PT Barnum is credited with saying: "There's a sucker born every day" and history has proven him right. Robert Welch created the John Birch society by conning as many wingnut rubes as he could into forming an anti-government and anti-Communist advocacy group. It became very powerful in the early sixties by promoting crazed Communist conspiracy theories that reached as far up as the White House. Even William F Buckley railed against them as vociferously as he could so that the Republican party wouldn't be besmirched by their apparent lunacy.

The society had been founded in 1958 by an earnest and capable entrepreneur named Robert Welch, a candy man, who brought together little clusters of American conservatives, most of them businessmen. He demanded two undistracted days in exchange for his willingness to give his seminar on the Communist menace to the United States, which he believed was more thoroughgoing and far-reaching than anyone else in
America could have conceived.

His influence was near-hypnotic, and his ideas wild. He said Dwight D. Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy,” and that the government of the United States was “under operational control of the Communist party.” It was, he said in the summer of 1961, “50-70 percent” Communist-controlled...read on

Conspiracy nuts have been on the fringes of political discussion for a long time, but with the rise of Fox News, the Tea party and the Internet, Glenn Beck has snatched the crown from Welch and proudly wears it for all to see. In the process, he's making millions of dollars off the dupes and weak-minded followers of extreme right-wing orthodoxy.

Here's Beck's latest nonsensical conspiracy rant about the possible Islamic brainwashing of John Brennan:

Perhaps the most amazingly hypocritical thing about Glenn Beck is that his entire Blaze network serves as nothing but a repository for conspiracy theories, wild speculation, and outright lies while Beck holds himself up as a champion of "the truth."

Case in point. On his program last night, Beck took up the allegation that John Brennan, President Obama's nominee to head the CIA, may have secretly converted to Islam as part of a counterintelligence operation run against him by the Saudi government.

Despite the fact that this claim originated from one laughably unreliable source, Beck found it to be entirely "plausible," saying that "if somebody makes a charge like that, shouldn't we at least explore it" before saying that the media wouldn't even bother to investigate because "it seems like we can't even ask reasonable questions any more"

Yes, crazy indeed, but we've seen his Muslim hysteria many times before.

Beck: I believe that I can make a case in the end that there are three powers that you will see really emerge. One, a Muslim caliphate that controls the Mideast and parts of Europe. Two, China, that will control Asia, the southern half of Africa, part of the Middle East, Australia, maybe New Zealand, and God only knows what else. And Russia, which will control all of the old former Soviet Union bloc, plus maybe the Netherlands. I'm not really sure. But their strong arm is coming. That leaves us and South America. What happens to us?

Not much daylight between Glenn Beck and Robert Welch!

The idea that anyone who hates liberals and makes a lamebrain assertion about anyone at all immediately becomes plausible and should be investigated. Can you imagine if he did acquire a network?

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From the state that brought us Ron Paul, now comes Ted Cruz, a freshly nominated Texas GOP candidate who’s not going to let the UN tell him where he can and cannot golf.

Cruz, 41, is a Princeton- and Harvard-educated former U.S. Supreme Court law clerk who just beat out a far more experienced candidate to become a Texas GOP nominee for Senate. Blessed by Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, he is broadly favored to win November’s election.

Cruz hates a lot of stuff – gays, socialists, creeping Shariah – but what really gets his goat is the United Nations and its vicious plot to eliminate our Constitutionally protected Right to Bear Golf Clubs.

In January, as ThinkProgress observes, he posted on his website an insanely paranoid blog railing against Agenda 21, a nonbinding UN plan seen by rightwing paranoiacs (i.e. most of the GOP) as a sort of Trojan Horse for the new World Order. Describing Agenda 21 as a “dangerous United Nations plan” that “establishes a regime of rules that attempt to bypass Congress and the American people, handing over power over vast areas of the US economy to unelected UN bureaucrats,” he wrote:

Agenda 21 attempts to abolish “unsustainable” environments, including golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads. It hopes to leave mother earth’s surface unscratched by mankind. Everyone wants clean water and clean air, but Agenda 21 dehumanizes individuals by removing the very thing that has defined Americans since the beginning—our freedom.

