I don't like blog posts that are mostly just links and cites to other blog posts, but Donald Trump seems to bring out the worst in me as he does in so many others.  So here goes one that is mostly a cite to  this post and this one explaining why Bernie Sanders' trade policy is just a less honest version of Trump's.

Both Trump and Sanders are protectionist.  Both are protectionist for the same reason -- they see cheap imports as harmful to the US working class, eating away at out good-paying blue collar jobs and hollowing out our working class as its livelihood is undermined. And they are essentially right there.  I recall well being warned of this in my college course on international economics.  Complete global free trade has the effect of tending to equalize wages world-wide, to the great detriment of people in high wage countries.

But it benefits people in low wage countries.  And therein lies the unfortunate fact.  Wages that are abysmally low by US standards can still be the best around in Mexico or China.  Cutting off imports from China or Mexico would devastate these countries economically.

To Sanders the answer is simple.  Just insist that these countries pay wages comparable to the US as a precondition to trading with them.  But really, in cases like these calling for wages comparable to US wages is unrealistic.  It simply means calling on all the low-wage industries in these countries to shut down and throw millions out of work.

Many countries have pulled themselves out of poverty by the export of cheap goods made with low wage labor.  Japan led the way, followed the the foursome of Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore.  Other East Asian countries are following in their path, such as Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and, of course, China.  The pattern all have followed has been essentially the same.  They begin as exporters of cheap, low quality manufactured goods, trading on cheap labor as their advantage.  Over time, these countries move from cheap, low quality manufactured goods and low wages to high quality goods and high wages, and from production for export to production for domestic consumption.  But in all cases, their initial advantage is low wages and higher wages come with time and practice.

This is not to deny or dismiss the importance of very real labor abuses -- unpaid wages, extremely hazardous factories, outright enslavement, death squads killing labor organizers etc.  These should not be written off as inevitable side effects of progress.  These things should be recognized and strongly opposed.  But to insist on protecting our domestic industry by protectionism is to deny millions in poorer countries to opportunity to advance -- or to throw them catastrophically backward by shutting down whole industries overseas.

And here is the difference between Sanders and Trump.  (Or, if you will between a liberal and a conservative or authoritarian, or between favoring breadth and favoring depth).  To Trump and his supporters, the answer is to shrug and say so what.  As President of the US my job is to concern myself with the well-being of American workers.  What happens to the rest of the world is not my concern.  To Sanders and his supporters, such an answer is simply not morally acceptable.

Much the same applies to immigration.  A Trump supporter sees the interests of immigrants as a non-issue. A liberal or Sanders supporter cannot shut immigrants out of the moral calculus, yet the fact remains that we really can't admit everyone the world over who might want to come here.  And even if we would, it is not only the US that would be harmed, but the countries losing so much of their population to us.

Right-wing populists in the US and Europe alike show that a large portion of the population has had enough of immigration and trade and will be heard, whether through respectable voices or otherwise. Liberal principle do not allow us to treat immigrants or the global poor as scapegoats for our problems, and rightly so.  But neither does political or economic reality allow us to shoulder the entire burden of lifting the world up.  What is needed is something new -- a policy that takes the needs of immigrants and global poor into account, but rejects a simple "more is better" approach to immigration and trade.  This is at least a proposal in such a direction for trade.  We need one for immigration as well, preferably one focused on improving conditions in countries with large out-migration and rewarding people who chose to stay.

No plan yet, but something to turn around and think about.

Bernie Sanders, Black Voters and Republicans

I know I have covered this issue before, but I seem to have the urge to come back to it.  It is a regular conservative complaint that black people only support the Democrats because they offer free stuff.  If there is one thing that Occupy Wall Street, Bernie Sanders, and Black Lives Matter should prove, it is that that is not true.

