Yeah, a couple hateful signs means that the the basic sentiment of the movement.
How about this. Most all the anti-war protests during the Bush years were sponsored by ANSWER. All anti-war people are therefore also communists (ANSWER is a communist group).
That's actually much more of a connection since the tea party stuff is not as top-down as ANSWER was.
I was at my dentist's office which was along a place here where the tea party people had their signs (a couple miles along Montgomery Blvd. in ABQ). In fact his officI drove right past them. there was a bit of a traffic jam, and I was stuck at a few lights. I saw no signs like those. Not one. Anecdotal? Sure, but I saw a LOT of signs, and 0% were hateful. Had they been common, or even slightly common I'd have seen some. Heck, I had enough time that geek I am I started counting people and then guestimating the number per 1/10th of a mile on my odometer.
For someone who claims not to have an affiliation, you certainly regurgitate talking points on the whole tea party thing. Lemme guess, you prefer the likes of Amy Goodman? (used to listen to her daily to get a feel what real whack-jobs thought)
Bottom line is that random people show up, and you can say very little about their actual beliefs short of doing real statistics on them. Internet pictures of a few signs is utterly meaningless, as is a single recorded assault (under circumstances that would likely remove it from violence considerations).
You'd need to scour police records and record reported violence during pure demonstrations. Do demonstrations by different organizations, then non-political events as a control. You can do the same with signs if you like.
There is a video posted a long time ago that someone made walking through that big tea party rally in DC. It;s several minutes. You could likely go through counting total signs, then count "offensive" signs, or signs that suborn violence, etc.
Would be a useful benchmark.
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