Tea Party Movement: Astroturfing?

This week I was reading the news, and I found something that fit perfectly with the subject material this week in class. What better way to end the semester than to take a look at the battle between Tea Party activists and anti-tea party activists. On the one side, we have Fox News Host and radio personality, Glenn Beck, who champions the cause of the Tea Party Movement. The other side, the anti-tea party side, is led by our very own Cass Sunstein, who has been appointed by President Obama as the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The first question to ask is: what is the Tea Party Movement?

The Tea Party Movement is a protest movement beginning in 2009 that stands for a constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility, and free markets. Protests happen all around the country, and those who participate fight against the bailout of 2008 and the stimulus package of 2009. The Economist magazine has even labeled the movement as "America's Most Vibrant Political Force." Based upon stats given by Quinnipiac University, the majority of these activists are conservatives/republicans and 82 percent view the democratic party as unfavorable.

Now, what in the world does this have to do with new media and our class? In 2008, Cass Sunstein, while at Harvard Law School, "co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites (as well as other activist groups) which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens' faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists." (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/15/sunstein) Does this sound familiar? Does it sound like astroturfing? Because that's exactly what it is. I won't go into every minute detail, which is why I posted the link after the quote, so you can see for yourself. But I will give you a reader's digest version of Sunstein's paper.

Basically, Sunstein advocates that the Government's stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups." Sunstein also proposes that the Government should make secret payments to "independent" credible voices to strengthen the Government's messaging ("on the ground that those who don't believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government").

Sunstein believes these tactics should be used to infiltrate the Tea Party Movement and discredit their cause by creating fake websites that suck up to the government and destroy the oppositional websites. One of these astroturfing websites is the other 25, which is an anti-tea party movement website that defends the government from tea party criticisms and attacks the tea party movement as a fringe. According to Glenn Beck and Red State (a conservative based website), the other 25 purports to be an authentically grassroots campaign. However, "the designer of the program is affiliated with moveon.org and other leftwing websites. But the most notable is the donation page. You can make donations to Democracy in Action. Democracy in Action is not for individual activists to use. It is for small and medium size 501(c)(3) organizations and others on the left." (http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/39348/)

That last sentence is extremely crucial, because it was Cass Sunstein, who I will remind you once again is the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (which tries to do the following: reducing paperwork burdens, reviewing Federal regulations, and overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs) and may possibly be a Supreme Court Judge, has exuberantly supported using 501(c)(3) interest groups as agents of astroturfing.

Glenn Beck's fear is that the people of the Tea Party Movement are being painted as radical right wing crazies through these sites proposed by Sunstein. According to Beck, these websites and their followers have even infiltrated inside the Tea Party Movement and tried to discredit the participants by pretending to be racists and extremists. However, a liberal journalist from the Washington Post, Robert McCartney, sees things a different way: "I went to the tea party rally at the Washington Monument on Thursday to check out just how reactionary and potentially violent the movement truly was. Answer? Not very. Based on what I saw and heard, tea party members are not seething. They are not ready to explode racists, as some liberal commentators have caricatured them. Some are extremists and bigots, sure. The crowd was almost entirely white. I differ strenuously with the protests on about 95% of them. So in other words, this writer doesn't agree. Nonetheless, on the whole they struck me as a passionate conservative voice dedicated to working within the system rather than the dangerous militia types or a revival of the KKK. Although shrinking government is their primary goal, many conceded the that the country should keep Medicare and even Social Security. None were clamoring for civil disobedience, much less armed revolt. Someone in the Revolutionary War fired bullets. This time we're firing politicians, said Clinton Lee, a wedding photographer from Tampa."

Is astroturfing and effective method of persuasion? Sometimes it is. But remember, although it may be effective sometimes, the practice itself is always, 100 percent propaganda and, in this blogger's opinion, completely and totally unconstitutional and downright wrong. Beck may be a conservative who leans one way, and Sunstein may be a liberal who leans the other way, but by simply looking at the facts, one can clearly see that Sunstein's astroturfing proposal is as wrong as Glenn Beck makes it out to be. I'm going to side with Mr. Beck on this issue. I'll leave you with a link to Mr. Beck's "One Thing" from his Fox News show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_i1hnIRvCE