Crooks and Liars predicts the trolls will be out in force on this one:
Cue the right-wing wailing and gnashing of teeth: The NAACP has now fully backed up its accusations of racism within the Tea Party movement with a meticulously documented report on the Tea parties' multifarious connections to racists and various far-right extremists.
The report, “Tea Party Nationalism,” looks at the relationships and differences between the six major Tea Party organizations — FreedomWorks Tea Party, 1776 Tea Party, Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Patriots, ResistNet, and Tea Party Express — and the various ways that each group has established connections with, and empowers, outright racists and white supremacists, as well we far-right “Patriot” extremists of various stripes.
“In these ranks, an abiding obsession with Barack Obama's birth certificate is often a stand-in for the belief that the first black president of the United States is not a 'real American.' Rather than strict adherence to the Constitution, many Tea Partiers are challenging the provision for birthright citizenship found in the Fourteenth Amendment,” write authors Devin Burghart and Leonard Zeskind of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, which produced the report for the NAACP.
The heart of the report is the section titled “Racism, Anti-Semitism and the Militia Impulse, which includes some previously overlooked facets of the movement and revealing details:
(There's lots more where that came from.)
Even if this is all true (and while I have no idea, I hardly think the NAACP is an objective reporter on this), what does it prove that makes you so pleased?
Does it show that all Tea Party people are racist? No.
Does it show that most TP people are racist? No.
Does it even prove that 10 or 20% of TP people are racist? No.
Can you even state which “branch” of the Tea Party is controlling in your area? Probably not. How many branches ARE there?
I doubt the report even shows that 1% are racist. And are 100% of Liberals/Progressives/Democrats/whatever innocent of racism? No. So here we are back again to making accusations that have no real ramifications and that can be “refuted” by reverse accusations of equal zero value. So what?
Even assuming truth, again, does that mean that every (or even a notable number of) members from the respective group agrees with the racist views being espoused by others in the group? Of course not. Maybe it’s a reasonable position to think that the vast majority of TP people are just concerned citizens that have some reasonable beliefs that differ from what is currently the law and would like that law changed? Why is that fascism? It is true that the current law of the land is that being born here (in most cases) makes you an American citizen. But it is neither fascism nor racism, by itself, to think that that might not be a good law. There are perfectly reasonable arguments against it – you and I, or even a court, can disgree with those reasonable arguments, but it doesn’t make them unreasonable. Lots of things are illegal and legal, about which reasonable people have reasoned arguments. It is the basis of America that there are LIMITS on being able to decide that the argument of another is unreasonable and therefore, should be stopped.
Fascism and totalitarianism, which you seem to haul out around here on a daily basis as an accusation against various people with which you disagree, REALLY rears its ugly head when people are no longer allowed to reasonably disagree. Or when what’s a “reasonable” disgreement becomes narrowly defined by one side. When you imply that people – even people who are extremist in most people’s view – should lose their livelihood and be shut up by those who can (in a process other than a voting booth), YOU are advocating fascism. And I support your right to do so, but don’t expect people not to notice.
The US must be a very nasty place, in the eyes of the NAACP: In order to define the Tea party movement as racist, the NAACP has to define racism to broadly, (Wanting immigration laws enforced, for instance.) that a super-majority of the America people are out and out racists.
What I see here is the NAACP going the way of the ADL and SPLC: Once worthwhile and respectable organizations, which met with the worst fate any organized, institutional movement can face:
Success.
No organization folds it’s tents and goes home on that terrifying day, of course. Self-preservation forbids that response. Rather, the movement’s leaders must define the problem it arose to solve ever more broadly, in order to claim the organization is still desperately needed. Soon you’re the SPLC, seeing racism in dried beans.
While becoming an arm of one of the major parties assures a permanent political base of support, and funding stream.
So, it’s hardly surprising to find the NAACP claiming the tea party movement is racist. Indeed, I’d be shocked if they had come to any other conclusion. Their institutional survival depends on the nation being awash in racists, and their stream of funding depends on those racists being located in the Republican base.
Well, that’s lame; What’s the point of stripping out my link, while highlighting text anyway?
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2010/01/13/survivor-home-gardening-edition/