#1254: Rick Wiles

Apparently Ann Coulter has turned out too conciliatory for the wingnut mob, which may in part explain the sudden popularity and attempts to mainstream Rick Wiles instead. Wiles is “[l]ike David vs. Goliath,” a “citizen reporter who decided to take on the Big News Media” through his radio show and website Trunews, which has so little to do with “true” that he, in the manner of various “Freedom”, “Liberty” and “Values” organizations, had to put “true” in the name of his show instead, as if the name could make up for the lack of anything resembling truth in its content. Contentwise, Wiles is trying to give Jim Garrow, Kevin Swanson and Bryan Fischer a run for their money, and is arguably moderately successful.

The Commies are coming

According to Wiles, the 2012 election signaled the “communist takeover of the United States of America”; in particular, he declared that the election results demonstrated that communists had taken over the nation and that the scandal involving CIA Director David Petraeus was a Stalinesque set-up, while predicting that Obama’s IRS would now start raiding churches and shooting people.

Indeed, Wiles agrees with Cliff Kincaid that the U.S. would have arrested Barack Obama by now if only he weren’t the president, in part because of the nominations of Chuck Hagel and John Brennan, which was apparently illegal. In particular (and Wiles got this from fellow conspiracy theorist John Guandolo), Brennan is seeking to “aid and abet the enemy” through assisting Muslim Brotherhood agents who are infiltrating the government as part of a plot to introduce Sharia law to the US. Oh, but it’s bigger than that. You see, Saudi Arabia is slowly taking over the United States government, ever since they “put Barack Obama in power.”  Yes, “Barack Obama is a foreign agent” and “his administration is the product of a successful foreign penetration of the country” by Islamists. “The federal government is quietly being taken over and changed into a pro-Islamic, anti-Christian entity,” says Rick Wiles.

In fact, not only is Obama a Saudi agent; he is “emulating the antichrist” – “the latest incarnation of Satan’s spirit inside a human being in a high public office” – and Wiles has not been shy about expressing his fear that Obama may “declare himself as God” while visiting Israel. Evidence? Well, according to Wiles God was going sending a plague of locusts to Israel as a “biblical sign” ahead of Obama’s visit: “I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel is covered with locusts when he arrives in Jerusalem in three weeks,” said Wiles. “How many biblical signs do we need to see to know that this man is evil?” Well, some may say, at the very least it needs to happen first (which it didn’t – though there was a locust problem in Egypt in 2013, which was evidence enough for Wiles and prompted much stupid form the expected sources). On the other hand, it was reported by the WND that a fly once landed on Obama, and according to Wiles this may be proof that the President is “possessed by a demonic entity” and the return of the Biblical “Lord of the Flies,” or Beelzebub (according to Wiles’s standards of evidence there is, however, no evidence whatsoever for evolution or global warming; clearly Wiles means something else than the rest of us by “evidence” and “proof”). Oh, there is more: The History Channel’s The Bible miniseries. Reacting to charges that the character depicting Satan looks similar to Obama, Wiles believes that “God guided the hand of the makeup artist and blinded the eyes of everybody on the movie set while it was being recorded” so that they wouldn’t see the resemblance. Or remember Dianne Reidy? Wiles thinks she’s a prophet.

So there is no wonder that Obama has “spiritually sodomized” the military in particular and the whole nation in general. And always one to completely lack any kind of perspective on anything, Wiles has argued produced words to the effect that Obama is the head of a “modern day Nazi regime” (as well as the “fourth beast” of the Apocalypse), ostensibly because insurance plans under Obamacare will cost at least $20,000 per family, and the health care reform is really a ploy to bringing “population control,” Nazism and Marxism to America. At least the claim is not just a Godwin; according to Wiles America has been taken over by a Nazi dictatorship as the culmination of a plot set in motion following World War II. And it’s the same Nazi movement that is behind the events in Ukraine, and will lead to World War III where America and other Western nations will be the evil Axis Powers while Russia and China will be the good guys, as demonstrated by Muslims, gays and Obamacare. In response, Wiles has asked God to deliver us from Obama, demanded that the military arrest him to prevent a second civil war and stated that “Islam must be eliminated from the face of the Earth” and “stomped out like cockroaches.”

Heck, even John McCain and Lindsey Graham have “sided” with the Muslim Brotherhood, “are in the pockets of radical Muslims,” and are “carrying out the instructions of their master” to turn America into a “Muslim bastion”.

And don’t get him started on Al Gore, who is clearly pushing a demonic Islamist force into America as demonstrated by Al Jazeera’s purchase of Current TV. Besides, people are having strange dreams where people eat a “fake manna” that represents “Lucifer trying to replicate what God did and feeding his people,” leading to a new demonic “spiritual transformation” and utter gibberish.

Against this background it is at least easy to see why the Republican-driven government shutdown in 2013 was actually a racist plot by President Obama to hurt white people. “Is the racist Obama administration specifically targeting conservative white people for shutdowns and evictions? I really think so. I think he is deliberately trying to provoke an outbreak of anger.” Thus works the mind of Rick Wiles.

The Illuminati is coming

Being hardly particularly concerned with internal consistence, Wiles appears to believe that the US government is really run by the Illuminati, which is linked to the 9/11 attacks. Also, the new One World Trade Center is actually a tribute to what he terms the “Free Mason/Illuminati New World Order” (because it is 1776 feet tall, and 1776 was the year the Illuminati was founded; you can’t don’t want to argue with that). In 2013, Wiles hosted Preston Bailey of the Spiritual Warfare Center to discuss how the “New World Order” is trying to restore the “Luciferian government” that existed before Noah’s Flood and will accelerate the End Times (which seems to be both a glorious and disastrous thing at the same time). Bailey told Wiles that he, based on information from his Illuminati “source”, didn’t believe that Obama was of the Illuminati’s bloodline, but instead the “forerunner of the Antichrist”; Hillary Clinton, however, is an Illuminati member. So there you go.

To sum it up – with the help of Wiles himself – a “deadly cabal of Illuminati, Freemasons, and Communists (masquerading as Progressives [cause they’re, in the mind of Wiles … not progressives?]) ... have infiltrated the U.S. leadership and brainwashed our children.” Apparently it started back in 2012 when Satan launched a “D-Day invasion” of America with “witches” like Madonna and Nicki Minaj performing “nationally televised occult rituals” and culminated in the re-election of “America’s illegitimate president, foreign agent Barry Soetoro.” Keep in mind that this guy has become pretty mainstream in wingnut circles.

And when Wiles had Joe Schimmel of something called Good Fight Ministries on his show they discussed the behavior of Miley Cyrus, concluding that she got rich and famous by making a “deal with Lucifer.” And hey: She has also been “baptized into the Illuminati” and is teaching people how to have sex with Satan.

The Sandy Hook and Columbine massacres (yes, he’s a Sandy Hook and Columbine truther) were accordingly carried out by MKULTRA and mind control assassins as part of the president’s nefarious plot to institute gun control. Meanwhile, the Ferguson protests appear to be a false flag operation initiated by the government to implement gun control and start a second civil war. Why on earth Obama would want a new civil war is left unexplained.

The gays are coming (but of course)

Really, though, it’s the gays. According to Wiles, “gay rights fanatics” are “going to get us all killed”. How? Well, you see, gay people are responsible for North Korea getting nuclear weapons to bomb us. How? Well, because there is “a terrible price to pay for outright rebellion against the Holy God of Israel and your sins are going to get us all killed.” Yes, that mechanism; and in order to avoid the nuclear bombs, America has to become a Christian nation, which it already is in other arguments Wiles are fond of using. Meanwhile Obama is sending weapons to Mexico and arming the Department of Homeland Security for the “full communist revolution.” It’s all going to hell, isn’t it? Lucky thing Wiles is making it all up from scratch.

