(From an article by yours truly posted on January 11, 2014 on the now sadly late and lamented SodaHead, itself basically a simplification of the outstanding “Birth of a Notion” blog by Loren Collins):
Note that all of this happened about ½ of a year before Philip J. Berg (who claimed to be a “Hillary supporter” but was in no way connected to her campaign) filed the very first Birther lawsuit on August 21, 2008:
• On Feb. 28, 2008, UCLA Law Prof. Eugene Volokh, of the famous eponymous blog The Volokh Conspiracy, posted a short rebuttal to rumors that John McCain was ineligible to be President. In a comment to that blog entry, a commenter named “Dave N.” posted a comment in which, as an analogy, he suggested a hypothetical scenario involving Barack Obama instead. His exact words:
Let’s change the hypothetical (just for grins and giggles).
Barack Obama’s father was a citizen of Kenya. What would Senator Obama’s citizenship status (and Presidential eligibility) be if:
1) He had been born in Kenya, but taken by his mother to the United States immediately after birth and then spent the rest of his life as he has subsequently lived it?
2) He was born in a third country, and like my first hypothetical, immediately taken to the United States? Does that change the analysis?
3) Would these results change if Senator Obama had been raised in a foreign country for any length of time before his mother returned with him to the United States?
• Almost exactly 24 hours after “Dave N.” posted that comment on
The Volokh Conspiracy,
FreeRepublic·com user “
FARS”
posted this off-topic comment as Comment #319 on the Freeper thread, “Pin the Middle Name on the Obama” (about suggesting humorous alternative middle names for the then-new Democratic Party Primary candidate for President):
I was told today that Obama swore in on a Koran for his Senate seat. I do not believe he did. Can someone clarify this for me? I am under the impression only a Congressman has so far sworn in on a Koran.
Also that Obama’s mother gave birth to him overseas and then immediately flew into Hawaii and registered his birth as having taken place in Hawaii.
Again, any clarifications on this? Defintely (sic) disqualifies him for Prez. There must be some trace of an airticket (sic). While small babies are not charged air fare they do have a ticket issued for them.
Long time ago but there may be some residual information somewhere. Good ammo (if available and true) BEST USED AFTER he becomes PREZ (if that occurs) and it’s too late for Dems — except accept the VP.
Immediately (as in, starting in the
very next post!), other FreeRepublic posters lambasted FARS for posting such
wild rumors based on nothing more than, “I was told today that…” Note that he used wording very similar to what “Dave N.” had used in his
hypothetical scenario analogy the previous day! In just one day, it has graduated from a hypothetical scenario posted as an
analogy “just for grins and giggles” into a
rumor that “FARS” claims that someone told him that day.
• Just four days later, vehement anti-Muslim fantasist “Alan Peters” (a pseudonym)
posted this entry on his eponymous
Alan Peters’s Ruthless Roundup blog. In it, he lifts the concepts expressed in FARS’s rumour-mongering Freeper post from four days previously, worded very similarly, without credit. This blog entry is, as far as either Collins or I can determine, the very first appearance in writing of the full Birther hypothesis as an actual
assertion, not a mere rumor (Collins suspects that “Alan Peters” either knows “FARS” personally, or “Alan Peters” = “FARS”). It was from here that the Birther movement really took off.
Collins traces it further in Part Two of his blog.
The entire Birther movement can be traced to this blog post, which in turn apparently plagiarized an
off-topic FreeRepublic comment posted as a
rumor, itself apparently plagiarized from a
hypothetical scenario posted as an
analogy to a post about
McCain’s Natural Born Citizenship!
And
that is how Birtherism started.
= new reply since forum marked as read
