Is The Tea Party one scone short of Totalitarianism?

Is The Tea Party one scone short of Totalitarianism?

by Liv | Published on November 11th, 2010, 2:13 pm | News

: totalitarianism tea party.jpg (20.85 KiB) Viewed 579 times

So I'm taking this advanced history class in college and I absolutely love it and my professor. I'm learning so much every day; things I'll admit I was 100% ignorant about. Some times though I get lost in my head as we study history and learn how much it relates to modern times, especially modern America. You can not but wonder if our budding little democracy isn't on the verge of some historical direction change as you imagine this must be how "this" or "that" society felt before becoming "whatever." The other day we began talking about totalitarianism, a type of government in which the state strives to control every aspect of the citizens lives. When the PowerPoint slide blipped up on the screen, I immediately whispered into my own head: "Sounds like a Tea-Party constitute's wet dream." Conservatives have been using the idea Hitler and Nazi German as a tactic to vilify Obama and the democrats, but Hitler was a totalitarian which is almost the opposite of the "reach across the aisle" Obama. In fact it almost appears to be the complete opposite of what Republicans want us to think.... and it's the Tea-Party, even the Republican party perhaps who fits the totalitarianism characteristic check list to a "tea":

You decide:

Characteristics of Totalitarianism

1-Super Patriotic. Nationalistic

2- Use of violence or threats of violence against dissenters.

Tea Party Violence

head stompings.

Tea Party is nothing short of a terrorist group.

Blackwater

3-Believes war is glorious.

4-Leaders are not constitutionally responsible to the people.

5-Leader is charismatic, and creates a cult like following because of their personality.

6- React Negatively to Modern Values

It seems pretty clear to me. If we're not careful- if we let Republicans get there way what's to stop them from ending term-limits, disbanding congress and claiming "One state, One People, One Leader?"

I didn't want to include this in the original article, but I did find a rather good (but slow) video about some of the people America just voted into office:

Not that they are mutually exclusive, but I think a case could be easily made that the country is heading towards fascism. I thought this was an intersting article:

American politics, as the midterm elections demonstrated, have descended into the irrational. On one side stands a corrupt liberal class, bereft of ideas and unable to respond coherently to the collapse of the global economy, the dismantling of our manufacturing sector and the deadly assault on the ecosystem. On the other side stands a mass of increasingly bitter people whose alienation, desperation and rage fuel emotionally driven and incoherent political agendas. It is a recipe for fascism.

http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard/Article/Recipe-for-Fascism-in-The-USA--A-Collapsed-Economy--Hateful-Conservatives-and-Ineffectual-Liberals/212920?sms_ss=reddit&at_xt=4cda7fb4ba80d6c6,0

You forgot the scapegoating of minorities and the appeal to religious fundamentalism.

Libertarianism appears opposed to Fascist totalitarianism, but in practice libertarianism is simply enabling corporate fascism and making unbridled selfishness seem principled. There was a very good reason we didn't let individuals or the market decide Civil Rights

The right wing noise machine has done a very good job of preemptive poisoning of the well by shouting 'Hitler' at every step, just as the fundamentalists have persuaded themselves - and the ignorant - that Hitler was an atheist.

Right on cue:

"Conservatives hope for gay marriage ban in N.C."

http://www.news-record.com/content/2010 ... _ban_in_nc

.

Crying2 wrote:Right on cue:

"Conservatives hope for gay marriage ban in N.C."

http://www.news-record.com/content/2010 ... _ban_in_nc

.

What idiots they are.

Crying2 wrote:Right on cue:

"Conservatives hope for gay marriage ban in N.C."

http://www.news-record.com/content/2010 ... _ban_in_nc

.

Pppfffffffppfff... that's so 2008. :roll:

With the Nazis, Hitler was pretty much determined from the start to become a dictator. And he had some serious issues with wanting to get some pay-back for what happened to his country in the Great War.

