THOUSANDS of Stephen Colbert fans are joining a Facebook group calling on the TV satirist to hold a rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Last week, nearly 500,000 people gathered at the Washington DC landmark for a "Restoring Honour" rally led by Fox News personality Glenn Beck.

An American conservative who hosts widely syndicated talk-radio and cable-TV shows, Mr Beck claims he is on a one-man mission to "restore God to American politics".

Among his most controversial statements is a belief that US President Barack Obama has a "deep-seated hatred of white people".

Lately - including at last week's rally held at the site of Martin Luther King Jr's 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech - he has been seen supporting Sarah Palin's fundraising efforts.

Now a Facebook group, titled "100,000 Strong to Restore Truthiness to the US Capital", aims to counter Mr Beck's mission.

"Truthiness" is word coined by Colbert on his TV show The Colbert Report, and is referred to as a "truth" that a person claims to know intuitively "from the gut".

A website, www.colbertrally.com, has also been created in support of the gathering, which had more than 28,000 members signed up as of yesterday.

"America, we are at a crossroads," the website proclaims. "Truthiness in this nation is at an all-time low."

It is unknown if Colbert is intending to support the rally as he is currently on a break from The Colbert Report.

He will return to air tomorrow.

A number of commentators have already pondered whether Colbert is behind the rally.

"Given Colbert's love for his 'Nation' and ability to satire the Right so effectively, this almost seems like something Colbert would have thought of himself," Katla McGlynn wrote on the Huffington Post.

In 2009, Colbert's fans managed to hijack a poll run by NASA to name the newest International Space Station module, with more than 250,000 voting for it to be called "Colbert".

However, NASA chose to ignore the public - as Colbert was not one of the four suggested names - and instead christened the module "Tranquility".

Instead NASA named a new treadmill aboard the ISS "COLBERT", an acronym for Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill.