Right wing politician, preacher and radio talker Chuck Baldwin has written a column sympathizing with Joe Stack, the Texas man who yesterday deliberately crashed a small plane into an office building killing himself and at least one other person and seriously burning two others. The column, entitled I Wish Joe Stack Had Not Killed Himself!, is posted on Baldwin's website. Baldwin expresses concern that the mainstream media will somehow distort the story to make Stack look bad. He writes:
By the time this column is released on Friday, however, I'm sure we will all have been inundated with copious references to this man, Joe Stack, as being "off his rocker," or similar assertions. Perhaps our friends at DHS will label Stack a "right-wing domestic terrorist." However, Mr. Stack apparently left behind a "suicide manifesto" explaining his actions. After carefully reading Stack's manifesto, I am quite convinced that he was not crazy, and he was not a "terrorist." However, he was angry.
A lot of us are angry--and for many of the same reasons that Mr. Stack was angry! While I would certainly take exception to some of the things Stack says in his manifesto, he said things that many of us are feeling.
...and...
My heart goes out to Joe Stack! The sentiments expressed above are shared by millions of Americans who are also fed up with Big Brother. We are fed up with our country being turned into a burgeoning police state, under the rubric of "national security." We are fed up with the harassments (sic) of the IRS. We know the "war on drugs" is merely the government's way of cutting out the competition (this is exactly what more than one retired federal law enforcement agent--employed in the drug war--told me). We know the "war on terror" is nothing but an excuse to trample our constitutional liberties. We are fed up with the voracious vampires known as the Federal Reserve sucking the lifeblood out of the veins of America's hardworking Middle Class. We are tired of the CFR, CIA, and America's State Department manufacturing perpetual wars that cost trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives for the benefit of the global elite. We are fed up with an arrogant and oppressive federal government that is strangling the life and freedom out of our states. We all share Joe Stack's pain!
I really wish Joe Stack had not killed himself, however. We need each other. By taking his life, he reduced our strength. The global elites delight in our demise. As we grow weaker, they grow stronger.
But the fight is not over; the battle is not lost! Rumblings of freedom's revival can be felt across the length and breadth of this nation. The clanging of liberty's resolve can be heard in hamlets and villages from Montana to South Carolina. There are still millions of us--from virtually every walk of life--who will not surrender our liberties without a fight! And we have not yet begun to fight!
While Baldwin makes a great deal of agreeing with the contents of Stack's rambling suicide suicide, even going so far as to claim that everyone would agree with them, he makes no mention of the victims of Stack's horrible attack and utterly fails to explain why he does not consider the attack terrorism. In fact, Baldwin puts the term "terrorist" in quotes. Does he not believe that such a thing exists? (On the other hand, he also puts "suicide manifesto" in quotes. He may just like to use quotes where they aren't needed.)
Baldwin has twice run for high office. He ran for the vice-presidency in 2004 on the Constitution Party ticket, gaining endorsements from the Alaskan Independence Party, the League of the South, the Southern Party of Georgia, Samuel T. Francis, Alex Jones, Howard Phillips, Taki Theodoracopulos and Pat Buchanan. In 2008, Baldwin was involved in Ron Paul's campaign for the Republican nomination. With Paul's defeat, Baldwin himself ran for the presidency, again on the Constitution Party ticket. Paul endorsed Baldwin's candidacy. (Read here.)
Baldwin got his start in politics in Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority. He has been associated with the the militia movement, radical states rights/secessionism, and anti-tax, anti-immigrant and 9/11 truth movements. He has also said that he "believe(s) the South was right in the War Between the States". (Read here.) He preaches at a church he founded in 1975 (read here), and writes a column at the far-right VDare website (read here).
Errol Southers, President Obama's nominee to head the TSA, has come under attack from a conservative organization for being anti-Christian based on a 2008 interview in which Southers warned of the terrorist threat posed by "Christian Identity" groups. CNS News, which was founded by conservative activist L. Brent Bozell III, has published an article which deliberately conflates Southers' very specific warning about the extremist Christian Identity movement as indicating a bias against anyone with a "Christian identity". (Read here: CNSNews.com - Obama’s TSA Nominee Characterized Groups That Were Domestic Security Threats as ‘Anti-Abortion’ and Having ‘Christian Identity’.)
