Who is this guy?
He's an American Buddhist living in France who posts to various internet forums to explain that President Barack Obama is the Antichrist of the Christian Bible, because the number 666 was draw in the Illinois state lottery the day after Obama's election. Over the years his theory has grown to encompass the belief that he is the "Messiah" or even "the Second Coming of Jesus" for being the only person to still take this lottery result seriously.
Does Geir believe that Obama is literally the Antichrist?
No. Geir Smith is a Buddhist, and openly rejects Christianity and the Bible, so cannot believe that anybody is "the Antichrist". He uses the Antichrist line as a metaphor for Obama being a bad and evil person.
Given the scorn with which he attacks Christians and his outrageous delusions of grandeur, it seems most likely that he believes himself to be cleverly tricking ignorant Christians into fighting Obama for him, much as an early colonial invader might attempt to trick natives into believing that a third party is the devil figure of the natives' religion.
Does Geir believe himself to be Jesus?
At some point Geir claims to have had a conversation with a Christian along the lines of:
- Geir: "I know the identity of the antichrist."
- Christian: "You cannot say that, as only Jesus would know this for certain."
- Geir: "Then I am Jesus."
Since then he has regularly claimed to be the second coming of Jesus. This seems to just be an even crasser form of tricking-the-natives, to the point of openly trolling because he knows it'll get a reaction on Christian-leaning US websites. He misquotes the Bible, gets his testaments mixed up and frequently quotes Jesus in the third person, so most likely does not actually believe himself to be Jesus.
Is he a birther?
Seems to be. I guess the antichrist wouldn't have a birth certificate?
He also thinks birthers are all ugly stupid garbage and on the paylist of Satan.
What do other birthers think of him?
- "Geir Smith is an unreliable source." —Carl Gallups
- "…the person who wrote that article is spreading nonsense. We have never said Obama is the antichrist. We have said repeatedly that Obama is AN antichrist. Listen to the interview again and you will clearly hear me say that. Thank you for trying to set the record straight on this." —Mike Shoesmith, private email
- "I guess Newsweek is just as crazy as, er, Geir!" —Mike Volin, blogtalkradio, 56:34
- "When the time is decided upon by Sheriff Arpaio to release our information, I personally will put out a public statement. If you don’t hear it from me it isn’t true." —Mike Zullo possibly in response to Geir misrepresenting Hagmann's interview
The Hagmann interview is an interesting case. Geir listened to the radio interview, made an exaggerated transcript of it and pasted up a number of stories at BIN, greatly exaggerating Arpaio's involvement and daubing it with his usual antichrist/666 rambling (sample headline: "CIA Reveals Arpaio Information To Media – Video – Apocalypse Breaks Right Now Before your Eyes"). So far so standard - take a birther story, lie and exaggerate to get attention, and spit "AND HE'S THE ANTICHRIST THIS IS THE APOCALYPSE!" at it a few times. This is what Geir does.
Except this got back to Arpaio somehow. Birther Report covered the story, linking to two of Geir's articles which they saw as having "no identified author", and publishing an explicit rebuttal from Zullo. Bizarrely, when BirtherReport mirrored their article to BIN, Geir joined the comments to parrot "News! Mike Zullo claims the Hagmanns aren’t working with Joe Arpaio." in comments, and users pointed out that it was Geir himself who had claimed Hagmann was working with Arpaio, and that the whole BR article was about Geir's mistake.
Apparently oblivious, Geir returned the next day to excitedly announce that "My new article about the Hagmanns and their revelation of info is breaking all records of views. It’s at 30 000 hits now." and made no attempts to correct or retract his Hagmann piece.
Who are his allies at BIN?
He occasionally claims that other "prominent" BIN writers agree with him, but all regular writers studiously avoid him in comments.
Lisa: Could the Muslims Mahdi and Christian Antichrist actually be the same person?
Geir: Nice try Lisa [Haven] but that’s NO. You already made a video saying Obama’s the Antichrist.
