A
Review Of Chris Hedges'
American Fascists
By Stephen Lendman
24 April, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Chris
Hedges is a journalist who for two decades was a foreign correspondent
for the New York Times spending much of his time reporting from conflict
zones in El Salvador, the Middle East and from Serbia covering the Balkan
wars of the 1990s that divided and destroyed a country under the guise
of humanitarian intervention providing cover for naked imperialism.
There it allowed NATO (meaning the US) to expand into Central and Eastern
Europe to keep predatory capitalism on the march for markets, resources
and cheap labor everywhere using wars to get them and eliminate "uncooperative"
heads of state like Slobodan Milosevic who was kidnapped, Mafia/Mossad-style,
by the ICTY kangaroo court in the Hague, hung out to dry when he got
there, and in the end effectively or, in fact, murdered to shut him
up and prevent ugly truths coming out about what the conflict was really
about and who the real criminals were.
The wars and subsequent show-trials
had nothing to do with myths about it fed us by Western media. Those
wanting the truth can find it in excellent books like Diana Johnstone's
Fools' Crusade; the extensive research and writings of Edward Herman,
Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, law professor Michael Mandel; and the
newest book out on the subject titled Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan
Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice by British journalist
John Laughland. Edward Herman wrote a superb review of the book in the
April, 2007 issue of Z Magazine now available in which he pointedly
says "the rules of the (illegally constituted) ICTY (established
by the US and UK) stood Nuremberg on its head" and Laughland states
"instead of applying existing international law, the ICTY has effectively
overturned it" to hide NATO's crimes and allow more of the same
playing out now in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.
The Christian Right supports
these type crimes and motives for them readers will understand from
Hedges' new book. He's also written many articles and is the author
of four books including his bestselling War Is a Force That Gives Us
Meaning drawing on his experiences in the conflicts he covered describing
how people and nations behave in wartime. The book was a finalist for
the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. His newest book
is American Fascists - The Christian Right and the War on America published
in 2007 and subject of this review. It's an incisive examination of
the huge threat extremist Christian fascists pose to a shaky free society
most people in the US take for granted but no longer will after reading
this important book.
Hedges was educated at Colgate
University and received a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School.
For a time he was a seminarian and is now a senior fellow at the Nation
Institute as well as a writer and lecturer at Princeton University where
he teaches in the Program for American Studies. He was also an early
vocal critic of the Bush administration's plan to attack, invade and
occupy Iraq characterizing war as "the most potent narcotic invented
by humankind" while professing not to be a pacifist.
This review will cover the
essence and flavor of American Fascists beginning with some background
on the Christian right, its influence, and danger it poses that Hedges
covers in detail. He said he wrote the book out of anger and fear of
the fundamentalist Christian Right seeking to establish theocratic dominion
over society in America in the name of God and is using the Republican
party as their vehicle to do it. He compares the movement's messianic
mission to Italian and German fascism of the last century cloaking itself
in Christianity and patriotism as their way to gain political power
under theocracy's literal meaning from the Greek words "Theos"
meaning "God" and "cratein/crasy" meaning to rule.
They're not kidding and neither
is the risk they'll gain control of government with some observers in
Washington believing they already have it including journalist/commentator
Bill Moyers saying "for the first time in our history, ideology
and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington." Some call
them "The Christian Mafia" noting they're well-funded by and
allied with wealthy, powerful hard right businessmen like beer magnate
Joseph Coors and Amway founder Richard DeVos, Sr. Hedges calls them
American Fascists, and his powerful book leaves no doubt how great a
threat they are to our cherished liberties in a free society now in
great jeopardy. Below is an explanation of the Christian Right and fundamentalist
movement overall before getting into the book.
The Christian Right
and Its Fundamentalist Movement
The Christian or Religious
Right is broadly defined to include adherents of the radical or hard
right embracing their kind of extremist political, economic, social
and religious ideology falsely called conservative which is a relative
term referring philosophically to favoring traditional values including
libertarian ones centered on the right of everyone to be master of his
or her own fate.
