Reps. Trent Franks an John Shadegg engage in McCarthyism, religious bigotry againt Muslim-Americans

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The right-wing has exhibited a disturbing trend towards a new era of McCarthyism in recent years. But their latest craziness is religious bigotry and fear mongering against Muslim American citizens.

In the mind of right-wing conspiracy theory loving religious bigots, Muslim Americans are all spies for Islamo-fascism (a term fabricated by the right-wing and of no actual significance) and Islamic sleeper-cell terrorists who are conspiring to "Islamize" a "Christian" America. Seriously. I kid you not.

A quartet of Republican Congressmen, including Arizona's own Reps. Trent Franks and John Shadegg, convened a press conference this week to demand that the House Sergeant at Arms investigate the organization Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), because this advocacy organization does what every other advocacy organization does, but they do it while being Muslim. Muslim spy interns have infiltrated Congress! Oh my!

Here is the press conference. The representatives in the video are: Sue Myrick (R-NC), John Shadegg (R-AZ), Paul Broun (R-GA) and Trent Franks (R-AZ).

Rachel Maddow and Eugene Robinson put this loony right conspiracy into it's proper context:

RACHEL MADDOW: Do you think that the secret ploy to "Islamize" America starts with interns?

EUGENE ROBINSON: (laughing) Yeah, that's where you want to start. You know the interns, they're the one's who control the real power on Capitol Hill. If you get the interns then you've got the whole city, and then you've got the world! You know this would be funny, it actually brings to mind that other great old movie Doctor Strangelove and General Jack D. Ripper and the plot he perceived to zap and impurity all our precious bodily fluids, that's kind of the way they sounded. But it's not funny, because it's dangerous and bigoted…

George Bush after 9/11, from the beginning, tried to make clear to everyone that the war on terror that he was prepared to wage was not a war against Islam, that this was not a religious war, that this was not a clash of civilizations, yet World Net Daily clearly didn't get the memo, and nor, amazingly, did some members of the U.S. Congress, and this is really scary stuff in that sense.

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MADDOW: I wonder if in contrast to what you just described about George W. Bush if you feel like these sort of things hurt our efforts in that regard, even if it is just a few very extreme members of Congress?

ROBINSON: Of course it hurts our efforts in those regards. And look, if you are Muslim in America and you hear that you have to conclude that you're under suspicion, if not under attack, at least from this kind of loony right wing of the Republican Party, and that's not the message we want to be sending, and it's certainly not they way we want to treat American citizens. This is supposed to be the American government, there is no established religion in this county, they made clear in the Bill of Rights that there wasn't going to be an established religion. It's amazing to me that these fundamental principles upon which this country was founded escape our elected representatives in Congress.

* * *

MADDOW: I wonder if, in real politic terms, if Republican leadership in Congress, given that four sitting members of Congress start promoting this conspiratorial theory, if the leadership has to consider whether they have a responsibility to disassociate themselves from this stuff when it immediately invokes threats of violence.

ROBINSON: I think that when you get to the point of a death threat, for example, and… I think the Republican leadership has to take this up and perhaps the leadership of the House itself, perhaps the Speaker has to say something, a different party but still, it needs to be made clear that it is not the policy of the United States government or the intention of the U.S. Congress to conduct some sort of McCarthyite witch hunt against Muslims who might happen to work as interns on Capitol Hill, or who might happen to be lobbyists around town, or might happen — Oh, my gracious! — to worship in a Mosque. This is really as un-American a development as I can think of almost, and it needs to be addressed. It needs to be denounced, and stopped.

Reps. Trent Franks and John Shadegg have been an embarrassment to this state for far too long. It is up to the citizens of Arizona to bring pressure to bear on these religious bigots to apologize to the greater Muslim-American community for their incendiary attempt to portray all American citizens of the Muslim faith as "spies" and "terrorists," a suspect "Fifth Column" that wants to "Islamize" Americans. Call and write their congressional offices to register your complaint.

The Arizona political media has an obligation as well to call out these religious bigots for their McCarthyism. Contact your local newspaper and television editors to let them know about this news story and to demand that they condemn Reps. Franks and Shadegg for their religious bigotry and McCarthyism.

What the Rachel Maddow Show did not touch upon is the Faux News sensationalism du jour, actors pretending to be someone they are not to infiltrate allegedly "subversive" organizations (like ACORN). GOP Rep Takes Campaign Against Muslim 'Intern Spies' To Fox

Citing Work Of Right-Wing Intern Spy, GOP Accuses Muslim Group Of Infiltrating Hill With Intern 'Spies':

Four House Republicans are charging that the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is infiltrating Capitol Hill with undercover interns, and they're basing the charge on a World Net Daily-published book that itself is based on the work of a man who posed as a Muslim to infiltrate CAIR as … an intern!

* * *

As Greg Sargent notes, the office of Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) does not have a list of the "Manchurian Interns" that she claims may have penetrated national security-related committees.

Myrick and three other members of the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus came to a news conference today armed with Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America. They called on the sergeant at arms to investigate whether, as Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) put it, a group that "is connected to or supports terrorists [and] is running influence operations or planting spies in key national security-related offices."

* * *

To CAIR officials, Chris Gaubatz was Muslim convert and college student Dave Marshall, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper tells TPMmuckraker.

"We treated him so well. I jokingly offered to help him get married," says an angry Hooper. "They lied to us about their background. They falsely claimed to be Muslim. They would stand next to us and pray during prayers."

Hooper and the World Net Daily crowd agree on one thing: that "Intern Dave Marshall" took a lot of documents while he was at CAIR — basically everything he could. World Net Daily argues that the documents prove that CAIR is "part of an organized crime network" with other Muslim groups that "collectively comprise the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood."

Hooper is not impressed. "This guy spied on us for months, and the most they can come up with is that we're doing ordinary lobbying work on Capitol Hill?"

Politico reports that the four Republicans revealed an internal CAIR "strategy" document today, that, in the words of the Politico reporters, "basically lays out a fairly straight forward public relations and lobbying strategy."

Hooper says CAIR has filed a complaint with Washington police for theft of property.

For the uninitiated, World Net Daily is the central clearing house for every right-wingnut conspiracy theory under the sun. Let's just say that rational people do not consider World Net Daily a credible news publication. It is in the genre of "woman gives birth to alien baby" stories in the National Enquirer and The Globe.

So let's Meet The Man Behind The Intern Spy Wars: Muslim Mafia Author Dave Gaubatz:

Let's take a closer look at the co-author of Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America … David Gaubatz, a former Air Force investigator and Arabic speaker.

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Here's the lowdown on Gaubatz:

• He referred to "our Muslim leader" Barack Obama on his blog last year.

• He has claimed that he personally found sites with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction when he was an agent with the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations in 2003. But the Syrians beat us to the punch on excavating the sites, Gaubatz claims, and the U.S. government suppressed the information to avoid the "explosive revelation of their own lethal incompetence."

• Just yesterday he wondered about Congress' two Muslim representatives, "How much information do we have on Carson and Congressman Keith Ellison?"

• According to Glenn Greenwald, Gaubatz in 2007 was focusing his time on creating "a comprehensive map of every mosque and Islamic school in the U.S" in order to determine which ones were preaching "Islamic law." The Web site that explained that project has since been made private.

• He said in September 2008 on a now scrubbed blog post at www.jihadishere.blogspot.com that: "We are now on the verge of allowing a self admitted 'crack-head' to have his finger on every nuclear weapon in America."

• He apparently has a history of faking conversions to Islam as part of his investigations.

Media Matters has a comprehensive roundup here and Greenwald has more here.