A very interesting piece by Talking Points Memos Josh Marshall. This has to be one of the craziest conspiracy theories yet-and that's saying something. It seems that we have truly Tea Party sponsored conspiracy imported to Egypt.
"But the best capsule summary I’ve found is this piece by Robert Mackey in the Times’ Lede blog. The upshot is this: we all know all the whackadoodle conspiracy theories from the right about Obama being a secret Muslim. But there’s also a more specific sub-whackadoodlism pushed by members of Congress and a group of DC-based Islamophobe activists that argues that the Obama administration has actually been infiltrated by Islamists in sympathy with the Muslim Brotherhood."
As Marshall says, the U.S. gets accused of lots of things-many of them true. However, certainly the U.S. does not see it's interests in forcing MB rule in Egypt. If anything, its' the opposite. One criticism of Obama for 'allowing' Mubarak to be turned out was that the MB would take over-which it did. Still Obama did the right thing in not trying to resist it and it's salutary that the Egyptian people have decided MB has gone too far. However, we certainly are in no way supportive of MB-beyond the fact that it is unsettling to see a democratically elected President forced out via a military coup-even if most Egyptians supported it.
But supporters of the MB?!
"But the best capsule summary I’ve found is this piece by Robert Mackey in the Times’ Lede blog. The upshot is this: we all know all the whackadoodle conspiracy theories from the right about Obama being a secret Muslim. But there’s also a more specific sub-whackadoodlism pushed by members of Congress and a group of DC-based Islamophobe activists that argues that the Obama administration has actually been infiltrated by Islamists in sympathy with the Muslim Brotherhood."
"Like I said, we covered this last year and I remembered it pretty vividly. But I didn’t grasp until this weekend how far it had spread within Egypt or how prevalent an assumption it had become within the anti-Morsi protest community."
"Most of this comes from the Frank Gaffney world, allied with the usual suspects in Congress: Gohmert, Bachmann, et al. You’ll probably remember the charges about Huma Abedin, Hillary’s Clinton’s longtime assistant/advisor and, weirdly enough, Anthony Weiner’s wife. There’s been a long series of accusations that she’s a Brotherhood plant at the heart of Obama administration foreign policy making. The charges became so widespread that John McCain felt it necessary to go to the Senate floor to defend her."
"There are many, many other examples of this kind of craziness. Abedin is only one high-profile example. But the key point is that what most of us here take as fringe Crazy has germinated into a full-fledged set of conspiracy theories in Egypt, perhaps one of the most astounding Internet era feedback loops yet seen."
As Marshall says, the U.S. gets accused of lots of things-many of them true. However, certainly the U.S. does not see it's interests in forcing MB rule in Egypt. If anything, its' the opposite. One criticism of Obama for 'allowing' Mubarak to be turned out was that the MB would take over-which it did. Still Obama did the right thing in not trying to resist it and it's salutary that the Egyptian people have decided MB has gone too far. However, we certainly are in no way supportive of MB-beyond the fact that it is unsettling to see a democratically elected President forced out via a military coup-even if most Egyptians supported it.
But supporters of the MB?!
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