The Christian fascist movement "will succeed because of the moral failure of those, including Christians, who understand the intent of the radicals yet fail to confront them....
The rising Christian fascist movement preaches a non-reality-based belief system, Chris Hedges argues in American Fascists: The Christian Right & the War on America (New York: Free Press / Simon & Schuster, 2006).
This non-reality-based belief system's elements include:
(*) Magical thinking --
(*) Christian nationalism --
(*) Apocalypse, violent revenge fantasies, and a cult of death --
(*) Sexual repression --
(*) Conspiracy theories.
Two of this movement's methods will be familiar to anti-racist activists who have read Wilhelm Reich's The Mass Psychology of Fascism.
The first is the use of a "body-politic" metaphor, in which the movement's identified enemies are described as "pollutants, viruses, mutations that must be eradicated to halt further infection and degeneration within society and usher in utopia;" (p. 32).
The second is "the use of elaborate spectacle to channel and shape the passions of mass followers" (p. 32).
Typical of this later indoctrination method are the "BattleCry" Christian rock concerts, souped-up with contemporary technology, but of the same essential character as Nuremberg rallies.
In the former, the imagined body-politic must have a head -- a male head. Hedges looks at "the hypermasculinity of radical Christian conservatism" (p. 78) as a mass, compensatory daydream that "induces mass delusion" (p. 79).
Many of the anti-racist / anti-fascist activists I knew from music and youth scenes in the late 80s and early 90s were also influenced by German sociologist Klaus Theweleit's two-volume Male Fantasies, to which Hedges tips his hat (to Hannah Arendt, too, though not to Reich's MPF).
The metaphorical body of the movement (and the "utopian" society it desires) is organized hierarchically. "The hierarchy fears romantic love. Sex, especially eroticism, in its most passionate, romantic form, threatens the iron control of the church leader." (p. 83)
But the central task of American Fascists is not description of a movement but a call to organize and oppose it, and especially its goal (in Hedges's subtitle): the war on America.
Hedges argues that specific battles -- homophobic ballot initiatives in the 2004 and 2006 elections, anti-reproductive-freedom bills in state legislatures, attacks on teaching science in public schools, public denunciations of Islam and Muslims -- are assaults in a larger strategy.
The movement pursing the strategy and the strategy itself are properly termed fascist, Hedges argues. The movement's objective, "under the guise of Christianity," is to "rise to dismantle the open society" (p. 195).
The institutions of an open society permit "the individual to avoid being subsumed by the crowd," and thus it is the destruction of those institutions that this new form of totalitarianism requires.
"Dominionism is a theocratic sect with its roots in a radical Calvinism. It looks to the theocracy John Calvin implanted in Geneva, Switzerland, in the 1500s as its political model. It teaches that American Christians have been mandated by God to make America a Christian state." (p. 11)
The Dominionist movement combines "a disciplined, well-financed radical core and tens of millions of Americans who, discontent and anxious, yearn for a vague, revitalized "Christian nation," creating a "potent new force in American politics." (p. 21)
*The movement sanctifies "a ruthless unfettered capitalism" (p. 21) --
*"Followers of the movement are locked within closed systems of information and indoctrination" (p. 26) --
*The movement's ideological leaders include military officers of general rank (p. 29) --
*"These dominionists hate the liberal, enlightened world formed by the Constitution, a world they blame for the debacle of their lives. They have one goal -- its destruction." (p. 202)
"What is to be done?"
This is where Hedges is starting to get into trouble.
One particular passage, and some comments in recent radio interviews, have Hedges in hot water with civil libertarians.
Does the author call for the state to suppress the speech of the Christian fascist movement?
T.P.S.M. will tackle this tomorrow, but, in the meantime, you can have a look at:
What Eugene Volokh said at The Huffington Post and at his law blog ("blawg"), the Volokh Conspiracy, here and here.
And the passage under question:
The leading American institutions tasked with defending tolerance and liberty -- from the mainstream churches to the great research universities, to the Democratic Party and the media -- have failed the country.
This is the awful paradox of tolerance.
There arise moments when those who would destroy the tolerance that makes an open society possible should no longer be tolerated.
They must be held accountable by institutions that maintain the free exchange of ideas and liberty. The radical Christian Right must be forced to include other points of view to counter their hate talk in their own broadcasts, watched by tens of millions of Americans. They must be denied the right to demonize whole segments of American society, saying they are manipulated by Satan and worthy only of conversion or eradication. They must be made to treat their opponents with respect and acknowledge the right of a fair hearing even as they exercise their own freedom to disagree with their opponents....
Tags: politics, law, policy, Chris Hedges, "American Fascists", Dominionism, Christian fascism, fascism, racism, white supremacy, feminism, LGBT, LGBTQI, lesbian, gay, queer.
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