This is the third part of our five-part series on right-wing attacks against Occupy Wall Street.
Even though right-wing activists malign Occupy Wall Street demonstrators as both violent mobs and lazy slackers, conservatives contend that the movement is promoting communism in its call for corporate accountability.
Strategy Three: Claim That What Occupy Wall Street Protestors Really Want Is Communism
For many on the Right, calls for corporate accountability and for the country to address the problem of extreme income inequality translate to calls for communism.
Eric Bolling claimed that the Occupy Wall Street protests are composed of “communist, Nazi…pot-smoking, sex-addicted morons,” Erick Erickson dubbed the protesters “damn dirty communists” and Bill O’Reilly called the demonstrators “anarchists” and “loons.” Alan Caruba contended that the “Occupy Wall Street youngsters are the latest foot soldiers of Communism” as a result of being “thoroughly indoctrinated in government schools and by Hollywood and the media.” One conservative writer even tried to link the movement to the violent anarchists ofthe 1920s. WorldNetDaily columnist Erick Rush told his readers not to place “too much emphasis on the OWS protesters’ character and proclivities” and instead to stress that the demonstrators “are following in the footsteps of all communist revolutionaries, dim-witted though they may be in the aggregate.”
Religious Right luminary Pat Buchanan said that tackling concerns about the country’s growing income inequality is an un-American idea that will inevitably incite a communist revolt. “For from the beginning, America was never about equality,” Buchanan writes. “Equality, egalite, was what the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, Mao’s Revolution of 1949, Castro’s Revolution of 1959 and Pol Pot’s revolution of 1975 claimed to be about.”
Another conservative writer, Robert Ringer, suggested that Obama might use the protesters to suspend the 2012 election:
Whether it’s the Occupy Wall Street protesters, rioters in Greece, public workers defacing the State Capitol in Madison, Wis., or thugs tearing down the city of Oakland, brick by brick, they are all focused on the same objective: equal distribution of wealth and a classless society. They may not use the word communism, but communism is precisely what they yearn for.
…
Nevertheless, Obama and his class-warfare pals can win. The more obvious their failure becomes, the more angry and panicked the wealth redistributors, especially in Washington, D.C., will be. Their bull slinging is easy enough to laugh off, but if it doesn’t work – if it becomes clear that the Democrats are going down to defeat in 2012 – look for them to go to their weapon of last resort and use brute force to “temporarily” suspend elections.
Today on Faith & Freedom, Liberty Counsel Vice President Shawn Akers and conservative activist Ron Miller argued that the movement is intent on eroding freedom and imposing socialism on America:
