I have to admit, I enjoy browsing Tea Party websites. The sites are overrun by some of the craziest, teabagging, wingnuts on the web. There are some common themes. Here, for example, is one, “Second Amendment Rights, Any truth to the story that Secretary of State Clinton, word is she’s working on a small arms deal with I believe the UN to disarm all of us by creating a treaty with the world. I can’t confirm this however the NRA may want to look into it.” This teabagger’s posting mimics ideology of some of the most dangerous, racists, extremists groups our nations has seen in the fifty years and can be linked to the radical rhetoric of the rightwing militia group known as the Posse Comitatus.
Another example of recent blog, posted May, 14, 2010 that caught my eye proclaimed: Marxist Control of our Food and Water Supply. Here the author poses two questions to her readers: “”Two Questions for everyone to consider and then ask your members of ‘c’ongress if this is "Their and Obama’s version of Stalin’s Population Control Pogrom"?
1) Would the Marxist Government forced and supported conversion of Food Crops such as Corn and Soy into ETHANOL have anything to do with this?
2) Would the Marxist Government forced drought, closing canals because of a small fish, in the San Joaquin Valley** the most productive "Food Basked" in the World, have anything to do with this?
ITS CONTROL PEOPLE! ! !
CONTROL OF ALL PEOPLE AND ALL THINGS! !
**(Note: Your Marxist Government did turn on a "Trickle" of water for a Good Progressive Member’s District – the rest are Dry, still very dry & No Crops can be Produced)”
Source:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Wholesale-prices-rise-in-apf-29982751…” [1]
The Tea Party member goes on to quote the above yahoo.com article, “Food prices jumped by 2.4 percent in March, the most since January 1984. Vegetable prices soared by more than 49 percent, the most in 15 years. A cold snap wiped out much of Florida’s tomato and other vegetable crops at the beginning of this year. … Gasoline prices rose 2.1 percent, the department said, the fifth rise in six months. … In the past year, wholesale prices are up 6 percent, with much of that increase driven by higher oil and other commodity prices….”
The teabagger thus concludes these facts are in some way proof of Obama’s drive toward Marxism. She then goes on to tell us about a U.S. soldier, “Sgt. Hill, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, has been in Afghanistan only a few months as part of the new troop surge into the country.” According to this Tea Party member, Sgt. Hill is “experiencing food and water shortages.” She goes on to say, “Over weeks of correspondence Sgt. Hill has informed Digital Journal of the conditions the logistics of just being able to eat. General McChrystal announced that fast food places like Burger King and Pizza Hut were going to be shut down and moved to make more room for essentials the troops will need for war..” To the Tea Party, this means Obama is making our troops “ration food.” This to the teabaggers, is proof of Obama’s communist plot to create a New World Order.
Let’s take a quick historical look at the ideology behind this so called communist plot by elected American officials to use the U.N. to take over the world through the control of energy, agriculture, and guns. According to Nebraskastudies.org, back in 1969, the Posse Comitatus was founded by Henry L. Beach, retired dry cleaner and former member of the Nazi-inspired organization the Silver Shirts. The Posse Comitatus came to believe, “the true intent of the country’s founders was to establish a Christian republic where the individual was sovereign, and the Republic’s first duty was to promote, safeguard, and protect the Christian faith. They saw farmers as the victims of a Jewish-led, communist-supported conspiracy that had infiltrated the government. They would rob the farmer of his land through manipulation of land values, grain prices, and credit. Once they controlled the land, they would control the food supply. …
Under their extreme interpretation of the law, they believed that the income tax system was illegal. They contended the United States was a republic, which meant the individual was sovereign and the government had no power to enact laws that would "loot and plunder the wealth produced by the sovereign individual."
During the earlier eighties, the Posse Comitatus embraced the battle cry, “The farmers must prepare to defend their families and land with their lives, or surrender it all.” The Posse was active until the early eighties when in 1983 members of the rightwing organization were involved in a shoot-out which resulted in the deaths of two U.S. marshals. According to the Special Investigation assigned to the shooting, Samuel Van Pelt, the Posse had developed a “survivalist” mentality and believed the Trilateral Commission is the “ultimate evil.” Van Pelt stated, “They think the Trilateral Commission is trying to force farmers off the land through the banks and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation so it can control food production and the economy.”
