Right Steals Left's Language of Protest

From 'Nazi' to 'my body,' conservatives are the new liberals
By Jason Farago,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 18, 2009 7:57 AM CDT
Right Steals Left's Language of Protest
Clennon Alexander of Florida, holds up banner as she walks in Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, Saturday, Sept. 12, 2009, during a taxpayer rally.   (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

If you go to Amazon to buy Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky's classic treatise on left-wing protest, you'll see authors that other readers are also interested in: Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, and GOP Sen. Jim DeMint. For Politico, that's one of many signs that conservatives have co-opted liberal techniques, from singing the pro-labor song "This Land Is Your Land" at tea parties to wearing pro-choice-esque "Keep Your Laws Off My Body" T-shirts.

"They've taken all the progressive arguments and made them conservative arguments," one professor said. Last week's anti-Obama rally, for example, called itself a March on Washington, and its logo featured a stylized raised fist reminiscent of the black power movement—intentionally. "We’re trying to borrow some from the Civil Rights movement,” said an organizer. “This is something people said in the office. If we had been alive back in the 1960s, we would have been on the freedom bus rides." (More health care reform stories.)

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