Letters to the Editor
-
It is indeed time to get angry
This is an excellent interview. I agree with Hedges that is indeed time to get angry. But it is time to get angry with the followers of this movement as well as with the leaders. I'm no elite intellectual but I can see the sick hateful jingoistic hypocrisy of our local megachurch. It's right there in the open. The leaders of this fascistic and deeply immoral movement are only as powerful as their followers have made them. Shame on all of them--and on those who are afraid to stand up to them and speak the truth about what they are. I look forward to reading Hedges book--and hope it heralds more straightforward discourse about this deeply dangerous movement.
-
Book title was incorrect
You might want to correct the article, as it appears the book is titled 'American Fascists', not 'American Fascism': http://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284437
-
Another correction
You might also want to correct the name of the "Harvard Theological Seminary"; if you mean the one in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that is "Harvard Divinity School".
-
christo-fascism is definitely a threat
but thanks to GW's failed crusade in Iraq we they are temporarily weakened. I'm not advocating complacency, but the immediate threat has somewhat lessened.
-
confused Christians...
When I read this I recalled a brief interaction I had with a coworker about the Iraq war. I was talking about the horrible loss of civilian life on the Iraq side, she said to me "in the old testament God calls us in war to eliminate every man woman and child who is the opponent".
Shocked all I could do was say "I'm not sure Jesus would agree with that aproach". Then she looked shocked and muttered "yeah, that Jesus was a special one".
-
econ
We can talk about the specific movements until we're blue in the face: "fascists," "Christian Right," "communists." The general process is the same.
Working class men feel disrespected by their society; they lack work, money, even the respect of their families. (Would you want to raise a child making near minimum wage right now?) Emasculated, they find ways to communicate their inner turmoil. Ridiculous, hyperbolic, charismatic provide leadership; the leaders become shrewd. The leaders use the men for organized violence on chosen "undesirables," which are little other than an undifferentiated Other. Chaos and war ensues. It subsides after bloodbath. The leaders that caused the original economic conditions that led to working men resorting to ideology and violence restore order by paying the working men enough money to raise their families.
We could avoid it all paying men enough to raise their families. But that would hurt the quarterly profits too much, wouldn't it?
-
The true homosexual agenda
Most of the Christian Right leadership seems to be homosexual - and we have seen some recent outings to prove the point. Most of the Republican leadership seems to be homosexual ... from Roy Cohn to Foley and all the way to the top today.
Who was gay hooker Jeff Gannon visiting on his overnight stays, per now-secret Secret Service logs, at the White House?
This is their Achilles heel: the fact that the rabid anti-gay forces, the totalitarians lying to their deluded flocks are led by sodomites. Not only here, but in the sexually repressive clitorectomy-performing totalitarian Muslim cultures as well.
Every time someone slams straight white men for "homophobia," please demand that they insert "straight-acting" or "straight-pretending" or "straight-wannabe" in there.
Keep outing the assholes.
-
Stand Up. Stand Up and Fight Back.
Stand up and Fight Back or they will be leading us non-believers to the gas chambers so that they can save our souls. Remeber the witch hunts?
The problem is there is an aspect of Christianity that thrives on persecution (real or percieved). Fighting them could just make them stronger. I don't have a clue as to how this should be done. Sun Tzu comes to mind. I don't know, this is such a complex issue. I have a lot of strands of thouhgt all knotted up....I don't really know where to start.
One thing though: these "Christo-Fascists" claim the moral high ground. Bullshit, I don't need a God to be moral and ethical. In fact I think that belief in a God hinders real ethical behavior because any atrocity can/has/will be committed in the name of some "dissembodied gaseous vertabrate". Remember Humanism? It is moral and ethical with recourse to a supernatural entity.
Have we forgot what Voltaire cried? "Remeber the Atrocities!"
Ok there I've had my rant.
Stand up. Stand up and Fight Back.
James
-
Crisis
I fear, and predict, that the crisis needed to give evangelical demagoguery its opening will not come from Al Qaeda. Our REACTION to Al Qaeda and 9/11 has damaged us socially, morally and financially to the extent that the house of cards that American democracy has become could be knocked over by something quite small. Like the Chinese deciding not to lend us any more money.
-
Look at the historical perspective
I agree with everything that Chris Hedges says-- as someone living in E. Washington/N. Idaho for the last 19 years-- somewhat a resurrection site/birthplace of a lot of this defective ideology, I stand amazed when I talk to a local newspaper publisher and he's never heard of Christian Identity, the Full Bible movement, or a lot of the other extreme right religious groups that feed toxic mythology toward the center-right. These groups are right in our backyard.
As far as whether the current version is fascist or not-- of course, they're fascist. But what Hedges doesn't say in his interview (maybe in his book) is that we are watching a long arc from before WWII when the movement really did support Hitler. It was the main thing that discredited groups like the John Birch society, and it has taken them, through manipulation of the Cold War, and now the inward crusade regarding ostensible moral decay, to regain their pre-eminence.
It's all rather frightening, because in many ways, written by more astute social critics than myself, the suburbs as a concept were built on the notion of racial hatred-- and the fact that we haven't managed to change the fundamental architecture of our living spaces is helping drive this movement. If architecture and physical community structure wasn't so important to driving fascism, then why was Hitler such a fan of Speer?
The scary thing is, of course, that we're truly approaching our real crisis-- bake the planet or run out of gas. Both are going to require rational thinking, or the movement that has crystallized under the likes of Robertson and Roberts are going to own the day with mythology. I'd encourage liberals of all ilks to work on understanding these folks, as well as recruiting more of us. And if it takes some anger, so be it. But don't let it interfere with the clear head that is going to be required to think our way out of this.