Far-Right Shock Jock Michael Savage Concocts Conspiracy Blaming Muslims for Boston Bombing -- and the Entire Govt. for Covering It UpAmidst a national manhunt, up to 8 million Americans were bombarded with wildly dangerous speculation and anti-Muslim incitement.
April 18, 2013 |
No one has been officially accused of orchestrating the Boston Marathon bombing that left at least three dead and scores wounded, but one of the most popular radio hosts in America claims to have found the perpetrator. On April 16, right-wing shock jock Michael Savage declared the 22-year-old Saudi national who was tackled and arrested while fleeing from the site of the explosions, and who was then released and cleared of all suspicion, was in fact an Al Qaeda operative dispatched to carry out a 9/11 style operation inside the US. What’s more, Savage claimed the federal government was engaged in a conspiracy with Islamist forces to cover up the true identity of the bomber and place the blame on a more convenient target, perhaps a right-wing terrorist.
Since Savage’s broadcast, a remarkably similar conspiracy has gained currency in right-wing media, finding its way into a House committee hearing today when Republican Rep. Jeff Duncan attempted to corner Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. “Now we have someone being deported for national security concerns and I’m assuming he’s got some sort of link to terror or he wouldn’t be being deported,” Duncan claimed, referring to the Saudi man cleared of suspicion earlier in the week.
Napolitano corrected Duncan, assuring him that the man was never deported. “Like I said,” she reminded Duncan, “I don’t even think he was technically a person of interest or a suspect, that was a wash.”
According to Savage, such denials by federal officials prove that a cover-up is afoot. To help him flesh out the details of the government plot, Savage invited a self-proclaimed “ex-PLO terrorist” named Walid Shoebat onto his April 16 show. For a full hour, Shoebat outlined the key players, from the Obama administration to Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia to longtime Hillary Clinton assistant Huma Abedin to the CIA, FBI, US military, liberals and gay activists, all united in a conspiracy to hide the true Saudi identity of the bomber, pin the blame on a more convenient target, and advance the creeping Islamicization of America.
Savage urged Shoebat along at each lurid twist and turn, heaping layers of anti-Muslim vitriol atop his guest’s bizarre diatribes. Amidst an atmosphere of national tragedy, mourning, and trepidation, the duo delivered what might have been one of the most outrageous hours in recent talk radio history, inciting wildly against Muslims in America, pointing the finger at an innocent man for a heinous terror attack, and implicating the entire federal government for letting him go.
A few extremists have fashioned their own conspiracy theories about the Boston bombing – the notoriously unhinged Alex Jones called it a government “false flag” operation – but none boast anything close to Savage’s influence. According to the trade industry magazine Talkers, as of September 2012, Savage’s show was the third most popular political talk show in the country, just behind Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity with 8 million listeners a day. Unlike Limbaugh and Hannity, who cater to the Republican base, Savage cultivates listeners among the most rightward Tea Party fringe with anti-government conspiracism and unvarnished Islamophobia – “when I see a woman walking around with a burqa, I see a Nazi,” he once said. Along with prominent neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and Islamic extremists, Savage has been barred from entering the United Kingdom.
Hours after the Boston Marathon bombings, Savage predicted, “They're gonna release the Saudi guy in the hospital; they're gonna wipe their hands of it and say he had nothing to do with it. He was only an innocent spectator and that it was a false lead, and anyone who said it was a Saudi or a Muslim was a racist… This is the playbook today.”
Claiming vindication the following day, Savage turned to his guest, Shoebat, for his expert opinion. “The man is linked to Al Qaeda. No question about it,” Shoebat said. Several of his family members are Al Qaeda leaders… The whole mechanism is interlinked with the spread of Muslim minorities all over the globe.”
According to Shoebat, the Saudi national, Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi, has several relatives locked up in the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay. “So this could easily be made as a revenge,” he claimed. “What Americans don’t understand is that a clan is linked…so the support for terrorism comes from a clan support.”
Shoebat then claimed that the US government had scrubbed photos from Alharbi’s Facebook page that implicated him in jihadist activities.
“Why would the FBI cover for the Saudis?” Savage asked in an innocent tone.
“We have no Qaeda problem,” Shoebat answered. “This would be very embarrassing for President Obama to have [an] Al Qaeda problem.”
“A ha!” exclaimed Savage. “In other words, it would show there’s a failure in the intelligence community.”
Savage added that the mainstream media was in on the plot, especially Fox News, which is partially owned by Saudi billionaire Prince Walid Bin Talal, and had therefore erected “a cordon sanitaire around the Saudi connection.”
“That’s what it is,” Shoebat interjected. “It’s a cover up from all levels. How did these photos go away?.. The FBI is gonna sweep this under the rug. You are right. Within a week this will be swept under the rug.”
“Oh my God!” Savage responded with a dramatic gasp. “Just like Benghazi.”
