Faux Right Wing Grass roots orchestrated by Grassfire.org & Resist.Net
Anger and violence at Town Hall Meetings- just what the Right -wingers hoped for
Shamelessly Republicans, Fox News, & Faux Right-Wing Grassroots organizations compare Obama to Hitler and as one of the worst most evil dictators ever
Who are the real Propagandists?
Who are the Real Thugs and Brown Shirts as they stir up crowds to the point of screaming, shouting and shutting down meetings ???
Is it a win/ win for the Republicans as they shut down all civil discourse on these important issues???
Comparing Obama to Hitler
From the time of the Barry Goldwater Campaign of 1964 over the next forty years or so various right-wing organizations of political and economic conservatives of what in the 1980s became known as The New Right and the Religious Right worked within and outside the Republican Party to further their extremist agenda to eventually take control of the party. These right-wing extremist groups through the use of this pincer style strategy finally succeeded in taking over the Republican party in the late 1990s. This led to the victories of the Bush administration in 2000 and 2004. Now they do not hold the reins of power yet they are doing everything necessary to make their voices heard as they try to undermine the Obama administration .
They are using sophisticated forms of propaganda to spread misinformation, lies and exaggerations while fear mongering and sounding the alarm that America is being destroyed at the hands of President Obama and the Godless UnAmerican liberals, leftists and progressives.
They are not above using rumor and innuendo along with a dash of racism and Nativism to achieve their agenda. Meanwhile they are linked to lobbyists for big corporations from the Health Care industry and the Health Insurance Industry and Big Oil and Big Coal . They are also joined by anti-abortion groups and the National Rifleman's Association and others including for example those alarmist fear mongering about illegal immigrants and those who fear that soon Whites in America will be a minority etc.(Pat Buchanan, Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh )They also promulgate the Birthers Conspiracy and The New World Order Conspiracy and even give a platform to the fringe such as the wacky Alex Jones.
Their Conspiracy Theories are as wild as those of the anti-Semitic Henry Ford and Father Coughlin in the 1920s and 1930s and the KKK from 1915 til today and the John Birch Society in the 1950s and 1960s and that of Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin and the House Committee on Unamerican Activities in the 1940s and 1950s and other extremists groups such as The Know Nothing Party and Illuminati Conspiracy Theorists of the mid 19th century to the anti-Irish and anti-Catholic alarmists which have at one time or another plagued America from soon after its conception from about 1800 to the present.
As mentioned these right-wing extremists eventually took control of the republican party as discussed in this article by Adele M. Stan at Alternet in which the author presents a history of the right-wing and how they are now setting the agenda for the Republican Party and the Conservative movement in America and their attacks on the Obama administration.
Intro to article :
In a new article published today, AlterNet's Washington Bureau Chief Adele Stan uncovers the links between establishment GOP figures and an extreme-right Web network, Grassfire.org, that is an organizing hub for town-hall protesters. While other astroturf organizations and Web sites, like Dick Armey's FreedomWorks, Tim Scott's Americans for Prosperity or Glenn Beck's The 912 Project, marshal the anti-tax mob, Grassfire, through its sibling site, ResistNet, rallies the most extreme of the paranoid right.
In "Inside Story on Town Hall Riots: Right-Wing Shock Troops Do Corporate America's Dirty Work", Stan chronicles the ties between the Republican establishment and ResistNet, where one finds not only the usual set of conspiracy theories, but also threats of violence against the opposition, a videoed racist screed against President Obama and even a prayer for the death of the president. The coup de grace is a slickly produced video posted on the site that uses Nazi imagery casting Obama as the Fuhrer. (The video is embedded in the AlterNet piece.)
Stan draws together the conflagration of corporate and GOP interests that have coordinated to unleash the unhinged fringe to disrupt the nation's civic dialogue, tracing pieces of the narrative back to Howard Phillips, one of the founders of the religious right, who served in the Nixon administration. She examines the tactics of the Republican right's "inside-outside" strategy, using as a model Phillips' theocratic Constitution Party, to which Sarah Palin has ties.
You knew it was bad. AlterNet's must-read article tells you just how bad it really is.
"Inside Story on Town Hall Riots: Right-Wing Shock Troops Do Corporate America's Dirty Work" By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet. Posted August 10, 2009.
How the health-care industry, the GOP and one media mogul(Rupert Murdock) made common cause with the anti-government fringe.
The recent spate of town hall dustups may look like an overnight sensation, but they've been years, even decades, in the making.
Since the days in the late 1970s, when the New Right began its takeover of the Republican Party, it has cultivated a militia of white people armed with a grudge against those who brought forth the social changes of the '60s.
These malcontents have been promised their day of retribution, a day for which they are more than ready. Few seem to understand that they are merely dupes for a corporate agenda that will only worsen the conditions in which they live.
...The strategy firmly established the right's foothold in the GOP, leading to the party's takeover. Any remnant of the old establishment of the Republican Party was crushed in 1996, when defeated presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan, now a MSNBC commentator, threatened to walk the delegates he had won in his primary war against Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kansas, out of the Republican National Convention and into the arms of Phillips' U.S. Taxpayer Party if the GOP platform did not firmly enough oppose abortion. He also insisted the platform incorporate a host of other right-wing demands, such as a condemnation of the United Nations.
The GOP forked over the writing of its platform to Phyllis Schlafly (another veteran of the Goldwater campaign) and Buchanan's sister, Bay, and the takeover was complete. The right wing became the Republican establishment.
All of the narratives today embraced by the ResistNet, FreedomWorks and the Glenn Beck crowd find their legs in the one-man clearinghouse that is Howard Phillips...
(Their reasoning is that)
...If you can nip this health care thing in the bud, you could stand in the way of a president who wants to rein in Wall Street's worse excesses and who may depress the profit margins of health-care companies in which your readers invest with his dastardly public option. What's a mogul to do?
Why not hire a guy known for riling the discontented to host a show on your cable news channel, and empower him as an organizer? Let him create a little project pegged to fear and nationalism -- something, say, like 9/11 -- through which he mobilizes bands of those aggrieved by the fact of a black president to disrupt town hall meetings.
That's exactly what Rupert Murdoch did when he hired Glenn Beck to host a Fox News Channel show and to put together a little organizing site called The 9-12 Project.
Although Beck's stated goal is to bring America back to where it was on Sept. 12, 2001 -- a nation pulled together in the wake of the terrorist attacks the day before -- he draws together only those who embrace the goals of the right.
...Add to that an oppressed-white-people narrative that has its roots in the origins of what used to be called the New Right, and you have a confluence of interests ready to elevate to prime-time status a disgruntled and paranoid minority with a penchant for misplaced blame.
...the American Council of Life Insurers, which opposes the long-term care provisions in the House bill, which it sees as competition.
...Grassfire is represented by the Washington public relations firm Shirley & Bannister, whose principal is Craig Shirley
Shirley promoted the movie, Stolen Honor, a Swiftboat-style smear piece made about 2004 presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.
But Shirley & Bannister retains ties to GOP establishment figures; its Web site bears an endorsement from William Kristol, who served in the administration of the first George Bush, who happens to be the candidate whose campaign reaped some of its victory from Shirley's Horton ad.
And Right-Wing Watch has been monitoring Grassfire for a while:
Grassfire.org:The Emerging Right-Wing "Resistance" November 2008 at Right Wing Watch at People For The American Way
We wrote about Grassfire.org a few times back in 2007 during the height of the immigration debate and then, once the issue died down, stopped paying attention to them because, with their core issues no longer on the table, they seemed to lose focus and stagnated.
But then I came across this Buzzflash piece(*see below) that informed us that not only is Grassfire back in business, they have re-formed themselves as the home of the “patriotic, resilient, conservative resistance” to Barack Obama:
(grass fire .org Obama nation front page poster)
article continues:
"Resisting is just the first step. That is why we propose a three-phased recovery for conservatives: Resist, Rebuild, and Restore. We believe that resisting will create newfound unity among conservatives. Out of this, we must then Rebuild our structures. New, invigorating models must be developed that inform, equip and bring together conservatives and prepare us to return our ideas to political prominence. The Internet will be a key battleground The Left has moved far ahead in its embrace of and usage of new 2.0 technologies. The Rebuild process will leave Americans with a clear ideological and practical choice between the Left’s statist model and our model based on God-given individual liberties."
I have to say that the Right’s sudden penchant for referring to itself as some sort of “resistance movement” is taking on a militia-esque tone that is getting to be a little bit disturbing.
And from the Grassfire website we get these following entries which gives us the flavor and tenor of their extremism and the wide range of issues which they claim are all somehow connected from abortion to health care to gun control to Global Warming in order to create a larger movement.
Grass Fire .org
Climate Bill Cools Due to Overwhelming Grassroots Opposition!
Schumer Declares "Amnesty Bill" By Labor Day
Hoyer Says Obama, Congressional Leaders United in Push for 'Pathway to Citizenship' for Illegal Aliens—Wants Action as Early as This Fall
Join the Patriotic Resistance and Help Rebuild and Restore Our Nation to Greatness!
As President Obama rapidly moves our nation away from the free market ideals that it was founded upon toward a far more radical statist model, many conservative citizens opposing his ideology are looking for an answer--a way to bring our nation back to its foundation
President Obama's Socialist Agenda EXPOSED!
In compelling fashion, Grassfire researchers have spotlighted the 21 ways the Obama presidency will impact you and your family--from increased government control and power to soaring tax increases and continued open-border anarchy and much more.
Help Stop President Obama's Statist Push!
Who can stop President Obama's aggressive statist agenda? Only an unprecedented idea-based Resistance from freedom-loving citizens can prevent the full implementation of Obama's march to the Left. That's why Grassfire.org is identifying and mobilizing hundreds of thousands of grassroots citizens in a patriotic, resilient and determined conservative Resistance to this agenda.
*Buzzflash piece "Right Wing's Armies of Darkness March On" November 2008
"One phalanx in the fight belongs to Grassfire.org. Just like the name suggests, Grassfire imagines itself as a grassroots effort, but is largely on the surface. And just like the image it provokes, its members are planning a blitzkrieg of fear mongering and misinformation.
Grassfire sent out an e-mail designed to scare people into joining its "army that is ready to take on Obama's agenda." But are the issues of most importance to this new "resistance" group really part of Obama's plan for the nation?
The e-mail lists nine "threats to our liberties" presented by the incoming administration. The common thread through all of these threats is alarmism. You'd think groups such as this would have learned from McCain's campaign blunder and not try to paint Obama as a socialist, but that's number one on the list of threats (another page warns of Obama's "'brave new world' of collectivism," which would be funny if it wasn't so sad). The group also warns the "end of marriage" is on the horizon and that liberals, of all people, want to restrict free speech."
about Grassfire.org
"Another creative turn of phrase translates Obama's post-partisan politics into his "post-American agenda." This is more than just clever linguistics; they clearly see partisanship as elemental to being American. Grassfire began as a staunch supporter of George W. Bush in 2000. In fact, some of its first petitions were merely vehicles for people to voice support for the president. They maintained that Congress and the American people should support their president in wartime, and that those who criticize the president are unpatriotic and mean to do harm to the country. Now that the president is a member of another party, there is no need to give him even a second to prove his ability to lead this nation, especially if he wants to do it in a non-partisan way. Coalition building is just not American!
According to the Center for Media and Democracy's SourceWatch
... Grassfire is anything but grassroots. The 501(c)4 is listed as a "front group" on the site, and SourceWatch notes that public relations for Grassfire are handled by Shirley & Banister Public Affairs, whose president, Craig Shirley, was part of the team that created the infamous Willie Horton ad. Shirley and Banister represent like-minded clients such as Ann Coulter, the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, and the National Rifle Association.
Grassfire is one of many groups amassing armies to fight everything Obama tries to do, no matter where it falls on the political spectrum. Despite Obama's promise to reach across the aisle and to be everyone's president, no matter if they voted for him or not, some people will never learn to work together. In order to make the most out of a Democratic-led government (much as Bush & Co. did for conservative aims during their time in office), we don't need to stoop to marginalization and fear mongering like the radical right does. But we do need to be prepared for the fact that there really are monsters under the bed."
Resist Net.com: Home Of patriotic Resistance
offers some Talking Points for their supporters to use at Town Hall Meetings and mailings to members of Congress and the Senate yet they claim they are not feeding people questions but rather the people who attend do so on their own spontaneously and the questions they ask come from the individuals who are expressing their personal concerns -:
ResistNet’s ObamaCare
August Recess Health Care Blitz
Talking Points
1) I oppose the President's socialized healthcare plan.
2) Don’t take my health care hostage. I want to make the best choices concerning my healthcare.
3) Eighty-four percent of Americans say they don’t want Obamacare or any form of socialized healthcare.
4) I do not want the government to have more control and influence over my health care. That is why I reject the so called “public option” which is really socialized health care and will destroy private options.
5) Americans cannot afford the $1.5 trillion price tag of socialized health care during these difficult economic times. I flatly reject any health care proposal that increases costs or imposes new taxes on any American.
6) The keys to a consumer-centered health care system:
a. Competition
b. Market Incentives to Control Cost and Improve Services
c. Price, Quality, and Value
7) America’s healthcare system is in desperate need of substantial reform. Policy makers should take decisive steps to move today’s bureaucracy driven, heavily regulated third-party payment system to a new patient-centered system of consumer choice and real free-market competition.
8) Look at the evidence: the TennCare plan in Tennessee and the government run health care plans from Hawaii and Massachusetts were deeply flawed and have failed. Universal healthcare is a bad idea that will end up devastating our nation.
9) What is exactly covered under Obamacare? Please be specific.
10) Have you ever been treated in a Veteran’s hospital? Ask a veteran if they are happy with government run health programs, they wait months for substandard, low quality service. Our veterans and citizens deserve better.
They also offer a mp3 audio of their agenda and their fear of Obama's policies found at :
audio report on Grass Fire.net activities
The spokespersons for Grass Fire .com claim Obama is forcing socialized government run health care down the throats of American citizens They argue such a health care plan is part of a leftist /collectivist/communist ideology. What the promoters really care about is the bottom line for those corporations involved in the health care and health insurance industry. And they are cooperating and forming alliances with other corporations who feel threatened by the Obama administration.
For instance what does the issue of illegal-immigrants , gun control, hate speech and hate crime laws and Family Values and traditional marriage and Internet Porn & broadcast decency and Gay rights have to do with health care reform. They toss all of these issues into the mix hoping people will react to a particular issue on a visceral/emotional level reacting to their worst fears(paranoia, racism,prejudices, fear of the other, insecurities, fear of change, etc.) and take action against the Obama administration.
For more see my Post on Aug. 10, 2009
and so it goes,
GORD.
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