To what extent are Obama denialists a cult?

It seems to me that the nObama tribe is not really a cult, but a few of the items from the following list that I collected some years ago fit. I’ll let you decide which.

Which of these cult characteristics would you attribute to Obama Denialists?

  • PARANOIA, amount of fear concerning real or imagined enemies, perceived power of opponents. (12%, 57 Votes)
  • DOGMA, rigidity of reality concepts taught; amount of doctrinal inflexibility. (10%, 50 Votes)
  • GRIMNESS, amount of disapproval concerning jokes about the group, its doctrines, or its leader(s). (10%, 47 Votes)
  • WISDOM CLAIMED by leader(s), amount of infallibility declared about decisions. (9%, 44 Votes)
  • ENDORSEMENT OF VIOLENCE when used by or for the group or its leader(s). (9%, 42 Votes)
  • WISDOM CREDITED to leader(s) by members; amount of trust in decisions made by leader(s). (8%, 41 Votes)
  • POLITICAL POWER, amount of external political influence desired or obtained. (8%, 39 Votes)
  • RECRUITING, emphasis put on attracting new members; amount of proselytizing. (7%, 36 Votes)
  • FRONT GROUPS, number of subsidiary groups using names different from that of the main group. (7%, 32 Votes)
  • # CENSORSHIP, amount of control over members' access to outside opinions on group, its doctrines, or its leader(s). (6%, 30 Votes)
  • WEALTH, amount of money and/or property desired or obtained; emphasis on members' donations. (5%, 23 Votes)
  • INTERNAL CONTROL, amount of internal political power exercised by leader(s) over members. (4%, 21 Votes)
  • # ISOLATION, attempts to separate members from family and friends who are not part of the group. (3%, 14 Votes)
  • DROPOUT CONTROL, intensity of efforts directed at preventing or returning dropouts. (2%, 8 Votes)
  • SEXUAL MANIPULATION of members by leader(s); amount of control of sex lives of members. (1%, 3 Votes)

Total Voters: 61

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About Dr. Conspiracy

I'm not a real doctor, but I have a master's degree.
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31 Responses to To what extent are Obama denialists a cult?

  1. TRUTH says:

    Mind explaining the insinuation behind this post? Or ya just have an urge to chat about Cults?

  2. OOPS. 😳 This was just a reference note, not that something I intended to publish.

  3. TRUTH says:

    LOL! At least it has a purpose now.

  4. nbc says:

    Another one bites the dust. Lack of standing of course…

  5. Greg says:

    Defendant McCain’s motion to dismiss, by the way.

  6. Bob Weber says:

    Doc, you’re on to something here but what really makes new cults like the 9-11 Troofers and the Birfers different from the old cults is the internet.

    The internet is a wonderful tool, but like all tools, it’s only as good as the user.

    The internet has drastically lowered the “transaction costs” of organizing marginal groups and has enabled the formation of more polycentric groups. Again, this is ethically neutral. It all depends on what it’s used for.

    (I can’t resist an aside that Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” is also quite neutral in its ethical content and can be studied by anybody and everybody interested in political action, regardless of political philosophy. The birfers have a strange obsession-fixation with Saul Alinsky, though I’m sure that none of them ever heard of him until a few months ago.)

    As to the specifics:

    PARANOIA *****+ This is the most paranoic group I’ve ever seen since the Albanian Faction split off from the Maoists in the early 1970’s. Paranoia to the level where ORLY (!) is being accused of being a Secret Obama Tool.

    DOGMA: *****+ Are you kidding? Refute them all you like, but they’ll keep repeating the same bilge.

    CENSORSHIP and ISOLATION **** Nothing prevents birfers from getting information outside their little group, but purging dissenters is a particular obsession, especially at FreeRepublic and WND.

    Isolation is self-imposed: Anything from the “MSM” is automatically suspect. They’ll even reject the 1981 Sunday NYTimes Travel Section article on travel to Pakistan, since, after all, it comes from the NYTimes.

    GRIMNESS **** This is an awfully grim bunch.

