Republican Reptiles for 2012.

Rick Santorum joined the Republican Presidential race on a socially conservative ticket which is opposed to abortion and gay rights. It is worth mentioning that the former Senator for Pennsylvania enraged gay rights activists in 2003 when he compared homosexuality to paedophilia and bestiality. For Mr Santorum the state has the right to ban any behaviour deemed to be antithetical to the "healthy, stable, traditional family". Ironically, Rick Santorum has a "Google problem" which equates his surname with gay sex. The man also clinged to the theory that there were weapons of mass-destruction in Iraq until long after the Bush administration dumped the suggestion. The Santorum brand of conservatism was rejected by voters in 2006 when he lost his seat in the Senate. In the race to the White House in 2012 Santorum lacks connections to the Tea Party, though his conservative outlook is attractive to the Christian Right, he also lacks a 'big persona' which will only mean his "Google problem" will be exacerbated further on the campaign trail.

Mitt Romney has made it clear that he is running for 2012 with his usual lack of sky-high charisma and witticism, which would work well on Fox News if Romney had not passed a suspect health-care reform in Massachusetts. Even though the conservative position used to be for the individual mandate, the Republican opposition to "Obama-care" has been a strictly opportunistic strike against Obama. As the costs of health-care in the US have driven the car industry to bankruptcy the debate over the health system was re-opened in 2008. The fight which took the dynamic of Republicans against Democrats was more like a clash between the interests of health insurance and the car industry, which easily transcended the boundaries of party-affiliation. Even as Romney has lurched further to the Right he is still viewed with suspicion, for he is a Mormon and the Christian Right will not go in for someone who thinks that Jesus Christ was the brother of Lucifer.

Despite all of this, Mitt Romney is a serious contender and it is no surprise he is running as he has basically been in campaign mode since he failed to win the GOP nomination in 2008 and, in doing so, pissed $40 million of his own cash into the wind. On an amusing side-note the announcement was made with a scenic backdrop in New Hampshire which has been subsidised with $1 million from the federal government. Similarly, New Gingrich has presided over a multi-billion dollar boondoggle in Georgia which produces F-22s at tax-payers' expense even though military spending in the US amounts to 50% of military spending in the world. Though it would appear that Gingrich is finished after the controversy over his comments regarding "right-wing social engineering", so the Newt no longer looks conservative enough in a race in which purity matters even more than usual. Then there are the disagreements which have led his campaign team to go AWOL.

Typically, Sarah Palin out-shined the dull Mitt with the credentials she garnered from the McCain-Palin ticket and the links she has established with the Tea Party movement. Combine that with the books, the reality TV show and the work Palin has done at Fox News there is a ready source of support once she has declared she's running. So she can afford to come in late, perhaps just as Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are looking especially weak. We might not have long to wait for her announcement in that case. At the same time it might be the case that she has outlived her run as the populist symbol of American motherhood. Especially as Palin was linked with the Tucson shooting, from which Giffords has only just recovered. We also have to keep in mind that it is Corporate America which matters most in American elections and right now Sarah Palin only has a 4% rating, she has been surpassed by Michelle Bachmann at around 8% and the forerunner is still the damp Mitt at 33.5%.

Michelle Bachmann stood out in the recent Republican debate in New Hampshire and may have even upstaged Mitt Romney. She wooed the crowd with the kind of hard-hitting populist rhetoric, early on she declared Barack Obama to be a "one-term President" before promising to repeal Obama-care when she takes office. Bachmann inevitably won a warm reception as she has five children of her own and 23 foster children, which meshes well with working-people who vote out of an opposition to abortion. Just like when she compared raising taxes to the Holocaust, the Tea Party and the conservative shock-jocks loved it. But as Gingrich and Romney have demonstrated, the GOP has not had a tradition of opposition to the individual mandate or state-intervention for that matter. So it would seem that Michelle Bachmann is not a part of this tradition on the American Right, or more accurately that she doesn't wish to be associated with it, for it is an impure aspect of the conservative movement.

Bachmann is still not as prominent as some of her rivals, the attention she has drawn has inevitably led to comparisons with Sarah Palin. There have also been some interesting revelations about Palin recently. We find that she had begged Tony Hayward for a 1,700 mile BP pipeline, which would have stretched across America. This came a year after BP was responsible for the biggest oil spill in the state's history. In 2007 Palin slashed $237 million in funds for around 300 construction projects as she initiated a budget of $6.6 billion - the largest budget for the state of Alaska - before vetoing an additional $238 million in funds for 350 projects the following year. Recently it was announced that Sarah Palin is to visit Britain and Sudan, she has already been snubbed by Thatcher much to the chagrin of Rush Limbaugh and others. Thatcher represents the earlier generation of women politicians, the "iron ladies" who out-manned the men.

As Jacques-Alain Miller pointed out Palin is a break with this in that she displays her femininity and motherhood. The imagery has a "castrating" effect on male opponents, it is not that she is more manly than them but it is the use of the sarcastic put-down of male authority. She knows that the phallic authority of her opponents is just a posture which can be mocked for her gain. Note the way in which Palin mocked Obama as a "community organiser", exploiting the sterile aspects of Obama's appearance - diluted black skin, slender features and big ears etc. As Slavoj Žižek goes on, in Palin we find "post-feminist" femininity without a complex and the roles of mother, prim teachers, public figure and sex object converge. All the while Todd Palin is displayed at her side as the First Dude of Alaska, a phallic toy if anything. The implicit sting which adds insult to injury is that it is a Republican woman who has ran for the Vice Presidency and may even run for the Presidency in 2012. So it should be a surprise that the Palin effect offers false liberation.

At this point it looks unlikely that Sarah Palin will run for President as she was notably absent at the debate in New Hampshire. Meanwhile, Michelle Bachmann has drawn considerable attention from the shock-jocks and support from the Tea Party. It remains questionable whether or not the Right would put forward a woman candidate. The Tea Party movement sprung out of the legitimate grievances of working-class Americans, but it was also manifested as an expression of a feeling of loss. The white man had finally lost his majoritarian status in America, along with the appearance of loss in power over the state and the privilege derived from that. The consequent anxiety and fear collides with grievances that go back decades in a classic instance of displaced class struggle. The idea that a Republican woman could ride this wave into the White House seems delusional. If anything the Tea Party functions as a bulwark against the Left, not a spring-board for a particular candidate.

