By Joseph Lazzaro, U.S. Editor: Subscribe to Joseph's RSS feed
October 22, 2011 2:15 PM EDT
To paraphrase singer Britney Spears, "Oops, she did it again." In this case, she is conservative commentator/columnist Ann Coulter, who on the Fox News television talk show "Hannity's America" Thursday said the Occupy Wall Street protest movement is "a mob" and similar to "mob uprisings."
Coulter also told host Sean Hannity that the Democratic Party likes these type of protests because it gives them results, including an ability to implement a socialist domestic agenda.
Most mainstream political analysts, as well as political scientists, view the social reforms implemented by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (via the New Deal) and other Democratic presidents (including Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Bill Clinton) as creating a modest social-welfare state in the context of the United States' conservative corporate capitalist economic system, which dominates commercial activity. Almost no analysts view the U.S. social-safety net as akin to the extensive -- and, in some cases, socialist -- safety nets found in many Western European democracies.
Coulter: Occupy Wall Street is Not Peaceful
Coulter does not view the U.S. social-safety net as being modest, and she does not view the Occupy Wall Street movement -- overwhelmingly peaceful, with none of the social unrest found in, for example, Greece -- as being mild or constructive.
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"Generally, mob uprisings are associated with violence. I think this particular mob is so ragtag and pathetic. And, also, Americans aren't really going for it. This is not a general cross section of America. It's adolescents looking for a cause, it's teenage runaways, criminals, homeless," Coulter said, according to Fox News. "No, I don't think there are even many of those [trust-fund young adults]. It just is 18- to 22-year-olds who don't have a home to go to."
This is the third time Coulter has used extremist phrases to describe the Occupy Wall Street protest movement, which seeks economic and fiscal reform.
Earlier, Coulter said the Occupy Wall Street protest movement was similar to the Nazis' rise to power in Germany in the 1930s, and that the protesters also represent the start of "totalitarianism" in the United States.
Specifically, Coulter said the statements by Occupy Wall Street protesters, a movement that doesn't attach itself to the Democratic Party or any other political organization at this point, are similar to what was said "before the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and with only slight modification when the Nazis came to power ... This is always the beginning of totalitarianism."
Coulter did not explain how the largely left-of-center Occupy Wall Street crowd is the equivalant of the 1930s Germany Nazi Party, which was a right-wing, extremist group that was authoritarian in structure, not totalitarian -- it allowed private corporations to continue to operate -- and murdered millions of liberals and left-wingers.
Cantor Also Viewed Occupy Protests as 'Growing Mobs'
Coulter is not the first conservative public figure to use extremist adjectives to describe the five-week-old Occupy Wall Street movement, which has grown steadily with demonstrations in U.S. and abroad.
This month, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., called the Occupy Wall Street movement "growing mobs."
Cantor has since backtracked from that comment, but he has not apologized.
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