We are not completely convinced that Tony Davis of the International Legal Services counts as a loon, despite his assurations to clients that due to technicalities every conviction in the last 60 years is null and void (a theory rejected outright at every level of the legal system). There are other explanations for his behavior than craziness.
You can’t fake being Bradlee Dean, however. Dean is not a fraud. He is one of the most aggressively insane persons to spread his breathtaking mindrot in the US at the moment, challenging Fred Phelps himself for hatred and Ray Comfort for density. Dean is the founder of the Taliban satellite organization You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide International. The Ministry has made itself famous for using bait-and-switch tactics to push a hardcore fundamentalist Christian agenda in American public schools by claiming to teach kids about how to fight drugs (that’s his gateway to public schools) but instead turning the sessions into frothingly insane Jesus events accompanied by psychotic gay-bashing – though it should be mentioned that his bait-and-switch technique did not go over particularly well in Dunkerton, Iowa.
Dean’s most frequently appreciated pastime, bashing gays, desevers a few words, starting with pointing out that when engaged in the activity Dean does not always observe the strictures of common decency or coherence. For instance, he supports castration of gays for the not entirely coherent or accurate reason that the Founding Fathers wanted that (he may actually believe that himself, or he may be lying; Dean has a well-established problem with that truth-thing). This should presumably be part of the legal punishment gays should face for their dirty thoughts and inclinations. In fact, jailing and castration are merely just punishment for the past sins of homosexuals; after all – according to Dean (who has jumped onto the Scott Lively bandwagon) – homosexuals were responsible for the Holocaust. Apparently they must have collaborated with the evolutionists (or the “religion of evolution”), given that Dean thinks the evolutionists are responsible for the holocaust as well.
In one of the most ridiculous displays of fatwa envy ever, Dean also praised Muslims for executing gays: “Muslims are calling for the executions of homosexuals in America. This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do.” (His subsequent attempt at backpedalling was rather feeble). Nevertheless, Dean is of course virulently anti-Islam, since there is “a correlation between the Muslims and the homosexual agenda.” Though he doesn’t say it in so many words, coherenceis apparently an enemy of Dean’s as well. It is probably a gay-Muslim-liberal conspiracy. Here he argues that Muslims have infiltrated our schools and are teaching kids to be jihadists.
In 2011 Dean filed a 50 million dollar lawsuit against Rachel Maddow for defamation after Maddow reported on Dean’s anti-gay stance, presumably targeting her in particular because she is herself openly lesbian. In fact, Dean has a history of completely baseless lawsuits, which he tends to lose badly. He has indeed also been noticed for trying to censor his critics on youtube. It is less clear that censoring his critics really matters when his own screeds are so batshit insane that even the most hardcore wingnut would hesitate over them to begin with (here, though, is Dean arguing that negative reactions to his offensive bigotry are offensive). If you want to access any of said screeds, you can go here – we don’t feel particularly comfortable linking directly to any of it, though here is his rant at the 2013 Awakening conference, where he argued that the Supreme Court has “opened the door to Satanism” by ruling that the government can’t force kids to pray and that Obama is just like Chairman Mao. (And not only Mao – apparently the American government is “emulating many similarities” with Nazi Germany, such as freedom of religion, equality, tolerance and liberty; the similarity ostensibly being that the government, like the Nazis, is “setting itself at war with God”).
A particularly notable event in Dean’s career occurred when the Minnesota Republican Party invited him to lead the ceremonial prayer at the start of the Minnesota House's legislative session. Dean's prayer turned out to be, shall we say, controversial; he would only recognize Christian members of the legislature and, for good measure, accused Obama of being a Muslim. It was in fact sufficiently appalling for the Speaker of the House to order a full re-start of the session and issue an official apology for the event. Dean later lambasted the Republicans for not endorsing his ridiculously insane, incoherent piece of fuming rage. As indicated, Dean is of course also a hardcore dominionist, who calls liberals “criminals” and urges the right to take up weapons against a liberal government (his association with the Sovereign Citizen movement is discussed here). You can imagine he was upset when Minnesota legalized same-sex marriage. Apparently they did it “covert-like” so as not to draw unwanted attention, because apparently elected officials passing a bill with the attention of the whole state is being “covert” when Dean disagrees with the bill’s content.
In his daily life, Dean is the drummer for the band The Junkyard Prophet, a hardline Christian conservative band promoting and promoted by his front organization. They are evil, and the other members, Rene Benton (guitar/vocals) and Massey “Mass Dogg” Campos (bass/vocals), have voiced their share of crazy as well.
Dean’s local wingnut radio show, The Sons of Liberty, has also established itself as a legend of untarnished lunacy. Rick Santorum has appeared on the show praising Dean for his stance on homosexuality and voicing his support for criminalizing sodomy. He also occasionally writes columns for WND, primarily for promoting shit he has to sell you (check out the Ray Comfort quote in that link, by the way.
Oh, and he is of course a hardcore conspiracty theorist. In fact, Dean is a Sandy Hook truther; that is, he claims that the (Aurora and) Sandy Hook shootings were orchestrated by the government (I suppose disagreeing with him is still considered “offensive”). Public schools are also part of a conspiracy – the rigorous International Baccalaureate program is, according to Dean, part of a global scheme to disarm Americans and indoctrinate students in a homosexual agenda (as well as Islam). Dean himself, on the other hand, apparently learns the stuff he should have learned at school from David Barton, with predictably disastrous results.
It is probably little surprise that Dean is a supporter of – and is endorsed by – Michele Bachmann. I don’t know who comes off worse by that association. More here.
Diagnosis: His level of crazy is only matched by his malice and bigotry. A rather unsavory fellow, in other words.