Pained

This last Sunday, Glenn Beck handed me an excellent excuse to talk about his cult of personality with his 8/28 "Restore America" rally.

There's been a lot of surprise that the "Restoring America" rally wasn't political. It resembled an evangelical rally, and was seemingly focused on religion instead of politics. Many people have been dismissive of the rally because they think that Beck has somehow changed course. This isn't necessarily true.

In my last post, I said that religion, language, race, and the nation all start to blur at the edges and become one thing (at least, within a nationalist movement). For devotees, a religious rally is just as political as a voter's pamphlet.

The video below has some interesting interviews with the crowd. Listen how the interviewees talk about religion versus politics. (I will be doing a post on "The Mexicans" and "The Muslims" as the two "enemies" of the nation and a post on the "registered independent" movement.)


Via Cynical-C

(complete 3-hour rally is on CSPAN)

Even though the content of the speeches were largely about religion and soldiers, the audience felt that the speakers re-affirmed their political beliefs. Partly, they were excited to be in a group of like-minded people. Partly, the speakers were talking in politically coded speech. But why else?

We're pretty familiar with the idea of a personality cult in religions, especially, well, cults. We have an image of a white guy in funny clothes with 6 wives that miraculously worked out he's the second coming, so he convinced a group of people to leave their families, donate their possessions to the glorious leader, and join a fortified compound in the desert, because the feds have put aliens in the drinking water. It's a little different in politics. But only a little.

In politics a personality cult is where a population worship the leader (or founders) of a country. We're not talking "Abe Lincoln never told a lie" kind of worship. We're talking "Every public building has a room dedicated to the Dear Leader, every school day begins with a special prayer to the Dear Leader, and every private home has a small shrine to the Dear Leader." You know, the kind of things that Tea Partiers think "liberals" do to Obama.

Before you get any ideas, I don't believe that Glenn Beck is the Dear Leader that all the Tea Partiers are secretly worshiping. I don't even think his aim is to deliberately create a political personality cult. But there's something extra rabid and stubborn about Glenn Beck fans.

Glenn Beck has developed a minor personality cult around the Founding Fathers. Beck, in his eyes and the eyes of his followers, is the only one who is speaking the truth about American history and he is the only honest man who can see the truth about where America is headed. He is the only one who can give us unbiased information. He is our only connection to the past and the prophet of the future.

Back here in reality, Beck will only give airtime to those who will talk about the Founding Fathers in biblical terms. In Glenn Beck University, Faith 101-103 is presented by David Barton, who claims among other things, that the Founding Fathers were mostly ministers, that the first continental congress signed their documents with "In the Year of Our Lord Jesus Christ" and that that same congress paid for bibles in American public schools. (There is a beautiful and thoughtful take-down of Barton's major arguments at Liars for Jesus. Scroll down for the videos as well.)

You may remember that Beck spent a lot of time comparing himself to Thomas Paine, largely because he's a sometimes forgotten founding father but he wrote a key pamphlet called "Common Sense". It was the first major piece of American Propaganda that asked the colonists to stand up and separate from Britain. Beck liked it so much that he re-released it -- with a modest 111 page introduction. Beck's attachment to Thomas Paine is more than a fondness for history. It was a wink at his viewers. Beck feeds his viewers something that feels both like privileged knowledge about history and events to come. This was our first sign Beck had slipped into the shoes of "mouth of propaganda." Because really, what's a personality cult without the propaganda?

So now we have the founding father linked to religion and Glenn Beck linked to the Founding Fathers. But how do we turn them divine? Well, all you have to do is a little line blurring, which is easy when people are already starting to associate their religion with their country. That the "Founding Fathers" won the revolution is enough to prove that "God was on our side." This slips into "God helped us win" to "God wanted us to win" to "We were destined to win". Which brings us to America's "Divine Destiny". Ultimately, the Founding Fathers morph into divine creators of our country, guided by destiny and acting out the will of god.

