When liberals wielded posters of Bush sporting a Hitler mustache at anti-war protests, just as when Tea Party activists do the same to Obama at anti-health care reform rallies, it becomes hard to take their message seriously. The body of the piece details the connection between the rise of the Tea Party and the reemergence of the violent, right wing, anti-government, and conspiracy theory oriented Patriot movement in response to Obama’s taking office. The latter consists of branches such as the aforementioned Celebrating Conservatism, The Oath Keepers, which “recruits military and police to refuse any orders to disarm American citizens or put them in concentration camps, threats they view as imminent,” and the Fully Informed Jury Association, which seeks “to nullify federal tax and civil rights laws.

The Tea Party legitimizes the Patriots and other paranoid, hateful and anarchic movements. Although many Tea Baggers are unaware of the presence of such groups in their midst and like to resist the charge that they are racists by occasionally highlighting blacks speaking at various rallies and emphasizing their purported fiscal concerns above all else, white supremacists love what they see and perceive an opportunity to recruit a new generation of like-minded radicals by blending their organizations, as in the case of Celebrating Conservatism, and handing out literature at protests. According to a report released by the NAACP, a discussion thread on stormfront.org, “the largest and most widely accessed of the many white nationalist websites,” contained the following comment: “take these Tea Party Americans by the hand and help them go from crawling to standing independently and then walking towards racialism.”

The mainstreaming effect of white supremacist-based anti-government conspiracy theories through the Tea Party is palpable. Previously normal people have been transformed into zombies. I can vouch for this in my own social circles. Relatives of mine were once Democrats turned neo-conservatives after 9/11 and finally Tea Partiers in reaction to Obama’s taking office. They are buying guns out of genuine fear that Obama will create concentration camps, and they believe we should do away with most of the federal government. Amazingly, they are Orthodox Jews who see no irony in the notion that their beloved movement is a tremendous recruitment tool and legitimizing force for neo-Nazis. Never mind, Tea Partiers are pro-Israel and can therefore do no harm.