Archive | Understanding the birthers

Are Birthers a hate group?

By Dr. Conspiracy on February 25, 2012 in Birthers, Understanding the birthers

As I’m reading a book on hate groups right now, that question naturally comes to mind. I’ve been thinking about an article with this title for a few days now. I thought: “This should be pretty straightforward. Define ‘hate group’ and then collect some of the really hateful things birthers say and give examples.”

That would be straightforward, but it wouldn’t be valid. I could use the same methodology to proves that Birthers are racists, or that they are illiterate – for example, check out this one I just found at Orly’s site:

You mean that Parke Bostrom is so stupid that he thinks that Obama is rligible for to be president of the United States. I guess he can’t read or hasn’t heard of our Condtitution of the United States. Obama father was a british suject and his mother was a American, but that put obama with a dual citizenship and no way in hell he can ever be President of the United States. Does corrupt Democrats slip him on the ballot and the election commitee kept thir mouth shut, that is treason against the United States. If you want Obama enoughto go to prison for that whatever he is, go for it.

There’s no question that there is a lot of hatred directed against Barack Obama from people on the Right and from the Birthers in particular. It wasn’t a warm fuzzy feeling that put Obama’s head onto a chimpanzee baby and wrote “now you know why no birth certificate.” My personal view is that conspiracy theory thinking is what defines Birthers, not hate. That said, I also believe that hatred is the “gateway drug” to Birtherism and that the closed world of birther web sites reinforces hate speech and amplifies hatred. And in time, perhaps Birtherism will evolve into a pure hate group, just as it appears to have evolved from retelling rumors to full-blown paranoid conspiracy thinking.

Birther evangelist psychoanalyzes his flock

By Dr. Conspiracy on July 31, 2011 in Birthers, Understanding the birthers

I came across something novel from the birther side this morning, an attempt by a birther to understand other birthers using psychology.

In my July 11 article, Obama conspiracies and the grief cycle, I discussed how normals, when coming to grips with the birther movement, can follow the Kübler-Ross model, commonly known as The Five Stages of Grief. In a new article yesterday prolific commentator William Lolli (pictured above) applies the same model to the birthers, in his article, Confessions of a Birther Evangelist at The American Thinker.

Lolli’s article adopts a pedantic tone describing emotional changes in someone making the journey of “discovery” that Obama is ineligible, but make no mistake, despite the reasonable tone, Lolli believes Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery and that: “both political parties and all branches of government are culpable.”

More from the birther evangelist on how he convinces someone to be a birther would have been interesting, but Lolli leaves that point vague, saying only, “The debates are never linear, but desultory.” [“Desultory” is probably not the word he wanted.]

Lolli gets one thing right:

Many politically active Birthers are stuck in the anger stage. You can see that by reading their blogs, letters to editors, emails to congressman, and their use of invectives like "long legged Mac Daddy," "Usurper," "Traitor," and the like. The ad hominem attacks do little to persuade, but they do provide emotional relief to the mass of frustrated Birthers, who find it difficult to understand why the legal and moral clarity of their arguments are systematically ignored.

What Lolli doesn’t understand is that birthers are ignored because their arguments lack a factual basis and legal clarity not in spite of it. Rather than realizing that only 5% of the population is convinced¹ Barack Obama was born overseas implies that the argument is essentially unpersuasive, Lolli explains it as “herd instinct” among the normals. I think Mr. Lolli is in denial.

I must say that the acceptance stage for a birther, as described by Lolli is a pretty fatalistic and negative one:

…the perception that the entire system of government is corrupt, there is no regard for the law or the Constitution, and any illegal alien or naturalized citizen can argue that he can be president without regard to Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5.

Lolli’s article at the American Thinker is one I recommend that you read. He is probably one of the best writers the birthers have. His article is an insight into how a thoughtful person views the world while still trapped in the birther alternate reality and underscores the fact that smart people still get sucked into conspiracy theories.

The Great Conspirator

By Dr. Conspiracy on July 29, 2011 in Understanding the birthers

I was teasing one of the commenters here by deliberately misinterpreting a comment of his referring to intelligent design and replying that I didn’t consider intelligent design a conspiracy theory. However, I really do.

Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.”

Wikipedia

Writers on conspiracy theories delineate two general ways to explain the world: The Forrest Gump theory ([stuff] happens) and the conspiracist explanation (nothing happens without a reason). The former believe that there is chaos in the world and that chaos, coupled with natural processes and people following their own interests, explain what happens. The latter see deep underlying structure in things, connections between events and the hand of conspirators pulling the strings from behind the stage. Writers on the psychology of conspiracy theory suggest that those in the former camp are less prone to see patterns in random events and that they are more comfortable with uncertainty compared to the latter.

