Taking Tea Parties Seriously: Corporate Globalization, Populism, and Resentment

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chip Berlet
Keyword(s):  
Predominantly White ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Tea Party Movement ◽  
Us History ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Corporate Globalization ◽  
Actual Mass

AbstractThe emergence of the Tea Party Movement after the election of President Barack Obama is the result of increasing anxieties, fears, and anger in a predominantly White middle class and working class constituency. Starting as a project of elite conservative strategists, the Tea Party movement quickly developed an actual mass base, and turned into the type of right-wing populist movement seen previously throughout US history. This article uses a social movement theory approach to explain the Tea Parties and considers how race, gender, and class dynamics are shifted toward the scapegoating of liberals, people of color, immigrants, and other targets.

scholarly journals Freedom over Fear: Fundamentalist Populism and the Challenge of COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-128
Author(s):  
William H. Westermeyer
Keyword(s):  
Social Institutions ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
International Crises ◽  
Tea Party Movement ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Party Activists ◽  
Cultural World ◽  
Health Experts

Abstract Although public responses to national and international crises are never without contestations and conflicting truth claims, the COVID-19 pandemic draws attention to the stark political and cultural divisions presented by conservative populism in the age of the Tea Party Movement and Donald Trump. Beginning with research among Tea Party activists in 2010 and continuing through the Trump Administration and “reopen” protests, I have documented a shifting cultural world of right-wing populism. The vivid and symbolically elaborate performance of patriotism and indignation by the Tea Party Movement declined in 2012, being replaced by a more belligerent and less colorful form of populism with Donald Trump. As Trump-inspired protests opposing COVID-19 mitigation policies emerged in 2020, however, Tea Party themes and symbols reemerged as frames for resistance to government restrictions. Yet, despite the shifting styles, there was a constant theme of what I term “fundamentalist populism.” This style illustrates political identities characterized by vilification of opponents, distrust of existing political and social institutions, ideological rigidity, and a rededication to individualism and personal freedom. Ethnographic and documentary research shows how these themes animate a small yet vocal resistance to the science-based and cooperative guidelines prescribed by public health experts

Using Internet Search Data to Produce State-level Measures: The Case of Tea Party Mobilization

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 898-925 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph DiGrazia
Keyword(s):  
Social Science Research ◽  
State Level ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Internet Search ◽  
Tea Party Movement ◽  
Search Data ◽  
Movement Mobilization ◽  
Google Search

This study proposes using Internet search data from search engines like Google to produce state-level metrics that are useful in social science research. Generally, state-level research relies on demographic statistics, official statistics produced by government agencies, or aggregated survey data. However, each of these data sources has serious limitations in terms of both the availability of the data and its ability to capture important concepts. This study demonstrates how state-level Google search measures can be produced and then demonstrates the effectiveness of such measures in an empirical case: predicting state-level Tea Party movement mobilization. Drawing on existing studies of the Tea Party movement and theories of right-wing and conservative mobilization, state-level Google search measures for anti-immigrant sentiment and economic distress are developed and compared to traditional metrics that are typically used to measure these concepts, such as the unemployment rate and the international immigration rate in their ability to successfully predict Tea Party event counts. The results show that the Google search measures are effective in predicting Tea Party mobilization in a way that is consistent with existing theory, while the traditional measures are not.

Alternatives to Coming Out Discourses

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuzhen Huang
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Queer Of Color Critique ◽  
Queer People ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Queer Of Color

The discourse of coming out has historically served as an effective vehicle to build and sustain the LGBTQ movement in the United States. It has also been utilized as an empowering resource that enables queer people to establish a queer identity organized around self-awareness and self-expression. However, queer of color critique and transnational queer theory argue that the prevalent discourse of coming out is built on a particular kind of queer experience and geography, which is usually from the standpoint of White, middle-class men of urban U.S. citizenship and is rarely derived from the experience of queer people of color and non-Western queer subjects. Taking an intersectional perspective, Snorton interrogates the racialization of the closet and proposes a sexual politics of ignorance—opposed to the disclosure imperative in coming out discourse—as a tactic of ungovernability. Centering the experience of Russian American immigrants who are queer-identified, Fisher proposes a fluid and productive relationship between the “closeted” and the “out” sexuality that resists any fixed categorization. Focusing on the masking tactic deployed by local queer activists, Martin theorizes the model of xianshen, a local identity politics in Taiwan that questions the very conditions of visibility in dominant coming out discourse. As a decolonial response to the transnational circulation of coming out discourse, Chou delineates a “coming home” approach that emphasizes familial piety and harmony by reining in and concealing queer desires. Being cautious against the nationalist impulse in Chou’s works, Huang and Brouwer propose a “coming with” model to capture the struggles among Chinese queers to disidentify with the family institution. These alternative paradigms serve as epistemic tools that aim to revise understanding of queer resistance and queer relationality and help people to go beyond the imagination of coming out for a livable queer future.

Growing Tea With Subnational Roots: Tea Party Affiliation, Factionalism, and GOP Politics in State Legislatures

2021 ◽  
pp. 1532673X2110411
Author(s):  
Stella M. Rouse ◽  
Charles Hunt ◽  
Kristen Essel
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
State Level ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Original Dataset

Most research has examined the influence of the Tea Party as a social movement or loose organization, but less is known about its influence within legislative party politics, especially at the state level. In this paper, we argue that in this context the Tea Party is primarily an intraparty faction that has caused significant divisions inside the Republican Party. Using an original dataset of legislators across 13 states for the years 2010 to 2013, we examine legislator and district-level characteristics that predict state legislators’ affiliation with the Tea Party. Our results reveal that in some respects legislators affiliated with the Tea Party are a far-right wing of the Republican Party. However, by other measures that capture anti-establishment political sentiment, Tea Party affiliated legislators comprise a factional group attempting to transform the Party in ways that go beyond ideology. These findings have important implications for the future prospects of the GOP.

The Mainstreaming of Racism in American Politics

Hard White ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard C. Fording ◽  
Sanford F. Schram
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Opportunity Structure ◽  
White House ◽  
Tea Party Movement ◽  
Political Narratives ◽  
Key Terms

This chapter frames the book’s analysis and provides an overview of the subsequent chapters. It explains how racism today is manifested most significantly in white “outgroup hostility” toward Latinos and Muslims as well as African Americans. It highlights the importance of race-baiting elites in exploiting a transformed media landscape to stoke white outgroup hostility and thereby mainstream racism in American politics today. The chapter introduces and defines a number of key terms, including “racialized political narratives” that operate to racialize selected groups of people to be constructed as threatening “outgroups” in opposition to whites as the “ingroup.” It emphasizes that the “political opportunity structure” for white racial extremists became more open, especially with the rise of the Tea Party movement, leading to their increased participation in conventional politics. The chapter argues that these factors had already converged prior to 2016 for Donald Trump to exploit in winning the presidency, thereby accelerating the mainstreaming of racism in American politics by putting it at the center of public policymaking in the White House.

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