Then there is the man who took over where Bush left off in Texas, who has been elected three times and has ran the state for over 10 years now. Rick Perry has not declared whether or not he is running yet. If he were to run he would automatically become a serious contender for the Presidency given his 10 years  as Governor of Texas. Perry supports the Arizona immigration act, which could have been written by the American Nazi Party. Rick Perry supported the execution of Humberto Leal Garcia, which was opposed by his cold predecessor. It is worth noting that Rick Perry has signed over 200 death warrants in his time as the Governor of Texas, whereas George Bush executed 152 people in his time as Governor. In 2009 Rick Perry joined in his own special way and started to spew secessionist rhetoric in response to the stimulus spending by the Obama administration. This kind of rhetoric is still popular in Texas, where even the liberals wouldn't mind a Republic of Texas.


The rhetoric Perry came out with was welcomed by the Right and he has cultivated a rugged image with tough talk and going for jobs which culminate with the shooting of coyotes. He has courted the Christian Right and the Tea Party movement successfully, but he has also held onto his mainstream status as a conservative. So Rick Perry is capable of the rhetoric needed to rally the crazies around him, but he can do so whilst holding onto his ties with Corporate America from which he derives his "mainstream" status. Without the close links with corporate power Perry could find himself in the right-wing limbo where Glenn Beck, Ron Paul and Michael Savage can be found any day of the week. It is a balancing act of bringing together the most reactionary elements of the working-class together with the political forces of capital. This is what the fusion of economic liberalism with social conservatism was designed to accomplish. The slogan of which might be "Tax-cuts for the rich, no rights for fags!"

It is possible that Rick Perry is the "dark horse" of the GOP. Just the other day Rick Perry gave a rousing speech on conservative principles at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans and it is plausible that he was posturing as a conservative heavy-weight just before he makes the "decision" when Texas wraps up legislative business at the end of the month. Perry then went on to detail a four-point prescription for the economy which began with "don't spend all the money" which followed with an emphasis on low taxes, legal reforms to prevent frivolous lawsuits; a fair and predictable regulatory climate. The crowd then showered him chants of "Run, Rick, Run!" He received the greatest applause from the audience, at an event attended by Bachmann and Gingrich. It is clear that he would immediately become the forerunner given the banality of the Republican line-up and might actually give the incumbent a run for his money.


As President Rick Perry might repeal the "Obama-care" reforms as a populist gesture, deregulate further and impose greater anti-union legislation where it is necessary. In regards to taxation it remains unclear whether Perry is a part of the Goldwater tradition, which cuts spending in order to cut taxes. As the Bush tax-cuts have been renewed the spending cuts will be enormous and may even be bigger than the cuts seen under Clinton. This is true regardless of who is elected in 2012. It is also true that the next term will still be dominated by the fiscal stratagem known as "starve the beast". The justification for which comes in the form of trickle-down thinking, tax-cuts will lead to the investment necessary to create jobs. It will also be defended on the grounds that it will lead to less spending. In actuality the tax-cuts will lead to another enormous deficit in years to come and will only function to facilitate even greater cuts in the long-term. This is the reason we will probably see the privatisation of social security within a few years.

Newt Conservatism for 2012.

The Year of the Newt?

The sins of Newt Gingrich, who would remind us all that marriage is between one man and one woman, include: abandoning your wife riddled with cancer on her hospital bed to fuck the brains out of your next wife whom you later cheat on whilst moralising about the outrageous infidelities of President Clinton - which saved social security. The Newt has been "rehabilitated" in recent years, propelling himself forward on fiscal conservative rhetoric and the discovery of Catholicism. Ultimately this has led Newt to announce his new ambition to succeed Obama as President. Gingrich is the embodiment of the contradictions of American conservatism, strident populism against liberals and intellectuals whilst also a defender of liberalism for the rich. Market liberalism complete with the muscle to stamp on feminists and progressives everywhere. Newt conservatism is really free-markets for the poor and the vulnerable, 'Big Government' for the benefit of business and the mega-rich.

The recent scandal in the news about the $500,000 Newt Gingrich carries in debts to Tiffany's has given liberals room to challenge his "fiscal conservatism". Sadly the way Newt has run Georgia is overlooked, the huge amount of federal subsidies that are poured into Lockheed in Cobb County, Georgia are hardly a state secret. Incidentally Cobb County is almost the biggest recipient of federal subsidies in the US. It would seem criticism of Gingrich's maxed out credit cards is of high value in an age of personalised politics. Similarly the most damaging attacks on the Obama administration from the GOP have been made along personal lines, e.g. Obama is an illegal alien from Kenya and so on. It doesn't take a sophisticated analysis of any kind to support such vilification, merely a few quotes deprived of context, outright lies and crude historical analogies. The liberals will prefer to play the game of trying to stick the "hypocrite" label on the Newt, as if that is the only thing wrong with Newt Gingrich and his particular brand of conservatism.

Federal money on welfare, social security and health-care were fair game to be cut under these conservatives.  Just as in Arizona Jan Brewer and John McCain have cut funding for education and health-care, setting up "death panels" in the state of Arizona. At the same time Brewer has increased the funding for border security and pandering to racist fears with Arizona SB1070, a bill on illegal immigration that could have been drawn up by the American Nazi Party. Even if the Republican resurgence last November does lead to decreasing the size of the government it would only be the transference of power from the state sector to the private sector. In other words, greater power would be moved from bureaucrats and elected representatives in Washington to bureaucrats in corporate blocks of offices. All the while the richest citizens would be enriched even more through regressive tax-cuts, whilst the majority of the population has been hit hard by the recession and has yet to recover.

As part of the Republican resurgence in 2010, John Boehner has resurfaced and risen to Speaker of the House. We might think of Boehner as the sidekick to the Newt, though he could be summed up as just another brash hack for corporate interests. He actually went as far as personally handing out checks for the tobacco industry in Congress to sway an upcoming vote on tobacco subsidies. Boehner also represents the interests of Goldman Sachs, among lots of other companies, which might explain why he voted for the bailouts in 2008. The extent to which Boehner will act to cut public spending and shrink the deficit is highly questionable. Boehner has supported the Bush tax-cuts and the renewal of them by the Obama administration, effectively subsidising the wealthiest of Americans, providing a pretext for yet more cutting in the long term. This is the "starve the beast" mantra of the Republican machine, which would distinguish the Newt from a conservative like Barry Goldwater in that the aim is to increase debt in order to justify further cuts.