What else do we need here? Well, a good personality cult needs words. Words to "study". Words that inspire. Words to live by. The writings of the founding Fathers must be holy because the Founding Fathers themselves were holy. Sound outlandish? Glenn Beck doesn't think so.

From Beck's Speech at the Divine Destiny Rally: "The words are alive. Our documents, our most famous speeches are American scripture. They are alive today as any scripture is."

As I mentioned in a previous post, Glenn Beck's "Overton Window" describes an ideal Tea Party. At the higher levels the "Founders Keepers" steal a page out of "Fahrenheit 451" (Becks ghost writers steal shamelessly from many dystopian novels) and the members memorize anything and everything written by their favorite Founding Father. They then recite these speeches at meetings like scripture. The love interest in the story, of course, memorizes Thomas Paine.

Worship tends to spill over onto anyone who is preaching the gospel of the Founding Fathers as does the reverence for his words. Beck has aligned himself with the Founding Fathers and is now aligned with Holy American Destiny. At least, in the minds of his followers.

Now, all a politician (like Sarah Palin) has to do is link themselves to the Founding Fathers and they have instant American Destiny cred. By speaking at the Divine Destiny rally, Sarah Palin was attempting to further align herself with prophecy. This is why I had privately assumed she would announce her presidential run at the rally.

But I was wrong. It seems that certain elements in the tea party aren't taking very kindly to Beck's self-anointment. We may be seeing the beginning of the end.

The Four Pillars of Nationalism

This is from an e-mail I wrote to a friend. Tomorrow is Beck's 8/28 rally and I want you all to be prepared with a small bit of background before I lay into the idea of a Personality Cult.

Tea Partiers may use weasel words like "Muslim" or "illegal immigrants" but that's just to avoid saying "Arab" and "Hispanic". If you ask a Tea Partier to draw a picture of a Muslim, they're not going to draw Ethnic Chinese Muslims (the Hui) and if you ask them to draw a picture of an "illegal" they're not going to draw Hollanders who overstay their work visas. To the tea party, it is the WORST INSULT to be labeled a racist, so they come up with creative Politically Correct replacement words.

Interestingly, in the 1960's when white people didn't want to seem racist they would make segregation arguments based on taxes. Poor people (Read: Blacks) pay less in taxes, therefore don't deserve the same level of social services. Sounding familiar? Now that no egos are involved, we can look back and declare all segregation to be racist, but at the time white people often wanted to avoid the "racist" title.

It's about fear of the Other, and it's also fear about jobs. Stupid, right? Economic crisis is the PERFECT time for a nationalist movement. Who "deserves" jobs, who doesn't. It's not a coincidence that Europe exploded in ethnic violence after the fall of the soviet union. People were literally trying to re-form nations as well as survive economic devastation. But who deserves a job? Well, first, we have to look at who is "us" and who is "them". This is a long process and will last throughout the movement. What we mean by this question is "who is most like ME?" but more on that later. The easiest way to group people is based on skin color. Like it or not, we're hard-wired for picking out one race versus another. People who claim to be color blind are full of shit. Religion is also a good one, and the two, historically, are connected. Back in the day before airplanes, your place of birth had as much influence on the shape of your nose as it did on which gods you worshiped. Ethnicity and religion often go hand in hand, but when they don't we can sort accordingly. Black and christian? Good. Black and Muslim? GTFO.

This is where the Nation comes in. To the nationalist, the nation you belong to is just as important as the color of your skin. More so. (Before nation-states we had "tribalism" but it's all part of the same pattern. It's a very Euro-centric study, but applies everywhere) Nationalism is the belief that the state is above everything else. It's that simple. Everything must be done in the service of the state; your life, your religion, your children, history, god, everything is compelled to serve of the state. There's a quote from a pope during world war two: "Nationalism is the pagan worship of the state" but that's not far enough. Think of a cult or an all-consuming abusive relationship. But... the Tea party is not at that level. It's Nationalism-lite.

