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Telling It Like It Is: Texas Tea Party Activist Articulates the Movement’s Fascist Ideology

Tech­nocrats march­ing in sup­port of aus­ter­i­ty: ready to slash bud­gets

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COMMENT:  A Texas Tea Par­ty leader has spilled the beans, explic­it­ly artic­u­lat­ing the clas­si­cal fas­cism of the Tea Par­ty.

With the excep­tion of the name, there is noth­ing new about these folks.

“Texas Tea Par­ty Leader Pro­motes Fas­cist Par­ty as ‘Pro-Con­sti­tu­tion, Pro-Amer­i­ca’” by David Edwards; The Raw Sto­ry; 3/19/2013.

EXCERPT: A tea par­ty leader in Texas is defend­ing his pro­mo­tion of the Amer­i­can Fas­cist Par­ty as some­thing he thought was “pro-Con­sti­tu­tion, pro-Amer­i­ca.”

James Ives, who was list­ed as the pres­i­dent of the Greater Fort Bend Coun­ty Tea Par­ty in 2011, con­firmed to The Texas Tri­bune on Mon­day that he had made a pro­mo­tional video for the Amer­i­can Fas­cist Par­ty and advo­cated tea par­ty prin­ci­ples on a Fas­cist Par­ty mes­sage board.

In the video, a man who looks like Ives sits in front of a Fas­cist Par­ty logo wear­ing a uni­form with yel­low shoul­der patch­es. Anoth­er pho­to shows a uni­formed man sit­ting in front of a fas­cist cross. The blog that inspired Nor­we­gian mass shoot­er Anders Behring Breivik describes fas­cist solar cross­es as “sym­bolic rep­re­sen­ta­tions buried deep in the regions of the brain where the pri­mal respons­es to stim­uli are rage, awe, and fear.” . . . 

. . . “From my point of view, it was all pro-Con­sti­tu­tion, pro-Amer­i­ca,” Ives explained to the Tri­bune. “I nev­er did any­thing… There real­ly weren’t enough peo­ple involved to be a gath­er­ing, let alone a ral­ly. It was basi­cally a scat­ter­ing of peo­ple across the con­ti­nent just com­plain­ing.”

The tea par­ty leader claimed that he his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Fas­cist Par­ty was part of an effort to write a nov­el about what he thought was a cabal. But instead of writ­ing that nov­el, Ives wrote on the mes­sage board about how build­ing the Fas­cist Par­ty in Amer­ica was “our spir­it, our call­ing.”

“It will be our great­est chal­lenge, and our sweet­est vic­tory, to final­ly sur­pass this dark men­ace, this numb­ing threat from the shad­ows, and replace it with the pure sun­beam that is our Fas­cist Faith, our Fas­cist Truth,” Ives wrote.

Discussion

2 comments for “Telling It Like It Is: Texas Tea Party Activist Articulates the Movement’s Fascist Ideology”

  1. It’s always inter­est­ing to see the Tea Par­ty forced to choose between two things it loves. Scary, but inter­est­ing. For instance, which one takes the top pri­or­i­ty prize: Fund­ing a vast nation­al secu­ri­ty behe­moth or show­ing the world how much they hate undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants. Take a guess...

    TPM DC
    STUNNER: House GOP Votes Down Own Bill To Avert Shut­down

    By Sahil Kapur
    Pub­lished Feb­ru­ary 27, 2015, 5:15 PM EST

    WASHINGTON — In a huge embar­rass­ment for Repub­li­can lead­ers, the House vot­ed down their bill Fri­day to avert a Home­land Secu­ri­ty shut­down hours before the mid­night dead­line.

    The House GOP plan was to pass a three-week stop­gap bill to delay the immi­gra­tion fight against Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma’s exec­u­tive actions until March 19.

    But even that failed to pass, los­ing con­ser­v­a­tives who con­sid­ered it too much of a sur­ren­der to a law­less pres­i­dent as well as Democ­rats who demand­ed a year­long DHS fund­ing bill with­out any restric­tions on Oba­ma’s immi­gra­tion poli­cies.

    The vote was 203–224. Fifty-two Repub­li­cans vot­ed against it, while 12 Democ­rats vot­ed for it.

    “This was a con­science vote about try­ing to uphold the Con­sti­tu­tion,” Rep. Wal­ter Jones (R‑NC), one of the “no” votes, told TPM. “If you’re sup­posed to cave in because you don’t want 30,000 peo­ple to lose their pay­checks — how do you make a stand if you don’t take a stand? ... It’s the only option we have.”

