Even more than the allegations of racism among the Tea Party movement this report about Rep. Bob Inglis’ brush with Tea Party conspiracy theorists is just depressing.

It would obviously be silly to suggest that tea-partiers are broadly anti-semitic; at this point, Jews and Israel seem to be firmly on the “good” side of the ledger for most of the far right. The point rather is that what’s wrong with a lot of hard-right tea-party rhetoric today is the same thing that’s wrong with a lot of anti-semitic rhetoric: an anti-rationalist, conspiratorial, apocalyptic, xenophobic mindset. It’s not so much that I’m scared of this kind of thinking because it’s likely to involve bigotry against me. It’s that I’m scared of this kind of thinking because I know it, and I know it because I’ve heard it coming from the mouths of people who were bigoted against me. The fact that my religious identity doesn’t seem to be its target at the moment doesn’t make it any less scary.

The Bilderberger Group promotes atlanticism, but is a favorite target of conservative activists, probably because of its elite membership and secret conferences.

Filed under: Politics, Subscriptions, USA Tagged: anti-semitism, bilderberger group, conspiracy theories, tea party, the economist