Безбожие

[tijd]

Знаменитый фокусник Рэнди Джеймс ("Amazing Randi") прославился разоблачением разного рода шарлатанов. Эта деятельность иногда напоминала ношение воды в решете - успешное разоблачение, к примеру,  не уменьшило число зрителей на представлениях мошенника Юрия Геллера, гнущего ложки силой мысли. Тем не менее эта деятельность помогала пропагандировать научный подход к знанию ни традиции американского трезвомыслия.

During the late ’60s and early ’70s, popular interest in the paranormal grew: There was a fascination with extrasensory perception and the Bermuda Triangle and best sellers like “Chariots of the Gods,” which claimed Earth’s ancient civilizations were visited by aliens. There were mystics, mind-readers and psychic surgeons, who were said to be able to extract tumors from their patients using only their bare hands - and without leaving a mark. Randi continued on his crusade. Few of his fellow illusionists were interested in exposing the way that conjuring tricks were used to dupe gullible audiences into believing in psychic abilities. “Everybody else just kind of rolled their eyes,” Penn Jillette, a good friend of Randi’s, told me. “'Why is Randi spending all this time doing this? We all know there is no ESP. It’s just stupid people believe it, and that’s fine.’ ”
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/magazine/the-unbelievable-skepticism-of-the-amazing-randi.html

Рэнди стал родоначальником движения скептиков, которое в конце 2000ых частично слилось с движением "новых атеистов", вдохновленных книжками вроде "The God Delusion" Ричарда Докинза или "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" Кристофера Хитченса.

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По иронии судьбы личная жизнь разоблачителя мошенников оказалась связана с мошенничеством. в 2010 Рэнди в возрасте 81 год "вышел из клозета" и признался в гомосексуальности, а на следующий год его партнер (позже супруг) был арестован за то, что жил под чужим именем по поддельным документам.

Randi was all but marooned in the house - he was forbidden to drive while he awaited cataract surgery - and Alvarez had been forced to surrender his driver’s license, after a series of events that began on Sept. 8, 2011. That morning there was a knock on the front door. When Randi opened it, a pair of federal agents stood before him. They asked to speak to Alvarez. Outside, Randi could see two unmarked S.U.V.s blocking the driveway and at least half a dozen agents surrounding the perimeter of the property. When Alvarez came downstairs from his room, the agents explained there was a problem. They wanted to talk to him about passport fraud. They cuffed him and took him out to the car. Randi was left alone in the house, holding business cards from State Department agents, who, Randi said, gave him instructions to wait 24 hours before calling them.
The agents took Alvarez directly to Broward County Jail, where he was photographed, issued a gray uniform and registered as FNU LNU: “first name unknown, last name unknown.” In an interview room at the jail, he told an agent everything: He had fled homophobic persecution in Venezuela and had come to the U.S. on a two-year student visa. He met Randi and knew he wanted to stay with him. But when his visa expired, there was no way to renew it. He said he was given the name and Social Security number of José Alvarez by a friend in a Fort Lauderdale nightclub, and used it to apply for a passport in 1987. Alvarez told the agent he was deeply sorry for the trouble he had caused the real Alvarez - who he believed was dead but turned out to be a teacher’s aide living in the Bronx. FNU LNU said his real name was Deyvi Orangel Peña Arteaga.
Charged with making a false statement in the application and use of a passport and aggravated identity theft, Peña faced a $250,000 fine, a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and deportation to Venezuela. After six weeks in jail, he was released on a $500,000 bond, and he subsequently agreed to plead guilty to a single charge of passport fraud. At a sentencing hearing in May 2012, the judge considered letters of support from Randi and Peña’s friends from the world of art, science and entertainment, including Richard Dawkins and Penn Jillette, as well as from members of charities to which Peña had given his time and work. The judge considered Peña’s long relationship with Randi, and Randi’s failing health. He gave him a lenient sentence: time served, six months’ house arrest and 150 hours’ community service.
But Peña still had to contend with the immigration authorities. After the sentencing hearing, he had been home for five days when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents appeared at the door. “Say goodbye,” they told him. Peña assured Randi he would be back that afternoon. He was taken to the Krome detention center in Miami, and remained there while his lawyer tried to find a way of keeping him in the United States. After two months of incarceration, Peña was finally released from Krome on the evening of Aug. 2, 2012, to find that Randi had spent half the day waiting outside the front gate for him. The couple were married in a ceremony in Washington the following summer.
Today, Peña remains on probation and no longer holds any identity documents except a Venezuelan passport with his birth name. United States immigration authorities have agreed not to deport him for now, but he has no formal immigration status in the United States: were he to leave the country, he would be unable to return.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/magazine/the-unbelievable-skepticism-of-the-amazing-randi.html



Примерно в это же время в братстве скептиков и атеистов начались расколы. Кристофер Хитченс умер и не дожил до того, чтобы полностью удовлетвориться результатами войны в Ираке, которую он всецело поддерживал.