Heck, even the Boy Scouts are allowing gays, which shows that the “Marxist-Communists” who have taken over the country are “ripping the heart out of the American people.” And in response to the Supreme Court’s marriage equality rulings Wiles claimed that Americans will escape (by rafts) to Cuba to escape gay marriage and … well, he seems to struggle with the grand picture here. In a moment of lack of self-insight breathtaking even for Rick Wiles he also lamented the lack of an “intelligent discussion” on gay rights – before promptly warning us about the dangers of gay “Nazism”. You see, gay rights advocates are literal Nazis who idolize Adolf Hitler – as a matter of fact Nazis had nothing to do with promoting the Aryan race, according to Wiles, but were instead bent on creating “a homosexual special race.” Indeed, “Hitler was trying to create a race of super gay male soldiers,” Wiles says, predicting that gay people in the US will realize Hitler’s goal and launch a mass “slaughter” and enslavement (yes, both) of Christians (his guest, Barbwire editor Jeff Allen, agreed). You won’t find that perspective in the history books, which I suppose is further evidence of a conspiracy to suppress the truth.

Everyone else is out to get him as well

When his views were exposed on the Rachel Maddow show, he received some messages that he concluded could only have come from “people who are demon-possessed,” thus serving as further proof that an anti-Christian holocaust is coming to America. The same mechanisms were in play during the protests against Texas’s restrictive anti-abortion legislation; the behavior of the pro-choice activists was literally demonic as “raw Satanic sewage coming up out of Hell” was running through the streets of Austin, said Wiles, warning us that the “Obamanistas” are just biding their time until they can carry out a “mass slaughter of Christians”. Apparently secular Jews are destroying America too.

Wiles on science, medicine and theology

With his son Jeremy, Rick Wiles felt the need to engage with the science when Pat Robertson asserted that Young Earth Creationism is “a joke.” As Jeremy explained, we cannot possibly know that the earth is billions of years old since Noah’s flood washed away all the evidence. Hence, the reason Robertson is attacking young earth creationism is because “he doesn’t want to feel like an outcast” [keep in mind that we are talking about Pat Robertson here] and is trying to make the Bible fit in with the secular scientific worldview. But of course, this is a losing strategy. After all, history has always shown that the Bible is 100% scientifically accurate, which is why Christians have always known that the earth is round while scientists were adamant that it was flat. Again, it may be tricky to argue with that in any fruitful manner.

To demonstrate his care for sound methodology, Wiles has also hosted a Bible code expert to prove that Obama is the Antichrist, though they admitted that a Bible code was strictly superfluous since according to them “[l]et’s just face it, he’s got a ring on that says, ‘There’s no God but Allah and Mohammad is his Messenger’” anyways.

Wiles has also warned about the dangers of Halloween – it’s a source of demonic possession. Apparently he’s seen it on TV.

He’s been a bit back-and-forth on the recent ebola outbreak, though, having at one point argued that it could help end the problems of “atheism and homosexuality” and promiscuity in this country, and at another that the government is going to release Ebola intentionally “as the cover to round up patriots who resist the takedown of the Republic.” Given his track record with consistency, he might believe both. In any case, it’s going to make Obama the worst mass murderer ever, worse even than Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot.

And for the grand finale, Wiles has actually argued that Obama might be creating an army of zombie cannibals, no less. The goal, I suppose, is marriage equality, pleasing the Saudi Arabian overlords, providing health care to the uninsured, workers’ control of production, and the end times. A zombie army would ostensibly be a great means for achieving these goals.

Allies

Wiles’s apparent supporters include Matt Barber, Harry Jackson, anti-Islam activist and insane conspiracy theorist Steven Emerson, Gary Cass, John Stemberger, Erick Stakelbeck, former congressman Tom Tancredo, Scott Lively, Larry Pratt, Pam Geller and, it seems, Rep. John Fleming (R-LA). At least his ebola conspiracies caused a fallout with Focus on the Family. On his side, Wiles claims that the attention he is receiving is proof of the endtimes since God in Wiles’s imagination promised him a national audience just before judgment strikes. Which makes one wonder why he cares about petty political issues or the alleged destructive powers of Obama, but I suppose a consistent agenda and worldview is the least of Wiles’s cares right now with all of this shit going down.

You can find a summary of his, even for Wiles, gloriously unhinged New Year’s Rant for 2015 here. There’s a good Rick Wiles resource here.

Diagnosis: Yup, this guy has apparently become pretty mainstream on the far right, and the people lining up to be guests on his show have genuine power and influence. Enough said.