    The vote was held open for long after time tech­ni­cal­ly expired, in the hope that mem­bers would switch their votes and pass it. Numer­ous law­mak­ers yelled for “reg­u­lar order” on the House floor, call­ing for the vote to end. After it was called, House Major­i­ty Leader Kevin McCarthy (R‑CA) advised mem­bers that fur­ther votes may hap­pen on Fri­day or the week­end. Unless both cham­bers act to avert a shut­down, DHS fund­ing will expire on Sat­ur­day at 12:01 a.m.

    The House­’s next move is unclear, GOP law­mak­ers said.

    “I would­n’t be sur­prised if there’s a lapse” in DHS fund­ing, Rep. Steve Wom­ack (R‑AR) told reporters.

    After the bill was vot­ed down, Sen­ate Minor­i­ty Leader Har­ry Reid (D‑NV) called for Boehn­er to avoid a DHS shut­down by allow­ing a vote on the Sen­ate-passed bill that ful­ly funds the depart­ment.

    “The Repub­li­can Con­gress has shown that it sim­ply can­not gov­ern. Two months into the Repub­li­can Con­gress, we are already star­ing a Home­land Secu­ri­ty shut­down square in the face, even as ter­ror­ists around the world threat­en to strike Amer­i­ca,” Reid said in a state­ment. “Now is the time to drop the par­ti­san polit­i­cal games and come togeth­er to avoid a Home­land Secu­ri­ty shut­down for the good of our coun­try.”

    Many House Repub­li­cans weren’t ready to cave yet and pass a year­long DHS fund­ing bill, as the Repub­li­can-led Sen­ate did on Fri­day morn­ing. As it turned out, many weren’t even ready to pass a short-term fund­ing bill.

    “I’ve been mak­ing state­ments, as has the Speak­er, since [Decem­ber] that the pres­i­den­t’s action was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. So I’d have to be going back on that,” Rep. Tom Rooney (R‑FL) told reporters. “Right now I’m lean­ing to ... stand­ing my ground that what I’ve been say­ing for the last three months has­n’t been polit­i­cal bull­shit. ... The bot­tom line is you’ve got to be able to explain your­self to your con­stituents that you are not a total hyp­ocrite.”

    Speak­er John Boehn­er (R‑OH) vot­ed for the bill — a rare move giv­en that the speak­er typ­i­cal­ly does­n’t vote. His allies tried in vain to per­suade mem­bers that the real bat­tle was in court and that they should pass the DHS bill.

    ...

    “Right now I’m lean­ing to ... stand­ing my ground that what I’ve been say­ing for the last three months has­n’t been polit­i­cal bull­shit. ... The bot­tom line is you’ve got to be able to explain your­self to your con­stituents that you are not a total hyp­ocrite.” That appears to be the gen­er­al sen­ti­ment amongst the 52 GOP that vot­ed against the GOP-led bill. So now the employ­ees of the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty are going to go with­out pay so they extra-crazy mem­bers of the GOP can show they aren’t hyp­ocrites. Aha.

    Keep in mind that there’s a last minute push to get a one-week exten­sion on DHS fund­ing so a shut­down might be avoid­ed. But if it does­n’t pass by mid­night tonight...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 27, 2015, 6:20 pm
  2. a one week exten­sion on DHS fund­ing after it could­n’t get the three week exten­sion passed ear­li­er in the night. And pre­sum­ably, in a week, we’ll be right back here although House Speak­er John Boen­her is claim­ing that no promis­es were made about the new vote a week from now so we don’t real­ly know what’s going to hap­pen in the next week. We just know that it will prob­a­bly be more GOP insan­i­ty. Whether or not it’s the reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled GOP insan­i­ty or some new sur­prise remains to be seen:

    Nation­al Jour­nal
    Democ­rats to the Res­cue: Con­gress Averts Shut­down for One More Week
    Repub­li­cans could not muster sup­port for the three-week bill and had to move a one-week mea­sure instead.

    By Daniel Newhauser, Alex Brown and Sarah Mimms

    Feb­ru­ary 27, 2015 It was Democ­rats to the rescue—again.

    A huge bipar­ti­san coali­tion came togeth­er Fri­day night to approve a one-week fund­ing bill for the Home­land Secu­ri­ty Depart­ment, pre­vent­ing a par­tial gov­ern­ment shut­down with just a cou­ple of hours to spare.

    Near­ly every House Demo­c­rat joined most Repub­li­cans to pass the mea­sure 357–60 after GOP lead­ers failed to squeeze out a short-term vic­to­ry ear­li­er Fri­day when the cham­ber reject­ed a three-week fund­ing bill amid fierce oppo­si­tion from con­ser­v­a­tives, who were angered that the bill did­n’t include pro­vi­sions defund­ing Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s immi­gra­tion exec­u­tive orders.