Take Occupy Wall Street.  They addressed in particular bread-and-butter issues of economic hardship, unemployment, foreclosures, and the like.  Their motto "We are the 99%" was intended as one of inclusion -- people of all races and ethnicities are oppressed alike by Big Money.  Black people suffered disproportionately from unemployment and foreclosures.  But Occupy Wall Street remained resolutely white.  Its bizarre antics no doubt went a long way toward driving off potential allies.  So, no doubt, did the perception that it was just a bunch of whiny college kids upset at not getting top-of-the-line jobs right out of college.

But it also seems fair to say that a lot of black people did not want to hear about an undifferentiated 99% all equally oppressed by the 1%.  Being regularly pulled aside, frisked, and singled out for attention was not the experience of the 99%; it was the experience of the black minority.  Nor could the 1% credibly be blamed for the harassment black people were experiencing.

Republicans debate who is the true Tea Party candidate, but can anyone doubt that Bernie Sanders is the true Occupy Wall Street candidate on the Democratic side?  He talks about a more equal distribution of income, about raising minimum wage, about making education, health care, and opportunity more readily available.  He implies (without quite saying) that these can bring back the good paying blue collar jobs of yesteryear.  But black people aren't interested in those things.  They are a whole lot more interested in abusive cops and an extortionist criminal justice system.

Ultimately, black people's top concerns are not about bread-and-butter issues, but about race and the coercive power of the state.  In the clear light of hindsight, maybe that shouldn't be so surprising.

Think in terms of the hierarchy of needs.  Or imagine yourself living in a slum in some Third World country.  Government is corrupt and stifles dissent, your neighborhood is one of hovels and open sewers and garbage dumps and armed gangs (sometimes police, sometimes drug traffickers) drive through your neighborhood, harassing, extorting, and sometimes beating or killing residents.  What is your top priority?  Probably stopping the armed gangs and ensuring basic safety.  Better housing and cleaning up sewers and garbage dumps will probably only become top concerns when basic physical safety stops being an issue.  And worrying about corruption and dissent is far off in the distance.

So it is, in milder fashion, with Black lives matter.  It would appear, that in the taxonomy of property rights/political rights/civil rights, bread-and-butter issues and economic equality fits more into the category of political rights/majority rule than the category of minority rights.  Besides, as this article comments, the political rights/majority rule populist approach is poorly suited to defending minority rights:

Arguably, plebiscitary appeals about crime and punishment have contributed to the policies that created mass incarceration. Furthermore, economic populism identifies economic elites as the cause of the problem, stealing the American Dream from ordinary citizens. The intellectual foundations of the BLM movement implicate the majority and the American Dream.

So how are Republicans responding to all this?  Are they relieved to learn that black people really are less interested in free stuff than in being left alone by the state?

There is some favorable response in the more libertarian precincts of spectrum.  Although Campaign Zero no longer has an evaluation of Rand Paul, he had useful suggestions of four of their ten proposals -- coming in ahead of Hillary Clinton with two.  Marco Rubio has made at least some sympathetic comments.

But by and large, most Republicans' hostility to the state does not extend to its more coercive and punitive aspects.  The are "core functions" and not seen as part of Big Government.  And the main conservative reaction to black people wanting relief from the state in its more punitive aspects is, once again, to call for more individual responsibility.  Or rather, more collective responsibility.  Any singling-out black people in general receive is understandable in light of high black crime rates.  Bring down those crime rates, and the problem will go away.  A particular black person may be very individually responsible and refrain from crime and violence and still be singled out because of his race.  By all means, we do need black people to make a more concerted effort to bring down black crime rates, but no individual can do so alone -- nor will individual virtue necessarily be rewarded in this case.  That is not a comfortable message to most Republicans.

Another (Scandal) Bites the Dust

So, it appears that the IRS scandal is a big dud.  Besides applying extra scrutiny to applications for tax exempt status containing the words "Tea Party," "Patriot," and "9-12," it also targeted groups with the words "progressive," "progress," "blue" and "occupy," and names containing reference to open source software.  The reason it targeted groups saying they were dedicated to open source software was that some of these groups are really commercial and improperly seeking tax exempt status.  It is quite probable that more conservative than liberal organizations received extra scrutiny, but this was not because of ideological bias, but simply because more conservative than liberal organizations were applying.