Впечатления от выступления Хитченса в 2007:

Then it was Hitchens at his most bellicose. He told us what the most serious threat to the West was (and you know this line already): it was Islam. Then he accused the audience of being soft on Islam, of being the kind of vague atheists who refuse to see the threat for what it was, a clash of civilizations, and of being too weak to do what was necessary, which was to spill blood to defeat the enemy. Along the way he told us who his choice for president was right now - Rudy Giuliani - and that Obama was a fool, Clinton was a pandering closet fundamentalist, and that he was less than thrilled about all the support among the FFRF for the Democratic party. We cannot afford to allow the Iranian theocracy to arm itself with nuclear weapons (something I entirely sympathize with), and that the only solution is to go in there with bombs and marines and blow it all up. The way to win the war is to kill so many Moslems that they begin to question whether they can bear the mounting casualties.
It was simplistic us-vs.-them thinking at its worst, and the only solution he had to offer was death and destruction of the enemy.
This was made even more clear in the Q&A.; He was asked to consider the possibility that bombing and killing was only going to accomplish an increase in the number of people opposing us. Hitchens accused the questioner of being incredibly stupid (the question was not well-phrased, I'll agree, but it was clear what he meant), and said that it was obvious that every Moslem you kill means there is one less Moslem to fight you … which is only true if you assume that every Moslem already wants to kill Americans and is armed and willing to do so. I think that what is obvious is that most Moslems are primarily interested in living a life of contentment with their families and their work, and that an America committed to slaughter is a tactic that will only convince more of them to join in opposition to us.
Basically, what Hitchens was proposing is genocide. Or, at least, wholesale execution of the population of the Moslem world until they are sufficiently cowed and frightened and depleted that they are unable to resist us in any way, ever again.
https://web.archive.org/web/20071024000031if_/https://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/ffrf_recap.php

Люди, которые считали себя рациональными мыслителями, способными рассуждать логически на любые темы, оказались не в состоянии понять, что пилюля " мы и они" затуманивает сознание, включая иные участки мозги и мешает им остановиться на грани между критикой Ислама, как религии, и пещерной исламофобией.

Похожая история произошла с отравлением сексизмом. Пойманные на поддержку "маносферы" и крючок байки про " свободу слова", крупнейшие деятели скептицизма-атеизма вроде Сэма Хэрриса и Майкла Шермера съехали в  так называемый Intellectual Dark Web, функционально смыкаясь с alt-right.



Само по себе это в порядке вещей о могло быть ожидаемо. Ирония обнаруживает себя в том, что разоблачители религиозного шарлатанства попались на разводку таких же шарлатанов.

Майкл О'Фаллон - деятель из Флорида, который построил бизнес на организации круизов для консервативных фанатиков. 10 лет назад его клиентами были birthers и фанаты Tea Party.