Lisa: Nope, I’ve never made a video saying Obama is the Antichrist. —1
One recent exception is fabulist Linda Joy Adams, who appreciates Geir quoting her blog in his comments, and considers him an ally on a site where everyone else considers her a laughing stock (she claims to be closely related to figures such as Obama and the British Royal Family, and to have been present at various historical events). But she draws the line at supporting Geir's claim to be Jesus, or even that Obama is the antichrist.
What was he doing before he decided Obama was the Antichrist?
Just reading some of Geir's old biography articles and it looks like he was a Y2K buff, back in the day, and his wife Joelle "has often reminded me about other things where I had gone wrong such as that I had also been very convinced by the Y2K groups, such as someone called Gary North. It's true: I had been very taken in by this, for various reasons."
Also: Harry Potter. ''"Wife Joelle asked me why I had made a big whoopla about Harry Potter which she claimed I had been obsessed with for several months about 2006. […] On Christian apocalyptic websites, I came across rabid criticism of Harry Potter. [Joelle found] this frivolous, unexplainable and worrying, because her "serious" husband was being sucked in to this "Harry Potter" kids' fad."''
"So to sum this up: I had thus opted for a Y2K monster and Harry Potter devil-like figure ….before actually attacking the Dalai Lama devil-like personage. […] This had monopolized me totally for several years to a year, but that was totally eclipsed by the Obama issue and battle which suddenly took over all my time and thinking."
We are told that he's had pretty much the same modus operandi since 2001. This 2001 Usenet post talks of other newsgroup users being fed up of his "thirty to fifty posts per day" and his "notion that "Olefronts" are oozing out of the woodwork". 13 years later he is spamming the BeforeItsNews citizen journalism site, and calling everyone who questions his current antichrist theories an "Obot", a leech that comes out of the woodwork. Plus ça change.
Is he a Buddhist?
You might not think that an angry, racist homophobe who pretends to be Jesus would be a Buddhist, but Geir claims to still be a practicising Buddhist. He studied Tibetan language and culture in Paris, and went on some kind of Buddhist retreat in 1979, and has since done "28 years of post-university research upon the deity Kalachakra", which we assume just means "reading books and the internet at home". It is perhaps significant that Smith has not taken the Kalachakra initiation and prefers to spread his message on Christian websites, rather than Buddhist ones.
He occasionally claims to be Rudra Chakrin, the prophecied last of the twenty-five Kings of Shambhala, the saviour of Buddhism who will slaughter Muslims. It is unclear how literally he actually means this. In 2003, a Buddhist forum thread included the quote "I received an email from the Secretary for His Eminence Phende Rinpoche, she told me that Geir Smith has never been recognized by anyone as a tulku or Rinpoche." (A tulku is "a lama recognised in Tibetan Buddhism as reincarnate, either by physical resemblance to an enlightened being or through connection to certain qualities of an enlightened being".)
This Buddhist Usenet post from 2001 (from a group he was seemingly banned from) is worth quoting:
It does no good to argue or reason with Geir. He simply cannot hear anything he does not wish to hear, his defenses are that strong, his obscurations that opaque. He has had incedible advantges in this life, some kind of international trust fund baby it would appear. He has had the opportunity to spend as long as he likes at the Sorbonne, travel freely to India, Tibet and Nepal, Ceylon and Taiwan.He has got to play patron to Ngor Phende dharma centers in France.
But I doubt that he has ever got the recognition he requires.Degrees ? Published Works ? Academic Position ? Does he demonstrate any fruit of practice, any understanding of cause and effect ? […]
In the process he may have broken samaya with Vajra Masters such as Luding Khen Rinpoche, and this is a root downfall. He may have also at times insulted bodhisattvas, which is another. And he has certainly fostered discord within the Sakya lineage, a sangha, and this is yet another. He should be an object of our compassion.
I post this here, rather than at arbt because I doubt Geir can face this at this time, and I have no wish to give him further opportunities to accumulate bad karma by further hating me or abusing dharmaholders.