    DROPOUT CONTROL no stars To the contrary, they’re the most expulsion-happy group this side of the Ayn Rand Cult.

    INTERNAL CONTROL * The only real tool is the purging of dissenters and “flaming” in discussion groups.

    WISDOM CREDITED ** There is a cult around Orly, despite, or perhaps even because of, her unbroken record of failure and incompetence.

    POLITICAL POWER, amount of external political influence desired or obtained.

    Desired, ***** They do want the presidency, and their fondest dream is President Sarah Palin, another cult figure.

    Obtained, 1/2* All they’ve gotten is to have a few yahoo GOP congressmen sign onto doomed birfer bills.

    WEALTH ?? Unknown: Except for Donofrio, they’re always asking for money, but their success is unknown, although WND seems to be well-funded.

  7. mpandgs says:

    (Apologoies for the hijack)
    RE: Alinsky’s _Rules for Radicals_:
    For all the hysteria about Alinksy, it seems that the Right, especially the Tea Baggers, have embraced RfR. See: http://tinyurl.com/mct8z4 and http://tinyurl.com/qds3ym
    Also, a blogger at Freedomworks insists that the Left is angry because Freedomworks has out-Alinskeyed the Left: http://tinyurl.com/myh4s5

  8. BlackLion says:

    I have been wondering the following and we all have to ask ourselves why Chris Strunk has never reported what information he received from his FOIA request for Ann Dunham’s passport and customs records. The govt hasn’t told us what they sent him. I am curious why Strunk has not shared any of the information. Is it because it shows that President Obama’s mother never had a passport until 1967, when she was going to move to Indonesia? I am just asking…

  9. I keep wondering that too, and I also wonder what’s happening with that lawsuit about the FOIA. The last docket entry was last June.

    In its June 8 filing, the government said:

    DHS has released responsive Dunham travel records to Strunk and DOS is currently processing Strunk’s request for Dunham passport applications.

    I have a FOIA for the Dunham passport applications submitted myself, and I am still waiting for mine too.

    What Strunk is trying to do now, according to court documents, is to try to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse FOIA lawsuit into a quo warranto action on the president’s eligibility with a 3-judge panel and a jury or some such nonsense.

  10. Bob says:

    Maybe you could post the PACER docket, and we could kick it around?

    But my guess is that once the DOS responds to Stunk’s FOIA request, the government will move for summary judgment. So the case is on hold while the DOS response.

  11. Gordon says:

    Yes they have.

  12. Welsh Dragon says:

    It’ll certainly be interesting but a word of warning – Barack Senior would have been able to have obtained a family or joint British passport that would also have covered Stanley Ann and baby Barack.

    Struggling for a solid citation on this and am basing it on memories from my childhood and youth but the follwing confirms that such passports ceased being issued in 1984.

    http://www.ips.gov.uk/cps/rde/xchg/ips_live/hs.xsl/1080.htm

  13. Well this is a very important point and I’d like insure that this would apply to Stanley Ann who was not a Citizen of the UK and Colonies, nor a British Subject.

    And there is the related question of whether Stanley Ann acquired CUKC when she married Obama. [Added: apparently not, as naturalization in the UK of a spouse carries residency requirements.]

  14. welsh dragon says:

    I’m researching this a bit more – more tomorrow

  15. Paul Pieniezny says:

    Now this is funny:
    http://www.motorhoming.com/need_dec_2000.htm

    Although the page itself claims to be from December 2000, this is obviously an archive of something much older, as it not only mentions family passports, but also the resuirements to enter East Germany and Czechoslovakia!

    So, if the information is indeed taken as contemporary to those days when family passports were still isssued, the following paragraph is interesting:
    “Every applicant must produce evidence of British nationality, for example, a birth certificate or registration or naturalisation papers. A married woman must produce her marriage certificate.”
    So, the point does indeed SEEM (if this info is correct for 1961) to be whether Stanley Ann acquired British nationality through her marriage.

  16. Welsh Dragon says:

    Immediately before the UK stopped issuing joint passports in 1984 there was a requirement that both husband and wife hold one of the categories of British citizenship.The same would probably be true back in the early 60s but I don’t have the resources to hand to be certain.

