Resentment in the heart of the Family

From the street, the three-storey, red-brick Washington townhouse resembles a fine, upscale American residence.

But it is becoming clear that the C Street House just two blocks from the Capitol is at the heart of political convulsions shaking the United States.

The property, where as many as six members of Congress live, is subsidised by a secretive religious group known to initiates as the Fellowship, a.k.a. the Family.

According to Democracy Now, a syndicated US radio show, the Family is "one of the most powerful Christian fundamentalist movements in the country."

"You're not so much elected by the people as selected from above," Jeff Sharlet, a journalist who spent a month in the C Street House, told Democracy Now.

Sharlet's The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power depicts an elitist group, connected to powerful politicians on both sides of the aisle, corporate titans and foreign dictators, and dedicated to "biblical capitalism", taking laissez-faire economics to the max.

The former convent might have stayed below the radar but for recent events. Its members have included Nevada's Senator John Ensign, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and Chip Pickering, the former Mississippi Congressman.

All three were recently embroiled in sex scandals, which for Sanford and Ensign, seen as potential presidential material by the Republican Party, dashed any hope of higher office.

Another man who dropped by for a "spiritual counselling session" at C Street, says Sharlet, is Todd Tiahrt. The Kansas Congressman made waves last month when he suggested in Congress that if public funding for abortion had been available 47 years ago Barack Obama might never have been born. Sharlet says the family believes in "the totalitarianism of Christ" to amass power and offers "Hitler, Pol Pot, Osama bin Laden and Lenin" as role models.

If this is what passes for mainstream politics among some C Street conservatives, perhaps it is not surprising that the twilight zone occupied by America's far right - a shadowy swamp awash with conspiracy theories, racism, anti-Semitism, gun rights and a pervasive sense of victimhood - has emitted scary signals since President Obama's election.

Rallies to promote the president's health care plan are disrupted by ugly scenes, where right-wingers - some waving "Death to Obama" signs (a Maryland sign added "Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids"), or carrying weapons (sidearms and assault rifles were in evidence at an Arizona rally this week) - rail against "socialism" (probably the worst slur in the conservative cannon) and "death panels".

US representative Barney Frank this week confronted a woman arguing health care reform was a Nazi policy. She was displaying a sign showing Obama with a Hitler moustache.

"On what planet do you spend most of your time?" said Frank. He went on to say that her protest was "a tribute to the 1st Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dinner room table. I have no interest in doing that."

As right-wingers flock to anti-tax "tea parties", vigilantes patrol the US-Mexico border, arms sales soar, and "birthers" question Obama's right be in the White House, some fear a "lone wolf" shooter might threaten his safety.

The Arizona Republic newspaper had a picture of a man with an AR-15 assault rifle slung over his shoulder at a protest in Phoenix, where Obama campaigned for health care reform this week.

The angry brigade espouse the familiar conservative tenets of less government, less tax, opposition to abortion, illegal immigration and so forth, but seem most energised by their opposition to Obama's presence in the White House.

There is a distinct echo of the Angry White Men who emerged in the Clinton era. Back then anti-Washington sentiment fuelled the militia movement and fostered right-wing paranoia about UN takeovers among the "black helicopter" crowd, whose zealots included Timothy McVeigh and John Nichols who killed 165 people in the 1995 Oklahoma bombing.

But this time round, with a black man in the White House, and shifting demographics that are changing the character of America, there is a racist edge. White resentment, and fears of being dispossessed as once marginalised groups flex their political muscle - an ugly vein tapped during the election campaign, when the Republicans championed "Joe the Plumber" as the archetypal, downtrodden white guy - exploded in July with the fracas over the arrest of a black scholar, Henry Louis Gates Jr, by a white policeman, James Crowley.

It was present in Republican attacks on Sonia Sotormayor, now the first Latina to be appointed to the US Supreme Court.

But Obama, who scaled the greatest heights, has provoked outright denial among extremists. Lead by Orly Taitz, a female attorney, dentist and realtor from Southern California, "birthers" insist Obama was born in Kenya or Indonesia and is constitutionally ineligible for office.

Although public records, proffered by Hawaii's governor and chief medical officer, prove Obama was born in the US, a Public Policy poll, published this week, says 24 per cent of Americans believe Obama is foreign-born, 62 per cent think he was born in the US, and 14 per cent are unsure. Those who think Obama was born elsewhere were mostly white, conservative males.