At this point in the story, the reader should have figured out where I’m going. “Undirected process” is the Gump theory and “intelligent cause” is the approach of the conspiracy minded.

Continue Reading →

Synthesis

By Dr. Conspiracy on July 29, 2011 in Misc. Conspiracies, Understanding the birthers

I’ve just started reading Michael Barkun’s 2003 book, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America. I’m looking forward to it, having read and thoroughly enjoyed his earlier book, Religion and the Racist Right. One of the themes in the newer book is the inroads that one conspiracy theory is making into another, and in particular right-wing conspiracies about the New World Order gaining traction among UFO types.

If belief in crank ideas is the result of how some of our brains are wired, as Michael Shermer argues in The Believing Brain, then it follows that susceptible individuals would embrace more than one conspiracy theory. We’ve seen this to some extent with birthers and truthers, Vattelists and tax resisters, and one comment I heard by a birther on Internet radio that mentioned the Illuminati.

This all came to my attention this morning because of a link I received in email to a web site that had a link to a web site called Educate-Yourself: The Freedom of Knowledge, the Power of Thought. A quick look at their conspiracy topic menu lists everything from Chemtrails to HAARP. They carry this paranoid-sounding warning:

It is strongly recommended that visitors to this web site print out hard copies of the information that is of interest. Do not assume that your hard drive, this web site, or even the Internet itself will always be there to serve you….Ken Adachi, Editor

While Educate-Yourself doesn’t focus on birther issues, rather more on health-related conspiracies, they are quite eclectic and include Obama conspiracies from time to time, such as in the articles: Soetoro Produces Certified Long Form Birth Certificate Copy, a tongue in cheek ridicule of the long form and this Video Highlights Obama’s Ineligibility to be President (the video was from PPSimmons, a WorldNetDaily so-called document expert).

The other web site was The White Hats Report: Reporting What The Main Stream Media Refuses To Report. This site seems oriented toward the Bilderberger/New World Order side of conspiracies. Obama, we learn, is wheeling and dealing with billions of dollars internationally in cahoots with George Soros. In explosive report # 18 from April, 2011, Soros, Obama and the rest of the cabal about to be Trumped? we see that none other than George H. W. Bush has Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate and is using it to blackmail him.

With Donald Trump’s new investigations proceeding into Obama’s citizenship issue, will this, in one fell swoop, remove Bush Senior’s powerful grip over Obama by diminishing the affect of his holding the certified copy of Obama’s Kenyan Birth Certificate? What will happen when Trump starts investigating and tracking Obama’s offshore bank accounts? What will happen when Trump starts investigating Mitt Romney’s Achilles Heel? In one combined sweep, Trump could take out both contestants and begin cleaning up America!

These anecdotal examples lead one think that conspiracy-minded people naturally latch onto any conspiracy based on distrust of the main-stream official explanation of things. Whether birthers on the whole are just conspiracy-minded people, or whether something else is going on there, I’m still considering.

A chemical explanation for birtherism?

By Dr. Conspiracy on July 22, 2011 in Birthers, Understanding the birthers

Why do birthers believe what they do? It turns out that one factor in whether someone mistakenly considers random patterns to be something significant has to do with dopamine levels in their brains — the more dopamine, the more belief. Dopamine is part of the brain’s reward system. I was just reading about this today in Michael Shermer’s book, The Believing Brain.

Naturally, the thought crossed my mind that perhaps birthers could have high dopamine levels and that explains why they believe things (particularly random variation in old typed text) that others don’t. An immediate objection I came up with against this idea is the strong correlation between birtherism and conservative political alignment and this being a better predictor than brain chemistry. After all, do Republicans and Tea Party members have higher dopamine levels than Democrats?

Well, it turns out that while there is no correlation with political orientation, there is a correlation between genes for dopamine receptors and the level of partisanship according to the article, Partisanship, Voting, and the Dopamine D2 Receptor Gene by Christopher T. Dawes and James H. Fowler of the University of California. Those with the A2 allele of the D2 Receptor Gene have a better-functioning dopamine reward system than those with the A1 allele. Perhaps dopamine system efficiency explains why conspiracy theorists like the birthers, soliciting members, attending town meetings, filing lawsuits, organizing rallies and conferences, and creating extra-judicial organizations such as “citizen grand juries.” When was the last time you ever saw an Obot recruiting members, holding a rally, intervening in a town meeting or trying to organize a conference? It may help explain why in the general population normals outnumber birthers at least 10-1, but when it comes to birther web sites and commenters, the numbers seem reversed.

The small (8%) correlation between D2 genes and partisanship doesn’t explain variation the size of birther vs Obot activists. In any complex social phenomenon there are likely to be many factors. One branch of statistics, factor analysis, attempts to explain the factors that underlie variation. With the right data, perhaps an academic study could, after all, explain part of birtherism by genetics.