Earlier, sociologist scholar
Sara Diamond wrote extensively on the rise of right wing groups in the
country providing readers with a wealth of information based on her
firsthand research. In her seminal 1995 book, Roads to Dominion, she
traced the various movements over the past 50 years identifying four
types she discovered:
1. The anti-communist conservative
movement that in the 1970s included moral traditionalism of the emerging
Christian Right.
2. The racist Right including
the KKK and other segregationist groups and later the paramilitary white
supremacist movement.
3. The Christian Right with
its evangelical roots, and
4. Neoconservatives with
roots in the Cold War and Democrat party later finding a new home in
the Republican party under Ronald Reagan.
Diamond explained these movements
involved scores of organizations, not monolithic in beliefs, who nonetheless
share a common set of policy preferences that unite them listing three
core areas - the economy, the "nation-state in global context (military
and diplomatic)," and moral norms relating to race and gender.
The movements are also unified in their advocacy of free-market capitalism,
anticommunism (now anything left of center), US worldwide military hegemony,
traditional morality, superiority of native-born white male Christian
Americans, and the traditional nuclear family. In addition, Diamond
lists what she calls the "three pillars of the US Right" calling
them "tendencies, not absolutes" - libertarianism, anticommunist
militarism (now all liberal/progressive/leftist non-extremist Christian
ideology), and traditionalism.
In her book, Diamond included
a detailed history of the Christian Right explaining how it came to
be the largest, most influential movement on the far right dominating
policy-making in Republican-led governments and especially the one not
yet in power under George W. Bush. She explained it all in over 300
fact-crammed pages and another 100 pages of notes and references. It's
important background information summarized here briefly to set the
stage for Hedges important account of what the Christian Right is up
to today, why it matters, and why this dominant movement threatens freedom
and democracy in America and the values most here hold dear, including
most of the 70 million evangelicals, a minority of whom are radical
ideologues selling their dogma of hate and domination to convert the
others and destroy non-believers.
Our Secular State
Founding Principles
Christians founded America
believing church and state should be separated, and Jefferson called
for "a wall of separation" between them in 1802 after freedom
of religion became part of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Today that bedrock founding principle is jeopardized by the extremist
Christian Right. If they get their way, they'll tear down that wall
with considerable public support from the 40% in the country polls say
take the Bible literally, and nearly one-third believe in the "rapture"
as Hedges explains in his book. The notion comes from conservative Protestant
eschatology denoting the final happening when "good Christians"
on earth are saved and "raptured" to heaven to be with Jesus
in eternal immortality while non-believers are doomed to a more hellish,
less "rapturous" fate Hedges characterizes as suffering "unspeakable
torments below."
These believers and all others
are entitled to their views, but the Constitution forbids them forcing
them on others. Earlier Supreme Courts agreed in decisions requiring
a "wall of separation" between church and state prohibiting
the adoption of any state religion and requiring government to avoid
undue involvement in religion, its trappings or expressions.
That status was put in jeopardy
following the introduction in Congress of the "Constitution Restoration
Act of 2004." It was then reintroduced in near-identical form in
2005, never passed, and now awaits its fate in the Democrat-led 110th
Congress or a future one that may or may not let it die. If it's ever
adopted in its present form, it will turn the country into a de facto
theocracy despite its supporters' denial. Don't believe them as getting
this passed is key to the Christian Right's mission to turn America
into a fascist theocracy where constitutional law is abolished in favor
of extremist Christian dogma Dominionists like Pat Robertson, Jerry
Falwell, James Dobson and others in the movement want to be the supreme
law of the land.
In their world, under their
law, practitioners of other faiths will be lawbreakers including about
75 million non-Christians and many others of the faith not willing to
go along with their interpretation of it. The "Constitution Restoration
Act of 2005" will also deny the Supreme Court's right to challenge
anyone in or affiliated with federal, state or local government acknowledging
the Christian "God (in their canon) as the sovereign source of
law, liberty, or government." Henceforth, any judge at any level
interpreting the new law differently would be subject to impeachment
and prosecution in the United (extremist Christian) States of (fascist)
America ruled by people like Pat Robertson and others like him.
