"Today’s New Right looks a lot like the New Left of the ’60s" - your take?

[WilliamPitt]

Tea Party: Woodstock 2?
Today’s New Right looks a lot like the New Left of the ’60s
By Clif Garboden
The Boston Globe

February 25, 2010

LIBERALS AND progressives groaned when Sarah Palin took center stage at the Tea Party convention in Nashville earlier this month. Clearly, the GOP establishment was making its expected bid to dominate another ostensibly grassroots initiative by courting it with the neo-cons’ beloved emissary to the gullible. But apparently, that winky-dopy thing didn’t work out as well as mainstream conservatives had hoped. Since then, Tea Party spokespeople have pointedly distanced themselves from the Republicans and denounced GOP attempts to co-opt their organization.

The Tea Party animals even played a little extortion politics during a recent jowl-to-jowl with Republican National Committee ChairmanMichael Steele. It seems that these do-it-yourself conservatives aren’t really Palinites, despite the fact that so many of them tirelessly claim to adore her because “she’s just like them’’ (i.e. unfit to govern).

What the Tea Party actually does represent seems to have a lot of observers baffled. Are its members just a bunch of kooks? Racists? Dittoheads? Survivalists? Libertarian extremists? Gun nuts? Thoughtful conservatives in wolves’ clothing? Can they really be all those things?

Yes they can. It’s a familiar pattern. I’ve seen it before, albeit from the opposite political pole. The Tea Party is an organization in no greater sense than “the Movement’’ was in the 1960s. Sure, between 1964 and ’74, millions of Americans - many young, most educated - coalesced around the shared goals of ending the Vietnam War and fulfilling the promise of the civil rights movement. But if people outside that New Left political flow thought we had a national plan or unified leadership, they were mistaken.

Opposing war and racism was our common ground, but our causes were many - feminism, vegetarianism, socialism, transcendental meditation, abortion rights, gay liberation, communal living, Puerto Rican statehood, macrobiotics, drug-law reform, Krishna Consciousness, ecology, etc. Peer pressure encouraged everyone involved to at least tolerate the full-spectrum ideological menagerie, but nobody on the New Left truly cared about every liberal cause the Movement allegedly embraced. Still, it was nice to have the people wearing tinfoil pyramid hats and the miniscule third-eye contingent chanting “nam myoho renge kyo’’ in your corner when it came to swelling the crowd at an anti-draft demonstration. And the marginal crusaders reveled in the public association with higher-profile activists. It was a jolly big tent of mutual convenience.

The Tea Party is no different, except, of course, its ties that bind are small government, lower taxes, and begrudging vital social services. Just as the ’60s New Left was plagued by all manner of progressive cohorts and lonely neurotics, the Tea Party is an magnetic bandwagon for conservative activist, ranging from pro-lifers to climate-change deniers to prayer-in-schools absolutists to people haven’t quite accepted heliocentrism, never mind evolution. Those factions, along with a giant cluster of conspicuously angry lone wingnuts, are climbing aboard and, in most media reports, overshadowing the group’s core of seemingly moderate sympathetic white, middle-class, suburban voters.

The rest: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/02/25/tea_party_woodstock_2/

[depakid]

1. The ONLY thing I see in common is some degree of anger at the establishment

Other than that- Mr. Garboden there's nothing like a "pattern."

[Bosso 63]

16. The tea party has a demographic problem.

The New Left gave a voice to people who were previously underrepresented in our country; women, people of color, and the GLBT. Clearly, the U.S. is becoming more diverse, but the tea party is predominately made up of white males, which is shrinking in size relative to the larger population.
In short, the Left was ahead of the curve, and the tea party is behind the curve, and from that I would say that their long-term future does not look good.

edit: I meant to reply to the original post.

[mmonk]

2. The whole comparison is insulting.

We were protesting against social injustices and war. We weren't protesting for them.

[Art_from_Ark]

5. I agree-- it's insulting

I consider myself a Kennedy/Johnson type of Democrat, and there's no way today's "New Right" compares to the period of liberal optimism that I experienced growing up in the '60s and early '70s.

[mmonk]

7. We were the ones that brought forth the advancement

of civil rights. Comparisons to the Tea Party movement dismisses the positives we were able to bring to American society and relegates them to mere anger. But as some responses in this thread show, party cohension is thought to be more important while it was the injustices in society that created the problem.

[Jackpine Radical]

79. Sullen, essentially hopeless anger of the Teabaggers

versus the bright, multicolored, tie-dyed optimism, dedication to the life principle, and openness to all kinds of experience that typified the 60's--No contest.

[Zoeisright]

10. Exactly. They're murdering pigs.

They don't care who is killed by their revolting stand on the issues. They're racist assholes.

[wolfgangmo]

102. You are likely right.

But angry mobs can be poitically useful. I suggest that we use them before another Hitler decides to.

Just my 2 cents.

[Hardrada]

103. We SDS organizers did exactly that.

[newfie11]

23. agreed n/t

[Odin2005]

28. The article was making a sociological comparison, not an ideological one.

[Jackpine Radical]

80. Nevertheless, it still doesn't work.

Sure, you can find some superficial similarities, but what they're doing is coming from a whole different part of the brain than what we were doing back in the day.

[Johonny]

48. +1

[Cetacea]

49. +1000

[XemaSab]

109. I think it's something we should learn from

We were organized then (well, you were, I wasn't born) because we had something to fight for that we believed in.

Now we're a total mess. Case in point: voter turnout in November 2008 in California. We couldn't even get people to go to the polls for 10 damn minutes to vote for Obama and vote against Prop 8. (Yeah, Obama won California despite the best efforts of the California democratic party.)

The Tea Party is ORGANIZED. They're PUT TOGETHER. They're MOTIVATED. If Erin, the head of the local Tea Party, gets up on Monday and says "Hey, we're going to have a rally to support the troops on Saturday," she can expect 50 people there.

Our local progressive group had about 10 people show up every week, then it splintered due to personality conflicts. :shrug:

I think the take-home message is that they have the discipline that we need to get back.

(Edit: I don't know what year it is. :P )

[asthmaticeog]

3. Good. Maybe they'll destroy the right's cohesiveness and derail its priorities

like the '60s left did to us.

[Toots]

22. Which priority did the sixties left derail?

Was it Civil rights? Exactly which Priority was derailed, War in Vietnam, the Draft, Women's rights, environmental awareness, Maybe you are just talking out your ass.

[RaleighNCDUer]

53. How about the monolithic Democratic Party, that was in charge 80% of the time from 1932

to 1968? Even Eisenhower had to contend with Democratic majorities.

The New Left pulled in all the disparate, often marginal, factions in protest against what was seen as a DEMOCRATIC war in Vietnam, and the Democratic coalition was shattered by the New Left coalition's protests which, after their focus was dissipated with the end of the war and the apparent success of the Civil Rights movement was simply not strong enough to hold the party as a whole together - and then, along came the DLC vowing to NEVER let the left upset their little applecart again.

What worries me about this parallel is, who will the Republicans' "DLC" be? The Tea Baggers are all over the place - much like Joe Stack - but will there be a hard-core unifying sub-party develop in response to the Tea Baggers' chaos? I fear it may be the seeds of the first truly mainstream fascist party in American history.

The similarities are not in ideology, but in structure, and the projection of where that structure might lead when applied to the right is VERY disturbing.

[Warren Stupidity]

70. Eh? LBJ admitted that the Civil Rights Act screwed that pooch.

You can blame the left for Nixon all you want, but the southern voting block was the difference and it went R because LBJ passed the civil rights act.

Perhaps we should have kept the color line in place?

[XemaSab]

111. I totally agree with your point about the fascist structure

On the one hand, there's a lot of democracy in the structure, but on the other hand it's very top-down.

At their meetings, one person gets up and talks, then they cede the floor to another scheduled speaker, then the next scheduled speaker gets up and talks... There's not a lot of room for audience participation.

After the main meeting, they break out into smaller groups where there is room for discussion and interaction, but it's a moderated discussion on a pre-chosen topic. There is still one person in charge of the group.

Compare this with virtually every grassroots progressive organization I've been to, where there may be a few opening words, but the meeting is conducted as a round-table, and if one person decides it's LIHOP/MIHOP night, any group organization or motivation is going to go out the window.

[ixion]

4. The only reason the so-called Tea Party has any credibility at all

is because the MSM covers them non-stop. Take away their national echo-chamber and they've got nothing.

They are ludicrous popinjays, and nothing more. There was nary a peep from them while BushCo -- systematically and with great malice and forethought -- destroyed what was left of the Constitution and Bill of Rights with their thinly-veiled machinations towards implementing Pax Americana and the New World Police State Order.

At that time, these "small-government" patriots were on their hands and knees speaking in tongues and praying that Little Lord Chimpenfurher would be safe while he cleared brush from the pig farm and destroyed the American Way of Life.

If they had been vocal at the time -- if they had been CONSISTENT -- I would have more respect for them. As it is, though, I think they're buffoons, albeit dangerous ones.

[Enthusiast]

13. +1, ixion.

Very well said. "Chimpenfuher"

[Warren Stupidity]

17. +infinity

in an alternate universe a major media outlet became a round the clock propaganda outlet for the New Left.

[Richard Steele]

26. + infinity +1

[FormerDittoHead]

29. +1. Everyone can just read ixion's msg above and leave this thread. Nail in coffin. n/t

[fascisthunter]

35. we on the Left know all too well what ignoring a group can do to a movement

I will never forget the massive march in NYC and how the media ignored it intentionally, and when it was barely mentioned, the size of the crowd was misreported.

[SammyWinstonJack]

50. !!!

:applause:

[Romulox]

56. I'd go so far as to say the "tea party" is a blank-canvass/bogeyman

The true rightwingers I am worried about right now are Tim Geithner and Larry Summers.

[pattmarty]

74. I believe the political term is "neoliberals". I think we ought start............

..........using the term on people out there that actually are and probably wouldn't find the term insulting. It wasn't just Milton Friedman and his disciples, it is Paul Wolfowitz, that fucking stupid shithead William Kristol (he's not just a neoconservative you know) AND the Geithner & Summers.

[arcadian]

88. +1 for popinjay

:rofl:

[ixion]

91. lol

thanks... yeah, that came out of nowhere.

[Hello_Kitty]

108. Thank you. eom

[Warpy]

6. I wrote something similar a month or so ago about the left/right similarity

although I was considerably more terse when I did it.

I remember the sheer nuttiness on the youthful left in the mid 70s, wild eyed suburban kids preaching revolution while the majority, for whom the system was still mostly working, looked on aghast at the thought of its overthrow.

The tables are turned this time, with senescent people being the ones to be wild eyed and preaching violent revolution to maintain a senescent movement, radical reactionary conservatism. In addition, they're defending a system that is working for no one, not even them.

While the right never gets hammered down to the extent the left has been, we can expect media and state to put out some half hearted attempts at doing so unless these loons manage to assassinate a high profile target. In that case, maybe we'll see a real crackdown on the sheer lunacy and Beck and the rest of the blowhards getting their overdue pink slips.

Still, for those of us more sanguine movement types of the 60s and 70s, the parallels of a dying paradigm breeding fanaticism and threats of violence among the diehard adherents are very telling.

Stick a fork in the conservatives, they're done. Oh, they'll hang on grimly as long as they can and there will always be a few buffoons out there to keep us entertained, but their original thinkers (who were able to dress up a warmed over mercantilism and make it sound fresh and new) are all ancient or dead and there are no new voices to take their places, their ideas have suffered greatly from being tried and having failed, and the religious soldiers for Jesus are just pissing people off, their power to affect the superstitious decreased by the fact that they're assholes and nobody wants to listen to them any more.

Soon they'll just be an ugly and embarrassing memory, it's the way this country has always been, the pendulum creaking back and forth. However, they'll be back a generation or two from now, new smart boys repackaging Reaganism for a new crop of suckers.

Maybe next time we'll be ready for them.

[Odin2005]

30. Given that most of these teabaggers seem to be Boomers I think it's an interesting mirror image.

Seems so very ironic.

[Warpy]

33. Boomers haven't gone into retirement in significant numbers yet

Damned few of us can afford to retire at 62 and the eldest of us are 63. You're looking at Generation Suck, those people who were too old for the 60s and resented missing the party and thinking they're Boomers. They're not, not in politics, not in education, not in outlook.

They did, however, benefit from the New Deal a decade or so longer than we did, so they got to retire.

[Odin2005]

38. You mean what is often called the Silent Generation?

Yeah, there are a lot of them, too, but the majority seem to be Boomers. Which is much like the 60s Left.

[Warpy]

41. Repeating a lie doesn't make it come true

and those are NOT BOOMERS.

I know everybody over 50 looks alike to the young, but come on now. Boomers are not retired. Either we're working two or three shit jobs to keep ourselves treading water until we get social security or we're spending every waking moment looking for three shit jobs. We are not retired. We can't afford to retire. The people you are looking at are much older. They are retired. They were allowed to retire because Reagan happened later in their lives.

Again, the tea partiers are NOT BOOMERS.

[Odin2005]

43. Maybe I'm misremembering things, I swear I saw a lot of people in their 50s and 60s...

...in many pics of the teabagger gatherings. :shrug:

[Warpy]

51. They all looked mid 60s to mid 70s to me.

and I'm old enough to recognize the ages.

[Urban Prairie]

63. Some boomers were like Ted Nugent or Jane Fonda

They talked the talk, and a few even walked the walk, but as soon as they graduated HS or college, their counter-culture disguises were shed, and they came out of their RWer conservative capitalist closets. It helped them a lot that the "me decade" of the Raygun 80s was soon to dawn five years hence.

[pattmarty]

76. I don't know if it's fair to compare Nugent or Fonda? A more apt person would...........

...........be David Horowitz. He "180'd" after the 60's were over and he saw an opportunity. Nugent was always a RW fucking nut. I remember seeing him at oh, must have been the 80 Republican convention as a delegate in a nice dark suit with his trademark shoulder length hair before that kind of thing was fashionable. Fonda always was and I still assume is a liberal. They both at least were consistent in their beliefs.

[RFKHumphreyObama]

89. Ummm....Jane Fonda is not a conservative

Don't know where you got that from but she's still very much a liberal. Maybe a little less radical but she'd be well to the Left of mainstream political thought today

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Fonda#Political_activism

[Hello_Kitty]

113. Jane Fonda was born in 1938, hence, not a Boomer. eom

[catbyte]

59. Generation Suck. LOL!

[Hardrada]

105. I am a War Child. Born just between the Organization Men

and the Brave New Boomers. It has been an interesting perspective. I can retire now but of course need (and want) to keep on awhile longer. I remember the old tranquilized world of the Fifties and it did have advantages (train travel, job security, no perpetual shooting wars).

[Urban Prairie]

40. IMO, by the mid-70s, and

The end of the Vietnam "Conflict" all but ended any revolutionary ideals. What was left was becoming or became old enough to start families and hold career jobs. The Big Chill sort of documented the change into becoming members of the "establishment". Some, like me, refused to embrace capitalism without kicking and screaming, and it cost me dearly. The Symbionese Liberation Army fiasco was the ending chapter of anti-establishment domestic terrorism.

[raccoon]

52. Most Boomers didn't do nearly as well economically as the characters in

"Big Chill."

It chaps my arse that many people think all Boomers are affluent.

[Warpy]

71. No kidding, they were all rich and skinny

and people I knew who were in the trenches instead of just going to the occasional march at the college didn't fare well, at all. While I know a few here and there who bit the corporate bullet, most have simply tried to keep going with wages that declined every single year. Many are entrepreneurs. Many others have jobs instead of careers. We all managed to start getting a little lumpy and forget the hairdresser appointments, the clothes anywhere but thrift shops and big box stores, and the perfectly done makeup. Crummy apartments in the city or shacks if we went back to the land were our housing, not a marsh front summer house that slept 20.

I hated that movie. They were all pampered and privileged and probably voted for Reagan, twice, and all they could do was whine.

[Hardrada]

104. I hated "30something"also, Same people.

We used to call them "plastic hippies" and they come back to class reunions claiming to have been part of the struggle. Even old faculty members who despised the campus rads at the time.

[EFerrari]

85. A lot of us hit the job market just as wages stopped keeping up with CoL.

[Warpy]

58. I was in Boston

and the revolutionary zeal lasted until the mid 70s. They were mostly trash talking PIAs but they scared the hell out of reasonable people. Then everybody either moved someplace they could have an organic garden and kids or bit the bullet and took a corporate job. I did both but had to ditch the corporate job, it gave me gas.

A lot of us wanted to distance ourselves from the screamers although we remained quietly radical. We pretty much waited for it to all die down and then got socked with Reaganism, as much a reaction against the screamers as the election of Nixon had been.

[leveymg]

8. The difference is, many on the Right are heavily armed, and have already assassinated people

Even the Weather Underground and the Motherfuckers never intentionally killed their political opponents. Most of the casualties in the '60s and '70s were a handful of idiots who blew themselves up in their parents' pricey Manhattan townhouse, and the unintentional death of someone who refused to vacate a lab bombed at the University of Wisconsin. It's not clear what the motives or actual events were in the Mumia Abu Jamal case. The SLA killed a bank customer in Oakland, but that was unplanned part of a robbery. There was an armoured car heist in the mid-1970s that resulted in a couple guards being shot dead, but I can't recall another instance of intentional murder committed by anyone in the Movement over the course of a decade.

The Right is far more lethal in its methods. Just since Obama's been elected, we've seen a slaying at the Holocaust Museum, the killings in the Unitarian Church in Knoxville, and the murder of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas, and most recently an anti-tax suicide pilot dive into an IRS office.

This isn't an apples-oranges comparison Mr. Garboden pretends it to be. When it comes to violence, it's grapes-watermelon.

[zipplewrath]

18. This is the important missing piece

It is very easy to draw similarities between the anti-war movement of the late 60's and early '70s, and this current bunch. I actually think it is wrong to mix the anti-war movement with the civil rights movement. Civil rights can date its way back into the '50s at the very least. The vast majority of it very peaceful. But the anti-war effort really brought to the fore folks like Abbey Hoffman. Riots and disruption were their stock and trade. But you rightly point out that the important distinction between those folks and these current tea bagger nuts, is the propensity and actual violence. We could discuss why, but in a VERY short time these nuts have done ALOT of killing.

And I would digress for a moment to complain about the mixing of several cultural phenomenons of the late '50s, the '60s, and the early '70s. There were AT LEAST 4 very separate "movements" at the time and although they were all liberal/progressive, they were distinct and independent.

1. Civil rights. Started before Martin Luther King got involved. Some would trace it back at least to Roosevelt. Predominately peaceful. A VERY mainstream movement, in the early days consisting often of area business men. By the time of the "Freedom rides", it was hugely mainstream.

2. Hippie/Flower Power. There are actually several subgroups of this movement. It was the free love crowd, and ultimately became the drug crowd. It was a counter-culture revolution. It was anything but mainstream. It was relatively small, and the vast majority were very young. Woodstock was it's crowning achievement, Altamont was its down fall.

3. Anti-war. Really did not get going at all until the mid '60s and really only became "main stream" leading into '67-'68. The degree to which it represented any majority is dubious. It became mainstream for 2 reasons, alot of kids didn't wat to get drafted, and alot of parents didn't want their kids going off to war. This is where Abbey Hoffman and alot of other folks got started. It was actually a very short period of time, basically over by 1972.

4. Radical Revolutionaries. This was very fringe, never had any political clout, and unfortunately was a serious blow to its connection to liberalism. It was the Weather Underground, the SLA, the Blank Panthers, and to some extent the whole Malcom X, Louis Farrakhan crowd, (although they'd probably complain about being mixed in here. I'm trying to draw broad similarities).

I will acknowledge that there were overlaps in all of these "movements" but mostly their common thread was that almost any "movement" will attract the dispossed, fringe, and just plain pissed off or lonely. And since they were all basically "liberal" you were going to see at least "sympathies" across the board. But the vague similarities the original post draws is mostly between #4 and the tea baggers, with a tad of #2. By any allusion to #1 or #3, it implies a much more "mainstream" condition of the tea baggers than can be defended.

[harkadog]

87. Blaming the victim for not leaving

The guy killed in the math building was a grad student doing research. He gets killed by the Weathermen and you say he is at fault for "refusing to vacate a lab". What bullshit. And you are conveniently forgetting the police officer blown up in S.F. by the Weathermen. The S.F. police union has accused Ayers of the crime and an investigation has recently opened up. That's not even counting the six or seven police officers killed by the Black Liberation Army.

[leveymg]

93. I didn't say it was "his fault". You did. And, I'm not apologizing for the Weathermen bombings.

Who was the SF officer, and what's the connection with Ayers? I wasn't familiar with that incident. As for the BLA, they seemed to have been in a small war with the Feds and the police after the annihilation of the Panthers. There were a number of a gun battles, and some of the shootings appear to have been ambushes of police officers. But, the BPP and BLA suffered the overwhelming majority of casualties. Again, I'm not trying to justify this violence, just to point out that the Far Right today seems to have more of a tendency toward assassination and mass casualty attacks, or at least they're more effective at killing people.

[harkadog]

97. This is the link to the SF bombing

I don't know the current status but I read someplace prosecutors had opened up an investigation. http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-03-12/bay-area/17212035_1_bernardine-dohrn-bombing-bill-ayers

[leveymg]

114. That article is dated March 12, 2009. Anything since then?

Let me know.

BTW: Some people strongly suspect that both Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn were agents provocateur. If, indeed, they had been turned, that would explains the outrageous public comments (particularly those made by Dohrn proclaiming that the Weather Underground endorses the Manson Family murders). It would also explain why when many times others around them were arrested but they weren't, the apparent ease of their escape after they were finally indicted, their successful change of identity and long period as wanted felony suspects in hiding (during which they lived with known associates, the last few years of which was spent back in Chicago living more or less openly), their lenient treatment when they reemerged and the ease with which they reestablished in the community, and finally the fact that they are employed by Establishment institutions with some very weighty Establishment friends.

[harkadog]

116. I have nothing more recent

You might be right about Ayers and Dorhn. Afterall Ayers father was CEO of Commonwealth Edison which was pretty much the biggest company in Illinois and one of the biggest power companies in the U.S. They had the best lawyers and judges money could buy.

[Jackpine Radical]

101. I don't think Robert Fassnacht "refused to vacate."

I don't think he was warned. iirc, Armstrong & his collaborators gave 15 minutes warning at about 2:30 am, and that warning was never transmitted to anyone at Stirling Hall. Armstrong & Co. had assumed there would be nobody in the building at that time of morning when the planned the bombing.

[leveymg]

115. There were many previous bomb threats.

But, I think you're right about the short notice on the real attack, and I withdraw that part of my comment.

[timtom]

9. 180 degrees

60's - concern was for humanity, the world, and the nation.

Today - concern is for one's own scuzzy self.

[OHdem10]

11. The 60s was different in that the masses of people involved.

In the 60s you would have massive riots in La, Cleveland
NYC Chicago --all Metropolitan Areas simultaneously.

The Teabaggers have people coming together from all over.
Compared to the 60s their crowds look like a family picnic.

[Enthusiast]

12. Insulting. nt

[Champion Jack]

14. Looks like they skipped Woodstock and went straight for Altamont

just sayin'...

[Cetacea]

45. Good one!

[Cetacea]

47. dupe

[madrchsod]

15. ya right.....

we did`t have did`t have corporate backing and we did`t have the media on our side. we fought against an unjust war and for people`s civil rights. we were murdered,beat`n,and constantly under surveillance. maybe a few had some idea of a new national political movement but as far as i can remember there was`t a huge national movement for a "new party".

i don`t see the teabaggers putting their lives on the line for principals.

so this old child of the 60`s says...fuck you clif.

[Warren Stupidity]

19. Analogy Fail

[philly_bob]

20. New Left didn't have corporate funding. /nt

[spanone]

21. all you need is love vs. all you need is hate

don't see it

[CHelms]

24. They are slightly similar, on the surface

But the teabagger movement is different than the counterculture of the 60's in one important aspect: The counterculture was organic and the tea party movement was created by Republicans for the purpose of concentrating and tricking middle aged, angry white people into pulling the R lever. The counterculture movement of the 60's was made up OF like minded people who were trying to change the world, albeit in different ways and for different reasons. The teabagger movement of the 2010s was made up BY like minded people (Glenn Beck, Fox "News," Clear Channel, FreedomWorks), in order to harness white middle class anger that they themselves had deliberately stirred up and to convince angry rubes that voting a straight ticket Republican would be some sort of a revolutionary act. The counterculture was liberal, forward looking and had few leaders while the teabagger movement is regressive, backward looking and led by people like Sarah "don't you dare try to field your own candidates" Palin. You're not dealing with much of a revolution when the centerpiece of your movement is "Let's change the world by going back to the exact same shit we've been doing since the 19th century."

Also, there was a frequently a sense of playfulness with the counterculture. The teabaggers are fucking pissed. I can't imaging them laughing at anything, except maybe Frank Lautenburg getting cancer.

[damyank913]

Only in as much as they're angry and express distrust of their govt.

Otherwise it's apples and oranges.

[Odin2005]

25. Good article.

The Alpha and Omega of the Baby Boom Generation.

[bullwinkle428]

27. The "60s movement" it most closely resembles would be the KKK.

[Kokonoe]

31. The tea party is disenchanted republicans who lost their jobs

and health care.
The republicans are desperate to vacuum them back up
as Democrats are sweeping them back in the box.

[Richard Steele]

32. No, the "New Right" looks a lot like the "Old Right" of the 60s....

Same greedy, racist, self-centered shit, different day.

I've recently been reading through a stack of old "Time" magazines
from '64-'68, and the RW contributions to the "letters to the Editor"
section look like they were written yesterday.

The horses the RWers are beating have been dead for frickin GENERATIONS.

[Warren Stupidity]

37. YAF

Same shitheads, different decade. Only difference is major backing from the kleptocracy.

[Art_from_Ark]

83. It does seem that the Teabaggers

would have been "John Birchers" in the '60s.

[Hardrada]

106. Yeah. I have a BIL who has been a consistent racist gun nut

freeper-type his whole life and he is about 70 now. It's the same people plus some newer fascisti.

[The Wizard]

34. The bulk of the Tea Baggers

are the 60s rejects who weren't getting laid during the sexual revolution. They were pissed off at the hippies and hated them for their freedom (sound familiar?). Now they're trying to recapture their lost youth with their misdirected anger aimed at everyone who can still ejaculate.
Impotence thy name is tea bagger.
Their insane rhetoric makes them candidates for FEMA reeducation camps.

[Odin2005]

39. "Hated them for their freedom" LOL, epic win!

Damn I wish I could rec posts! :rofl:

[berni_mccoy]

36. Right on man, groovy!

NOT.

[ThomWV]

42. Well, now and then one needs to see an incoherent argument just so you know what one looks like

[David Zephyr]

77. The best response on the thread.

Thanks.

[The_Commonist]

44. Wait... You mean this wasn't The Onion?

It's always amusing when a writer gets it so profoundly wrong.
Either this guy did WAY too much acid back in the '60s, or he didn't do enough.
He likely gets paid by the word for whatever blather he can come up with.
FAIL!

[KittyWampus]

46. The far Right fringe is unstable, lacking empathy and heavily armed. And more easily lead

by rabble-rousers.

They are also given way more legitimacy by the Mediawhores than the far left ever was.

[whatchamacallit]

54. Such bullshit

Judging from many voices at DU, the "new left" is center-right. Pro-war, pro-corporate, pro-party apologists.

[Romulox]

55. It seems to me that "New" Democrats simply haven't learned how to co-opt this right wing

anti-establishment sentiment. When they do, these "teabaggers" will be redeemed and brought back into the fold, I'm sure--the Obama Republicans?

[defendandprotect]

57. T-baggers are owned and financed by the right wing elites . . .

that's quite a difference!

[anonymous171]

60. I hope so. The New Left was fucking useless. nt

[Warren Stupidity]

69. Oh that's harsh. Look at all we accomplished:

[Echo In Light]

61. Further weak, drastically misguided attempts to align TBs w/the left

Man there sure are some vested interests who are soooo hoping to get this fucked meme to stick...

[Jim__]

62. It's true that in the 60s "The Movement" contained many disparate groups.

I prefer "The Movement" to the "New Left" because I think the New Left was a particular part of The Movement. But, the Movement was heavily focused on the Vietnam War - lots of other interests among the various groups, but Vietnam was the unifying cause. I think Teabaggers are composed of disparate groups too; but I'm not sure what their focus is other than opposition to Obama. I don't think they are nearly as focused as the anti-war movement in the 60s.

[placton]

64. Will, I was actually AROUND in the 60's

and I disagree with your comparison

[WilliamPitt]

68. It wasn't my comparison.

[G_j]

65. "but OUR causes were many"

Clif, you are a fraud. You could not have been part of that movement and write this piece of complete nonsense.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

66. Sorta like comparing Mussolini's march on Rome to Gandhi's march to the sea.

[G_j]

67. thank you!

that NEEDED to be said!

[Prof Lester]

96. Yes, My Thelonious-loving brother!

[KingFlorez]

72. Not really

The only real similarity the article correctly points out is the factions. The new left worked towards good and ascertainable goals, many of which were achieved. They also faced down an establishment that very opposed to progress and the movement was diverse and young, the tea party is very mature overall. When the new left movement was over, a lot of the folks involved became real leaders and made even more of a difference. The tea party doesn't have that, they cannot have a future being an older, far-right, lily white. The demographics of the future don't support that, we are headed towards a progressive era.

[cornermouse]

73. I'm going to disagree.

I find the comparison of the 60s movement which was aimed at ending the war and making life better for others to the teabaggers' selfish agenda highly objectionable.

[Blue_In_AK]

75. No fucking way.

[madriver]

78. Seriously...

...is this guy on drugs? I know he has to fill a column, but the 60s left like the '10 right? Rly?

That's like saying Osama bin laden is like Jerry Rubin. The former wants to mindlessly destroy because you disagree with his dogma, the latter wanted to build something for everyone---not just white jewish guys---because it was the right thing to do.

Guess which group the teabaggers fall into?

[Jackpine Radical]

81. Yes, that's exactly on target.

[RainDog]

82. I think they're still the same rednecks they were in the 70s.

was too young then to get the sixties, but they're the "Proud to be an Okie From Muskogie" crowd... still...who didn't like those liberals. The counter was "proud to be a hippie from Moleno"

(oh, and in response to the 3 types above - the hippies were direct descendants of the beats, even tho Kerouac hated them. Ginsburg was part of it, the San Francisco writers were very influential, the interest in alternative forms of religion and drugs were extensions of the beats' exploration of zen buddhism and drugs etc in the 1950s. - and the beats were important for the gay rights movement.)

anyway, when I was growing up in that horrible chocolate brown shag rug and disco ball era, the rednecks were just as outspoken as others - they just spoke in support of the establishment. growing up in the south - in Nashville - meant being a witness to the musical version of it all. Rednecks were the conservatives.. that was the term for them, even tho those comedy guys have mainstreamed it (at the same time assimilating mainstream values rather than hate for hippies rhetoric.)

[EFerrari]

84. If the Left embraces diversity, why on earth would anyone expect us

to all agree about everything all the time. Maybe this writer is unclear on the concept.

But "just like them (unfit to govern)" is funny. :)

[Echo In Light]

99. Yet it's odd how some DUers clearly do NOT embrace diversity

I agree w/you, but wanted to point that out.

[EFerrari]

117. Yes. DU is now huge so, we can count on our statistical share of

authoritarians weighing in.

[Echo In Light]

118. And then some...depending upon the topic at hand

[bemildred]

86. Bullshit.

However wannabe imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. They wannabe like us, but they are not.

[RainDog]

90. the teabaggers are the mullet of political movements

sort of like the way that the rednecks didn't grow their own long until the hippies had cut theirs off.

[annabanana]

92. Except for the difference between Love and Hate, you mean?

what the hell... ok

[zeemike]

94. Perhaps the same dynamics but much different goals.

the goals the hippies set was to create a new culture to bring about change.
the tea party is about keeping things the same or reverting to the past.
The Hippies were spiritual the tea baggers are materialistic and authoritarian.

[zeemike]

95. Can/t believe I see a Will Pitts post at

But it just means you are human after all.....and that many thought it was your opinion.

[Prof Lester]

98. 'Baggers hate African Americans. Period.

All this bullshit about 'baggers. IF Bam was white, there wouldn't be no 'baggers. What they hate is a black man being president. They are nothing but bought stooges of the banksters.. who are democracy-hating neo-feudalists. All the Beckerhead crap about the "founders" and "the Constitution".. When their boy Dub was in, he said he want to be the dictator and the Constitution was nothing but a "piece of paper". Where was the 'baggers then? Did they march on DC? Did they wave little signs about "morans" and such? Noooooooooooo. Not a fucking peep out of 'em except to dump shit on us that did protest the raping of the Constitution. They called US traitors. Imagine that. Just imagine that.

Don't you dare put those who went south with Martin.. and who DIED doing it.. in the same bag as these brain-damaged scum!

[laughingliberal]

100. I believe all the ideologies in the New Left mentioned in your OP had a common basis

The desire for a more peaceful, sustainable world with equality and dignity for all seemed to be the basis for every movement you mention as part of the New Left in the 60's. And, as part of that movement, I did not necessarily embrace all the elements I was able to see the value of all of them.


I do believe the heart (as if they have a heart) of the teabagger's movement is about smaller government.

I must point out the other key difference here is that we were right. :)

[Hardrada]

107. Oh yeah? Show us their Baez or Dylan or Lennon!

[librechik]

110. we were anti practically everything the Teas are for. The only comparison

is that both sides have fools who are being used by the establishment to destroy their enemies.

[lotuspetal]

112. New Right VS, 60's new Left

Although your post seemed thoughtful I'm not sure it hit the mark. As a returning Viet Nam vet in 1965 there was a nationwide, student and non student revolt. To be sure, most were young but there were also a lot of ordinary converts of all ages. I remember the VVAW(Viet Nam Vets Against The War) who were quite organized among others, that tried to fly the flag of peace and humanity. It however take a while to really get going. We just endured 8 years of the most corrupt, greedy, war pig administration that I'm sure many of us could not even imagine. What must it take? From Kent State to Berkeley we were determined to be heard. I only wish that the young people of today would reignite that flame of democracy at work. Somehow we must find a way to battle corporatism and greed. Good luck to all real patriots.