RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.
While Donald Trump’s friends at Fox News are defending his false statements about Muslim-Americans, the GOP front-runner’s new friends at InfoWars are floating conspiracy theories of their own about the San Bernardino shooting.
5) San Bernardino Trutherism
Just hoursafter hosting GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump on his radio program, Alex Jones floated a new conspiracy theory about the San Bernardino shooting.
The shooting at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California does not fit the pattern of a typical mass shooting and appears to be geared to elicit widespread public outrage.
Posted by Alex Jones on Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Jones wrote on Facebook that the attack “appears to be geared to elicit widespread public outrage,” sharing an “InfoWars” article suggesting that the “highly suspicious” shooting was staged since it “occurred hours after House Republicans blocked debate on a bill to prevent people on the government’s no-fly list from exercising their Second Amendment right.”
The post added: “A shooting at a facility for people with developmental disabilities will undoubtedly result in widespread outrage, as did the alleged shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December, 2012.”
Indeed, as Timothy Johnson of Media Matters points out, “Jones and his website frequently promote far right-wing conspiracy theories arguing that high-profile mass shootings and other tragic events are staged by the government. He has claimed that both the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting and Aurora, Colorado, movie theater mass shooting were ‘staged.’”
4) “He’s Bringing An Army”
Conservative radio host Michael Savage first thought that President Obama would “deputize” Crips and Bloods gang members to become his own private army. Then he claimed that Black Lives Matter activists are really part of “the secret private army that Barack Hussein Obama” has been designing.
Now, Savage believes that Obama will turn Syrian refugees into his own personal army, suggesting last week on “The Savage Nation” that Obama is “bringing an army” into America.
“Obama is literally seeding an army in the United States of America,” he said, all with the help of Middle Eastern governments and Pope Francis.
3) Attacks From Witches
While conservative talk shows are stoking fears about Obama’s private refugee army or his string of staged shootings, televangelist Jim Bakker wants the public to know about the real threat: Witches who target televangelists.
Bakker, who spent time in prison for mail and wire fraud connected with his previous television ministry, “The PTL Club,” revealed that he was the victim of witchcraft, and that when other televangelists are caught in financial or sex scandals, they should remember the role of witches.
2) The Palin Prophecy
Sarah Palin has a warning in her new book, “Sweet Freedom”: God is running out of patience with America because we keep “kicking him out of the public square.”
As the former governor told Janet Parshall, America is at risk of losing God’s blessings and its guarantee of religious liberty and the U.S. may wind up in the same place as “other tragic nations that aren’t allowed to exercise their freedom.”
1) Fox News Defends The Donald
Donald Trump is not backing down from his objectively untrue claim that “thousands and thousands” of Muslim-American in Jersey City celebrated the 9/11 attacks. He received some help this week from Fox News host Eric Bolling, who added a new twist to the bogus conspiracy theory, claiming that the nonexistent Muslim celebrants “were tipped off prior to the thing.”
Bolling later criticized BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski over Twitter for mocking his blatantly false claim, citing as proof reports about “a group of five men had set up video cameras aimed at the Twin Towers prior to the attack on Tuesday, and were seen congratulating one another afterwards.”
As Kaczynski pointed out, the report he mentioned was referencing five Israeli men, not Muslim-Americans, and the FBI concluded that those men did not have advance knowledge of the attacks.
Is it any surprise that a majority of Trump supporters in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire similarly believe that “thousands of Arabs in New Jersey celebrated the attacks of 9/11”?
