bobalot wrote:Creating FEMA death camps to hold citizens for their political beliefs
Actually, I've seen that used against Clinton, Bush II and now Obama. So it's not just Obama. FEMA Death camps is a persistent rumor based off cold war era plans for handling displaced persons after a nuclear war.
Yea, but it wasn't something most people heard of. That's the problem: There's always been this deranged set of psychosis in the country. But normally the insanity was not embraced both-hands by large cable news bobbleheads and, in the case of some conspiracy theories, large groups of elected officials. Hateful loonies who think presidents enact killings to random people have always existed, but you didn't see them on the news, and then came the Clinton Witchhunts with the whole Vincent Foster idiocy.
It's the mainstreaming of this lunacy that's damaging.
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Out Of Context theatre: Ron Paul has repeatedly said he's not a racist. - Destructinator XIII on why Ron Paul isn't racist.
bobalot wrote:Creating FEMA death camps to hold citizens for their political beliefs
Actually, I've seen that used against Clinton, Bush II and now Obama. So it's not just Obama. FEMA Death camps is a persistent rumor based off cold war era plans for handling displaced persons after a nuclear war.
Really? I wasn't aware of that. It's amazing how stupidity persists.
However, I doubt if high profile national figures (Beck, etc.) were making this claim about Bush II.
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"Problem is, while the Germans have had many mea culpas and quite painfully dealt with their history, the South is still hellbent on painting themselves as the real victims. It gives them a special place in the history of assholes" - Covenant
"Over three million died fighting for the emperor, but when the war was over he pretended it was not his responsibility. What kind of man does that?'' - Saburo Sakai
bobalot wrote:Creating FEMA death camps to hold citizens for their political beliefs
Actually, I've seen that used against Clinton, Bush II and now Obama. So it's not just Obama. FEMA Death camps is a persistent rumor based off cold war era plans for handling displaced persons after a nuclear war.
Really? I wasn't aware of that. It's amazing how stupidity persists.
However, I doubt if high profile national figures (Beck, etc.) were making this claim about Bush II.
Considering the US government had a habit of locking up people for their political beliefs not so long ago, it's not hard to see why the rumor would get spread even if it weren't true.
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From what I understand, all this started off in a big way when George HW Bush declared a NEW WORLD ORDER. That really set the loonies off.
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
Yeah, and from there it kind of snowballed: the militias in the '90s, and that never really went away; if anything it just kept snowballing until now it really comes to a head with Obama and Dems in the White House.
One really significant point though, is that back in the '90s the Republican Party wouldn't touch this shit with a ten foot pole. Now there's less separation between the hardcore conspiracy theorists and the more extreme parts of the Republican mainstream (with Glenn Beck as chief spokesman for that edge). That lends a degree of credibility and acceptance to the birther and black helicopter crowds that they never had before, in my opinion.
When Glenn Beck can talk about how some day soon a government crackdown will make it impossible to speak freely on the air or whatever, that encourages the people who expect this dictatorial New World Order to show up any day now.
The FEMA deathcamp/NWO/Illuminati talk isn't really aimed at democrats only. I remember during Bush II the nutters like Alex Jones and David Icke were going absolutely ape in the wake of 9/11 and into the WoT. It is rather telling that Alex Jones hasn't been on Coast to Coast AM more than about once or twice since Obama was elected compared to during W when he was on every other week.
David Icke is a crazy fringer who rants about reptiloids. Whereas rhetoric like death panels and other such shit have reached the mainstream when the rightwing has tried to demonize the Dems.
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
SirNitram wrote:Yea, but it wasn't something most people heard of.
Because until about the late 1980s it was still pretty tricky to widely disseminate stuff.
If you wanted to spread a conspiracy theory, you had to either mimeograph shit or xerox it and then leave it lying around where others would read it.
When BBSes sprung up in the 1980s, that was when they started to go mainstream, since someone could easily download a text file screed and then reproduce it elsewhere.
The internet was just really starting by the mid 1990s making it even EASIER to spread theories -- where do you think a lot of the ideas for the X Files came from?
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
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- PeZook