#2094: Ileana Paugh

Ileana Johnson Paugh is an author, blogger and columnist, who has for instance written for the WND, which is sufficient to establish with some confidence that she is a serious loon. Paugh delivers. In 2013, for instance, Paugh criticized Pope Francis’s commitment to social justice teachings (really a core component of the Roman Catholic Church doctrine, to the discomfort of numerous wingnuts) and tied them to the KGB, no less. So, in her column “Communism and the Pope,” Paugh “traces Francis’ thinking to KGB-influence in S. America”, claiming that social justice is foreign to the teachings of Jesus Christ but instead a “Soviet communist-led idea” that have helped the KGB “infiltrate” the Catholic Church. It’s worth noting that she relies to a large extent on the writings of Ion Pacepa (Paugh, like Pacepa, apparently grew up under communism in Romania). 

Perhaps Paugh’s main schtick, however, is Agenda 21 conspiracy theories. She has even written a book, U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy, where she describes Agenda 21 as a nefarious conspiracy that “has been in the works for decades, spearheaded by environmentalists, foreign individuals, third world countries, and non-profit organizations around the world. In the name of protecting the environment, socialist global governance has been quietly implemented at all levels of government” to mandate “population re-distribution in the name of biodiversity”, brainwashing our kids and “rezone us, resettle us, reduce our numbers, and tax us into the sustainable community described in the Wildlands Project Map.” In short, it is an agenda to control and oppress us all: “Our sovereignty is at stake. We must stop U.N. Agenda 21 before it is too late. Every chapter of it violates our Constitution.” Yes, environmentalism is a depopulation conspiracy.

Of course, Paugh is a hardcore global warming denialist (when you’ve already decided that the UN is an evil conspiracy to oppress us all, you better make the data fit), claiming that the global warming idea “lacks academic rigor” and “intellectual honesty” (Paugh seems to have no scientific background and doesn’t seem to be able to distinguish scientific rigor from stream of consciousness ranting if her life depended on it); instead, it is apparently a conspiracy among scientists to take our money and give control of the world to George Soros (or perhaps, it seems, Maurice Strong).

Her other books are Echoes of Communism and Liberty on Life Support.

Diagnosis: Crazy as they come. That this is standard wingnut fare does not exactly make it any better.