NAACP Releases Report On Troubling Tea Party Ties

Image by bsryan via Flickr

By: Cord Jefferson

The NAACP and the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR) today fired the second official salvo in the battle between civil rights groups and the Tea Party movement. In a report released this morning, "Tea Party Nationalism," IREHR researchers Devin Burghart and Leonard Zeskind detail the origins of the Tea Party and its connections to militias, anti-immigrant organizations and white-power groups.

NAACP President Ben Jealous writes in a foreword to the report, "We know the majority of Tea Party supporters are sincere, principled people of good will," but, he adds, "links between certain Tea Party factions and acknowledged racist hate groups in the United States … should give all patriotic Americans pause."

"Tea Party Nationalism" comes several months after the NAACP passed a resolution condemning what it regards as troubling racism within the ranks of the Tea Party movement.

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