Led by former Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes, more than a hundred conservative and Tea Party activists and their families rented out space on this ship for what was billed as a "cruise for liberty."
Cruise organizer Michael O'Fallon markets this seven day voyage as a chance to talk politics in paradise.
"Right now people are wanting to be with other conservatives. Maybe it's because they feel like they're on an island right now,” says O’Fallon, Sovereign Cruise president.
At the pre-cruise kick-off at a Miami hotel, Keyes explained why he believes the Tea Party is gaining steam.
"I think it is quite obvious that this isn't about Republicans and Democrats. It may be about the failure of both parties and the whole party system," says Keyes.
Conservative activist Alan Gottlieb sees a golden opportunity.
"A lot of people have never been involved in politics before. They know nothing about politics. They're extremely naive. They're angry and they're upset. And they're venting their frustration by attending those rallies.”
Cruise for Liberty speakers Floyd and Mary Beth Brown have a Web site calling for President Obama's impeachment.
"I know all of us need some encouragement in fighting this battle … against Obama who's trying to destroy America and I know all of you love America and are fellow patriots," says Mary Beth.
When it comes to President Obama, this is no love boat. Liberal critics of these conservative expeditions through the Caribbean say they're a picture perfect example of how the Tea Party movement can sometimes go overboard.
Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons worries the tone at some Tea Party events - on shore and off - is getting out of hand.
"Are we just talking about voting differently or are we talking about something a little more edgy than that,” asks Simmons.
Want edgy?
Keyes refers to the president as the "present occupant of the Oval Office," still questioning Mr. Obama's citizenship even though the White House and the Republican governor of Hawaii, where he was born, have produced evidence refuting the charge.
“If according to the Constitution you are not eligible for the presidency and that does turn out to be the case then Barack Obama was never president,” says Keyes.
https://am.blogs.cnn.com/2010/02/05/welcome-to-the-tea-party-cruising-for-a-cause/

В партнерах выступал тогда вездесущий  Джером Корси и его конспирологический сайт WND.

WorldNetDaily, a media outlet that says Barack Obama is foreign-born and can’t be president, is inviting fellow travelers to ship out on a Tea Party at Sea cruise to the Caribbean with Swift Boat author Jerome Corsi and former Republican presidential longshot Alan Keyes.
The week-long itinerary includes Puerto Rico, St. Maarten and a resort identified in the online brochure as Labadee, Hispaniola.
“On the north coast of Hispaniola, surrounded by beautiful mountain slopes and exotic foliage, sits Labadee®, Royal Caribbean's private paradise,” the WorldNetDaily brochure beckons. “This exclusive destination offers pristine beaches, breathtaking scenery and spectacular water activities.”
WorldNetDaily doesn’t mention that Labadee is in Haiti, a country ravaged by an earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people earlier this year.
https://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/09/15/tea-party-goes-to-haiti/



На таком круизе Виктория Джексон, комедийная актриса и бывшая звезда SNL, познакомилась с Брэндоном Валлорани, который нашел для нее способ подзарабаотать в качестве "принцессы" Tea Party.

Victoria says she knew nothing about politics and rarely voted. But because “everybody in Hollywood is liberal and Jewish,” the best way to network was through a cagey group of industry conservatives.
She refuses to name what she calls a “secret organization,” but Victoria is clearly talking about Friends of Abe (FOA). Celebrities who have confessed to being among its 1,800-plus members include Pat Boone, Jon Voight, Kelsey Grammer, and Gary Sinise. Started in 2007 by “two guys in their trailer whispering that they respected Bush,” Victoria says, it's something like a support group for conservatives who fear being blacklisted for their beliefs. <...>
She then attended what she says was L.A.'s first Tea Party rally, on the Santa Monica Pier, in February 2009, carrying a sign reading, “We don't want no socialism.” She read to the crowd of 50 the definitions of capitalism, communism, and socialism. A week later, she was waving a Bible on The Sean Hannity Show. Soon she recorded a new song, “There's a Communist Living in the White House,” in both English and broken Spanish.
Victoria returned to Miami for good in 2010 to be with her pregnant (and married, she states pointedly) 25-year-old daughter, Scarlet. That airhead sitcom never panned out. Instead, she became a self-described “conservative journalist.” In early 2011, she began writing for the right-wing website World Net Daily. She received loads of attention for her editorial on a kiss between two male actors: “Did you see Glee this week? Sickening!”
Around that time, she met Brandon Vallorani, founder of the website Patriot Update (motto: “A free press for the conservative revolution”; Chuck Norris is a columnist), on the Tea Party Cruise for Liberty, a weeklong boat ride. “We hit it off immediately,” Vallorani says, and he conceived of an online show for her and three other mostly unknown conservative female contributors: PolitiChicks. It's billed as The View for right-wingers, and Victoria says she earns a “modest” living from it.
They've tackled the mystery of Area 51, with Victoria earnestly wondering whether Jesus died for aliens' sins. Then there was the episode titled “Who's More Racist, Blacks or Whites?” in which the discussion centered on a conversation the hosts had with a black airport baggage handler. Also: “Can Christians Vote for a Mormon?” (Answer from a cohost: “As long as he's not a Muslim, I think that's fine.”)
https://www.sfweekly.com/news/tea-party-princess-victoria-jackson-and-the-rabid-right/



Когда Обама победил на выборах в 2012, двумя самых безутешными персонажами в социальных сетях оказались Дональд Трамп и Виктория Джексон.