I would HOPE that the Republicans don't have anyone in their ranks who follows that model. However, they do seem unaware that they are providing a near-perfect framework (or growth medium) for a modern-day Hitler to come to power. And they really do seem perfectly suited to some megalomaniac with the right mix of smarts and charisma to rise in their ranks and turn this country down a very dark path.

Sounds like the stuff of any number of modern political thriller novels. Only if it happens in real life, humanity could end up getting totally screwed.

But remember Hitler wrote "Mein Kampf", which clearly stated his intentions.... yet it was only in hindsight we go "stupid us".... Just look at Summy, and BHL and his "We'll get you this fall" & "you just wait" rhetoric he was spewing prior to election. Clearly in my opinion there is a tinge of revenge in their words.

Liv wrote:But remember Hitler wrote "Mein Kampf", which clearly stated his intentions.... yet it was only in hindsight we go "stupid us".... Just look at Summy, and BHL and his "We'll get you this fall" & "you just wait" rhetoric he was spewing prior to election. Clearly in my opinion there is a tinge of revenge in their words.

I'm not aware of anyone in the running for national office stating anything openly about conquering the world or exterminating Muslims to allow the Christian religion to gain supremacy. Those who say they want war with Iran are the ones I'm most concerned about, because they clearly haven't learned the lessons of the last 10 years of our history, let alone the history of Western civilization for the past thousand.

But I agree that this tea party movement shows an awful lot of the characteristics of totalitarian aspirations. I just wonder how many of the hoi polloi who cheer them on would like the result if these leaders got some real political power.

If you want some good 'ol traditional Nazi antisemitism look no further than Beck's attack on Soros.

Washington Post journalist Dana Milbank has observed that Fox News host Glenn Beck has a bit of a Nazi fetish. From Obama’s inauguration through June 2010, Beck had “202 mentions of Nazis or Nazism, according to transcripts, 147 mentions of Hitler, 193 mentions of fascism or fascist, and another 24 bonus mentions of Joseph Goebbels.” Yesterday he spoke again about the Holocaust. But it was not to commemorate Kristallnacht. It was to engage in an insidious form of Holocaust revisionism. His motivation? To score political points against George Soros, a prominent Jewish philanthropist and Holocaust survivor.

As many of you know, I was the subject of a personal attack by Glenn Beck in May of this year. Responding to an article I wrote supporting a government role to advance the common good, Beck scolded me, declaring that my words “are what led to the death camps in Germany” and that I “as a Jew, should know better.” To discuss this and other, similar comments, on July 26, I joined rabbis Steve Gutow and David Ellenson, on behalf of fourteen prominent leaders of national Jewish organizations, in a meeting with Fox News President Roger Ailes and the producer of Glenn Beck’s television show, Joel Cheatwood. We spoke for almost an hour about the concerns held by many Jews about Glenn Beck’s constant and often inappropriate invocation of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany on the air.

We were assured by Ailes and Cheatwood that they understand our concerns and would explain them to Beck. Two days later, I received a hand-written note from Beck, which stated: “Simon, Joel shared the details of your meeting yesterday. Please know that I understand the sensitivity and sacred nature of this dark chapter in Human History. Thank you for your candor and helpful thoughts.”

Yesterday, Glenn Beck and the leadership of Fox News made a mockery of their professed understanding. In his own words, “George Soros used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off. And George Soros was part of it. He would help confiscate the stuff. It was frightening. Here’s a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps.”

No one who truly understands “the sensitivity and sacred nature” of the Holocaust would deliberately and grotesquely mischaracterize the experience of a 13-year-old Jew in Nazi-occupied Hungary whose father hid him with a non-Jewish family to keep him alive. Many other Jews survived the attempted extermination of the Jewish people by changing their identities and hiding with Righteous Gentiles. With today’s falsehoods, Beck has engaged in a form of Holocaust revisionism.

What really concerns me about the Farright Town crowd is the scapegoating. They don't accuse Jews of ruining the country -- they accuse "liberals." And their public rhetoric doesn't fall very far short of suggesting death for liberals, even though THEY are the ones that truly brought the country to the current pass.

