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With the 10th anniversary of the "Battle in Seattle" coming up Nov. 30, expect a lot of stories about WTO. The Seattle Times, for example, is already asking you to send in your memories of 1999.
Coverage will include "then-and-now" looks at how the world has and hasn't changed. One interesting trend: The protest tactics developed by the left in the 1960s and practiced by anti-globalization protesters in the 1990s are emulated and echoed in the Obama era by the American right wing. We've gone from "turtles and Teamsters" to "Teabaggers."
One thing about the WTO protests: They were driven by the left, but they also were embraced, if more quietly, by the far right. Pat Buchanan was in town for WTO along with Eugene anarchists. The far right has long been anti-NAFTA, anti-World Bank, anti-Wall Street, and anti-surrendering sovereignty to international organizations, from the IMF to the United Nations and the World Trade Organization. The more mainstream manifestations are Buchanan, Ron Paul, and Ross Perot.
Globalization lost its center-stage moment with the 9-11 attacks. Protests in Seattle and Genoa gave way to World Trade Center terrorism and hot wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the Great Recession has revived economic anxieties, and breathed some life into longtime critics of the globalized, corporate financial system. Anger about the Wall Street bank bailout is found both on the right and left, but the great middle is more concerned with seeing their 401(k)s and retirement funds restored to vitality, or that "growth" be revived to create jobs. Fundamental reform has been back-burnered; discussion of alternative economic systems is still off the radar and pundit panels. President Obama is as much a corporatist as President Clinton was during WTO when Gov. Gary Locke (now Obama's secretary of commerce) sent in the National Guard to help clear Seattle's streets to enable the president to make his meetings.
So who today is dressing up in costumes, waving crazy signs, engineering sit-ins at the nation's Capitol and marching on Washington? Who's reading and organizing according to the principles of lefty guru Saul Alinsky? Who has learned the importance of gaining media attention with provocative signs and visuals, and passive resistance? Who is afflicting the comfortable?
It's the Teabaggers. Earlier this month, they protested health care reform with Rep. Michele Bachmann, while an anti-abortion splinter group conducted a sit-in at Nancy Pelosi's congressional office, tearing up copies of the health care reform bill and being dragged out by the cops (the arrested included a Catholic priest, shades of the Berrigan Brothers). This is the kind of direct action and civil disobedience that is vintage let, from the civil rights movement to anti-Vietnam war protests to WTO.
Conservatives used to disdain such protests, disruptions and outbursts, shrieking "get a job" to the hippies who filled the streets. Now, they themselves have taken to the streets and have the full backing of a cable network, FOX News, whose commentators and newscasters enjoy whipping up a frenzy. Most of the tut-tutting is from liberals.
Some of the protest anger is genuine, some of it ginned up populism by anti-tax corporate interests. And like most mad-as-hell movements, it's not necessarily a coherent whole. At WTO, some protested globalization, some raged against the Illuminati. Every mass movement has its Da Vinci Code cast of characters. Teabag protests are made up of angry anti-tax activists, but there are also loons who compare Medicare-style reform to the Holocaust. Anyone who liked the WTO or anti-Iraq protests should be able to appreciate the theater of passion and overstatement. A protest is not a cogent argument, it's a media event.
It's not clear how far the Teabaggers will go. Such movements sometimes provide cover for more radical causes and elements. WTO's peaceful protesters were used as cover for more violent behavior by anarchists. The left worries the far right's activism will lead to political assassination or a new Oklahoma City-type attack.
But as we saw at Fort Hood and Columbine, attacks can occur even without cover of a larger movement. There are always crazies among us. But the anti-gloablization movement, while it smashed Starbucks windows, did not resort to assassination after WTO. Loud angry protests do not necessarily to lead to greater violence. That said, extreme politics can always inspire sick assassins (see Leon Czolgosz, Sirhan Sirhan, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth). But such threats are long a part of our politics, right, left, and in the Twilight Zone.