While most of us are celebrating Mitt Romney's defeat in the streets by legally smoking marijuana and gay-marrying randomly-chosen passers-by, not everyone is quite so happy. And thanks to Twitter, we know about it. Vibrating bologna loaf Donald Trump, mistakenly believing that Romney won the popular vote, is calling for "revolution," - revolution! - while former SNL actress Victoria Jackson is sobbing and telling Christians that they "disgust" her.
https://gawker.com/5958376/i-cant-stop-crying-america-died-donald-trump-and-victoria-jackson-melt-down-on-twitter

If we believe what she tweets, Victoria Jackson can’t stop crying because President Obama was reelected. The former Saturday Night Live star, devout Christian, and Tea Party activist took the Donald Trump “high road” in reacting to the election. In a string of tweets, Jackson said, “I can’t stop crying. America died” and “Thanks a lot Christians for not showing up. You disgust me.”
Well that doesn’t seem very Christian now, does it? For those not familiar with Jackson’s religious and political positions-which she detailed in her autobiography, Is My Bow Too Big? How I Went From Saturday Night Live to the Tea Party, and which she regularly espouses on her Web show, The Victoria Jackson Show, here’s a road map to how we got from her stand-up to her meltdown.
Fall 2008: Jackson goes on Fox News to talk with Bill O’Reilly about why she is supporting then-Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain.
“I think Obama is a communist,” Jackson tells O’Reilly. “And my husband said, ‘Don’t use that word. Say radical or Marxist.’ But, you know, Karl Marx wrote the book, so I don’t see why people are afraid to use the word Communist. Because I’ve done a lot of research. And I’ve read the book 1984 by George Orwell, twice. And I was walking through the airport and every magazine had Obama’s picture on it. Every one. And I turned on the TV and every channel had him on it. It’s like Castro in Cuba or the guy in China or Saddam Hussein. There are pictures everywhere!”
March 1, 2010: Jackson introduces a song she wrote, “There’s a Communist Living in the White House.” Sample lyrics: “Why aren’t people shocked or something? Why aren’t people up in arms? Does anyone read history or see red flags or hear alarms? The streets are filled with deaf and dumb as I squeak like a mouse, ‘There’s a Communist living in the White House!’”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/victoria-jacksons-election-tweet-meltdown

Click to view

"I don't want a political label, but Obama bears traits that resemble the anti-Christ and I'm scared to death that un-educated [sic] people will ignorantly vote him into office. My mom likes him because his children are well dressed! You see, what bothers me most, besides that he is a Communist, and a whitey-hater, (although he is half white), is that he is a LIAR. He pretends to be a Christian and he incriminates himself everytime [sic] he speaks about Christianity. To lie about being a believer in Christ is very dangerous. Lightning could strike him at any minute! But seriously, he doesn't have a clue what the Bible says and yet he pretends to be a church-going Christian to win votes. That is sooooo evil."
https://gawker.com/5040564/respected-pundit-victoria-jackson-weighs-in-on-anti-christ-whitey-hater-barack-obama

Обзывание Обамы антихристом и коммунистом не слишком отклонялось от генеральной линии Tea Party. Будущий сенатор Тед Круз прославился и получил трамплин для выборов, выступая в 2010 на митинге Tea Party, организованном на деньги братьев Кохов, и рассказывая про засилье коммунистов в Гарвардской юридической школе.

Cruz made the accusation while speaking to a rapt ballroom audience during a luncheon at a conference called “Defending the American Dream,” sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a non-profit political organization founded and funded in part by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch. Cruz greeted the audience jovially, but soon launched an impassioned attack on President Obama, whom he described as “the most radical” President “ever to occupy the Oval Office.”
He then went on to assert that Obama, who attended Harvard Law School four years ahead of him, “would have made a perfect president of Harvard Law School.” The reason, said Cruz, was that, “There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/is-senator-ted-cruz-our-new-mccarthy

Предпагается, что под коммунистами Круз имел в воду профессоров, связанных с Critical Legal Studies - областью права, которая рассматривает правосудие, как систему поддержания власти. Взгляд леволиберальный, критичный по отношению к марксизму и не имеющий никакого отношения ни к коммунизму, ни к тайным планам про "overthrowing the United States government".

