Feckless Douche of the Week: Scott Lively and his Pink Swastika

Update: Nearly 13 years ago, I named Scott Lively Top Douchebag on Life without Feck, my blog later subsumed by Magick Sandwich. Back then, he knocked Mark Williams off the pedestal. Williams dropped off the map after being kicked out of Tea Party Express because he wrote a racist blog post. Was he a proto-victim of cancel culture? If so, good riddance.

Isn’t it funny how perspectives change? It could be argued that the MAGA Republican faction is the deformed progeny of the Tea Party. On the other hand, the Tea Party seems quaint by comparison in our post-insurrection hellscape.

Well, stand back and stand by: Though we may have reached Peak Douchebaggery in 2023, Scott Lively still stands tall, long after publishing The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party.

After wallowing in this guy’s wretchedness for a post that would reach tens of readers, I was feeling a little, oh, I don’t know, pissed off, so I had some childish fun with Mr. Lively’s Wikipedia page, sprinkling into his bio things like, “He enjoys butt stuff in the afternoon.” Unfortunately, my edits are gone.

But this guy hasn’t gone away. I’m sure he’s proud to be branded an extremist by the Human Rights Campaign, Southern Poverty Law Center, and other groups. He has fought to pass anti-gay legislation in Latvia and Uganda and publicly praised Vladimir Putin for criminalizing “gay propaganda.” What a guy.

Did I mention he’s a pastor? He says has changed his focus from persecuting gays to spending more time with his flock in Abiding Truth Ministries, his tax-exempt church. Its website is appropriately named atmchurch.org, since Lively’s parishioners are his living ATMs.

And now, here is my inelegant segue into my original post, already in progress:

I first became acquainted with Pastor Scott Lively, president of “Defend the Family” and co-author of The Pink Swastika, on July 28, 2010, when he appeared in a segment of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Daily Show Scott Lively Gay Reichs

Jason Jones interviews Scott Lively, douchebag extraordinaire.

Pastor Lively told Jason Jones, “Open homosexuals are distinct from everybody else, men and women, in being exceptionally brutal and savage….Adolf Hitler used homosexual soldiers because they were more savage than natural men,” adding, “they didn’t have the restraint a normal man has. It was easier for them to do some of the terrible things that the Nazis did.”

Lively told Jones he wishes this cup could be taken from him:

“It’s not easy to be a person who tells the truth when a large part of the population doesn’t want to hear it. Frankly, I wish I’d gotten a different assignment….I woulda loved to just been hanging out on the beach someplace. But instead I got stuck with dealing with homosexual Nazis.”

Researching Pastor Lively, I discovered more interesting nuggets about Hitler and his cronies. The initial meeting of what would become the Nazi Party occurred in a gay bar. Each young Brownshirt was matched up with a homosexual male adult to initiate him into the league of gay Aryan supermen.

How to explain the extermination of gays by the Third Reich? Lively has a simple answer. “The Nazis did persecute homosexuals to distract public attention away from their homosexuality.”

I was shocked at the number of sites recommending The Pink Swastika as a source of well-supported historical facts being suppressed by gay activists and even by the National Holocaust Museum. The book is now in its fourth edition due to nice Christian groups all over the Internet plugging it almost as hard as they peddle the Almighty. [Note: I’m unsure what edition it is on now, but I found someone selling the 5th edition paperback on Walmart.com. I shudder to think what content Google will serve me now.]

Then it all started to make me ill. WWJB, people? What would Jesus blog? I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t take to the Web in support of a book that advocates murdering homosexuals. I’m not talking about the Nazis this time: I’m referring to Pastor Lively’s book, sermons, and life’s work.

“Pastor,”–because quotes should flank that honorific like traffic cones–you seem every bit as brutal and savage as the fantasy you promote as truth. Far be it from me to suggest that you tell this story to the next guy you see with a swastika tattoo. I’m sure he’d enjoy acquainting you with your feminine side.

But that wouldn’t be very Christian of me, would it? Not that I’m Christian; I’m not. But I have a conscience. Since you most likely believe in an afterlife, allow me to paint you a picture. Fire. Brimstone. You, servicing Satan’s balls for eternity. (I hear he swings both ways. You got a problem with that?) Bon appetit!

More douches:
Feckless Douche of the Week: Mark Williams
Feckless Douche of the Week: Rush Limbaugh

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Feckless Douche of the Week: Mark Williams

I know, I know. You were expecting Mel Gibson. Or maybe Whoopi Goldberg. But Tea Party Express organizer Mark Williams has proven himself the douchiest of them all!