The urge, even the need, to take to the streets is ongoing. Just like the Boston Tea Party actions of 1773 that give the Teabaggers their inspiration, no one has a monopoly in fighting perceived tyranny. Today, there is a WTO sea turtle costume in the Museum of History and Industry. Someday, it might hang next to a Teabagger costume, companions in American tradition.
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Comments:
Posted Fri, Nov 13, 10:46 a.m. Inappropriate
I'm trying to figure out where our local "progressives" hold the line on the "law". Last week there was much hand-wringing and public "support" for a murdered police officer in Seattle. Yet, ten years ago a percentage of that populace romanticized - and tacitly approved - the anarchists setting fires and smashing windows during their WTO "protests". I suspect many of the same folks support a recent "protest" that came in the form of breaking into Submarine Base Bangor. So... where is it? It's OK to throw a newspaper box through a storefront window but it's not OK to shoot a cop? Seems to me cop-killing is the logical extension of the mindset in support here.
And - by the way - under-reported in the news (and we can all speculate why THAT is), last week the King County council voted to proclaim King County a "sanctuary" county for illegal aliens. Law enforcement is not allowed to ask immigration status when arresting; social service providers are not allowed to discriminate based on citizenship. Official disregard for immigration law? Are they sure they're opposed to shooting police officers?
Posted Fri, Nov 13, 11:13 a.m. Inappropriate
BlueLight, speaking as someone who hated the anarchists in 1999 too, I find your comparison of cop murder to property damage...bizarre. That's a euphamism.
Posted Fri, Nov 13, 11:29 a.m. Inappropriate
Really? When one advocates breaking the law, one advocates hostility to those charged with enforcing said law.
Posted Fri, Nov 13, 1:26 p.m. Inappropriate
Knute’s use of the term “Teabagger,” after it has been agreed by all that it is a) not the term that tea party organizers have taken for themselves and b) known by most people to childishly equate political activism with a graphic sexual act, can’t possibly fit with the direction you’re taking Crosscut. With all of the hand-wringing about the death of civility in political discourse, Crosscut has heretofore stood on pretty solid ground as a respectful standout in a new media environment that too frequently resembles a high-wire act for a lowbrow audience. Crosscut has previously occupied a place for me as rising above this sort of petty derision and pointless name-calling. It doesn’t even rise to the level of satirical commentary. It is just vulgar and I’m sure disappointing to many of Crosscut’s readers, at least some of whom are tea partiers themselves. Maybe this is an attempt to create a buzz and draw attention for the purpose of boosting readership. In a society where celebrities now leak sex tapes for publicity gains we need some things to remain focused and mature. It is important for organizations such as Crosscut to take seriously their role as a redoubt in the ever-present battle to preserve fair and productive conversations on issues of immense importance. The demise of levelheadedness doesn’t hurt one side of the political debate more than another; all will suffer if this trend continues.
Posted Fri, Nov 13, 5:57 p.m. Inappropriate
It seems to me the most salient element of the Teabagger story has yet to be told.
This is the story of how the Democratic and Republican parties are seemingly collaborating to ensure "change we can believe in" never goes beyond the abject powerlessness implicitly affirmed by the adoption of "hope" as a viable political slogan.
The story begins with the fact today's U.S. working-class citizens have legitimate grievances that have worsened steadily since the untimely end of the Kennedy Administration 46 years ago.
These grievances include the ever-more-apparent extermination-by-neglect policies at the core of the U.S. health care system; the constant fear so generated amongst lower-income, elderly and disabled people (I am all three); the outsourcing and downsizing of our jobs; foreign wars that have no purpose beyond functioning as profit-centers for Big Business; and now the brazenly Antoinette savagery of bailing out the ruling class while abandoning all the rest of us to "jobless recovery" -- foreclosure, eviction, homelessness, sickness and thus ultimately forcible population-reduction by economically imposed death.
