WEDNESDAY, JUL 11, 2012 10:14 AM EDT
SALON.COM
Tea Party Nation goes extreme
The Oath Keepers are the last line of defense against tyranny, apparently
This article was originally published by The Southern Poverty Law Center.
The Tea Party Nation, one of the more extreme factions of the Tea Party movement, has dipped deeper into the conspiratorial waters of antigovernment lore, most recently promoting the Oath Keepers and other antigovernment “Patriots” as the last line of defense for Americans increasingly confronted with “a government verging on evil.”
In a post published over the weekend on the Tea Party Nation’s website, regular blogger Alan Caruba painted a dire picture of the threats to freedom that lie in wait under President Obama, whom he calls a “red diaper baby” and a far-left functionary “raised from birth and mentored to embrace communism.”
“Obama’s disregard for the Constitution, its separation of powers, and Americans suffering greatly from his policies, suggests that he is not beyond making the greatest grab for power using a bogus ‘national emergency’ or manufactured ‘crisis’ to declare martial law,” Caruba wrote. He goes on to cite three recent executive orders as proof positive that Obama is setting up the nation to abandon its constitutional mandates and wage an all-out campaign against freedom.
And that’s where the Oath Keepers comes in.
Founded three years ago by former Army paratrooper and Yale Law School graduate Stewart Rhodes, the group operates under the defiant banner of “Not on our watch,” plying thousands of politically disaffected men and women with ideas of a totalitarian “New World Order” looming on the horizon. The group is composed of active and retired military and law enforcement personnel who vow to uphold their oath to the Constitution and disobey orders they deem to be in conflict. Inherent in the group’s “Ten Orders We Will Not Obey” is a roster of far-right conspiracy theories involving domestic prison camps, the dismantling of the Second Amendment and more.
Caruba is also the communications director for the anti-New World Order American Policy Center, so it’s no surprise that he would repurpose the Oath Keepers’ paranoid talking points. “The biggest question facing Americans is whether the members of our military and our law enforcement authorities would obey [Obama],” Caruba wrote. “My bet is that they would not.”
In a series of articles last year, Caruba lashed out at immigrants, Muslims, the LGBT community and, of course, Obama. In one of those articles, he likened Obama to Casey Anthony, the single mother from Florida who had just been acquitted of murdering her 2-year-old daughter. He has also been a perennial opponent of Agenda 21, a benign multinational agreement signed 30 years ago to protect the environment that has increasingly been compared on the far right to a blueprint for the New World Order.
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In the interest of accuracy, something missing in large measure from this article, I am not the Director of Commuinications for the American Policy Center, although I served in that capacity for ten years until 2004. I remain an advisor to the APC. -- Alan Caruba
Permalink Reply by S.Terry Carter on Alan - We, or at least you, are getting some attention from the opposing side. That just means that they take you seriously. He seem to have quoted you pretty much in context, except for the snide,demeaning,elitist comments. I thought it was a good read. Maybe - just maybe - someone on the left will read this and actually do a little research and have a light bulb ( compact florescent ) go ON and actually see something. Keep up the good work,my friend and mentor.
Permalink Reply by Alan Caruba on Thank you, Judson, and everyone else. I find it amazing that anyone thinks I am a threat just for exercising my First Amendment rights.
Permalink Reply by Jeff Dover on I wish I still had the capacity for amazement, Alan. But then, I guess that's why we're all here... Defeat is not an option.
Permalink Reply by Diogenes on
If you were a standup guy Mr. Caruba, you would start pursuing the mass media for its restricted and non balanced communication.
Permalink Reply by Walter Bowen on Mr. Caruba don't you know! the pen is mightier than a 'real "terrorists exploding "nuke!" if this gets profiled/censored oh, well--I'll just set for a long sleepy/Vacation at government expense.
Permalink Reply by Diogenes on Why the country is in poverty.
Great charts about the Obama years to give you facts. Have a look and please forward to others:
Permalink Reply by Royce Latham on from:http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/salon-plums-depths-of-dark-side/
To give you just one example of what I mean, five years ago, Stephen Bright, one of those civil rights activists and progressives with a conscience, was invited to an event honoring SPLC’s director, Morris Dees.
Bright politely declined the invitation, stating: “Morris Dees is a con man and fraud, as I and others, such as U.S. Circuit Judge Cecil Poole, have observed and as has been documented by John Egerton, Harper’s, the Montgomery Advertiser in its ‘Charity of Riches’ series, and others. The positive contributions Dees has made to justice – most undertaken based upon calculations as to their publicity and fundraising potential – are far overshadowed by what Harper’s described as his ‘flagrantly misleading’ solicitations for money. He has raised millions upon millions of dollars with various schemes, never mentioning that he does not need the money because he has $175 million and two ‘poverty palace’ buildings in Montgomery. He has taken advantage of naive, well-meaning people – some of moderate or low incomes – who believe his pitches and give to his $175-million operation. He has spent most of what they have sent him to raise still more millions, pay high salaries and promote himself. Because he spends so much on fundraising, his operation spends $30 million a year to accomplish less than what many other organizations accomplish on shoestring budgets.”
But there is Salon magazine not only giving credibility to SPLC, but holding it up as an honest broker of news!
The group’s stock-in-trade is raising hundreds of millions of dollars through fanning the flames of phantom threats posed almost exclusively by those who love America and its Constitution. It also files lots of lawsuits, sometimes even on behalf of real victims of racism, and pockets most of the money raised through heart-wrenching direct-mail pitches.
The most famous example was a judgment SPLC won for a black woman whose son was killed by the Ku Klux Klan. While Dees and company raised $9 million sending out solicitation letters featuring a gruesome picture of the victim, the mom received a total of $51,875 in the settlement. Dees pays himself more than $280,000 a year from the “charity.”
I think Reason writer Jesse Walker may have said it best when he wrote: “The Southern Poverty Law Center … would paint a box of Wheaties as an extremist threat if it thought that would help it raise funds.”
When the SPLC attacks, that's a sign that you're doing something right! They consistently lie about anyone that is not agreeing them and is a threat to their position.
Permalink Reply by Richard Ellis on Dear TPN: I beg all who are on this thread to please go to You-Tube and type in "Truth President", JFK gave a speech to the US Press Club in 1961 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. JFK coined the word "CONSPIRACY". Yes a Democrat gave that speech, does that mean JFK was a KooK? No but he sure got silenced.
Permalink Reply by Royce Latham on JFK was shot to death 8 days after signing the Green Hilton Memorial Agreement with President Sukarno of Indonesia.
John Kennedy junior knew what had happened to his father and who did it. That is why plastique explosive was put on the underbelly of his plane that went down in the Atlantic.
Permalink Reply by Royce Latham on © 2013 Created by Judson Phillips.