It’s just something to think about.

Learn more:

Friendships Moderate an Association Between a Dopamine Gene Variant and Political Ideology. Settle, Dawes, Christakis and Fowler
The Heritability of Partisan Attachment, Political Research Quarterly, Settle, Dawes and Fowler.

What’s in it for the Birthers?

By Dr. Conspiracy on July 6, 2011 in Birth Certificate, Understanding the birthers

A cursory look at the birther movement might lead one to wonder why anyone would want to be a birther. The birthers’ expressed intention of keeping Barack Obama out of the White House, and later removing him and erasing his legacy, are further from realization than ever. They have lost a remarkable sting of lawsuits. They are regularly derided by the media, when they are mentioned at all. Even conservative politicians wish that they would go away.

Since the birther conspiracy theories don’t explain the larger economic forces in the world, they don’t alleviate the anxiety caused by the loss of control over their lives to faceless bureaucracies. So what’s in it for the birthers?

An excuse

Racism isn’t socially acceptable anymore; the “n” word is totally taboo. Anyone who opposes Obama from a bigoted stance (whether racial, ethnic, or religious¹) is able to say the nastiest things and express seething hatred toward Obama under the “usurper” label and thereby avoid the stigma and social ostracism 0f the bigot.

Fame/pride in accomplishment

In a world approaching 7 billion people, distinguishing oneself is no trivial pursuit. One of our birther commenters here said that she had made a YouTube video that will end the Obama presidency. Such an accomplishment would cement a place in history for the one who accomplished it. For some whose grandiose delusions are collective rather than individual, the the sense of hoped for notable accomplishment still beckons.

A sense of place

I have described myself is a profoundly uninteresting person. Being a liberal in the South is a little like the “lonely petunia in an onion patch.” I can understand the desire to fit in and to be accepted. The birther movement is a fraternal organization, like a church or the freemasons, or the Rotary Club. The birther who is otherwise a misfit, finds a community of like-minded people, and an Internet-based circle of friends. They have their own special events and heroes like Terry Lakin and Commander Kerchner. They have their own jargon and shared history.

But most of all, they have a place as part of what they see as an important movement in history.

Money

As they say, “follow the money.” This is impossible to quantify because no birther organization reports their income. Many birther websites feature donation links (in contrast to anti-birther websites which do not accept donations).

Political agenda

Many birthers have a political agenda that the birther movement attempts to push. Conservative, anti-government types clearly benefit from smearing Barack Obama. Anti-immigrant activism also plays a role, since Barack Obama is the ultimate example of an immigrant (non-US-citizen father) who took the job that should have gone to a “real American.”

So these are a few answers to the question of “what’s in it for the birthers?” What else?

¹While Barack Obama professes to be a Christian, the conspiracy theorists tried to make him Muslim.

G. U. T.

By Dr. Conspiracy on July 5, 2011 in Birthers, Understanding the birthers

The holy grail of physics is the Grand Unification Theory, an all-encompassing theory about the forces in the universe. In the same vein, my holy grail is a unifying theory of the birthers.

A sample conspiracy theory

Let’s take a very abbreviated walk through conspiracy thinking. Here’s a sample question: war brings misery; why do it? One approach to explaining war is to ask “who benefits?” One answer is the arms merchants. Both conspiracy theories and popular fiction expand on that theme. Conspiracy theorists who seek to explain war in terms of the secret machinations of the arms merchants will collect bits of information and interpret them to support that theory. The theories are based on real events and real evidence – only the conspiracy aspect is speculative.

Stupidity

Birtherism asks this initial question: Barack Obama is a despicable person; how can he be elected President? Their answer is that he can’t and that he wasn’t. Birthers collect bits of information and interpret them to support that theory.

The difference between our sample and the birthers is that the evidence the birthers collect is stupid. Their birth certificate analysis is inept and/or deceptive, their legal theories are crank, their supporting documents are fake, they misquote and misrepresent their sources, and of course the initial premise in their question is false. It’s really a pretty sorry mess.

This leads us to the first unifying principle: stupidity.

Demonization

I won’t take the time to repeat examples of what everybody already knows: birthers hate Barack Obama. They believe that he’s willfully destroying the country – something that the vast majority of Americans haven’t noticed. The reasons for the hatred may be several: envy, racism, religion, internationalism, liberalism or regionalism. In each case, the birther identifies Obama as different and foreign.

Our second unifying principle: demonization.

A Theory

My theory is not very well developed at this point. Demonization of the Other is a very powerful primitive emotion and the question is whether or not this plus simple stupidity along with the catalyst of the Internet is sufficient to explain birtherism. Is it also necessary to add a conspiracy theory about a powerful cabal of wealthy conservatives acting through covert political operatives to explain how the hatred and the stupidity came together to form the birther movement?

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