On his “Generations Radio” program today, right-wing pastor Kevin Swanson blamed the recent turmoil in the financial markets on the U.S. national debt, which he in turn blamed on John Maynard Keynes.
Swanson said that Keynes’ supposedly “nihilistic” economic beliefs were shaped by his sexuality. (Keynes is widely believed to have been bisexual, but Swanson claimed he was homosexual).
“It will be interesting to know that a homosexual ruined the world,” Swanson said. “Somebody will indeed write the story about this in the year 2060 or 2070, no doubt. This will be the great exposé of how the world economies came down all because of a homosexual who was promiscuous, who was perhaps one of the most wicked, flagrantly licentious men who has lived in the modern world and he becomes the grandfather of the modern economies, bringing them all down. It makes a lot of sense: Sexual nihilism, of course, will produce sexual burnout, and that must be tied to economic burnout and epistemological burnout as well when societies lose the will to live.”
Swanson isn’t the first critic of Keynesian economics to skew a quote from Keynes to claim that he didn’t care about the long-term impact of his economic beliefs. Back in 2013, American Family Radio host Bryan Fischer pointed to Keynes’ sexuality as evidence that “homosexuality in the end is going to be responsible for the collapse of the Western economy.”
Swanson said at a summit he organized in Iowa last year, which was attended by Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee, that God will punish America because the character Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series is gay and that gay people who fail to repent should be put to death.