    Democ­rats now hope the cham­ber will get to vote by March 6 on the Sen­ate-passed long-term clean DHS fund­ing bill, though Repub­li­can lead­ers claim no promis­es have been made on that front. But Speak­er John Boehn­er will still have to cope with fall­out from his own GOP troops, who are furi­ous that he has not been able to suf­fi­cient­ly bat­tle back against Oba­ma on a vari­ety of fronts.

    The dra­mat­ic 203–224 vote on the three-week bill, held open for sev­er­al min­utes to no avail, came after a day’s worth of intense lob­by­ing by the lead­er­ship of skep­ti­cal mem­bers across the con­fer­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the end. In total, 52 Repub­li­cans joined all but a dozen Democ­rats in vot­ing against the mea­sure, which was sup­posed to go to the Sen­ate so it could be approved lat­er Fri­day. White House spokesman Josh Earnest indi­cat­ed that Oba­ma would sign it, even though he would still pre­fer a full-year clean bill of the type the Sen­ate passed Fri­day morn­ing.

    Rep. Mike Simp­son, a Boehn­er ally, sug­gest­ed that the House could pass some ver­sion of the long-term Sen­ate fund­ing bill with the votes of “Democ­rats and a few of the adults” on the GOP side. That may well hap­pen after the one-week fund­ing mea­sure was approved.

    House Minor­i­ty Leader Nan­cy Pelosi sent a let­ter to col­leagues Fri­day night urg­ing them to sup­port the sev­en-day bill. “Your vote tonight will assure that we will vote for full fund­ing next week,” she wrote. Because the mea­sure came up under sus­pen­sion of the rules, two-thirds sup­port was required to pass.

    But Repub­li­cans quick­ly pushed back on the notion that they had struck an agree­ment with Democ­rats. “No such deal or promise was made,” said Boehn­er spokesman Michael Steel.

    Just before 8:30 p.m. on Fri­day night, the Sen­ate passed a one-week con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion under unan­i­mous con­sent. The move means that now that the CR has passed the House, the Sen­ate auto­mat­i­cal­ly deems that it has passed in the upper cham­ber as well. With that, the Sen­ate recessed for the week.

    At an ear­li­er meet­ing of the House Free­dom Cau­cus, a new coali­tion rep­re­sent­ing the cham­ber’s most con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers, Rep. Raul Labrador said the group had made a leg­isla­tive pro­pos­al to lead­er­ship. They sug­gest­ed lead­ers put on the House floor the same three-week CR, but with a pro­vi­sion man­dat­ing that it expires in a week if the Sen­ate refus­es a con­fer­ence com­mit­tee.

    Even a win for House GOP lead­ers may be fleet­ing, as they and their Sen­ate coun­ter­parts will have to find a length­i­er DHS fund­ing solu­tion that can clear both cham­bers by March 6, the new-and-improved shut­down dead­line. House con­ser­v­a­tives are insis­tent on block­ing Oba­ma’s immi­gra­tion poli­cies, but Sen­ate Democ­rats say they won’t give the nec­es­sary 60 votes to any­thing but a clean fund­ing bill.

    Repub­li­can lead­ers’ search for votes for the DHS bill became seri­ous enough that they decid­ed to scratch from Fri­day’s sched­ule the oth­er bill set to be considered—a rewrite of the No Child Left Behind edu­ca­tion mea­sure. It also was prov­ing to be a tough sell with­in the GOP con­fer­ence: Con­ser­v­a­tives object­ed to reau­tho­riz­ing a large fed­er­al pro­gram, while state inter­ests were putting sig­nif­i­cant pres­sure on mem­bers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those from Flori­da, New Jer­sey, and New York.

    Though mem­bers were cau­tious­ly opti­mistic about the DHS mea­sure com­ing out of a con­fer­ence meet­ing Thurs­day night, the long delay por­tend­ed trou­ble for the stop­gap bill. Lead­ers knew they’d lose a siz­able con­tin­gent of con­ser­v­a­tives, who believe that Oba­ma’s exec­u­tive action on immi­gra­tion has plunged the nation into a con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis and who refuse to vote for any mea­sure fund­ing the agency tasked with imple­ment­ing the action.

    “I don’t know how I go home and tell peo­ple that the out­come would have been dif­fer­ent if Har­ry Reid had still been in charge” of the Sen­ate, com­plained Rep. Mick Mul­vaney.

    And Rep. Steve Pearce said he was angry at the way the entire week was han­dled, as the House had to act at the very last minute.

    “This is a protest vote on the way the whole thing is work­ing,” Pearce said. “This is not a way to gov­ern.”

    But law­mak­ers aligned with lead­er­ship were frus­trat­ed by the con­ser­v­a­tives’ move.

    “They’re cav­ing into Oba­ma’s reck­less­ness by not show­ing they know how to tac­ti­cal­ly get three more weeks to con­tin­ue the fight. … You can’t say you want to fight and not under­stand tac­ti­cal­ly how to fight,” said Rep. Devin Nunes, anoth­er close Boehn­er ally.

