When all the hyperbole has been stripped away from the attacks on our embassies in Cairo and Benghazi, it all comes down to these simple facts. A cabal of fundies was so determined to get its message of hate out that it was willing to work with a convicted fraudster to do so. That fraudster, in turn, was so determined to fulfill his end of the bargain that he deceived the cast and crew into taking part in this movie by making them think it was about a totally different subject.
When I learned that Joseph Nasralla and Media for Christ had bankrolled "Innocence of Muslims," I immediately thought back to my own experience with fundamentalism in its most unacceptable form. As many of you know, I was suckered into joining a hypercharismatic campus ministry in my freshman year at Carolina--and it took me six months to finally get out. This outfit subscribed to the same mentality as Nasralla--that all was fair when getting people saved. These people found it perfectly acceptable to deceive others about their true orientation in order to get people to join. I thought this bunch was a relatively moderate group--indeed, nothing in their literature indicated their true nature. The first that I learned about who they really were was when I went to church with them for the first time. I believe that this group knew that there was no way it would last long at Carolina if it was honest about its true nature, but didn't have the stones to take its medicine.
Early in my sophomore year--after I left, mercifully--I ran into a girl who'd started going to this group about two months before I left. Like me, she didn't exactly buy what this bunch was selling. Turned out that as a result of being hectored for the better part of spring semester by a couple of guys in there, she was now a 200 percent rabid fundicostal. I later found out that these guys had kept after her even when she didn't want to listen. While I never have been able to find out whether the campus ministers in this bunch knew what was going on, one thing is beyond dispute--there was a culture in that group in which this sort of behavior was acceptable. After all, when you're dealing with a group that doesn't think anything of deceiving people about who they really are, you really have to wonder where they draw the line.
It's also hard not to think about how the religious right has managed to hornswoggle voters who on paper have no business voting Republican. They've managed to convince people to throw their economic interests aside all in the name of keeping baby-killing and gay-loving libruls out of office. And what do we get as a result? Some of the poorest districts in the country are R+10 or more. What's wrong with that picture?
In my view, the Innocence of Muslims fiasco is the logical end of such sick and twisted thinking. After all, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula knew damned well that if the cast and crew found out what they believed to be a B-movie opus about life in Egypt 2,000 years ago was really a piece of anti-Muslim agitprop, they'd have all walked out.
I have said on numerous occasions that the cast and crew have strong grounds to sue everyone responsible for producing and bankrolling this movie for fraud and endangerment--specifically, lying to them about what the film was about, and putting them in danger of being killed by Islamofascist yayhoos. The only way I can see Nasralla getting out of a lawsuit is if he claims Nakoula lied to him about his plans to deceive the cast. But this doesn't seem likely, since this movie has been in the works since 2009.
What happened here, to my mind, is the logical result of an "all's fair when getting people saved" mentality. As a result, four of our most promising diplomats are dead, and 80 innocent actors and crew members may have to look over their shoulders for who knows how long. And all because Nasralla and his cohorts were determined to save people from the "evils" of Islam--and basic standards of decency be hanged.
2:16 PM PT: Sunbro mentions in the comments that Steve Klein told The Guardian that "we went into this knowing this was probably going to happen." So now the $64,000 question becomes what he meant by "this"? If he meant the insanity in Cairo and Benghazi, Klein and his buddies may have really stepped in it.