Wired Nation: How The Tea Party Drove an Anti-Immigrant Campaign

Authors

Louis Edgar Esparza, California State University—Los Angeles
Judith Blau, University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill

Keywords

Tea Party, Immigration, Social Movements, Latinos

Abstract

Emails written by activists mobilized by organizations affiliated with the tea party and supporting anti-immigrant legislation illustrate two primary kinds of tea party activists. Most activists articulate economic grievances and employ paralogical argumentation that, for them, resolves real grievances with anti-immigrant state policy. A smaller set stands against illegal immigration, a priori. Surprisingly, we also find that this email mobilization attracted a significant number of counter-protest emails. We conclude that tea party activists have channeled energy originating from legitimate grievances into scapegoating immigrant groups in Arizona in the campaign to support SB 1070. On the tenth anniversary of SSF, we hope the article also illustrates the continued importance of organizations such as Sociologists Without Borders and its scholarly interventions in behalf of human rights objectives in the United States and abroad.

Recommended Citation

Esparza, Louis E. & Judith Blau. 2012. "Wired Nation: How The Tea Party Drove an Anti-Immigrant Campaign." Societies Without Borders 7 (4): 426-446.
Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/swb/vol7/iss4/6