Although Geir occasionally reminds us all that Buddhism is the supreme religion and all the dumb Muslims and Christians are going to hell, he rarely quotes any kind of Buddhist teaching in his comments any more, preferring to misquote Wikipedia policies and the Bible.
Is he gay?
It's certainly true that he is aggressively homophobic; he has frequently seemed convinced, in a red haze, that every single BIN user who disagrees with him is a "f*ggot", and he repeatedly tries to get people to talk about how disgusting anal sex is. Combined with his paranoia that every BIN user who disagrees with him is also a paid shill of the CIA or the White House, he occasionally lets slip the crossover delusion that his articles are being watched by a powerful group of gay men. ("You’re not interested in Obama. You’re into anal sex, that’s why you’re here. That’s what this is all about. You’re just interested in me. Right?") He also seems to have homoerotic thoughts about Obama, frequently using sexual metaphors when discussing the fall of Obama.
Geir goes through phases of talking scat in comments. In July 2013 he was warned by BIN and had articles deleted after posting multiple essays about "replacing sphynxters" in older gay men (and also how the other BIN users he didn't like should consider it), which he claimed were innocent public service announcements.
Geir has reasoned that because (in his view) all gay men have anal sex with men, anyone who has not had actual anal sex with a man is not gay. "It reads like a Greek Mathematical Archimedes Equation. There's no escaping the logics of it all. No sodomy and you're not gay. Period." Geir may have had a non-anal encounter with another man, and is trying to convince himself that despite this he is not gay.
Geir has mentioned taking vacations in Thailand because he "likes sex".
Is Geir Smith a troll?
Kind of. He seems genuinely quite detached from reality, but has learned to enjoy saying provocative things to get a reaction from people, and it feeds into the delusion that if you call your critics names and they call you names back, you have successfully angered them and must have "touched a nerve" and be onto something with whatever you were talking about.
What does he think of this site?
Smith posted an article in October 2013 to say that geirsmith.wikidot.com is run by the CIA, must have something to do with Wikipedia because it has the word "wiki" in it, and the only possible reasons the website can exist are either (a) paid Obama shills or (b) paid by mumble mumble. He says:-
Another strange thing was that when I left Wikipedia where they banned me saying “Don’t try to edit WIkipedia again saying the Chicago Lottery drew 666 the day after Obama’s election”, I started posting to forums around Internet but the hatred I’d encountered at Wikipedia continued, unabated. The same people as at Wikipedia said I couldn’t post those facts anywhere because they’d oppose it. The people at Wikipedia want to decide what “version of reality” is the one they’ll accept. But they also want to fix the sources and referenes you can find on Internet.
So they sent me a link to a website that was just starting out which was a page criticizing me and which is an off-shoot branch of Wikipedia. I signed up and edited it. But they countered everything I edited there. So, they didn’t want to discuss with me and wanted to tell the world who I was in that website. I don’t see how they can know who I am if they’re refusing to talk to me.
Since three years the website’s reached incredible proportions. There seems to be a group-effort to report whatever I write on Internet. Obviously, my personal case counld’t interest anyone this much unless there was a special reason. I doubt my mere personality can focus people to this extent without some alternate reason being behind it.I see two reasons.:
1. I’m saying (and PROVING) Obama’s the Antichrist. This irks and freightens the Obama paid shills.
2. This is a paid work and a job for these people They have to do their paid job and adding things to the website is the result of that paid labour.
I want to say from the beginning that everything written on this site in the link below is garbage and it’s only intent is to smear me. The authors have never contacted me for my opinion or for me to make a declaration on that website dedicated to me. Is that right?
He remains baffled by how this wiki can have gathered pages of quotes about him, despite them all coming from his own web articles and videos.
Did they put mics and moniroting devices on my computer etc… It looks like this was governement spying. This could be a major investigation like WIkileaks so I’d request Trump to send me his staff to find out what’s going on