The Christian Identity movement is a violent, racist and anti-Semitic movement with connections to groups such as Aryan Nations. Adherents of that movement have been responsible for numerous terrorist acts including bombings and murders. Although the CNS article provides the following quote which makes the nature of Southers' concern quite clear, the CNS article deliberately distorts the meaning of the statement. Here's how CNS quotes Southers:
In the interview, Southers was asked whether there were “groups inside the United States that pose a danger to our security?”
“Domestically speaking, a large part, most of the groups we have here in the United States, are white supremacists groups, World Church of the Creator, National Alliance, Aryan Nations. There are some black separatist groups,” said Southers. “What’s interesting about those groups is you find that they are usually either Christian identity groups and/or groups that really have a foothold in our correctional or prison systems in the way of radicalization and recruiting.”
Southers was then asked: “Which home-grown terrorist groups pose the greatest danger to the U.S.?”
“Most of the domestic groups that we have to pay attention to here are white supremacist groups. They're anti-government and in most cases anti-abortion,” he said. “They are usually survivalist-type in nature, identity orientated. If you recall, Buford Furrow came to Los Angeles in, I believe, it was 1999. When he went to three different Jewish institutions, museums, and then wound up shooting people at a children's community center, then shooting a Filipino postal worker later on. Matthew Hale, who's the Pontifex Maximus of the World Church of the Creator out of Illinois, and Ben Smith, who went on a shooting spree in three different cities where he killed a number of African Americans and Jews and Asians that day. Those groups are groups that claim to be extremely anti-government and Christian-identity oriented.”
That statement by Southers is clear. The lede of that CNS article distorts that interview as follows:
Erroll Southers, who President Barack Obama has nominated to head the Transportation Security Administration, described groups that were a domestic security threat as being "anti-abortion" and “Christian-identity oriented."
And then there's that little matter of the headline, which deceptively changes Southers' statement about the Christian Identity movement into one about every person who identifies as a Christian. CNS seems to think that by doing this, and by spelling the word "identity" with a lower-case "i", they can deceive their readers about the nature of Southers' statement. They must think that their readership is very stupid. (Judging by the comments the article has attracted, they may be right.)
I wrote last week about the planned protest at my synagogue by an anti-gay, anti-Semitic cult-like church called the Westboro Baptist Church (or "WBC"). Last Saturday, they mounted small anti-Jewish and homophobic protests at Brooklyn's Congregation Beth Elohim and Kane Street Synagogue, among a number of other locations. Here are my impressions.
The lead-up to the protest included the news that school children in the Boerum Hill and Cobble Hill neighborhoods of Brooklyn had found scattered on sidewalks hundreds of slips of paper with the slogan "Kill Jews!". Police were said to be investigating a link to the planned demonstration at the Kane Street Synagogue which is located in Cobble Hill. (Read here.)
But that sort of stuff is child's play compared to the other PR techniques used by WBC. They're a small group, but they get a lot of press attention. They've latched onto the idea of protesting homosexuality at military funerals, a move which must be motivated more by attention-seaking than logic.
One means by which WBC generates attention for themselves is through fax spamming. A Zionist organization I know of receives almost on a daily basis faxes announcing WBC's picketing schedule and featuring their particular brand of insane rant. I assume that they're not the only one's getting these faxes.
I've seen some of these faxes, starting with an April 23 flier announcing demonstrations at the Israeli Consulate of Los Angeles and the Corona del Mar High School in Newport Beach, CA. The headline on that one got right to the point "JEWS KILLED JESUS!" and states that the Christ-killing Jews are "now ... carrying water for the fags; that's what they do best..." The announcement for this weekend's Brooklyn rallies (pdf here) was oddly headlined "THE FATEFUL FIG FIND", and included the warning to Jews that the Lord would soon "expel you from off the land & cause you to eat your children". WBC has very largely focused on such anti-Semitic and anti-gay proselytizing, frequently with only the most tenuous of connections. For example, they did detour from their usual path to celebrate both the death of Ted Kennedy and the fires in Athens, both of which they somehow believe to be God's punishment for homosexuality. They have taken the "God's punishment" idea invoked by Jerry Fallwell with respect to New York after 9/11 to its illogical extreme: any death or disaster is attributed to God's punishment for homosexuality.