So we have the four pillars of the nationalist movement, the nation (America), the skin color (white), the religion (Christian), and the language (English). Slowly, and I mean REALLY slowly, each one will start to equal the other three. If you're Christian, you should be an English-speaking White American. If you're White, you should be a English-speaking Christian American. If you're American, you should be a English-speaking White Christian. If you speak English, ... yeah. Now, that idea alone is scary as hell, but it gets worse. Before you know it, "Christian" isn't enough. You have to be protestant. "White" isn't enough, you have to be Germanic. "American" isn't enough, your family has to stretch back to the FOUNDING FATHERS. Etc.

Godwin moment: Language was a huge part of Germany's justification for invading Poland. The Polish spoke German too, and therefore must be occupying inherently German land. Also Poland was threatening Germany and Germany needed to protect itself.

I think you can see where this is going. The Muslims are non-white and non-christian, and therefore not proper Americans with the same rights (freedom of worship, mostly). The Mexicans are non-white, non-Americans and therefore don't deserve the same rights as real Americans. Those who closely fit the criteria get to be part of "us" and those who don't... well, they need to stay in line. They're here because we allow them to be here, after all. We "deserve" the jobs, the full benefits of being an American, the protection of the state, the medical care, to be patrons of privately owned business and, soon, the citizenship. Of course, past that we have "half-citizens" and slowly, slowly, half-humans... then, well, horribleness.

I don't believe the tea party will get there.

Let me say that again.

The Tea Party will not get genocidal.

But I do believe we will see serious violence against "the Other" in the next two years. It will probably be done in the name of "self-defense." 1960's race-riots level? Hard to say. But possibly.

Edit: I will continue to update this post with relevant links as I find them.
Also some spelling fixed by Robin.

Elbows Down, Pinkies Up

Stand back everyone. I'm going to to do politics.




Welcome to the Tea Party

So what am I talking about here? Am I going to talk about that horrible Alice in Wonderland movie? I hope not. Am I going to talk about those people who dress up like Founding Fathers and spew nonsense about Obama? Heck yes. Am I going to make fun of them? Only when it illustrates a point. Let me be clear: I don't think Tea Partiers are stupid. They're mostly being swept up in a phenomenon that can capture just about anyone. My angle is Glenn Beck. I don't know much about Sarah Palin, and at this point I don't care to. She'll be interesting when she makes her Presidential run.




I'm going to assume you have a pretty good grasp on the idea of the Tea Party. Probably you have an image of an older heavy-set white Libertarian in a home-made sarah palin t-shirt yelling about socialism. You probably also think of That Guy on facebook that clutters your wall with long rambling posts on Terrorism and the Liberty Tree. To sum up, older, white, male, libertarian, and short in the brains department.

Or are they? Well, Glenn Beck certainly doesn't think so! And he's going to help all those poor tea partiest people fight back against the big mean liberal elite. He claims the tea party is made up of every race and nationality and political group in the country. Young and the old, the tall and the small. From all walks of life. And black people. Just like you see in the video.

In Beck's NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER The Overton Window, he describes his ideal Tea Party movement. Except here, he calls them the Founders Keepers. (Their website hasn't been updated since June, but I'm sure they're just waiting for the revolution. But you can follow their Twitter.) And boy are they diverse.

"The dirveisty of the gathering was another surpirse; there seemed to be no clear exclusions based on race, or class or any of the other traditional media-fed american cultural divides. It was a total cross section, a mix of everyone -- three-piece suits rubbing elbows with T-shirts and sweat pants, yuppies chatting with hippies, black and white, young and old, a cowboy hat here, a six hundred dollar haircut there -- all talking together .... in the press these sorts of meetings were typically depicted as the exclusive haunts of old white people of limited means and even more limited intelligence. But this was everybody." ~The Overton Window

The Founders Keepers do a lot of strange things like LARP Founding Fathers, but only speak in the words the Founding Fathers use in their letters and speeches. This is also the first TOTALLY FICTIONAL book I've read that has references in the back. You know. For fact checking.

Yeah, I know. I'm about 6 months late in the "omg so white" thing. But think of it as a refresher for your first lesson. In Tea Party Land, they're not white people. They represent everyone.