There is nothing more American than commodifying a revolution. We the people love to buy our Che Guevara T-shirts at Urban Outfitters, after all. And so perhaps it’s no surprise that both the tea party and Occupy Wall Street were very quickly co-opted by people looking to make a buck. The tea party got started in February 2009; by April, one Barry Coles (who also owns a company that calibrates police radar guns, among other businesses) had already applied for a trademark and begun selling gear at rallies. Similarly, within a month of OWS’s inception, opportunistic souls had begun putting the Occupy Wall Street tagline on condoms — which might have prevented certain other things from multiplying, but spawned a whole slew of similarly branded merch.
Sure, there are some extremely meaningful ideological differences between the two movements — and maybe you want to take that into account — but aligning with one or the other is also about picking a lifestyle. It’s about celebrity endorsement. It’s about schwag. It’s about figuring out which anti-sellout movement has sold out more successfully. Below, a brief guide to picking the brand — and we do mean brand — of populism that’s right for you.