OMG golf courses?

Yes. Because as is well known, the UN is run by socialists who want to keep your dad and his golf buddies permanently locked indoors, probably sweating on stationary bikes to produce electricity like those Brazilian inmates everyone’s talking about.

Right?

Not so much.

In the land of reality, Agenda 21 is voluntary plan for global sustainability signed by President George H.W. Bush in 1992 after the U.N.’s Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. It has precisely zero power to force anyone to do anything.

That hasn’t stopped our fringy rightwing friends from totally freaking out about it. The John Birch Society is on this thing like white on rice, running a national lecture tour on the supposed dangers of the decades-old nonbinding agreement.

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Think Progress reporter Lee Fang interviewed David Koch in a sidewalk ambush last year.

Boy, the apple didn't fall far from the tree, huh? What a swell family those Kochs are:

Billionaire David Koch has vowed to defend Wisconsin governor Scott Walker against the union-backed recall election underway in that state. In aninterview with the Palm Beach Post, Koch said that, “We’ve spent a lot of money in Wisconsin. We’re going to spend more.”

The we in question is Koch and his equally well-off brother Charles, who together have financed much of the conservative tea party movement through their group Americans For Prosperity.

Koch also told the Post that “there will be no stopping union power” if they win the recall election versus Walker, who jammed through legislation that strips public employee unions of their power to collectively bargain.

In the interview, Koch lavishes praise on his father Fred Koch who was a founding member of the far-right John Birch Society.

Fred Koch once wrote that the “colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America” and claimed welfare was designed to create a “vicious race war.”

The John Birch Society was founded in opposition to the civil rights movement, and promoted numerous conspiracy theories of a UN-led “one world” government. The group also famously opposed fluoridation of water, which it described as a communist mind-control plot.

If you witnessed the last GOP Presidential debate on Fox News, you witnessed a Republican field of candidates that have become a cross between the John Birch Society, the Moral Majority and Americans For Tax Reform. When Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed burst onto the scene via the College Republicans, they were considered the tea party of their day by both parties. Complete radicals who had insane ideas and weren't to be taken seriously. I mean, they really loved South Africa under Apartheid.

Fast forward 30 years and their ideas have become embedded into the heart of the GOP. Thomas Frank predicts much of what happened to Obama in interview with Amy Goodman back in August of 2008 because he understood their bag of tricks as well as anyone ever has, especially on deficit spending:

But the most insidious one, the most insidious scheme for permanence, the one that really strikes me, is the use of deficit spending by the right. OK, now, I don’t have a problem with deficit spending. You know, it’s — liberals have used it for decades very effectively. You know, it’s — if you’re a Keynesian — you know, it’s one of the tools that you use to, say, you know, get the country out of a recession or, you know, build low-income housing, or whatever it is that you want to do with the state, right? So, but the conservatives got into power in the early 1980s, and they’re handed this tool, the big old — you know, the power tool of deficit spending, and I’ll be damned, they run that sucker right into the ground, you know, and pile up the biggest deficit anyone has ever seen, short of, you know, World War II.
And what that does, that leaves the next administration to come along, which happened to be Bill Clinton, leaves him with this colossal Everest of debt that he has to deal with.

Sound familiar? This isn't a defense of Obama's decisions or actions, but a reminder what many of us talked about during the 2008 election. This is why history matters so much in politics, but it's something that the beltway media ignores as much as they can:

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[Photo via Judd Legum at ThinkProgress]

Seems there was a very good reason Tim Pawlenty decided not to show up for that pre-debate Tea Party rally in Greenville, S.C., last night: It was being run by some of the wingnuttiest, far-right elements in America:

According to [its] official program, the pre-debate “Freedom Rally” is sponsored by several extremist groups, including the Oath Keepers militia group and the radical anti-communist John Birch Society. You can see a picture of the program here.

And the speakers were straight out of casting central for rattle-eyed nutcases -- right along side GOP stalwarts like their new governor:

The rally also featured a cadre of high profile speakers, including Judge Roy Moore, the former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice who lost his job after refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building, and Nikki Haley, South Carolina's first female governor.

Yep, that would be the same Roy Moore who flirted with a presidential bid under the banner of the militia-friendly/far-right Constitution Party. And while the local press reported that Haley "fired up" the Tea Partiers while mostly sticking to "policy issues" in her speech, she couldn't help brushing up against the nutcases everywhere she turned:

She followed John Birch Society president John McManus, who equated neo-conservatives with socialists, and Greenville Republican activist Dan Herren, who urged the tea party to try to work within the GOP to make it more conservative.

On top of that, she spoke with that huge Oath Keepers banner right behind her. That's one of the rally's chief sponsors -- and it's one of the most bizarre, paranoid and extreme -- not to mention potentially dangerous -- of the Tea Party factions.

After all, let's recall the 10 points that Oath Keepers proclaim as their oath:

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We warned this was coming: On Friday, Glenn Beck devoted his entire hour to promoting the conspiracy theories of G. Edward Griffin, a John Bircher and 9/11 truther whose book, The Creature from Jekyll Island, attacks the Federal Reserve as a nefarious cabal intent on enslaving and destroying America.

It was quite a performance: Among other things we learned from Griffin was that he believes there is no actual gold at Fort Knox (maybe Goldfinger rendered it radioactive, eh?) and that there is a real inflation rate of around 20 percent right now.

Well, as we explained already:

Beck, as we all know, has previously demonstrated a fondness for the Birch Society, and this is consistent with that: Griffin, after all, was a close personal friend and longtime associate of Birch Society founder Robert Welch, and wrote a popular Birch book published in 1964, The Fearful Master: A Second Look at the United Nations.

The Creature from Jekyll Island is in many ways a compendium of previous works claiming that the Federal Reserve is a fundamentally illegitimate -- and therefore deeply nefarious -- organization. Most of these theories were deeply anti-Semitic in nature, since they depicted the Fed's bankers as part of a Jewish cabal intent on destroying white American society. What sets Griffin's work apart is that -- like most Birch texts, which assiduously avoided anti-Semitism -- he manages to scrub out the anti-Semitic elements while keeping the paranoid conspiracist elements intact.

Since its publication in 1994, Griffin's book has become a popular text for a large number of right-wing extremists, particularly tax protesters and Patriot movement believers. Griffin himself was involved in organizing a gathering on Jekyll Island last year that the Southern Poverty Law Center credits with helping revive the militia movement.

It has been debunked thoroughly, of course -- probably most notably by historian Gerry Rough, whose three-part series on the origins of the Fed, "Another Twist on the Jacksonian Bank War," pretty thoroughly reveal just how fraudulent Griffin's text really is. You can read it here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

[Rough has debunked Griffin further in other essays as well: here, here, and here.]

Meanwhile, Media Matters' research team has a complete rundown on Griffin. From an earlier piece:

Griffin, in addition to spinning conspiracy theories about the Fed, is also a 9-11 truther and has written extensively about the U.S. government's "facilitation" of the attacks. In April 2008, Griffin appeared on the radio program of conspiracist Alex Jones and claimed that he predicted just days after 9-11 that "the FBI and the intelligence agencies of the federal government had advance knowledge of this attack but did nothing to stop it," and that he was proven right. He also is -- or, at least, was -- a member of the ultra-right wing John Birch Society. He wrote a 1970 pamphlet entitled "This is the John Birch Society: An Invitation to Join," and a 1975 book entitled The Life and Words of Robert Welch: Founder of the John Birch Society.

