Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) has ratcheted up its recent campaign against Jews with the release of virulently anti-Semitic music videos.

This latest gimmick is somewhat of a departure for the rabidly anti-gay group from Topeka, Kan. For years, Westboro has been notorious for disrupting the funerals of fallen American servicemen, among others, saying God is punishing them because of the “fag-enabling” ways of their country. In April, however, the group started picketing synagogues and Jewish cultural institutions, saying the Jewish community and its religious leaders condoned homosexuality and abortion. Then, in June, Westboro members went one step further, producing music videos that demonize Jews — all Jews — with blatantly anti-Semitic parodies of popular songs.

The five videos aimed primarily at Jews feature the dubious talents of Westboro Baptist Church members and can be accessed from the group’s main website. In “Come Together,” the cut out heads of prominent Jewish figures such as Woody Allen and Madeleine Albright are made to lip-synch to the Beatles tune, whose lyrics now include the words “filthy Jews.” Grotesque caricatures of Jews that could have been ripped from Nazi propaganda posters flash on the screen, including a grinning man with a bloody knife in his hand. There’s also an image of a drowning Jew. Cut-out figures depicting Westboro members hold signs that read, “God Hates Fag Enablers” and “You will Eat Your Babies.”

In “Makes Us So Happy,” which predicts Israel’s destruction to the tune of “Hava Nagila,” two church members dressed to look like Hasidic Jews (with obviously fake beards and sideburns) growl as they fight over a penny. Afterward, with dollar signs dangling from their necks, they dance and count money. “The Beast — the one you worship/Obama — has no mercy,” they sing. (In case you’re wondering how Obama and his purported lack of mercy fit in, Westboro member Shirley Phelps-Roper told Hatewatch that the president will turn on the Jews. “There’s going to be an awful trauma, and you know who’s going to be leading those nations against Jerusalem? It’s the beast, the Antichrist Obama.”) Toward the end of the video, Westboro members — dressed like Old World Jews — join hands and dance in a ring. The women wear T-shirts emblazoned with the address of a Westboro website: JewsKilledJesus.com. ( continue to full post… )

Since the mid-1990s, Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) has spelled out its core message in neon-rainbow picket signs that read, “God Hate Fags.” In a series of outrageous stunts, members of WBC have disrupted the funerals of servicemen killed in Iraq for supporting a “Fag-loving” country, protested a memorial for victims of the 2006 Sago mine disaster claiming it was God’s punishment on the US for tolerating homosexuality, and picketed the University of Wisconsin, where three students had recently died in a house fire, claiming the parents were to blame for “teaching them to be whores and bastards.”

Now WBC has turned its ire on the Jewish community, targeting synagogues and Jewish community centers with a new hate-filled taunt, “God Hates Jews.”

The Topeka, Kan., based church began picketing Jewish religious and cultural institutions in April of this year when they issued a press release that read, “Yes, the Jews killed the Lord Jesus…Now they’re carrying water for the fags; that’s what they do best: sin in God’s face every day, with unprecedented and disproportionate amounts of sodomy, fornication, adultery, abortion and idolatry!” ( continue to full post… )

About 10 members of the Westboro Baptist Church bearing signs with messages like “Baby killer in hell” were an unwelcome presence at a vigil for murdered abortion doctor George Tiller.

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The BBC reported today that five American right-wing extremists were among 16 individuals banned from entering the United Kingdom since last October for reasons of “fostering extremism or hatred.”

According to a new report from the Home Office (the lead U.K. government department for immigration and passports), the five Americans and the reasons they were not allowed into the U.K. were:

• Stephen Donald Black, a.k.a. Don Black, former Alabama Klan leader and creator of the white nationalist online forum Stormfront, banned for “promoting serious criminal activity and fostering hatred that might lead to inter-community violence in the UK.”

• Erich Gliebe, chairman of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, for “engaging in unacceptable behaviour by justifying terrorist violence, provoking others to commit serious crime and fostering racial hatred.”

• Fred Phelps, Sr., and Shirley Phelps Roper, leaders of the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church, for “picket[ing] the funerals of Aids victims and [claiming] the deaths of American soldiers are a punishment for US tolerance of homosexuality.”

