We’ve seen this type of thing before..
Reader Greg S. sent me a link to this astonishingly creepy video from a group that calls themselves “” (“I’m tomorrow”, get it?) It has a bunch of teenagers imploring adult voters to vote to preserve conservative values by electing conservative politicians. But it goes way beyond that. It’s so over the top that it reminds me of the type of propaganda you’d expect from the Third Reich Nazis, brainwashing children into a passionate and unquestioning nationalism.
Here’s the video:
There’s a link on the YouTube page to www.Liberty2012.tk which is a bizarrely useless website. However, it does have the title “858 Tea Party” and a Google search of that turns up a page (on the same lame webpage template) with the same name: eight58teaparty.wix.com/858teaparty. This is the homepage of a group of southern California tea partiers who appear to be responsible for the video and the group for kids called im2moro. im2moro has a website, too: im2moro.org. This is where it gets interesting.
Their about page has this to say:
im2moro is an organization of young Americans who realize that if we don’t speak up today, we will be living in a very different country tomorrow – an America with limited freedoms and a dulled spirit. We must Own Our Future – Now! That’s why we’re determined to speak up to protect the liberties and principles that made our nation great.We don’t think of ourselves as “Republicans,” “Democrats” or “Libertarians.” We’re Americans, independent thinkers who believe in the framework of ideals that have formed and guided this great nation for over 200 years.
This is, of course, standard tea party fare. America is weak. America is sad. America is tragic. All is lost, be afraid for America. But what gets really Third Reich-ish about their approach is their use of children and their not-so-subtle use of subliminal messaging. The background to their page is this image:
Click for a larger version
Notice the messages there. They are a weird mix of liberal and conservative statements twisted into the nationalistic tea party ideology.
“We are accepting of others even if don’t always agree with our beliefs.”
“We care about our environment and believe it is our responsibility to protect it.”
“Unanimous doesn’t mean we agree on all the issues. We don’t. But it does mean we are united in defending the constitutional principles that made our nation great.”
The tea party approach contradicts most of this. They do NOT accept others that they disagree with. They call them “socialists” and “communists” and “anti-American”. This is the tea party way.
Also, I have never seen a tea party group lift one finger for an environmental cause unless it was to decry regulations that protect the environment as “government overreach”.
Tea partiers don’t even agree on what constitutional principles they actually uphold. On one hand they have a near-religious worship of the U.S. Constitution. On the other had, various tea party groups and candidates talk openly about repealing the 14th Amendment (defines citizenship as anyone born in the US regardless of their parent’s citizenship), the 16th Amendment (allows the federal government to tax the income of American citizens directly) and the 17th Amendment (allows for the direct election of Senators). They can’t decide if it’s perfect or in need of major revision!
But the scary bit about this is that they are trying to indoctrinate kids into their very limited worldview. Watching the video, the kids talk about “no more socialism, no more social programs” and Reaganism (who was president before they were born.) They talk about preserving English as our national language and a whole host of other nationalistic concepts. Their statement of principles and purpose page (pdf) lists seven principles which are pure tea party, nationalist dogma:
The video has had over a million views, helped along, no doubt, by promotion from Shawn Hannity. It’s a frightening bit of nationalistic propaganda and you can be sure that teenagers had nothing whatsoever to do with its creation other than to act in it. I realize that Godwin’s Law is always out there and comparisons of groups to the Nazis is frowned upon. But this type of thing smacks mightily of brainwashing and of using love of country as a way to move people toward a particular ideology. This type of nationalistic fervor is frightening and harmful to our country. I find it very worrisome.
