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Tag: religious right
Ann Coulter

'We're Getting Slaughtered': Coulter Blames Lost Elections On Religious  'Zealots'

Over the years, conservative firebrand author Ann Coulter hasn't been shy about attacking "godless" liberals. And she has defended the Religious Right on many occasions.

But since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the anti-abortion Coulter has argued that red states are going much too far with their restrictions on abortion.

Coulter, during a mid-February appearance on Bill Maher's HBO show Real Time, argued that religious "zealots" are causing Republicans to lose elections they should be winning. The subject came up during a discussion of Republicans losing ground among young female voters.

When Maher predicted that abortion would be "the Achilles heel for the Republican Party in the next election," Coulter agreed — saying, "Abortion is really hurting Republicans. I don't think you can blame all Republicans for this…. I'm glad (Roe v. Wade) was overturned by the Supreme Court…. I think it was disgusting to call that a constitutional right. But it has been sent back to the states. That's all we ever wanted. And guess what, fellow pro-lifers, we're getting slaughtered."

Coulter added, "There have been seven direct-to-the-people votes. And the tiniest restriction on abortion loses overwhelmingly — in Montana, in Kentucky, states that Trump won, Kansas…. And it isn't Republicans per se pushing this. It is these pro-life zealots who just, they don't care — I'm going to be pure, and did you see my writeup in the Catholic Insights Magazine? And you guys are like the corporate Republicans who will not give up on your cheap labor. We have to tell them: We can give you some things, but we can't give you everything — or we're just going to lose."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

GOP Senate Candidate In Georgia Says Existence Of Apes Disproves Evolution

GOP Senate Candidate In Georgia Says Existence Of Apes Disproves Evolution

Trump-endorsed Georgia Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate,Herschel Walker, revealed on Sunday that he is a science-denying religious extremist. Walker wrongly insisted the existence of apes dispels the scientific theory of evolution, and there was no Big Bang Theory. He attributes all of creation to God.

“I tell you something else I heard – now think about this,” Walker very proudly told the pastor of Georgia’s Sugar Hill Church, Chuck Allen, “at one time, science said, man came from apes.”

"Did it not?” Walker, a former college and pro-football star asked, pointing at the audience. “Well, what is interesting though, if that is true, why are there still apes?”

“Think about it,” Walker pressed.

HuffPost’s Amanda Terkel, who first reported Walker’s false anti-science beliefs, explains he “gets some basic facts wrong”:

Humans did not evolve from the apes that you see at the zoo. Rather, humans and apes have a common (and now extinct) ancestor that lived roughly 10 million years ago. Technically, all humans are apes, but that doesn’t mean that chimpanzees are one step away from becoming people. Walker’s summary of evolution is incorrect, and there’s nothing incompatible about humans coexisting with other apes.

Walker then explained that, according to him, God is necessary for “the conception of a baby.”

“Let me tell you, science can’t do that. They are trying to do it but they can’t because there had to be a God.

“So when God came and said, ‘Now let me create this.’ And God created the earth. And he put Adam and Eve there, and stuff.”

After some rambling remarks likening the United States to the biblical Garden of Eden, because of “freedom,” Walker declared, “I tell people this, I’m not trying to teach you to love Jesus. I love him. You can like who you want to like, but I’m going to tell you there’s only one of them. There’s only one god, there’s only one Jesus. So if you’d go in with the wrong horse, I’m sorry for you. I’ll tell you I love Jesus.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also backs Walker.

Watch:


New Anti-Vax Theory: Vaccination Is Plot To Create ‘Transhumanist Cyborgs' (VIDEO)

New Anti-Vax Theory: Vaccination Is Plot To Create ‘Transhumanist Cyborgs' (VIDEO)

Sherri Tenpenny is an influential religious-right anti-vaccine activist who has testified before the Ohio state House, appeared on Charlie Kirk’s podcast, and been a speaker at multiple ReAwaken America events, where she has shared the stage with the likes of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Eric Trump, Mike Lindell, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and Alex Jones.

