Earlier this month, after Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich resigned amid outrage over his support for California's Proposition 8 anti-gay marriage effort in 2008, Will Saletan wrote a satirical column about the controversy on Slate called "Purge The Bigots" in which he sarcastically called upon activists to start targeting every one of the 35,000 people who donated to Prop. 8 in order to get them fired from their jobs as well.
On Friday night, Matt Barber posted his weekly column, first on WorldNetDaily but it was soon reposted on various right-wing websites, which was based entirely on his own mistaken assumption that Saletan's column has been serious, which sent Barber into a full-blow fury, warning his readers that Saletan had just given "his fellow rainbow-shirts their jackbooted marching orders" to begin the wholesale destruction of Christians in America:
No, this is not parody. It is not a bad joke. It is not Mr. Saletan satirically assuming the role of Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi propaganda minister, in an effort to underscore how utterly out of control his own “progressive” movement has become and, in the spirit of argumentum ad absurdum, gently coax his fellow bohemians from madness.
Neither was Slate joking. They were not joining in on Saletan’s fun, pretending, for a day, to be “Nationalsozialistischen Briefe,” Goebbels’ parallel publication, in a clever endeavor to use the power of metaphor as a scrub brush to wash away the stench of totalitarianism from an American left bathed in it.
No, these ruthless cultural Marxists are as serious as Josef Stalin's heart attack.
Continued Saletan: “To organize the next stage of the purge, I’ve compiled the financial data into three tables.” He then listed details from, and linked to, the Proposition 8 hit-list reportedly leaked by the Obama IRS and meticulously assembled and published by the Los Angeles Times.
This was all by design. It’s what led to Brendan Eich’s career beheading. But Eich was just the opening act. The list provides the exact names, employers, places of residence and dollar amounts of every single person in America who donated even a dime to the Golden State’s campaign to protect natural marriage. (I realize it’s hopelessly symbolic, but as matter of principle I will not link to the list.)
This is a level of voter intimidation and journalistic terrorism on the part of the Obama administration, the L.A. Times and Slate magazine that is unprecedented in American history. With their blessing, indeed their encouragement, Herr Saletan then gave his fellow rainbow-shirts their jackbooted marching orders:
“If we’re serious about taking down corporate officers who supported Proposition 8, and boycotting employers who promote them, we’d better get cracking on the rest of the list,” he said, candidly closing, “Otherwise, perhaps we should put down the pitchforks.”
You do understand this, right? Obama, the L.A. Times, Slate and America’s larger “progressive” movement are dead serious about purging Christians and other traditionalists from the workplace. It’s coming. Mozilla was just the opening salvo.
In the very same way Eich’s forced resignation was deliberately calculated to terrorize any American who might resist the left’s sexual anarchist agenda, and support some future, legally executed pro-family ballot initiative, the clear purpose behind releasing both the Prop 8 donor list and publishing the Slate article was to, likewise, instill terror in the hearts of Christians and other traditionalists who support natural marriage, family and human sexuality. It was a not-so-subtle shot over the bow.
It was also a call to arms.
It’s fight or flight time, America.
The only problem for Barber was that Saletan's column was a parody, so he was quickly forced to remove his column and re-write it, resulting in a new version that retained the original's dire message while additionally blaming Saletan for the fact that Barber had utterly failed to understand that his original column was satire.
Barber even went so far as to begin his re-written column with an author's note that admits that Saletan "contacted me claiming that his piece was intended as satire" before magnanimously announcing that "I have given him the benefit of the doubt":
Now, to be fair, Saletan later claimed that his article was intended as satire to illustrate the hypocrisy of his own “progressive” movement. Many, if not most, of his readers seemed to miss the joke,and the article’s comments section quickly filled with people agreeing that it was, indeed, time to “purge the bigots” (read: Christians).
The Fox News Channel observed that the piece “may or may not be tongue-in-cheek.” Satire is traditionally somewhat clever, witty and fairly easy to recognize as such. Mr. Saletan’s piece was none of these things. Nevertheless, I will give him the benefit of the doubt.
...
So here we have Mr. Saletan playing the role of today’s Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi propaganda minister, in an effort, albeit a clumsy one, to underscore how utterly out of control his own “progressive” movement has become and, in the spirit of argumentum ad absurdum, gently coax his fellow bohemians from madness.
Slate was apparently in on the fun too, pretending, for a day, to be “Nationalsozialistischen Briefe,” Goebbels’ parallel publication, in an equally awkward attempt to use the power of metaphor as a scrub brush to wash away the stench of totalitarianism from an American left bathed in it.
But as you read the article a frightening reality quickly rises to the surface. It’s neither funny nor untrue. None of it. The cultural Marxist American left is 100-percent serious about “purging” Christians from society.
They’re as serious as Josef Stalin’s heart attack.
Continued Saletan: “To organize the next stage of the purge, I’ve compiled the financial data into three tables” (he actually did this). He then listed details from, and linked to, the Proposition 8 hit list reportedly leaked by the Obama IRS and meticulously assembled and published by the Los Angeles Times.
This was all by design. It’s what led to Brendan Eich’s career beheading. But Eich was just the opening act. The list provides the exact names, employers, places of residence and dollar amounts of every single person in America who donated even a dime to the Golden State’s campaign to protect natural marriage (I realize it’s hopelessly symbolic, but as matter of principle I will not link to the list).
This is a level of voter intimidation and journalistic terrorism on the part of the Obama administration and the L.A. Times that is unprecedented in American history.
Joking or not, Herr Saletan then gave the rainbow-shirts their jackbooted marching orders: “If we’re serious about taking down corporate officers who supported Proposition 8, and boycotting employers who promote them, we’d better get cracking on the rest of the list,” he said, concluding, “otherwise, perhaps we should put down the pitchforks.”
You do understand this, right? Obama, the L.A. Times and America’s larger “progressive” movement are dead serious about purging Christians and other traditionalists from both the workplace and society at large. It’s coming. Mozilla was just the opening salvo.
In the very same way Eich’s forced resignation was deliberately calculated to terrorize any American who might resist the left’s sexual anarchist agenda, and support some future, legally executed pro-family ballot initiative, the clear purpose behind releasing the Prop 8 donor list was to instill terror in the hearts of Christians and other traditionalists who support natural marriage, family and human sexuality. It was a not-so-subtle shot over the bow.
It was also a call to arms.
It’s fight or flight time, America.
