Glenn Beck is the new Abbie Hoffman

[KingOrfeo]

As usual, Michael Lind nails it: The problem with today's American right is that its most visible manifestation is not a sober, policy-oriented, think-tank-based counter-establishment, but an irrational, theatrical counter-culture.

Street theater. Communes. Manifestoes. Denunciations of "the system." The counterculture is back. Only this time it's on the right.

Political factions that are out of power have a choice. They can form a counter-establishment or a counterculture. A counter-establishment (a term that Sidney Blumenthal used to describe the neoconservatives in the 1970s) seeks to return to power by reassuring voters that it is sober and responsible. A counter-establishment publishes policy papers and holds conferences and its members endure their exile in think tanks and universities.

In contrast, a counterculture refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the rules of the game that it has lost. Instead of moving toward the center, the counterculture heads for the fringes. Like a cult, it creates its own parallel reality, seceding from a corrupt and wicked society into morally and politically pure enclaves.

<snip>

When Buckley came on the scene in the mid-1950s, the American right was dominated by kooks: right-wing isolationists, Pearl Harbor and Yalta conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites and members of the John Birch Society like the palindromically named professor Revilo P. Oliver. Buckley and his movement conservatives, and later the early neoconservatives, struggled to purge the right of crackpots and create an intellectually serious movement capable of governing the country.

And yet the right of 2010 looks like the fever-swamp right of 1950 instead of the triumphant right of 1980. The John Birch Society, which Buckley and Goldwater expelled from the conservative movement in the early 1960s, was a co-sponsor of this year's Conservative Political Action Convention (CPAC). Folks who claimed that Eisenhower was a communist now insist that Obama is a socialist. (The conservative historian Russell Kirk had the wittiest put-down of the Birchers: "Eisenhower isn't a communist; he's a golfer.")

The tea partiers are the hippies of our time. True, they tend to be relatively affluent -- but so were the hippies. As Tony Hendra once told me, "You had to have a lot of money to take part in the Summer of Love."

Consider the following countercultural features of the emerging American right:

Anti-System Radicalism: Just as the New Left claimed that the New Deal era wasn't really liberal, so the countercultural right claims that the Republican Party from Nixon to George W. Bush wasn't really conservative. '60s radicals like Carl Oglesby denounced John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson as sinister "corporate liberals" in the same way that the radicals of the right claim that the two Bushes, if not the sainted Reagan, were inauthentic "big government conservatives." The radical left had Ralph Nader. The radical right has Ron Paul.

Luddism: A few decades ago it was the countercultural left that opposed science, technology and markets. Now mainstream environmentalists have arguably gone too far in adopting the market rhetoric of cap-and-trade. Stewart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, today seeks to save the environment by means of nuclear power plants, genetically modified crops and urban living.

Nowadays anti-science, anti-technology Luddites are more likely to be found on the right, among opponents of stem-cell research and evolutionary biology. And while the exaggerations and coverups of some scientific proponents of global warming undermine the claim that science on this subject is settled, it is clear that many conservatives reflexively believe the opposite of what progressives say on this and other subjects. If Al Gore changed his mind and announced that global cooling was imminent, one suspects many on the countercultural right would immediately warn of rising global temperatures and flooded coastlines. A counterculture inverts not only the widely shared values but also the agreed-upon facts of the dominant culture they despise.

Street Theater: The eclipse of the countercultural left by the countercultural right is evident in political protest as well. Carnivalesque protest is practically monopolized by the tea-party right in the age of Obama. In the U.S., at least, the street theater of antiwar and anti-World Bank activists cannot compete with the mass demonstrations of the tea partiers. The giant puppets of the left are out. Posters of Obama with a Hitler mustache are in.

Dropping Out: In a letter to other conservative activists in 1999, the late Paul Weyrich, the president of the Free Congress Foundation, called on the right to adopt an explicitly countercultural strategy. "I no longer believe that there is a moral majority," Weyrich wrote. "I do not believe that a majority of Americans actually shares our values."

Echoing the back-to-the-land hippies of the '60s and '70s left, Weyrich called on conservatives to secede from American society and form their own subcultural communities. "And while I'm not suggesting that we all become Amish or move to Idaho, I do think that we have to look at what we can do to separate ourselves from this hostile culture." Weyrich concluded by holding up the countercultural left as a model for the new countercultural right: "The radicals of the 1960s had three slogans: turn on, tune in, drop out. I suggest that we adopt a modified version."

During the freak show at CPAC, the crumbling old conservative establishment sought to prove that it's still relevant by calling for "constitutional conservatism" in its "Mount Vernon Statement." Signed by dignitaries of the old regime like Reagan's Attorney General Edwin Meese, the Mount Vernon Statement is less interesting for its content -- an attempt to reunite the libertarian, religious and foreign policy hawk wings of moribund "fusionist" or "movement" conservatism -- than for its dignified style and invocation of philosophical first principles.

The rise of the conservative counterculture may provide the beleaguered Democrats with a stay of execution. A serious Republican counter-establishment, putting forth credible plans for addressing the nation's problems and determined to collaborate with the other party to govern the country in this crisis, would be a greater threat to the new, shaky Democratic establishment than the theatrics of the right's Summer of Love.

Or should it be called the Winter of Hate?

