Start here. Andrew Breibart attended a white nationalist conference in 2006, with panels by Jared Taylor and John Derbyshire.
He was attending with his protege, James O’Keefe.
O’Keefe has acquired some notoriety for dishonest stunts in the name of far right wingnuttiness. Among them was the Landrieu break-in.
According to reports, on January 25, 2010, O’Keefe and his friends Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan visited the New Orleans office of Senator Mary Landrieu. Basel and Flanagan disguised themselves as repairmen, and attempted to access the office’s telephone system by saying there was something wrong with the phone lines. O’Keefe was in the office and videotaped the some of the events with his cell phone camera. Office workers smelled a rat and called the authorities. The three of them were arrested, along with a fourth man Stan Dai, and charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony.
Notice the guy on the right? That’s Joe Basel. It’s a bit embarrassing, but he attended UMM a few years ago — we did not get along. I do find it amusing that one of his complaints was that the university ought to remove all reference to me from its website, because I offended him. So if O’Keefe was Breitbart’s protege, Basel was O’Keefe’s — I guess he’s kind of a third rate Breibart imitator, which is not something to be proud of.
Basel previously was the editor (or some such role) at the Counterweight, the conservative alternative newspaper here at Morris a few years ago. He is now the CEO of something called the American Phoenix Foundation, which is yet another wingnut ‘thinktank’ with a mission.
The mission of the American Phoenix Foundation is to protect the American Republic through ethical, innovative, and technologically driven journalism.
A descendant of Breitbart/O’Keefe/Basel is protecting ethical journalism? OK. I’m laughing, but OK.
Thankfully, Basel is now gone from UMM, and the Counterweight is defunct. Unfortunately, its successor is that rather nasty racist rag, The North Star. It’s editor, John Geiger, was named a Phoenix Fellow by the foundation last year.
Breitbart → O’Keefe → Basel → Geiger, all with a nice infusion of racism throughout. It’s all kind of ugly and incestuous, isn’t it?
Birds of a feather, right?
O’Keefe is not only a convicted criminal for trying to bug Senator Mary Landrieu’s phone, but his last smear campaign in Texas was just thrown out of court. The judges had some sharp words about his case.
He also settled a lawsuit about the Acorn hatchet job by paying one of them $100,000.
O’Keefe is a loser and everyone is on to him. He also seems to be Northstar’s amd John Geiger’s role model. Not smart.
Breitbart → O’Keefe → Basel → Geiger
Is this like Apotstolic Succession?
Not everyone. Fox News still defends him, and many conservatives feel that he did the world a favor with his Acorn hatchet job. In fact, just last year some Republican legislators included defunding Acorn as attachments to bills. Acorn has been dead lo these past two years, but Republicans still see it as a liberal evil they need to defund.
Rachel Maddow just did a segment that amply illustrated the incestuous nature of the far right. Link. Hang in there for the entire 26 minute presentation. It’s a tour de force of history, current events, and far-right relationships.
O’Keefe was sued by one of the Acorn video victims. He settled out of court for $100,000.
Let’s see. O’Keefe is a convicted criminal, loser in a recent court case over one of his smear videos, and settled a lawsuit by paying out $100,000. He also is getting a reputation as a slime mold and failure at what he does, smear and hatchet jobs.
Not much of a hero. Not much of a role model.
Yeah I know. Everyone should really be “normal decent people.” O’Keefe did the rightwing fever swamp a favor, not the world.
O’Keefe is a Kochroach. But to the other Kochroaches he probably looks irresistably charming and intelligent.
Hmmm.
O’Keefe et al have done black-bag and false-flag ops, yes? (Apologies if I’m getting the terminology wrong!)
And the et al links to Geiger. And then Geiger gets victimized in a way that lets him accuse and (threaten to) sue PZ.
Hmmm.
I would never imply that Geiger stole his own newspapers, of course. I’m sure he’s totally honest, and sincerely feels that he is being victimized. However, I wonder about the people who know Geiger, and whom he knows. I wonder if any of them might have decided, wholly independently and without any prompting on his part, to Do Him A Favor and make a few hundred copies of the North Star disappear.
I much preferred the Phoenix Foundation in MacGyver.
it is nice to have actual connections instead of paranoid speculation. Then it is not really paranoia which is a delusion that someone or something is trying to get you you have real evidence that real people are actually trying to get at you.
The thing that strikes me about these “operations” is how much they come off as drunken sophomoric frat boy pranks in planing and execution. I mean Nixon had his “plumbers” but these guys I don’t know?
Seems like a complicated way for them to make a living, Is it just insinuation or is it really known that the Kook bros. are funding these guy’s.
Are they trying to make The professor into a atheist radical Angela Davis because he advocates free thought and science?
uncle frogy
Nixon had his “plumbers” but these guys
They seem about comparable in trade-craft. By which, I mean to insult the CIA.
There is never just one Kochroach!!!
I don’t know if the Koch brothers are funding them directly or through one of their many fronts such as Americans for Prosperity and NeoFeudalism. The Koch’s have tens of billions of dollars to spend making themselves even richer and toss around hundreds of millions per year on rightwing nutcase causes.
But it doesn’t matter. They are on exactly the same side, working towards exactly the same goal, and it isn’t that of the average citizen.
dannysichel (#7): “I wonder if any of them might have decided, wholly independently and without any prompting on his part, to Do Him A Favor…”
“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” – Henry II re: Thomas Becket.
“So if O’Keefe was Breitbart’s protege, Basel was O’Keefe’s — I guess he’s kind of a third rate Breibart imitator”
Damn, it really is “turtles all the way down.”
Conservative assholes. For fun, read about the homophobic past of one very big right wing talk star Laura Ingraham who started out as a staff member of an independent conservative magazine at Dartmouth. And think, this is an example of a success.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Ingraham
That’s a terrible affront to turtles, really, even in an allegorical sense.
More like that Michael Keaton movie about cloning, Multiplicity.