Crashing the Tea Party Mass Media and the Campaign to Remake American Politics

The Tea Party has been the most high profile and controversial social movement in the US of recent times. But real analysis of the Tea Party remains slim - is it a genuine social movement or a topdown interest group created by the Republican Party and corporate funding? Crashing the Tea Party is based on first-hand observation of local Tea Party chapters, and undertakes a critical journalistic and scholarly examination from the national and local level. Paul Street and Anthony DiMaggio provide a carefully documented account which challenges conventional wisdoms. Crashing the Tea Party fills the gap in public understanding about this particular social movement, and how social movements in general relate today to the ideologies of left and right and the mass media.

Chapter 1 The Tea Party Does Not Exist; Chapter 2 “Turning the World Upside Down”; Chapter 3 Tea Party “Super Republicans”; Chapter 4 Tea Party Racism; Chapter 5 Return of “the Paranoid Style in American Politics”; Chapter 6 Astroturf to the Core; Chapter 7 Elections 2010; Chapter 8 Prospects for a Progressive Revival;

Paul Street, Anthony Dimaggio