Anthony Fox No Agenda News
Only a year ago this was the Tea Party:
Dave Johannes: Tea Party protesters just starting
The inaccurate media coverage and the continued bashing of the Tea Parties by the media has only strengthened our commitment to our message and our cause. We are not a bunch of right-wing extremists trying to be disruptive; we are concerned citizens trying to make our voices heard and participate in our political process. We are not protesting any single person or political party; we are protesting the direction and policies of the current Congress and the new administration.
Our issues are:
•Excessive taxes.
•Out-of-control government spending.
•Nationalization of private businesses.
•Redistribution of wealth.
•The TARP bailout plan.
•Loss of individual freedoms.
•Excessive government regulation.
•Socialized medicine.
•Loss of national sovereignty.
Now Raw Story is reporting this:
Oklahoma conservatives, lawmakers plot anti-federal militia
“Have they heard of the Oklahoma City bombing?” said Joseph Thai, a constitutional law professor at the University of Oklahoma. The state observes the 15th anniversary of the anti-government attack on Monday. Such actions could “throw fuel in the fire of radicals,” he said.
Frustrated by recent political setbacks, tea party leaders and some conservative members of the Oklahoma Legislature say they would like to create a new volunteer militia to help defend against what they believe are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty.
Tea party movement leaders say they’ve discussed the idea with several supportive lawmakers and hope to get legislation next year to recognize a new volunteer force. They say the unit would not resemble militia groups that have been raided for allegedly plotting attacks on law enforcement officers.
“Is it scary? It sure is,” said tea party leader Al Gerhart of Oklahoma City, who heads an umbrella group of tea party factions called the Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance. “But when do the states stop rolling over for the federal government?”
Thus far, the discussions have been exploratory. Even the proponents say they don’t know how an armed force would be organized nor how a state-based militia could block federal mandates. Critics also asserted that the force could inflame extremism, and that the National Guard already provides for the state’s military needs.
In one year the Tea Party has made this transformation. All on it’s own? It hardly seems likely. Sure we’re supposed to believe that everyone right of center is completely mad and liable to erupt in gunfire at the slightest provacation. That doesn’t explain the Tea Party stance of a year ago, though. What happened?
Here’s the methods employed by the FBI against the Black Panthers in the ’60′s Cointelpro:
Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit and disrupt. Their very presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. The FBI and police exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.
Extralegal Force and Violence: The FBI conspired with local police departments to threaten dissidents; to conduct illegal break-ins in order to search dissident homes; and to commit vandalism, assaults, beatings and assassinations. The object was to frighten, or eliminate, dissidents and disrupt their movements.
Psychological Warfare From the Outside: The FBI and police used a myriad of other “dirty tricks” to undermine progressive movements. They planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups. They forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials and others to cause trouble for activists.
Harassment Through the Legal System: The FBI and police abused the legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, “investigative” interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters.
The Tea Party is only a year old. There hasn’t been enough time to apply all of the techniques listed but a suspicious mind could easily see some have. This most recent step would set them up for more.
This isn’t necessarily an FBI operation of course. Our government is rife with secrecy. It really doesn’t matter which agency is doing the dirty work. Why it is being done does matter.
The Tea Party began as a grassroots movement to enact a fundamental change in the direction the Federal government is moving. It should be clear to anyone, regardless of their political leaning, that the government is directed by people with power and money. True grassroots movements of any sort, by their nature, are going to be anti-thetical to the goals of these people.
Why? Because the goal of the power elite is more power. It is simple to the point of being stupid. There are people in the world obessed with power and control. They don’t want to share it with anyone and they certainly don’t want to share it with everyone. A grassroots movement of any sort is going to drive them crazy; unless they control it and at that point it is no longer grassroots.
The Tea Party needs to root out the representatives of the power elite in their organization and the rest of us (liberals included) need to cheer them on.
We need grassroots movements. We need the Black Panthers and we need the Tea Partiers.
April 28th, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Er, how about no?
Don’t get me wrong: I absolutely defend the Tea Partiers’ right to do their thing (“I may not like what you have to say…” and so on). They deserve freedom from political harassment and intimidation. But vague insinuations of a “suspicious mind” (as you put it) aren’t compelling evidence of such activities. There’s a motive, but no evidence of wide-scale dirty work. Until such evidence materializes, the apparent devolution of the Tea Party from a supposedly grassroots reform movement to an anti-federal group toying with the concept of armed insurrection must be laid solely at the feet of the Tea Partiers themselves.
