Failed predictions from the extreme right

Right Wing Watch, a project of the organization People for the American Way, has published an interesting list of predictions about 2015 from the far extremes of the religious and political right wing. Needless to say (I hope), these odd notions don’t reflect the views of most mainstream conservatives, though extremists seem to have more influence lately than one might hope.

The predictions include:

Warnings from televangelists John Hagee and Jim Bakker (among others) of a likely major stock market crash or natural disaster last September, in connection with a biblical day of debt relief known as Shemitah on September 13 and the last lunar eclipse of a tetrad (a sequence of four lunar eclipses) on September 28.
Various predictions of violent riots and divine punishment for the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States.
The Jade Helm 15 conspiracy theory, which was cynically fueled by GOP politicians, centered around fears that a military training exercise taking place between July 15 and September 15 of this year would produce grave consequences, such as a federal takeover of Texas, the declaration of martial law and the transformation of closed Walmart stores into FEMA-run concentration camps. Others thought that Jade Helm 15 was a deliberate attempt to stoke fear and chaos, which would justify military rule in the future.
A claim going back to 2008 that President Obama was plotting to create a private army to oppress white people. Right-wing talk-show host Michael Savage (keeping the dream alive, or possibly just trying to see how gullible his audience actually is) recently claimed that Obama’s army, unlike Dumbledore’s, would be made up of Syrian refugees, Black Lives Matter demonstrators, and members of urban gangs.
Glenn Beck’s suggestion that he and similar leaders might be marked for elimination in order to make it easier to control the masses. Many news events, he claimed, such as the Baltimore riots a few months ago, weren’t real but scripted shows to create an excuse for a federal takeover of local police departments.

You can read the full article here.

(Updated 2016 January 12 to fix a duplicate reference to Jade Helm conspiracy theories.)