Still, it would be false to say that there is no problem at all.  A commenter to Kevin Drum explains:

I worked in the field for several years, and while it'd be pretty easy to convince me that some of these organizations deserve closer scrutiny, the IRS' "screening" has been wildly disproportionate. Groups that are unquestionably above board have been in limbo for years, unable to start fundraising in earnest, because the IRS refuses to finally approve or reject their application for 501(c)3 status.

He goes on to say that the Tea Party is probably experiencing the same problem -- some of its applications for tax exempt status are legitimate; some are not.  The problem is that office in charge of deciding which organizations are legitimate lacks the resources to address the issue properly, so they cast a very broad net and unduly delay many organizations whose applications are legitimate.  In other words, just because the IRS was not being partisan does not mean that all is well.  It means that the problem is structural -- the IRS is poorly equipped to give proper and timely scrutiny to questionable applications.

I would also add, the problem is also with the laws the IRS is enforcing.  A 501(c)(4) organization is a "social welfare" organization.  Although not allowed to endorse candidates or engage in openly partisan activities, it may engage in "civic," "educational," or "issue" activities that look very much like lobbying or grass roots lobbying.  Some of them are simply PAC's (political action committees) under a very thin veneer of civic action.  Nor is this limited to the right -- moveon.org is a 501(c)(4) organization, as are many others. Drawing the line between "educational" or "issues" advocacy, which is allowed by the tax code, and partisan or candidate activity which is not, is going to mean making hopelessly fine distinctions that make no sense to anyone.  Any attempt to enforce it will necessarily mean relentless and heavy-handed scrutiny.  The other alternative, of course, is to give up and not attempt to enforce the rule.

It would be nice if the initial impression that the IRS was violating the rights of right wingers led to some sort of impetus for reform.  Maybe there should be more resources devoted to enforcement to allow a less heavy-handed approach.  Or some sort of guidance should be offered.  Or maybe (God forbid!) the law should be changed to eliminate the distinction between partisan and issue-oriented.

Oh, well.  I can dream, can't I?

On Thinking You Are Better Than Other People

In yet another link I can no longer find, David Frum responded to Democrats who are frustrated a Republican populism when Republicans are so much the party of the rich.  Irrelevant, he said, American populist resentment is not directed at the rich, but at the educated.  And the Democrats are the party of the educated.

I have come to conclude, though, that this is only half true.  Real populist resentment is directed toward people who think they are better than you.  Wealth, Republicans are quick to point out, is not in itself resented because most people aspire to wealth for themselves.  But the same goes, to some extent, for education.  As Rick Santorum learned the hard way when he dismissed Obama wishing everyone to go to college as snobbery, most people aspire to higher education for themselves or at least their children.  Education, after all, is the usual key to wealth.

I believe that overall, if people are more likely to resent the educated than the rich, it is because they are more likely to perceive the educated as seeing themselves as better than other people.  And let us admit, there is some truth to that.  People with credentials and expertise certainly do regard themselves as having superior specialized knowledge in their field, and the "I know better than you" attitude gets resented (especially when it clashes with people's cherished religious beliefs).  But that might be forgivable if the educated limited themselves to claiming superior expertise.  What is really most resented, I think, is the unstated suspicion that educated people consider themselves morally superior to less educated people.  And let's face it -- many educated people do consider their education a mark of  moral superiority.  Is it any wonder that such an outlook is resented?

By contrast, rich people do not claim any special superiority because of their wealth -- or do they?  Various theologies that see wealth as a reward for merit are nothing new, after all.  The prosperity gospel remains with us today.  And most significant, the growing frequency of public speeches using phrases like "makers and takers," "job creators," "our most productive citizens," all suggest that wealth is some sort of measure of merit.  At the very least, income is taken as a reasonable proxy for social utility.  Taken a step further, this view assumes that people are either entrepreneurs or parasites.  And furthermore, this simply reflects the views of today's rich and powerful, who firmly believe that their superior wealth is proof of superior merit, if only the ignorant public would just understand that.