The Islamist-Obama conspiracy was so vast that only a rogue agent willing to risk it all for his country could save America. “We need some operative in our own government who’s not going to go along with the program,” Savage declared. “Very difficult because they will lose their pension and they themselves will be nailed to a cross.”
“Mr. Savage, I worked with the Homeland Security for ten years,” Shoebat claimed. “I provided them with Al Qaeda locations in Libya. Latitude, longitude – everything. I know with it’s like dealing with the apparatus. They wanted nothing to do with with information; nothing to do with facts.” There is no record of Shoebat consulting for the Department of Homeland Security on Libya. However, he once earned a $5000 speaking fee through a DHS grant to provide a group of South Dakota police officers and sheriff’s deputies with his insider’s perspective on the mentality of Muslim terrorists. “All Islamic organizations in America should be the number one enemy. All of them,” he told his audience. The appearance prompted a CNN investigation of Shoebat’s background, which found that his claims to have been a former Palestinian terrorist to be completely bogus, with his family near Bethlehem describing him as a “regular kid” who left for the US at 18 to work as a computer programmer.
Shoebat was thus unmasked as a run-of-the-mill con artist huckstering his way across the country, raking in as much as half a million dollars a year through a shady foundation that claimed to aid persecuted Christians, but which provided no evidence of having done so. While raking in cash from American rubes, he has inspired as much resentment against Muslims as possible. One participant at an anti-terror seminar led by Shoebat described his solution as follows: “Kill them…including the children.” Anders Breivik, the right-wing anti-Muslim terrorist who killed over 80 people at a youth camp in Norway, cited Shoebat over 15 times in his manifesto.
Savage, a former New Ager named Michael Weiner who skinny dipped with Alan Ginsberg and palled around with the beats in San Francisco’s 1960’s-era North Beach scene, did his best to help his guest deflect the charges of fraud.
“Are you in hiding?” Savage asked Shoebat.
“Pretty much,” he haltingly replied, claiming persecution at the hands of godless liberals. “After becoming Christian and beginning to fight for this country, that's when I became a terrorist!” he complained to Savage.
Having restored Shoebat’s credentials, Savage and his guest delved into the hidden motives of the Boston conspirators, from the Al Qaeda-linked Saudi bomber to the government enablers who supposedly let him off the hook. “Has Obama literally deracinated the FBI and other intelligence agencies with a thought process that literally must cut off when it comes to Islam and terror, that they will never find the actual perpetrators?” Savage wondered.
“When it comes to Obama, I have to ask, why is his family so involved with the Wahhabi apparatus? And that's his family in Kenya,” Shoebat said, claiming that Obama’s Kenyan cousin, Musa Ismail Obama, was secretly funding students to study at Wahhabist academies in Saudi Arabia. He added that Huma Abedin, the longtime assistant to Hillary Clinton and wife of Anthony Weiner, was another key link between the Wahhabi terror apparatus and the Obama administration -- Shoebat has alternately described her as stealth operative for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Wahhabists. (On his personal website, Shoebat claimed “Huma’s mother [is] part of a plot reminiscent of Hitler’s Nazi Germany.”)
Wondering why Obama refused to “cop” to being a Muslim, Savage warned of radical Islamic influence “at the FBI level, the CIA level, presidential level, military – everybody!”
Indeed, the entire government was run by dupes for Islam, all united, wittingly or not, in a Saudi-orchestrated plot to place America under the control of Shariah law. And it all started with gun control. “Al Qaeda is in favor of gun control in America,” Savage remarked to Shoebat. “Why?”
“It’s very simple,” he explained. “If people are disarmed, they’re easily occupied, they’re easily conquered. Because the American system itself begins with harassment of people like me and you by Muslims against non-Muslims… If you don’t think they will execute people in this country – there are many cases of executions by Islamists against Americans in this country.”
According to Shoebat, the most dangerous type of Islamic terrorist was not the open extremist determined to kill Americans, but the stealth operative. For this character, the progressive movement is the ultimate Trojan Horse. “Islam is a socialist system, not conservative,” Shoebat explained. “Islam is pro-evolution. This tickles the year of all the liberals.” To illustrate his point, Shoebat pointed to “anti-Israel demonstrations” where “gays, lesbians, leftists, communists, and Muslims hold hands.”
Who do homosexuals ally themselves with “people who want to kill them?” Savage asked his guest.
“The homosexual movement finds in Islam, ghelmaniya, which is pedophilia, having sex with boys,” Shoebat said, referring to a practice explicitly banned in Islam. “In fact, many of the Islamic caliphs had sex with boys… Pedophilia in Islam is overwhelming.”
Having painstakingly detailed the Saudi-CIA-Obama-gay-communist plot to Islamicize America, Savage seemed overcome with delight.
“Your knowledge is so soothingly real,” he told Shoebat, “that I don't care where it leads us.”
Listen to the full Michael Savage/Walid Shoebat broadcast here
