What do Adolph Hitler, Osama bin Laden and the birthers have in common? They’re all conspiracy theorists.
People look around themselves, find things that trouble them, and they attempt to understand why things went bad. Scientists use the scientific method; conspiracy theorists connect dots. The scientific method has controls to reduce the likelihood of running off on some crazy tangent. Conspiracy theorists just find more and more patterns to weave into their theory. The bad thing about conspiracy theories is that they end up identifying some one or some group to blame for what’s wrong; they choose a scapegoat.
The Nazis were presented with some serious social and economic problems in the Germany following World War I. There was huge unemployment, crushing war reparations and hyperinflation. Who was to blame? How about a conspiracy consisting of an elaborate secret hierarchy of controlling Jewish influences creating both financial ruin and attempting to undermine Aryan racial purity. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a fraudulent document detailing just such an international Jewish conspiracy, was a major influence on the Nazis.
Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were major proponents of the text: It was studied, as if factual, in German classrooms after they came to power in 1933, despite having been exposed as fraudulent years before.
In its golden age, a Muslim empire stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. What happened? Conspiracy theories run rampant in Islam and the Jews are also central characters in Muslim conspiracy theories.
Reported [Al-Qaeda] beliefs include that a Christian-Jewish alliance is conspiring to destroy Islam, which is largely embodied in the U.S.-Israel alliance…
Today Al Qaeda, along with neo-Nazis and birthers look to conspiracies of a New World Order for an explanation to all that’s wrong, and all look to Barack Obama as part of the conspiracy.
I chose these two rather extreme examples (Hitler and bin Laden) to make a point: when conspiracy theorists get real power, bad things happen. I don’t predict that birthers will ever get real political power, but maybe one of them will get their hands on a really big bomb.
> Today Al Qaeda, along with neo-Nazis and birthers look to conspiracies of a New World Order
Actually, “NWO” is a buzzword for the extremists on the left as well (at least over here in Europe). Always “funny” to see that the basic world view of hardcore left/right wingers is pretty much the same.
If you look for distinctions in the extremists’ view, you’ll find they’re much more based on where they live than what politics they strive for. For the Europeans, “NWO” usually means “USA + Israel” (read: “USA + Jews”). In the US, “NWO” stands for “UN” (sometimes “+ Islam”, sometimes “+ Jews”, depending on whether the person has a favourable view of Israel or not).
But I think the birthers are a good example why the “NWO” belief is not restricted to political extremists. Many of them may be to the far right of the GOP, but many others would likely consider themselves “average conservatives”, especially the older ones.
Two birther-related anecdotes about the Protocols:
1) many believe Pavel Krushevan who first published them in September 1903, was also the writer – meaning the Protocols originated in Orly’s birth place, Kishinev
2) almost all literary critics believe the Protocols were inspired by and based on The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu by Maurice Joly, a satirical book written in 1864. Whoever said any satire of birtherism is indistinguishable from the real thing? Accoring to Wikipedia, Joly consigned Machiavelli to hell because he believed Machiavelli’s work The Prince was almost a “how-to” manual for usurpers …
Of course, in Orly’s view, Macchiavelli and Montesquieu have been replaced by Bill Ayers and Malcolm X
Yeah, the NWO has become the “catch-all” cabal bogeyman for conpiracy nuts on all sides of the crazy spectrum. And you are correct that the only thing that differs between who and what the NWO are where you do go back to those same internail biases and prejudices of that person’s worldview.
Unhappy with life?…Don’t understand the world?…Need somebody to blame that sounds mysterious, spooky, in control and everywhere at the same time?…Then the NWO is your one stop shopping excuse for everything from paper cuts to armaggedon!
Dr.Conspiracy, you are a phony and a thug. You use twisted logic for one purpose and one purpose only — to make people fearful of expressing their views on an issue of significant public importance, specifically, whether A SITTING PRESIDENT HAS COMMITTED COMMON IDENTITY THEFT TO ATTAIN HIGH OFFICE. In your world, I shouldn’t say such things, because this makes me a Nazi and an Islamic terrorist. It doesn’t make any differnce that EVERY EXPERT that has yet examined the birth certificate to date has stated at minimum, that it is has been digitally altered, and that it is not a photocopy of an original document. In your world, they’re all Nazis. But let’s not cross over into the real world yet. Let’s play in your sand box some more. Okay, I’m the evil Nazi who says Obama has committed identity theft. You’re now the self-proclaimed saviour tasked with preventing the coming holocaust against Obama and the Democrats. How do you do this? Isn’t it with MORE INFORMATION? Isn’t it true that if just a few more people exposed Hitler’s lies he would never have coume to power? So take the lead good doctor. Get an expert to examine Obama’s birth certificate and proclaim it “authentic” (a pretty big task, as the so-called “original” is still under lock and key at the Hawaii DOH). Explain to us how Obama did not commit COMMON IDENTITY THEFT in obtaining is Social Security card when it was issued to a Connecticut resident and Obama has never lived anywhere near Connecticut. Come’on Dr.Conspiracy. We crave your truth. Save us all.
