NAACP releases report accusing tea party groups of links to bigots

[kpete]

Source: Kansas City Star

NAACP releases report accusing tea party groups of links to bigots
By JUDY L. THOMAS
The Kansas City Star

Three months ago in Kansas City, the NAACP first raised charges of racism within the tea party movement. Today a report is being released accusing tea party groups of providing platforms to anti-Semites and other bigots.

“These groups and individuals are out there, and we ignore them at our own peril,” said NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous in a statement announcing the report. “They are speaking at tea party events, recruiting at rallies, and in some cases remain in the tea party leadership itself.”

...........

The new report describes what it calls links between tea party factions and white supremacist groups, anti-immigrant organizations and militias, according to a news release issued by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which wrote the document.

Not only have tea parties given platforms to extremists, the news release said, the movement is a recruiting ground for hard-core white nationalists who are “hoping to push these (white) protesters toward a more self-conscious and ideological white supremacy.”



Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/10/19/2332666/naacp-releases-report-accusing.html

---

http://www.naacp.org/press/entry/naacp-to-release-report-highlighting-troubling-ties-to-extremist-groups/

[marmar]

1. Doesn't matter. The MSM will ignore the evidence and accuse the NAACP of playing the race card.

nt

[jimmil]

2. Tea party racists?

Who would have thought???

[sinkingfeeling]

3. Love the quote from the Teabagger. Wonder why it didn't apply to them about ACORN.

“To attack a grassroots movement of this magnitude with sundry isolated incidents only goes to show the NAACP has abandoned the cause of civil rights for the advancement of liberal Democrat politics,” Russo said.



Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/10/19/2332666/naacp-releases-report-accusing.html#ixzz12uWuoitH

[alp227]

4. Haha, "sundry isolated incidents"? My ass.

Mark Williams once wasted an opportunity to prove that the Tea Party was not bigoted by . And all those "niggar" signs and stuff like that? All this "take our country back" rhetoric? Hardly "isolated" to me.

[Turborama]

5. N.A.A.C.P. Report Raises Concerns About Racism Within Tea Party Groups

Source: NYT

The nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization released a report Wednesday declaring that the Tea Party is “permeated with concerns about race,” an assessment that is likely to reignite a feud between the two groups.

The report released by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People argues that Tea Party groups “have given platform to anti-Semites, racists and bigots,” and have attracted white nationalists looking for recruits.

“The Tea Party movement has unleashed a still inchoate political movement who are in their numerical majority, angry middle-class white people who believe their country, their nation, has been taken from them,” it says.

The study was written by Devin Burghart and Leonard Zeskind of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which is dedicated to examining and mobilizing against racist, anti-Semitic and far-right social movements. It analyzed what it calls six nationwide Tea Party networks at the core of the movement, and concludes that leaders of all but one — FreedomWorks, a libertarian group in Washington headed by Dick Armey, a former House Republican majority leader — have raised questions about the validity of President Obama’s birth certificate.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/us/politics/21naacp.html

---

The report: http://www.teapartynationalism.com/



A very good short documentary called "White Power USA" that aired on Al Jazeera English in January which gives a really good insight: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x419829

The follow up discussion with the producer, Chip Berlet and Leonard Zeskind: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x420345

[demosincebirth]

6. You could have knocked me over with a feather!

[pampango]

7. NAACP backs report that ties racist groups to tea party

Source: Washington Post

The report, called Tea Party Nationalism, uses news articles, visits to white nationalist Web sites and observance of tea party functions to claim that tea party events have become a forum for extremists "hoping to push these (white) protesters toward a more self-conscious and ideological white supremacy."

Its findings cite that members of groups such as the Council of Conservative Citizens, which opposes all efforts to "mix the races of mankind," have become involved in tea party chapters, and that posters on the online white nationalist Web site Stormfront.org have written of "inflitrating" tea party events.

In the summer NAACP members called on tea party groups to "repudiate" what they called "racist elements" in the movement. Since then, the NAACP and various tea party supporters have clashed publicly over their motivation. In a July post on Twitter, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin challenged the notion that her fellow tea party advocates promote racism: "I'm busy today so notify me asap when NAACP renders verdict: are liberty-loving, equality-respecting patriots racist? Bated breath, waiting . . ." Jealous has criticized tea party supporter and conservative commentator Glenn Beck as divisive.

Wednesday's report also noted the presence of "birthers," or people who think President Obama was born outside the United States, within the tea party movement. A Washington Post/ABC News poll released earlier this year found that 35 percent of strong tea party backers said they believed Obama was born in another country. The same percentage of conservative Republicans agreed.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/20/AR2010102004020.html

[TheDebbieDee]

8. This is ridiculous! I don't need anyone to tell me that an organization

is racist. If they talk like racists and act like racists, they're racists! Why would I need them to admit to it for me to believe it was true?