Flea Party (Fleabagger)

“Occupy Wall Street” protests began in September 2011 in New York City, but the protests quickly spread to other cities. Some (mostly conservative) critics of “Occupy Wall Street” have called the protesters dirty hippies, full of fleas and in need of a good shower. The nickname “Flea Party” was applied, contrasting the political movement with the “Tea Party.” “Flea Party” has been cited in print since about October 4, 2011 and has been used by conservative author Ann Coulter.
 
“Fleabagger” (imitative of “tea bagger”) has also been used. The term “fleabagger” actually pre-dates the Occupy Wall Street protests.
 
Similar nicknames for Occupy Wall Street include “Poopstock” and “the great unwashed.”
   
       
Wikipedia: Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street is an ongoing series of demonstrations in New York City based in Zuccotti Park, formerly “Liberty Plaza Park”. The protest was originally called for by the Canadian activist group Adbusters; some compare the activity to the Arab Spring movement (particularly the Tahrir Square protests in Cairo, which initiated the 2011 Egyptian revolution) and the Spanish Indignants.
 
The participants of the event are mainly protesting against social and economic inequality, corporate greed, and the influence of corporate money and lobbyists on government, among other concerns. Through October, similar demonstrations had been held or were ongoing in over 70 cities in the United States and had spread globally.
 
Advance Indiana
Monday, October 03, 2011
Anti-Wall Street Protests Coming To Indianapolis
(...)
COMMENTS
HOOSIERS FOR FAIR TAX said…
People are calling it the “Flea Party” and I’m starting to agree. They are truly clueless and allowing themselves to be manipulated by machinery they don’t understand.
 
NorCal Blogs
Parallel Worlds
By Post Scripts on October 6, 2011 10:31 PM
by Jack Lee
(...)
COMMENTS
J Soden | October 7, 2011 8:45 AM
Big difference between the Tea Party and the Flea Party. Tea Partiers don’t use violence, the protest on weekends because they have jobs, they clean up their trash and don’t need union organizers or others to give them their talking points.
 
Would be interesting to know how many of the Flea Party folks are actually registered to vote . . . . .
       
Theblog at BillLawrenceOnline.com
Posted by Bill Lawrence at 10/7/2011 3:34 PM
Flea Party Vs Tea Party
As the unwashed Obama supporters continue their protest on Wall Street against the washed Obama supporters, a story regarding the privately owned park in lower Manhattan where they are camping serves as a comparison between their movement and that of the Tea Party.
 
The blog at BillLawrenceOnline.com
Posted by Bill Lawrence at 10/7/2011 10:49 PM
Flea Party Vs Tea Party II
Philadelphia Inquirer carried a large, front page story, Oct. 7, about the “Occupy Philadelphia” protest near City Hall which drew about 700 flea partyers.
 
The People’s Cube
Red Square
10/12/2011, 12:37 am
Stop me if you’ve heard this, but on the local radio in NYC a caller proposed to call this protest a Flea Party and the protesters Fleabaggers.
We must make an effort to stop these epithets from propagating like a herd of hungry fleas on Wall Street! Wait, that didn’t come out right…
 
NewsBusters.org
‘Occupy Wall Street’ Goons Are the Flea Party, Media Itching to Cover Them Favorably
By Ann Coulter | October 13, 2011 | 11:44
So far, the only major accomplishment of the “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) protesters is that they have finally put an end to their previous initiative, “Occupy Our Mothers’ Basements.”
 
Oddly enough for such a respectable-looking group— a mixture of adolescents looking for a cause, public sector union members, drug dealers, criminals, teenage runaways, people who have been at every protest since the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, Andrea Dworkin look-alikes, people 95 percent of whose hair is concentrated in their ponytails and other average Democrats—they can’t even explain what they’re protesting.
 
Los Angeles (CA) Times
How Occupy Wall Street can change its ‘flea party’ image [The conversation]
October 13, 2011 |  1:54 pm
Occupy Wall Street has confused reporters, ruffled conservatives, turned off feminists and garnered comparisons to the tea party since its inception almost a month ago. While the grass-roots movement certainly has its heart in the right place, the so-called 99% has failed thus far to craft a clear mission.

Conservatives have dubbed the movement “the flea party.”