Everybody's Talkin' About Christian Fascism

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Sun, 16 Jan 2005 23:43:14 -0500

Everybody's Talkin' About Christian Fascism

 

 

 

http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp01132005.html

 

 

" Fighting for the Work of the Lord "

Everybody's Talkin' About Christian Fascism

 

By GARY LEUPP

 

Commentators right and left are talking about fascism in the U.S. of

A. Libertarian conservative Lew Rockwell, in a recent article entitled

" The Reality of Red-State Fascism, " declares, " what we have alive in

the US is an updated and Americanized fascism. "

 

Fellow libertarian Justin Raimondo, in a piece called " Today's

Conservatives are Fascists, " calls the neocons shaping U.S. foreign

policy " fascists, pure and simple. " United Methodist minister Rev.

William E. Alberts accuses some of Bush's followers of upholding a

" super religion displaying tendencies similar to Hitler's super race

with its fascist ideology of superiority. "

 

Meanwhile the Revolutionary Communist Party circulates in the tens of

thousands a statement declaring that " Bush and his people " are

" Christian Fascists---dangerous fanatics who aim to make the U.S. a

religious dictatorship and to force this upon the world. " This is

quite a wide spectrum of anti-fascist opinion.

 

I think it's good the f-word is out there, and the issue on the table.

Fascism needs to be discussed. I thought so in October 2002, when I

wrote an essay posted on CounterPunch, " Talking to Your Kids About

Fascism. " It was a presented as a quiet talk one might have with

preteens, delivered with the simple clarity and sobriety one might

assume when talking with one's young about drug use or sex or any

serious issue. My point at the time was fascism's not just a

phenomenon unique to 1930s and 40s and defeated in 1945 but something

that can recrudesce. One should be alert for warning signs.

 

That was over two years ago, before the criminal invasion of Iraq,

based on lies, and the cynical exploitation of racist-based fear. It

was before British officers complained that their U.S. counterparts in

Iraq were treating the Iraqis like Untermensch (subhumans, a term the

Nazis applied to various non-Aryan groups). It was before the Abu

Ghraib and Guantanamo torture revelations, and the reorganization of

the " intelligence community " to better disseminate disinformation in

the service of ongoing war. It was before the Bush campaign to amend

the constitution, for the first time to specifically prevent the

expansion of liberties. It was before persons in and around the

administration defended Japanese-American wartime concentration camps

with an eye towards new camps for other groups in the future. The

fascist tide has surged in the interim, as I thought, back in 2002,

was very likely.

 

A Fascist Movement

 

I'm not suggesting that the state has become fascist. We remain a

bourgeois democracy, in which you are free to vote for the

corporate-sponsored Republican or Democrat of your choice. You can

still maneuver around as best you can in a marketplace controlled by

ever fewer people. You can access a broad range of websites, protest

in the streets (under carefully controlled conditions), and say what

we think in emails and phone calls (although the

authorities can legally monitor them as they please). You can still

write and maybe have published letters to the editor criticizing the

regime. The country itself remains pre-fascist.

 

Nor is there, a mass-based fascist party yet. The Republicans may

morph into such, but there remain the occasional Ron Pauls. (I have to

note, though, that the Texas Republican Congressman himself opines

that " a total police state is fast approaching. " ) What we have is a

fascist movement, even if its storm troops themselves do not, by and

large, conceive of it as such. Many of them simply think they're God's

Army, having nothing in common with Hitler's Brownshirts, whom they

learned in school were bad people defeated by fine Americans. They

will be insulted if told they resemble the Nazi supporters of the

1930s, but in many respects they do.

 

Fascism feeds on fear. Hitler's Reichmarshall Hermann Goering declared

that " people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This

is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and

attack the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country

to danger. It works the same in every country. " Question for

discussion, ladies and gentlemen: How does this apply here? Are the

myriad threats the movement has used to frighten all who will listen

(weapons of mass destruction, mushroom clouds over New York, Muslims

in general, liberal college professors, homosexuals) working to get

people to do the bidding of leaders in this country?

 

Fascism also feeds on ignorance. " Good Germans " were truly persuaded

that Jews, Slavs and Bolsheviks threatened them in 1939. Fascism is

inherently anti-intellectual, deploying emotions (national pride,

resentment at " outsiders, " feelings of injury, millenarian hope) and

targeting prominently among internal enemies those who challenge its

self-validating myths. A key factor in the American variety is a

frontal assault on whole fields of science, especially those

challenging the Biblical depiction of the earth as merely 6000 years old.

 

MUCH MORE, CONTINUED AT http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp01132005.html.

 

 

 

 

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can

change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - -

Margaret Mead

 

Suppose you were an idiot ... And suppose you were a member of

Congress... But I repeat myself. - - Mark Twain

 

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on

military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching

spiritual death. - - Martin Luthur King Jr.