Если Виктория Джексон шла дальше, то только в том, что выдавала тайну о придумавших коммунизм жидомасонах из Иллюминати, которую наследники John Birch Society обычно стесняются выносить на свет.

"Have you seen all the satanic symbolism in Kanye West, Jay Z, Beyonce, Nikki Minaj, Lady Gaga, Madonna, etc.'s videos and Superbowl performances? Have you heard the rumors or watched the Youtube videos about a secret Luciferian society called the Illuminati - The International Bankers who control everything, and whose goal is a one world government that enslaves the masses and is ruled by the elite? I have."
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/how-fringe-media-helped-turn-conspiracy-loving-snl-star-politician



Брэндон Валлорани, встретивший Викторию Джексон на круизе - пример удачного шарлатана, который приспособился зарабатывать на "патриотах".

A good deal of the “conservative revolution” is produced by Patriot Depot™, a division of Discount Book Distributors, a Georgia corporation founded in 2007 by Brandon Vallorani, an MBA with a graphic design background. His Chief Operating Officer is another MBA, Jay Taylor, whose undergraduate degree was in computer engineering.
Patriot Depot, which advertises “Supplies for the Conservative Revolution,” now has nine employees in White Hall, West Virginia, mostly packing and shipping books, DVDs, bumper stickers, and t-shirts with original messages like, I’ll keep my guns, freedom & money... you can keep the “change!” Taylor told me that the company has sold nearly 100,000 Keep the “change!” bumper stickers.
Almost every day, Patriot Depot sends more than 100,000 individuals emails with original content such as “The Ten Commandments According to Obama”- the first of which is:
"Thou shalt have no God in America, except for me. For we are no longer a Christian nation and, after all, I am the chosen One. (And like God, I do not have a birth certificate.)"
These “Commandments” also are for sale at Patriot Depot on a t-shirt.
Which brings us to emailers with itchy FWD fingers.
“We hope they’ll forward the emails on,” Taylor says. He acknowledges that such people serve as unwitting salespeople in a multi-tiered marketing system, like Amway’s.
He is reluctant to divulge the resulting annual sales, other than “between one and ten million dollars.” An educated guess is $3.5 million. “Initially it was a business opportunity,” he says. “Then we saw an opportunity to get the message out.”
The company recently launched Patriot Update, a website complete with news, commentary, and editorial cartoons (example below). They also just published a book, Born To Lie: From The Birth Certificate to Health Care. Taylor anticipates sales of 10,000.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-fwding-of-the-conserv_b_278848

В 2016 он сколотил настоящую шарлатанскую империю вранья для поддержки Трампа на выборах. Благодаря чудодейственному Фейсбуку, эта платформа остается скрытой от либералов, но прицельно заточена на целевую аудиторию в 50 миллионов.

Many of these political news pages will likely find their cachet begin to evaporate after Nov. 8. But one company, the Liberty Alliance, may have found a way to create something sustainable and even potentially transformational, almost entirely within the ecosystem of Facebook. The Georgia-based firm was founded by Brandon Vallorani, formerly of Answers in Genesis, the organization that opened a museum in Kentucky promoting a literal biblical creation narrative. Today the Liberty Alliance has around 100 sites in its network, and about 150 Facebook pages, according to Onan Coca, the company’s 36-year-old editor in chief. He estimates their cumulative follower count to be at least 50 million. Among the company’s partners are the former congressman Allen West, the 2008 election personality Joe the Plumber, the conservative actor Kirk Cameron and the former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Victoria Jackson. Then there are Liberty’s countless news-oriented pages, which together have become an almost ubiquitous presence on right-leaning political Facebook in the last few years. Their names are instructive and evocative: Eagle Rising; Fighting for Trump; Patriot Tribune; Revive America; US Herald; The Last Resistance.
A dozen or so of the sites are published in-house, but posts from the company’s small team of writers are free to be shared among the entire network. The deal for a would-be Liberty Alliance member is this: You bring the name and the audience, and the company will build you a prefab site, furnish it with ads, help you fill it with content and keep a cut of the revenue. Coca told me the company brought in $12 million in revenue last year. (The company declined to share documentation further corroborating his claims about followers and revenue.)
Because the pages are run independently, the editorial product is varied. But it is almost universally tuned to the cadences and styles that seem to work best on partisan Facebook. It also tracks closely to conservative Facebook media’s big narratives, which, in turn, track with the Trump campaign’s messaging: Hillary Clinton is a crook and possibly mentally unfit; ISIS is winning; Black Lives Matter is the real racist movement; Donald Trump alone can save us; the system - all of it - is rigged. Whether the Liberty Alliance succeeds or fails will depend, at least in part, on Facebook’s algorithm.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/magazine/inside-facebooks-totally-insane-unintentionally-gigantic-hyperpartisan-political-media-machine.html

