Angry Voters, Right-Wing Populism, & Racial Violence: People of Faith Can Help Break the Linkages

[Shallah Kali]

We are in the midst of one of the most significant right-wing populist rebellions in US history as illustrated by the Tea Party and Patriot movements. Will religious and progressive activists provide a voice and outlet for populist fear and anger or will these dispossessed voices find a home among the potentially violent elements of the far right?

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/religiousright/2218?page=entire

“{When people who} oppose the Obama reform of health care claim we are losing our country they are using racialized, coded rhetoric,” says Ward, whether they are aware of it or not. Some pundits who backed the Tea Bag protestors and Town Hall criers were well aware of the racialized content of their rhetoric. Ward complains that “we see Pat Buchanan on television claiming that our country was built by white people… Really?” He wonders, “Why is this acceptable commentary on any television station?”

Ward believes “folks need to be held accountable for their racism. Too many people are hearing this coded rhetoric and deciding that the real problem with the economy must be folks of color, immigrants, and the Jews.” During the last period of Patriot and militia growth in the mid 1990s, Ward witnessed this coded racist rhetoric being tested in the margins of the right-wing media, though it has since moved into the mainstream. In the past year I’ve interviewed dozens of activists and scholars who see the same dynamics. All of us are worried.

“What I find surprising is the lack of an appropriate or effective response. Decent people need to stand up,” says Ward. “The Democratic Party pundits seem to think this is some sort of game; they act as if there are no legitimate grievances at all out here. They have to realize that the other side is not playing a game—they are playing with the lives and livelihoods of real people,” Ward points out. “Meanwhile, across the country, people are being pulled into right-wing populist movements, and from there, some of them are being recruited into White Supremacist movements.”

I catch up with the Rev. David Ostendorf by cell phone while he is waiting for a plane at an East Coast airport. He is the executive director of the CNC where Ward works. Ostendorf, A United Church of Christ minister, once led PrairieFire Rural Action, a group that tried to save family farms during a major agricultural economic crisis in the 1980s. “Back then we helped build a popular economic political movement among family farmers across the country seeking debt relief along with fair and sustainable government agricultural polices,” explains Ostendorf.

“Around 1984 we saw right wing and racist organizers try to move in and take advantage of our movement. They were trying to capture the emerging populist sentiments and steer them into the antisemitic and racist right. So we publicly took that on in our organizing efforts,” Ostendorf recalls. “After a few years we managed to push the racist right back under their rocks; and we also retained our focus on helping keep rural communities alive and struggling for economic justice.”

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http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/religiousright/2218?page=entire

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