Despite the fact that Tenpenny is an osteopathic doctor with no expertise on vaccines, she regularly appears on right-wing programs where she spreads wild conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines.

Recently, she has begun to claim that COVID-19 vaccines are designed to create “quantum entanglement” between those who take them and the Internet in an effort to turn humanity into “transhumanist cyborgs.”

“The stated goal is to depopulate the planet and the ones that are left, either make them chronically sick or turn them into transhumanist cyborgs that can be manipulated externally by 5G, by magnets, by all sorts of things,” Tenpenny said during an appearance on The Stew Peters Show Thursday night. “I got dragged through the mud by the mainstream media when I said that in May of last year in front of the House committee in Columbus, [Ohio]. Well, guess what? It’s all true.”

“The whole issue of quantum entanglement and what the shots do in terms of the frequencies and the electronic frequencies that come inside of your body and hook you up to the ‘Internet of Things,’ the quantum entanglement that happens immediately after you’re injected,” she continued. “You get hooked up to what they’re trying to develop. It’s called the hive mind, and they want all of us there as a node and as an electronic avatar that is an exact replica of us except it’s an electronic replica, it’s not our God given body that we were born with. And all of that will be running through the metaverse that they’re talking about. All of these things are real, Stew. All of them. And it’s happening right now. It’s not some science fiction thing happening out in the future; it’s happening right now in real time.”


flynn

Flynn Aiming For A Violent, Ultranationalist, Theocratic Coup Against Democracy

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Michael Flynn is always in the news for the worst reasons.

Today, it's because of the former Trump advisor's feud with Lin Wood and the leaking of messages and audio recording during which he calls QAnon “total nonsense” as well as a CIA psy-op. Last time, he was calling for a single religion in the United States. Time before that, QAnon members accused him of being a Satanist for a sermon at a church drawing from a former New Age apocalyptic leader.

Next time, it may be for something worse. In any case, everything Flynn has been doing suggests that QAnon or not, his audience, his rhetoric and his goals are far more concrete and far more sinister than the mocking media coverage suggests. Let’s start in September.

On September 17, Flynn was at the “Opening the Heavens” Conference at the Lord of Hosts Church in Omaha, Nebraska. That event claimed to be “an annual, multi-day event where the prophetic heart of God and the manifestation of His supernatural power are demonstrated to those in attendance and [those] viewing online around the world!”Flynn spoke alongside a number of “prophetic” pastors, including Gene Bailey, executive director of Kenneth Copeland ministries, whose spiritual warfare preaching got the heavy-metal treatment last year.

Flynn’s speech made news due to QAnon’s reaction to it. It was said to be Satanic, ironic given QAnon’s resemblance to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Flynn’s speech resembled a 1984 sermon by Elizabeth Clare Prophet, founder of the Church Universal and Triumphant, a New Age apocalyptic group best known for their move to bunkers in Montana to await a prophesied nuclear apocalypse in 1990. Not only was it a failed doomsday cult, but it was a theosophic movement, something associated with Lucifer by its 18th-century founder.

Flynn said he felt called to St. Michael, the archangel and his namesake. While the link between Prophet and Flynn is interesting, the text of Flynn’s “Archangel Prayer” is all by itself not so great:

We are your instrument
Of those sevenfold rays
And all your archangels, all of them
We will not retreat, we will not retreat
We will stand our ground
We will not fear to speak
We will be the instrument of your will
Whatever it is
In your name, and in the names of your legions
We are freeborn, and shall remain freeborn
And we shall not be enslaved by any foe
Within or without
So help me God.

“Seven rays” is a concept used in theosophy and in the Summit Lighthouse. Prophet’s prayer to Archangel Michael, which people have compared Flynn’s sermon, is not only part of the theosophic movement, but an aggressively anti-Communist talk, ending:

Archangel Michael, Stand with me!
Save my child!
Save my household!
Save my nation and bind those Communist hordes!

Others can analyze the I AM movement and its issues, but the use of militant religious language and the comparison to an aggressively apocalyptic, anti-Communist doomsday cult is bad enough.

