You can’t tell everything about a movement from the signs its supporters carry, but words do count for something.
That’s why the liberal-leaning Huffington Post Web site posted some of the photos that its viewers took at the April 15 “Tax Day Tea Parties” protests around the country and posted them in a special feature called “10 most offensive tea party signs.”
The “winners,” if I may call them that, and their locations included:
Madison, Wis.: “Obama’s Plan: White Slavery.”
Downtown Chicago: “The American Taxpayers Are the Jews for Obama’s Ovens.”
Sacramento: “Our Tax [Dollar] $ Given to Hamas to Kill Christians, Jews and Americans, Thanks Mr. O.”
Tampa: No words, just a color cartoon of President Barack Obama grabbing Uncle Sam from behind and slitting the old man’s throat.
Chicago again: “Barack Hussein Obama, The New Face of Hitler” — on a large picture of Adolf Hitler with Obama’s face bearing a Hitler-style mustache superimposed over the face of a picture of the original Hitler.
By the way, I have a modest proposal: Can we declare a moratorium on the use of Hitler as a metaphor for anyone but Hitler? Hitler’s in a class by himself. Let’s not cheapen his horrors by overusing his memory.
But, I digress. It is not fair to make too much of a movement’s most extreme participants or their signs. It is more fair to turn to its leaders. And that’s the trouble with the tea-party protests. The protesters don’t appear to have real leadership.
The protests were promoted, although not actually led, by conservative groups like the Washington-based FreedomWorks, led by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas.
The protests did have spokespersons. Lots of spokespersons. Ask anybody at the protests, which journalists did, and he or she instantly became a spokesperson.
More Top Picks Best Mountain Bike Shoes With Wide Toe Box
You can find spokespeople at the rallies, in political offices, on talk radio and on cable television, especially at Fox News, whose wall-to-wall coverage eagerly blurred the line between reporting and cheerleading.
The protests grew through blogs, e-mails and social networking Web sites and were directed at Obama’s spending policies.
Taxes offered a convenient issue around which the protesters could rally something deeper, an orphan movement on the right that is desperately seeking the strong coalition-building leadership that Obama brought to the left.
If one believes in the long-term pendulum swing of history, the right will come back. First they need the sort of big-thinking, wide-embracing agenda that Ronald Reagan brought to the Republican Party in 1980s. Until then, rally-style outbursts of multidirectional rage do about as much to solve the nation’s economic woes as a little boy who derails his train set.
Adding an unfortunately sinister edge to the tea-party coverage was the almost simultaneous release of warnings from the Department of Homeland Security. The agency has observed a resurgence of right-wing hate and serious threats of violence after Obama’s election.
The economic downturn, talk of new gun-control laws and the election of the first African-American president “present unique drivers for right-wing radicalization and recruitment,” the report said. Although it had “no specific information” of plans for violence, the DHS report said right-wing extremists may be gaining new recruits, particularly among military veterans, “by playing on their fears.”
The report also cited “single-issue” groups concerned with abortion, gun laws or immigration.
Such references alarmed and offended the groups to whom the report refers, including military veterans. I share their sense of offense, and not just because I happen to be a military veteran. Rather, I remember too many past abuses by federal and local agents, including illegal spying in the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, on peaceful anti-war groups and others on the left.
Protest groups of all persuasions have a right to organize peacefully without government intrusion. In return, leaders and organizers have a responsibility to police their own ranks for nut cases. Begin by reading the signs they carry.
———-
Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune’s editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/pagespage