Tea Party Nationalism:
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| Image via TeaPartyNationalism.com |
We know the majority of Tea Party supporters are sincere, principled people of good will. That is why the NAACP—an organization that has worked to expose and combat racism in all its forms for more than 100 years—is thankful Devin Burghart, Leonard Zeskind and the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights prepared this report that exposes the links between certain Tea Party factions and acknowledged racist hate groups in the United States. These links should give all patriotic Americans pause.
I hope the leadership and members of the Tea Party movement will read this report and take additional steps to distance themselves from those Tea Party leaders who espouse racist ideas, advocate violence, or are formally affiliated with white supremacist organizations. In our effort to strengthen our democracy and ensure rights for all, it is important that we have a reasoned political debate without the use of epithets, the threat of violence, or the resurrection of long discredited racial hierarchies.
Dave Neiwert at Orcinus has a spot-on take on the Tea Party reaction:
Of course, because the data in this report is there for everyone to see, it's pretty hard for them to claim that this is merely anecdotal evidence: Rather, we're talking about a problem that is very much systemic in nature.
If the Tea Party leaders were sincere and honest about wanting to get rid of any racists who might be attaching themselves to their movement, they would take this report seriously and respond to it forthrightly.
But they aren't. So they won't.