    However as far as Stanley Ann is concerned I believe that she would have been entitled to UKC citizenship ‘by registration'(not naturalisation) under our old friend the 1948 Act. Section 6(2):

    ‘(2) Subject to the provisions of subsection (3) of this section, a woman who has been married to a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies shall be entitled, on making application therefor to the Secretary of State in the prescribed manner, and, if she is a British protected person or an alien, on taking an oath of allegiance in the form specified in the First Schedule to this Act, to be registered as a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies, whether or not she is of full age and capacity.’

    Of course, this doesn’t mean she did but it’s a crack a birther could slither into.

  17. Bob says:

    Carl (of the citizen grand juries) is really going off the deep end: FDR declared martial law, gold-fringe flags, organic constitution, etc.

  18. Heavy says:

    Your messiah at work! They will stop at NOTHING to silence all critics!

    http://www.michaelsavage.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=7461

  19. If Stanley Ann Dunham had registered to UKC citizenship, then she would have expatriated herself as a American (this is one of the recognized expatriating acts). Therefore, if we should find that she obtained a US Passport after 1961, then we would be assured that she had never become a CUKC, and therefore she could not have traveled on a family passport with Obama Sr.

    That is, an FOIA result from the US stating that Stanley Ann Dunham first applied for passport after 1961 would conclusively show that she could not have legally traveled to Kenya in 1961.

    The “family passport” is a very unlikely possibility anyway. Family passports are mainly a convenience and Obama Sr. already had a passport.

  20. Welsh Dragon says:

    Hope you’re right but would Stanley Ann be of age to expatriate herself in 1961? I see the age is 18 now but was it in 1961?

    UK’s Nationality Act 1948 didn’t care if the woman was of age or not.

  21. Greg says:

    It is against the law to use Federal resources for purely political purposes.

    Hatch Act. Passed in 1939 in another of Obama’s blatant attempts to travel back in time in order to harass his opponents.

  22. Bob says:

    Slate has an article about Obama’s death panels (which have supplanted birfers as the media’s new shiny object, BTW).

    The thesis of the article is about, really, living in a post-fact society. Much of the author’s point applies to birferdom.

  23. Good article. Based on the advice in that article, Obama should NOT show the long form birth certificate. It would just increase the footprint of those who doubt by legitimizing the issue.

  24. Mary Brown says:

    Not desperation Heavy. Just an understanding of your agenda. After all, you have threatened to punish people who do not see this issue as you do. That threat says a great deal about your political agenda and your loyalty to the idea of a democratic republic.

  25. Heavy says:

    Mary, where have I threatened anyone? Please provide proof or shut up! Have you ever heard of SLANDER, hon?

  26. SFJeff says:

    Very ironic article- where the writer suggests that Obama may have committed perjury, while completely misrepresenting the truth himself.
    “and his refusal has cost him a million dollars.”
    There is no proof that this has actually happened. There is only proof that his campaign paid attorneys.
    “Oh, and Obama was a dual citizen of both Kenya and the U.S., a point he neglected to tell the American voters”
    Funny, anyone who bothered to read the book he wrote would know this is untrue. Unless the writer is suggesting that Obama was a dual citizen at time of the Election which is a blatent lie.
    “IF he was born in Kenya – something his maternal grandmother has claimed.”
    Of course such claim was not actually made- a U.S. pastor claims she said that- this has been thoroughly refuted- the writer is either a dupe or lieing.

    My favorite part though is one statement:
    “One qualification is that a person must be either born here, or be born to citizens.”

    Note- even he acknowledges that a person born in the U.S. is a natural born citizen. But nobody will believe the writer in this aspect but will believe all the other dreck he wrote.

  27. SFJeff says:

    oh an this also from the article that Heavy loves:

    “There are only two ways of removing a sitting president: vote him out of office after his term has expired, or impeachment. SCOTUS cannot remove him, nor is there any recall mechanism”

    Poor JTX

    Interesting article- disagree with most of it, but there are some kernals of truth in there.

  28. Heavy says:

    Good job, pole smoker!

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