An open letter and warning from a former tea party movement adherent to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Editor’s note: The following is excerpted from on open letter posted on Reddit by vaslittlecrow. To read the full letter and to comment, please visit: http://redd.it/kyjo2.
1- The media will initially and purposely avoid covering your dissenting movement to cause confusion about what your movement is about within mainstream audiences. This is to enrage you and make you appear unreasonable, and perhaps even invisible.
2 - While the obfuscation is happening, stooges will infiltrate and give superficial support, focus and financial backing to the targeted movement. In the tea party movement’s case, it was the religious Republicans and Koch Brothers.
In this case, it’s the public sector unions (the organizations as quasi-human entities, not the members themselves) and ultra-rich liberals who pretend to care, but frankly do not serve liberators and freedom seekers but rather the interests of those who run the public sector unions and the Democratic Party. Democrat, Republican, these parties are all part of the same corporate ruling system. Case in point:
http://www.debates.org/
3 - The media will cover the movement only after this infiltration succeeds. Once the infiltration is completed the MSM will manufacture public media antipathy towards the movement by using selective focus on the movement’s most repulsive elements or infiltrators on the corporate Conservative media side, while the corporate Liberal media will create a more sympathetic tragic hero image -- this is the flip side of the tea party, but same media manipulation tactics. I go into greater detail on this tactic:
http://vaslittlecrow.com/blog/2011/09/08/how-the-media-and-ideological-groups-manipulate-your-beliefs/
4- Someone in the Democratic Party will feign sympathy for the movement and falsely “non-partisan” entities provide tons of funding and unwanted organization, just as was done with the tea party movement by Republicans. Once people assume that the pro-corporate government operatives are their friends, they will hijack the movement and the threat of your movement will be neutralized.
If this new Occupy Wall Street movement is to survive, here’s what needs to be done.
1 - Loudly denounce violence and disavow the violent rabblerousers of the movement. They do not help the cause.
2 - Be image conscious. Present your best face and call out those who act like fools within the movement. People are more likely to pay attention to you in your Sunday dress and bringing homemade food, than when you are drinking a bottle of Snapple and chomping on Big Macs while you are looking like a slacker rich hipster/unwashed hippie stereotype.
3 - Accept that you’ve already been infiltrated by the corporate-funded government, and work hard to say, and state what your movement is and is not about. “No, this isn’t about unions or Liberals, conservatives or bored spoiled brats. This is about 99% of our population being exploited and manipulated for the sake of profit.” “No we will not resort to violence.” “Yes, all we want is for the end of government collusion with corporate entities that are illegitimately recognized as people.” And, so forth...
4 - Don’t forget who you are as the illusions are thrown at you. Corporatists are masters of illusions. That’s the most powerful weapon they have. That’s how they sell products you don’t need and convince you to justify accepting atrocities for the sake of products. Don’t fall for it. Otherwise, your cause will be lost. Be wary of large donations from special interest groups or non-profit corporations that were not involved in this movement from the inception. Special interest groups are not your allies. Non-profit corporations are still corporations, and unfortunately, too many of them care more about donations than doing the right thing. Killing a movement with kindness is easy.
I wish your movement better luck than we had with the tea party movement before it got hijacked by the theocrats and corporatists. We used to be non-partisan too. We were the older version of you. But, I believe that as the media apparatchik and infiltrators start to twist your cause, you will understand the frustration us early adopter tea partiers felt and that we were not your enemy after all. A fascist oligarchy on the verge of winning is our common enemy. This should be your focus. Don’t be dazzled by the illusion as we were. For the sake of our future, know who you are.
I am sharing these observations, so you guys know what’s going on and can prevent the media from succeeding in painting you as violent slacker hippies rebelling without a cause, or from having the movement be hijacked by a bunch of corporatists seeking to twist the movement’s original intentions.