Every year at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, dozens of organizations big and small rent tables in an exhibition hall to dole out pens, stickers, and brochures promoting everything from homophobia to global warming denialism.
But alongside the National Organization for Marriage and the NRA are a cavalcade of fringe organizations warning of the dangers posed by the United Nations, secularism and foreign languages. Here are five of the craziest views advanced by their literature:
1. Marxists Control The Catholic Church. Fringe fundamentalist Cliff Kincaid’s organization America’s Survival is handing out a brochure warning Roman Catholics that the church “has been compromised philosophically — not only by infiltrators from the homosexual movement and Marxists. but by adherents of the so-called ‘New Age’ philosophy.” So vast is the communist infiltration within the Catholic Church, one “Catholic insider” told the organization that the bishops “made a deal with the devil to get Obamacare passed.”
2. The UN Will Take One-Quarter Of America’s Land. The American Jobs Alliance, a conservative business advocacy group, is handing out hundreds of fliers warning attendees of the dangers posed by the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an undeniably controversial free trade agreement that the United States is currently negotiating with a handful of South Pacific nations. Instead of reasoned criticism however, AJA sounds the alarm over Sharia Law, and claims that the Partnership “cedes 1/4 of U.S. to Foreign Control. A quarter of the entire U.S. land area will fall under UN court jurisdiction.”
3. Marriage Equality Must Be Opposed. Reason #8 in the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Prosperity’s “10 Reasons Why Homosexual ‘Marriage’ is Harmful and Must to Opposed” brochure: “It Imposes its Acceptance on all Society.” One example of the horrors of acceptance? “Rental property owners will have to agree to accept same-sex couples as tenants.” 10 reasons weren’t enough for the Ruth Institute, who have a brochure of their own with “77 Non-Religious Reasons to Support Man/Woman Marriage.”
4. George Soros Controls Everything. In another brochure published by Cliff Kincaid’s America’s Survival organization, author Zubi Diamond proclaims that President Obama “hates America just like his master George Soros.” Racially questionable language aside, Diamond’s obsession with French financier George Soros spills over to the rest of the brochure, going so far as to claim that former Fox News firebrand Glenn Beck was fired from the network for “exposing George Soros.”
5. Puerto Rico’s Statehood Referendum Was Rigged. ProEnglish’s singular mission — to promote English as country’s official language and wage war on any attempts to provide civic services in Spanish or any other foreign language — is laid forth in an 8 page newsletter on display at CPAC. Such articles include “Canada’s Struggles with Bilingualism Continue,” “ProEnglish Ally Rep. Steve King Re-Elected,” and cover story “Rigged Vote in Puerto Rico Produces Artificial Majority for Statehood.”