American Fascists
Masquerading as True Christians - Defiling the Teachings of Christ,
His Twelve Apostles and Others of the Faith
Hedges begins his book with
a powerful quote from Blaise Pascal that "Men never do evil so
completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
Until the modern era, the best examples in Christendom were the first
Crusades when Popes like Urban II sanctioned holy wars between 1095
- 1291 to wrest Jerusalem and the "Holy Land" from "heretic"
Muslims and later ones in the 16th century against infidels - in the
name of God.
Today in America, Dominionists
are the new "crusaders" Hedges equates with 20th century fascists
because of their fanaticism. They cloak their ideology in Christianity
and patriotism as their way to gain political power they claim is sanctioned
by the Almighty to give the movement moral legitimacy. But beneath the
surface, their doctrine is dark and foreboding posing real dangers to
a free society not to be taken lightly. It comes from their view of
Genesis 1:26-31 they interpret to mean God gave man "dominion....over
all the Earth," and that Jesus commanded his followers to impose
godly rule over everyone denouncing people of other faiths and non-believers.
The modern blueprint for this ideology comes from the writings of RJ
Rushdoony's 1973 book, The Institutes of Biblical Law, calling for a
Christian government. It advocates torture and death for gays, non-Christians
resisting conversion, anyone committing blasphemy, and women guilty
of "unchastity before marriage."
Ideology of Radical
Christian Right Fascists
Christian Right extremists
advocate a frightening ideology detailed below. It includes:
-- Racial hatred.
-- White Christian supremacy.
-- Blind adoration and obedience
of the movement's leadership while discouraging free and independent
thought.
-- Male gender dominance
portraying Jesus as a real man dominating through force like a powerful
warrior ignoring fundamental Christian "thou shall not kill"
doctrine. It's an ideology of hyermasculinity centered in a male-dominated
authoritarian church and in the home where men are encouraged to dominate
their wives, and women and children are taught to submit.
Well-known Christian Right
leader James Dobson built his career on these ideas and now has a huge
media empire dispensing advice as a Christian therapist over his Focus
on the Family program. He's heard on more than 3000 radio stations and
80 TV stations reaching 200 million people in 116 countries from his
81 acre campus in Colorado Springs, Colorado employing 1300 people.
He's fiercely anti-choice and anti-gay and has backed political candidates
advocating abortionists be executed. He also calls stem cell research
"state-funded cannibalism" and urges Christian parents take
their children out of public schools and put them in Christian ones
teaching his ideology.
Dobson preaches male dominance
calling non-submission a violation of God's law. He also thinks murder
is wrong but not when committed against infidel Iraqis or Islamic terrorists
saying all non-believers, heretics and sinners will be consumed in an
End Times Tribulation of terrible calamities and torment lasting seven
years with non-redeemers condemned to eternal punishment. True believers
adhering to holy scriptures, however, will be saved and "raptured"
to eternal life and bliss in heaven. But getting there means going along
with what he, End Times guru Timothy LaHaye, and other dominant Christian
Right figures like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell preach including
that they have a divine right to rule and must be obeyed.
Hedges notes that televangelists
like Robertson, Benny Hill, Paul and Jan Crouch and others "rule
their fiefdoms as despotic potentates" some adherents might think
isn't God's way of doing things. They travel with burly bodyguards in
kingly luxury on private jets; have amassed huge personal fortunes,
much of it gotten from listener subjects; and show up everywhere in
limousines with all the pomposity of heads of state and billionaire
CEOs but in their case playing God as false prophets "clutching
the cross and the Bible (offering seductively), like Mephistopheles,
to lead us to a mythical paradise and impossible, unachievable happiness
and security" provided we surrender our will to theirs and our
money too, which is one way they get rich.
They preach a false gospel
of prosperity and well-being preying on the gullible to believe faith
alone cures illness, overcomes emotional distress, and assures financial
and physical security so there's no need for traditional secular institutions,
social service organizations and government regulatory agencies to exist.