Tea Party Douche Mark Williams

Mark Williams at Tea Party Rally

This guy’s got a bee in his bonnet about the NAACP condemning the Tea Party’s tolerance of racism. He countered Monday on CNN’s Situation Room with the I’m-rubber-you’re-glue gambit, saying the NAACP is racist. Why? Well, for one thing, it uses the words “colored people” in its name. Also, “the NAACP is a bunch of old dusty old relics trying to stay relevant in the 21st century and they make money off of race-baiting.”

On the other hand, Williams describes the Tea Party as “… a movement based on the Constitution of the United States. Therefore, it is impossible to be a racist and a Tea Partier because the Constitution is all about individual rights and civil rights.” I don’t think that even qualifies as pretzel logic. And I’d like to point out that denying a person’s ability to be racist is, in itself, pretty racist.

Wolf Blitzer, citing racist representations of Barack Obama, asked, “Should the Tea Party leaders be more assertive in disassociating and condemning these outbursts?” Williams responded, “Well, since every Tea Partier is the Tea Party leader, there is no formal organization; that’s exactly what they do. . . . After buying the mainstream media myth that they’re going to find a happy home in the Tea Party, racists quickly discover that it’s all about rights and that’s not what racism is about. It’s about America and the ideal of equality.”

That might be easier to believe if there weren’t so many images of Tea Partiers with signs depicting Obama as a witch doctor, Hitler, or the Joker, to name but a few. I won’t show the image of a sweet little old lady holding a stuffed monkey and a sign saying, “Send Obama Back To Kenya.” I’m guessing she doesn’t cry socialism when she gets her Social Security check.

Williams said it’s not his job “to police the personal beliefs of everyone in the Tea Party.” Fair enough. But would Martin Luther King have spoken up if the Klan had attended his rally? I think so. When Roland Martin pressed Williams to tell racists they’re not welcome in the Tea Party, he responded, “The racists have their own organization. It’s called the NAACP…a bunch of old fossils looking to make a buck off skin color.”

Then he and Martin showed up on Anderson Cooper 360 and did it all again. What was said? I was distracted by Martin’s penchant for using the word “epitaph” when I believe he meant “epithet.” I remember Williams blaming the media again for “inviting” the racists to rallies. Blah blah blah. Listen, I’d be perfectly happy if “news” cameras stopped showing up at these events. It’s the attention that feeds the movement. And the need to fill a twenty-four-hour news cycle feeds the networks. It’s a symbiotic relationship.

After his appearances on CNN, Williams still felt the need to share his outrage. So, on Tuesday, in an interview on NPR, Williams said, “You’re dealing with people who are professional race-baiters, who make a very good living off this kind of thing. They make more money off of race than any slave trader ever. It’s time groups like the NAACP went to the trash heap of history where they belong with all the other vile racist groups that emerged in our history.”

Temporarily out of the spotlight, Williams took to his blog and dashed off a fake letter to Lincoln from NAACP president Ben Jealous. I refuse to link directly to his blog so that link is to an article in The Guardian that quotes the entire post.

In this fake letter, the NAACP has changed its mind about emancipation. It’s mind-blowing. You should read the entire post, but here’s a snippet:

…The racist tea parties also demand that the government “stop the out of control spending.” Again, they directly target Colored People. That means we Colored People would have to compete for jobs like everybody else and that is just not right.

Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government “stop raising our taxes.” That is outrageous! How will we Colored People ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society?

Mark Williams: for your insistence you don’t support racism after calling Obama an “Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug” (people keep records of these things, you know), for your contagious ignorance and egregious misuse of satire, you are officially Douche of the Week. Hell, you might even be Douche of the Year. Watch your back, Mel! This crazy racist is gaining on you!

*****
Update:
On Friday, Williams appeared on MSNBC and claimed that the NAACP brought offensive signs to rallies to make innocent tea partiers seem racist: video here.  TPM’s Evan McMorris-Santoro calls Williams the King of ‘Accidental’ Racism.
Over the weekend, Williams removed the “letter to Lincoln” from his blog while still protesting that it was intended as satire. Meanwhile, the National Tea Party Federation expelled Williams and his Tea Party Express. That group’s spokesman, David Webb, appeared on CNN and CBS’ Face the Nation and called the blog post offensive but not racist. On both programs, NAACP’s Ben Jealous called bullshit on that.
Meanwhile, Williams says he’s done talking about the controversy but not until after he accuses Webb of turning the debate into a “World Wrestling Style personality conflict.” How long will he be able to keep his mouth shut? Stay tuned.

Previous honorees:
Feckless Douche of the Week: Rush Limbaugh
Feckless Liar of the Week: Spencer Pratt

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Robert Novak is Dead

Robert Novak, the right-wing “journalist” who outed Valerie Plame (with Karl Rove’s assistance) has died of brain cancer.

I hope they cut out his tumor and throw it a parade.