#630: Mark Downey

And just in case you thought you’d seen the worst of lunacy by now, we give you Mark Downey. Reverend Downey is the culprit behind the “Christian Identity” website Kinsman Redeemer Ministries, which is a good place to go to give up all hopes for humanity. Downey’s main tenet is that the so-called “Chosen People” of the Bible are – as opposed to what the Bible suggests – not the Jews, at least not today’s Jews, but rather the “Germanic, Celtic, Scandinavian, and Anglo-Saxon” peoples. And thus you may get an impression of the direction in which Downey is headed. And indeed: “Adolf Hitler showed the world the mercy and loving kindness of Positive Christianity,” he says, but we failed to listen and were instead fooled by a Jewish conspiracy to view Hitler as evil. Yes, that’s the idea, and even among the most insane it will probably remain a minority view for some time. As for anti-semitism, Downey has revived most myths from ancient and medieval times. “How many of the innocent youngsters you see on milk cartons have fallen prey to the ceremonial knives of rabbis and lie buried in secret graves or were ground up into dog food in some jewish-owned processing plant?” asks Downey in his series of articles charmingly titled "Why We Hate the Jews", and follows it with this.

But Downey isn’t quite done. The whole idea of the notion of “Kinsman Redeemer” is that Jesus came to redeem not all humans, but his kinsmen. His kinsmen were the white people (since, as most renaissance paintings so accurately depict him, Jesus was blond and blue-eyed). It doesn’t really help, then, that Downey actually purports to reject “white nationalism” – he rejects white nationalism since white nationalism is, according to Downey, a pagan movement. Instead, he prefers to view his ideas as “Christian nationalism”, which combines the main tenets of white nationalism with dominionism and hysterical endtimes babble. It is not as charming as it sounds.

Of course, Downey and his group also rejects evolution – not on technical grounds but because evolution implies common descent and by the inference rule of Downey’s wacky wishful thinking evolution must therefore be false. Instead they claim that all races were created separately (and should not be mixed – “race mixing adulterates God's plan for the Ages”) and that the different races represent not only different species, but different genera (no, they do not exhibit any trace of having the faintest idea what that would mean).

To really emphasize their fervent contempt for reality, they are also 9/11 troofers (though you probably saw that one coming), and promote the idea that the levees of New Orleans were destroyed on purpose by the guv’mint during Hurricane Katrina, which, alongside most other natural disasters, was a punishment from God for America’s rejection of God’s laws on race in any case. I don’t think much good can come from delving deeper into Downey’s ideas so we’ll leave it at that. (We are also reluctant to link directly to any of Downey’s own stuff; you’ll have to google it).

Diagnosis: Could he be the most deranged psychotic madman we’ve encountered thus far? His candidacy is at least a strong one, though his influence will probably remain somewhat limited for the foreseeable future.

#606: Larry Darby

Larry Darby is a practicing Alabama attorney, founder of the Atheist Law Center and former state director of American Atheists (he was forced to resign when he invited David Irving to speak), as well as a runner-up candidate for Alabama Attorney-General in the 2006 Democratic Party Primary. That campaign started to flail when Darby began questioning the veracity and scale of the Holocaust (less support from some quarters; more from others). He also wanted to “reawake white racial awareness”. Specifically, Darby questioned the number of Jews who died during the Third Reich (suggesting around 140,000, but that many of those succumbed to typhus rather than systematic murder). I don’t know what it tells you about Alabama that he got pretty close to winning the primary, but one suspects that it may not have been because of his atheism (indeed, he claims to have converted to Christianity later on in the process, blaming his fellow atheists’ penchant for jumping onto the “Judeo-Marxist” bandwagon).

Darby even agreed to the term Holocaust denier: “I am what the propagandists call a Holocaust denier, but I do not deny mass deaths that included some Jews,” a comment upon which he elaborated with “there was no systematic extermination of Jews. There's no evidence of that at all.” Apparently the “millions of deaths” claim originated instead with “the Holocaust Industry”. You can review more of Darby’s breathtaking conspiracy theories here.

He has also declared that the United States is undergoing a “Mexican invasion” – that one is a common one, but Darby added some personal flavor by comparing the current immigration to the 1960s civil rights movement since both were events that in Darby’s eyes have hurt the South. To deal with the immigrant situation Darby suggested bringing the Alabama National Guard back from Iraq because “they're fighting for Israeli interests and not for Alabama or the United States’ interests,” and rather deploy them to ferret out illegal immigrants. If elected he said he would ask for the governor to declare martial law “so we could act freely and stop the illegal immigrants from crossing our border.” Apparently he didn’t mean immigrants from Mississippi, but if he didn’t it is a little unclear which border he was referring to.

Diagnosis: An amazing character; that he managed to achieve some limited but significant popularity in Alabama – even despite his atheism – tells you something about something.

#116: David Duke

David Duke is a radical far-right wingnut. A former Ku Klux Klan member, a member of the National Socialist White Peoples Party, and founder of the student chapter (LSU) of the White Youth Alliance. He actually wore a Nazi uniform to campus, and later worked to revive the Ku Klux Klan before founding a “more professional” organization, the National Association for the Advancement of White People. He is currently frequenting Stormfront.

