4 Reasons the Right-Wing Propaganda Machine Has Failed to Destroy OWS

In the two years between the 2008 election and the 2010 election, it seemed that the American right--especially the paranoid far right--really owned the moment. The invention of the Tea Party, the escalating influence of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, the Republican electoral sweeps of 2010: it all seemed like the right’s decades-long project of amassing power had reached new heights.

But now, less than a year after the 2010 elections, the right-wing is losing its ability to dominate the media's attention. Hardline conservatives struggle to find a candidate to go up against Barack Obama in 2012. Sarah Palin gets booed in public. Tea Party numbers are dwindling and now the group is ranking amongst the least popular groups in the country. Meanwhile, Occupy Wall Street has surged forward both in public consciousness and in popularity. The right-wing response to Occupy Wall St. has been limp and incoherent, mainly centered around spreading urban legends about dirty hippies and avoiding any substantive engagement.  

How did the right-wing lose hold of the narrative? Here are four reasons it has been unsuccessful (so far) in steering and reframing the discourse surrounding OWS and the movement's focus on the injustice of the 1%'s dominance of our economy and politics. 

1. Its “woe is me” pose may have lost luster in an ongoing economic crisis. 

The stock and trade of the American right is to play the victim. Right-wing propaganda in the form of Fox News, talk radio and direct mail is full of whining about how conservatives are just so oppressed because they can’t impose their agenda on others by fiat. The Tea Party’s motto was one of victimization: “I want my country back!” At first, many perceived the Tea Party as a populist uprising against unpopular initiatives like the bank bailout. As time has worn on, however, it’s become clear that the Tea Party has no real interest in holding corporations accountable, and that its leadership generally seemed interested in exploiting the bank bailout as part of a larger anti-government ideology coupled with a heartfelt devotion to the typical culture warrior nonsense.

Meanwhile, across the nation, people are losing their jobs and homes, and dying of treatable illnesses because they don’t have health insurance. With real victimhood all around us, it’s hard to find an ounce of sympathy for someone who feels victimized because they aren’t teaching creationism in schools, because they have to pay their taxes, or because they have to endure pressing “1” for English when they call AT&T.  

2. The obsession with sex. 

The Republicans swept many state elections and the U.S. House by convincing the voters that they intended to do something about the economic crisis and lower the unemployment rate. Instead, they devoted most of their attention to the supposed crisis of people having unauthorized orgasms. The House can’t pass a jobs bill to save their lives, but they can pass one bill after another attacking abortion rights or defunding family planning spending. The first big showdown between Obama and the House Republicans, in fact, was over condoms and the pill; House Republicans threatened to shut down the federal government in order to prevent American women from getting subsidized birth control pills from Planned Parenthood. On the state level, voters saw the newly elected Republicans do the same thing. One state after another is falling into disrepair and seeing unemployment numbers stay high, but their state legislatures are more interested in defunding contraception and restricting abortion than in paying attention to people’s economic concerns.