Conspiracy Theories and the FAR RIGHT

[nadinbrzezinski]

And how some of those talking points come here.

This is a fascinating read on conspiracy theories in the far right. and a few of them are familiar to us, here at the old DU... why we call a few of them FAR RIGHT talking points.

Here is one that is particularly relevant right now, but will also link to the full article for your reading enjoyment.

05 'Door-to-Door' Gun Confiscations
One of the defining features of Patriot/militia subculture is an obsession with firearms. Patriot groups stockpile them, train using them, and, perhaps most of all, worry about losing them. Any attempt to restrain their gun rights is viewed as the thin-edge-wedge of a New World Order crackdown. Patriots believe it inevitable that NWO forces in black masks and jackboots — and possibly UN blue helmets — will one day be sent door to door to take away their weapons by force. This fear is also stoked by mainstream figures within the conservative movement. Wayne LaPierre, the president of the National Rifle Association, a major player in the Republican Party coalition, is the author of a book entitled, The Global War on Your Guns: Inside the UN Plan To Destroy the Bill of Rights. In 2006, Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter attached an amendment to a domestic-security spending bill that prohibited the confiscation of legally owned guns during an emergency. The measure passed by a vote of 84-16.

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/fall/patriot-paranoia

Others that you will enjoy and we have seen include chemtrails, and yes the 911 was a government plot.

Enjoy...

[Wait Wut]

1. A friend of the husband's believes the door-to-door thing.

I told him to tell the guy, "Really? You know about that? The wife and I are on a list for interviews to be collectors. It pays really well."

I like poking at the reality challenged.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Be careful with folks like that

they might not be wound too tight...

Though I like to joke about them coming at night, men in black, with neuralizers. Yup, that was venus swamp gas.

[zappaman]

2. Very true.

Of course it's bullshit, but that doesn't stop the RW from promoting it.
However, the "911 was a government plot" isn't just a RW conspiracy theory. In fact, it seems to reside quite well in the left.

[hack89]

4. 9/11, Chemtrails, HAARP all have their believers at DU.

looney tune CTs are not a purely RW phenomena.

[zappaman]

5. +1

I think CT's are a good example of the far right and far left meeting as if connecting a circle..

[CJCRANE]

6. The difference is that conspiracy theories are mainstream

in RW circles nowadays.

They weren't mainstream on either side during the Bush era.

[whatchamacallit]

29. I personally don't believe we know everything about 9/11. Does that make me loony, hack?

[hack89]

30. Not as long as you stay away from CD, holograms, space weapons or mini-nukes. nt

[whatchamacallit]

31. I'd love to, but I keep getting lumped in with those folks

simply because I haven't accepted "The Word".

[hack89]

32. Unfortunately the loons are the face of 911 truth

that is what happens when a movement has no self discipline and can't settle on a single "truth".

[Odious justice]

7. Gun Nuttery is a political party all of its own.

Apparently the first thing many people do after buying a gun is become paranoid that it will be taken away. Which is why they need to get more guns. Sort of a good marketing plan if you sell or make guns. Not so good if you are trying to avoid getting shot by whatever dischevled/ disgruntled white guy who didn't get laid last night.

[hack89]

9. You do realize that gun violence is a multi-racial phenomena?

no race in America has a monopoly on gun violence.

[Odious justice]

13. The Monopoly guy is also white. Possibly a gun nut. Absolutely a Romney supporter.

Think about it. I haven't.

[frylock]

28. food for thought..

serial ell ohh ell!!

[Odious justice]

33. lol

[slackmaster]

10. Welcome to DU. Your choice of words and your ideas seem somehow...

...familiar.

[Odious justice]

14. is there a presence that you haven't felt for a long time?

My name is Dave, I've been a lurker here for many years.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. I would not say many

I woud say a few... but point taken.

[SidDithers]

8. If you go far enough LEFT, you run into the same conspiracy theories...

the political spectrum is a circle, not a line.

Sid

[zappaman]

12. See #5

That was the point I was trying to make.
You made it better.
+1

[Junkdrawer]

16. I think you've stumbed onto the solution to Global Warming....

Last edited Wed Aug 8, 2012, 06:06 PM - Edit history (1)

get Alex Jones to turn it into an Obama Conspiracy.

*poof* Disappears just that easy.

[hack89]

17. Many 911 Truthers became Birthers.

Philip Berg being the most prominent.

