Can 100,000 Anti-Obama New World Order Conspiracy Videos Be Wrong ?
Bruce Wilson printable version print page     Bookmark and Share
Sun Jul 26, 2009 at 10:17:01 AM EST
When I wrote the first draft of this story, sometime in March 2009, a dedicated search at the YouTube.com video hosting web site, on the two terms "New World Order" and "Obama", produced over 50,000 results. Today on July 26, 2009, the same search produces over 90,000 results. Within weeks, the same YouTube search will net 100,000. Some of the YouTube NWO videos have had millions of views.

Although there are secularized versions of New World Order conspiracy narrative, the conspiracy theory genre is at base a religious one. These YouTube NWO videos tend to associate Barack Obama with the forces of absolute evil, suggesting Obama is either an antichrist or "false prophet" figure or, probably more commonly, that Obama is a key player in a conspiracy to create a world totalitarian system which, in religious versions of the NWO conspiracy narrative, will be led by a murderous antichrist figure soon to dominate the world political stage.

NWO conspiracy theories typically are interwoven with Christian apocalyptic End-Time narratives predicting the immanent arrival, on the world stage, of a satanic world ruler who will come to power promising peace but instead implement a savage and bloody reign of tyranny.

Then, either a) Christians will be "raptured" up to heaven after which Jesus Christ will return to Earth to overthrow the evil regime or, in an increasingly common version of the narrative, b) Christians themselves will take up arms, overthrow the evil world regime, cleanse the world of all evil including ideological foes, and implement a thousand-year utopian Biblical theocracy. The latter doctrine is promoted by Sarah Palin's key Alaska church, the Wasilla Assembly of God.

New World Order conspiracy theories are nothing new, but the sheer scale and range of the current outbreak of NWO conspiricism may be unprecedented. The rise of the Internet and its ability to facilitate homespun rich-media productions has given right wing conspiracy theorists a powerful new tool for spreading anti-government sentiment.

Tens of millions of Americans are intimately familiar with the interwoven New World Order / Christian apocalyptic end-time narratives, which have for decades in some cases been preached from megachurch pulpits, by Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee and other prominent evangelists.

Hagee's sermons go out over Christian broadcast networks that now can reach into upward of a hundred million households globally. Other Christian networks that unabashedly broadcast New World Order conspiracy theory have even broader reach; GodTV, headquartered in Jerusalem, claims its broadcasts can reach four hundred million people worldwide.

Under the rubric of a religious narrative, clad in thinly coded "Biblical prophecy" form, opponents of the current presidential administration are able to undercut and demonize Barack Obama, associating the president with absolute evil. During the Clinton Administration, such NWO demonizing played a substantial, and some would say primary, role in motivating those American citizens who formed independent militias and even carried out acts of domestic and anti-government terrorism.

During the Clinton Administration New World Order conspiracy theories
were distributed on a massive scale. But one of the major sources of that anti-Clinton propaganda has never been adequately recognized in relevant scholarship: The Prophecy Club.

Much scholarship on the rise of the militia movement has focused on the distribution of New World Order conspiracy propaganda by white supremacist groups, but from 1993 and into the current decade The Prophecy Club has sold its conspiracy theory material as consumer products and broadcast its conspiracy theory talks on a massive scale.

The Prophecy Club is a Kansas-based Christian ministry that organizes talks by conspiracy theorists, some of whom are unabashedly racist, anti-Hispanic, anti-Jewish, even anti-Catholic. During the 1990's the "club" helped kick-start the careers of an entire generation of professional conspiracy mongers.

At its height in the late 1990's, Prophecy Club presentations went out on up to 80 AM and FM radio stations nationally, dozens of TV stations, and on shortwave radio; Prophecy Club speakers gave talks in up to 40 US cities per month. Prophecy Club broadcasts, during the club's heyday in the late 1990's, could in theory have reached up to 10% of the American population, and the "club" played a key, almost unrecognized role in instigating the militia movement, and Prophecy Club videos were widely distributed through militia movement channels.

In 1993 a video called "America in Peril" (I), featuring a talk by one of the figures some credit with almost singlehandedly kick starting the militia movement (such claims may overreach somewhat) Mark Koernke, was released as a Prophecy Club video.

Many of the Prophecy Club speakers claimed to have government and military experience and "top secret" security clearances. One of the most significant of these, Retired Colonel Jim Ammerman, did indeed have a military background. During his Prophecy Club talks during the late 1990's Ammerman repeatedly called for the execution of Bill Clinton, for alleged treason. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which fights for freedom of worship in the US military, has called on the Pentagon to revoke the endorsing authority of Ammerman's agency.

Ammerman presides over the Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches, which endorses roughly 6-8 percent of the active duty chaplains in the US military. In his September 2008 official monthly agency newsletter, Ammerman made a thinly veiled suggestion that US Senators Obama, Clinton, Dodd, and Biden should be executed for the allegedly "treasonous" act of voting, in 2007, against a bill that would have made English the official language of the United States.

In his Prophecy Club talks, Jim Ammerman told his audiences that Bill Clinton had betrayed America by secretly signing the country over to the United Nations. Chinese, Mexican, and Russian troops lurking along the US borders and cleverly stashed in National Forest lands would emerge, overwhelm US police and National Guard forces, and round up dissenting Americans, even millions of Bible-believing Christians, and pack them into boxcars (fitted out with shackles and guillotines, some claimed) that would carry them (or their corpses) to secret FEMA internet centers or concentration camps.

It was a startlingly vicious inversion, because while NWO conspiracy theories tended to claim, as did World War Two Nazi propaganda, that Jewish bankers (or 'international' bankers with Jewish names) control the world economy and domestic economies, the NWO conspiracy theorists also exploited the legacy of the Holocaust - in the expected dystopic New World Order, Christians would be the persecuted ones, the new "Jews" in effect.

During the 1990's, New World Order conspiracy theories helped inflame a populist wave of  Christian conservative activism against Bill Clinton's presidency. Now, over a decade later, the same conspiracy theories are being recycled on a massive scale, to brand the new Obama administration as evil and illegitimate. It worked in the 1990's, and lack of discussion of the mounting ideological attack suggests it may work again.

One of Col. Jim Ammerman's most prominent miitary chaplains is James F. Linzey, who has stated that he was the command chaplain for the Operation Iraqi Freedom troop mobilization prior to the US invasion of Iraq.

In 2005 Linzey went on a Prophecy Club speaking tour and in one Prophecy Club talk which was recorded and sold by the club in VHS video format, Linzey claimed that "The Rothschilds", and European bankers who all have Jewish names except for "The Rockefellers", control the US economy through the Federal Reserve and are scheming to bankrupt, and enslave through debt, the American middle class.

During the tour, Linzey also made radio station appearances and, in April 10 and March 12, 2005 radio broadcasts James F. Linzey claimed [link to transcripts from radio broadcasts] that the International bankers he said ruled America were conspiring to send a wave of 5 million Mexican and illegal alien killers across the border into the United States, to rape caucasian American women and their teenage daughters, and kill American caucasian men and so alter the country's  ethnic and racial makeup. Linzey claimed the Mexican/illegal alien rapist/killer army would slaughter 25 million Americans in what would be a "Holocaust."

In the radio show appearances chaplain Linzey describes joining The Minutemen vigilante border patrol group, befriending Minuteman founder James Gilchrist, holding a religious service for Minutemen members, and patrolling the US/Mexico border for the Minutemen effort.

[note: for one of the most authoritative treatments of apocalyptic conspiricism and its relationship to US right wing movements, see Political Research Associates Head Analyst Chip Berlet's PRA series Dances With Devils]




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Growing up in fundamentalist protestant churches as a kid I heard all these conspiracy theories. The only changes are the people involved, i.e. who will most likely be the anti-Christ. The leaders of these churches are afraid that they will lose control of their congregations, so they work up fear. When people are afraid they stop thinking clearly. The last thing fundamentalists want is people who are capable of rational thought.

by offbeatjim on Sun Jul 26, 2009 at 04:56:34 PM EST
A friend of mine who grew up as a Southern Baptist tells me from what she experienced, there was a strong prohibition against preaching NWO conspiracy theories from the pulpit. For that sort of thing one went to John Birch Society meeetings.

by Bruce Wilson on Sun Jul 26, 2009 at 05:17:47 PM EST
Parent
Usually the preachers & congregations got into the conspiracy mindset when they were going through Revelation. Some fundies search for a church currently teaching end times prophecy. It's like a drug to them.

by offbeatjim on Mon Jul 27, 2009 at 06:54:24 PM EST
Parent
Suggested that in the SBC churches she grew up in the preachers talked a blue streak about hellfire and damnation but steered a wide berth around Revelations. But that's just one person's perspective on things.

by Bruce Wilson on Mon Jul 27, 2009 at 07:14:58 PM EST
Parent




If anyone is interested in seeing religious right conspiracy theorists and Christian historical revisionists in action, visit www.grandich.agoracom.com and join in the discussion.  It was originally a stock investing site, and the guy's calls on resource stocks are pretty good.  But the reason to go there is to see how these conflicts are playing out in real time.  It's an eye-opening experience.

by ascanius001 on Sun Jul 26, 2009 at 06:33:32 PM EST

A right wing friend of mine was deriding the fact that many on the left were worshiping Obama during the 2008 campaign I just laughed. He asked why I was laughing and I told him two words, "Ron Paul". I told him everyone on the right was worshiping Ron Paul. If only Ron Paul could get elected he'd give us back our country. He'd do the right thing. Really sad. These 'take back our country' tea party goers demand the state Corpoate system grow their food, cloth them, water them, provide them with electricity and a legal system plus educate their children for them and provide day care. How you gonna take back your country when you don't even feed yourself or educate your children. And if you think Ron Paul cares about you more than you care about yourself then you're in the same boat with the Obama crowd who think he's their savior. Perhaps the left did worship Obama but the right worships Ron Paul... both need to wise up.

by sovereignjohn on Sun Jul 26, 2009 at 02:35:43 PM EST
and how soon they forget.

As to Obama-worship; I must not travel in the right(left) circles, as I don't see much praise for him anymore, at least when it comes to the "transparency" he touted during his campaign, and his continuation of Bush's faith-based garbage.

I should admit that I was completely turned off by his vote for the FISA/Telecom Immunity, to the point where I did not vote for him, and in fact sat this one out, as I sure as hell wasn't voting for McBetcha. As things are looking now, I'm already on the lookout for a good 3rd party candidate rather than a Dem/Rep.

by trog69 on Tue Jul 28, 2009 at 09:58:46 AM EST
Parent
The site topic is the religious right and what to do about it. Please try to stay on topic.

by Frederick Clarkson on Tue Jul 28, 2009 at 11:29:17 AM EST
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