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If you need any proof that John Birch is alive and well and running the GOP all you have to do is watch this Frank Luntz focus group comprised of Iowa Republican caucus members on Hannity. It's stunning in its twisted belief system. Even Frank Luntz in my opinion was taken back by what they were saying because they weren't asked specifically what religion Obama belongs to.

Bill O'Reilly is still obsessing over his ratings from his Super Bowl interview with Obama which I will talk about in another post, but Luntz's Road to 2012 focus group was asked to comment on Obama's response to BillO's question about the Muslim Brotherhood.

Luntz noted his group’s extremely negative reaction when, in his interview with Bill O’Reilly, Obama did not say he didn’t want the Muslim Brotherhood as part of a new government in Egypt. Then, feigning non-partisan curiosity, Luntz deliberately elicited a slew of condemnation by asking his group, "The reaction was so negative, so overwhelming, what’s the problem?”

But I wonder if Luntz knew what he was in for when one member of his group piped up with, “I believe that Barack Obama’s religious beliefs do govern his foreign policy.” When Luntz pressed her to explain what those “religious beliefs” were, the woman replied, “I believe that he is a Muslim.” “You do,” Luntz said. How many of you believe that here?” The majority of the group’s hands went in the air.

Up until that point, I was suspicious that Luntz knew his group's beliefs in advance and had begun the Muslim Brotherhood discussion with an eye toward steering the discussion that way. But then Luntz sounded a bit dismayed as he said, “Now, do you understand the implications of what you’re saying here, what the media’s gonna say about this group and about Iowa caucus voters in the future? You realize what you’re opening up here?”

He quickly tried to walk them back by saying, “Now, do you understand the implications of what you’re saying here, what the media’s gonna say about this group and about Iowa caucus voters in the future? You realize what you’re opening up here?”' I expect Republicans to dislike President Obama, but the religious fantasies they embrace is as terrifying as the first time you saw Linda Blair's head spinning around in The Exorcist.

It doesn't surprise me all that much after a Pew Poll showed 30% of Republicans believe Obama is a Muslim back in 2010. However, their religious fantasies are getting much worse as we approach the 2012 election. The Tea Party has had two years to gather their conspiratorial forces together and they will continue with the onslaught of Bircher type lunatic fantasies that the Koch Brothers were founded on.

UPDATED: Think Progress clipped Phillip Dennis of the Texas Tea Party from a segment on Hardball saying Obama might be a Muslim.

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As someone who has been involved somewhat in the punditry circuit (for lack of a better term), I have been asked by progressive friends what I think is needed for the Left to compete with the Right, not so much in the war of ideas, as idea distribution.

To begin with, we need people who can confidently promote progressive values on television and radio. While the last decade has seen the creation and expansion of progressive think tanks, Air America Radio (an incubator of such talent as Rachel Maddow and Sam Seder), and even primetime MSNBC's becoming a mini-progressive tv outpost, we still lack the funding of the Right, and the pipeline it creates.

A 24-hour conservative television station and talk radio both nationally and locally dominated by conservatives doesn't only get the message out and give cover to politicians and political ideas once considered slightly to the right of insane (make no mistake, they've used these and many print distribution channels to take Bircherism, or Hofstadter's "Paranoid Style," mainstream--something which was once looked at as absolute looniness by those who even controlled the Establishment on the Right).

It also has created everyone from Glenn Beck to Sean Hannity to Tucker Carlson (we can also thank The Weekly Standard and Swanson for this last honor, as in Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson). So we may not have that. Or Heritage Foundation Summer School (with balconies!) and, for the most part, the other think tanks that pay conservative "thinkers" real salaries just to think out loud during non-paid tv segments, in low-paying articles and columns, and to write books nobody buys--but reach the NY Times bestseller list because these think tanks bulk buy 20,000 of them the minute they come out.