He has repeatedly run for public offices on Democratic, Republican, and Populist party tickets, and actually managed to get himself elected to the Louisiana state senate in 1989 (he also ran for governor, and lost with a frighteningly small margin to a rather openly corrupt and morally contemptible opponent). He has recently been a strong supporter of the Tea Party, lending them credibility by asserting repeatedly that the Tea Party isn’t racist (argument by assertion). He describes himself as a “racial realist”.

So what’s he been up to lately? Well, he was not particularly happy that the Republican National Committee elected Steele as chairman, or more precisely: “I am glad these traitorous leaders of the Republican Party appointed this Black racist, affirmative action advocate to the head of the Republican party because this will lead to a huge revolt among the Republican base.” (full story here). Due to his impeccable credentials, Duke has also been one of the “scholars” (he holds a “PhD” from a Ukrainian diploma mill with the thesis “Zionism as a Form of Ethnic Supremacism”) the Iranian government has consulted to hammer out their view on the Holocaust.

His tie to Tony Perkins’s (utterly lunatic) Family Research Council is interesting. So is the (admittedly more tenuous) link to the Floria GOP.

Some lovely quotes here.

His wiki page is here.

In 1976 he also published a self-help sex manual for women on how to perform fellatio and anal sex, under the pseudonym Dorothy Vanderbilt (just a curious piece of trivia).

Diagnosis: I’ll leave this one to you. His ability to reappear almost everywhere is a bit scary.

#98: Lorraine Day

Once a respected academic orthopedic surgeon who has fallen deeply into woo, conspiracy mongering and holocaust denialism. According to her own website, “Dr. Lorraine Day reversed her severe, advanced cancer by rebuilding her immune system by natural therapies, so her body could heal itself.” Her evidence for her therapies? Testimonials – in other words, pure anecdotal evidence and wishful thinking, and Day doesn’t seem to have the slightest understand of why alternative medicine “testimonials” for cancer treatments are inherently misleading.

That makes her but one of many (though still a loon). Dr. Day, however, really stands out for her attempts at combining woo-mongering with holocaust denialism – a leap, true, but one that is understandable given the total lack of critical thinking skills involved in both. An infamous interview can be obtained from here (and a debunking here). The blurb reads: “Dr. Lorraine Day discusses the control over the medical industry by a small group of Jews and Goyim who consider us pawns in their game of world conquest. However, the Jews who follow the Talmud are actually using their Goyim "friends" also” – that should give you an idea.

A telling claim from her website: “[the] term [”Holocaust”] has been ’hi-jacked’ by the Jews who use it, incorrectly, to describe the purported treatment of the Jews at the hands of the Germans during World War II. Actually, it better describes the Post-World War II treatment of the German citizens by the Allies (the U.S., U.K and USSR), who were taking their orders from International ... Very few people realize that the Zionist Jewish version of the "Holocaust", what the revisionists refer to as the Holocaust Hoax, is the CENTERPIECE of the Zionist Jews' Plan to destroy all nations, control the entire world, slaughter most of the population of the earth, and reduce the rest to slaves.”

More on her antics can be found here (oh yes, it is all there: drugs don’t cure diseases, they only cover up the symptoms; chemotherapy doesn’t cure cancer; Dr. Day has glorious credentials; natural fallacies and so on and so forth).

She is also a 9/11 truther and religious whacko.

Diagnosis: One of the most unhinged, insane crackpots out there; utterly lacking in critical thinking skills, sanity and rationality. Must be considered dangerous.

#61: Willis Allison Carto

Willis Carto has for almost a lifetime been among America’s most prominent promoters of antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial (that’s not how he describes himself, but that’s another matter). He founded Liberty Lobby in 1955, and Institute for Historical Review (IHR) in 1979, as an organization dedicated to publicly challenging the "myth of the Holocaust." The IHR sought from the beginning to attempt to establish itself within the broad tradition of historical revisionism, by soliciting token supporters who were not from a neo-Nazi background such as James J. Martin and Samuel Edward Konkin III, and by promoting the writings of French socialist Paul Rassinier and American anti-war historian Harry Elmer Barnes to attempt to show that Holocaust denial had a broader base of support besides just neo-Nazis. The IHR brought most of Barnes' writings, which had been out of print since his death, back into print. However, most of IHR's supporters were neo-Nazis and anti-Semites, and while IHR included token articles on other topics and sold some token books by mainstream historians in its book catalog, the vast majority of material published and distributed by IHR was devoted to questioning the facts surrounding the Holocaust.

In 1984, Carto was also involved in starting the Populist Party, which was (not to be confused with the Populist Party of 1889 and) little more than an electoral vehicle for current and former Ku Klux Klan and Christian Identity members.

His wikipedia page is here. I am not going to link to his homepage or any homepage associated with his organizations.

