Tuesday, July 29, 2008

I reiterate: it is going to be bad

I previously said, in response to having witnessed Glenn Beck ask, seriously, of John Hagee if he thought Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ*:

If a Democrat becomes president expect to have our public discourse overtaken and overwhelmed with the most extreme, insane, and rotten attacks and smears from the conservative movement that you can possibly imagine ...

...

Belief that Bill Clinton was the anti-Christ was a principal belief of militia movement extremists. If either Obama or Clinton becomes president look for a resurgence in the patriot movement, with these folks going off into the woods, stockpiling weapons, and preparing to wage war with the anti-Christ.

But excluding some sort of national catastrophe, the real threat is not going to be them. (Although the families of those killed by Timothy McVeigh might beg to differ.) The bigger threat is the one Hofstadter recognized, that this kind of endless mindless drivel that comes from the Drudge-Hannity-Limbaugh axis of misinformation will create a political climate in which rational pursuit of our well-being and safety is impossible.
Ok, now from Media Matters

SUSSMAN: You know, emperor of the world. You hit it on the head, my man. Now, I will wax religy for just a moment. As I was watching that speech, I could have sworn [Obama] was running for Antichrist.

[snip]

This is what we're looking for in terms of the Antichrist. That's what he's running for, in my opinion.
And from Orcinus

Slowly but surely, the old extremist right of the 1990s -- the ones who saw Bill Clinton as the New World Order Antichrist and formed militias to stop him -- has been crawling back out of the woodwork in response to Obama's looming presidency.

Now they're replaying one of their old favorites: the fake "body count" e-mail. Gavin M at Sadly, No! has the details

[snip]

The source of these mails is indeterminate. But you may recall that the similarly spurious "Clinton body count" e-mails that flooded our inboxes in the '90s was the product of the black-helicopter militia crowd:
So how long do you think it will be before this sort of conspiratorial extremism becomes regular mainstream fodder? This may originate with extremists, but it is only a matter of time before Rush Limbaugh, Neal Boortz, and Sean Hannity are speculating about the mysterious deaths surrounding Obama like they still do with the Clintons.

*Hagee answered "no chance," given he considers it a doctrinal necessity that the Anti-Christ be Jewish.

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