I don’t want to sound too negative, though, even though I find the politics represented by the Tea Party decidedly unappealing. I think one of the major problems faced by the movement is that it has effectively presented itself as a Rorschach blot: vague, generalized goals allow for people to basically read their own values and priorities into the movement. There are clearly a large number of Tea Partiers who, even if I disagree with their politics, have always been thoughtful, dedicated reformers, and that remains true today. But, by the same token, the “lunatic fringe” isn’t a new development, either: they were part of the movement from its conception just as much as their counterparts.
In that respect, the Tea Party is less like the Black Panthers and more like Students for a Democratic Society. Like the Tea Party, the SDS was a activist movement that faced a schism from its “extremists trying to be disruptive.” That schism (which led to the formation of the terrorist Weathermen) effectively destroyed the SDS and was much more an issue of internal politics than external pressure. Despite radically different attitudes and goals, the same dynamics are at work in the Tea Party, and its up to the Tea Partiers to ensure that they don’t fall into the same trap.
April 29th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Students for a Democratic Society was a COINTELPRO target. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
Knowing what your government has done is the key to understanding what it is doing.
April 30th, 2010 at 5:57 am
Of course it was. Just about every grassroots movement from the 1960s and 1970s was targeted by the intelligence community in some respect. Did the government abuse its responsibilities in targeting SDS, the Black Panthers, et al? Certainly.
But COINTELPRO does a damn lousy job of explaining the schism between SDS and the Weathermen. You can argue, perhaps, that the stress of constant government surveillance and attempted infiltration put tensions within the organization on edge (which is probably true, as far as it goes), but that’s hardly sufficient to explain the problems. The problems faced by SDS were their own, as is the ultimate responsibility for failing to deal with them.
The same principle applies to the Tea Party. It’s possible that they are the target of a coordinated (or even uncoordinated) government counter intelligence effort. But as I said before, even if there is a convincing motive (and given that the strength of connections between the supposedly grassroots Tea Party and various representatives of the power elite, I’m not sure that I am convinced), you still need evidence. And even if it can be argued that there is such interference at work, that doesn’t necessarily imply that the problems we’re talking about here aren’t entirely homegrown. Which is the fundamental difference between the Black Panthers and SDS. and, I would argue, the Tea Party.
It’s the responsibility of every citizen to be vigilant against government overreach, and to defend against unlawful or unethical activities carried out by authorities. But to argue that “it hardly seems likely” that an activist political movement would be capable of tearing itself apart in a relatively short period of time is silly: it’s happened numerous times in history, with or without government intervention. To raise the specter of COINTELPRO to excuse or explain the less savory elements of the Tea Party, especially when there isn’t even any real evidence of such activity, is either naive or deliberately misleading.
April 30th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Recent actions and stories of the Tea Party can be explained by infiltration (of the Tea Party) and planting of media stories. Our government has a well documented (if not so well publicized) history of employing these tactics. Those who crave power are loathe to share it, especially with the public at large and grassroots movements that don’t serve their agendas. Grassroots movements are their biggest threat.
If you lived next door to a convicted arsonist and came home one day to find your house burned to the ground, it would be reasonable to suspect your neighbor. If you had fair reason to believe your neighbor coveted your property, it would be all the more so.
I find your argumentative tactics spurious:
A) One of my final points in the article is to suggest that the Tea Party identify and rid itself of its disruptive elements and you claim that as a pillar of your own argument as though it hadn’t already been mentioned.
B) You knew that the SDS was a COINTELPRO target but didn’t reveal that until after I pointed it out.
C) You say COINTELPRO does a damn lousy job of explaining the schism between SDS and the Weatherman. This schism perfectly represents the goal and purpose of psychological warfare. Maybe you’re just not familiar with the techniques. It would be understandable, few are. Which is a large part of the reason it is so effective.
D) You say I am naive or being deliberately misleading (which is ad hominem in itself) to ‘raise the specter of COINTELPRO’ when there isn’t any real evidence. There is evidence, not proof mind you, but evidence; and that is what the article points out. I am, to quote you, “Be[ing] vigilant against government overreach, and defend[ing] against unlawful or unethical activities carried out by the authorities.”
Those who disagree with the issues that the Tea Party was founded upon should argue those points. Acting as if the words and actions of a minority (who act as agent provocateur would and with the same effect) represent the whole is disingenuous and plays perfectly into the hands of those who wield the weapon that is psychological warfare.
Here’s a primer on psychological warfare http://noagendanews.blogspot.com/2010/03/what-is-psychological-warfare.html
April 30th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Your entire argument remains centered around supposition and conjecture.