And really, taken to its logical conclusion, it is really hard to escape the suspicion that today's Republican Party really does think rich people are better than the rest of us.  This is a problem for the Republican party because, while celebrating success and loudly proclaiming that you admire the successful is an electoral winner, proclaiming that net worth is a good measure of moral worth, that being rich makes you better than other people, is a surefire loser.  Occupy Wall Street has been an overall failure but its basic message -- that this country is turning into a plutocracy, and that we don't like it -- had a lot of resonance.  The Tea Party's primary concerns may be immigration and cutting spending on the poor, but they, too, often express a fear that this country is turning into a plutocracy.  The Republican Establishment interprets this to mean that the Tea Party is mad as hell that this country is not plutocratic enough, and they will do their utmost to correct that.

The Romney campaign ran into trouble so long as he campaigned as a plutocrat.  At the first debate, he shook the etch-a-sketch, announced those old statements were no longer operative, and saw his campaign take off.  How Romney would actually govern is anyone's guess.  But it is emblematic of the Republican leadership's basic problem.  In their heart of hearts, the Republican leaders believe that wealth makes people better.  Their dilemma is how to advance such an agenda and govern in that way without letting the word get out.

The Tea Party and Fascism

This was an old obsession of mine, comparing various American political movements to fascism to see if they fit (invariable answer: No).  So I might as well apply it to the Tea Party.  Some people have accused the Tea Party of having a fascist tone.  Is there anything to it?

In this case, I will not go by my own amateurish definitions of what fascism might be, but by what serious scholars have seen as its traits.

Stanley Payne, in Fascism: Comparison and Definition (1980) offered three main clusters of traits. Let us see how well they apply.

A. The Fascist Negations: 


-- Anticommunism.  Communism is not exactly an issue these days.  Still, if you substitute for anti-Communism, anti-radicals seeking to overturn the social order, it clearly applies to the Tea Party.  I should add that I think the Tea Party seriously overestimates the radicalism of the current administration and its threat to the social order.  But so what?  Classical German fascists came to power largely because German conservatives seriously overestimated the radicalism of the Social Democrats, and underestimated the radicalism of the Nazis.

-- Antiliberalism.  That means having to define what it is to be liberal.  On the one hand, there is no doubt that the Tea Party crowd uses "liberal" as a curse word.  On the other hand, many might say that they are the true liberals, the classical liberals who favor old-fashioned liberal values like free markets and minimal government.  But I would say fascists are above all else anti-liberal in the sense that I have defined liberalism -- placing universalism ahead of in-group loyalty.  Tea Parties are also anti-liberal in that sense.  And, unfortunately, they have taken a strong sense of in-group loyalty into partisan politics, in the form of being unwilling to accept elective government not controlled by their (political) in-group.

-- Anticonservatism, (though with the understanding that fascist groups were willing to undertake temporary alliances with groups from any other sector, most commonly with the right).  No, the Tea Party is clearly not anti-conservative.  It is better characterized as somewhere between conservative and reactionary.  

Tea Party members fear radicals threatening the social order because significant parts of the social order really are being threatened.  Homosexuality is becoming ever more accepted.  Gay marriage is gaining traction.  Global warming is threatening the fossil fuel industry and may force changes that can hardly be imagined.  Our population is becoming increasingly Hispanic, especially in the younger generation, weakening our cultural cohesion.  As our population ages, programs for the elderly are becoming strained and will become increasingly more strained.  Furthermore, all these trends are independent of partisan politics and will continue regardless of who is elected.  Most Tea Partiers, I think, know this.  To this extend, Tea Partiers are the sort of conservative who stands athwart history, shouting stop!

