Of late Birthers have tried to deflect accusations of their being racist in two ways. First, they have tried to call Obama supporters, particularly the “Obots” racist. One commenter on this blog said:
The following Israeli science authority defies the RACIST OBOT’S attempts at proving an un-provable accumulation of distorted BC facts.
and another:
Face it Obots… you are all; RACIST. anti-American, anti free markets, ignoramuses.
The other deflection of criticism is to blame the left for the birther movement, and we see this often on Twitter and even from more mainstream sources, for example:
The birther movement originated with anonymous e-mails from Hillary Clinton supporters. Although Hillary dropped out of the race, others soon picked up the birther cause, and for more than four years, Americans have been hearing endless allegations about Obama’s alleged ineligibility to serve as president, and now the birther movement is turning to smear Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Ted Cruz, etc.
That’s not true. The birther movement started at the right-wing Free Republic forum. Yes, Clinton supporters were early adopters of birther rumors, most of whom fell away after one of them found the newspaper announcements of Obama’s birth in Honolulu newspapers, but they didn’t originate them.
Read more:
- The Secret Origin of the Birthers by Loren Collins
While birferism did not originate with Hillary supporters, some of the earliest and angriest birfers were Hillary supporters. Birferism gained a lot of momentum from being pushed by these sore losers. However, Hillary herself was never a birfer. She never expressed doubt about Obama’s birthplace or who his parents were or whether he is a natural born citizen. Although Mike Huckabee flirts with birfers occasionally, a couple of years ago he made what I find to be one of the most convincing arguments against birfer conspiracies (besides the problems with lack of evidence LOL): He doesn’t buy any of the birfer stuff because he knows that, if there was any substance to it, the Clintons would have found it and used it against Obama in the 2008 primary.
DON’T CARE WHO STARTED, I WOULD LIKE TO SAY HE’S ILLEGAL…
huckabee said: ”If there was any shred of truth to it, Hillary Clinton and her wonderful investigative opposition research machine would have found it and would have used it,” Huckabee said. “For Republicans to even be bringing it up, I think it’s a waste of energy and time.”
berg was a hillary supporter and a birther
The attempt to link what a “supporter” does to the candidate is problematic. If I recall correctly, about 17,000,000 people voted for Hillary in the primaries. Among those one could doubtless find someone who propounded almost any nonsensical position one wanted. That is no reflection on Mrs Clinton.
Berg should only appear in the same sentence as Hillary if he held a position within the campaign (as AZ Sec of State Bennett did in the Romney campaign) or someone has actual evidence that Berg received support or encouragement from the campaign. Otherwise, Berg speaks for Berg alone.
“Face it Obots… you are all; RACIST. anti-American, anti free markets, ignoramuses.”
Ironically, there is a 99.99% chance that the birther who wrote the comment above might have been using a device made in China, a communist country.
Scientist:
i agree – but when the “hillary is a birther” issues comes up, berg is mentioned as a “supporter” as if that means hillary agrees with him and/or his lawsuits
And I would like to say that birthers all suddenly got some sense and quit birthin’. But liking something doesn’t make it so.
I think Mick and my Namesake anticipated your desires very well:
Let’s start with the incredibly simple concept of the caps lock key.
You mean “illegitimate”, not “illegal”.
In your case, “illiterate”.
It’s a free country. You can say any moronic thing you want to.
Dude! don’t forget the fact that Hillary supporters are NOT the ones STILL beating this dead horse! it’s the racist right that is keeping it alive!
And Susan, I would like to say that you are stupid, uneducated, as well as uncivil.
“Politeness is the mark of a good cross-examiner.” — Louis Nizer.
DON’T CARE WHO STARTED, I WOULD LIKE TO SAY HE’S ILLEGAL…
I’d like to say I’s a Gold Glove shortstop and was paid $100 million last year while batting 350, but that isn’t even close to being true either…
“I LIKE PIE . . .”
~from The Wit and Wisdom of SusanM
Here is where it all really started, with this great dissertation on how to get a handle on all those different ways citizens have of being born citizens.
“Just say natural.”
but…
“You doesn’t have to call me Johnson.”
Watch for the birther cameo at the end. I think it is Bob Gard, asking for “two naturals, please.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LztZu5s0-QU
I heart Ray J.
Guilt by association is a common propaganda tool, used by both sides of the aisle. Just look how many people Obama was in contact with the right tries to denounce as “Marxists”. Or how “communist party endorses X” somehow must mean X is a communist or otherwise a bad person.
Which is why my definition of “birther” isn’t “someone who, at some point in his life, had doubts where Obama was born” but rather “someone who, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, still believes Obama was born in Kenya and that there is a vast conspiracy to cover this up”.
