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The Tea Parties, by contrast, are a phenomenon of right-wing revanchism that sees itself as "taking back" a country that has been "stolen" from them. Their sense of entitlement changes the protest calculus. They simply can't imagine that any means they might use to "get their country back" would be seen as illegitimate. It was "theirs" to begin with. The social and political others they protest against are illegitimate for not recognizing their fundamental right to steer the ship of state, regardless of what elections say.
Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Tea Partiers:
I hear GOP folks and Tea Partiers bemoaning the fact that media and Democrats are using the extremes of their movement for ratings and to score points. This is like Drew Brees complaining that Dwight Freeney keeps trying to sack him. If that were Martin Luther King's response to media coverage, the South might still be segregated. I exaggerate, but my point is that the whining reflects a basic misunderstanding of the rules of protest. When you lead a protest you lead it, you own it, and your opponents, and the media, will hold you responsible for whatever happens in the course of that protest. This isn't left-wing bias, it's the nature of the threat.Nonviolence was a necessary political strategy because black people were not seen as American citizens entitled to the full protections of the law. The practiced, careful decorum of black protesters predates the 1960s -- think the silent protest in Harlem in 1919. The widespread belief that black people weren't people the way that white people were people informed the decisions of civil-rights leaders to choose nonviolence as a political strategy, in part because force could not possibly have worked. And as TNC points out earlier in the post, that conscious understanding that, as a black person, your public actions at protest reflect on black people as a whole, has not really changed.
The Tea Parties, by contrast, are a phenomenon of right-wing revanchism that sees itself as "taking back" a country that has been "stolen" from them. Their sense of entitlement changes the protest calculus. They simply can't imagine that any means they might use to "get their country back" would be seen as illegitimate. It was "theirs" to begin with. The social and political others they protest against are illegitimate for not recognizing their fundamental right to steer the ship of state, regardless of what elections say.
If you're walking into a protest with that in your head, you're not only going to not care about whether or not you're being rowdy, you're not going to understand why anyone else would object. It would be like someone telling you not to object to a stranger breaking into your room and ransacking your house.
-- A. Serwer