Then again, the Tea Party is proving quite successful in other areas.  It has for all practical purposes repealed Roe vs. Wade and re-outlawed abortion in many states.  Its drive to deregulate the economy, cut taxes at the top, shred the social safety net, and (in some states) kill the public schools in favor of a voucher system are proving highly successful.  Whether these, too, prove to be inevitable trends or whether Democrats have some power to derail them remains to be seen. But in any event, these are all conservative or reactionary goals, and definitely not anti-conservative.

B. Ideology and Goals: 

-- Creation of a new nationalist authoritarian state based not merely on traditional principles or models.  I see no evidence of this.  The Tea Party goal appears to be a massive reduction in government, at least in its mommy functions, and at least for people under 65.

-- Organization of some new kind of regulated,multiclass, integrated national economic structure, whether called national corporatist, national socialist, or national syndicalist.  I see no evidence whatever that the Tea Party favors anything of the kind.  What the appear to favor is a return to the Gilded Age (with the presumed exceptions of keeping Social Security and Medicare), which was anything but a " regulated,multiclass, integrated national economic structure."

-- The goal of empire or a radical change in the nation’s relationship with other powers.  I have no idea.  Foreign policy does not appear to be the Tea Party's major interest.

-- Specific espousal of an idealist, voluntarist creed, normally involving the attempt to realize a new form of modern, self-determined, secular culture. I have no idea what this means.  It sounds a lot like "fundamental transformation," though, something the Tea Party dreads.

C. Style and Organization: 
-- Emphasis on esthetic structure of meetings, symbols, and political choreography, stressing romantic and mystical aspects. I would say that running around in 18th Century costumes and the intense veneration of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution as a sort of immutable archetype
 counts.  But so what?  Lots of non-fascists political movements do the same thing.

-- Attempted mass mobilization with militarization of political relationships and style and with the goal of a mass party militia. Mass mobilization, yes.  Militarization, no.  Mass mobilization alone does not make a movement fascist.  The Civil Rights movement mass mobilized as well.

-- Positive evaluation and use of, or willingness to use, violence.  The Tea Party often uses violent language and violent imagery.  It does not, however, practice actual violence.  Indeed, the advanced age of so many of its members make the whole idea of the Tea Party as Brownshirts absurd.
Tea Party
Brown Shirts See any differences?



-- Extreme stress on the masculine principle and male dominance, while espousing the organic view of society.  On the one hand, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman are heroes to the Tea Party.  On the other hand, they do seem to be making a concerted effort to cut off women's access to reproductive care (at least for poor women), which looks suspiciously like an effort to keep women (at least poor women) in their place.  But no, some right wing movements do look like nothing but an outbreak of testosterone poisoning.  The Tea Party does not appear to be one of them.

-- Exaltation of youth above other phases of life, emphasizing the conflict of generations, at least in effecting the initial political transformation.  Quite the opposite, the Tea Party largely a movement of the old, offended at the younger generation's perceived fecklessness.

-- Specific tendency toward an authoritarian, charismatic, personal style of command, whether or not the command is to some degree initially elective. Well, there is Rush Limbaugh, I guess.  Also Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Roger Ailes.  If these are the true leaders of the Tea Party, then it is something new (so far as I know) -- a political movement led by media personalities who shun public office rather than politicians.  (There have been many media moguls who were important political figures in the past, from Horace Greeley to Silvio Berlusconi, but most of them have also sought office.  A political movement whose leaders refuse to run for office is so unfamiliar as to be impossible to categorize.  Alternately, one could call the Tea Party a grass roots, leaderless movement.

In addition, Robert O. Paxton in The Anatomy of Fascism offers nine "mobilizing passions" of fascism. Again, applying them to the Tea Party;

-- a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions; I think this is true.  It is what makes the Tea Party so dangerous.

-- the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether universal or individual, and the subordination of the individual to it; I don't think this is true.  As discussed above, I think the Tea Party applies in-group loyalty to partisan politics in a manner dangerous to the health of democracy, but I certainly don't think they go this far.