You wish to equate “birthers” with Nazis and
“How about a conspiracy consisting of an elaborate secret hierarchy of controlling Jewish influences creating both financial ruin and attempting to undermine Aryan racial purity.”
As an officer in the International Jewish Conspiracy™, I can confirm we are monitoring you from our subterranean headquarters in New York and Jerusalem.
I’m not “equating” birthers and Nazis, but pointing out one commonality.
Of course, this is not true. At least 4 experts have said that there is no sign of tampering and altering. The “experts” who say otherwise are all birthers and conspiracy theorists (based on their previous writing).
If you had taken the time to look, you would have found articles here on this topic, but I would just ask you: do you have some particular Connecticut resident in mind? Presumably all these databases consulted to find Obama’s SSN would also disclose the name of the Connecticut resident, and if the person were deceased it would be in the Social Security Death Index (which it isn’t).
Where’s your smoking gun?
I completely agree with you. I found a Kenya BC (Obama’s?) that’s right here! Thanks for visiting.
Explain how not once in the 30-plus years Obama has been using that Social Security number did the IRS reject his tax returns because the number did not match his number.
I have a question for you – how would you go about authenticating your own birth certificate? I expect that you wouldn’t ask the state you were born in for an official copy of your BC, allow anyone interested to take a look at it (and maybe let images of it be posted on the web), get state officials to verify on the record and under oath that they did, in fact, have your BC on file and that the image posted on the web was accurate, get the President of the United States to make a special request (admittedly a little bit harder for you…) to the state DoH to make an official copy of the original which you would then scan and convert to pdf for posting on the internet as well as photocopied and distributed to the press (members of which were also allowed to inspect and photograph the actual document) like President Obama did, so what would you do differently and why do you think that would be better than what President Obama did do? Also, can you please point out instances of Doc bullying people? Or behaving in some way that could be described as “phony”? I must have missed them…
What’s amusing to me is that Doc allowed BigDaddy557 to publish his post, but when I go to most any birther blog, they edit or delete any post that doesn’t agree with them.
They also never publish posts that criticize the blog owner personally.
Big 1st amendment practitioners, those birthers.
Well, I criticized the POSFKBC on I, Lucas Smith’s website and he hasn’t censored it (or anything else). The birther blog Itooktheredpill also doesn’t moderate obot comments. That’s all that I know of.
http://www.wasobamaborninkenya.com/blog/date-formats/pesky-numeric-date-formats-on-birth-certificates-and-western-union-receipts/#comment-56
If you wish to convince others that you argument is worthy and correct, nasty name calling to the host is not usually a productive method. You may feel that you are just telling the truth as you see it and it makes you better this way, but, Obama is still the President, the Doc is still writing about Conspiracy theories, and others here have the impression that you are not worthy to be taken seriously. So what have you accomplished? If this is how you go through life, that is certainly unfortunate.
I might suggest also you lay off the all caps and try using what are called html tags. They make it easier to emphasize and make certain statements stand out better. They may take longer to write this way, but it allows you to think about what you want to say and how is the best way to say it.
You might try paragraphs also.
GRAMMER…SPOOLING…SANTANCE KONSTRUKSHUN…THEY R ALL COMMIE GODLESS MOOSLEM NWO ALINSLY TRIKS……or possibly words to that effect from the standard Birfoon… 😎
Well, I am now sorry that I shortened my firstreaction to omit the point that the Protocols are not the work of the Nazis, but probably of antisemitic elements in the Russian tsarist secret police.
The main claim in the Protocols is that there is a long-term conspiracy of collusion between High Finance (dominated by Jews like Rothschild) and the revolutionary branch of the Russian socialist party at the time (also believed to be led by Jews). One part of the conspiracy would destabilize the economy and create massive unemployment. Unemployment would then lead masses of people to join the Bolsheviks, who would use this to topple conservative governments and achieve world domination for the commies and Jewry.
Weird stuff coming from Kishinev if you think logically about it, but of course Orly manages to outprotocol the Protocols by declaring Obama is a nazi AND a communist AND a Muslim fundamentalist.
and then follows it up with this…
BigDaddy557: . Get an expert to examine Obama’s birth certificate and proclaim it “authentic” (a pretty big task, as the so-called “original” is still under lock and key at the Hawaii DOH).
i want to invite him to my next party 😀 😀
Identity theft would mean that the President is not Barack Obama, that somewhere out there exists the real Barack Obama. Can you point me to this supposed real Barack Obama? Thanks for your help.
Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?
🙂
Apropos of nothing at all I suppose (I can’t find the ‘open thread’ all of a sudden), I found this little gem while looking for something else. I don’t know what the guy was on about, other than to point out that the SS card is not an identity card. But he goes to a lot of effort to make whatever point he(or she) is making.
The Social Security Number is NOT to be Used for Identification
> Of course, in Orly’s view, Macchiavelli and Montesquieu have been replaced by Bill Ayers and Malcolm X
I wonder when birthers will claim that “Mac OS X 10.6.7 Quartz PDFContext” in the metadata of the PDF scan are the forger’s secret hints to Malcolm X (garbled to “Macos X”). Probably “Quartz” is garble talk for “Marx” as well.
> Orly manages to outprotocol the Protocols
YMMD. 😉