AFA Fires Bryan Fischer
Yes, really ... sort of.
That was unexpected.
Rachel Maddow↱ broke the news tonight on her msnbc show; the thirteen and a half minute segment is an enjoyable and enlightening thirteen and a half minutes, but let us go with
Josh Feldman↱ of Mediaite, because it's easier to quote:
The American Family Association has officially fired notorious evangelist Bryan Fischer after a controversy involving the RNC and Israel. Fischer is notorious for having some––well, let's not sugarcoat it––crazy views on gays, "homofascists," more crazy views on gays, and… yeah, basically a lot of gay stuff.
Fischer is so out there, he concocted some insane conspiracy theory last year that the only reason Shepard Smith wasn't freaking out about Ebola is because he wants to support President Obama's big government gay agenda.
At issue this time is an RNC trip to Israel that was apparently being paid for by the American Family Association, of which Fischer is the director of issues analysis.
Feldman updated his post to note that the AFA has fired Fischer as a spokesman, but apparently is still retaining his radio show.
The whole story is strange, though. The basic background is that the AFA is sponsoring an expenses-paid trip to Israel for sixty members of the Republican National Committee. This has been known for a while, at least, but things took a turn this week, as
Debra Nussbaum Cohen↱ reported for
Haaretz under the headline, "U.S. NGO: 'Hate group' funding Republican National Commmittee Trip to Israel":
The trip is being organized by the American Renewal Project, an endeavor housed in and financed by the American Family Association, a conservative Christian group in Tupelo, Mississippi. The AFA is described as a "hate group” and "extremist group” by the SPLC, an Alabama-based civil rights nonprofit, because of statements it made that are deemed anti-LGBTQ, anti-Latino and anti-black, and which suggest that the United States is a country for Christians only.
“The AFA has an extensive track record of bigotry and hate,” SPLC president and CEO Richard Cohen wrote in a letter to each member of the RNC, urging them not to go on the free trip.
Bryan Fischer, the AFA’s director of issue analysis, has said that black people “rut like rabbits.” Moreover, in a September essay, he wrote: “We are a Christian nation and not a Jewish or Muslim one.” On a video segment on MSNBC’s "Rachel Maddow Show" last Friday, Fischer was seen blasting gay activists as “jack-booted homo-fascist thugs,” and depicting Islam as “an Ebola virus that is lethal and deadly.”
According to Maddow, and as Feldman reports, AFA President Tim Wildmon cited Fischer's remarks about Hitler and homosexuality.
Which is, all in all, one of those proverbial "things that make you go, hmmm".
That is to say, we might consider that the AFA is planning a massive political trip to Israel, and their spokesman has said, publicly and repeatedly, that Jews are not entitled to First Amendment rights in the United States.
So they fire him for offensive remarks about homosexuals.
And it's true that Israel, as a socety, can be a sensitive about Hitler rhetoric; it is also true that we don't really need to wonder why. But we hear the government and many of the nation's citizens complaining of hating Jews if one suggests that the nation of Israel has no right to arbitrarily murder, kidnap, deprive, and displace Palestinians. One might, as such, wonder how Israelis or their government feel about the proposition that Jews should not be allowed the right to worship in the U.S.
Yet the reason given for Bryan Fischer's dismissal as a spokesman―but not, apparently, as a radio host who helps raise funds for the organization―has to do with mean things he says about homosexuals; "We reject that", Wildmon explained.
Well, at least they reject that
now. It's not like this is a new pitch; he's been on about this for at least
six years↱. And apparently AFA just found out about it.
Or perhaps they decided they needed to do
something, and between pumping Scott Lively's excrement and arguing that Jews have no rights under the First Amendment, the group decided to go with the Nazi bit because they can easily reject it.
Which could make for a very interesting conversation between Israelis and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus:
"So, you know, why did you decide to come to Israel on the tab of an organization that hates Jews?"
And why would the anti-Semitic AFA want to go to Israel in the first place?
(
Hint: It's called
Premillennial Dispensationalism, or, as Bill Maher summarized over a decade ago, "when Jesus comes back, the Jews have a part to play, which is, of course, to die".)
This could get interesting.
Meanwhile, the AFA has chosen to cite Fischer's homophobia as the reason for his sudden dismissal.
In the last couple years, gays have been blazing their way up the ladder of social and political respectability; we've already cut in line in front of women, but what I can't figure out is whether we just cut in line in front of Jews, or if we had already passed them by.
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Notes:
Maddow, Rachel. "American Family Association fires Bryan Fischer ahead of RNC trip to Israel". The Rachel Maddow Show. msnbc, New York. 28 January 2015. Television. msnbc.com. 29 January 2015. http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/bryan-fischer-fired-ahead-of-rnc-israel-trip-390575171843
Feldman, Josh. "American Family Association Evangelist Bryan Fischer Has Been Fired, Maddow Reports". Mediaite. 28 January 2015. Mediaite.com. 29 January 2015. http://www.mediaite.com/tv/evangelist-bryan-fischer-has-been-fired-maddow-reports/
Nussbaum Cohen, Debra. "U.S. NGO: 'Hate group' funding Republican National Committee trip to Israel". Haaretz. 27 January 2015. Haaretz.com. 29 January 2015. http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/.premium-1.639330
Fischer, Bryan. "The truth about homosexuality and the Nazi Party". Renew America. 15 May 2008. RenewAmerica.com. 29 January 2015. http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/fischer/080515