I know this subject has been hashed and rehashed, but I just saw and want to recommend a worthy interview with Joan Walsh on the Rachel Maddow show. [hattip rawstory.com/rawreplay.] In the clip Maddow and Walsh talk about the potential dangers of the birther movement as demonstrated by the shocking, fatal attack made by birther, anti-semite, James W. von Brunn at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. Walsh, in particular, called on centrist Republicans to take a stand against the birther mania, so as not to foment radical anti-government sentiment among right-wingers.
Although many Americans have never heard of, or are just now hearing of birthers, most of us who blogged the '08 elections, have known of the birthers for months, and feared this day would come.
(For those new to the concept, 'birthers' are those who feel, without evidence, that either President Obama's birth certificate is a forgery, and that he is not a natural born American citizen - rather a Kenyan citizen; or that if he were born a US citizen, that he lost his US citizenship when he moved with his mother and step-father to Indonesia as a boy, and never was properly reinstated. Basically, birthers claim that President Obama is not eligible for the presidency, and therefore is a usurper of the postion. The fraud they believe is being perpetrated by this scandal is sometimes called certifi-gate.)
David Emery, an expert on urban legends who writes for About.com, said the citizenship rumor has been fueled by an unusually "deep well of revulsion toward Barack Obama himself, and rage."
"Thanks to the relentless agitation of the conspiracy theorists and the sheer quantity of hypothetical scenarios and legal arguments floating around, they've clearly succeeded in planting unreasonable doubts in reasonable people's minds," he said. *
Obviously, it was not just von Brunn's birther views that drove him to kill at the holocaust museum, it was also his hatred of Jews and fear of losing his 2nd amendment rights, which he managed to link to his hatred/fear/distrust of President Obama, as found in the note discovered in his car after the shooting:
"You want my weapons; this is how you'll get them... The Holocaust is a lie," the note read. "Obama was created by Jews. Obama does what his Jew owners tell him to do. Jews captured America's money. Jews control the mass media." *
Not surprisingly, the angry, rhetorical, right-wing chatter that fuels the firey rage behind the likes of von Brunn's violent behavior, seems to be down-played at the moment by the GOP and most conservative media. Check out this piece of work at the Washington 'so-called' Independent. [The author actually calls out dailykos twice, in an effort to distance von Brunn from the right and stick him on the left. How desperate.]
Evidently, the right has been hoping to put some distance between themselves and Jerome Corsi, (one of the movement's apparent founders and strongest proponents through his worldnetdaily blog) and the birthers for a while, now. But the distance isn't coming between von Brunn and Corsi of swiftboating-redux ignominy. Today, the breaking headline over at worldnetdaily is :
BORN IN THE USA?
WorldNetDaily Exclusive
Trifecta: 3rd media outfit bans Obama eligibility ads
Clear Channel joins CBS, Lamar in dissing constitutional question
--WND
Nor does the distance come between the birthers and Boss Limbaugh, whose stance on 'certifigate' is lauded and used as a fundraising tool by the WND crowd and their followers.
Regardless of von Brunn's current or former political affiliations, the guy clearly lost his marbles and finally snapped. It appears that process was helped along by the likes of Jerome Corsi and his worldnetdaily propaganda mental manipulation pages, aided and abetted by right-wing, corporate media of all stripes, especially Limbaugh, but not only. [Yeah, I'm looking at you Joke and Mika - your mockery is an insult to our intelligence.]
By simultaneously dismissing, mocking, and taking offense at the Homeland Security Report of April 2009, warning of right-wing extremism, [which, by the way, followed a little-mentioned Homeland Security report on Left-wing extremism], the right-wingers and the mainstream media had a knee-jerk reaction that belittled the idea that a trend was emerging that was perhaps unseen to them, but on the radar of the DHS. Not only that, they fueled the paranoia of guys like von Brunn and the tea-baggers, adding to the right-wing feeling of separate-ness (secessionist?). In the process they lumped themselves in with volcano-ignoring ignoramouses who have no business guiding our country - on capitol hill or on the airwaves.
If you are going to mock homeland security reports without giving it further thought of it's significance - get off the news and get out out of DC... 'Cause you are doin' it wrong.
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[Speaking of which, I want to give another shout-out to a stand up news man through this madness. That of course is Shep Smith. If you can show him a little love that might be warranted, because now he is on the wingnut radar and they are apparently looking for a Corsi's favored attack -ad hominem. They've even got a Shep Smith poll for those registered at WND. Yikes.]