Liberty Alliance LLC, which was founded by Vallorani in 2007, operates a number of conservative websites and makes money through clicks garnered through strong a social media presence. In 2012, Liberty Alliance was ranked 576 in Inc. Magazine’s annual fastest growing companies ranking. In 2013, Liberty Alliance websites were getting more than 1 million page views a day, and by 2016 they claimed to have a cumulative follower count of 50 million. My rough-and-ready count based on website metadata found more than a hundred websites created and operated by Liberty Alliance.
Some are websites that borrow the celebrity and name of right-wing heroes, such as Joe the Plumber and Victoria Jackson, ex-Saturday Night Live cast member. Some promote themes such as Eagle Rising, Conservative Firing Line, and Girls Just Wanna Have Guns. In the era of Trump, all of them, in totality, promote pro-Trump propaganda.
https://rantt.com/a-look-at-who-is-behind-the-right-wing-fake-news-that-spreads-on-facebook



Что касается организатора круизов О'Фаллона, то в трамповские годы он переключился на окучивание христиан и бескомпромиссную борьбу с Соросом и "глобалистами".

There aren't many cruise "experience" directors who spend their days defending what is described as America's Judeo-Christian heritage and promoting "nation-ism" - a version of nationalism that champions "the right of self governance and the right of people to be self-governed.”
But Michael O'Fallon does, and he argues both are under attack by the Open Society Foundation, founded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros. He often says as much on his website, Sovereignnations.com, as well as through conferences with speakers who range from controversial psychologist Jordan Peterson to a slate of evangelical Christians of the Calvinist variety.
And when he has some spare time, he goes on a cruise - like a recent journey to the Galapagos Islands, which O'Fallon recently highlighted on his personal Facebook page.
"On a strikingly blue day, we came ashore to hike and explore the home of Marine Iguanas, the Galapagos Albatross, the Blue-Footed Booby, the Red-Footed Booby, the Magnificent frigatebird and the ever-present Pacific seals," wrote O’Fallon, who is both CEO of Sovereign Nations and owner of Sovereign Cruises and Events LLC, which runs vacation excursions for religious and political groups, alike.
https://religionnews.com/2019/07/08/from-cruise-ships-to-trumps-hotel-calvinist-christian-nationalism-is-making-moves/

В 2017 О'Фаллон подсуетился организовать конференцию в обители шарлатанов и прохиндеев, отеле Трампа в Вашингтоне.

"The movement to embrace sovereign nationalism begins in Washington, D.C., at the Trump International Hotel from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1 at the first Sovereign Nations Conference. This year's theme is "Understanding the Causes of Things," and it will feature these dynamic speakers: Rep. Bill Johnson, Rep. Tom Garrett, Ambassador Alan Keyes, Matt Vadum, Kelly Monroe Kullberg, Matt Barber, James R. White, Steve Lawson, Summer White, Nick Adams and several others soon to be announced.
Our conviction to begin this movement has been fortified by the following:
1. Knowing that abiding by the Declaration of Independence and Constitution as intended by our Founding Fathers and the future of our United States is a worthy and worthwhile pursuit regardless of the dangers presented before us.
2. Knowing that President Trump has been dragged through the mud and his reputation has been sullied and attacked viciously by the Open Society Foundations, the progressives they fund and their media proponents - but he has not backed down - has shamed all of us who react in fear instead of purpose. We must follow Trump's example.
3. Knowing that our future generations will not have the rights that we so often take for granted if we do nothing to reverse the course being pursued by globalists of the Open Society Foundations."
https://www.wnd.com/2017/10/bold-plan-to-reclaim-america-though-sovereign-nationalism/



