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  • 2017-12-19 (xsd:date)
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  • Will UN Peacekeepers Be Deployed on the Streets of Chicago? (en)
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  • A Chicago-area official's comment calling on the United Nations to dispatch peacekeepers to help quell gun violence has been distorted to spark paranoia that feeds into a persistent and popular conspiracy theory about an alleged grand scheme to subvert the sovereignty of the United States. On 14 December 2017 the Chicago Tribune quoted Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin saying he wanted UN Peacekeepers to help put an end to the quiet genocide of African-Americans in Chicago. Boykin flew to UN headquarters in New York to meet with UN officials about the issue. Per the Tribune he said: The story resulted in a flurry of blog posts on sites like Anti-Media, IlluminatiExposed.net and Anonymous-Feed.com reporting the possibility there could soon be UN boots on the ground in an American city. The United Nations is a key part of a broad, popular and anti-Semitic conspiracy theory known as the New World Order. Subscribers of this conspiracy theory believe that a secretive cabal of super rich and powerful (usually Jewish) men are plotting a global take-over to establish a one-world autocratic government. Conspiracy sites and networks like conspiratorial InfoWars have long promoted the idea that the UN is preparing to invade the United States, first by disarming Americans. In a 19 December 2017 segment about Chicago, InfoWars host Alex Jones said: InfoWars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson warned in a 19 December 2017 story: Despite the dire warnings, Watson's own reference to decades indicates how long these unsupported rumors have been around. University of California, Davis history professor Kathryn Olmstead, who specializes in studying conspiracy theories, told us: More specifically, RationalWiki points out that the UN is the mechanism conspiracy theorists believe will be used in subordinating the United States to the global order: Patrick Oldendorf, spokesman for Boykin, said his staff was taken aback by the hostile backlash online to the commissioner's comments. Oldendorf said the commissioner's comments were blown out of proportion. He never intended to have peacekeeper boots on the ground in Chicago. Instead Boykin was simply in search of ideas to stop an upsurge in homicides in the Windy City. Oldendorf told us: Even if some of Chicago's local leaders did want UN Peacekeeper boots on the ground, an outsider simply making the request to the UN wouldn't result in an international blue helmet mission there. UN Peacekeeping missions are voted on by the Security Council which consists of five permanent member states (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and 10 countries elected to two-year terms. A UN Peacekeeper spokesman confirmed there is no planning of any kind to send a mission to Chicago. Regardless, angry comments proliferated on Boykin's official Facebook page, in which he was accused of inviting UN troops onto U.S. soil for conspiratorial reasons. One man wrote: Perhaps in an effort to settle the issue, Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson told the Tribune, in response to Boykin's comments, that UN Peacekeepers have no jurisdiction in Chicago. (en)
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