The Newt still adheres to the trickle-down theory and will initiate even more tax-cuts, especially for the rich, if he takes office in 2012. Apparently it wasn't enough that the richest 1% of Americans have seen taxes cut from 91% in the 50s down to 28% in the 80s, before they were raised to around 36% in the 1990s. Gingrich wants to eliminate the capital gains tax and abolish inheritance tax, as well as cuts to corporation tax and a shift to a flat tax of 15%. This would cost the Treasury billions, increase debt, hit the poor hardest and leave the fat cats even more bloated than before. Typically the language used by his PR team is vague, with references to a "balanced budget" with no clear laid out plans to make the cuts which will decrease the debt - e.g. defence spending. Instead we can read plenty of platitudes about helping Americans, keeping to national values and letting the fucking Muslims know how it is. Not to mention plenty of talk of 'reform' in regards to entitlements and health-care.

The American people are disillusioned by the hopeless state of the union and as a result the GOP has been able to mobilise a conservative base on family values and gun rights. As the low voter turn out converged with the interests of capital there has been a striking shift away from social democracy and the New Deal. In the mid-term elections of 2010 75% of the population made up 37% of the vote, these are the Americans who earn less than $50,000 a year and typically lean to the Democrats. Just compare this with the 26% of the vote which consisted of the 10% of Americans who make $100,000 a year and lean to the Republicans. Although it is true that a strong Democratic tendency does not necessarily mean that the US is a liberal or left-wing country, because the Democrats are a right-wing party and at best predominantly "moderate" conservative. In the simplistic worldview put forward by the media there is no room for the class dynamic of American elections.

New Gingrich is a part of the Republican tradition of right-wing populism which mobilises the South as a conservative Christian base against the bi-coastal liberal elites of the North. The way he has consistently ran on a platform of baiting the poor against one another, like the way he has called for poor children to be taken from their mothers and placed in orphanages. The way in which he has referred to Obama as a "food-stamp President" is a similar form of baiting, to utilise the racist imagery of black people as a bunch of free-loaders and dangerous criminals against the first administration led by an African-American. He has managed to rehabilitate himself since the sex scandal which scuppered his chances of running for President against the Democrats 10 years ago. His discovery of the Roman Catholic faith in 2009 was a major part of that rehabilitation. But it remains unclear whether such cynical gestures and self-serving spin will pay-off for him and there is still no clear forerunner for the Republican nomination right now.

The Myth of Ronald Reagan.

Fact and Fiction.

February 6th 1911, exactly 100 years ago today, Ronald Reagan was born in an apartment in Tampico, Illinois into a devout Christian working-class family. Ronald Reagan, or "Dutch" to his friends, went on to become the 40th President of the United States and is considered by some as one of the greatest Presidents. Since he took power in 1981, Reagan has been a subject of adulation by Republicans and is widely revered on the American Right. Reagan is now being held up by the Tea Party as a figure of immense integrity and ideological purity. The Tea Parties emphasise small government and fiscal responsibility, family values and a strong defence. For the Tea Party, Reagan belongs to the most noble of political traditions going right back to the American Revolution. This is the first of a series of articles that are aimed to dispel the myth of Ronald Reagan through a critique of the impact of Reagan's policy in foreign, economic and social spheres.

For the GOP Ronald Reagan is an icon of American conservatism and have succeeded in crafting a folkloric Reagan, to an extent which would impress Kim Jong-il. Take the story in which Reagan invites a black family to his home for the night, having dinner and breakfast with them, because they were refused rooms in the local inn. This is a story for anyone eager to glorify Reagan as a man ahead of his time. In reality Ronald Reagan opposed the Civil Rights act, tried to veto the Civil Rights Restoration act, on the grounds that the acts imposed too much regulation on small business and churches. He also opposed the Martin Luther King holiday but reluctantly voted for it given the level of popular support. Reagan later added Nelson Mandela to a list of terrorists in 1988 as he propped up Apartheid. These facts mean much more than the story of the anonymous black family and the friendly white man, which would have us believe he was everything we'd want from a President.

Reagan is often described in glowing terms as a man of humble origins who earned his privileged position in society through sheer hard-work. Of course, the fact that Reagan was a star of the B-movies who became the biggest corporate spokesman of the 1950s is downplayed. As a politician Reagan began his career as a Democrat and was a proponent for the social democratic policies of Roosevelt's New Deal. But in the 50s he made the transition to the right-wing of the Democratic Party, endorsing Eisenhower and Nixon along the way, before completing the transition and defecting to the Republican Party in 1962. Reagan began to espouse the core principles of American conservatism: small government, free-markets, anti-communism, family values and individual freedom. Reagan's success as a politician was down to his ability to present policies favoured by "Corporate America" as good for all sectors of society.

Ronald Reagan is still revered as an apostle of the free-market, small government and fiscal responsibility. There is a clear difference between the Reagan dreamed up by the public relations industry and Reagan the man. Even though under Reagan the size of the federal government increased relative to GDP, enormous protectionist barriers were hoisted up against foreign competition, whilst corporations were allowed to close plans all over North America and spending on the military increased rapidly under his administration. The systematic deregulation of the financial sector led to the Savings and Loans crisis, to which the Reaganites responded with bailouts for companies that were "too big to fail". In foreign policy the Reagan administration led a brutal crusade of violence and terrorism in the name of promoting democracy, which thousands in Latin America and the Middle East slaughtered.

The last 30 years have been heavily influenced by the events that took place in the Reagan era. The discourse was redefined in the 1980s by the likes of Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes, who created the GOP playbook of mudslinging and outrageous lies, we have them to thank for right-wing media - e.g. Fox News and Rush Limbaugh - that has crudified debate. Millions of Americans don't even vote because the elections look meaningless, as the candidates smear one another as "Nazis" and "anti-Americans". The culture wars are still raging in America, wedge issues like abortion and immigration remain a rallying call against liberals on the Right. At the same time "Reaganomics" has led to an enormous gulf between the rich and the poor, with the most basic aspects of the welfare state being torn up for the sake of "small government" and the "free-market".

What the Fuck Happened?

In 2008 the Obama campaign won a term in the White House, but it also won the award for the best marketing campaign of 2008 with Apple coming in second place. Only two years on and we have witnessed the midterm annihilation of the Obama administration. Though it was not as bad as it could have been, the Democrats managed to hold onto the Senate but lost the House of Representatives to the Republicans. Before the elections Paul Jay at the Real News Network identified six reasons that the Obama administration was facing such a battering: 1. Letting the Republicans recreate themselves as "populists". 2. Furthering the same old foreign policy. 3. The failure to adequately defend the public option for health-care. 4. The failure to use the auto-bailout to build a greener economy. 5. The bailouts and the failure to restructure the financial sector. 6. The failure to investigate the Bush administration for war crimes and the negligence that led to the attacks on September 11th 2001.

