From Savior to “Parasite in Chief”

In 1829, David Bernard wrote that freemasonry was the most dangerous institution ever inflicted on mankind, “. . . an engine of Satan, selfish, demoralizing, blasphemous, murderous, anti-Christian.”

Six years later, Samuel Morse, inventor of telegraphy, warned of a new danger: the Jesuits. “There’s a conspiracy afoot and its plans are already being carried out,” to which an anonymous author added, “They spread their mischief across the country in order to popularize papistry.” Lyman Beecher ranted that Catholics would “decide our elections, divide our nation and topple our free institutions.”

Paranoia: the American constant

Historian Richard Hofstadter quoted these agitated voices in his 1964 essay entitled “The Paranoid Style of American Politics.” He describes a constant inherent in American history: the certainty among mostly right-wing minority groups that America and its system of values will soon be overthrown by a foreign culture whose agents have, in fact, already infiltrated society. At one time it was the Illuminati, then it was the Catholics or the Communists.

Hofstadter’s essay has lately taken on an almost creepy reality. Entire passages from it read exactly like descriptions coming from the new right that has risen from the swamp of political indifference almost overnight. With its “Tea Parties” and its apocalyptic rhetoric, the movement at first seemed to be a home for marginalized loonies; they have since morphed into a real political power to be taken seriously.

When Obama was elected, he promised to heal the national divide and pacify the cultural war that had raged throughout the 1990s. He mobilized liberals as no one before him ever had but won the election with the help of moderates. No one had ever looked more suited to play the role of unifier. He personified the diametric opposite of Hofstadter’s “paranoid style.”

But in his presidency, he was less successful than he was in his candidacy. Healthcare reform, environmental policy, the financial system, Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan: many voters are becoming impatient waiting for his promised “change.” The Obama lapel buttons, so ubiquitous even into the summer months, have since disappeared. His approval ratings continue downward.

“Too eager for compromise”

Recently in Washington, 150,000 gays and lesbians scornfully recalled his election promises. One year after his election they accused him of being “too cautious, too eager to compromise.” Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times, “Obama has endangered his own agenda by trying to do too much.” Krugman’s Times colleague Nicholas Kristof said that voters “were tired of his intellectual aloofness.”

No one has criticized him more sharply recently than Cornel West, the African-American philosopher, activist and Princeton University professor. Obama “listens to technocrats on his economic team who have never worried about the poor. He’s fascinated by their intelligence and their status. He has progressive instincts but he lacks the courage to risk anything really new – and perhaps to pay the supreme price for doing it like brother Martin,” he said, referring to Martin Luther King.

West’s dramatic words illustrate how quickly Obama’s magnetic attraction for the left has weakened. And the right, rather than accept his offered compromises, have turned even further to the right. The vacuum left by the neo-conservatives wasn’t filled by level-headed people like John McCain; it is being filled by the representatives of a movement Hofstadter’s analysis described point by point, namely, enraged white folks who again see their country going down the drain.

Fox News attacks the President

The new polarization can be seen in the three major news channels: liberal MSNBC and conservative Fox News are both enjoying an increase in viewers while the centrist, one-time market leader CNN continues to lose its audience. The strongly right-wing anchorman Lou Dobbs, who was CNN’s sole practitioner of opinion journalism, suffered the consequences and handed in his resignation last Thursday.

The “Tea Party Movement” got its initial start when CNBC reporter Rick Santelli, reporting live from the Chicago Stock Exchange, expressed anger over an aid program for homeowners who could no longer afford their mortgages. He raged that instead of guaranteeing loans for “losers,” the government should be helping those “who carry the water, not those who just drink it.”

Conservative Whips Hold Reform Plans Hostage

But the real heroes of the Tea Party Movement are right-wing radio talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, who sees his country collapsing into communism or Nazism every afternoon on Fox News. He recently began one of his typical tirades against the public option in healthcare reform by lecturing on Hitler’s eugenics philosophy, then went on from there to his own handicapped daughter and finally linked it all to Obama’s reform plans.

