Advice to Tea Party Movement

David Horowitz is a writer and right wing activist. He was a former supporter of Marxism in the 1960s and then renounced his left-wing radicalism. He became an advocate for conservatism.

He states that the Left perpetuates the myth that they are for the "underdogs". The myth is the false belief that people have is that the Left defends and sticks up for the victims and the underprivileged. This is a lie.

Here’s the tactical advice he gives to the Tea Party Movement:

"1. Do the Unexpected. Raise Their Discomfort Level. Put them Off-Balance. Invert the Myth. All four of these objectives are accomplished by inverting the Myth. The left feeds off the Myth that they are on the side of the Underdog, they are serving the underserved, defending society’s victims, championing the oppressed. And that you are the oppressor. By picking an issue and framing it so that it inverts the myth you accomplish all of the above. E.g., by having a Die-In outside mammogram facilities you dramatize that ObamaCare will take a vulnerable group, women, and reduce them to budgetary statistics, and sentence individuals to unnecessary deaths. (ObamaCare will do this to everyone, but since women have been portrayed and are perceived as a victim group, this dramatizes the way in which the socialist state is an oppressor.)

2. Make your point in a sound-bite or an image.

3. Provoke the left. Since the left controls the media, the key to getting media attention is to tick off the left. When the left squeals, the media listen. Inverting their Myth is the best way to do this.

4. Pick an issue that exposes the fact that they are the oppressor and you are defending the “oppressed.” Conservatives are best organized around an issue. The left is a religious movement. They are saving the squirrels, the trans-gendered oppressed, the snail-darters, the planet. What unites them is their belief that America — capitalist America — is the Great Satan. Conservatives are generally already committed to religions in which the savior is not government but a divinity. They are pragmatic and attached to real world things and values. But conservatives can be galvanized into a movement if they perceive a threat to their way of life. Hence during the cold war, the threat of communism organized them around the issue of national security. The threat of Obama is doing the same thing (and Obama is really the same threat that we experienced from communism during the Cold War). Barack Obama and the socialist juggernaut he heads have persuaded conservatives that they are prepared to destroy everything Americans hold dear. So there’s no real problem in organizing conservatives now. Just focus on an issue that crystallizes Americans’ fear and frame it in a way that inverts the Myth and focuses attention on the source of the threat."

Interesting comments and suggestions. Thank you David for your perspectives. Perhaps the Tea Parties will incorporate some of your ideas into future activities!