RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.
On top of all the dizzying anti-government rhetoric emanating from the Bundy Ranch fiasco, the right-wing still had time this week for extremist and bizarre claims about gays, Muslim-Americans and Hillary Clinton.
5. Bundy Ranch Rallying Cry
Fox News, Tea Party groups and the Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity have become major cheerleaders for Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his allied militias in their lawless stance against Bureau of Land Management, consistently citing debunked claims that the BLM is working on behalf of a solar energy project led by Harry Reid and a Chinese firm.
Fox News host Sean Hannity hinted that the government was trying to murder Bundy, and his network colleague Todd Starnes suggested that violence would have been an appropriate response to the authorities who confronted Bundy after his defiance of several court rulings.
Conservative activists and commentators have compared Bundy to Rosa Parks and Mahatma Gandhi and likened the militia members to the colonists who fought the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Astoundingly, the violent rhetoric of Bundy and his supporters was even too much for Glenn Beck.
4. The ‘Gay Jihad’
Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber, whose over-the-top columns are so unbelievable that he may in fact be deliberately trying to embarrass the conservative movement and undermine it from within, this week warns that “‘gay’ jihadists,” along with the “power class of cultural Marxists and left-wing statists,” are pushing an “anti-Christian, sexually anarchist sociopolitical agenda.”
“Most people are naturally repulsed by the mechanics of homosexual conduct,” Barber writes, warning that their “filthy practice” is “the squalid, unnatural and feculent abuse of both the reproductive and digestive systems. Yuck.”
Therefore, he warns that gays need to take over public schools and the media in order to “indoctrinate” the public against their better instincts to oppose gay rights.
But Barber goes on to lament that most people aren’t as smart or brave as he is, leaving them easy prey of the gay “jihad.”
3. America’s Star Of David Badge?
Eagle Forum’s national political chairwoman Sandy McDade says that while she wants the governor to require people show a photo ID in order to vote, she opposes the REAL ID Act because it will turn America into Nazi Germany.
McDade, who also heads Eagle Forum’s Louisiana chapter, testified at a Louisiana legislative hearing on Tuesday against a REAL ID compliant driver’s license bill, warning that a gold star on the license is reminiscent of the Star of David badge that the Nazis forced Jewish people to wear.
2. Birth of the Shoe Truthers
It was only a matter of time before conservative activists conjured up a conspiracy theory about the incident in which a woman threw a shoe at Hillary Clinton while she was delivering a speech in Las Vegas. Writing for Fox News commentator Bernard Goldberg’s blog, Arthur Louis speculated that “Hillary arranged to have the shoe thrown at her” in order to “make her seem presidential.”
Herman Cain, who at one point was the frontrunner for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, suggested that Clinton engaged in “fakery,” and tweeted an article from his website’s editor-in-chief, Dan Calabrese, about how “only a completely naive fool” would believe that Clinton didn’t stage the incident.
In the article, Calabrese carefully analyzed Clinton’s movements when the shoe was thrown in her direction, concluding that she had a “snarky grin on her face” and did not have “a natural reflex action.” “Listen carefully to the inflection,” he wrote. “I'm just asking: Did that sound sincere?”
Rush Limbaugh also weighed in, saying that he wouldn’t reject the “shoe truther” conspiracy theory because it all could have been a ploy to discredit conservatives who criticize the former secretary of state’s handling of the Benghazi attack.
So, it should come as no surprise that less than 24 hours after Chelsea Clinton announced that she is pregnant with her first child, we already have Clinton baby truthers.
1. Muslims Can Vote? What A Scandal!
Of course, Fox News hosts Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Steve Doocy believe that a new group working to increase the civic involvement of the Muslim-American community is a dangerous threat to the US, so they invited former congressman Allen West to spread insane fears about the Muslim Brotherhood taking over the country.
Because only to Fox News is an effort to increase voting and participation in public life an attempt “to wage jihad from within.”