These are all sound reasons to explain what may be the beginning of the end for the first administration to be led by a African-American. The problem with Obama is not that he has been "too radical" it is that he lacking even the tenacity to push through modest reform. The compromised health-care bill are instances of Obama's failure to ram through moderate changes. A serious attempt to establish universal health-care in the US would have mobilised the working-class vote in a way that not even the Southern Strategy of the GOP could.  Instead the policy-makers in the administration tossed a compromised bill to the masses, which was then voted against as the working-class was demoralised and failed to turn out to support the reform. The Democrats have a bad habit of expecting the working-classes to vote for them because of the New Deal reforms under Roosevelt. The current residents of the White House are guilty of this and it will continue to hurt the Obama administration.

On the campaign trail pundits compared Barack Obama to John F Kennedy on the grounds of Obama's charisma and exhilarating style of speaking. Though some would argue that Obama is a better speaker than JFK, Obama will probably fade away like Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton and not go down in flames like Kennedy. It should be noted that Carter, Clinton and Kennedy were not noble politicians in any estimation. The liberal intellectuals adore JFK and always have done, after all it was the Kennedys who invited so many intellectuals up to the White House for a nice pat on the head and a discussion on the works of Proust. Just as JFK secured a glowing legacy by courting intellectuals, Bush ensured a rightfully appalling legacy by proudly shunning the intellectual community. It remains to be seen whether or not Obama can save face and secure a glowing legacy to keep our descendents in the dark about his failures, but would that be a desirable outcome of this government?

Incidentally Jack Kennedy should not be viewed as a great liberal tragically shot down before he could extend equal rights to black people, bring peace to Indochina and further the reforms of the New Deal. When in actuality JFK was a rich playboy with the kind of right-wing opinions that a man like Joe Kennedy would want in a son. We should also not forget that Joe Kennedy was a vote-rigging virulent anti-Semite who made his fortune from bootlegging. It was JFK who escalated the Vietnam war, launched a campaign of terrorism against Cuba and installed a military junta in Brazil. If Kennedy had not been assassinated he could have lived long enough to be robbed of his good looks by Addison's disease and disgraced by his foreign policy. Let alone the work Kennedy put into slashing taxes for the richest 1% of Americans, which was an early step towards decimating the welfare state born out of the New Deal. The Kennedy myth was consolidated when JFK's brains were blown out the day before Doctor Who first aired, we should not buy into such a myth.


Back when Barack Obama was running for the Presidency in 2008 many cynics speculated that Obama would be assassinated soon after winning. Though if President Obama had been assassinated the legacy of his administration would have been secured and all the flaws of his policies pinned on succeeding Presidents. The premature death of this man might have saved him from the kind of disgraces that JFK "escaped". The Obama administration is suffering the consequences of failing to bring change and opting to preserve the status quo. Obama deserve to be decimated in the midterm elections, but the Republicans did not deserve to win any seats. At this point the worst case scenario for Obama is a one-term stint in the White House having accomplished little to brag about, in which case he'll be walking the footsteps of Jimmy Carter. If that is the case we could be living under a Republican administration by 2013, which could return us to the extremes of the Bushites and further the decline towards a neofeudal America.

All in all there was not much unusual about these midterm elections. Both the Republicans and the Democrats depended largely on professionals, managers and owners to turn out and vote for them. Only the most backward elements of the working-class are mobilised in the form of the Tea Party movement, which failed to smash an unpopular Democratic administration. About 75% of Americans earn less than $50,000 a year and these 225 million people only account for 37% of the total vote, which is down to low voter turn out. Turn out among the wealthy is much higher, people earning $100,000 and over make up about 6% of the population. But those 1.8 million people account for around 26% of the total vote. There is a strong bias towards the Democrats among voters earning less than $50k a year. Just as there is a bias among those earning $100k a year towards the GOP, a bias which is even more intense among voters earning $200k or more a year. The American working-class desperately await a progressive party to represent their interests.

Tea, Cake and Lunacy.

Easy Answers.

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, and the subsequent recession, the working-classes of Britain and America are still in a crisis of unemployment and stagnant wages supplemented with credit cards and loans. Most notably the Tea Party movement in the US and the English Defence League in Britain which are now forging an alliance in the name of defending Anglo-American values from Islamism. Though the Tea Party and the English Defence League have little in common, except when it comes down to foreign policy, border security, immigration, political-correctness and multiculturalism. Take economics, where the Tea Parties are free-market fundamentalists, the EDL are lacking any official position on economic policy. Just going by the chants of "British jobs for British workers!" it's likely that the EDL do not share the Tea Party's love of privatisation and deregulation.

Interestingly the membership of both groups at first appears quite different, a rabble of gun-toting survivalists and Christian extremists on one side; a mass of football hooligans and neo-fascists on the other. But both movements are of the working-class which has become superfluous in an economy based on finance and banking. Entire industries like manufacturing and mining have gone into decline, which has devastated whole communities. These communities have been reduced to "pockets of deprivation" where the unemployed fester and pensioners rot. People trapped in such "pockets" look for an answer and, naturally, the mass-media has an answer: it's not the economy, it's immigrants, it's single mums etc. The assumption being that the economic system would work perfectly if it were not for some "meddlesome entity" like immigrants, gays etc. When in fact there are systemic problems within the economy, which have nothing to do with any of these groups.


The rage of the working-class is real and based on legitimate grievances going back to the 1970s, when the assault was first made on the welfare state. The reactionary press has focused on directing all of this anger against the government, whether it be the welfare state or immigration policy. The aim being to distract from real sources of problems in our society. The MP expenses scandal was used by the press to direct anger away from the £7 billion that bankers are receiving in bonuses. In fact if the expenses system was scrapped it would likely leave politicians more likely to jump into the pockets of lobbyists. Though serious reforms to the expenses system are needed such reforms are irrelevant, compared to the kind of changes we need to made in banking. It was the financial sector that have dispossessed people of housing, work and even pensions in some cases.



The media loves to direct rage from the grass-roots against government and unions because the state is potentially democratic and the labour movement is democratic. Businesses on the other hand are pure tyranny, there are no elections and the decisions come from the top if you're disobedient you could lose your job. Other favourite scapegoats include single-parent families, anti-social youths, foreigners, ethnic and religious minorities. But never a bank or a corporation, except in cases where it's against one person like Fred Goodwin or Dick Fuld. The media is a lot like a conveyor-belt on which moral panics are fed to the public, keeping a lot of us in a perpetual state of fear and anger. This is so successful because the readership are constantly working to sustain themselves. So they do not have the time to carry out a research project to filter through all of the nonsense, so lots of people just assume it's true what they read in the press.