-- the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against the group's enemies, both internal and external;  I have no doubt that Tea Partiers see their group (defined as conservatives, Real Americans, or whatever) as a victim and are prepared to go well beyond generally accepted democratic norms, but nothing as far as all that.

-- dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effect of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;  Yes, I absolutely do think that is a major factor driving the Tea Party.

-- the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;  To some extent.  I think the desire for a closer integration of a purer community is largely what drives the Tea Party's hostility to immigration and concern over who is and is not an Authentic Real American.  No doubt they greatly fear the alien Other.  I see no evidence of exclusionary violence, though.

-- the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny; No, the Tea Party shows no interest in such a leader and prides itself in being leaderless.

-- the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason; Irrelevant, since there is no Leader. On the other hand, they do show a certain tendency to reject facts in favor of going with the gut.  But it is their gut, not the leader's.

-- the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success;  Once again, the Tea Party uses the language and imagery of violence sometimes, but not the actual practice.  Give the advanced age of so many members, I do not believe it has a capacity for violence.

-- the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess in a Darwinian struggle.  This is a decent definition of American exceptionalism.

CONCLUSION:  The Tea Party is best characterized as reactionary.  It either stands athwart history shouting stop or seeks a return (perhaps successful) to the Gilded Age.  It engages in a delegitimization of the opposing party that is dangerous to the health of democracy.  But it has none of the ambitious goals or violent methods or leader worship characteristic of true fascism.  Try Ron Paul.

And a Point for Haidt

I have been critical of Jonathan Haidt for his comments on the Tea Party. Let me say, though that his criticisms of Occupy Wall Street are spot-on.

Occupy Wall Street began with an economic issue that many people could identify with -- anger at the bank bailouts. The Tea Party began with that issue, too. Both movements were angry over the bailouts because they violated their sense of justice. The Tea Party's response to the bailouts was to call for an end to our social safety net on the theory that if we couldn't punish the banks, we should at least punish the unemployed so somebody suffered for their bad decisions. Occupy Wall Street, by contrast, is angry that the banks ruined the economy with their mistakes, got bailed out, and now are doing just fine while the rest of us continue to suffer.* Maybe this is liberal bias here, but I am inclined to think that the message that the banks got bailed out and now should give us something in return has more resonance that the message that the bank bailouts are too late to stop, so we should cut off money to the unemployed instead.

What does not resonate is people camping in parks day after day, throwing trash around, attracting the homeless and some criminals, insisting on marching place where they do not have a permit in order to provoke the police to overreact. "Why can't you do what we did, obey the law and just march where you have a permit?" Tea Party members asked. It was a very good question. Haidt would say, because respect for authority is not a high liberal value. But taking disregard for authority to mean disregard for law ultimately means disregard for the inconvenience you cause to people who do follow the law. And that does violate the liberal value of harm avoidance. (The liberal counterpart of "Don't Tread on Me" is "Don't Tread on Others.")

Occupy Wall Street also showed no regard for what other people held sacred or found culturally offensive. Quite the contrary, they regarded pushing the envelope as a point of pride. Well guess what, guys? If you want to start a mass movement, you are just going to have to limit your counter-cultural tendencies to the privacy of your home and your friends' homes. In public, try behaving like ordinary people and in ways that ordinary people can relate to. Humor is fine. Humor can deflect hostility and convince people you really aren't threatening. But please, refrain from mocking what other people hold in reverence.

But above all else,OWS's utter rejection of authority has done it in. When nothing can get done unless there is a universal consensus on it, then nothing gets done. OWS did not even have enough structure or authority to keep out violent, disruptive, dangerous elements that ended up going on a rampage and destroying the movement altogether. What's the use of that?**

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*Haidt argues that general complaints about inequality of outcome will get nowhere, but complaints that the 1% made their money dishonestly might. Given what we know about the behavior of banks during the housing bubble, that looks like a message that will resonate. It requires defining the 1% as banks and excluding people who made their money producing physical goods. That is not accurate, but then again, people have hated banks for a long time, largely because they don't produce anything tangible, which makes people suspect they are not producers, but cheats.
**And, yes, as this post may suggest, I am angry and resentful that a movement that might have had something constructive to offer has lost the opportunity by its self-indulgent, self-destructive behavior.