The movement preaches those not trusting them lack faith, that God alone
is enough, and that fate is determined by a personal relationship with
Jesus Christ in a world in which individuals surrender their will to
a higher authority dictated by the leadership. Hedges sums it up saying
tyranny follows when "fealty to an ideology becomes a litmus test
for individual worth" and a world of "miracles and magic"
is the only "place to turn for help" ruled by Christian Right
extremists "grow(ing) rich off (the vulnerable) who suffer"
becoming passive in the process.
-- Hatred of gays, the "gay
agenda," and everyone in the LBGT movement with Christian Right
adherents believing "same-sex attraction" can be cured like
a virus their ideological medicine can fix. They define the problem
as "male gender deficit" for which "reparative therapy"
is the antidote gotten from a close connection with a strong heterosexual
man "comfortable in his male role." With nonsensical ideological
fervor, they believe bonding with a straight man makes homosexuality
disappear while at the same time denouncing gays as depraved perverts
and criminals threatening all Christians.
-- Disdain for non-believers
and rational intellectual inquiry.
-- Condemnation of self-criticism
and debate as apostasy.
-- Frequent use of the death
penalty including for abortionists, gays, Muslim "terrorists"
and other "heretics."
-- Adoration of militarism,
war and apocalyptic violence. Adherence to these notions is so extreme
that in the run-up to the Iraq conflict, many Christian Right leaders
and End Times believers preached opposing war was anti-American and
contrary to God's plan and what's written in the Bible as they interpret
it. Their many supporters in Congress include Minority Leader John Boehner,
who supports endless wars. He recently said "The spread of radical
Islamic terrorism is a threat to our nation (and) the free world....They
are (everywhere and) growing right here in America....dedicated to killing
Americans (and) our allies, and ending freedom and wanting to impose
some radical Islamic law on the entire world." With leaders like
Boehner in Congress and the administration, it's easy to see the influence
of radical Christian fundamentalist poison infecting the body politic
and threatening everyone with it.
-- Illegalization of abortion
even in the case of rape and incest.
-- Ending public education
with Bush administration help budgeting billions of dollars for extremist
Christian faith-based organizations. They renounce proved science like
evolution allowing only creationism repackaged as "intelligent
design" to be taught as well as other extremist Christian values
sold through the "big lie" to trick those in the movement
to believe mysticism and magic are facts. Hedges calls the process a
"war on truth" where the culture war front lines are in classrooms,
and the battle is one traditional educators are losing. Core values
of a free and open society are being destroyed and replaced through
a process of thought control based on pseudoscience assaulting the real
thing on everything challenging extremist Christian ideology from creation
to HIV/AIDS to pregnancy prevention to global warming to war and peace.
It's also happening inside
government alarming the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)
advocacy organization to write in its March, 2004 Scientific Integrity
in Policymaking report: "There is significant evidence that the
scope and scale of the (scientifically unethical) manipulation, suppression,
misrepresentation of science by the (Christian Right dominated) Bush
administration are unprecendented."
-- A primary Christian mission
to proselytize non-believers to the faith by recruiting "soldiers
in the army of Jesus Christ" quoting Dr. D. James Kennedy of the
Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Coral Ridge, Florida near Fort Lauderdale,
just north of Miami. His voice is dominant in the Christian Right and
carried over the huge multimedia empire he built with his weekly broadcasts
heard and seen on more than 600 TV stations, four cable networks and
the Armed Forces Network reaching millions of people.
He also has a six day a week
radio show on 744 stations reaching millions more preaching his radical
ideology that "the Christian view of morality (according to the
Christian Right) is the (only) one that should prevail in America"
while denouncing liberal churches and other religions as godless. He
holds workshops teaching how to sell his brand of religiosity using
the same kinds of brainwashing/marketing techniques political and other
extremist movements know work. They promise believers eternal life while
those not saved are damned to eternal punishment.