Then in early November, Flynn and Wood had a series of exchanges -- people have focused on the audio recording of Flynn calling QAnon a CIA disinfo operation — but more worrying was the fact that he told Wood, on November 3, to read an article proving QAnon is a fraud.Why more worrying? Because it was written by Hal Turner, a neo-Nazi radio host who’s promoted various QAnon conspiracies and served time for threatening elected officials -- he advocated murder repeatedly. The article is incredibly scary. It included this passage:

The Trump Anon believers want SOMEBODY ELSE to do it for them. Well, I’ve said this before and I will say it again now: Nobody is coming to save them/us. Nobody is coming to save the country. If you want something done, you gotta do it yourself. And until someone (but not me) decides that it is finally time to throw away all the comforts of this life, and brutally slaughter the people who are doing all these things, (and by “slaughter” I mean exactly that) then all these things will continue, unabated, to the destruction of our country and our oh-so-comfy lives.

This is standard Turner fare -- to preserve white nationalist power, people have to murder others, including elected officials -- but to have someone with Flynn’s background and his elite status within QAnon conspiracy and other movements promoting it is infinitely more terrifying than the entertainment value of seeing him bashing QAnon.A week later Flynn and Wood were in Springfield, Missouri, at a “Preserving America” event billed as “Come and listen to America’s tier-1 patriot speakers and learn about preserving America under the Constitution.” Outside of the Springfield News-Leader, it garnered little press -- but one local sheriff attending claimed he had, “A great conversation with General Flynn. He wanted me to know the American Sheriff is the last line of defense for our freedom. I agree!”

Flynn has spoken with Richard Mack for the “Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association” podcast, an anti-government extremist group that works to recruit sheriffs into the “patriot” militia movement. The comment should be taken in that light.

Then there is Flynn’s ongoing “Reawaken America” tour, the most recent news items before the Wood blowup. On November 13, the tour was at the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, John Hagee’s church.Hagee is an apocalypse-minded Christian Zionist and his son and executive pastor of the church, Matt, was on stage for the event. The “Reawaken America Tour,” a QAnon speaking tour, has numerous pastors presenting -– Dave Scarlett, Mark Burns, Phil Hotsenpiller, Leon Benjamin, Greg Locke, Jackson Lahmeyer, Brian Gibson among them. All have pushed the Big Lie and Christian Nationalism.

On stage, Flynn said, “if we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God.” The clip got widespread media play, but it is much more important in that broader context. “Reawaken America” has events in Dallas in December at Elevate Life Church in Frisco, where Pastor Keith Craft runs men-only “Warrior Nights,” dresses in militant garb, and mocks mask-wearing and the government.

In January, they’ll be at Dream City Church in Phoenix, which had hosted a Trump rally in 2020 and had been sent a cease-and-desist about promoting a fraudulent air filter system that June.

In February, they’ll be at Trinity Gospel Temple in Canton, Ohio, where Pastor Dave Lombardi tweeted out on November 3: “‘King Cyrus’ will prevail! Christian principles will prevail!,” and “the ‘Walls of Jericho’ will fall tonight! The Gospel message will prevail! The March continues!”

Both ideas have violent overtones — the fall of the walls of Jericho is followed by the massacre of all inhabitants. “King Cyrus,” a reference here to Donald Trump, destroyed the empire of the Babylonians.

These events are linking congregations nationwide in a specific project -- to build an ultranationalist Christian right to control of America.

Flynn’s fall events show it is not as simple as whether or not he’s a grifter who pretends to believe in QAnon. He is. He’s a fraud. He’s corrupt. And we already knew this. But he’s also a corrupt fanatic, who believes in overthrowing the government and imposing a theocracy. He certainly seems comfortable reading and promoting neo-Nazi articles advocating the literal slaughter of enemies while doing so.

Stop laughing at Michael Flynn.

He’s dangerous.

Driving him out of QAnon is great, but the other groups he’s engaged with, the other ideologies he’s a part of, are no laughing matter.