A Tea Party/Occupy Wall Street Alliance?

Time magazine asked the question: Could Occupy Wall Street, the movement currently in 1,100 U.S. cities, join together with the tea party? At first glance, the question invites laughter. On the one side is the populist, anti-Obama, anti-government, anti-taxes, anti-immigration, anti-all interpretation of the Constitution, pro-right to bear arms movement. On the other side, from an ambiance that calls to mind the 1960s, are the youth (even if they are supported by a not-insubstantial fringe of the upper-middle class), who ask that Wall Street get what it deserves for destroying the economy. In principle, the (often extreme) right and the movement coming up from the left theoretically have few things in common.

In an essay published in Time magazine, the author gives importance to the fact that the two groups are equally furious that their dollars have served to save Wall Street, furious at the destruction of the American Dream that hopes, among other things, that each generation will do better than the one before it (at least from a social point of view) and furious at a system that resembles a plutocracy rather than a democracy.

But the similarities end there. Politico reports that the tea party has thrown itself into an effort to discredit OWS by circulating videos highlighting the excesses of certain OWS members, while searching for links between the militants who are blocking Wall Street (or the streets of San Francisco or Boston) and the syndicates. The funniest thing is that the tea party keeps expressing that its movement should be compared to Martin Luther King, while the OWS resembles Malcolm X and the militants of Black Power during the ‘60s.

Despite the tea party’s efforts to discredit its competitor on the left, Americans are not convinced. According to a poll taken by Time, 54 percent of Americans favor OWS, whereas only 27 percent (half of the favoring amount) support the tea party.

The tea party may be at a turning point (just before the precipice). Though the tea party has kept the Republican Party on a leash since Barak Obama’s election, the GOP is now trying to turn the tables. This has without a doubt affected the choice to make Mitt Romney the candidate for the White House, the man who is without a doubt the furthest from the ideas (if you can call them that) of the tea party. And Wall Street, which finances the tea party, has also signaled that it is time to calm them down. With their extreme behavior that is threatening the country’s economy, they are jeopardizing the interests of their own boss. They did their work: destabilizing the country and compromising the re-election of the 44th president — but they were not supposed to break the machine completely. Back to your kennel now!

At the same time, OWS has curiously gained credibility from certain Wall Street titans. Vikram Pandit, CEO of the giant Citigroup, confirmed to Businessweek that their sentiments were “completely understandable. Trust has been broken between financial institutions and the citizens of the U.S., and that is Wall Street’s job, to reach out to Main Street and rebuild that trust.” There is work to be done.