low IQ bufoonery
If you really want to burrow deep into the brain-damaged Bizzaro World rabbit hole of the most “out there,” batshit crazy conspiracy theories currently making the rounds, “Agenda 21,” is zooming to the top of the charts with a bullet among the tin foil hat set… and beyond.
That’s right, Agenda 21 is going mainstream, baby!
Agenda 21 is actually (sort of) a real thing, a non-mandatory proposed declaration pertaining to sustainable development first introduced at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro. It has never been ratified by the US Senate, but despite this, lunatics on the fringes of the far right (and at least one group identifying itself as a Democrat-leaning subset) think it is the most nefarious globalist plot ever hatched to steal away our American birthrights and freedom and shit. Or something.
Agenda 21 is a fairly fluid, one-size-fits-all conspiracy theory, like HAARP, and can be called upon to enforce imaginary, at zero risk of happening things like mandatory birth control and involuntary sterilization (and sometimes just the opposite), Soylent Green-style euthanasia of old people and the forcible rounding up of country folk who will be made to live in cities and give up their cars.
To the fruitcakes propagating these theories—Glenn Beck and Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, come to mind on the right, as well as less ideologically categorizable sources such as David Icke and Alex Jones—“sustainable development” is just some BS “New World Order” code-word for “UN control” and of course, the bogeyman of Socialism (or at least whatever that term currently means to folks on the right).
Where an unsophisticated, buffoonish belief system like this becomes a problem is when a gang of aging low IQ baby boomers—the kind who believe in ACORN plots, birtherism and tax cuts for oligarchs—get riled up by Glenn Beck and decide that anything dubbed “sustainable,” mentioning “smart growth,” “climate change” or god forbid, cutting down on pollution or trying to preserve the environment, must mean it’s a plot against freedom, the Founding Fathers and Jeebus and so they turn up at local zoning hearings to shout down rational discussion with their paranoiac drivel and drown out sane people.
Ecologically sustainable development = NWO “they’re coming to take our freedom away” dog whistle. But of course! Of course!
Even worse the same dum-dums who joined the Tea party and who think Glenn Beck’s “eureka!” moments represent profound moments of deep undercover revelations about the evil leftwing puppet masters who want to destroy America—and not just some asshole shooting his mouth off shilling shit to the rubes—are getting themselves elected to local and state positions in growing numbers in red states. The state legislatures in Alabama, Kansas and Tennessee have approved resolutions blocking Agenda 21—which was never ratified, I remind you—from ever being implemented in their states. Not that there’s much of a danger of that ever occurring…
But it’s not stopping there as Mother Jones’ Tim Murphy writes in “Top Georgia GOP Lawmakers Host Briefing on Secret Obama Mind-Control Plot”:
President Obama is using a Cold War-era mind-control technique known as “Delphi” to coerce Americans into accepting his plan for a United Nations-run communist dictatorship in which suburbanites will be forcibly relocated to cities. That’s according to a four-hour briefing delivered to Republican state senators at the Georgia state Capitol last month.
On October 11, at a closed-door meeting of the Republican caucus convened by the body’s majority leader, Chip Rogers, a tea party activist told Republican lawmakers that Obama was mounting this most diabolical conspiracy. The event—captured on tape by a member of the Athens-based watchdog Better Georgia (who was removed from the room after 52 minutes)—had been billed as an information session on Agenda 21, a nonbinding UN agreement that commits member nations to promote sustainable development. In the eyes of conservative activists, Agenda 21 is a nefarious plot that includes forcibly relocating non-urban-dwellers and prescribing mandatory contraception as a means of curbing population growth. The invitation to the Georgia state Senate event noted the presentation would explain: “How pleasant sounding names are fostering a Socialist plan to change the way we live, eat, learn, and communicate to ‘save the earth.’”
The meeting consisted of a PowerPoint presentation followed by a 90-minute screening of the anti-Agenda 21 documentary, Agenda: Grinding America Down. It was emceed by Field Searcy, a local conservative activist who was forced out of the Georgia Tea Party in April due to his endorsement of conspiracy theories about the president’s birth certificate and the collapse of World Trade Center Tower 7. The presentation also featured a special video cameo from conservative talking-head Dick Morris in which the former Clinton aide warns that Obama “wants to force everyone into the cities from whence our ancestors fled.”
About 23 minutes into the briefing, Searcy explained how President Obama, aided by liberal organizations like the Center for American Progress and business groups like local chambers of commerce, are secretly using mind-control techniques to push their plan for forcible relocation on the gullible public:
“They do that by a process known as the Delphi technique. The Delphi technique was developed by the Rand Corporation during the Cold War as a mind-control technique. It’s also known as “consensive process.” But basically the goal of the Delphi technique is to lead a targeted group of people to a pre-determined outcome while keeping the illusion of being open to public input.”
Mother Jones also had a simply marvelous screen shot from Field Searcy’s Powerpoint presentation:
Georgia Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers hosts a public meeting of top GOP Senate leaders to discuss Obama-related conspiracy theories.
Glenn Beck explains “Agenda” 21 in his very special way:
Oh wait, what’s this? Only the most fucking genius commercial of all time: It’s for Glenn Beck’s new novel, Agenda 21, and I haven’t seen a version, yet, that wasn’t videotaped off a television screen, so I’m wondering if it’s meant to look like this? I think it’s much better if that was intentional…
Thank you Sia Abderezai!