Conservative commentators are running out of time for all of their dire prophecies about President Obama to come true, including fears about the looming imposition of martial law, establishment of Obama’s private army and the assassination of conservative leaders. Right-wing pundits also seemed to have missed with their prophecies about financial collapse, natural disasters and widespread unrest coming in 2015.
September Doomsday Bust
Several Religious Right pundits jumped on a nonsensical and convoluted tale about how blood moons and the Shemitah, a biblical day of debt relief, would lead to some sort of disaster in America on September 13. The far-right website WorldNetDaily marked the arrival of the Shemitah with articles titled “Mark This Date For Potential Disaster,” “Get Ready: Biblical ‘Shemitah’ Begins This Week” and “Countdown To Disaster.” One of the leading propagators of this theory was Messianic rabbi and Religious Right fixture Jonathan Cahn, who even wrote a book on the matter.
Essentially, Cahn claimed that prophecies pertaining to biblical Israel can now apply to the U.S. because the founding fathers, like ancient Hebrews, made a covenant with God. As a result of the country breaking that covenant due to national “sins” like gay marriage and legal abortion, he forecasted that September 13 would be the date that America faced divine punishment.
Contrary to Cahn’s predictions nothing catastrophic happened on that day in the U.S. Cahn defended his prophecy by pointing to an earthquake off the Gulf of California, a body of water which he conveniently forgot to mention borders Mexico, not the U.S. He also claimed that a stock market selloff on August 18 was close enough to his doomsday date, so he was right all along! (The Dow Jones has since rebounded since the August correction). He went on to insist that anything bad that happens between September 2015 and September 2016 would also validate his prophecy.
Cahn’s prophecy caught on with commentators like Rick Wiles of “Trunews,” who said that between September 13 and October 9, there would be a major “financial plunge of the Dow Jones stock index, possibly 30 percent or more” as God sent a “big attitude adjustment” to America. The Dow Jones actually went up during that time.
Televangelist John Hagee went even further, claiming that there could be “a 50 percent correction in the stock market” in the fall due to the Shemitah and blood moon prophecies. “I believe, in the fall of this year, America and the world will face another economic crisis, perhaps as a result of war in the Middle East or an economic crash,” he declared.
Jim Bakker, a televangelist who himself claims to receive personal messages from God and regularly had Cahn on his program to discuss the Shemitah/blood moons prophecy, and made a few predictions of his own about September 13.
“There is going to be a crash on September 13,” Bakker warned his viewers, also predicting that something would happen to Pope Francis during his September visit to America.
He also said that on September 13, the U.S. could be hit by a typhoon, earthquake, bombing or financial meltdown: “God spoke to me.”
Gay Marriage Punishments
After blowing his September prophecy, Cahn saw a biblical threat from Hurricane Joaquin. He said that the Supreme Court’s gay marriage ruling and the White House’s LGBT Pride Month celebration with rainbow lights had provoked God’s judgment, and now, Hurricane Joaquin would strike Washington, D.C. Cahn wasn’t alone, as Wiles too said that God was using Hurricane Joaquin to punish the U.S. by striking Washington, D.C., and New York. (It didn’t hit either city).
Cahn and Wiles were far from alone in making wild predictions about the effects of gay marriage.
One month before the Supreme Court issued its ruling, American Family Radio host Bryan Fischer warned that if the Supreme Court struck down state bans on marriage equality, then we would see violence in the streets: “If the Supreme Court continues to overreach and they aren’t checked, we are headed towards civil unrest, I don’t think there is any other way around it. If it’s not stopped and reversed, the tyrannical overreach of the Supreme Court, we are to have social dislocation and I believe we are going to have violence as a result.”
WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah predicted that “millions of Americans” would flee the country to evade gay marriage, televangelist Pat Robertson warned of financial calamities as a sign of God’s judgment for the Supreme Court marriage equality ruling and Massachusetts-based pastor Scott Lively said the Antichrist could emerge around September 23.
Other Religious Right leaders predicted that the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling would lead to divine punishment, war, revolution, chaos and the destruction of America.
Jade Helm 15
The Jade Helm 15 conspiracy theory, which was cynically fueled by GOP politicians, centered around fears that a military training exercise taking place between July 15 and September 15 of this year would produce grave consequences, such as a federal takeover of Texas, the declaration of martial law and the transformation of closed Walmart stores into FEMA camps. Others thought that Jade Helm 15 was a deliberate attempt to stoke chaos, which would justify military rule in the future.
In May, one poll found that one in three Republicans, including half of Tea Party supporters, agreed that “the government is trying to take over Texas.”
Wiles, the “Trunews” host, said Jade Helm 15 was “the preparation for or the actual implementation of a round-up of patriotic men,” describing the drill as a “two-month-long Night of the Long Knives” that would lead to “a civil war.” In one discussion of Jade Helm 15, Wiles warned of the prospect of the Obama administration launching a nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack against Texas and oppressing Americans who live in the South and Midwest.
Obama’s Refugee/Gangster/BLM Army
Ever since President Obama won the 2008 election, right-wing activists have claimed that he is on the verge of creating a private army akin to Hitler’s Brownshirts.
With 2015 coming to a close, it looks like Obama has just one year left to create such a force, but conservative talk show host Michael Savage has a pretty good idea of what Obama has in mind. Savage, who believes that Obama is bent on committing anti-white genocide and rounding up conservatives, has alleged that the president intends to create a personal force composing of Syrian refugees, Black Lives Matter demonstrators and members of the Crips and the Bloods, whom he thinks will be armed and deputized by Obama.
Gun activist Lawrence C. Mackin similarly warned that “Obama’s private internal army” will include government employees who ally with “a group of radical Islamists,” “illegal aliens from the Middle East” and “Soviet troops.”
Glenn Beck Might Die, Says Glenn Beck
Far-right pundit Glenn Beck, the self-proclaimed prophet of imminent mass killings, civil war, race riots, revolution, enslavement and internment camps, responded to the demonstrations and riots in Baltimore following the death of a black man in police custody by making it all about him … and how government assassins may kill him because he is such a great leader who knows about their nefarious schemes.
The conservative pundit said that the protests and riots in April and May were all designed to justify a federal takeover of local police forces:
That’s all that’s happening right now. This is a show. We’re watching a script and a play play out in front of us. None of this stuff is real. Those riots in Baltimore. That wasn’t real … At some point, there will be a straw that breaks the camel’s back, and it will set the whole country on fire. And what happens? We will cry out for police help. The police will be overwhelmed. The DOJ will say, ‘We’re going to take over policing, we’ll coordinate it from here.’ And you’re done. It’s lights out, republic.
Beck went on to explain that he and other leaders who are exposing such deeds to the masses may be killed, just like how Hitler killed potential rivals in the Night of Long Knives and Turkish leaders killed Armenian leaders at the beginning of the Armenian genocide.
“They do that so there is nothing left but sheep and no shepherds,” he explained, claiming that these nefarious agents are going after him and not his 10 million viewers because they know “they cannot kill 10 million people in one night.”
“Prepare for a time when voices like mine or others are no longer heard and yours is the only voice,” he said.