В 2018 О’Маллон стал одним из главных авторов воззвания к христианам о необходимости борьбы с “социальной справедливостью”: “Specifically, we are deeply concerned that values borrowed from secular culture are currently undermining Scripture in the areas of race and ethnicity, manhood and womanhood, and human sexuality. The Bible’s teaching on each of these subjects is being challenged under the broad and somewhat nebulous rubric of concern for ‘social justice.’“
https://statementonsocialjustice.com/

В своём блоге он объяснил, почему такая борьба стала необходимостью: “The Protestant evangelical church has been a massive conservative force over the past 50 years. With nearly 40 million members, evangelicals are normally politically active, voting for their morals as well as for the preservation of our republic. But something has happened over the past 7 years or so that has radically changed the priorities and mission of the largest evangelical denominations, churches, and seminaries in the United States. Seminaries previously focused on Scriptural exegesis and proclamation are now focusing on teaching their future pastors’ postmodern concepts such as critical race theory and intersectionality. <...> The new progressive-leaning tendencies in the evangelical church that has been accompanied by massive propaganda campaigns, reflexive movements, giant conferences all accompanied with an obvious political mission needed to be confronted.”
https://sovereignnations.com/2018/09/04/statement-social-justice-gospel/

На поддержку важного дела предотвращения евангелических избирателей от сползания в прогрессивизм через чуждые понятия "social justice" и "critical race theory" удалось раскачать серьезных консервативных спонсоров. Организованную О’Маллоном и его партнерами сессию CPAC “Stopping the Progressive Drift of Evangelical Voters” спонсировала “CO2 Coalition” - организация в поддержку бизнесом, выбрасывающих CO2 в атмосферу.

A thing I contemplate occasionally is that Alan Keyes stopped speaking to his daughter because she’s gay. https://t.co/csdpiWN8sd pic.twitter.com/XCShVpUTVP
— Jane Coaston (@cjane87) February 28, 2019

В 2019 О’Маллон был среди подписавших воззвание о национальном дне молитвы за Трампа: “We the undersigned are calling for June 2 to be a special Day of Prayer for the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, that God would protect, strengthen, embolden, and direct him.”
https://billygraham.org/story/special-day-of-prayer/

В том же году вдобавок к Sovereign Cruises and Events LLC он зарегистрировал частную компанию New Discourses LLC со своими новыми партнерами. Ими оказались шарлатаны из атеистического движения.



Их предыдущие книжки назывались "A Manual for Creating Atheists" и "Everybody Is Wrong About God". Но намного успешней продается новая книжка "Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody", посвященная критике старой страшилки Critical Legal Studies и ее разноводности Critical Race Theory.

Как и Тед Круз 10 лет назад, авторы пугают марксизмом, переходящим в коммунизм и ГУЛАГи. Ни книжка, ни сайт New Discourses не упоминают коммерческой связи с О'Фаллоном и правохристианскими экстремистами и пытаются строить критику с либеральных позиций. Отсутсвие соответствующего образования и владения предметом авторам не мешают. Попытка усмотреть у тех, кого ону критикуют тайные мотивы, оказываются банальной проекцией.

Cynical Theories suffers from the exact same problems Pluckrose and Lindsay diagnose in Social Justice scholarship-namely, misplaced cynicism combined with unwarranted confidence in such cynical interpretations. Critical scrutiny exposes an embarrassing fact: Pluckrose and Lindsay have done a better job of revealing themselves as cynical theorists than revealing any of the theories they discuss as cynical. They appear absolutely convinced that there are several humanities fields with a Theory infestation, and that all Theorists think the “master’s tools” of logic, science, and reason are only accessible to white, Western men, and thus ought to be destroyed. Nevermind the fact that there is no evidence of these convictions in the work of Fricker, Dotson, Code, Wolf, Medina, Mills, or Bailey; the authors’ lived experience is surely worth more than citations with page numbers.
I’ll conclude by considering a recent tweet by Lindsay: “The Woke approach really only does the same things over and over again: uncharitable readings, call people names, take things out of context, erase nuance, call people names again. Takedowns of it are exceptionally tedious and require a lot of lengthy explanations.” If this is right, Cynical Theories carries out the Woke approach to perfection.
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-cynical-theorists-behind-cynical-theories/

Это не заслуживало бы особого внимания, если бе на разводки христианских шарлатанов не ловились лидеры мирового атеизма и другие уважаемые мыслители.