They also maintain several relatively sophisticated websites (all with offensive names) featuring a variety of promotional material such as videos of sermons, music videos, promotional writings and calenders. The "Upcoming Pickets" calendar on the WBC website announced Saturday's Beth Elohim demonstration by denouncing bat mitzvah ceremonies as "unbiblical" and referring to the girl who was to be bat mitzvahed with an insult bordering on obscenity. That calendar entry is thankfully no longer available online.
This targeting of a youngster for abuse is typical of the WBC. They tend to target schoolchildren, frequently targeting schools and houses of worship for obscenity laced picketing. On Friday, September 24, they demonstrated opposite Brooklyn Tech High School in Fort Greene with just such a borderline obscene rally. They were met with a much larger counter-rally. (Read the Brooklyn Paper's coverage of that demonstration here. Their coverage of the preparations for the Beth Elohim demonstration is available here.)
On Saturday morning, my son wanted to come with me to Beth Elohim, but I told him that some bad people were going to be outside the synagogue and I just wanted to make sure that everything was okay.
Things were just getting started when I got there at about 9:45 am. I joined the group standing in front of the synagogue which included members of the synagogue, neighborhood residents, guests there for the bat mitzvah, and counter-demonstrators of various types. The crowd was mostly well-behaved and good-humored. (Kudos to the person who brought a dog wearing a sign reading "Dog Loves Fags".)
The WBC demonstration was extremely small. There had only four adult demonstrators and one child.
Each adult demonstrator held multiple signs, each sign bearing a calculatedly shocking and upsetting slogan or picture. This array of placards gave the impression of a slightly larger demonstration. After my initial surprise at how few of them there were, it occurred to me that these people are a subspecies of the group which includes those who opposed abortion by blocking clinics. They don't need large numbers to have an impact. They compensate for their small numbers with gross imagery, vicious rhetoric and a strategy of provoking confrontation. This was brought into focus by a particularly offensive sign to wave around at families going to various Shabbos services and a bat mitzvah: a picture of an infant inside a giant hamburger bun with lettuce and tomato with the of a slogan: "BITCH BURGER". The below-embedded video shows a WBC member "explaining" the sign.
After some of the chanting heard in the above video, they got to the main event. Like some sort of demented glee club, the WBC people began singing a series of several well rehearsed songs with lyrics concerning the evils of Jews, gays and Barrack Obama who was depicted with devil horns and the slogan "ANTICHRIST", an image also seen at teabag rallies.
At about 10 am, Rabbi Andy Bachman came out of his office bearing a shofar. He stood on the steps in front of the shul and addressed the crowd. After expressing his surprise at how so few WBC demonstrators caused so much tumult, he eloquently thanked the diverse crowd for coming together to oppose hate in the name of a God of love who loves gays and lesbians. He led the group in singing Oseh Shalom. Then the crowd fell back on an old standard to create a more festive mood, singing Hava Negila and dancing the hora. Rabbi Bachman took a moment to lead the crowd in a comic collective nose-thumbing directed at WBC in the name of "the God of Groucho Marx" (okay, it's a Reform congregation). Then he blew the shofar several times, the crowd chanting "tekiah", drowning out the obscene WBC chanting and singing and bringing an air of peace appropriate to the season.
Ben Muessig's Brooklyn Paper article on the Beth Elohim and Kane Street demonstrations (readable here on the New York Post website) was accurate and well-written. Steven Waldman's coverage at Beliefnet was also excellent (read here). On the other hand, Brooklyn's Channel 12 cable TV news covered another WBC demonstration at the Midwood Jewish Center in a very different way, showcasing video of an angry, apparently frum man in a group of men in black hats and tallitot, and contrasting that with an interview with a for-once not shouting Shirley Phelps saying her demonstration was "anti-sin". (View here.)
Video of the local CBS affiliate's coverage of a WBC demonstration in nearby Great Neck, L.I. is embedded below.
Before this week, I didn't really know what could motivate a hate group such as WBC, but their behavior at the demonstration -- a startling combination of obscenity-laced rhetoric concerning and targeting children and including a child participant -- presented an important clue. As a child, Fred Phelps, the leader of this group, must have been taught to associate piety and goodness with abusive, hateful language and exhibitionism, largely focused on a fear of homosexuality. Phelps has been able to promote this obscene, authoritarian world view in a family cult which worships a verbally abusive, narcissistic God. They literally worship hate. Time will tell whether they succeed in passing this ritualized hate onto the next generation of Phelps. From what I saw, the poor child they brought to Beth Elohim on Saturday would much rather have been somewhere, anywhere, else. He seemed ashamed of his elders. I hope that he can preserve that sense of shame.
On Monday, I posted about a hateful anti-Jewish demonstration conducted outside a Rosh Hashana service in Oklahoma by a small cult-like group called the Westboro Baptist Church. (Read here.) Today I learned that this group is coming to my synagogue. Gene of Harry's Place was kind enough to post the following:
Blogger Adam Holland has received an email from Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, where his family attends services and where his 4-year-old son attends preschool:
The email concerns plans by a hate-group to demonstrate outside the synagogue. I’ve written frequently about anti-Semitism on my blog for the past three years. Now it has come to my doorstep and demanded my attention and the attention of those who care about this issue.
The group in question, Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, has a long history of demonstrating at gay pride events with signs and slogans of the lowest, most hateful kind. More recently, they have similarly targeted the funerals of those killed in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now they target Jewish religious services as well. I’m asking those with the capacity to speak out against the efforts of Westboro Baptist Church to harm Jews, gays, and members of the military to do so now.
As I wrote on my blog, Westboro Baptist demonstrated outside Rosh Hashana services in Norman, Oklahoma, last Saturday bearing signs reading “God hates Jews”. No Jewish child should be forced to read that sign. No family should have to explain to their child what that sign means. Our families should not be forced to run a gauntlet of bigots in order to worship. By exposing this sort of hatred, and by demonstrating our commitment to peaceful coexistence between all religions, we help to counter those who try to sow seeds of hate.
You may recall that the same group demonstrated outside my old high school last spring because it’s named after the notorious homosexual Walt Whitman.
Although I had some reservations about giving this group the attention it obviously lives for, I've decided to go ahead and cover this. Why? Because I know that I and many other parents will be unable to bring our children to Shabbat services this Saturday so they aren't exposed to hate like that pictured below.
Jacob Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church protests at the Oklahoma University Hillel Rosh Hashahah service.
I'm not sure what will happen on Saturday. Watch this space for a follow-up.
Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church, the group that demonstrates against gay pride events with "God Hates Fags" signs, has branched out in recent years to protest at the funerals of those killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. There, they wield signs to the effect that God is punishing those who fight for the U.S. because -- you guessed it -- the U.S. has too many gays. As nuts as that is, it's even more malicious. Some bereaved families who have lost loved ones have been forced to run a gauntlet of these homophobic sign-wielding lunatics.
Now they've found a new target. Jews. They chose a Rosh Hashanah service at Oklahoma University at Norman, Oklahoma to try out their new act.
Jacob Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church protests at the Oklahoma University Hillel Rosh Hashahah service.
Members of Westboro Baptist Church forcefully protested the Rosh Hashanah holiday in front of Hillel today, while another crowd protested and shouted across the street in opposition.
Shirley Phelps-Roper, leader of the Westboro protest, said the church stopped at OU as part of a love campaign across the country to protest Jews killing Christ over 2,000 years ago. She said despite the common belief that Christ’s death brings salvation, members of the Jewish community should not have killed Christ.
“These people killed our Lord, and they know it,” Phelps-Roper said. “The hour of judgment is near and everything bad happening in the world is in part their fault for killing Christ.”
Westboro protestors held up signs reading “God hates fags,” “God hates Jews,”America is Doomed” and “God hates Israel,” among other derogatory statements.
“I’m Catholic,” said Scott Jech, music performance senior, who stood on the opposition side. “I came out here to show that I and a majority of America and the world disagrees.”
Hillel, a campus Jewish organization, did not stage a counter protest, and none of the protestors were part of the organization.
“We did not protest the Westboro Baptist Church visit, as this is exactly what they try to provoke, and we encouraged people not to protest,” the organization wrote in an online statement. “We are very proud that Hillel students understood the importance of not engaging with these people, and instead have been inspired to think about tolerance programming. We will keep the OU community informed of our future plans.”
Phelps-Roper said the major focus was on the Jewish community because Friday marks Rosh Hashanah, the start of the Jewish new year. She said the Westboro has been protesting the gay and lesbian community along with Mormonism, and now it is time for the Jewish community to “learn the truth.”
