Occupy Wall Street Isn't the Same Old Left vs. Right

Now that Occupy Wall Street has picked up steam, brace yourself for a “fusillade of attempts” to “force these demonstrations into the liberal-conservative blue-red narrative,” writes Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone. Already Democrats are claiming credit for the movements, and Republicans are vilifying it. It’s a bad trend, because “the Rush Limbaughs of the world are very comfortable with a narrative that has Noam Chomsky, MoveOn, and Barack Obama on one side, and the Tea Party and Republican leaders on the other.”

“What nobody is comfortable with is a movement in which virtually the entire spectrum of middle class and poor Americans is on the same page,” Taibbi writes. Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are actually natural allies against the “incestuous political and financial corruption on Wall Street and in Washington." The media, many politicians, and especially the banks would rather “draw phony battle lines, and then herd everybody back into the same left-right cage matches of old.” Don’t fall for it. This “isn’t part of the same old story.” (More Matt Taibbi stories.)