But we are making progress in other areas. One project I'm involved with, The Progressive Talent Initiative, not only provides 3.5 days of media training including everything from performance critiques to messaging advice, but the relationship continues afterwards, as the program gives you a tune up when you need it and helps get you booked for appearances.

It is a great program, which I had the luck of attending, and now maybe it's your turn. If you're a political strategist, progressive activist, blogger, academic, non-profit dweller or the like, this could be a great program for you to earn the key messaging and media training skills the Left so critically needs. The training is free to participants so if you are selected, can take the time to participate and are eager and willing to be booked after the training, the PTI team will take care of everything else.

If this is something you've been thinking about, give it a shot, as we need progressives armed with not only the facts, but the ability to share them with persuadable audiences.

So what are you doing March 9th-12th? If you'd like to apply for media training, now's your chance. The training is limited to only 12 participants, so showcase your talents in your application for the review committee to see. Application is available here and is open until January 14. So get in the game my friends!

Flying under the radar, but not to us, a new Bloomberg poll on the Tea Party movement confirms everything that David and I wrote in our book, Over the Cliff: Tea Party activists are an extension of the most extreme, far-right John Birch Society values, with the added bonus of funding from the corporate right. They are Grover Norquist's wet dream. Think South African apartheid, baby. The right-wing extremists once ousted by conservatives like William Buckley now rule the roost. The "Free Markets" reign unimpeded, led by "Christian values", for those white and 55 and over.

Bloomberg:

Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Oct. 15 issue: Respondents who identify with the Tea Party are almost unanimous in saying it stands for lower taxes, smaller government and personal responsibility. More than six in 10 say it advocates government based on Christian principles.
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Tea Party supporters are more likely than other voters to be white, married, 55 and older, and call themselves born-again Christians.

During the HCR debate, tea partiers were able to keep their Ralph Reed beliefs bottled up because they were able to target their rage away from social issues and into the health care debate. Are you surprised that there was so much violent rhetoric used by their members while toting guns in their belts? It wasn't until the end of the HCR debate that the abortion issue came up and suddenly members of Congress were yelling the term "baby killers" on the floor of Congress. The Ron Paul influence is also evident by their hatred of the Federal Reserve, which has been the subject of many conspiracy theories by the supposed libertarians that have joined him.

They also are more likely to be suspicious of the Federal Reserve, which sets monetary policy. Six out of 10 Tea Party supporters who plan to vote say they want to overhaul or abolish the Fed, compared with 45 percent of all likely voters.

They are as passionate about the deficit as the Birchers were worried that Communists had infiltrated the White House. Here's how out of the mainstream they are:

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Meet Lawrence A. Hunter, the executive director of the Alliance for Retirement Prosperity, senior fellow at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) and the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI). He might sound more familiar to you as the director of the Social Security Alliance, a 501(c)(4) group with the following mission statement (from their 2008 990 filing):

Working to promote the retirement security of today's seniors and the seniors of tomorrow. SSI's top policy priorities are to stop the raid on Social Security trust funds, prevent cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits, and protect seniors from health care rationing and other limitations on their access to health care.

SSI was a recycle of an organization originally launched in 2004 at the time of the Great Social Security Privatization Debate. That organization was also known as the "Alliance for Retirement Prosperity", and was spun off by Jack Kemp and Dick Armey from Citizens for a Sound Economy, known today as FreedomWorks, and Kemp's Empower America. The IPI That organization's stated purpose was as follows:

Advocacy and lobbying activities aimed at reforming Social Security by dedicating a substantial portion of the payroll tax to large personal accounts.

The newest incarnation of the "Alliance for Retirement Prosperity" is a bit different, as Hunter indicates in the video. For starters, it's a for-profit group, purporting to be a "true alternative to the AARP". To that end, it offers members the opportunity to "ensure a prosperous, enriched and secure retirement" for the low, low price of $60 per year for the premium membership, and just $16 for an individual membership.

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