The Occupy Wall Street campaign is sweeping the USA. What started as a small protest in Lower Manhattan (not-at-all-coincidentally on Constitution Day) has morphed into one of thousands in New York City alone, and similar protests have been mushrooming up in a host of other states. It bears comparison with the protest movements of the last few years – it is similar in character to those of the Arab Spring, and might be thought a natural progression of the Uncut movements in both the UK and the USA. There is even an element that those of the Tea Party, that gratifying resurgence of fiscal conservatism lauded by America’s cable networks, might identify with.

Despite their similarities, Occupy Wall Street has not been received as a crie de coeur of middle America in the same way that the Tea Parties were. CNN, who hosted their Republican presidential debate in concert with the Tea Party Express, were quick to discredit the multitude of people camped out in Zuccotti Park. Fox News, the Tea Party’s most vocal supporters, have likewise criticised the movement, characterising it as disorganised and aimless, and its participants as lazy, destructive and unpatriotic. References to bongo drums and banjos have been made aplenty, no doubt also to dreadlocks, didgeridoos and doobies. The networks and their anchors, with some notable exceptions, revel in depicting the protesters as a bunch of hippies full of misdirected anger and with nothing better to do.

This is nothing more nor less than a case of wilful ignorance. For the answer to the question of who the protesters blame for their problems, you need look no further than their name, Occupy Wall Street. Much as in the UK, America’s banks were recapitalised with taxpayer bailouts. In return, banks have paid their executives record bonuses and have been reticent to lend to businesses and potential and current home-owners. The same banks back up the Republicans’ demands for spending cuts, and help reinforce a narrative of austerity from which they stand apart; a narrative that results in schools going under-resourced  and America’s bridges, roads and railways withering away.

Another charge that is levelled at the Occupy Wall Street movement is the multiplicity of the people that make up its numbers. Perhaps it is hard to conceptualise given the comparative simplicity of the Tea Party, whose membership was mostly white, conservative and angry. However, the slogan of the movement – "We are the 99 per cent" - merely coalesces the abuses that the few have put upon the backs of the many in one phrase. The houses that have been foreclosed upon. The jobs that have been lost. The costs of living that have increased. The wages that have stayed stagnant. These are complaints that 99 per cent of the signatories to the social contract that underpins our societies can put to the remaining one per cent, who, by contrast, are doing better than ever.

Almost as aggravating as the callousness is the hypocrisy of corporate America and the politicians they pay. Keep government subsidies to energy companies making record profits, but cut Pell Grants to poor students. Relax regulations on pollution and safety standards, but legislate against reproductive rights. Allow corporations and PACs to donate unimaginable sums to their favoured candidates, but restrict the ability of the poor, the elderly, and the young to vote. In this way, America moves further towards becoming a society in which a few privileged individuals in politics, in business and in the media preside over the dispossessed masses – students, professionals, senior citizens, middle-class families.

America and Europe looked at the Arab Spring as oppressed populations casting off their despotic leaders and entering the fold of democratic societies at long last. Believe it or not, there is as much that needs changing about America, or Britain, or Greece, as there is in Egypt, Syria, or Tunisia. The desire of a minority for wealth and influence means that people of every political stripe, every cultural background, every religious persuasion – the 99 per cent – have been set up to take the fall. This is what Occupy Wall Street is, and those are their stated aims. Any dismissal of the movement by the American media is nothing short of categorical collusion.