(I think that covers it better; after all, I do not know where my chancellor was born and would have to look it up, too.)
By this definition, the Clintons have never been birthers.
But we all know that projection is a common thing in Birtherstan.
As they say, it’s not important who started it, it’s important who ended it. The sane world has stopped birfin’ years ago.
You might like to but you would be factually incorrect. Do you like being wrong?
OK, I’ll bite and give you a hint: NOT in a communist country.
There is still a minority of people who believe (as in “think so because they heard it somewhere”, not “believe over evidence to the contrary”) she was born in East Germany. Not that it matters, legally.
I don’t think even the RWNJ’s in my country have ever claimed ineligibility of certain people, or talked about birth certificates or citizen parents. (They do, however, make claims similar to your “The US is a corporation” SovCits and that therefore there are no state officials and those who claim to be are really just acting as private citizens.)
I am glad to see an article that once again deflates the myth that Hillary supporters started the Birther movement. I am not sure that I buy that early Birthers like Berg and Mara Zebest were ever Hillary supporters either. I think Berg is probably a Democrat in name only and possibly because it was convenient in one of his runs for office to be a Democrat in a Democratic area.
One of the reasons I wrote the article and titled it as I did was that I knew it would be re-tweeted by the Birther News twitter account as well as anyone who looks at the #birther hash tag. This is to counter tweets that say otherwise.
Of course nobody goes from being a die hard Hillary-supporter to genuinely (and permanently) believing that Hillary and a cast of thousands drawn from the Democratic Party would go along with Obama faking his birth certificate.
I WOULD LIKE TO SAY it was an obvious smear based on the stupidest of conspiracy theories.
I got my start in birther debunking in July of 2008, when I encountered a batch of early “Cult of the COLB” types at Wes Clark’s community groups.
A lot of “Clarkies” wanted Wes Clark to run in 2008. When he endorsed Hillary Clinton, many followed suit, some didn’t. The Clinton supporters did their best to drive out the non-supporters, and many of us got frosty welcome backs when Hillary conceded and Wes Clark endorsed Barack Obama.
After that point, a LOT of the early “Cult of the COLB was based not just at Townhall and Free Republic, but at PUMA blogs like “TexasDarlin”, “PUMA PAC”, “No Quarter”, and others. Not all PUMAs went birther, but a lot did.
And there’s a lot of birthers (Philip Berg, Dr. Kate, Helen Tansy, Mara Zebest, Terese Daniels, Ed Hale, Bettina Sofia Viviano, etc.), that got their start in the PUMA litterboxes.
So are you accusing someone of _committing_ a crime, or of _being_ a crime?
I’d like to say I’m a millionaire, but that ain’t gonna make it true!
If I said I like to believe you are a racist, that would probably be true.
SUSANM:
DON’T CARE WHO STARTED, I WOULD LIKE TO SAY HE’S ILLEGAL
I would like to call you an idiot, but you’re not smart enough to qualify for the job…
So are you the same “SUSANM” that said at Birther Report:
“SUSANM 1 day ago
TAKE THEEM ALL OUT OF THE W.H. AND HANG THEM ON THE FRONT LAWN OF OUR W.H.”
If so, I can’t say I think much for your judgement or common sense.
Strange fruit indeed…..
Rhetoric like that is frightening and corrosive…someone, somewhere, will read stuff like that, and nothing but stuff like that, and he will go out and make those fevered, angry thoughts a reality.
Well, obviously you don’t read the oh so credible WND where the truth is to be found! They have the definitive article about the Hollywood producer who overheard everything, including the fact that if the Clintons didn’t drop their claims about Obama ineligibility, then something bad would happen to Chelsea (http://www.wnd.com/2012/04/hollywood-producer-heard-bill-clinton-say-obama-ineligible/).
Of course, if you want the whole sordid truth, you have to read Butterdezillion’s screed at Free Republic (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2993240/posts?page=191#191) about how Soros was behind Obama’s rise to power.
Geez, don’t you do any research? Don’t you want to know the REAL truth?
🙄
To wit:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Holocaust_Memorial_Museum_shooting
My point precisely…we have already seen such behavior manifested. The Holocaust Museum shooting is the exemplar. The guy who shot up the Sikhs earlier this year was another. Buford Furrow was a third…there is a thin but ugly trail of people who have been inspired by these motormouths, who go out and put their theories into practice.
Matthew Hale, of the “World Church of the Creator,” got nailed for plotting the demise of the judge who ruled in his case (ironically in his favor), through a supporter. He was nailed on tape by the FBI, so his own words did him in. Now Hale is doing 40 years in the federal can.
An irony: a guy shot up the judge’s home and killed her family, in an unrelated massacre. There is no end to pain and sadism….