In the mid-eighties and nineties, a variety of rightwing militia groups formed and imploded. Many white-supremacists,Christian Identity, and Patriot militias took root and developed their own mutations of the Posse’s ideology. The Anti-Defamation League has been tracking these groups since their inception. Here is a small excerpt from their website on the rightwing militia groups history during this period:
The extreme right in the United States has long had a fascination with paramilitary groups. Before World War II, right-wing and fascist groups such as the Silver Shirt Legion and the Christian Front marched across America. Later, the Cold War ushered in a new wave of paramilitary organizations like the California Rangers and the Minutemen. In the 1980s, survivalists and white supremacists formed a variety of paramilitary groups ranging from the Christian Patriot-Defense League to the Texas Emergency Reserve to the White Patriot Party.
The militia movement is heir to the right-wing paramilitary tradition, but it is heir, too, to another tradition, the anti-government ideology of groups like the Posse Comitatus. The Posse developed an elaborate conspiratorial view of American history and government, one that claimed the legitimate government had been subverted by conspirators and replaced with an illegitimate, tyrannical government. Posse members believed that the people had the power and responsibility to "take back" the government, through force of arms if necessary. As a result, many Posse figures engaged in paramilitary training. Most notable among these was William Potter Gale, a Christian Identity minister who was one of the founders of the Posse. In the 1980s, he appointed himself "chief of staff" to the "Unorganized Militia" of a group known as the Committee of the States. Gale’s appropriation of the term "unorganized militia" is significant; it is a statutory term in federal and state law that refers to the nominal manpower pool created a century ago when federal law formally abandoned compulsory militia service. In using the term, Gale implied that his organization was not only legal but that it was, in fact, a constitutional arm of the government. This argument would be amplified by later militia proponents (Gale himself died in the late 1980s) who claimed that militia groups were: (a) equivalent to the statutory militia; (b) not, however, controlled by the government; and (c) in fact, designed to oppose the government should it become tyrannical.” [3]
Last month, I pointed out that the Tea Party has actively been recruiting for a number of militia nationwide. I provided link to the Tea Party Patriot website posting a recruitment announcement for the Michigan Militia, an organization in which held gatherings that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols had attended. [4] On the same week as the Oklahoma City bombing, the Tea Party announced they are forming their own militia. Here is an excerpt from an Associated Press posted April 12, 2010:
“OKLAHOMA CITY — Frustrated by recent political setbacks, Tea Party leaders and some conservative members of the Oklahoma Legislature say they would like to create a volunteer militia to help defend against what they call federal infringements on state sovereignty. Tea Party movement leaders say the unit would not resemble militia groups that have been raided on suspicion of plotting attacks on law enforcement officers. "Is it scary? It sure is," said Al Gerhart of Oklahoma City, who heads the Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance, an umbrella group of Tea Party factions. "But when do the states stop rolling over for the federal government?" The discussions have been exploratory, and even proponents say they don’t know how the force would be organized nor how a militia could block federal mandates. Critics said that the force could inflame extremism and that the National Guard already provides for the state’s military needs.” [5]
One thing should now be clear; the Tea Party movement is slowly, but surely, beginning to embrace some of the craziest and most radical elements for the rightwing. Whether it is the climate change deniers, the Birthers, or the militia movements, all are, in one way or another, heir to the extremist ideology of the Posse Comitatus. The only questions are, 1) Does the Tea Party movement honestly believe it needs a militant arm to their party? 2) How long do you think a Tea Party militia will take to destroy any and all credibility teabaggers have left?
[1] http://teapartypatriots.ning.com/forum/topics/marxist-control-of-our-food
[3] http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/militia_m.asp?xpicked=4&item=19
[4] http://www.broowaha.com/articles/6574/tea-party-terrorists-americas-next-great-threat
[5] http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/04/12/2109111/lawmakers-tea-party-leaders-in.html