Larry Pratt of Virginia is a member of two different national Tea Party networks: Tea Party Nation and 1776 Tea Party. He is also executive director of Gun Owners of America, which bills itself as a "no compromise" organization opposed to all forms of gun control.
Just over a week after the IREHR Special Report Tea Party Nationalism first exposed many of the so-called “birthers” in the leadership of the different national factions, Tea Party Nation (TPN) founder Judson Phillips decided to openly join that growing list yesterday.
Rather than join those who claim the President Obama is not a natural-born American, Phillips promoted his peculiar theory as to why he thinks that President Obama is ineligible to hold the office. Phillips brand of “birtherism” weaves another layer of xenophobia into this already racially-charged discourse on citizenship.
In an article on the TPN website entitled, “The Birth Certificate of Barack Obama,” Phillips writes, “Is Obama really an American citizen, as all of the folks hitting the eligibility question ask? By birth, probably, but there is a curve ball. As a child, his mother married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian, who then adopted Obama and they moved to Indonesia. The law in effect at the time stated that if an American child was adopted by a citizen of another country and moved to that country, the child lost its American citizenship. The child could regain its citizenship by applying to an American Embassy at age 18 but would only be treated as a naturalized citizen.”
Phillips explained that he hoped that there would be a court ruling that would find Obama ineligible to be President. Nevertheless, he wanted that ruling to occur after 2013, because he wants Obama in the 2012 presidential race. Phillips argued that keeping President Obama in office “will all but guarantee a Republican win in 2012.”
Although Phillips had been coy about the topic until now, his public embrace of the birther position should come as no surprise. As IREHR reported in February, at the Tea Party Nation Convention in Nashville, Phillips introduced Joseph Farah, of the far right website WorldNetDaily.com, as the Friday evening keynote speaker. Farah spent much of his speech cooking up a Biblical basis for his obsession with Obama’s birth certificate.
Phillips joins TPN marketing director Pam Farnsworth in publicly embracing the birther position. Other birthers in prominent national Tea Party leadership roles include Amy Kremer (Tea Party Patriots, later Tea Party Express), Mark Williams (Tea Party Express), and Darla Dawald (ResistNet).
For more on the Tea Parties and the Birthers, see "'Who is An American?': Tea Parties, Nativism and the Birthers" in Tea Party Nationalism.
A quick-view guide to the relationships between the various national Tea Party factions.
The Revolutionary War-era costumes, the yellow “Don’t tread on me” Gadsden flags from the same era, the earnest recitals of the pledge of allegiance, the over-stated veneration of the Constitution, and the defense of “American exceptionalism” in a world turned towards transnational economies and global institutions: all are signs of the over-arching nationalism that helps define the Tea Party movement.
It is a form of American nationalism, however, that does not include all Americans, and separates itself from those it regards as insufficiently “real Americans.” Consider in this regard, a recent Tea Party Nation Newsletter article entitled, “Real Americans Did Not Sue Arizona.” Or the hand-drawn sign at a Tea Party rally that was obviously earnestly felt. “I am a arrogant American, unlike our President, I am proud of my country, our freedom, our generosity, no apology from me.”
The founding moments of the contemporary Tea Party movement were many. Several were grassroots in nature, developing outside the existing power centers in Washington, D.C. and in the more remote regions where conservative politics meets a more libertarian (right-wing and anti-statist) opposition. Others derived directly from elements within the Republican Party apparatus and began as proxies for the party itself.
At a GlanceHeadquarters: Franklin, Tennessee
Website: TeaPartyNation.com
Online members: 31,402
Notable: The group has provided a Tea Party platform to Christian nationalists, nativists and birthers.
The Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR) is a national organization with an international outlook examining racist, anti-Semitic, white nationalist, and far-right social movements, analyzing their intersection with civil society and social policy, educating the public, and assisting in the protection and extension of human rights through organization and informed mobilization.