First of all, when you argued that “the Tea Party identify and rid itself of its disruptive elements,” you were explicitly referring to “the representatives of the power elite.” I most certainly do not claim that as a pillar of my own argument. Quite frankly, I think that’s a chimeric argument, because (as I’ve said) I don’t think the problems facing the Tea Party can be blamed on outside infiltration. My entire point is that those disruptive influences have been part of the Tea Party from the beginning, and that they were not imposed from the outside. I don’t think they represent the entirety of the movement, then or now, but I think it’s an internal problem, not one that can be blamed on some outside bogeyman.
Second, as I said before: show me an activist/reform movement from the 1960s, and I’ll show you a COINTELPRO target. Simply put, I didn’t bring up the SDS/COINTELPRO connection because, a) I assumed that it was already common knowledge, and b) it’s not particularly relevant. Even establishing that a group was targeted only goes so far: the question, what impact did being targeted have on that group? In this particular case the scholarly consensus is “not that much.” COINTELPRO no doubt loved the SDS/Weatherman schism, but even a cursory analysis of the group’s origins and activities shows that a confrontation between the gradualist and militant factions of SDS was bound to come to occur sooner or later based solely on the internal tensions of the organization.
I’m very, very careful not to condemn an entire movement based on the activities of its lunatic fringe, and I don’t believe I’ve done so anywhere in this discussion. That said, I don’t think that attitudes like those written down by Dave Johannes a year ago have disappeared from the Tea Party, but neither do I believe that the extremist views of people like Al Gerhart were wholly absent from the movement at its inception. A cursory look at the posters and signs wielded by Tea Partiers a year ago show that there was already a militant fringe associating itself with the group at a very early stage. Did they represent the whole of the movement? Of course not. But I’m not sure that the extremist actions of the Oklahoma branch represent the Tea Party as a whole today, either.
I’m limiting myself strictly to methods rather than issues (going back, again, to the idea that I defend the right of the Tea Party to exist even if I do not personally approve of it), and, in that regard, I agree that the majority of Tea Partiers are blameless in the actions of the group’s lunatic fringe. But you act as if the difference between actual agent provocateurs and those who simply “act as [they] would and with the same effect” is immaterial, and I don’t buy that. It is my responsibility as a citizen to speak out against deliberate subversion of an movement by external forces, but it is the responsibility of the movement itself to ensure that its own legitimate adherents do not subvert the movement from within. Put crudely, I am obligated to do my part to make sure that someone else doesn’t shoot you, but it’s not my responsibility to prevent you from shooting yourself.
If there is evidence of serious harassment, you have not provided it. You have provided a motive (open to debate, mind you, but not implausible), and established that the authorities are capable of such activities. I don’t dispute any of that. But the premise that grassroots movements like the Tea Party are unlikely to subvert themselves in a short period of time is demonstrably false: it’s happened time and time again, many times before the government was capable of anything resembling organized counter intelligence activities. It’s far too easy to write off a group’s every blemish to agent provocateurs and the “power elite.” But in the absence of actual evidence (concrete or even circumstantial) indicating that this is not only plausible, but is actually happening, it’s little more than a conspiracy theory. And it provides a too-convenient smokescreen for a group to absolve itself of its own responsibilities, and makes it too easy for the Tea Party (or whoever else) to externalize its own faults. While I am more than willing to protect the Tea Party from the FBI or whatever, I have no interest in shielding it from its own less savory elements and dirty laundry.
April 30th, 2010 at 5:57 pm
I will always have the upper hand in this because the argument hinges on evidence of a coordinated external attack and until that comes to light I will say,”It hasn’t yet.”
And I may be right.
This is one of the many crippling effects of having a secretive government.
May 1st, 2010 at 7:19 pm
Look, I can’t argue with you that government secrecy is a bad thing. That we live under the specter of past (and present) misconduct by authorities is unforgivable. I agree 100% with you there.
But the “upper hand” you claim is ridiculous. You establish a possibility, and then go on to treat it as a foregone conclusion. Sure, you may be right. But that might as well be a coincidence: a clock stopped at 3:15 is right twice a day, but I’m hardly going to rely upon it to tell the time. In the absence of evidence, it’s a crackpot conspiracy theory. And if the purported goal of your article is to convince liberals that they should defend the Tea Party against “coordinated external attack,” then I think it’s rather important to establish some basic evidence that such an attack is actually occurring.
May 2nd, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Psychological warfare, by it’s nature, is devious. It is supposed to look natural. This is something I think we both understand.
You don’t believe it’s being applied to the Tea Party. I can respect that.
I think it’s likely that it is. Even if it’s not, people need to know that it is possible. We have a secretive government that has applied these techniques many, many times before; here, and around the world. As is often said,”Practice makes perfect.”
What is at stake is that the people lose their voice in government and an important voice is that of grassroots movements. Even those we disagree with.
If I didn’t make these points clear enough in my article then I appreciate the opportunity you’ve given me now.