Of course, it's not quite the same. Abbie Hoffman never had his own TV show; nor did the old lefty counterculture ever get massive funding from the major corporations or explicit support by leading members of Congress.

 

[Wok]

Oh.

Salon.

 

[Powertone]

c & p
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:caning::caning:

 

[Songcatcher]

Glen Beck is a globalists' tool. Writing an article on him is rather missing the point, Michael.

 

[koalabear]

Does anybody know what Palin had for lunch today, let's stick to the important things.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

Of course, it's not quite the same. Abbie Hoffman never had his own TV show;

Poor Abbie. Missed it by just a couple of decades.

http://www.frugal-cafe.com/public_html/frugal-blog/frugal-cafe-blogzone/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/keith-olbermann.jpg

 

[Xplorr7]

did somebody :: YAWN :: post something

 

[unregistered]

 

[RoryN]

Abbie Hoffman was an egotistical dumbfuck.

So, they do share that in common.

 

[John Doe]

As usual, Michael Lind nails it: The problem with today's American right is that its most visible manifestation is not a sober, policy-oriented, think-tank-based counter-establishment, but an irrational, theatrical counter-culture.

This reminds me of when President Obama told Senator McCain that they weren't campaigning anymore.

 

[The_Trouvere]

"A serious Republican counter-establishment, putting forth credible plans for addressing the nation's problems and determined to collaborate with the other party to govern the country in this crisis, would be a greater threat to the new, shaky Democratic establishment than the theatrics of the right's Summer of Love.

"Or should it be called the Winter of Hate?"

-----------

That is a good contrast between the hippies and the teabaggers. A second contrast is visual. Female hippies looked a lot better than female teabaggers. A third contrast was intellectual. Those who attended anti-war demonstrations could usually explain why they opposed the War in Vietnam. Teabaggers misspell the slogans they write on their signs.

 

[miles]

As usual, Michael Lind nails it: The problem with today's American right is that its most visible manifestation is not a sober, policy-oriented, think-tank-based counter-establishment, but an irrational, theatrical counter-culture.

"Pinot noir spew".

We all know how rational the Left is. Global warming, anyone?

 

[KingOrfeo]

"A serious Republican counter-establishment, putting forth credible plans for addressing the nation's problems and determined to collaborate with the other party to govern the country in this crisis, would be a greater threat to the new, shaky Democratic establishment than the theatrics of the right's Summer of Love.

"Or should it be called the Winter of Hate?"

-----------

That is a good contrast between the hippies and the teabaggers. A second contrast is visual. Female hippies looked a lot better than female teabaggers. A third contrast was intellectual. Those who attended anti-war demonstrations could usually explain why they opposed the War in Vietnam. Teabaggers misspell the slogans they write on their signs.

And the Yippies certainly were a lot more entertaining, in the laughing-with-them sense, than the Teabaggers.

 

[KingOrfeo]

"Pinot noir spew".

We all know how rational the Left is. Global warming, anyone?

The theory that has become consensus wisdom among the world's foremost experts in climatology? That global warming?

 

[The_Trouvere]

"Pinot noir spew".

We all know how rational the Left is. Global warming, anyone?

http://content.imagesocket.com/images/STFU_MILES_2bb8f.jpg

 

[JamesSD]

I've actually realized that a lot of Beck's viewers are people who realize it's theater (but agree with his hatred of Obama) or haters, similar to the early days of Howard Stern when angry listeners actually boosted his ratings.

Beck is the clown prince of right wing TV, and he likes it that way. He's an intellectual lightweight (O'Reiley and Rush are more caustic but far more intellectually sharp) who knows his place in the world and is laughing all the way to the bank.

 

[miles]

The theory that has become consensus wisdom among the world's foremost experts in climatology? That global warming?

Have you been asleep the past three months?

 

[KingOrfeo]

Have you been asleep the past three months?

Waitiminnit, it's dark outside . . . THE SUN HAS GONE OUT!

miles, you couldn't out-reason your grandmother on your most reasonable day of your life if you had an electric reasoning machine.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Beck is the clown prince of right wing TV, and he likes it that way. He's an intellectual lightweight (O'Reiley and Rush are more caustic but far more intellectually sharp) who knows his place in the world and is laughing all the way to the bank.

Hoffman never did that, to be sure.

 

[Powertone]

Glenn can not be an Abbie Hoffman anything...he has to be smacked across the face by a Gibson SG wielded by Pete Townshend first

 

[garbage can]

"Pinot noir spew".

We all know how rational the Left is. Global warming, anyone?

With a dash of "crap & tax", and a sprinkle of "card check".

 

[RobDownSouth]

Glenn can not be an Abbie Hoffman anything...he has to be smacked across the face by a Gibson SG wielded by Pete Townshend first

Damn, I'd heard this before but always thought it was an urban legend....and it turns out Hoffman DID get smacked by Townshend.

Learn somethin' new every day.....

 

[KingOrfeo]

Damn, I'd heard this before but always thought it was an urban legend....and it turns out Hoffman DID get smacked by Townshend.

Learn somethin' new every day.....

Probably the only person Abbie ever met who did more drugs than he did.

 

[Liar]

"Pinot noir spew".

Have a Bud, you elitist snob.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Oh.

Salon.

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:caning::caning:

Not very well thought out and developed...

I really like the Right as Luddites...

They hate SCIENCE!!!

DENIERS!














Too bad they were correct in their denial...