[Posteritatis]

21. Yeah, I definitely see most of those here, too

I think #4 and #5 are the only ones I haven't seen several times, and I admit to having been concerned about #3 at points with the vaguely worded "other programs" schtick under Bush..

[ieoeja]

23. Horseshoe, not circle. They get closer while remaining opposite ends.

Friend of mine used that analogy.

[pampango]

15. #4 (New World Order), #6 (9/11 as a government plot) & #10 (North American Union)

make their appearances here at DU from time to time. #9 (Federal Reserve tied to the New World Order) surfaces occasionally.

All these conspiracy theories may be primarily far-right CT's but not exclusively so. Some are shared by some on the left as well.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. They are, but... they are chiefly far right

Hell, we even have HAART appear, but for the moment, DU... I think I am truly done for a while.



It is just tiresome at times.

[pampango]

19. Looks like the Democratic senate candidate in Tennessee is on board with many of these CT's.

“Tea Party Style” Democrat Tied to Hate Group

While Tea Partier Poskevich lost in the Republican contest, self-described “tea party style conservative activist” Mark Clayton won the Tennessee Democratic Party’s nomination to run against Corker for the U.S. Senate.

Clayton goes to lengths that we’re not really sure that even Public Advocate does. For example, he apparently believes that there is a NAFTA superhighway being built from Toronto to Mexico, but disguised as the expansion of I-69 south of Indiana through Memphis to Texas, a step that he thinks could lead to the creation of the “North American Union” and the end of the United States. He believes, according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal, that “voters…need to protect themselves by voting against neoconservative New World Order boys like Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker.” He believes that a national ID card has been “secretly and electronically embedded in ALL Tennessee driver’s licenses.”

http://www.nonprofitquarterly.org/policysocial-context/20803-tea-party-style-democrat-tied-to-hate-group.html

I guess all the crazies can't be on the far-right. We have to have a few that maintain that they are Democrats (although the Tennessee Democratic Party claims otherwise in the case of Clayton).]

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. The tennessee dem party had another issue

From what I understand they did not run a competent candidate.

Partly it's a state surrendered at the national level, and a viscioys circle.

That said the left has a few too.

[kctim]

20. Man those people are whacko

The UN? Seriously?

EVERYBODY "knows" it's the evil Christians who are going to create a theocracy and go door to door and force people to read the Bible.
Well, that is EVERYBODY except those who know it's "really" the evil banksters who will go door to door and steal piggy banks.

[Junkdrawer]

24. Some of the ten are completely false. As for the rest....

I'll just say: Suppressed truth never goes away, but it never reemerges without first becoming seriously, seriously twisted.

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. Well, go over to the SPLC.

To me, I have come across people who believe them as gospel. Will not defend anybody or anything anymore.

[JHB]

26. A line in #3 will be familiar as a FOX line...

03 FEMA Concentration Camps
Following the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Domestic Terrorism held hearings on the Patriot/militia subculture that bred and nurtured the bombers. Throughout the hearings, a running theme expressed by Patriots was a fear that "urban gangs," directed by Washington and possibly acting in concert with U.N. and foreign troops, would sweep in from the coasts, confiscate their guns, and round them up. This home-invasion force would hold down the streets during the imposition of martial law, then send the members of Patriot militias to internment camps run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which most Patriot groups consider to be "the executive arm of the coming police state."

You want to know why people believe the bullshit about ACORN? Why they don't bother wondering if the New Black Panther Party could manage to fill a school bus with their entire membership?

Hell, race war was part of the "hetler skelter" Charles Manson was trying to bring about with his "family" holed up in the hills. Don't think Manson was a lefty just because he had long hair and dropped acid. This meme is old, Hatian Revolution old.


On the other hand, the first time I heard of FEMA camps, it was a right-wing meme infiltrating into the left: they were supposed to have been built by Reagan (it's what Ollie North was supposed to have been doing at FEMA) in anticipation of military action against Nicaragua. No "Vietnam style" protests with the lefty leaders whisked off to camps. It all got mothballed when political opposition to a war was too great and they went with the Contras instead.

This factoid was floating around well after it would have taken place -- when I heard it a lot of people were digging into what was going on down there. And now that I think about it, I'm not sure who I heard it from. It was on a lefty radio station, but it may have been one of the interviewers there who was more libertarian than lefty and was a vector for right-wing rumor-peddlers to drum up a new audience.

[nadinbrzezinski]

27. Just to clarify

Older than Haiti.