The Right’s Last Gasp

These are momentous times in America. A black man is president. The country has experienced economic tremors of a kind not witnessed in decades. Two wars are raging abroad and new threats mount each day. Natural and man-made disasters are challenging the nerves and resources of the world. The United States has just passed two major legislations, one extending healthcare to millions and controlling costs in the coming years, and another regulating the wild rides and adventures of the finance industry.

No doubt, each generation feels special about its own historic moment, but whatever its ultimate legacy, there can be no question this is our moment. The experience is jarring, disturbing, challenging and in every sense, surreal.

As immigrants, most of us are bystanders to the political drama and social events unfolding before our eyes, although many in the Indian American community, second generation especially, are immersed in the national politics. However engaged, or disengaged we might be, however, this historic moment is bound to shape us, just as much as it reshapes this country.

It is no coincidence that these disturbing developments are rooted on the Right, among “Conservatives,” who, in a limited sense of that word, want to conserve their world, their policies and their dreams only because they are blind to the world transforming around them. These three related developments are stacked against the factual reality of a changing world, with the growing presence of the “other” immigrant, racial and cultural groups. Current population trends show that Whites are projected to become a minority in the United States by 2050 and it is that transformative reality that has sent the radical right into a tizzy.

Anti-immigrant groups, according to Heidi Beirich of the SPLC, have “nearly doubled” in 2009. The “nativists,” as they are called, are aligning with the “The Patriot Coalition,” which is an “anti-government outfit battling ‘globalism,’ ‘socialism,’ and the loss of ‘National Identity and Culture.’”

Hate groups are not new to this country; the KKK traces its origins to the 1860s and was at its peak in the 1920s. What is new, however, is the rapid rise of these groups and the fact that there is now a concerted effort — coordinated or otherwise — in which various shades of hate groups are converging against Pres. Barack Obama and his policies. A strong strand of American politics has always detested the idea of government. This is the purest (if misunderstood) idea of a free people, free even of their government. Its proponents want the government to fight their enemies, but not interfere with anything they do. They desire to pay minimum taxes, but want their war veterans to be cared for and roads and bridges paved. In a great irony now, they want the government to “clean the oil spill” in the Gulf, because the “private sector,” represented here by British Petroleum, otherwise their darling, cannot do the job! The Second Amendment that protects their rights to arms has often been taken to be a license to fight the government, when one disagrees with it or its officials.

Lest you think this is a fringe movement in the South, it is rising all across the country. A diluted form of this extremism parades in our public squares in the form of the Tea Party. If there is ever a postmodern play on words that parodies itself, this is it. It would be a mistake to tell school kids that there is any relation between this Tea Party and the proud chapter in their history books. This new Tea Party showcases the emergence of an anti-Washington strain in American politics, one whose advocates hate the government and taxes, despise any social spending and want to restore openly libertarian thinking in public life, where every man is for himself.

The composition of the Tea Party is an enigma. The photographs of the rallies show few nonwhites. The participants seem less educated and singularly lacking in political literacy. A new slang, dubbed “Teabonics,” seems to have emerged among those who participate in these rallies, where mangled syntax and misspellings of simple words of protest on placards make our last president look less grammatically challenged.

A New York Times survey however paints a far different profile of the group. The tea party supporters are “wealthier and more educated than the general public,” the survey found. The respondents claim that the “conservative” wing of the Republican Party is their secondary target after Obama and his “big government” policies, which they believe, is “getting away from what America is.” Although they are opposed to socialism, the Tea Partiers favor retaining social security and Medicare.

The Tea Party seems to have had some electoral success. Rand Paul, son of iconoclastic Congressman Ron Paul, handily defeated the Republican candidate blessed by the minority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, in a Kentucky primary. Paul sparked a national controversy with a statement that while he favored Civil Rights legislation in public life, he did not support its implementation in the private sector. Paul’s statements have affirmed the contradiction that while the Tea Party itself is not racist, it defends the right of anyone to be a racist. Public commentary on Paul’s statement has paid attention to his “intellectual” argument, as if there is something purely cerebral in deliberating why a restaurant in the South can refuse to give milk to your kids because they do not share the white European gene pool of the owner.

The law is abominable on several counts. Immigration is a federal responsibility and one would hope that those who profess to be so fond of the U.S. Constitution would know that. Everyone on the Right, from John McCain, the greatest turncoat in contemporary American politics, to Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Greta van Susteren, the mouthpieces of extremism, has been defending the law that makes a suspect out of anyone who does not have a White identity. If you ever thought identity cannot be legislated, this is the refutation. And if you are a student of the past, you will find parallels to this practice in the dark chapters of history.

As the Tea Party becomes the electoral organ of the raging Right, just as militias terrorize and extremists march for State’s rights, there is the specter of Talk Radio. One would expect Talk Radio to be the mildest and most innocuous of the Right wing forces, chasing ratings and money. In fact, the de-facto leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, rages on radio each weekday afternoon for three hours before an audience of 15 million. Limbaugh’s influence has grown so much in the past 20 years, especially after two successive Republican defeats in 2006 and 2008, that he reigns supreme over the Party now. Limbaugh rants unstoppably his vitriol that crosses the borders of paranoia, wild fantasies and deep hatred unlike anything witnessed on radio before.

Each of them gives a flourish to the rhetoric of hatred that is surreal at best. For the past 16 months, Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, Michael Gallagher and Beck have systematically painted a picture that Pres. Obama is not “American” at his core, protesting that he apologizes for this country all over the world, that he appeases Muslims (Obama cannot say the words, “Radical Islam,” so goes their refrain), that his government spending is a methodical attempt to take over the State and that he is calculatingly subverting the country. Their call to “take this country back” is a battle-cry against anyone who is not at core “American,” which in itself conveniently means a lot of things.