• Michael Alan Weiner, a.k.a. Michael Savage, right-wing talk radio host, for “seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred.” The Home Office also noted that Savage’s “views on immigration, Islam, rape and autism have caused great offence in the US.”

Other individuals banned from entering the U.K. in the past six months include Muslim extremists, a Jewish militant and two Russian skinhead gang leaders.

The British government refused to allow Fred Phelps and his daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, into the country on the grounds they “incite hatred against a number of communities.”
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With the Tuesday inauguration of Barack Obama drawing nearer by the hour, threats against the first black man to be elected U.S. president are growing more heated.

On Friday, neo-Nazi threatmeister Hal Turner, amplifying on an earlier posting suggesting that it would be a good thing to use an unmanned drone carrying explosives to attack inaugural crowds, said a mass murder of those attending the festivities “would be a public service.” “I won’t say what may happen Tuesday but I will say this,” Turner wrote on his blog. “After Tuesday, the name Hal Turner may live in infamy. Let it be known that I saw what was necessary and decided to do what had to be done. I make no apology to those affected or their families.”

Earlier, on Jan. 11, Turner had posted photos to his blog, under the headline “My Inauguration Dream,” of a small, unmanned aerial drone, an electronic guidance system and sticks of dynamite as he laid out one method of attack. He also discussed the possibility of sending up balloons filled with helium and a “payload” and fitted with fuses that would explode the balloons over the crowds. And he displayed a grainy video that purported to show that method being tested. “Too far fetched?” Turner asks of a possible balloon attack. “It got tested and it worked! … Watch the video and imagine what payload, other than the index cards taped to the outside of the test balloons, might be substituted? HMMMMMM. Might be something messy? Something contagious? Something deadly? Ahhhh, such possibilities!” Then, last Thursday, he posted an update, saying: “All the assets that need to be in-place for next week are now in-place; deep within the security perimeter. Everything is a ‘go.’ We have crossed the Rubicon; let history judge us well.”

Turner, a North Bergen, N.J., man who in years past has been paid as an FBI informant even while making threats over the Internet (a relationship that ended after it was revealed on this blog and harshly criticized by law enforcement experts), said the attacks were deserved because of a whole series of government misdeeds. He added that it would be “a public service” to kill African Americans (“sub-human simians”) and white people (“mentally-ill Whites”) who attend the festivities. “Wouldn’t it be a great day for American and the world to see our federal government dealt with in such a fashion?” Turner asked. “Stay tuned…..”

Also on Friday, federal authorities arrested a Wisconsin man for threatening to assassinate Obama in a posting to an Internet site about UFOs and extraterrestrial aliens. Steven Joseph Christopher, 42, was arrested in Brookhaven, Miss., because of a Jan. 11 posting that read: “Yes, I have decided I will assassinate Barack Obama. It’s really nothing personal about the man. … But I know it’s for the country’s own good that I can do this. Barack Obama, I view more as a sacrificial lamb… .” ( continue to full post… )

Can the man sink any lower?

After all, we’re talking about a fellow who pickets the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq, shouting that they are being punished by God for somehow helping America in its “fag-enabling” ways. A man whose own children have accused him of beating them viciously with a mattock handle. A “pastor” who has celebrated the deaths of coal miners trapped beneath the earth, children killed in school bus accidents, even the thousands murdered on Sept. 11, 2001. The language he employs in his sermons attacking homosexuality — versions of which have been hissed at passing children by his followers — is so disgusting that it is unprintable in the major media.

But now Fred W. Phelps, who runs the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) of Topeka, Kansas, and the infamous GodHatesFags website, has taken another step down into the slime. His latest, posted last week on Friday the 13th, is “Thank God for Dead Boy Scouts.” The WBC Video News production opens to the strains of a hymn. ( continue to full post… )

A federal jury awarded $10.9 million in damages to the family of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq whose funeral was picketed by members of the Westboro Baptist Church.
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The parents of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq filed a lawsuit against the Westboro Baptist Church after WBC members cheered and waved “Thank God for dead soldiers” signs outside their son’s funeral.
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The anti-gay church called off a planned demonstration at the funeral of five Amish girls in exchange for an hour of radio time.
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