Know-Nothing Solidarity.

The scapegoats, that were conjured up by the media, for the EDL and the Tea Parties are Muslims and Mexicans. The EDL claims that the government has pandered to Muslims, giving them special treatment and in doing so is trampling on English culture. The Tea Parties believe that Mexican illegal immigrants are responsible for crime, job losses, wage cuts and the decline of health-care. Similar claims are also made by the press in Britain. But this is no different than the "Know-Nothing" movement of the 19th Century who thought that the influx of German and Irish immigrants would turn the US into a "Catholic country". It was even feared that the Pope was trying to destroy American democracy. Of course none of this happened, but the fears were a result of real grievances such as poverty and unemployment. This was the reason that shops would hang signs in windows stating "No dogs, no Irish." Then towards the end of the 19th Century the Chinese became the new scapegoat and  a racial exclusion act was passed in 1892, banning the Chinese from migrating to the US.

Xenophobia, specifically with the Muslim community as a scapegoat, is the primary characteristic of the EDL. The Tea Party, on the other hand, opts for a strain of nationalist populism branded as a fusion of rugged individuality and Puritan family values, all protected by a strong defence and a militarised border. The EDL lacks a platform so the "bridge" between the Tea Parties and the EDL is Pamela Geller, the leader of 'Stop the Islamization of America' - an organisation modelled on 'Stop the Islamification of Europe'. Geller gained salience in the Tea Party after leading the march against the "Ground Zero Mosque". Though it should be noted that this so-called "mosque" is actually an Islamic Cultural Centre open to all. It will have a restaurant and a basketball court as well as prayer rooms for Muslims, Jews and Christians. Not only is it not a mosque it's not even at Ground Zero, it's two blocks away from where the Twin Towers once stood.

This standard of nonsense is what has accelerated the Tea Party's rise to prominence and influence in America, but also what feeds the racism of the EDL. Some commentators have speculated that the Tea Party could emerge as a third-party in the future. The Tea Parties are becoming a political force in America, due to the financial backing by billionaires like the Koch brothers. Similarly the EDL is being funded by sympathetic elements of the business community in the UK. However, the EDL is lacking the level of support from the media to achieve the prominence that the Tea Party movement has gained. It could be that the alliance forged between the EDL and the Tea Parties is nothing more than short-sighted opportunism. It is unlikely that the relationship between the two movements could be sustained into the long-term future. Especially as the Tea Party may have weakened itself by associating with a movement of football thugs and neo-Nazis.

Historically there have been two faces of anti-capitalism to emerge during recessions, fascism and socialism. The fascists saw liberalism as bougeois a system as communism was a proletarian movement. Instead fascists situated themselves in the "centre" and sought to transcend class boundaries, whilst upholding an authoritarian hierarchy, for the sake of national solidarity. Socialism, on the other hand, seeks the emancipation of the working-class through the end of capitalism. The emergence of extreme right-wing groups like the EDL should be understood in this historical context. Whereas the ideologues of the Tea Party are out to reaffirm capitalism as it was before the crisis, not as the utopian free-market idealised by many of it's activists. The connection between the two groups could be exploited by the Democrats, which is why the Tea Party will probably dump the EDL. We should be relieved as nothing could from an alliance founded under the slogan "Angry White Men of the World, Unite!"

The Groucho Marx of the Right.

Cesspool Conservatism.

Glenn Beck has gone from mediocrity as a disc jockey to a self-styled political commentator. Just like his fellow shock-jocks of the Right, Limbaugh and Savage et al, Beck deals in cesspool conservatism - a tradition spawned in the fermented juices left in Lee Atwater's wake. Afterall Beck applies the same tactics that Atwater used to save Bush I from an electoral defeat in 1988. Lee Atwater was a mentor to Karl Rove and practically wrote the GOP playbook to safeguard the GOP platform, by tapping into the South as a source of right-wing populism, and demolish the Democrats as a liberal opposition. These tactics range from distorting history and the political spectrum to vilify the opposition, provoking outrage at every turn along the way. These tactics are partly what have enabled Beck to rise from a Top 40 DJ to an icon of the right-wing commentariat that basks in controversy.

To this day Beck wallows in controversy, which functions to distract people from the issues, fuelling the widespread confusion and rage along the way. In calling Barack Obama a "racist", in the midst of the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr, Beck succeeded in obfuscating the issues raised by the arrest - e.g. institutionalised racism in the police force - to a ridiculous debate over the content of his comments. But this is nothing new Glenn Beck has a history of shocking displays of prejudice, typically racist and or misogynistic chauvinism. Beck once called the wife of a competing DJ in Phoenix and mocked her for having a miscarriage on live radio. He claimed that Malik Jones used to smoke crack with his own grandmother. Jones had just been shot dead after refusing to pull over for the police, Jones was black and the police officer who shot him was white.

In the aftermath of the financial implosion of 2008, it was expected by many that there would be a radical shift in politics pushed by grass-roots movements. Beck has been instrumental in taking full advantage of the recent vicissitudes of capitalism and the weaknesses of the Left to reaffirm the system. In demonstrations against universal health-care and "socialism" the Tea Parties are undermining progressive tendencies that were absent, crushing any signs of an opposition to the consistently pro-business agenda of the US government. Beck does not attack "Obama-care" for obligating even more Americans to buy into a dysfunctional and bureaucratic insurance industry. Instead Beck accuses the administration of being "communist" and feeds the Tea Parties as a movement pushing for a more regressive health-care system.

Lee Atwater Populism.

It was 20 years before Beck when Lee Atwater obfuscated the real issues to smash the Democrats and keep the White House Republican for 4 more years. In 1986 the Reagan administration had been exposed as supporting the Contras, and their campaign of terrorism in Nicaragua, funding them through a state-sponsored trafficking in arms and drugs. The major issue of the election of 1988 should have been Bush's involvement in funding the terrorism. Lee Atwater resorted to the Southern Strategy and turned the discourse away from the Iran-Contra affair through a campaign of race-baiting. A campaign which Roger Ailes, who now runs Fox News, was deeply involved in from day one. This extreme-rightist brand of populism is designed to appeal to the Southern working-class, who have been marginalised by the bicoastal elites historically.