Westboro is a church in Topeka, Kan., owned and operated by the Fred Phelps, Phelps-Roper’s father, and the grandfather of the young men who accompanied Phelps-Roper to the protest.
“We are living in our last days and these Jews need to hear the truth,” Jacob Phelps said. “We are here to send a message to them that they are responsible for killing our Lord.”
Phelps said he felt the protest was a way to send a message of salvation and warning to the Jewish community because judgment for killing Jesus is coming soon.
Jacob Phelps, the member of the Westboro Baptist Church, protests at OU Hillel, a Jewish student organzation, Friday afternoon. Luke Atkinson/The Daily
“I know we were asked to not come out today, but I wanted them to see that we really do care about our Jewish community,” said Kara Joy McKee, OU alumnus. “We love our Jews. We love our everybodys.”
A group known for its demonstrations at military funerals and anti-gay stance protested Rosh Hashanah outside a University of Oklahoma Jewish student organization.
Members of the Westboro Baptist Church shouted slogans, held signs that said "God Hates Jews" and sang a rendition of "Hey Jude" as "Hey Jew" outside the Hillel Foundation on Friday.
Counter-demonstrators, not affiliated with Hillel, gathered across the street with signs and chants of their own. The protest ended without confrontation.
Westboro leader Shirley Phelps-Roper says the church stopped at the school as part of a "love campaign" to criticize Jews for "killing Christ."
A trio of motorcyclists who show up when Westboro members picket a military funeral revved their engines to drown out the Topeka, Kan.-based group.
Pastor Steven L. Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona has, infamously, prayed in sermons for President Obama's death and posted the videos on the internet. He has repeatedly offered his version of a fatwa, saying that killing the president would not be a crime. (Read here and here.) One of his parishioners, Christopher Broughton, then armed himself with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to protest outside a town hall meeting at which President Obama spoke.
I took a look at Anderson's website to get a sense of who Anderson is and what he stands for. Here's an example that may say it all.
As is typical for fundamentalist Christians, Anderson hates homosexuality, but Anderson verges on obsessing about it, and his views on the subject are extreme. He literally advocates that gays should be put to death. As upsetting as this is, I didn't find it surprising; there are sadly many of his ilk among the Christian right. What I found more surprising is what he considers the cause of homosexuality. I found it funny at first, but upon reflection, troubling in its sheer madness. In an essay entitled "Television: the Leaven of the Pharisees" (read here), Pastor Anderson says that the Andy Griffith show and several other 1960s situation comedies are to blame.
Alternative lifestyles
"From the beginning, the producers of television have had an agenda. Even in the most “harmless” of shows, alternative lifestyles are being promoted. Consider, for example, “The Andy Griffith Show.” The show centers around a single parent who lives with his aunt. Admittedly, his wife supposedly died, and he is not divorced. However, we are still being desensitized to the idea of a single parent which is neither the norm nor God’s plan. The show also features a character, Gomer Pile, who is played by a man who is a homosexual in real life.
"Consider the show “The Odd Couple” from the 1960’s. Aside from sinful content, we are being exposed to an alternative lifestyle of two men living together as roommates. Genesis 2:24 tells us God’s normal plan, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” Although neither man in the show is a homosexual, this show was obviously a forerunner of the sitcoms of today which feature homosexual characters.
"Consider “The Brady Bunch.” The show is about a widowed man and a widowed woman who have three children each. Now they are married and have six children collectively. This is an extremely rare scenario but mirrors the very common scenario of divorce and remarriage. We are subliminally being exposed to the idea of stepparents and stepchildren which is far more common in divorced situations than in the rare circumstance of young widows.
"If you can see what is wrong with the above examples from forty years ago, you probably do not need me to go into what is wrong with the themes found in today’s television programming."
It's bad enough that armed followers of this guy are roaming around outside presidential speeches, especially in light of the fact that he teaches that killing the president would be a good thing. Knowing that this guy has written that Mayberry RFD was a modern Sodom and Gomorrah at first made me laugh and roll my eyes. But after reflecting on the fact that someone so obviously insane has followers who are willing to act on his words to threaten the president with violence, I'm not sure that this is very funny. Anderson and his followers are a dangerous cult. The absurdity of his beliefs only brings that into sharper focus.
Christopher Broughton with assault rifle outside presidential appearance.
Christopher Broughton and Pastor Steven L. Anderson
