I suppose it was inevitable.

For months, right-wing bloggers have been linking the ATF's Operation Fast and Furious to a wide array of increasingly ridiculous conspiracy theories. The operation itself was a failed attempt to take down Mexican cartels that certainly deserves (and is receiving) scrutiny after many guns involved in the program ended up at crime scenes, but the right-wing media's preference for wild theories over solid facts has gotten well out of hand.

Now, they've decided that the “ultimate goal” behind the program was to -- try not to laugh -- collapse the system as part of the “Cloward-Piven strategy” and initiate a “coup de d'état.” You may recall “Cloward-Piven” as the Glenn Beck-pushed conspiracy which claims that the motive force of the last forty years of progressive policy is an article written by two obscure college professors that calls for “collapsing the system” by overloading government services in order to implement new policies. After Beck repeatedly devoted his programs to attacking the surviving professor, Francis Fox Piven, she began receiving death threats.

What does that have to do with a failed operation aimed at stopping Mexican drug cartels? Pajamas Media blogger Bob Owens provides the following “speculation” (emphasis added):

Gunwalker purposefully increases social unrest (increased gun violence/destabilizing Mexico), with the possible result of overloading the U.S. public welfare system (more illegal aliens fleeing the violence in Mexico and Central America). Gunwalker's perpetrators could then use that influx to create an insurmountable constituency of poor seeking handouts from the Democratic Party. The hope of the strategy is to force a system-wide collapse of the current system, and then to rebuild the government in a variant of the strongest socialist model they think the public will accept.

[...]

Operation Fast and Furious doesn't make sense as a anti-cartel operation, but it makes perfect tactical sense as a way of implementing Cloward-Piven, something that President Obama, Attorney General Holder, Secretary Napolitano, and Secretary Clinton have long embraced as followers of those radicals and Saul Alinsky. Gunwalker is the start of a coup d'état against the republic by the very souls entrusted to guard it.

The idea that the Obama administration wants dramatically increased illegal immigration in order “force a system-wide collapse of the current system” is, of course, at odds with their record of increasing deportations and reducing illegal immigration.

(As an aside, it's interesting that Owens now has a problem with “a coup d'état against the republic,” given that he previously called armed revolution the “morally-required alternative” if other efforts to repeal health care reform fail.

Fast and Furious blogger Mike Vanderboegh, who thinks that if Hillary Clinton doesn't run for president again it must be because “she's got some dirty Gunwalker underwear she doesn't want outed in public,” is also highlighting Owens' conclusions.

It's almost as if these people are desperate to not be taken seriously. But that's pretty much par for the course for the right-wing media.

It's a shame that Owens is just teasing us with the reference to how Obama, Holder, Napolitano, and Clinton are “followers of... Saul Alinsky.” I was looking forward to a detailed explanation of the Alinskyite tactics.