Barack Obama, 666?
Sunday, August 10th, 2008At least according to one of John McCain’s attack ads, he is.
As Fred Clark of slacktivist notes:
There’s not a second wasted here — every image, gesture, note, word and allusion points in a single direction, everything in the film says a single thing: Barack Obama is the Antichrist. Yes, it’s propaganda, but like the films of Eisenstein or Riefenstahl, it’s also art — unsubtly didactic, yet beautiful in its unity of purpose.
The McCain campaign denies this, of course. Despite being what Orcinus describes as “blasting the dog-whistle at air-raid volume at the religious right“, it’s all allegedly just a joke. As Fred Clark continues.
Tragically for Davis, however, it turns out that accusing your political rival of being the Antichrist is considered a bit over the line. Apparently according to conventional American political mores, the claim that your opponent is the ultimate personification of evil, the 10-horned beast of the Apocalypse, is regarded as sleazy gutter politics of the worst sort.
As Street Prophets points out, that doesn’t wash. It’s a pretty blatant attempt to associate with Barack Obama with Nicolae Carpathia, the Antichrist figure from the appalling “Left Behind” books.
It’s clear the McCain campaign recognises that the rapture cultists (I refuse to use the word “Christian” to describe their heretical belief system), although dangerously bat-crazy, are a powerful voting block.
Anyway, I’ve always thought Sun Myung Moon would make a good candidate for the Antichrist. One world religion and all that? But somehow the rapture cultists always ignore him. Presumably it’s because he’s a conservative, and they’ve all be conditioned into assuming that the horned beast of the apocalypse would be a liberal.