Today Beck is part of a similar mud-slinging campaign to excuse the crimes of the Bushites and undermine the Obama administration, by leading people to flock to the Right and elect a Republican President just as bad if not worse than Bush. This time the race-baiting is focused mostly on Muslims, as Islamophobia has become a major tool of mobilising angry white men. The "Ground Zero Mosque" being the newest tool, even though it is actually an Islamic Cultural Centre featuring a swimming pool, basketball court; a restaurant and prayer rooms for Muslims, Christians and Jews. The Centre isn't even at Ground Zero, but the desired effect has been accomplished. On the part of the Right this is a conscious way of undermining any progressive tendencies that might emerge, either in the state or from the grass-roots. Glenn Beck is deserving of his reputation for inducing laughter, but not in the intended way.

The Beck routine typically begins with a satirical attack on his opponents and their arguments, rounded off with a "serious" message of sentimental moral proportions. The first part is supposed to be the source of hilarity, though Beck's brand of satire would embarrass any decent human being. As Žižek pointed out, it is the ridiculous "serious" conclusion that is laughable. Beck is avidly reducing the political discourse to entertainment and comedy, the realm in which the conspiracy theories of ultra-conservative Mormons can be passed off as "serious" content. He consciously distorts the political spectrum to the extent that Barack Obama is both a "socialist", a "racist" and a "fascist" surrounded by loony lefties, whilst Roger Ailes is a "hero" of the Civil Rights Movement. The aim being to exploit the crisis of the American working-class for reactionary ends, against what little progress is being pursued in Washington.

What About Corporate Dole?

There is talk of deficit reduction and austerity measures, on both sides of the Atlantic, a lot of the "debate" is geared towards dismantling the welfare state which FDR constructed. In the US the Obama administration is looking to pursue greater spending initiatives for now, but it is spending cuts which we will see at a later date. In Britain, on the other hand, a series of deep spending cuts are about to be rammed through by the Con-Dem Coalition. These programmes of austerity will hit the poor hardest and function like an increase in taxes on working-class people everywhere. The impact is regressive, as it removes or severely undermines services which millions of people depend upon and have done for decades. The cuts will increase the amount of money that ordinary people will have to spend to get by on a day-to-day basis. The disposable income of the wealthy will be unscathed as they are the less reliant on institutions of the welfare state, like the NHS.

Typically the welfare state, particularly benefits, are a target of these cuts. The aim being to destroy a corrosive "culture of dependency". Even though in the US the trillion-dollar deficit is mostly due to the enormous costs entailed by a dysfunctional health-care system and a bloated military budget. Offense spending, not defense spending, has increased to $1.5 trillion in recent years and Obama has increased the military budget even further. Today 50% of military spending in the world is just the US offense expenditure, it is higher than the military budgets of the rest of the world combined. Though it should be noted that a great deal of this spending is funneled into the economy, to fund research and development of technology for high-tech industry. Along with enormous subsidies and protectionist measures, 'Corporate America' benefits enormously from government intervention in the economy.

This is nothing new, the US government from it's origins in revolution and war to the present has reflected the interests of the wealthy class of white men. In fact if the US economy had been truly laissez-faire from the beginning the country would have remained an appendage of the British Empire for much longer. In the 1850s, the railroads received 20 million acres of land free from the US government and during the Civil War this amount increased to around 100 million acres of free land. This land had been "cleared" of Native American tribes, not by the free-market, but by the state so that rich white people could become the owners of it. Today it is corporations, like Lockheed and Microsoft, which are the primary beneficiaries of supply-side economics dressed up as free-market economics. The US is no different to other first world countries in that development and economic growth was a result of state-intervention in the economy.

The free-market rhetoric of the Tea Parties and the right-wing ideologists spurring them on is absurd. The Tea Parties are for a free-market, small government, family values and a strong defence. Notice that a strong defence and a free-market are specifically in opposition with one another as the offence budget is used to subsidise high-tech industry. The ideologists of the movement are not free-marketeers, Newt Gingrich is a cynical reactionary seeking to manipulate people with legitimate grievances to support a narrow right-wing agenda. We can see this just by looking at Gingrich's record of supporting a welfare state for the rich. For over 20 years, Newt Gingrich represented the 6th district of Georgia and a leading recipient of federal subsidies in the country - namely Cobb County, Georgia. There Lockheed produces F22s at a subsidised rate which exceeded $70 billion a year under Gingrich.

Accumulation by dispossession comes to mind, the opulent minority accumulate wealthy and property at the expense of the poor majority. As for the Con-Dem Coalition, David Cameron has a proposal for job creation that will supposedly provide the "unworthy poor" (benefit cheats and single-mums etc) with work. The proposal is the cut in national insurance, which Cameron described repeatedly as a "jobs tax" during the campaign. The policy of "job creation" could be summed up as subsidies to firms who hire the unemployed at the minimum wage. It's likely that this policy could drive down the wages of other workers and it has the potential to undermine trade unions. A cut in "jobs tax" doesn't sound as wonderful when described in these terms. Especially if you consider the massive spending cuts as a form of taxation, decimating the ability of many people to live comfortable lives.

It's interesting that we think of the welfare state as a safety-net providing health-care and education, as well as financial assistance, to the poor. We do not think of the bailouts, tax-cuts and subsidies as falling under welfare. Even though a regressive tax-system funnels money into the pockets of the uber-rich. Naturally, the reactionary press have a problem with the poor living off of the "dole" and regularly accuse them of living parasitically on the hard-work of the "deserving poor". The assumption being that tax-cuts which benefit the wealthy, and spending cuts that harm the poor, reward the worthy and punish the unworthy. It is not the case that individuals thrive according to their own merits in this world. The self-made man is mostly a myth, as almost all "self-made men" are a product of centuries of affirmative action for rich-white-men and the dole queue of fat cats.

The Road to Fascism.

Angry White Men.

In 2009 we have seen the rise of mass movements on both sides of the Atlantic, I am of course referring to the Tea Party Movement and the English Defence League. In both instances these movements are thoroughly politicised and are growing in strength. In the US the Tea Party Movement has risen to prominence in conservative politics in reaction to taxation, fiscal irresponsibility and what they consider "socialism". In the UK the English Defence League has become a prominent movement in right-wing politics and is supposedly dedicated to combating the "Islamization" of Britain. Both movements appear to consist of various right-wingers united by a few key issues. The Tea Parties consist of "Birthers", gun-toting survivalists and Christian fundamentalists etc. while the EDL consists mostly of football hooligans and far-right activists formerly associated with groups like Combat 18. The latter movement became prominent due to the protests against Islamic fundamentalism outside a mosque in Harrow on September 11th 2009. The former emerged in direct reaction to Barack Obama's bailouts and health-care reforms.