-- Rejection of secular humanist
notions of reason, ethics, social equity and justice believing a better
world is possible through good will in a free and open society. Also
claims secular humanist organizations like the American Civil Liberties
Union, NAACP, National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood and
others want to destroy a Christian America. They further include the
major TV networks (for airing sex and violence); major newspapers and
magazines; US State Department; foundations like Rockefeller, Ford and
Carnegie; the UN; the Democrat party left/liberals; Harvard, Yale and
2000 other universities; and all others not buying their gospel of extremist
white Christian dominionism and hate.
-- Seizing on the common
denominator of pain, disillusion, dislocation, suffering and despair
felt by millions caused by a culture of "soulless landscapes filled
with strip malls and highways" to build a mass movement of servile,
unthinking followers. They've replaced the real world of science, law
and rationality with unquestioning belief in the word of the leadership
and a glorious other utopian unreal world of prophets, mystical signs
and magical mumbo jumbo that's real to them and in which they're "protected,
loved, guided and blessed." It promises what followers don't have
- a stable home and family, loving community, fixed moral standards,
financial and personal success, and abolition of doubt and uncertainty
based on religious vision and moral clarity. It also frighteningly promises
a final apocalyptic battle of their "good" against all else
they call "evil" exterminating the forces believers blame
on their despair after which they will emerge victorious and saved.
-- A Christian totalitarian
ethic based on a gospel of "free -market" capitalism, militarism
and intolerance of democratic freedom of thought and action.
-- A fanatical devotion to
and support for the state of Israel as Jerusalem, and specifically the
Temple Mount Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary, is where Fundamentalist
Evangelical Christians believe the second coming of the Messiah will
be and thus is the holiest site in the world for Christians and Jews
as well who want it for a third and final Temple. Enter Rev. John Hagee
of the 18,000-strong Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, global
TV ministry, and his Christians United for Israel (CUFI) radical organization
founded in early 2006. He's perhaps the most extremist, bellicose and
influential Christian Zionist in America today preaching Muslims are
Islamic fascists waging war against Western civilization. His antidote
is a gospel of preemptive war against Islam in self-defense including
one against Iran now if he had his way. The danger is warmongering hate-preachers
like Hagee and others reach large audiences convincing millions of adherents
they're right.
The Dark Side of
Radical Christian Morality
Hedges notes the movement's
appeal is from the leadership's promise of a moral Christian nation
promising renewal. But the message hides a darker side with Dominionists
awaiting a fiscal, social and/or political crisis great enough to end
democratic constitutional government replacing it with their vision
of a Christian fascist theocratic America. In the meantime, they spent
a generation working for this and now have great influence at state,
local and federal levels of government.
Hedges notes the movement
already controls the Republican party. In addition, Christian fundamentalists
hold a majority of seats in 18 of 50 states plus large minorities in
the others. Also, (as of the book's publication) 45 senators and 186
House members got 80 - 100% approval ratings from the three most influential
Christian Right advocacy groups: The Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum
and Family Resource Council. This represents a dominant mass movement
succeeding because mainstream Christians and the major media aren't
confronting it, and their passivity threatens the constitutional rights
of a democratic state on life support sinking fast with help from the
Christian Right on the ascendancy.
They're influence is spread
by Christian broadcasters commanding large audiences estimated to be
141 million in the US through radio and TV. They preach the Christian
Right gospel flaunting their wealth, power and celebrity status to show
it works for believers of the faith. They believe in unrestrained free-market
capitalism, divinely sanctioned to freely create a global marketplace
of (non-Christian, non-believing) serfs, denied all rights, forbidden
to organize, and left to the mercy of a repressive state and corporate
predators out for profit and to be allowed to dictate wages and control
the right to work.
