Interview: Author Anthony DiMaggio on Elections, the Tea Party, and Punk Rock

As a professor at Illinois State University, Anthony DiMaggio teaches American Government, Politics of Africa, Asia, & Latin America, Middle East Politics, Citizens and Governance, Peace Studies, Social Justice, and Ecology, and the American Presidency. As a radical writer with a rapidly growing audience, his work focuses on (among other things) mass media, U.S. foreign policy, education, public housing and segregation, social movements, ecology, and Middle East politics.

Most recently, DiMaggio is the author of When Media Goes to War: Hegemonic Discourse, Public Opinion, and the Limits of Dissent and next up in 2011 is the very timely, Crashing the Tea Party: Mass Media and the Remaking of American Politics.

On the heels of the recent U.S. elections, I figured it would be the ideal time to chat with Anthony and share our conversation with you.

DiMaggio Takes His Swings

My Conversation With Anthony DiMaggio

Planet Green: What led you to become a writer and how did you become focused on radical issues?

Anthony DiMaggio: I was always interested in politics from a relatively early age, since my mid to late teens. My family's generally pretty apathetic across the board, but I was sucked into alternative, underground culture at an early age as a skater and as someone who was (and still is to a degree) an avid listener to punk rock. Punk has long been known as sharing a radical political culture, with a do-it-yourself ethic that stresses non-corporate, independent labels, a rejection of mainstream cultural values, and is strongly distrustful of corporate America, American imperialism, and the entire bi-partisan spectrum of politics. My involvement with this subculture spanned most of my teens and early twenties, as an avid follower of many progressive punk rock bands, including the likes of Bad Religion, Propagandhi, Good Riddance, Pennywise, Fugazi, and many, many others.

PG: Did anything about the most recent U.S. election surprise you? If not, what is it about the American electoral process that you feel needs to be reformed/replaced immediately?

AD: This election was in most ways exactly what I expected. I have been predicting a significant loss of Democratic seats since early 2009. Strong losses for the party of the president are to be expected when the economy is stagnating to declining. Empirical voting studies in political science have long shown that two of the best predictors of losses in Congressional seats for the party of the president (especially during midterms) are: 1. The decline in the economy as reflected in declining national GDP and personal income, and 2. The decline in presidential approval. The first condition (a stagnating to declining economy) was present in the run-up to this election, as was a declining presidential popularity, which is common during the "honeymoon" period following the president initially taking office. The only thing that surprised me somewhat was the relatively large gains seen in the House, which were a bit larger than what most polling and news organizations were predicting. Still, there was little to nothing of substance that surprised me in this election. If anything, the election was remarkable for how similar it was to previous elections, with the exception that distrust in government is at an all time high and the number of protest votes against the incumbent party clearly reflected strong public disgust over the failure (or perhaps refusal) of the Democratic Party to significantly improve the economy through a push for real, New Deal-esque progressive policies that favor labor, public works, stronger health care reform, and real investments in American education. All these things are profoundly popular with the American public, and little of it was translated into the Democratic Party's political agenda and achievements.

PG: Why are you writing about the Tea Party phenomenon?

AD: The Tea Party is fascinating to me primarily because it is a house of mirrors and overwhelmingly a media creation. I've been observing the Tea Party on the ground and studying it as a local and national phenomenon for the greater part of 2010 (and in late 2009). Never have I seen such a "movement" that has become such a darling of corporate media, while doing so little to deserve such sustained and sympathetic coverage. As someone who studies media as my professional focus, I have always been fascinated in the ways in which media manufacture consent and dissent, in line with the agendas of the two major parties and corporate America. While my explanation for why the Tea Party is not a social movement and why it is primarily a media created fiction cannot be explained fully here, I can say very briefly that my local and national study (pursued alongside radical political analyst Paul Street) shows that there is virtually no sustained activism in local Tea Party "chapters" (what few of them exist across the country). Similarly, we've found no evidence of sustained or coherent organization of local chapters at the national level in the run up to the 2010 midterms. I

- The Tea Party Does Not Exist

- What "Populist Uprising?" Part 1: Facts and Reflections on Race, Class, and the Tea Party "Movement"

- What "Populist Uprising?" Part 2: Further Reflections on an "Astroturf Movement"

PG: To those feeling anger and frustration, what might you suggest as a better (than the Tea Party) outlet for such emotions?