    A larg­er cir­cle of dis­il­lu­sioned members—including some centrists—emerged as well, and lead­er­ship sources found the tar­get num­ber of votes to pass the bill elu­sive. Democ­rats did not make the task any eas­i­er for their GOP coun­ter­parts.

    If House Repub­li­cans could­n’t pass a short-term fund­ing bill for the Home­land Secu­ri­ty Depart­ment, Democ­rats thought they’d have the lever­age to force Boehn­er to fund the agency for the full year. The prob­lem: Their plan relied on the log­ic of the House Repub­li­cans whose judg­ment they’ve ques­tioned all week.

    House Minor­i­ty Leader Nan­cy Pelosi told her mem­bers to vote against Repub­li­cans’ three-week bill to fund DHS, a rare step to oppose a “clean” shut­down-aver­sion mea­sure. That’s because the Sen­ate has passed a full-year fund­ing bill—one Democ­rats much prefer—and Pelosi thought Boehn­er would be forced to take up the Sen­ate bill if his short-term CR went down. “If this were to fail, they would have no choice but to take up the Sen­ate bill,” she said in her Fri­day press con­fer­ence.

    Pas­sage of the long-term bill would come with large­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic votes, and the ire of much of Boehn­er’s cau­cus.

    Rep. Steve Israel said every one of his fel­low Democ­rats would help GOP lead­ers pass the Sen­ate’s long-term fund­ing bill. “We have con­sis­tent­ly bailed them out,” Israel said.

    But Democ­rats were con­vinced that the speak­er can’t afford to let the agency shut down, and they put that the­o­ry to the test. “If the [CR] goes down here, I think there will be great pres­sure and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for Speak­er Boehn­er say­ing to his peo­ple, ‘We tried and it went down, and we’re now going to pass [the Sen­ate] bill,’ ” House Minor­i­ty Whip Ste­ny Hoy­er said in an inter­view.

    Before the Demo­c­ra­t­ic whip oper­a­tion sprung into action, mem­bers sound­ed torn on whether to sup­port the bill. “I don’t want to see it shut down, but I think that run­ning the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty for two months, three weeks at a time is absolute­ly irre­spon­si­ble,” said Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep. Cedric Rich­mond. “Teach­ers do les­son plans longer than that.”

    Across the Capi­tol, Sen. Chuck Schumer had some sim­ple advice for the GOP.

    “The vote this after­noon means only one thing: Speak­er Boehn­er, fol­low Leader McConnell and put the Sen­ate bill on the floor now. It will pass and DHS will not shut down,” Schumer said.

    Sen­ate Repub­li­cans, mean­while, were large­ly unwill­ing Thurs­day to crit­i­cize the House­’s strat­e­gy, but estab­lish­ment mem­bers and con­ser­v­a­tives alike acknowl­edged that it is unlike­ly to get them any­where. Sen. Kel­ly Ayotte of New Hamp­shire called the three-week CR “delay­ing the inevitable.”

    Sen. Ted Cruz said he is hope­ful that the stand­off will work out in con­ser­v­a­tives’ favor, but warned that the par­ty’s strat­e­gy since Decem­ber has been one that was always “doomed to fail­ure.”

    “In fund­ing vir­tu­al­ly the entire­ty of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment [in Decem­ber], lead­er­ship delib­er­ate­ly gave away vir­tu­al­ly all of our lever­age, putting us into a box canyon where the pre­dictable result was what just hap­pened: lead­er­ship cav­ing, join­ing with Har­ry Reid and Oba­ma and giv­ing in entire­ly. That was a mis­take. We should­n’t have giv­en up the lever­age in the first place,” Cruz said, adding that he “eager­ly await[s] lead­er­ship’s next steps”.

    ...

    You have to love Ted Cruz’s lament:

    Sen. Ted Cruz said he is hope­ful that the stand­off will work out in con­ser­v­a­tives’ favor, but warned that the par­ty’s strat­e­gy since Decem­ber has been one that was always “doomed to fail­ure.”

    “In fund­ing vir­tu­al­ly the entire­ty of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment [in Decem­ber], lead­er­ship delib­er­ate­ly gave away vir­tu­al­ly all of our lever­age, putting us into a box canyon where the pre­dictable result was what just hap­pened: lead­er­ship cav­ing, join­ing with Har­ry Reid and Oba­ma and giv­ing in entire­ly. That was a mis­take. We should­n’t have giv­en up the lever­age in the first place,” Cruz said, adding that he “eager­ly await[s] lead­er­ship’s next steps”.

    Yes, why did­n’t the GOP shut the ENTIRE gov­ern­ment down instead? Noth­ing insane about that!

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 27, 2015, 8:03 pm

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