Of course, the parallel between them and the 1930's Nazis sort of fits there, as well. The Nazis laid the blame for Germany's woes on Jews, when it was the German imperialists who drove the country into the disastrous Great War, and kept it going long enough to bleed the country dry of all possible economic resources that could have been used to recover.

I hope that America doesn't fall into the trap that Germany got itself into. Sadly, I don't think that hope is justified at all.

Liv wrote:
totalitarianism tea party.jpg
So I'm taking this advanced history class in college and I absolutely love it and my professor. I'm learning so much every day; things I'll admit I was 100% ignorant about. Some times though I get lost in my head as we study history and learn how much it relates to modern times, especially modern America. You can not but wonder if our budding little democracy isn't on the verge of some historical direction change as you imagine this must be how "this" or "that" society felt before becoming "whatever." The other day we began talking about totalitarianism, a type of government in which the state strives to control every aspect of the citizens lives. When the PowerPoint slide blipped up on the screen, I immediately whispered into my own head: "Sounds like a Tea-Party constitute's wet dream." Conservatives have been using the idea Hitler and Nazi German as a tactic to vilify Obama and the democrats, but Hitler was a totalitarian which is almost the opposite of the "reach across the aisle" Obama. In fact it almost appears to be the complete opposite of what Republicans want us to think.... and it's the Tea-Party, even the Republican party perhaps who fits the totalitarianism characteristic check list to a "tea":

You decide:
Characteristics of Totalitarianism

1-Super Patriotic. Nationalistic.
Check. The tea party signs flags, and gets upset when Obama appears not to join in on the Pledge of Allegiance.

2- Use of violence or threats of violence against dissenters.
Check. Google "Tea Party Violence" or refer to the many bricks through the windows, or head stompings. The Tea Party is nothing short of a terrorist group. One could only imagine what would happen if they were to get the support of an organization such as conservative "Blackwater" (now Xe), or the hundreds of conservative leaning fringe para-military groups in the U.S.

3-Believes war is glorious.
Check there too. They love the war. They love our troops, and if you really got inside their brains they'd bring their religion and concept of government to every Islamic country in the world if they could. Do I really need to cite this one?

4-Leaders are not constitutionally responsible to the people.
Oh George Bushy, he may not have wore his Tea Party uniform of totalitarianism, but boy did he have a honorary membership. The man bypassed, and broke every constitutional right he could think of. Tea Partiers today don't really care what the constitution says, they only care that its redefined in their false interpretation of it- where abortion is illegal, homosexuality is illegal, and women wear pig tails and dirndls.

5-Leader is charismatic, and creates a cult like following because of their personality.
Bush could definitely fit this model, (though not the best speech giver) but boy does it fit Mrs. Sarah Palin to a "Tea". Far-right conservative groups drool and fight for her endorsement, and to get favor from their "leader."

6- React Negatively to Modern Values
This is the one that just screams it to me. They reject and vilify liberal ideas and communism to promote traditional roles and gender. Sound familiar.... your Republicans just "took back" America, to "roll back" Obama's agenda. They want to over-turn Roe Vs Wade, gay marriage, and re-instate DADT and some even segregation. Whose the Nazi now?

It seems pretty clear to me. If we're not careful- if we let Republicans get there way what's to stop them from ending term-limits, disbanding congress and claiming "One state, One People, One Leader?"

The Tea Party is the antithesis of this false accusation. Funny, you just described the demoncracKKK party quite well. Please libby, leave America. BTW, the left already have a long history of violence. Just google "left wing violence" "communist violence" "socialist violence" "SEIU violence" Oh, libby, you and your ilk have a whole lot of blood on your hands since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

thesumofyourfears wrote:The Tea Party is the antithesis of this false accusation. Funny, you just described the demoncracKKK party quite well. Please libby, leave America.

Summy Tummy is back!...

A good debater recognizes that resorting to a tu quoque only weakens one's position in the argument.

(Now I've used the word of the day twice today... I rock.)

Might we call Summy a Mastur-deBator? :twisted: