Rebellion in America

Citizen Uprisings, the News Media, and the Politics of Plutocracy

Anthony DiMaggio

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351247207
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

In a time of rising inequality and plutocratic government, citizens' movements are emerging with growing frequency to offer populist challenges to the declining living standards of masses of Americans, and to protest the conditions through which individuals suffer in poor communities across the country.

This book looks at the progression of modern social uprisings in the post-2008 period, including the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, the Bernie Sanders "Revolution, " Trump's populism, the anti-Trump revolt, and #MeToo. A key theme is that populism and mass anger at the political-economic status quo take different forms depending on whether the protests are progressive-left or right-wing in orientation.

Employing theories of elite politics and pluralism, and using a mixed methods approach, Anthony DiMaggio harnesses his rich experience with movement politics and his engagement with a wide range of media and public opinion data to explain where we are today and how we got here – always with an eye on moving ahead. Aimed at courses on social movements wherever they're taught, this book also offers general readers insight into contemporary politics and protest.

1 The Tea Party and the Rise of Right-Wing Rebellion

I present five main claims in this chapter. First, the Tea Party was an elitist movement and was concerned with enhancing corporate political power, displaying little concern with inequality or aiding disadvantaged groups. Tea Partiers’ support for deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy suggested they were committed to enhancing plutocracy. The Tea Party depended on organizing from the top down, with help from Republican candidates committed to a pro-business agenda.

Second, the Tea Party was not independent of the Republican Party, and it was not a mass movement.¹ This uprising was anemic compared to larger movements, including the 2003 anti-Iraq war protests and the anti-Trump protests. Local chapters were infrequently active, and the movement lacked enough grassroots participation to sustain itself over time.

Third, because the Tea Party was embraced by the Republican Party, it received extensive news attention. Social movements traditionally operate on the “outside” of politics looking in, influencing government indirectly by influencing discourse and public opinion, pressuring for change. But the Tea Party depended on support from Tea Party Republican candidates. Despite failing to become a mass movement, it pulled political discourse to the right, while cultivating support from the public.

Fourth, “identity politics” was central to the Tea Party, regarding its expressions of classism, racism, sexism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia. The Tea Party symbolized a rising conservative backlash against change. This was personified in its disruptive opposition to America’s first black President – Barack Obama. Tea Party prejudice manifested itself through classism, sexism, and racism, and at the intersections of these identities. Tea Partiers were committed to intersectional sexism. Some scholars claim it “empowered” women, since many served in leadership positions in the movement. However, the Tea Party was committed to empowerment only among conservative white women. Liberal women and women of color were treated with hostility by a movement that embraced racial prejudice.

Finally, the Tea Party embraced a conservative backlash against demographic change. Tea Partiers felt the “real America” (as in conservative middle-class whites) was under assault from various “threats.” They sought to spotlight the “dangers” posed by immigrants, the “drain” on societal resources resulting from “overly generous” welfare programs for “lazy” poor people of color, and the Muslim fifth column “threat.”

Truman’s disturbance theory depicts citizens as mobilizing when their perceived well-being is in danger. With the Tea Party, the disturbance was evident in its opposition to national demographic shifts. But the Tea Party’s backlash populism was anemic due to the reluctance of sympathizers to sustain organizing efforts over time. Still, Tea Partiers benefitted from a favorable “political opportunity structure,” with Republican officials adopting the “Tea Party” brand.²

The Tea Party’s populism was not defined by economic insecurity, of which its supporters revealed little. Their anxiety was more general, lamenting the poor state of the economy under Obama. The Tea Party was defined by patriarchal, “white identity politics,” serving as a precursor to the rise of Donald Trump’s populist politics in 2016.³ However, while Trump’s supporters were strongly concerned with socio-cultural issues, Tea Partiers were more focused on economics.

My findings are drawn from two sources. First, I provide personal reflections, based on my participant-observation in Tea Party events and meetings throughout the Chicago metro area in 2010. Since Illinois elected more Tea Party Republicans to office than any other state in the 2010 elections, it represents an ideal place for observing Tea Partiers. Second, I supplement my first-person reflections with survey data, demonstrating how my personal observations relate to national trends. I discuss how the movement impacted the news, and how sympathetic coverage impacted political discourse and public opinion.

A History of the Tea Party

The Tea Party was active from 2009 to 2010. Its members demonstrated in numerous cities, favoring conservative economic policies. They drew inspiration from the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when revolutionaries dumped tea into Boston Harbor in protest of British taxes under the banner of “no taxation without representation.” This claim gained popularity with Tea Partiers who rejected Obama’s economic policies.

The Tea Party was centered on a few personalities. One was Keli Carender, a conservative activist who called in February 2009 for Seattle residents to protest against the Democrats’ stimulus bill, allocating hundreds of billions to revive the economy following the 2008 economic collapse.⁴ Carender referred to the legislation as the “porkulus,” drawing on criticisms of Congressional spending bills as laden with “pork” barrel spending projects.

Coinciding with Carender’s protest was a “rant heard round the world” from CNBC analyst Rick Santelli on February 19, 2009, in which he called on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for a Tea Party protest in Chicago.⁵ Protesting “big government” policies, Santelli railed against allocating hundreds of billions of dollars to help families avoid foreclosure.⁶ Santelli complained Obama was “promoting bad behavior” by helping “subsidize the losers’ mortgages” following the housing market crash.⁷ Santelli’s position reflected that of many conservatives who blamed home owners for making poor financial decisions, rather than focusing on banks engaged in predatory lending.⁸

Shortly following Carender’s and Santelli’s statements, Tea Party protests began to emerge. On April 15, 2009, Tea Party events occurred in more than 200 cities, drawing tens of thousands of demonstrators.⁹ In August 2009, Tea Party activists attended Democratic “town hall” meetings across the country, protesting against the Democrats’ health-care reform.¹⁰ These activists’ opposition fueled critical media coverage of health-care reform.¹¹

The Tea Party attracted high profile supporters, including former Republican House Majority Leader and Freedom Works Chairman Dick Armey, former Republican Alaskan Governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and media pundit Glenn Beck. Beck’s September 2009 “9/12” rally drew on Tea Party support, attracting tens of thousands to Washington D.C., seeking to unite Americans as they came together after the September 11 terror attacks. The 9/12 project coincided with the September 12 “Taxpayer March on Washington,” attended by various Tea Party activists. By 2010, the Tea Party emerged as a phenomenon in American politics. Its first national convention in Nashville in February drew national media attention, cementing the Tea Party as a political force. The Tea Party’s second annual “Tax Day” protests occurred on April 15, drawing thousands of participants across 150 cities.¹²

The media referred to the Tea Party as social movement from 2010 onward.¹³ But its grassroots elements dissipated by the end of 2010. Tea Party rallies no longer took place across many cities. The Tea Party was heavily reliant on top-down support from the Republican Party, media, and elite political groups, and once these actors had achieved their goal – returning Republicans to Congressional power – the movement quickly disappeared. Such is the nature of anemic, top-down populism.

Tea Partiers: What They Believed

Many polls were conducted to understand Tea Partiers’ ideology, which was described by Bloomberg News as “Super Republican” because of its supporters’ partisan leanings.¹⁴ Tea Partiers were relatively affluent. The April 2010 CBS–New York Times national poll of Tea Party supporters showed they were more likely to come from middle-to-upper income backgrounds.¹⁵ Tea Partiers were disproportionately white, male, middle-aged to older, Republican, conservative, college educated, married, Protestant, and regular church attenders. And they were more likely to represent these groups when compared to the public, with limited support from less privileged social groups.

My observations of Tea Partiers, supplemented by national polls, suggest they represented the far right, and were more conservative than the public on every political question surveyed in the April 2010 CBS–New York Times poll and the Pew Research Center’s March 2011 poll. The most commonly expressed goal of Tea Partiers was reducing the size of the federal government. Most (53 percent) said they were “angry” when describing their “feelings about the way things are going in Washington.”¹⁶ Tea Partiers’ attendance of rallies spoke to their passion in protesting government. That passion manifested itself in anger against Obama. More than any other figure, his policies were criticized in the rallies and meetings I attended. Most Tea Partiers disapproved of Obama’s job handling the economy, health care, and budget deficit.¹⁷ Only a small minority approved of the Democrats’ 2009 stimulus.¹⁸

Large majorities of Tea Party supporters preferred a “smaller government” with “fewer services.” They agreed government is “wasteful and inefficient,” and government regulation of business “does more harm than good.” I met many protesters who felt the Democratic health-care reform would unfairly tax hard-w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Social Movements and Rebellion in a Time of Plutocracy
• 1. The Tea Party and the Rise of Right-Wing Rebellion
• 2. The Economic Justice Movement: Challenging Plutocracy and Inequality
• 3. Black Lives Matter: And the Struggle against Color-Blind Racism Sakura Shinjo
• 4. Populism in the 2016 Election
• 5. The Anti-Trump Uprising and Beyond
• Conclusion
• Index