The Tea Party was a product of engineered state-legitimacy crisis, not grassroots spontaneity

Evidence

The beauty of the dynamic is that other segments of the NTC could then exercise their hostility toward both the federal government and the Federal Reserve with seeming justification, thus filling up most of the political space churning around reactions to the crisis. For instance, the Tea Party could not have existed without this “market-based” practice of shifting the onus of business-induced leverage onto the state, then having private interests run the bailout, and then, as a consequence, precipitating a crisis of state legitimacy. Once set in motion, it has been a juggernaut that moves of its own accord. In parallel with carbon trading, the medium-term failure of the policy turns into long-term political success for the neoliberals. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 950

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly parallels the ‘flawed-solution-as-long-term-success’ logic from the carbon-trading discussion in ‘Grafting & Growth’ analogically; more strongly, the mechanism of medium-term policy failure becoming long-term political success echoes how engineered crises consolidate control.
• XREF: connects to: The Tea Party’s apparent spontaneity was manufactured by networked astroturf organizations — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 131; Tea Party activism expresses fear of racial and generational change, not fiscal policy — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 651; McCarthyism and Islamophobia were systematic products of state power, not outsized individuals (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Tea Party activism expresses fear of racial and generational change, not fiscal policy #qualifies (0.80) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 651
• The Tea Party fused astroturfing with grassroots entrepreneurship into a self-propagating franchise #qualifies (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 908
• McCarthyism and Islamophobia were systematic products of state power, not outsized individuals #expands (0.78)
• Petty-bourgeois factions drove Tea Party and Occupy protests #complicates (0.78) — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 188
• A trading-floor rant launched the Tea Party populist movement. #responds-to (0.75) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 478
• A worldwide wave of anti-establishment movements-from Tea Party to Gezi-Park broke out 2009-2013 #contradicts (0.75) — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 167
• Local Tea Party groups self-financed through small-scale sales #expands (0.72)