"The birther conspiracy is a classic example of extreme sentiment," says Heidi Beirich, research director at the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), which tracks hate groups. "It salves all the fears people on the far right have. They'd like to nullify the election. They'd like the country to move back to the right. They'd like to stop where history is taking them. So it's not surprising they fixate on the idea they can somehow yank Obama out of the White House."

Other hysterical fantasies depict Obama as a secret Muslim or a closet Marxist, intent on a socialist revolution.

Obama's victory vanquished mainstream Republicans, bereft of credible policy, hamstrung by scandal, to the political wilderness. But politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum, and without a credible Republican to address conservative white fears of globalisation, changing demographics and a shattered economy, the lunatic fringe has set up shop in the centre.

Back in the Clinton era, extremism flowed via AM and shortwave radio. Today it flourishes on the internet and in the mainstream media. CNN's Lou Dobbs, a TV populist, gives a platform to birthers, and talk radio host Rush Limbaugh says Obama wants to impose "government control over life and death".

The most incendiary figure is Fox TV host Glenn Beck. He depicts Obama as a "racist" who has "a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture".

After Obama was elected Beck pondered secession, a diehard right-wing fantasy. Last time that happened, Lincoln freed the slaves.

"Dobbs and Beck are voicing what are essentially idiotic conspiracy theories," says Beirich of this Alice-like reality.

"That's really scary. Where does the mainstream end? And where does the fringe begin? How do you know?"

Many hoped Obama's election, with the president's promise to "bridge divides and unite in common effort", might terminate the culture wars that have roiled since the 1960s, usually triggered by sharp disagreement on emotional social issues like gay marriage, abortion and gun control.

The ugly climate fostered by the far right makes this unlikely. In April, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said extremists were exploiting Obama's election "to recruit new members, mobilise existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda".

The DHS warned that, "Lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States."

According to Ronald Kessler, an investigative reporter who has written a book about the Secret Service, threats to Obama have increased 400 per cent since he took office.

The SPLC says militias are on the rise, "racialised" by Obama's election and by illegal immigration, and that ex-soldiers and police officers are among the recruits.

Some perspective is necessary. According to the SPLC there were 926 US hate groups in 2007, a 4 per cent rise on 2006. With some 30,000 hard-core members and 250,000 sympathisers, this is just one-tenth of 1 per cent of the US population.

But the DHS warning became grisly reality in April, when a white gunman, angry at Obama's election, killed three policemen in Pittsburg; in May, when a gunman murdered a Kansas abortion doctor; and in June, when a gunman killed a security guard at Washington's Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The issue that has galvanised inchoate resentment among conservatives who buy into the birther phenomenon is the battle being waged over Obama's heath care reform.

Some 47 million citizens in the world's richest nation, out of 304 million, have no health coverage.

Many others, unable to pay rising insurance premiums or who have lost jobs that provided health care, face a similar fate.

When the Remote Area Medical clinic, created to service Third World nations, arrived in Los Angeles this month, over 6000 people received free medical, dental and eye care.

The challenge of reforming a bewildering array of health care plans, crammed with loopholes that allow insurers to deny coverage, is ripe for exploitation by opponents.

The Democratic National Committee charges that "Republicans and their allied groups are inciting angry mobs of a small number of rabid right wing extremists ... to disrupt rallies".

Critics say these "Astroturf" conservative groups, phoney grassroots activists, are bent on sabotaging real reform, and that Republicans seek to gain traction in midterm elections - held next year - by exploiting the issue.

"Opposition is coming from extreme ideological, donor-funded groups," says Brooks Jackson of Annenberg Political Fact Check. "This is an example of the culture of outage that talk radio show hosts feed on and foment. There's a financial incentive to be as inflammatory as possible, because if people are angry they'll write a cheque."

Disinformation is rife. Critics charge that Obama will "socialise" medicine, that the obese will be sent to "re-education camps", and that "death panels" will decide if the critically ill are worth saving, a chilling echo of Hitler's forced euthanasia programme voiced by Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP candidate for vice-president, among others.

But if extremists seem to stand for nothing other than opposition to Obama, and a desire to turn back the clock, their fury may weaken health reform.

This week Obama, who has pressed his case for reform at rallies and in a New York Times opinion piece, dumped plans for public health insurance, a pragmatic move to pass some type of reform.

As some 14,000 people lose their health care every day, Obama tried to reassure confused and frightened Americans - and many people are scared - that although "the cynics and naysayers will continue to exploit fear and concerns for political gain", serious debate "is taking place at kitchen tables all across America".

It is this debate that is the best hope for democracy when extremism is on the march.