July 24, 2015 06:20 PM UTC

Bigots, Birchers, and Islamophobes in Colorado Mainstream Now

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• by: kwtree

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Groups promoting hatred and fear of Muslims, gays, immigrants, unionized workers, and people of color are openly meeting in Colorado. These meetings are being promoted by mainstream Republican activists, and are aimed at influencing policy by informing local law enforcement and legislators of the  “threats” these groups pose. The John Birch Society had an Executive Dinner in Denver July 24.  RMGO is promoting an anti-Muslim training session for law enforcement, community and the public Aug. 13-15.

John Birch Society- the Founding Bigots

The John Birch Society met July 24, at the Doubletree Hilton Hotel in North Denver.  Many mainstream GOP activists planned to attend, according to their Facebook pages. The John Birch Society (JBS) has a long history of racism and religious bigotry in the United States, and was where the Koch Brothers learned how to prey upon the fears of the ignorant.

The JBS had its origins in the McCarthy era, as an anti-Communist group.  “Birchers” preached that all Civil Rights Movement leaders and actions were Communist-inspired. My father, an editorial writer for the Post, used to rail about the “Goddamn Birchers” who would oppose every piece of civil rights or anti-poverty legislation in Denver, and tried to suppress his editorials in the 1960s.

Although JBS leadership now wears three-piece suits, and meets at $50 a plate fundraising dinners in nice hotel ballrooms, their messaging has changed very little: “Those people” (leftists, feminists, unionists, environmentalists, gays, Muslims, the UN, Democrats, people of color promoting Obama’s “race war”) are conspiring to take away your American way of life,  and they must be stopped, preferably with a hefty donation to the JBS. 

The JBS contributes heavily to “Right to Work” and other ALEC- generated legislation.  Colorado legislators are rated  on the JBS “Freedom Index”. Rated at 70% or higher: Mike Coffman, Doug Lamborn, Scott Tipton,  Cory Gardner, and Ken Buck . It will be interesting to see which of these Republican politicians attended the JBS dinner.

 John Guandalo: RMGO sponsored workshops August 13-15 on “Understanding the Threat” of the Global Islamic Movement

“American Muslims do not have a First Amendment right to do anything.” – John Guandolo, from his Understanding the Threat trainings, quoted by the Southern Poverty Law Center

Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, known in Colorado circles for opposing gun-limiting legislation, is sponsoring John Guandalo, disgraced former FBI agent and current anti-Muslim speaker, at the Centennial Gun Club August 13-15, 2015. Guandolo plans to present the “Threat of the Global Islamic Movement” to an audience of law enforcement professionals, legislators, church security, and the public. 

Although Guandalo stands firmly on his FBI /counterterrorism past experience, he does not talk about how he was fired from the FBI for having a sexual relationship with a witness; nor does he talk about how the FBI is now backing away from some of the inflammatory anti-Muslim propaganda he helped to inspire at the agency. Guandalo’s latest extremist rant was his insistence that John Brennan, Obama’s CIA Director, is a secret convert to the Muslim Brotherhood.  And you know what that makes Obama.

I forced myself to watch 20 minutes of Guandolo’s 2014 presentation at Colorado Christian University. Although the “facts” he presents are not facts but paranoid fears and opinions, he doesn’t come off as crazy. He is well-spoken, clean-shaven, humorous, a competent communicator. He lectures on this same anti-Islamic theme all over the country, although his presentations have been canceled in Virginia, Kansas, Texas and Arizona, as public pressure from churches, community organizations, and citizens was brought to bear. Many people of good will believe that this anti-Muslim bigotry poisons our political discourse, inside and outside the United States.

Guandalo’s presentation in Centennial should be canceled, as it has been in four other states. I’m calling on our Attorney General, Cynthia Coffman, as chief law enforcement officer in Colorado, and all local Sheriff Departments, to boycott Guandalo’s presentation to law enforcement officers, as has been done in Kansas, Texas, Arizona, and Virginia.

Organizations like the ACLU,  the Interfaith Alliance,  the Center for American Islamic Relations,   Right Wing Watch, and concerned individuals and faith groups have stopped Guandolo from spewing his poison in other communities. I’ve written to these and other groups, and will update in these pages on how that’s going. Hopefully, Guandolo and RMGO will find that Colorado, too, is “no state for hate”.

–crossposted at Daily Kos