#1920: John Maffei

Response to the SPLC
calling out Maffei and
his hate group as a
hate group, pointing out
that the SPLC must be
in league with the Jews.
Epic fail, in other words.

Catholic Counterpoint is a publishing group specializing in radical traditionalist Catholic materials, covering topics from the rise of the Antichrist to 9/11 conspiracies. It is run by John Maffei. One of the videos Maffei sells is “Synagogue of Satan” by devout Father John O’Connor, an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. Maffei’s catalogue, according to his promotional materials, includes “all [O’Connor’s] presentations on the Zionist movement and how it controls the U.S. thru [sic] the banking system … and their bringing us into two world wars. … Few have the courage to speak the truth about the six million Jews that supposedly died in the concentration camps of Germany. This is a history course that will set you free.” Maffei is apparently a big fan of Hutton Gibson, no less; his website features a thoroughly bizarre collection of photos of Gibson, and Maffei has extensively promoted Gibson’s books at various extremist conferences, such as the 2006 conference of The Barnes Review, a journal specializing in Holocaust denial, published by Willis Carto. Maffei also pushes the writings of legendary Father Charles Coughlin, a leading anti-Semite in the US in the 1920s and 1930s, and even a book by neo-Nazi Artie Wheeler that describes Wheeler’s rather complicated (and flamboyantly insane) 9/11 conspiracy theory.

To top it all, Maffei pushes alternative health products, including a “miracle soap” and a book on how doctors are in a conspiracy to make people sick rather than cure them.

Maffei wants us to know that (http://www.phillymag.com/news/2013/04/18/philadelphia-hate-groups-skinheads/) he’s not racist, though: “I come from a beautiful neighborhood in Philadelphia. An Italian neighborhood in South Philadelphia. It’s completely destroyed. But I’m not a racist. I just remember how it used to be.”

Diagnosis: Some of our entries describe people who fail criticial thinking in one particular area, but are nevertheless overall good people who do lots of good things. John Maffei is not among those. Dreadful nonsense.

Hat-tip: SPLC.