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Newt Gingrich, Saul Alinsky and the Religious Right's Conspiracy Narratives

Gingrich's claims echo conspiracy theories from the Tea Parties, Glenn Beck, the John Birch Society, and the 1990s Militia Movement.

By Chip Berlet
Posted at January 28, 2012, 12:09 pm

To an alarming extent the frame of Obama bringing socialism to America includes allegations that Obama and his allies are part of a vast left-wing conspiracy. Whether this conspiracy tracks back to Marx or Satan is open to debate. Further to the Right are recruiters for White supremacist groups suggesting the conspirators are Jews or Muslims using Obama as a puppet. This is not a healthy dynamic for civil society--and we have seen it before.

This campaign--aimed at rolling back the polices of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration--has always been a loose-knit coalition of large corporate interests, small business owners, economic libertarians, anti-union activists, conservative Christians, and moral traditionalists. They all share an antipathy to collectivism in general. Their opposition to taxes, however, is selective. For example, they tend to support funds for the military and law enforcement, but tend to oppose government programs that weave a social safety net.

Anti-Obama rhetoric circulating in the Tea Party movement suggests Obama is a puppet of liberal elites and socialists. This mimics 1960s claims calling the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. a dupe of a communist conspiracy--circulated by groups such as the ultra-conservative John Birch Society, the all-White "Citizens Councils," and the Ku Klux Klan. Billboards and flyers with this message appeared across the South. Postcards were distributed nationwide. This storyline has more than a little racist baggage.



The anti-left red-baiting of Obama echoes the same charges made against President Roosevelt claiming he was a socialist, a fascist, or both. Some authors, such as Elizabeth Dilling, added antisemitic conspiracy theories to the attack on the New Deal. After World War Two this theme re-emerged as militant Red Scare anticommunism which demonized liberals, union and community organizers, peace activists, socialists, gay people, Jews, and people of color. The "McCarthy Period" anticommunist witch hunts stretched from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.


Elizabeth Dilling, 1936, The Roosevelt Red Record and its Background, Chicago: self-published.

Read More About Gingrich, Alinsky, and the Christian Right Grand Conspiracy Narrative Here [ http://www.researchforprogress.us/conspiracism/demons/index.html#jump (major resource)].

Copyright 2012 AlterNet

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/767941/newt_gingrich%2C_saul_alinsky_and_the_religious_right%27s_conspiracy_narratives/ [with comment]


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Bill Maher Rips into Gingrich's Saul Alinsky Smears: "Who the F-- is Saul Alinsky?"

By Sarah Seltzer
Posted at January 28, 2012, 11:31 am

Last night during his "New Rules" segment, Bill Maher slammed the accusations being leveled against Obama for being a "Saul Alinsky radical," making fun of Alinsky's relatively low profile among the general public and GOP voters in particular--and then revealing his own Wikipedia research on Alinsky, who was a beloved and influential community organizer with zero communist ties.

The point of Maher's line of inquiry on Alinsky?

The Republicans are running against a fictional Obama, a radical and socialist political figure who has no basis in actual policy or even personal association, as the Alinsky charges demonstrate: Alinsky died when Obama was ten.

Watch below, courtesy of Mediaite:

[video embedded; original at http://www.mediaite.com/tv/bill-maher-wants-to-know-who-the-fk-is-saul-alinsky/ ]

Meanwhile, at the Forward, Gal Beckerman makes the case that the Alinsky reference is a kind of coded Anti-Semitism [ http://blogs.forward.com/forward-thinking/150178/ ], a desire to link the President with secular elite Jews that is particularly insidious.

Copyright 2012 AlterNet

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/767939/bill_maher_rips_into_gingrich%27s_saul_alinsky_smears%3A_%22who_the_f--_is_saul_alinsky%22/ [with comments]


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