Early this year, Rush Limbaugh was anointed as “head” of the Republican party due to the total lack of political leadership. Many Republicans cried foul when this was done. When Rush wasn’t so toxic they didn’t mind that Rush when he was made an honorary member of the 1994 class of Congressmen. Speaking of the 90s Rush was attacked because of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing. That attack was partly unjustified. Rush would attack and hang up on the wingnut conspiratists who believed much the same nutty stuff as McVeigh.
In doing research for today’s tea parties I noticed a common theme amongst the Facebook and Meetup profiles is Glenn Beck and his 9-12 project. Beck is certifiable. See his Thomas Pain video on our front page. He also now says that it’s OK to secede and called Presidents Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt fascists. Don’t you think over 600,000 Americans dying in the Civil War was enough to settle this? The Pittsburgh cop killer, Rich Poplawski, posted a Beck video with Ron Paul concerning the FEMA camps on the white supremicist website, stormfront. Poplawski passed on the lie spread by Beck and others that Obama was going to take away his guns, rather than merely reinstating the assault weapons ban which the first time around did not take away everybody’s guns. We’ve already addressed here the bogus issue of “socialism”.
The tea parties today are not a political or even partisan debate. They are rather a movement of fear, hate, and racism known as eliminationism.
Eliminationism: a politics and a culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas in favor of the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through suppression, exile, and ejection, or extermination.
David Neiwert nailed this in his book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right:
For most of my life, even into the 1990s, it was fairly easy to distinguish eliminationists from mainstream conservatives. Conservatives were people who welcomed the advances of science and education, were generally civil in their dealings with political opponents, shunned conspiracism and outrageous paranoia, and were not constantly sounding the alarm about the impending end of civilization. Religious beliefs always played a role in traditional conservatism, but the old consensus held by both liberals and conservatives–that religious freedom meant the freedom of every citizen to choose their creed without coercion–still held sway for the most part.
That began to change, though, in the mid-1990s. And by the first few years of the 21st century, the differences between the mainstream Right and its fanatical fringe became thin indeed.
During the 1990s even right-wing talk radio eschewed conspiracy nuts. Now they embrace them along with fomenting those who advocate and practice violence. I am not saying they believe in violence but they cannot claim to be an innocent flight attendant when they know full well what their over-the-top rhetoric would do to the truly unhinged. We need responsible Conservatives who like Rush Limbaugh in the 90s upbraid the tinfoil hat conspiracy nuts. Let’s see if any show up at the tea parties today.
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Glen Beck will surely be live covering the TEA parties whereas Rush as said he won’t attend because he “is too famous” and would be a distraction. That of course is a cop out, he’s just not interested in the TEA parties except to use them as a rant platform. He cares less what the protest is about, more that there is a protest.