Rabble on the right quickly copied Beck’s iconography and rhetoric. Demonstrators call Obama “Parasite-in-Chief” or parody the “Hope” signs by replacing the word with “Treason.” Another sign read “Socialist health care financed by Communist China.” At a recent Tea Party gathering in front of the U.S. Capitol, some held up large photos showing piles of human corpses at Dachau bearing the caption “Nazi Healthcare.”

The strategy and images used by the new Right are obviously borrowed from the left, including the clenched fist symbol. Tea Party activists admit to having studied Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” the classic activism handbook that influenced Obama during his days as a community organizer.

Powerful Economic Lobbies Support the Tea Baggers

But the protests are by no means spontaneous; commentators refer to them as “Astroturf” rather than “grass roots.” Organizations like “FreedomWorks” are behind many of them, an organization financed by former presidential candidate and publisher Steve Forbes with ex-Senator Dick Armey as its leader. They are also backed by “Americans for Prosperity,” a group financially supported by Koch Industries whose founder, Fred Koch, was a godfather of the John Birch Society. In his 1970 song “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” Dylan lampooned the Birchers, singing, “I was feelin’ sad and feelin’ blue / I didn’t know what in the world I was gonna do / Them Communists they was comin’ around, / They was in the air / They was on the ground.”

Dylan’s song pretty accurately describes today’s “irrational right.” Beside their rejection of the new diplomatic direction in foreign policy, they have nothing whatsoever to offer other than their fundamental opposition to government and taxes. This ideological stance suffices to sabotage every project from healthcare reform to climate change agreements.

Rational Egoism – Philosophy of the Bush Republicans

One of the mentors of the new right is author Ayn Rand. Her main work, “Atlas Shrugged,” a paean to capitalism, individualism and selfishness, is one of the movement’s bibles. Yaron Brook, Director of the Ayn Rand Institute commented on the continuing strong sales of Rand’s book: “There’s a reason. In ‘Atlas,’ Rand tells the story of the U.S. economy crumbling under the weight of crushing government interventions and regulations. Meanwhile, blaming greed and the free market, Washington responds with more controls that only deepen the crisis. Sound familiar?”

Rand’s rational egoism collides with the ideological religious superstructure of the Bush Republicans. Dick Armey of “FreedomWorks” considers the Iraq war to be a mistake; he criticizes the restrictive immigration policies of recent years and says conservatives should avoid cultural subjects such as abortion. “When Republicans fight against governmental power, we win; if we fight to expand it, we lose,” he says.

Since the Republican establishment doesn’t hesitate to open its doors to what House Minority Leader John Boehner calls “legitimate political rebellion,” it’s apparent a fundamental shift in ideology is currently under way: Bush’s most loyal electoral base, the Christian Right, is losing influence. Social themes, those famous “values,” are receding into the background. The “culture wars” of the nineties are over, claims the New York Times.

But all the talk of communism and Nazism is infused with another motif: hatred of Obama himself as shown by the calls of “Traitor!” and “Kill him!” first heard at McCain-Palin political rallies and which continue to simmer in the American underground. The posters depicting Obama as The Joker, the villain in “Dark Knight,” come off as harmless in comparison.

Since Glenn Beck diagnosed Obama as having “a deep hatred of white people,” and called him a racist, it’s now O.K. for the right to depict him as Little Black Sambo, a character dating from America’s early history of racial hatred. The African-American radio talk show host Mason Weaver goes even further with his staggering rants. The President, he thunders to his predominantly white audience, wants to enslave the nation: “They break into your house, they steal your money. What ‘change’ are you looking for, a return to slavery?”

Image Problems

But the right wing seems to think that the most promising method of exposing Obama as an agent of everything foreign and un-American is the still-popular theory that he was born in Kenya. Or Indonesia. “Ken-ya trust Obama?” members of the so-called “birther” movement ask.

Culture critic Greil Marcus says, “Obama is the face of the country and the country is therefore Obama’s face. Anyone who questions Obama’s legitimacy also questions his own legitimacy. When a part of the nation rejects the president, it rejects the nation itself.”