attack its leadership instead.
I've posted this before, but I feel it is worth emphasizing again and again:
Never attack a movement's members, always attack its leaders.
We need to remember this no matter how tempting it is to do otherwise.
Why?
Not out of love for the opposition. Not out of service to the idea that "we are better then they are". These are noble ideas, but the are not the reasons I'm suggesting this.
I'm suggesting it because attacking movements backfires, and splitting them wins the fight.
Here's the science and the strategy:
Cognitive dissonance (the academic theory, not the common usage) suggests that attacking the supporters may actually increase their level of commitment.
This is what happed immediately after W stole the 200o election. Many of us, myself, included, basically said to his followers "F*ck you! We'll win the next one", which caused them to circle the wagons, even as W was starting to screw many of his supporters. Instead we should have pointed out said screwing
It works like this: Say someone has two contradictory ideas: "I smoke" and "Smoking is bad for me". This causes discomfort, which must be resolved. Unfortunately, it is usually resolved in an ego- protecting way, so you wind up with something like: "Smoking isn't bad for me" instead of "I'm stupid to be smoking and should quit".
If we make fun of a Tea Party supporters, they hold the following ideas": I like my candidate's ideas" and "All these people say the ideas are crazy". Well, no matter what the evidence for the lunacy, that's likely to resolve into "the ideas are right" instead of "I made a mistake". This is particularly true if they see criticisms as hostile.
On the other hand, if a supporter holds the following ideas "I like this candidate" and "this candidate just said that s/he is going to screw me personally ", the supporter is more likely to question the candidate.
For a great exploration of cognitive dissonance, see Tavris and Aronson's Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts.
Every time we paint the Tea Partiers with a broad brush as racist gun-toting lunatics, we harden their stances. We need to attack and expose the leaders who claim to support them while acting against them.
Apropos Rusty Cannon's Some Common Ground with Teabaggers? In which a Tea Party rant regarding the threatened destruction of Social Security is detailed, there is a lot of legitimate anger coming from these folks regarding the economy, it is just powering the wrong party. No less a prominent leftist than Noam Chomsky has pointed out that the lack of an organized Left has allowed the Tea Partiers to take their grievances in the wrong direction. As soon as the right begins to screw them, which it will, we need to make the case that progressives can provide the real solutions to the economic insecurity that has caused so much anger.
So what do we do? We need to show, loudly and visibly every betray of the economic (and privacy) interests of Tea Partiers made by:
Legislators
Campaign contributors
Political advisors
Sponsors of right wing media outlets
Et cetera
It is divide and conquer time. Holding our anger for the best opportunities is hard to do, but it is the way to win.