Occupy Wall Street: “The Left’s Tea Party”? Not Even Close

As the Occupy Wall Street protest/slumber party enters its fourth week and spreads to additional cities across the USA, it seems like a good time to examine the OWS phenomenon -- its origin, where it is now and where it’s going.

Occupiers: Anarchists and Marxists

Just as importantly, an examination of the reaction of the media and politicians to these protests is definitely in order, especially as a contrast to their reactions to the Tea Party, the genuine grassroots movement they so desperately want to compare to OWS.

The Occupy Wall Street protest that has been taking place for four weeks in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan likely began as a truly grassroots, or bottom-up movement. Those who set out to protest the government bailouts of Wall Street corporations and big banks -- something they viewed as unfair when everyday Americans were left to fend for themselves -- had sincere and legitimate grievances.

But as the movement reached its peak and looked likely to be reaching its end, it was usurped by the usual left-wing suspects: major labor unions, Organizing for America, the Democratic National Committee, the Communist Party of America and other far-left, progressive groups. It was only then that the media, especially the left-leaning, so-called "mainstream" media began to not just report on the movement (albeit inaccurately) but cheerlead and romanticize it. This of course in stark contrast to the way they either ignored or maligned the Tea Party.

Interviews with typical OWS protesters reveal that most of them have no idea exactly what they’re protesting against, or asking for. They seem to have more a list of demands -- namely things that the government and taxpayers owe them, than any coherent and unifying list of issues they seek to resolve.

Even when the occupiers can articulate their grievances, they’re a muddled hodgepodge of complaints and accusations. Their proposed solutions range from the anarchists call for an end to all government, to the Marxists demands for an ever-larger and more oppressive one.

And it is this lack of a cohesive message and unifying issue that has led to the demonstrators and their movement being co-opted by the very sort of people they actually should be protesting against. They have become pawns, useful idiots and worst of all… expendable to those that want to collapse capitalism and democracy for their own ends.

As evidence of this fact you can look to AFL-CIO union organizers telling OWS protesters that they need to be prepared to be arrested to get their point across. You can also look to featured speakers denouncing peaceful and lawful protests (and even Gandhi) and calling for French Revolution style violence and a return to the guillotine. Or you could look to liberal media personalities like Rachel Maddow and Bill Maher encouraging OWS protesters, marching uptown to the homes of people like NewsCorp chairman Rupert Murdoch to threaten violence.

Most recently you can check out a video from the progressive propaganda machine that is MSNBC, where Donny Deutch told Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski that what the Occupy Wall Street movement needs is a “Kent State moment”. That sort of irresponsible talk from an analyst on a cable news outlet is akin to putting a match to gasoline.

But it’s also important to listen, not just to the rhetoric, but the way that it’s delivered and received by the organizers and participants in these rallies. The cult-like way that the organizers deliver their messages, known at the “human megaphone”, is disturbing and somewhat absurd. But the hand signals that the participants use to interject in the conversations their collective assemblies engage in is quite revealing and really ridiculous.

In terms of comparisons between the occupiers in the various cities around the country and Tea Party movement, there really are none.

TEA Party Rally

The Tea Party movement was largely ignored or maligned by the bulk of the media. Occupy Wall Street has been embraced by the media who agree with the anti-capitalist sentiments of the squatters in Zuccatti Park and around the nation.

Tea Party groups got permits for their rallies, self-policed their ranks, obeyed police orders to move or disband, paid for their utilities and extra security and left the areas where they rallied cleaner than they found them.

By contrast, the Occupy Wall Street folks have illegally setup tents, defecated in public, refused to follow police instructions, attacked and provoked police, stolen power, used drugs and left the areas they’ve occupied in much worse condition than they found them in. Ironic considering the left is supposed to care so much about being “green” and protecting the environment.

The Tea Party has a clear and concise reason for existing, namely a desire for constitutionally limited government, lower taxes and a return to founding principles. They love their country and proudly fly the American Flag.

Tea Party supporters have a grasp of basic economics and history that leads them to the conclusion that socialism is a failed model that always collapses, but not until after it leads to tyranny and suffering for the people that chose it.

They also realized that in order to achieve their goals they needed to organize beyond protesting and elect constitutional-conservatives to Congress and the White House.

The occupiers want two different remedies to their perceived injustices; depending on which camp they’re from. The Anarchists want there to be no government and to be able to take what they want from those that have more. The Marxists want larger more oppressive government that will take from the wealthy and redistribute it all to them. They don’t want to pay taxes, but they want the “evil” corporations and the rich to pay even more taxes.

In both cases left wing professors who have never held a job outside of academia have indoctrinated them. The protesters don’t understand that if they were to be successful in collapsing our democratic-republic and our capitalist system, they would be no better off economically and be far less free to express their discontent.

Many of them say they hate capitalism and that the United States is as bad as Al-Qaeda. If they have an American Flag it’s either been desecrated, flown upside down or is being worn like a bandana around their face to conceal their identity. They proudly display signs that say “Socialism in NOT a dirty word” and copies of the Communist Manifesto. 

In the past two-and-a-half years politicians and the media alike, all without a shred of evidence, have accused the Tea Party of being racists, spitting on black members of Congress and using racial epithets. 

The OWS crowd has been caught on video being anti-Semitic, in multiple cities and on multiple occasions. They’ve been caught using hate speech they would excoriate a conservative for using and all these occurrences have been caught on video in only 4 weeks.

Now the Occupiers are taking things to a new level. The Occupy DC marchers were heard chanting “No justice? No peace” and repeated that call in interviews. Isn’t that the chant that Al “Resist We Much” Sharpton – MSNBC’s “elder statesman” – led protesters with immediately before the deadly Crown Heights riots?

On the same day, occupiers in Rome rioted, torching cars and smashing bank windows. Youths wearing hoods clashed with police all over the historic city.

The only real commonality between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street is that both groups oppose taxpayer funded, government bailouts of banks and big business. But even in this similarity there is a fundamental difference. The Tea Party wants that bailout money to go back to the Treasury to pay down the national debt. The OWS crowd wants that money to be redistributed to them in the form of government entitlements and handouts. 

Occupy Wall Street “the left’s Tea Party”? Not even close.