The Bryan Fischer Award is given to those who display weapons-grade projection, accusing others of their own worst traits and behavior. And you’re gonna love this one. The John Birch Society is calling another group of right wing crazies paranoid and whacky.
A note to right-wing extremists: When the John Birch Society (JBS) condemns your movement as a “fringe group” whose followers are “paranoid” “conspiracy theorists” who “occasionally go off the deep end … when confronted with reality,” it’s time for some serious soul-searching.
An article published yesterday in The New American, JBS’s magazine, used exactly those terms to describe the “sovereign citizens” movement, whose radically antigovernment adherents generally believe they don’t have to obey most laws or pay taxes. Outlining the movement’s basic principles and citing the 2010 slayings of two West Memphis, Ark., police officers by sovereign citizens during a routine traffic stop, the article warned that sovereigns have a “twisted and confused” perception of reality and should be avoided entirely.
I blame it on the fluoride in the water.
17 comments
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daved
March 6, 2012 at 1:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Nah, it’s the chemtrails. The fluoride is just a distraction.
Gregory
March 6, 2012 at 1:13 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Crimeny, the Birchers are still around? And they are sounding SANE compared to other such groups?
*Sigh* Clearly, I have been alive for too long.
Zugswang
March 6, 2012 at 1:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Gregory, #2
Birchers have been around for a while, and sadly, the second generation is far more influential now than their predecessors were in the ’50′s, when much of their positions were dismissed by politicians almost universally as completely indefensible.
Didaktylos
March 6, 2012 at 1:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Ah, but I was so older then, I’m younger than that now.”
baal
March 6, 2012 at 1:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The “sovereign citizens” movement is a bunch of wackos.
jws1
March 6, 2012 at 1:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Would someone please tell the “new-agey” types that fluoride in the water is not some gov’t plot to pacify the populace?
richardelguru
March 6, 2012 at 1:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
jws1
No that was the G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate.
Remember? They tried it on Miranda, and that’s what caused the Reaverublicans.
jws1
March 6, 2012 at 1:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What?
d cwilson
March 6, 2012 at 1:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Gregory:
The Birchers never really went away. They’re just called mainstream republicans now.
richardelguru
March 6, 2012 at 1:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
jws1 Serenity reference. To balance what I take to be a Dr Strangelove one.
abb3w
March 6, 2012 at 2:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
But what do the John Birch Society have to say about the Christian Dominionist movement? Though there’s some overlap, it’s not quite the same bowl of nuts as the Sovereign Citizen movement….
Ms. Daisy Cutter, Gynofascist in a Spiffy Hugo Boss Uniform
March 6, 2012 at 2:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Relevant.
Area Man
March 6, 2012 at 3:01 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I must say, I am very surprised that the Birchers are criticizing the sovereign citizens’ movement rather than joining them. I can only guess that they’re afraid that a lack of paying taxes will hurt the military, which we need to fight communism. Er, terrorism.
dan4
March 6, 2012 at 9:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Veering off-topic, I know, but I wonder why the JBS magazine is called “The New American” (It used to be called American Opinion, but the title was changed, for some reason). It sounds more like a government pamphlet aimed at newly naturalized U.S. citizens.
evilDoug
March 6, 2012 at 11:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
nuair bha mi og
from some years back, The Chad Mitchell Trio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG6taS9R1KM
evilDoug
March 7, 2012 at 12:00 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
lemme try that again (jeeze I hate HTML – it’s like programming in something three circle of hell down from assembly code, and not improved by an excess of Bombay Sapphire)
when I was young
The Chad Mitchell Trio sings the John Birch song
Raging Bee
March 7, 2012 at 8:09 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
AS others have already noted, the JBS aren’t projecting, they’re dead right: the Sovereign Cop-Killers are indeed crazier than they are. The Birchnuts at least had the decency to support some form of government and laws to keep people in line and organize resistance to the evil commies. Today’s loony right aren’t even that sane. (Of course, back in the day it was safe for right-wingers to support the government, because it was still solidly dominated by a monolithic white conservative majority. That’s no longer true, which could account for the babyhish anarchism in today’s right-wing/Randroid movements.)