AD: I think we need to see a striking resurgence of unionization in this country, in the public sector, but especially in the private sector. The biggest mistake Democrats made this time around was abandoning the Employee Free Choice Act, which single-handedly represented the best chance (over the mid to long term especially) to rebuild the Democratic support base that existed for so many decades (prior to and following World War II), which requires an institutional apparatus with wide reach (which could be coordinated through union activism), in order to effectively socialize Americans not to vote against their own economic interests by voting in Republicans. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has tried to "out Republican" the Republican Party in recent decades, as seen in the policies of Clinton and Obama. Clinton was fond of calling himself an "Eisenhower Republican" in private, while publicly proclaiming a commitment to end the social welfare state for the poor. Obama has pursued market based health care reforms very similar to those proposed by Republicans in the 1990s, while calling for a bi-partisan commission to gut Social Security. Essentially the Democratic Party today has devolved into what the Republican Party was forty years ago (when Nixon publicly accepted the mantle of Keynesian economics, which is still embraced, but to a limited extent by Democrats today). The Party has moved further and further to the right, while Republicans have simply moved off the spectrum so far to the right that their political views and extremism are simply off the charts. This issue has taken books to describe as well, with a few good ones I would recommend being: Off Center (by Hacker and Pierson) and Polarized America (by McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal)—both of which are must reads for anyone seriously interested in American politics and partisan polarization as it has played out in recent decades.

Back to the question though, the answer to our problem today is more activism and less apathy. We desperately need labor based activism (and left activism through other venues as well). We have a real opportunity to work toward institutional progressive reform in this country today, and I am not the least bit deterred by the recent electoral turnout. The Democratic Party has grown corrupt, complacent, too close to Wall Street, too opposed to real progressive policies, and too tepid in its challenges to conservatism and the pro-business, neoliberal "free market" ideology. While I would never personally vote for Republicans, the trouncing Democrats took in this last election was probably needed as a wake up call for the Democratic Party, and as a rude reminder that they need to start representing a real alternative to the Republican Party. Of course, the opposite could happen too, with Democrats moving further to the right, but that possibility is not pre-ordained. The opposite could also happen, with the party being forced to the left, if (and this is a big if) progressives and left activists get serious about mobilizing those who have been left behind by the bi-partisan driven neoliberal political era.

PG: Is it me or does hope and change feel just like shock and awe?

AD: I would certainly agree on foreign policy. Obama is trying to out-hawk the hawks by seeking to find a way to keep military bases in Iraq, while expanding a pointless, imperialist war in Afghanistan. Foreign policy scares (in line with your shock and awe perception) are the most popular way today of propagandizing the public in order to convince them to grant support for a permanent military state, being pursued to the tremendous harm of the general public in the U.S., which has redirected untold resources toward destruction and death, rather than toward productive things such as health care, jobs, education, renewable energy, and other endeavors that should be valued in any sane society. With Obama's expansion of the "War on Terror," it appears that the Democrats have become just as effective in fear mongering as directed against the public. To be fair though, "War on Terror" fear mongering among Democrats dates back to at least Clinton, whose National Security Strategy is virtually indistinguishable from Bush

PG: What is your take on Obama's domestic policies?

AD: On domestic policy, the Obama administration I do see some evidence of shock and awe. The secret efforts to create proposals (behind closed doors) to cut Social Security, as seen in Obama's bi-partisan Social Security commission certainly appears to have all the makings of a neoliberal hit job, as it is expected to unveil a plan for a major scaling back of the wildly popular Social Security shortly following the election. Then there's also the Democratic obsession with tax cuts, as seen in the stimulus and in the run-up to this election, which is a poison pill for the public in the sense that Democrats are playing right into the hands of Republicans and the business community. Rather than asking the question, what specifically can government do to help those in need of help during this time of crisis, Democrats are asking how they can further downsize government. Whether one is talking about tax cuts for the masses or the rich is irrelevant in this case, since either way the government is curtailing any possibility for expanding public works and other progressive policies and by removing the basic funds needed to fund such programs.

PG: How can readers connect with you and your work?

AD: I write fairly regularly for a number of progressive websites, including Counterpunch, Z Magazine, Firedoglake, and Truthout for those who are interested in reading my works. I haven't written quite as much recently as I would like since I've been hard at work on these Tea Party works, but I typically write a number of pieces every month for these sites regardless of how busy I am, and encourage readers to read them more generally for all the valuable content they run.