To get a full picture of Carto’s insane conspiracy mongering, have a look at his earlier Liberty Lobby. Apart from standard conspiracy theories, such as New World Order related ones and John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracies, Carto and his gang has always been taken by the Bilderberg conspiracy, going so far as to send reporters every year to "infiltrate" the Bilderberg conferences and report on their nefarious activities.

This already sets the stage for crank magnetism, and Carto has been an ardent promoter of alternative health remedies, including colloidal silver, Laetrile, shark cartilage and chelation therapy. He is also a numerologist.

Perhaps most interesting in that respect is Carto’s involvement with Scientology. Back in the beginning, the Church of Scientology representatives viewed Carto's organizations as useful media for gaining popularity and respectability. Carto, with his critical view of "establishment" press (i.e. conspiracy theories), had reached quite a number of people, and scientologists flocked to the IHR and subscribed to Carto's publications. Many Scientologists, including the current International Public Affairs Officer Alex Jones, praised Carto and his magazine "The Spotlight" (the percurson to IHR) as "a defender of individual liberties." A scientologist was also the director of IHR (the scientology church has subsequently withdrawn its official support, notably after the tax exemption rules from 1993).

Despite his claims to the contrary, Carto and his group are ardent neo-Nazis (follow the link for recent activities).
Diagnosis: Vile and utterly delusional loon. Zealous. Is still extremely dangerous, despite the fact that his impact is probably limited to a relatively small group (his conspiracy theories seem to draw sympathetic attention, by crank magnetism, from other conspiracy theorists and whale.to readers, however).

#47: Arthur Butz

David Irving might be disqualified from an entry in the Encyclopedia by being British, but his views have its share of followers in the U.S. as well. Arthur Butz is one of the most prominent. Arthur Butz is actually a tenured Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Northwestern University, although his colleagues have exerted some pressure on him to retire. In 1976 Butz wrote the book ‘The Hoax of the 20th Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry’, which asserted that the Holocaust did not occur and has been deliberately contrived to justify the creation of the state of Israel. He has actively used his position as a tenured professor to give legitimacy to his views (without providing the administration at Northwestern any formal reason to get rid of him).

Butz remained quiet for a while after the book, but has returned to the spotlight the last 5 years for his defense (praise) of President Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial. In fact (in addition to a lot of long refuted claims), he called Ahmadinejad’s statements “formidable in their perspicacity” and that Ahmadinejad “understands the intellectual terror in the West” (said, apparently, without a hint of irony). Butz also pointed out that “Tony Blair made a routine pompous suggestion to Ahmadinejad: Visit the camps and see for yourself. Ahmadinejad replied: Good idea, I’ll bring a scientific team. He knows about the forensic issues too.” Yes, Butz, that reply surely establishes Ahmadinejad’s provenance as a razor sharp, non-biased critical thinker, in particular since Ahmadinejad seems to have no intention of actually following up on it. More here. Butz’s claims are thoroughly debunked here.

At least Butz clearly displays the ineptitude and ignorance of the deniers; when you praise Ahmadinejad’s unashamed anti-Semitic, zealous denialism for its rigor and good ideas, your own arguments cannot be particularly strong.

Diagnosis: Dangerous and cunning, perhaps, but a serious loon nonetheless. His influence might be limited, but its threat can hardly be exaggerated.

#42: Pat Buchanan

a.k.a. Mr. Republican

The very epitome of cryptofascism, Buchanan is a noted paleoconservative and racist, suspected holocaust denialist (discussed here, with links. Alternatively, the Holocaust was France and Britain's fault), Nazi sympathizer and believer in the Zionist Conspiracy. A good sample of his views, in his own words, can be found here.

Buchanan needs little introduction, I guess, but anyway: He was originally a senior adviser to presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, and an original host on CNN's Crossfire. He sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 (where his speech during the Republican party nomination might have scared several moderate Republicans to vote for Clinton – invented the concept of ”culture wars”) and again in 1996. He ran on the Reform Party ticket in the 2000 presidential election.

He co-founded The American Conservative magazine and launched a foundation named The American Cause, has been published in Human Events, National Review, The Nation and Rolling Stone. Currently Buchanan is a political commentator on the MSNBC cable network including the show Morning Joe and a regular on The McLaughlin Group.

He is most noted today for his opposition to free trade and immigration, both legal and illegal. He could be considered an "economic nationalist", but is more likely simply a xenophobe. He is (by the same token) a staunch opponent of military actions related to the war on terror. He is, however, very positive to using torture on people suspected of terrorism.

Also an amateur historian; in ”Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War” he takes a pro-German view of World Wars I and II. Buchanan argues that the US shouldn't have gotten involved in World War II, that Churchill helped provoke Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, and that Hitler could have been contained. Curiously, he rejects evolution because, among other things, it lead to Hitler (no, these people aren’t overly concerned about distinguishing the question of the truth of a claim and consequences of believing a claim, presumably because they aren’t overly concerned with truth to begin with); discussed here and here.

Diagnosis: Insane crackpot and zealot, evil. Relatively influential though his impact is probably smaller than his media exposure could be taken to indicate.