The Tea Partiers are closer to the New Left. They don’t seek to form a counter-establishment because they don’t believe in establishments or in authority structures. They believe in the spontaneous uprising of participatory democracy. They believe in mass action and the politics of barricades, not in structure and organization.
New York Times columnist David Brooks (who really needs to update his stodgy column mug) • Regarding the similarities between the Tea Party movement and the New Left (i.e. the hippies). Both are populist uprisings (though one can argue that Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks is responsible for astroturfing the Tea Party movement). Both don’t align neatly with the political party in power. Both have been known to get together on the National Mall en masse. Neither have leadership in the traditional sense. And both are important movements. However, Brooks notes that the things that failed the New Left – “imprudence, self-righteousness and naïve radicalism” – will fail the Tea Party movement. Interesting take. source