So What Would I Do?

Let's take a start. I regard the apparent Tea Party program of massive government spending cuts, more regressive taxation, regulatory rollback and (probably) tight money as disaseterous. I regard the OWS program of raising taxes on the rich and punishing banks as understandable but not very helpful. So what would I say.

Basically, I differ from the Tea Party or OWS in accepting the bank bailouts as a necessary evil. My quarrel was with how they were done. If we had refused to bail out the banks and simply let the financial system collapse, I have no doubt we would be a whole lot worse off than we are today. My guess is the Tea Party would say that the free market would never allow that to happen. If it did happen, they ultimately would say that if a second Great Depression was the free market's will, who are we to quarrel with it. I would further guess that any OWS response would be even less coherent. I would also guess that to the Tea Party, their biggest complaint about the bailout would be the use of taxpayer money and the violation of free market principles. To OWS, it would be that banks have gone unpunished and that the rest of us have not gained anything.

It is a bit hard for me to weigh in on this issue because my understanding of finance is limited, but I would rather spend more money than see the bailout done right than less and see it done wrong. What would be my concept of doing it right? Once again, with a limited understanding of finance I would recommend:

Make the banks write off their bad debts. As we kearned from Japan, if banks refuse to write off bad debts, you ed up with zombi banks. This will no doubt mean a greater expenditure of taxpayer money to recapitalize the banks that would otherwise be the case, but if it actually puts them on a sound footing, it will be well worth the expense.

Meaningful mortgage relief. This would be the counterpart to writing off bad debts. Home owners would get the chance to crawl out from under the mountain of debt that is holding our economy down and banks, in turn, would have to write it off. Granted, this will lead to resentment that some people lived beyond their means and got away with it. To which I answer, so far as I can the overhang of mortgage debt consists of three things, (1) people who bought a house at a grossly inflated price because that was all there was, (2) financially unsophisticated people tricked into fancy mortgage instruments that harmed them, and (3) people who were lived beyond their means, either by buying a bigger house than they could afford or by using their house as an ATM. How relatively important were these three factors. I don't know. But the fact that underwater mortgages are extremely uneqully distributed, ranging from 70% of the total in Nevada to under 10% in New York makes me suspect that the first factor is dominant. Some sort of write down for categories 1 and 2, with a speed-up of the foreclosure process for category 3 would bring down the debt that is weighing us down. Again, it would mean more losses for the banks and therefore more money to recapitalize, but for the sake of ecnomic recovery, it would be well worth it.

Some type of reorganization of the banks to convey the message that they had a serious problem. By all accounts, banks were in deep denial that there was a problem. So were the auto companies. The auto companies went through a major reorganization. Now they are making better cars and (I bet) recognize that they had a problem. The banks are still in denial. (Of course, the two above might be enough to convince them).

Tougher regulations to keep banks from taking excessive risks. Once again, I don't pretend to know enough about finance to have the answers. But requirements would have to include leverage limits (increasing with increasingly risky investments), a testing period for new financial instruments, tough underwriting requirements before anything could be securitized, and better consumer information. I leave the rest to the experts.

Some type of reform in executive compensation. Conservatives worry (justifiably) about moral hazard, but our current system of executive compensation is moral hazard on two legs. Essentially, corporate management gets to decide its own pay, setting itself up to get bonuses if it does well and golden parachutes if it does poorly. (Besides, most top corporate officers have so much money that losing a big chunk doesn't much affect them). In the end, corporations don't make decisions; individuals make decisions. Individuals are also the ones who suffer the real consequences of mistakes. We need to insure that top management, which makes the decisions after all, feels the consequences of those decisions. That is the only way I know to prevent excessive risk taking.

