Archive for the ‘Racket of religion’ Category

Obama, Assassination, and the Antichrist Conspiracy

Posted: November 20, 2011 in American Right, American Superstitions, Anti-Christ, Anti-Science, Anti-Science Crazies, Atheists Are Smarter, Bad Religion, Barack Obama, Barack Obama Anti-Christ, Conspiracism, Conspiracy Crackpots, Conspiracy Crazies, Conspiracy Loons, Conspiracy Theories, Crazy for God, Fundamentalism, Racket of religion, Religion, Religion and the Brain, Religion Destroys the Brain, Religious Brain Damage, Religious Crazies, Religious Credulity, Religious Delusion, Religious Fascists, Religious Fundamentalism, Religious Insanity, Religious Kooks, Religious Right, Religious Violence, Right Wing
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Obama, Assassination, and the Antichrist Conspiracy
Chip Berlet on the connections
Randall Gross Nov 19, 2011

[Link: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/11/19/153758/35/Front_Page/Obama_Assassination_and_the_Antichrist_Conspiracy]

Even if the shooter is a thorough crackpot his delusions did not form in a vacuum. Hate sites like Prison Planet, Atlas Shrugs, and Farrah’s World Net Daily all do most of the heavy lifting for these conspiracy theories and delusions. Oprah is not a hate site, but she does her share of aiding and abetting delusion with promotion of pseudoscience and magical thinking disguised as pop pscyh self help, so it’s really not a contradiction that he addressed a video to her, even though many on the right will grasp at that and say aha!

The alleged shooter charged with attempting to assassinate President Obama, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, apparently thinks our Commander in Chief is an agent of Satan in an End Times war. Sarah Posner has explained the basics in an article “‘Obama the Antichrist’ and end-times doctrine.” I warned about the possibility of the demonization of Obama leading to more violence in a book chapter published in 2010 “The Roots of Anti-Obama Rhetoric.” Here is a slightly revised version of what I wrote:

Many Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. Others are convinced he was not born in Hawaii and is thus not eligible to be President. Some say Obama is the Antichrist of Biblical prophecy.

A September 2009 poll in New Jersey found that 14% of Republicans believed that President Obama was the Antichrist—Satan’s agent in the End Times according to one reading of the Bible’s Book of Revelation. Another 15% thought it might be possible.

The results across political allegiances, however, were also troubling; with 8% of respondents statewide saying they thought Obama was the Antichrist and 13% stating they “aren’t sure”. The poll also found that “21% of respondents, including 33% of Republicans, express the belief that Obama was not born in the United States”.

According to the pollster, these are “eye popping numbers” (“Extremism in New Jersey”, 2009). The mobilization of apocalyptic expectation among Christian Evangelicals in the United States has been shown to be an effective mobilization strategy by the Christian Right and allies in the Republican Party (Boyer, 1992; Fuller 1995). This is especially true among fundamentalists (Barron, 1992; Mason, 2002; Berlet, 2008). This millenarian mood is spread from religious into secular communities, often through conspiracy theories (Brasher, 2000).

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Forced Indoctrination At Gunpoint Wishes Mike Huckabee!

Posted: May 24, 2011 in American Fascism, American Right, Crazy for God, Fundamentalism, Mike Huckabee, Racket of religion, Religion, Religious Fascists, Religious Kooks, Religious Nazis, Religious Right, Right Wing, Right Wing Buffoons, Separation of Church and State
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Mike Huckabee Says He Wants Americans To Be Indoctrinated At Gunpoint

David Barton is the leading promoter of a brand of falsified American history altered to support the claim that America was founded as a Christian, rather than a secular, nation. As Chris Rodda, who has authored an entire book debunking Barton’s brand of pseudo-history, writes,

I was quite surprised… to come across a video clip from this conference on the People for the American Way (PFAW) Right Wing Watch blog with the headline “Huckabee: Americans Should Be Forced, At Gunpoint, To Learn From David Barton.” I had watched Huckabee’s speech. How on earth could I have missed a statement like that? Well, I didn’t. It had been edited out of the webcast that I had watched.

Kyle Mantyla over at PFAW’s Right Wing Watch had recorded Huckabee’s speech when it was streamed live on Thursday, and posted the ‘forced at gunpoint’ clip on Friday. By Saturday, when I watched the webcast on the United in Purpose website, that part of Huckabee’s speech had been edited out.

The webcast that I saw showed Barton leaving the stage as he ended his presentation, then the screen going black for a moment, and then what appeared to be the beginning of Huckabee’s speech. What was edited out was Barton returning to the stage to introduce Huckabee, and the first two minutes and forty-five seconds of Huckabee’s speech, during which Huckabee made his ‘gunpoint’ comment and praised David Lane, the man behind all of the American “Renewal” and “Restoration” projects that have popped up across the country during the past few elections.

[below: the unedited footage from Huckabee's speech, with the "joke" about indoctrinating Americans at gunpoint to be found at at 1:06. Footage courtesy of Kyle Mantyla of Rightwing Watch, who might have almost single-handedly consigned Huckabee's presidential hopes to the dustbin of history.]

I should also note that what Chris Rodda has to say about this has especial weight given that she’s arguably been the most indefatigable author to challenge David Barton’s sprawling falsified American history oeuvre, as a Talk To Action site search on Rodda’s extensive posts debunking Barton would suggest. Chris Rodda is author of the book Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right’s Alternate Version of American History which prominently features David Barton, head of Wallbuilders and arguably king of the “liars for Jesus”. Rodda is also Head Researcher for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

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Tim LaHaye’s Rapture Babble

Posted: May 22, 2011 in End the world nuts, Racket of religion, Rapture crazies, Religious scammers
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Tim LaHaye Against “Trivializing” Bible Prophecy

The Rev. Tim LaHaye, co-author of the “Left Behind” series of Christian prophecy novels, said [Harold] Camping “trivializes the very serious study of Bible prophecy by ignoring Jesus’ statement that everyone seems to know except him, and that is that no man knows the day nor the hour” that Jesus will return.”

That would be the same Tim LaHaye who launched his apocalyptic potboiler The Rapture on 6 June 2006, just so that he use the advertising tagline “The Rapture—Coming 06.06.06“. And let us not forget

versions of “Left Behind” for young readers, a comic book adaption, “Left Behind” t-shirts, a daily devotional guide, desk calendars and even a “Left Behind” board game. (In the game, players collect “Left Behind Tokens” that they can later use to defeat the Antichrist.)

Plus, of course, the controversial video game.

Not trivializing “the very serious study of Bible prophecy” at all.

Hypocrites, liars and scammers; what’s not  to trivialize about this banal mega racket, that masquerades as religion?!
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