Compassion for the less fortunate
is left to individual acts of charity and the churches with government
out of it entirely and only dedicated to social control and aggressive
militarism dictated by a warrior God (meaning Jesus) giving Christian
America the right to rule the world and assure corporate giants can
suck all the profit and life out of it. Hedges explains the Christian
Right sells an ideology believing it's a "Christian duty to embrace
the exploitation of others, to build a Christian America where freedom
means the freedom of the powerful to dominate the weak....to bring about
(their notion of ) a Christian utopia (that when no legal or social
protections remain) it will be too late to resist (and the movement's
leadership will be in control of everything)." Their plan is to
"convince the masses to agitate for their own incarceration"
shocking as that notion sounds, but it's working.
The movement is on a "crusade"
against constitutional government working for now within the political
system it wants to destroy and remake in its own image. Awaiting the
time they'll take over, they're creating a parallel system within the
existing one in which only "Bible-believing" judges, Christian
teachers, and pseudo-reporters on Christian broadcasts are tolerated.
And only white Christian men championing their extremist doctrine will
be allowed to rule. Students are taught this ideology in Christian schools
Hedges says are the fastest growing segment of the private school system.
Textbooks used call Islam, Buddhism and African religions "false,"
Hinduism "pagan," and even Catholicism "distorted."
It's also heard on the campaign
trail from candidates like "stalwart on the Christian Right"
2006 Ohio gubernatorial losing candidate Kenneth Blackwell who as secretary
of state and co-chair of Ohio's Committee to Reelect George Bush in
2004 "arranged" for enough votes in the state to go to the
sitting president to swing Ohio and the election for him. In his own
losing effort in 2006, he appeared at Christian Right rallies laying
out a blueprint for an authoritarian state where all dissent is heresy
yet campaigned carefully not to offend those outside the movement by
avoiding religious terminology.
Christian Right Fascism
in Real Time in "Bush's Shadow Army" - Blackwater USA
Journalist and author Jeremy
Scahill characterizes Blackwater USA as "the world's most powerful
mercenary army" in his new book about them. Like Hedges' book,
it's frightening reading needing exposure. It describes a "shadowy
mercenary company....largely off the congressional radar....having remarkable
power and protection within the US war apparatus" with no accountability
or oversight on the ground in Iraq, (working for the State Department,
not the Pentagon, with a $300 million no-bid contract), Afghanistan,
on US streets and in neighborhoods like New Orleans, and coming soon
to a city and neighborhood near you courtesy of the Gestapo-like Department
of Homeland Security. With backing from the Bush administration, it
operates outside the law and Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ)
and is immune from civil lawsuits like the military. Scahill calls Blackwater
the "Bush Administration's Praetorian Guard (along with the CIA
long-serving in that capacity and that uses Blackwater in its illegal
covert operations abroad and at home)."
Blackwater was founded in
1996 by former Navy SEAL and now super-rich Erik Prince who's closely
tied to the Christian Right he funds and supports. It came into its
own post 9/11 becoming a dominant player in the Bush administration's
"Global War on Terror" (GLOB) now rebranded "The Long
War." Today, Blackwater employs 2300 personnel in nine countries
with 20,000 or more private mercenary contractors ready to go wherever
needed and are part of the 100,000 contractors in Iraq, 48,000 of whom
are paramilitary mercenaries. It also has a fleet of 20 aircraft (believed
to have been used covertly as part of the Bush administration's "extraordinary
renditions" of targeted individuals), including helicopter gunships,
a private intelligence division, and operates at home on its 7000 acre
Moyock headquarters Scahill calls "the world's largest private
military base."
It's not enough for Blackwater
in the burgeoning world of privatized secret mercenary paramilitary
armies coming soon to a neighborhood near you, so the company is preparing
by seeking an environmentally sensitive protected agricultural preserve
southeast of San Diego, CA for it current expansion plans. It's an 824
acre site in Potrero, CA surrounded by the Cleveland Forest Blackwater
wants for a military training base with 15 firing ranges for automatic
and non-automatic weapons and various types of commando-type training
facilities residents don't want near their community for obvious reasons
concerning safety. People everywhere should object, for what may endanger
one isolated community now or a larger one in New Orleans already may
threaten us all in a paramilitarized America we're heading for locked
down by Blackwater-type storm troops enforcing Christian Right fascist
dogma.
