At a demonstration last month at the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC, far-right activist Larry Klayman called upon demonstrators “to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come up with his hands out.” Today, Klayman and allies on the far-right who recently formed the Reclaim American Now Coalition (RAN) will be continuing Klayman’s call for revolution and to deliver a new declaration of independence at a demonstration in Washington’s Lafayette Park – steps away from the White House.
Larry Klayman and protestors outside the White House in October 2013, where he demanded President Obama “put the Quaran down.”
Today’s demonstration in the nation’s capital is organized by Klayman’s organization Freedom Watch and comes after several smaller “citizens grand juries” he has held where he and supporters have “indicted” President Obama on charges of fraud and handed the president and other elected officials prison sentences. Obviously, none of those indicted by Klayman and company have actually been sent to prison – or even resigned from office. RAN members are now escalating their calls for revolution and rallying in front of the White House.
As it is to be expected by those on the far-right, conspiracy theories often fuel the sentiments behind actions like RAN’s demonstration today. Leading up to today’s demonstration, Klayman has used his regular column at the internet conspiracy hub World Net Daily to label President Obama as the “mullah-in-chief” with an “apparent allegiance to Shariah law.” Klayman concluded one such column on September 13 writing, “[Obama] would be well advised to ride off into his Islamic sunset, link up with 72 virgins and party on at his expense – not ours!”
Predictably, these conspiracies are rife with anti-Muslim rhetoric which attracts anti-Muslim activists and some of the organized Islamophobia movement’s more prominent leaders and other fringe far-right activists. Some of the speakers expected to attend today’s demonstration include:
- Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, the prolific anti-Muslim bloggers whose American Freedom Defense Initiative drafted an 18-point platform calling for, among other things, a moratorium on Muslim immigration to America. Spencer and Geller also were the chief organizers of protest against a community outreach event in Manchester, Tennessee where attendees cheered at the mention of a mosque burning.
- Larry Pratt, Executive Director of Gun Owners of America, who has previously attended conferences organized by white supremacists and militia leaders including a notorious 1992 meeting in Estes Park, Colorado, where far-right radicals and white supremacists such as Louis Beam made calls for revolution similar to what RAN members are proposing now. Media coverage of Pratt’s attendance at such events ultimately led to him resigning his position on white nationalist Pat Buchanan’s 1996 presidential campaign.
- Joe Kaufman, chairman of the deceptively-named Americans Against Hate, a stridently anti-Muslim organization. Kaufman is also a columnist for the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s FrontPage Magazine and been the keynote speaker at Freedom Center-organized events across the country.
- Richard Mack, a former county sheriff in Arizona who frequently speaks at far-right events espousing anti-government views, is one of the leading spokesmen for the militia movement in America today.
- Joseph Farah, founder of the conspiracy-obsessed website World Net Daily of which many of RAN’s members have contributed.
In addition to listening to remarks delivered by these extremists and others, Klayman has asked supporters to camp out in parks across the nation’s capital in his call for revolution. “We must have the means to literally camp in Washington D.C. and not leave until we get results,” the RAN event’s agenda reads. This tactic bears a striking resemblance to Occupy Wall Street demonstrations that began in 2011 and became the target of the far-right’s ire almost immediately. As Pamela Geller wrote of the protests in a November blog post that year, “The intepretation [sic] of these protests as symbolic of free speech is wrong. There is a distinction between speech and action. They do not have the right to co-opt and take over public parks or shut down public streets.”
How the Geller-approved RAN event is any different – other than it reaffirming her and her colleagues’ own conspiratorial bigotries – is unclear.