The reasons for the sudden emergence and rapid growth of these particular reactionary movements are not as obscure as the media pretends. Typically in recessions people are desperate for answers in such situations and often flock around identity markers, e.g. religion or nationality, in search of comforting answers. The popularity that the far-right experiences during financial crises is due to the vulnerability people have for easy answers. This is the way that Hitler came to power in Germany during the Great Depression. So there is a definite connection between socio-economic troubles and far-right politics as a "solution" to such troubles. The critique these groups present of society's problems are drawn along populist lines, sometimes reminiscent of leftist attacks on capitalism, but focusing more on individuals and groups than the system itself. Thus, fascist groups like the EDL require a scapegoat, the Muslim community as the source of a destructive radicalism and the Left as dangerously capitulating to that force.

In the case of the Tea Party Movement the scapegoat is the Obama administration, as the enemy of the American way of life, and the Federal government, as a source of incompetence and corruption of the free-enterprise system. The Tea Party see the reason for the financial crisis, not as a lack of regulation but as too much regulation and too much state interference in the financial sector. For them, it is an imaginary elite of liberals, secularists, communists, feminists and progressives who are responsible for the fiscal irresponsibility and "big government". Therefore, the political system needs to be "changed" so that fiscal responsibility, the Constitution and free-markets can be restored in America. Ironically this was a method of communists used to justify a further purge and yet more economic planning. The failures of communism were often blamed on an imaginary elite of capitalists that was still functioning somehow to deprive the workers of their utopia. The system is not at fault, just corrupt individuals that we must purge.

In America and Britain the last 30 years have been difficult for working-class people, to say the least. Communities centred around factory work, mining and manufacturing, were torn apart through privatisation and deregulation on both sides of the pond. The government has effectively abandoned these communities, creating pockets of deprivation. The labour movement and unions were smashed, weakening them considerably, reducing the power of workers to improve working conditions, obtain pay rises and shorter work hours. As a result, wages went into decline or stagnated and work hours have increased. The gap between the wealthy and the poor increased rapidly. This is reflected by facts such as in the year 2000 1% of Americans owned over 40% of stock while 80% of the population owned less than 10%. In Britain we are now seeing the greatest gap between the rich and the poor in 40 years.

The economic policies that have created this inequality is not scrutinised in the working-class press anymore, because the working-class press does no longer exist. It was eliminated by the growing dependence on advertising revenue in the media, which influenced the content of the news as advertisements could be withdrawn if businesses dislike the content. As a result, the cheapest and most commonly read newspapers are thoroughly right-wing. In Britain we saw The Daily Herald replaced by The Sun owned by Rupert Murdoch, in the US it is Fox News. Today the only answers available to the majority of working-class people, regarding the current state of affairs, are from those who blame everything on "do-gooders" whose sensitivity - to immigrants, single-parents and gays - will bring down society as we know it. Political-correctness and multiculturalism are depicted as a source of weakness, leaving our society "vulnerable" to moral decay by "alternative life-styles" and destruction by radical Islamists.


Both the EDL and the Tea Parties have a palingenetic tendency, reminiscent of the fascist movements of the 1930s. Palingenesis being a rebirth or reincarnation of something, in Nazism the Third Reich was the "rebirth" of the First and Second Reich, in Italian Fascism it was the goal of "recreating" the Roman Empire. Today, the EDL "seeks" to take Britain back to a time when British values were safe from Islamism and to do so intend to fend off the "Islamization" of our society. Similarly, the Tea Parties aim to "rejuvenate" the ideals of Revolutionary America, ending the "tyranny" of the Obama administration in the name of individual liberty and responsibility. Of course, the ways they aim to bring about this "rebirth" involves the infringement on the ideals and values they claim to be defending. It is a sad fact that there are such crypto-fascist movements, who claim to stand for freedom while promoting causes that are radically opposed to freedom, in countries that helped bring down fascism in Europe and the Pacific.

Significant Links:

EDL - Inside the violent world of Britain's new far-right 

The Tea Party Patriots - Mission Statement 

English Defence League - Who are the EDL?

English Defence League - Exposing the Myth 

Keith Olbermann - Racial discrimination in the Tea Party Movement 

The Scapegoat for Hitlerism.

Better Dead than Red.

The American Right has been desperate lately to promote the view that fascism, particularly the notorious Hitlerite variant known to us all as Nazism, was and is a left-wing movement. There is a tendency on the American Right to try and scapegoat the Left as the source of all problems. And the motivations of this, appear to be strictly partisan as usual and are probably part of the "culture war" that conservatives have waged since the early 1990s. Though, it could be more than just partisan politics, this could be an attempt of the American Right to distance themselves from the "dirty word" of fascism and turn the word against the liberals, who are all too enthusiastic to hurl it against the likes of the Bush administration. Some have even gone as far as distorting the political spectrum, so that left and right are determined according to the statism and individualism of the ideology. This would mean that fascism and socialism are both left-wing, as they are ideologically statist, whereas conservatism and libertarianism are right-wing because they are supposedly anti-statist and individualistic.

There are more flimsy arguments in favour of this view, such as the fact that the Nazis' full title was the National Socialist German Workers' Party and from that we should conclude that the Nazis were socialists. According to that logic, North Korea is democratic as it's official title is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The Nazis viewed communism as part of an international Jewish Bolshevik conspiracy. Though, it is true that the national socialists were opposed to laissez-faire capitalism, as they regarded it as "decadent" and associated it with Judaism. It should be noted that fascist movements tend to utilise socialistic titles, slogans and rhetoric in order to gain popular support from the working-class. This is particularly true of the fascist movements of the 1930s, as socialism still carried a considerable moral weight and appealed to many working-class people. The same can be argued in regard to national syndicalism, the labour movement associated with the Italian Fascists, the official ideology of the Falanges in Spain.

It was in 2008 that a conservative writer named Jonah Goldberg published a book entitled Liberal Fascism. Since then the pundits at Fox News, as well as radio hosts Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh, have jumped on the idea. Though, Michael Savage once called George Bush a "fiscal socialist" and referred to the Republicans as Mensheviks, the smaller faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party that ultimately lost to the Bolsheviks. So it's not surprising that Savage has leaped on this argument. Whereas, Rush Limbaugh has used it to attack Obama's health-care reforms drawing a comparison with the National Socialist policy on health-care. Though, what Limbaugh neglected to mention in his rant is that every developed country in the world except for the United States and South Africa has some form of a national health service. The same can be said of Glenn Beck, who has even promoted a documentary The Revolutionary Holocaust which draws comparisons between Stalinism and National Socialism.