Why do I get the impression that Mr. Lindsay thinks that the Reptilian Overlords are using 5G signals to promote BLM?
- Steve Foster (@BoredtownBoy) July 20, 2020

И если бы нападки на Critical Race Theory, которую преподают во всех ведущих американских университетах, не превращались в предмет для государственной цензуры.

Well done, Mr. President! Happy to help you and your administration properly understand this threat to protect the American people from it.
- James Lindsay, relevant white dude (@ConceptualJames) September 5, 2020

До Трампа дело докатилось обычным образом - через Fox News и расистский час Такера Карлсона.

Just days after returning from Kenosha, Wis., where he staunchly backed law enforcement and did not mention the name of Jacob Blake, the Black man shot seven times in the back by the police, Mr. Trump issued an order on Friday to purge the federal government of racial sensitivity training that his White House called “divisive, anti-American propaganda.”
The president then spent much of the weekend tweeting about his action, presenting himself as a warrior against identity politics. “This is a sickness that cannot be allowed to continue,” he wrote of such programs. “Please report any sightings so we can quickly extinguish!” He reposted a tweet from a conservative outlet hailing his order: “Sorry liberals! How to be Anti-White 101 is permanently cancelled!”
Not in generations has a sitting president so overtly declared himself the candidate of white America. While Mr. Trump’s campaign sought to temper the culture war messaging at the Republican National Convention last month by showcasing Black and Hispanic supporters who denied that he is a racist, the president himself has increasingly made appeals to the grievances of white supporters a centerpiece of his campaign to win a second term. <...>
Like other policies put forth with little advance notice, Mr. Trump’s focus on diversity training seems to have originated with something he saw on Fox News. On Tuesday night, Tucker Carlson interviewed Christopher F. Rufo, a conservative scholar at the Discovery Institute who criticized what he called the “cult indoctrination” of “critical race theory” programs in the government.
“It’s absolutely astonishing how critical race theory has pervaded every institution in the federal government, and what I’ve discovered is that critical race theory has become in essence the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American people,” Mr. Rufo said on the program.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/06/us/politics/trump-race-2020-election.html

Certainly progressive liberal James Lindsay isn't making common cause with Christopher Rufo of the Discovery Institute (that's creationism if you're asking) and being congratulated by the Christian nationalist Sovereign Nations pic.twitter.com/wYJM4Pfwrd
- Scientist Holden Marie Caulfield (@conceptualkitty) August 16, 2020

Без любимого телеканала OANN тоже не обошлось.

Emerald from OANN tweets suggesting Betsy DeVos withholding federal funds from the #1619Project - 13 hours later, so does Trump. pic.twitter.com/JX005XOFEX
- Laura Miers (@LauraMiers) September 6, 2020

Шарлатан Джеймс Линдсей оказался среди тех, кому посчастливилось попасть в высочайшие ретвиты.

Nobody should be angry, this is great. I've been saying for weeks that Trump is feeding on James's culture war and it's unlikely to work against Biden. Plus it's further proof that James and Trump are on the same grift train. The only surprising part is how fast we got here. pic.twitter.com/J7bZ0x6CwH
- Embrace the Void Pod (@ETVPod) August 30, 2020

Американские законы пока что запрещают федеральному правительству указывать учебным заведением, что им можно или нельзя включать в учебную программу.

No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system, or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials by any educational institution or school system, or to require the assignment or transportation of students or teachers in order to overcome racial imbalance.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/1232a

Поэтому угрозы запретить проект 1619 являются пока что сотрясением воздуха, несмотря на восторженную поддержку противников "cancel culture" и борцов за "свободу слова" . Но даже если не обращать внимание на  разжигание расизма в целях предвыборной пропаганды, неизвестно пока, насколько далеко Трамп и его администрация могут зайти в борьбе с оппозицией.

"The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice are announcing a joint operation center to investigate the violent, left-wing civil unrest. <...> We have to stop this horrible, left-wing ideology that seems to be permeating our country."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-press-briefing-august-8-31-2020/

Пока прохиндеи и мозгоебы продолжают дурачить людей, в том числе из числа профессиональных борцов с шарлатанством, из привычных рупоров раздаются призывы "размазать печень митингующих по асфальту".

This is basically a call for the criminalization of dissent, coming from a US Senator. This is shameful, disgusting stuff.
- Clay Ranck (@clayranck) September 6, 2020