http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/fall/world-nuts-dailyThe SPLC has a long (long) article on the history of WND, its founder Joseph Farah, and many of its associated kooks. Its a long one, but reading it is like playing FSTDT bingo; you've probably heard of most of the crazy shit if you've been here long enough. Some takeaways:
-The book that allegedly pushed Farah from Fonda-loving hippie to out-and-out wingnut was "Marx and Satan", which alleges Karl Marx is a Satanist, and Communism in general is s Satanic church.
Marx and Satan draws on poetry Marx wrote as a young man to prove that the author of Das Kapital “received the rights of initiation” of a “secret Satanist church” and became the Devil’s “elect servant.”
According to Wurmbrand, a Jewish convert to Christianity who was imprisoned and tortured in Romania, Lenin was also “dominated by Satanist ideology.” So were Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Kim Il-Sung, and former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
“Marxism is not an ordinary sinful human ideology. It is Satanic in its manner of sinning,” Wurmbrand’s book concludes. “Marxism is a church. … ts god is not named in its popular literature. But, as seen by the proofs given in this book, Satan is obviously its god.”
-Farah's first big job was editor of a major paper in 1990, which he promptly fucked up by using the kind of doublespeak the right would be famous for in WND:
Under his direction, pro-choice advocates were described as “pro-abortion” and environmentalists were reportedly called “eco-fruities.” The word “gay” was reportedly forbidden, replaced by “homosexual” — and once, in a column by the late David Chilton (who elsewhere wrote that “The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under … the rule of God’s law.”), with “sodomite.” Farah also convinced rising conservative radio star Rush Limbaugh (who had left Sacramento a few years earlier to take his show national) to write a daily column, and ran it on the paper’s front page.
-Almost every crazy rightwing nutjob has passed through WND. I won't pick any one of these, simply because I just can't, there's so many. But chances are you would've heard from at least a handful of them.
Go ahead. We'll wait. *picks up a six pack and an Xbox controller*