In regards to the arguments that draw analogies between fascism and communism, based on the similarities between the actions of fascist and communist states, there is a major flaw which is often overlooked. According to Marxist theory, revolution could only occur within developed capitalist societies and this would exclude Tsarist Russia, as it was not a fully developed capitalist society when the "October Revolution" took place. Lenin was well aware of this, but the "Revolution" he led in Russia was not intended to take the country into socialism, it was intended as a "holding action" to prepare the society for the "Revolution" which would take place in the most advanced capitalist country. To Lenin, Russian society required a vanguard which could "push" society through capitalism to socialism and eventually to communism. This is the reason that Lenin utilised tools of oppression to crush political opposition and to destroy instruments of workers' democracy such as unions, worker councils and even soviets ironically. Therefore, it could be said that Marxist-Leninist regimes are not communist states.

In a rebuttal to his numerous critics, Jonah Goldberg has claimed that no one has successfully "rebutted" the argument that fascism is left-wing as it rejects traditionalism and laissez-faire capitalism, while embracing statism. First of all, to claim that fascists rejected traditionalism is a simplistic generalisation. Goldberg is ignoring the way in which fascists "intervened" in culture. In the case of Nazi Germany, this included the banning of so-called "degenerate art" and the creation of "Positive Christianity", which was a form of Christianity compatible with national socialism. Let alone, the persecution of homosexuals, banning of birth control literature and abortion that was typical of fascist states. Though, abortions were permitted and "encouraged" as part of Nazi eugenics for the stated purpose of "racial hygiene". Under fascist governments, women were marginalised to the role of housewives, the importance of child-bearing was emphasised greatly. Surely, these practices only differ from traditionalism in that they are more extreme.

Better Blue than You.

This may be because fascism is more of a palingenetic ideology, which Roger Griffin differentiates fascism from the rest of the Right, palingenesis is the "rebirth" or "reincarnation" of something. In fascism, it is the rebirth of a glorious imperial past, with an emphasis on cultural, military and racial superiority. This is the reason that Nazi Germany was referred to as the Third Reich as it was seen as the Third reincarnation of the Holy Roman Empire, the Second Reich being the German Empire. It could be argued that Italy's invasion of Ethiopia was palingenetic, as it was an attempt to recreate the Roman Empire in the 20th Century. The same could be said of Franco's struggle to hang onto the remnants of the Spanish Empire. There is no such palingenetic characteristic among socialist and anarchist movements. The only exception that comes to mind, is the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia. Though, it should be noted that the Khmer Rouge ideology was more of a radical combination of communism and nationalism than communism; the aim of the Khmer Rouge was to return Cambodia to it's glorious past as an invaluable part of the Khmer Empire.

In the symbolism of the fascist movements, which is typically nationalistic, there is evidence of this palingenetic tendency, as it relates to the past of the country. The colours red, white and black that are used in Nazi symbolism originate in the flag of Imperial Germany. The Swastika has it's roots in pre-Christian mythology and folklore of Europe. The word fascism derives from the Latin word "fasces" meaning "bundle". But the symbol fasces, which consists of a bundle of rods tied around an axe, which was included on the Fascist Italian flag, was a symbol of authority in Ancient Rome. The symbols of the Falanges, a bunch of arrows tied together by a yoke, and the Greek Fascists, a double-headed axe once used in Ancient Greece, are also palingenetic. Communist symbolism like the hammer and sickle carry connotations of the industrial and agricultural working-class. The colour red was chosen for communist flags as it is symbolic of the blood of the working-class spilt in the class struggle.

Now let's assess the notion that fascism is left-wing as it is a statist and totalitarian ideology. If we define the Right as focused on individual liberty and a small government consistent with a market economy, where does this leave right-wing dictators like Augusto Pinochet on the political spectrum. The Pinochet regime in Chile stood for individual liberty and small government when it came to the economy, but socially the regime has often been compared to fascist states. The Chilean people were totally oppressed, unions were crushed, dissidents were tortured and killed. All the while, Pinochet pursued the privatisation of state-industries, the dismantling of the welfare state and the liberalisation of the markets. On one hand, Pinochet was a monster who killed thousands of his own people; he brought about an economic miracle. In a sense, there is no point at which Pinochet can be placed on this spectrum, as he can be seen as both a fascist and a liberal. It would seem that the Left-Right spectrum, as defined simply by individualism and statism, is overly simplistic as it cannot accommodate neoliberal dictatorships.

On a more sophisticated spectrum fascism could be placed near on the centre-right economically and socially on the authoritarian far-right. There was a great deal of central planning under fascist regimes. However, there was a place for private property and corporations, whereas trade unions and the labour movement were harshly repressed, under such regimes. An exception being Fascist Spain, where there was room for unions but they were subject to state-control.  These fascist regimes had typically corporatist economic policies, which they promoted as a "third way" to capitalism and communism. These policies, some of which today would be regarded as Keynesian, were directed at boosting demand and decreasing unemployment. Mussolini was adored by the business community, the same was true of Hitler and Franco. In fact, corporations like General Motors, Ford, BMW, IBM and Coca-Cola flourished in Nazi Germany. Coca-Cola launched Fanta for the German market and IBM created a traffic management program for the concentration camps.


Perhaps, the American Right are worried about the similarities that can be drawn between the Tea Party Movement and the fascists of the 1930s. Though, we should not mock them, for they are people who have legitimate reasons to be angry, just like the people of Weimar Germany. But the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Glenn Beck are not spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Instead, they are telling them that there is a "liberal elite" - which have infiltrated the government and the media - that is "clogging" the functions of the free-market and preventing the whole country from flourishing. This is similar to the 2006 demonstrations against the Socialist Party in Hungary, the participants of these demonstrations believed that Hungary had yet to achieve "true capitalism". For them, the only way to realise capitalism is to "purge" society of all communists posing as captains of industry. Just like the Hungarian populists, which aimed at repeating the "Velvet Revolution", the Tea Party Movement aims to embody the spirit of the Boston Tea Party and the "American Revolution" through palingenesis.

Significant Links:

Definitions and Double Standards by Jonah Goldberg 

The Revolutionary Holocaust

The Corporation

The Life of Pol Pot
War on Democracy: Chile.
Tea Party Patriots - Official Home of the American Tea Party Movement.
Noam Chomsky on the Tea Party Movement