My guess, now, would be that if I presented this list to OWS, some of them might think I was a sellout and a pushover, but others would take consider them a reasonable plan. I would further guess that if I presented this list to the Tea Party they would denounce it as an outrageous violation of free markets and economic liberty. (I have been quite impressed during this crisis at the extent to which conservatives take the assumption that the market knows best to mean that management knows best, and that if a company runs into trouble, it cannot possibly be because of mistakes by the management).

Why the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Can't Cooperate

Unsurprisingly, there have been comparisons between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. Both are angry, outside the establishment (although the Tea Party is moving in fast), dissatisfied with the status quo and basically hostile to the whole idea of leadership and conventional politics and mad as hell about the TARP. Some have argued that their complaints are so similear there should be plenty of room for cooperation. There is even a Venn diagram showing their areas of overlap.
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Here's why I don't think it can work. Both groups may have similar analysis of what is wrong witho our country, but their prescriptions about what to do about it are diamatrically opposed. That is a very poor basis for alliance.

Let me make a qualification here. I am not a member of OWS and therefore not qualified to speak for them. Nor do the comments of right-wing Republicans or Fox News necessarily reflect the views of the Tea Party. But so far as I can tell, both sides are angry about the bank bailouts. But since it is too late to stop them now, the question is what to do for the future. To OWS, the answer is to punish the banks, or at least extract a price for the bailout and impose tighter regulations. To the Tea Party, it is bad enough that we interfered with the free market by bailing out the banks, to ask anything in return or to tighten regulations would simply compound the error.

Conservatives complain, with justification, that OWS protestors seem to reduce all our problems to rich people not paying enough taxes. But then again, the Tea Party seems to reduce all our problems to government spending too much. The Tea Party brought calls to balance to budget front and center as the most important political issue. They also made clear that balancing the budget would consist entirely of cutting services to low and middle income Americans and possibly adopting a more regressive tax system. Asking any sacrifice from upper incomes was out of the question. Is it any wonder such views have generated pushback?

Tea Parties are angry at government. OWS is angry at corporations. I'm pretty sure OWS is angry at government, too. But for the Tea Parties, anger at corporations is, by definition illegitimate. Here is a fascinating article on Eric Cantor explaining why anger at government is legitimate, but any suggestion of criticism of the private sector is completely out of bounds.

This commentator sums up the problem well. "[W]hen it came down to it, what did Wall Street and corporate America ever have to fear from the Tea Party? Lower corporate taxes and regulatory rollback? Seriously?" And that has always been the Tea Party's potential problem. When people are angry over a bank bailout that hasn't benefitted them any, calls for lower corporate taxes and regulatory rollback has never been the most intuitively satisfying response. For forty years now, the Right has assumed that it has a monopoly on populism. That monopoly is now being challenged.

Occupy Santa Fe

Well, I visited Occupy Santa Fe's demonstration today (as a mostly sympathetic observer, not a member). Here are some basic impressions:

• The weren't marching or chanting, at least when I was there. They were just standing on the sidewalk, holding up signs.


• Most of the signs were hand-written. Some were pre-fabricated. There were some unused signs for anyone who wanted to pick up.


• There were a wade range of ages, but ethnically most people present were Anglo.


• There were children, but they were playing on the grass, not holding up signs. Good! I have never approved of parents in demonstrations who make their children carry signs they don't understand. It has always seemed like child exploitation to me.


• There were also carefully labeled recycling containers for people to throw their trrash.


• Although there were some drums beating and a few costumes, it was nothing like a freak show.


• The crowd was not that big, but a lot of people driving by honked their support or waived or flashed the peace sign. Not everyone, of course. The crowd often tried to elicit a response from motorists and were disappointed if they didn't get one. I didn't see anyone going by show hostility, but then, Santa Fe is a liberal town.


• There were a few people talking about camping overnight. It appears a regular tactic of the movement is to trespass or camp past their pemit to provoke the police into overreacting. (It has been highly successful so far). There were no police present that I could see.


• A few girls were using hoola hoops. Are those making a come back?