#1562: Raymond Drake, Michael Drake and the TFP

Yes, yet another wingnut organization, this time something called the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), and it’s precisely the same as, and just as idiotic, as all those other Family™ organizations. The American TFP is a ”special campaign” of The Foundation for a Christian Civilization, Inc.,which forms ”the world’s largest anticommunist and antisocialist network of Catholic inspiration,” according to themselves. (It claims to have more than 120,000 members.) The organization is based on the ideas of crazy Brazilian fundamentalist Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, and their goal is to oppose what Oliveira believed was an anti-Christian process that had undermined Christian civilization since the 14th century, a three-stage “revolution” that would progressively undermine the Church and social order as follows:

1. The Protestant “Pseudo-Reformation” and its rejection of religious authority and inequality.

2. The Enlightenment and the French Revolution and its rejection of temporal authority, in particular the King and nobility.

3. The Communist Revolution and its rejection of economic inequality, which also seeks to eradicate the Church and Christian civilization in favor of neo-paganism.

Oh, yes – there be conspiracy, and America is already headed for communist tyranny and persecution of Christians and all the associated terror: equality, freedom, science (they’re staunch creationists), and so on. Their president is Raymond E. Drake (the vice president is one John Horvat II).

As you can imagine, the TFP isn’t fond of gay marriage (the tornadoes in Illinois in 2013? The state’s recent approval of a marriage equality bill, of course, at least according to executive director Robert Ritchie, who apparently was just JAQing off). A good example is the comments by Michael Drake (whom I assume to be closely connected to President Raymond Drake), who said that conservatives must fight against marriage equality because the real reason behind efforts to “destroy marriage” through marriage equality is to bring about socialism (Karl Marx’s target was apparently marriage all along, for instance) … just like during the end of the Roman Empire.

Diagnosis: Utterly deranged conspiracy theorists – this is whale.to and Icke forums level batshittery – the group is relatively obscure but apparently economically relatively well-oiled. Thoroughly insane, and although their actual level of influence remains to be determined they're definitely dangerous.