In the meantime, Blackwater
is cashing in big as a war profiteer getting huge no-bid Bush administration
contracts Congress belatedly is showing interest in wanting to oversee
to eliminate abuses. Whether it will happen, however, is problematical
as current laws on the books aren't enforced making it likely new ones
won't be either on all matters relating to foreign wars, so-called "terrorism,"
or anything claimed for national security. As long as the nation is
in wars both parties support and the Christian Right is dominant, companies
like Blackwater will thrive. With them, wars are easier to get into
and harder to end meaning the culture of militarism will grow abroad
and at home that's part of the Christian Right's agenda to impose its
extremist theocratic rule on the country where, if it happens, democratic
freedom, as we know it, is incompatible. Under it, Blackwater's private
army will be on our city streets as thuggish paramilitary enforcers
licensed to terrorize and kill with impunity bringing to America what
they're well paid to do abroad.
"Eternal"
Fascist Chickens Coming Home to Roost
A generation ago, the notion
of a "global Christian empire" was barely credible, but Hedges'
ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, 80-year old Dr. James Luther
Adams, warned back then we'd all one day be fighting "Christian
fascists." It was when Pat Robertson and other radical televangelists
began preaching a new political religion aimed at creating a dominant
Christian world according to their extremist views. Adams was in Germany
in 1935 and 1936 and saw with horror what happened there firsthand.
Hedges says he "was not a man to use the word 'fascist' lightly."
He understood before most others the similarities of that time in Germany
to what was developing here around 1980. He saw "how the mask of
religion hides irreligion (and) our world is full to bursting with (various)
faiths, each contending for allegiance." It was a virtual "battle
of faiths, a battle of the gods who claim human allegiance."
Adams knew deep-seated resentments
and bigotry exist in all democratic societies like Weimar Germany and
saw it emerging in 1980s America promoting the destruction of democracy.
He feared late in his life a movement here was on the march, more cleverly
packaged and sophisticated than in the past and this time with no serious
opposition. He saw hatreds being stoked, progressive forces weakening,
and the despair of tens of millions of Americans losing good manufacturing
and other well-paying jobs being easy prey for smooth-talking fanatics
like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell promising miracles and visions
of apocalyptic glory.
Adams said then to watch
the Christian Right's treatment of gays knowing the Nazis used their
"values" to repress opponents and just days after coming to
power in 1933 Hitler banned all gay and lesbian organizations as his
first target with many others to follow. Pastor Martin Niemoller warned
us in different versions of his famous quotation listing Jews, communists
and trade unionists targeted but omitting the one Hitler chose first.
He didn't speak out because he wasn't one of them, and when they came
for him there was no one left. It was too late.
Adams explained gays in a
Christian Right dominated American would be the first "social deviants"
singled out for condemnation, disempowerment and elimination as in Nazi
Germany. Other targeted groups would follow, and we would be next. He
then warned as does Hedges that forces against American democracy are
"waiting for a moment to strike, a national crisis that will allow
them to shred the Constitution in the name of national security."
The Christian Right awaits that time "with gleeful anticipation"
wanting adherents to be ready.
Hedges warns we also must
be ready quoting Alvin Toffler saying "if you don't have a strategy
you end up being part of someone else's strategy." It means challenging
the Christian Right's gospel of hate, "exclusion, cruelty and intolerance
in the name of God" with a doctrine of life, hope and respect for
the worth and dignity of everyone, and their right to practice their
beliefs openly in a free society. That's the American dream shared by
free people everywhere. At the book's end, Hedges says preserving it
means giving up "passivity, challeng(ing) aggressively this movement's
deluded appropriation of Christianity (and fighting back) to defend
tolerance." Wishing won't make it so. Defending democracy means
working at it every day. Today we face an imminent threat to our freedom
against which "tolerance coupled with passivity is a (deadly) vice"
that will destroy us unless we're on guard to be sure it doesn't.
Stephen Lendman
lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit his blog site
at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen each Saturday
to the Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on The Micro Effect.com
noon US central time.
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