The Islamic Republic of Iran is replete with beautiful mountain vistas, a clean subway system and keen scholarly discussion, if the Institute for Historical Review’s (IHR) Mark Weber is to be believed.  The country is also the victim of the harmful depredations of a “Zionist-controlled Hollywood,” according to Weber.  He and more than 40 other non-Iranians gathered with their Hollywood-hating Iranian peers for a four-day February conference in Tehran.  Speakers from the United States, Europe and the Middle East claimed that Hollywood did everything from pollute their cultural environment to promote war with Iran.  If you thought Americans were all skinny, that was a false impression caused by Hollywood.  And if you looked around and thought about sex, well that too was the fault of Hollywood. 

It was May 1, 1988 in Paris, and I watched as Jean-Marie Le Pen, a young girl dressed as Joan d'Arc, a line of sash-wearing dignitaries, and 40,000 Front National supporters marched through the streets in a May Day parade. It was the moment that the Front National's racist nationalism broke into the middle of French politics, after years (decades) on the margins. Le Pen won 4.4 million votes, about 14.7% of the total, in the first round of the presidential elections that year. At the time, I was used to monitoring Klan rallies in the American South, which never approximated the size and power of the rally that day. The Front National's fortunes have waxed and waned over the next two-plus decades since. Now, with a stunning six million votes (17.9% of the total) in the in the first round of the French presidential elections, Marine Le Pen has re-established the Front National as a leading voice for racist, anti-immigrant politics in Continental Europe.

His YouTube channel has over 30 million views and over 200,000 subscribers. He's had cameo appearances in two Hollywood films. Yet he's hardly a household name. Nonetheless, over the last fifteen years, Austin, Texas-based radio talk-show host Alex Jones has made a career pumping out bigotry and conspiracies for profit.

Jones has also defended the same Tea Party movement whose leaders are attacking the Occupy movement today. He has indulged in vicious racist anti-immigrant rhetoric, promoted anti-Semitic con artists, defended Holocaust deniers, and attacked civil rights leaders. He is an equal opportunity bigot.

The presidency of Barack Obama dominated political events in 2009.  Whether it was discussion of the bank bailouts last winter or the continuing failure of the government to solve the problem of depression-era unemployment, the blame or success will be laid on the doorstep of Obama’s White House.  Whether or not Congress passes meaningful health care reform, it will be on this president’s watch.  After announcing an American troop surge in Afghanistan, this administration now owns that war. And whether the fortunes of the far right and white nationalist movements rose or fell during the past year, Barack Hussein Obama will be regarded—rightly or wrongly—as the cause.

Texe Marrs joined David Duke at Washington D.C.'s Capitol Skyline Hotel for a conference on November 7, according to reports.