What a time to be alive! Washington Rep. Matt Shea has admitted that he's responsible for distributing a four-page manifesto entitled “Biblical Basis for War," which reads like something out of an apocalyptic Sunday school handbook.
The document is organized in 14 sections with multiple tiers of bullet points and a smattering of biblical citations. Under one heading, “Rules of War,” it makes a chilling prescription for enemies who flout “biblical law.” It states, “If they do not yield – kill all males.”
After the document was leaked online Tuesday, the Spokane Valley Republican insisted he was not promoting violence and that the message had been taken out of context.
“First of all, it was a summary of a series of sermons on biblical war in the Old Testament as part of a larger discussion on the history of warfare,” Shea said in a Facebook Live video on Wednesday. “This document, in and of itself, was not a secret. I’ve actually talked about portions of this document publicly.”
Shea, who also hosts Patriot Radio, a show broadcast on the American Christian Network, has a reputation in Washington for being fucking crazy. He's rabidly anti-gay, anti-choice, and anti-truth, as Heidi Groover noted in 2016:
• He believes "there is no difference between Planned Parenthood and what Dr. Josef Mengele did in Germany in the 1940s."
• He recently made up quotes from the Founding Fathers in a pro-gun bill he introduced in Olympia.
• In North Idaho, he urged people to stock up on ammo for the "inevitable collapse."
• He visited the Bundys—both in Nevada and in Oregon. His name was also invoked by militants in Wednesday night's call from the Oregon refuge.
• He worries FEMA shelters could be "used for something other than emergency relocation in the event of a natural disaster [like internment camps] because of centralized federal control."
Shea also organized the Spokane chapter of the anti-Muslim ACT for America, pulled a loaded gun on a motorist during a road rage incident, and has referred to journalists as "those dirty, godless, hateful people" (which, speaking for myself, is partially true).
The honorable rep was recently featured in an insane Rolling Stone profile, which began at “Liberty or Death” in which Shea spoke. Writer Leah Sottile described how Shea, who is the head of the state Republican caucus,
"rarely sees any blowback for the things he says or for the fact that in his nine years in office he has allied with some of the most high-profile conspiracy theorists and anti-government extremists in the American West: from Cliven Bundy and his sons to a neo-Confederate Idaho preacher to the head of the Oath Keepers, an extremist group that believes 'the United States is collaborating with a one-world tyrannical conspiracy called the New World Order.'"
This conspiracy peddling weirdo has been elected to the state legislator four times and is now running for this fifth term in office. Will his "Biblical Basis for War" have any impact on this latest race? Doubtful, but if you need to get prepped for the coming war, you can read his primer here or listen to Shea defend himself in his own words, which he did on Facebook after the document leaked. It'd almost be funny if the man weren't elected to office.