Adding real and potentially very explosive fuel to this metaphorical fire is the increasing recognition we are hopelessly imprisoned in a neo-manorial economy -- the reason that here below the salt only the most deluded PollyAnnas still believe there will ever be any meaningful recovery of lost jobs.
Normally -- as the Democrats did with the New Deal in 1932 and pretended to do again during the 2008 election campaign -- they would have ridden this groundswell of wretchedness and rational anxiety to huge electoral mandates for radical change.
Instead, the Democrats' expressed just enough generalized protest to win the vote but since then have worked relentlessly to limit if not obstruct the very change they seemed to promise.
The result is an unprecedented and growing backlash, the Teabagger phenomenon that for its demagogic figurehead should properly be re-labeled Palinism: hard-Right expression of working-class fears and anger that normally would have been voiced by the Left as condemnations of ruling-class greed and agitation for definitively humanitarian reforms.
No more. The remarkable silence of the Democrats has given the Right an opportunity unprecedented in U.S. history to seize the time and pervert it to anti-humanitarian purposes.
Cunningly -- and predictably -- the Palinoids are thus redirecting a huge measure of working-class rage from its proper target and hurling it against the only possible measures by which the causative problems might have been ameliorated if not resolved.
The immediate and obvious consequence is the revitalization of the Republican Party: the increasing probability the GOP will regain enough Congressional seats next year to end -- effectively forever -- any possibility of real health care reform (now hopelessly obstructed by the Democrats’ decision to combine the abortion and health-reform fights), or Employee Free Choice (the one measure that would have genuinely re-empowered the working class but has already been reduced to meaninglessness by behind-the-scenes betrayals).
Given these facts -- that is, given (A), the undeniable extent to which the Democrats are truly enabling their alleged opponents and (B), the extent to which this enablement serves Big Business and Wall Street at Main Street‘s expense -- what emerges into ever-clearer focus is a charade of bipartisanship that functions solely to advance the ultimate goal of monopoly capitalism: absolute power and unlimited profit for the ruling class, total subjugation and bottomless poverty for all the rest of us.
Thus the Teabaggers are manipulated -- much as were the people of Weimar Germany -- to collaborate in their own further disempowerment by mobilizing in support of their oppressors.
While the implicit pattern is obvious to anyone with a working knowledge of labor relations or history -- and (precisely as the above demonstrates) is not all that difficult to explain -- the fact it remains an untold story is perhaps the most damning proof yet of the harlotry to which U.S. mass media has been reduced.
Posted Fri, Nov 13, 6:26 p.m. Inappropriate
Bryan,
The word that offends you-- probably a simple mistake--although not always the case with Crosscut commenters. But your selection of words is so over-the-top that I'd guessing them a hurried mistake too. Just checking to be sure the new Crosscut didn't hire a nanny.
Seriously, if you'd calm down and use less adjectives you are on to a parcel of "issues of immense importance."
Posted Fri, Nov 13, 8:43 p.m. Inappropriate
The Tantrum in Seattle was a terrible failure to take the unique opportunty to engage the rest of the world in a serious conversation about fairness of trade and human rights. I met with representatives of nine developing nations who were crushed by the failure of the talks to produce meaningful progress in international agreements. These were not people naive about power and globalization; they had lived in the shadow of the empires their whole lives, but they had been preparing for years to use this opportunity to improve their position. Instead, they got a bunch of twenty-somethings and labor-somethings claiming to have an analysis of the ills of the world and to speak for the downtrodden species (frequently animal), but who, in fact, didn't know turtle squat about the issues. The 25 African nations who really brought down the WTO got no support from the children blocking them into their hotels. I was in the streets as an observer and got gassed with the rest, but realized quickly this was not about police (mis)behavior (though it did occur), but about the necessity of some to have issues they can dress in funny costumes for and claim victimhood for in their quest for identity.