They do not see Democratic Party as part of the democratic fabric of this country. Listening to these talk show hosts is an amazing experience. It defies patience and tolerance and leaves you in a bewilderment that is abject and repulsive at its core. It used to be amusing to listen to them spin arguments, principles and positions they did not follow themselves. Theirs is a narrow worldview, one that this country, more than any other in recent past, has worked to erase, so there could be, at least in principle, a possibility of an egalitarian society.

With Glenn Beck’s deeply theatrical paranoia and his pathological thirst for making television and radio as instruments of relentless, one sided attacks, the audiences have a great outlet to vent their feelings of discontent that has been building in this country at a timewhen money is squandered in wars and so much is lost on Wall Street in a single day to fill the treasuries of many poor nations for years to come.

The thread of continuity between the militias, the Tea Party and the Right wing Talk Radio underscores the fear of those defending “their country” that it is slipping away from their grasp. The changing demographics of this country and the increasing global dependence of its economy ensure that White Caucasians will soon be outnumbered by people with darker skin shades. As one-time Republican Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan put it, “America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right.”

Buchanan should rest assured that the new inheritors of this land will work to restore the values of civility, diversity and democracy that the raging wrecking crews of the Right demolish in their desperate attempt to preserve their racial purity and cultural hegemony.

“Run up to Oklahoma City” Mark Potok, Director Intelligence Project Southern Poverty Law Center What is your response to the immigration legislation that is coming up in Arizona? The legislation is fairly obviously unconstitutional and it seems to institutionalize racial profiling, which certain police departments in Arizona already have a major problem with. The practical result of this legislation will be, is that certain aggressive police departments, will be questioning anyone who looks Latino to them, that’s the bottom line. This legislation is not going to affect people who appear to be white. President Bill Clinton made a remark about how the current climate could lead to real violence in this country. The reality is that we are in a period that looks and feels very much like the run up to Oklahoma City in 1995. I covered Oklahoma City as a reporter for USA Today at the time, you know, and that’s something I won’t forget and the atmosphere out there is very similarly rancid right now. Is it similar or is it more or less intense? Well I would say that it is essentially broader and deeper now. Immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing USA Today ran a poll, which asked Americans if they agreed with the statement that the federal government was in imminent threat to their freedoms and civil liberties. At the time 39% said “Yes.” It seemed extremely high at the time, kind of remarkable. Well that poll was just redone about six weeks ago and the number had climbed 15 points, 54% of the Americans now say, “I agree with the idea that the government is in imminent threat to their liberties.” That I think is really quite something and there is all kinds of other polling that shows how very angry many Americans are at the government and so on. The difference is that we haven’t had an incident along the lines of Waco that really set the movement on fire. You make a point in intelligence report that the hatred runs through the Tea Party and Talk Radio as well. How strong is this connection? I think there is lot of overlap. As I said in the report, I would not characterize the Tea Party movement as extremist per se. That said, there are absolutely strands of conspiracy theorizing, of demonizing propaganda and in some cases open racism in the Tea Party movement as well as on Talk Radio. I think that’s obvious. I am not trying to argue that everyone in the Tea Party is an unrobed Klansman, I think that’s clearly not true. However, I think that there are many, many people in the Tea Party world who are actually frightened. They have taken to believe the comments of people like say Sarah Palin that healthcare reform will mean death panels, murdering their grandparents and that sort of thing. I mean there is no question that there has been a kind of cross pollinating of various groups on the Right. So, you know, the Tea Party movement, many people in the Tea Party world for instance now believe conspiracy theories that comes from the very extreme in the immigration groups that Mexico has a secret plan to invade and re-conquer the American South West. In the same way, many people in the Tea Party Movement believe a conspiracy theory that originates in the militia groups that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is secretly building concentration camps around the country, you know, into, which they plan to throw good patriotic Americans. So, it’s that kind of cross pollination we see happening and it’s anybody’s guess where the Tea Party Movement will go. Maybe it will completely fizzle out, maybe it will become much more radical. We have yet to see. Let us return to the immigration issues. Do you see evidence in terms of actual crimes or actual attacks on immigrants? The remarkable crime was from early last year in 2009 when a woman named Shawna Forde allegedly murdered a nine year old girl and her father, you know, because she thought they were Latino, they must be drug smugglers and have a whole lot of money. I think that anger at non-white immigration is very much a driver of this explosion on the radical right we have seen and it is not limited to white supremacist groups, or even anti immigration groups like the Minute Men. The founder of teaparty.org recently wrote that “illegal aliens” are flooding this country and turning it into a socialist hell hole. As much as people on the right in general and the Tea Parties in particular deny any relation to racism, the reality is that there is a theory among these people about the immigration of people who do not have white skin. Now Arizona is the center of all of this and are you spotting emergence of new groups? The whole politics of the state is utterly reactionary. Look at the laws they are passing down there, quite remarkable. Few years ago the citizens of Arizona passed proposition 200, which was a law that mandated all government workers to check the immigration status of any person receiving any benefits whatsoever of any kind from the government. It was revealed that the national advisor to that campaign was a white supremacist who belonged to a nasty organization called the Council of Conservative Citizens, a White supremacist organization that has written things like black people are “a retrograde species of humanity.” Arizona has very nasty politics there is no question about it. Traditionally of course this sort of heat has emerged more in the South. Is that still the case? I wouldn’t describe it at all as a Southern phenomenon. There is more conflict along the boarder certainly, although it tends not to be in places like Texas, which has a very long relationship to the border that’s quite different. But, you know, you see it in Arizona, you see it in California, in Southern California of course. But now I would say that this explosion on the radical right has been fairly evenly spread throughout the country.