#690: Frank Gaffney

A.k.a. “The Paul Revere of calling out the Muslim Brotherhood” [Erick Stakelbeck, resident conspiracy theorist of the Christian Broadcasting Network]

Frank Gaffney is an islamophobic pundit and a really not particularly nice fellow. He writes for the Moonie Times, (formerly) Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website, and is the founder of the Center for Security Policy. The Center is his propaganda organ and their expressed purpose is to keep people “informed” about Islamism, terrorism, and the threat of creeping Sharia – including promoting “research” showing that Sharia is taking over the American court system – as well as, for good measure, advocating global warming denialism as a national security matter. Its website Family Security Matters is famous for calling for George Bush to use nuclear weapons in Iraq and become “president for life” since he was the only one who could ensure continued freedom and, by declaring himself president for life, democracy in the Western World. Gaffney claims that the intervention in Iraq was necessary because of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. According to Gaffney it is obvious that he had them – regardless of what reality and even the government have admitted concerning the matter.

Gaffney, of course, has all the credibility on issues related to Islam possessed by Alex Jones and Victoria Jackson, but his rather ardent campaigning has at least made him something of a perceived expert among certain groups. He was invited to testify during the Murfreesboro mosque debacle, where his only contribution was an attempt to derail the court case into discussing his conspiracy theories. As for their “research” proving the existence “creeping Sharia”, it is not only badly carried out and stupid, but also completely fraudulent (here is an example of Gaffney on how to deal with facts) insofar – in their “Shariah in American Courts” report – as nearly every single case they have provided has really been evidence against their conclusion, but like young earth creationists and global warming denialists people like Gaffney aren’t particularly proficient at evaluating evidence.

He famously made a fool of himself when he criticized Obama for changing the logo of the Missile Defense Agency to include a crescent, something he later retracted when he noticed that the logo was approved by the Bush administration rather than the Obama administration. Among people Gaffney has accused of working with (being agents of) The Muslim Brotherhood (which is trying to keep us “stupid” about their plans to take over America), are Obama (and yes, the conspiracy theories inhabit such reaches of pure paranoia that it is virtually breathtaking; as are his ignorance and lack of care with respect to that ignorance), CPAC, Huma Abedin, Grover Norquist, Chuck Hagel, David Petraeus, John Brennan (he speaks Arabic, a crime too dreadful for anyone to commit if we wish to retain freedom, dialogue and democracy), the federal government, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, and Herman Cain. Chris Christie should also apparently be in prison for his cooperation with Muslims. Gaffney’s explicitly expressed solution to politicians palling around with Muslims is to revive the solution that worked so well in the 50s and erect a new “House Anti-American Activities Committee”. Nevertheless, his idiocy can sometimes actually be rather amusing.

Indeed, Obama is not only endorsing Islam; he is embracing the familiar radical Muslim gay agenda (it is also communist, of course). And as wildly crazy wingnuts are wont to do, Gaffney predicts that Obama will soon impose restrictions on free speech to serve his sneaky agenda and hide its conspiratorial secrecy – without providing any foundation in reality, of course, but that sort of goes without saying given the derangedness of the accusation. He elaborates here, where “elaborate” means ranting incoherently for a slightly longer period of time. He also toys with birtherism.

He has also been promoting conspiracy theories surrounding Anders Breivik, in particular that his so-called manifesto was a hoax created by Muslim extremists. That one was a fall-back position after he dimly realized that his claims that Breivik might be a secret Muslim didn’t quite fly even with his regular fans (Gaffney did claim that there was a conspiracy to portray this obvious Muslim as a Christian nationalist as a step in the organized efforts to turn Western Europe into Islamic tyrannies).

On a slightly different note, here is Gaffney claiming that “no one has done more to undermine womens’ rights than Hillary Clinton,” but when you think about what Gaffney evidently believes “rights” means (doesn’t apply to people Gaffney doesn’t like, for instance) it sort of makes sense in its own, deranged way.

There is a fascinating report on the depth of the paranoia of Gaffney and his gang here, and a good Frank Gaffney resource here.

Diagnosis: Absolutely, utterly, unhingedly insane. The stupidity of Frank Gaffney ought to be physically painful. Nevertheless he seems to have pretty non-negligible impact.