I am not naive about globalization and its ill effects, but to completely blow off an opportunity to talk to the world is idiotic and, really, rude. I hope the anniversary doesn't turn into simplistic self-congratulations, but I'm not optimistic.
Posted Sat, Nov 14, 8:59 a.m. Inappropriate
Thank you Bryan Myrick for calling out Knute on the "teabagger" epithet. I have to admit I have no vision of the sexual practice referred to but I assume Knute does and I think it is simply name-calling. Submerged inthis is the presumption that anyone who pays and then complains about taxes need not be dealt with seriously, at least not in King County.
Posted Sat, Nov 14, 9:51 a.m. Inappropriate
I guess I haven't been following this story closely enough and have a very limited vocabulary of sexually explicit phrases--because I saw nothing derogatory or offensive in Knute's use of the word "Teabagger." In fact, his treatment of both the right and left throughout the piece seems pretty balanced. This being liberal Seattle, I therefore expected such balance would not go unpunished--but from the left, and not from the right. Incidently, has anyone bothered to analyze the original homophobic meaning behind the phrase "That sucks"? ("Squaws," anyone?)
Posted Sat, Nov 14, 1:57 p.m. Inappropriate
It astounds me -- no actually it doesn't because here too I recognize the symptoms of class struggle -- how the ruling class of Moron Nation has perfected the use of red herrings to distract from or camouflage real issues: in this instance, Mr. Berger's cogent and thought-provoking analysis of the Rebellious Right, flawed only in its omission of the histories of such risings -- as against the Weimar Republic (where it brought Hitler to power), or Pinochet's Chile (where it empowered Pinochet and his U.S.-puppet torture state).
Posted Sat, Nov 14, 3:05 p.m. Inappropriate
Bryan,
My dictionary lists three uses for the word "teabaggers." One of the three is precisely the use Berger chose. It's interesting you would choose its sexual connotation.
Posted Sat, Nov 14, 3:29 p.m. Inappropriate
"Teabagging is a slang term for the act of a man placing his scrotum in the mouth[1] or on or around the face (including the top of the head) of another person, often in a repeated in-and-out motion as in irrumatio. The practice resembles dipping a tea bag into a cup of tea.[2][3]
Teabagging is also an erotic activity used within the context of BDSM and male dominance, with a dominant man teabagging his submissive partner as one variation of facesitting and/or as a means of inflicting erotic humiliation. Teabagging is not always carried out with a solely "sexual" connotation. In some cases it can be carried out as a prank whereby a male might teabag a sleeping person for the mere humiliation and humor of the act.
Above commenters roused me to find out what "teabagging" means. Wikipedia defines it above. If Knute wants to refer to tax protesters (more likely protesters against taxes on future generations) as teabaggers that is his prerogative as a writer. I don't think it's good but it's his right. What isn't right is to pretend that this usage is part of a respectful dialogue ("balanced" "cogent, thought-provoking").
Posted Sat, Nov 14, 5:36 p.m. Inappropriate
After all is said and done, I'd say this has measured up pretty well to a rousing Crosscut conversation--no personal attacks on each other (I tune out then and there).
As Calvin and Hobbs would say: just another rousing treehouse clubhouse meeting!
Posted Sat, Nov 14, 10:35 p.m. Inappropriate
Again in defense of Mr. Berger's usage, for the teabaggers to now complain about about being called teabaggers is rather like the Ku Klux Klan suddenly objecting to being called the Ku Klux Klan.
The historical fact is that "teabaggers" is the label these protestors first afixed to themselves.
Quoth Wiki:
'In February, David Weigel of The Washington Independent photographed a protester holding a sign that read "Tea Bag the Liberal Dems Before They Tea Bag You."[118] The verb "tea bag" is used by others including Fox News Reporter Griff Jenkins and reteaparty.com where it is used self-referentially.[119] Salon.com, however, pointed out that "teabagging" has long had another meaning.[120][121][122][123]'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_protests
(scroll down to "Origins...")
I rest my case.