RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.
Americans have a right to be worried: While President Obama is bringing in thousands of Muslim refugees who will impose Sharia law in Walmart stores, gay people are provoking God into punishing America through drought and famine. But don’t look to pot to calm you down, as it is simply a tool that Satan will use to devour you.
5) Benghazi Conspiracy Theories Never Die
While Jeb Bush has been confronted on the campaign trail about his brother’s disastrous legacy in the Middle East, conservative talk show host Laurie Roth knows who is really to blame for ISIS: President Obama. Roth writes in BarbWire that “Obama has been complicit in creating ISIS – ISIL by sending them (through Lybia [sic]) thousands of lethal and high-end weapons and money.”
“Not only did America, under Barack Obama’s leadership, weaponize the Islamic rebels, growing and creating ISIS and its offspring, but the weapons pathway and illegal activities lead [sic] to the murder of Ambassador Stevens and staff,” she said, adding that Obama appears to be “in full support of the Islamic caliphate and murderous genocide of Christians worldwide.”
Roth seems to conveniently ignore the thousands of airstrikes against ISIS forces carried out by a U.S.-led coalition, and also doesn’t realize that the right-wing conspiracy theory championed by Sen. Rand Paul and WorldNetDaily that the Obama administration was sending arms to terrorists via Libya has beencompletely discredited.
While Roth demanded that Rep. Trey Gowdy investigate the claim, a House GOP-led investigative report [PDF] found that “the CIA was not collecting and shipping arms from Libya to Syria” and that “eyewitness testimony and thousands of pages of CIA cables and emails that the Committee reviewed provide no support for this allegation.”
4) Obama’s Refugee Plot
Right-wing activists are increasingly outraged that some Iraqi and Syrian refugees have been resettled in the U.S. The U.S. has settled just over 600 refugees from the Syrian civil war, which caused over 4 million Syrians to leave the country. This week, one right-wing pundit described those 600 refugees as a Muslim “flood.”
One BarbWire columnist said that Obama is bringing in the refugees in order to create “pockets of potential jihad in America” and sow “a harvest from Hell,” while the editor of the Conservative Review wondered if the refugees will bring about “the death” of the American Republic and cause Jews to “flee” the country. One anti-immigrant activist, Ann Corcoran, warned that the administration is “ literally swapping out the people” of the U.S. by bringing in refugees who want “ to create an Islamic state throughout the world.”
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican candidate for president, offered his own take, insisting that the U.S. shouldn’t take any refugees who fled Iraq following the 2003 U.S. invasion since Americans “won the war.” Plus, Paul claimed, the refugees could increase the threat of terrorism and should be left in Iraq since they are “friends of the West” who should be left in the country to “form a better country over there.”
3) Walmart Sharia
Clearly, Muslim refugees have already brought Sharia law to the U.S., or at least, to Walmart stores.
Allen West, who since losing his House seat has become a Fox News contributor and the head of the National Center for Policy Analysis, wrote a just asking the question-style post on his personal blog this week entitled, “ Sharia law comes to Walmart?”
West reported that he was trying to purchase alcohol from a local Walmart when he noticed that the line he was in had a sign reading, “No alcohol products in this lane.” West saw that the “young man dong the checkout” in that line wore a name tag with what he determined was a Muslim name (“Let me just say it was NOT Steve.”) Aghast, West wanted readers to know that “this Muslim employee” was discriminating against him, making West a victim of Sharia law.
Of course, West was quickly forced to update his post with the response of a Walmart employee who noted that the sign was posted because “employees under 21 years old are prohibited from selling cigarettes and alcohol.”
Despite the fact that everything West stated — sorry, asked — in his post was wrong, he insisted that he still believes that Walmart might be “caving to Muslim demands” and re-titled the post, “More ominous signs of Christian persecution.” His (fake) case of (fake) persecution then led him to rant about the resettlement of Muslim refugees in the U.S., which he blamed on the fact that Obama is leading “the most anti-Christian executive branch in recent history.”
2) Blame the Gays
Religious Right radio host Rick Wiles thinks America is already experiencing divine punishment for its increasing support of gay rights, claiming that marriage equality is responsible for the drought in California and mass deaths of honeybees, piglets, chickens and turkeys. “America is in a state of rebellion against almighty God,” Wiles said this week, “and we wonder why the food supply is diminishing? God is cutting off America’s food supply.”
Wiles added that “it will get worse in the days ahead if the nation does not repent” by “shutting down the abortion clinics, all of them” and “abolishing same-sex marriage.”
One guest of his radio program, conservative activist Herb Titus, even said that gay people are turning Christians into their “slaves” and “will use legal force along with illegal force to get there way.”
1) Satan’s Plant
Colorado state Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt is not pleased that voters in his state voted in 2012 to legalize marijuana, telling “Pray In Jesus Name” viewers this week that people who use pot are inviting “a demonic spirit of drunkenness” into their bodies.
“When you begin hallucinating, I’m told, and you begin seeing these images,” he said, “you’re having apparitions and you are seeing and interacting with and welcoming to rule your heart a demonic spirit of drunkenness. That’s not recreational. It’s evil.”
Klingenschmitt said that before using pot, one should ask oneself: “Do you really want to be devoured by the devil?”
