Forum Post: Taibbi: Why Occupy Wall Street is Bigger Than Left vs. Right
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 17, 2011, 12:53 p.m. EST by groobiecat2
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from Brattleboro, VT
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"...There is going to be a fusillade of attempts from many different corners to force these demonstrations into the liberal-conservative blue-red narrative.
This will be an effort to transform OWS from a populist and wholly non-partisan protest against bailouts, theft, insider trading, self-dealing, regulatory capture and the market-perverting effect of the Too-Big-To-Fail banks into something a little more familiar and less threatening, i.e. a captive "liberal" uprising that the right will use to whip up support and the Democrats will try to turn into electoral energy for 2012.
Tactically, what we'll see here will be a) people firmly on the traditional Democratic side claiming to speak for OWS, and b) people on the right-Republican side attempting to portray OWS as a puppet of well-known liberals and other Democratic interests.
On the Democratic side, we've already seen a lot of this behavior, particularly in the last week or so. Glenn Greenwald wrote about this a lot last week, talking about how Obama has already made it clear that he is "on the same side as the Wall Street protesters" and that the Democratic Party, through the DCCC (its House fundraising arm), has jumped into the fray by circulating a petition seeking 100,000 party supporters to affirm that “I stand with the Occupy Wall Street protests.”(I wonder how firmly the DCCC was standing with OWS sentiment back when it was pushing for the bailouts and the repeal of Glass-Steagall Act).
We've similarly heard about MoveOn.org jumping into the demonstrations and attempting, seemingly, to assume leadership roles in the movement.
All of this is the flip side of the coin that has people like Breitbart trying to frame OWS as a socialist uprising and a liberal media conspiracy. The aim here is to redraw the protests along familiar battle lines.
The Rush Limbaughs of the world are very comfortable with a narrative that has Noam Chomsky, MoveOn and Barack Obama on one side, and the Tea Party and Republican leaders on the other. The rest of the traditional media won't mind that narrative either, if it can get enough "facts" to back it up. They know how to do that story and most of our political media is based upon that Crossfire paradigm of left-vs-right commentary shows and NFL Today-style team-vs-team campaign reporting."
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Yes. This is the most important message right now. It's okay if either say that they are on our side, or understand us. But #OWS is not on their side. It has no interest in their election, it has interest in reforms. That has to remain clear to the members of OWS, the public and, if it can be forcefully shoved down their throat, the media.
Thank you!
cheers. I agree with a lot of what Taibbi says, in general, but I think his view on the #OWS and Tea Party working together or having "much more in common" is waaaaay optimistic. The two are diametrically opposed to one other, philosophically, I'm afraid. One is very much for neo-liberalism (TP) and one is very much against it (#OWS). The #OWS post the other day describes it better than i can:
"Over the last 30 years, the 1% have created a global economic system - neoliberalism - that attacks our human rights and destroys our environment. Neoliberalism is worldwide - it is the reason you no longer have a job, it is the reason you cannot afford healthcare, education, food, your mortgage. Neoliberalism is your future stolen.
Neoliberalism is everywhere, gutting labor standards, living wages, social contracts, and environmental protections. It is "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." It is a system that ravages the global south and creates global financial crisis - crisis in Spain, in Greece, in the United States. It is a system built on greed and thrives on destablizing shocks.
It allows the 1% to enrich themselves by impoverishing humanity.
This has to stop! We must usher in an era of democratic and economic justice. We must change, we must evolve.
On October 15th the world will rise up as one and say, "We have had enough! We are a new beginning, a global fight on on all fronts that will usher in an era of shared prosperity, respect, mutual aid, and dignity."
(source: http://occupywallst.org/article/10-15-call-to-action/)
Anyone who doesn't see the face of the Tea Party in this definition of Neo-Liberalism isn't paying attention, in my view.
(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism)