Fascism watch

Sun, 04 May 2008 15:12:29 -0000

"All effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand."
Adolf Hitler

Tags: fascism

Posted by: amortal

The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism by Chris Hedges

Sun, 04 May 2008 15:11:23 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The spark that could set it ablaze may be lying in the hands of an Islamic terrorist cell, in the hands of the ideological twins of the Christian Right. Another catastrophic terrorist attack could be our Reichstag fire, the excuse used to begin the accelerated dismantling of our open society. The ideology of the Christian Right is not one of love and compassion, the central theme of Christ's message, but of violence and hatred. It has a strong appeal to many in our society, but it is also aided by our complacency.

All debates with the Christian Right are useless. We cannot reach this movement. It does not want a dialogue. It cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. It is not mollified because John Kerry prays or Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday School. These naive attempts to reach out to a movement bent on our destruction, to prove to them that we too have "values," would be humorous if the stakes were not so deadly. They hate us. They hate the liberal, enlightened world formed by the Constitution. Our opinions do not count.

The attacks on homosexuals handed to the foot soldiers of the Christian Right an easy target. It gave them a taste of victory. It made them feel empowered.

watch closely what the Christian Right did to homosexuals. He has seen how the Nazis had used "values" to launch state repression of opponents.

"What convinces masses are not facts," Hannah Arendt wrote in Origins of Totalitarianism, "and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system which they are presumably part. Repetition, somewhat overrated in importance because of the common belief in the "masses" inferior capacity to grasp and remember, is important because it convinces them of consistency in time."

Facts become interchangeable with opinions. An understanding of reality is not to be based on the elaborate gathering of facts and evidence. The ideology alone is true.

The movement seeks the imprint of law and science. It must discredit the rational disciplines that are the pillars of the Enlightenment to abolish the liberal polity of the Enlightenment. This corruption of science and law is vital in promoting the doctrine.

the 9 th chapter of the Book of Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of men." The march towards global war, even nuclear war, is not to be feared but welcomed as the harbinger of the Second Coming. And leading the avenging armies is an angry, violent Messiah who dooms millions of non-believers to a horrible and painful death.

"Any teaching of peace prior to [Christ's] return is heresy."

Only by reintegrating the working class into society through job creation, access to good education and health care can the Christian Right be effectively blunted.

This image of Christ as warrior is appealing to many within the movement. The loss of manufacturing jobs, lack of affordable health care, negligible opportunities for education and poor job security has left many millions of Americans locked out. This ideology is attractive because it offers them the hope of power and revenge. It sanctifies their rage. It stokes the paranoia about the outside world maintained through bizarre conspiracy theories, many on display in Pat Robertson's book The New World Order .

The cult of masculinity pervades the ideology.

These books rarely speak about Christ's message of love, forgiveness and compassion. They focus on the doom and destruction that will befall unbelievers and the urgent need for personal salvation. The world is divided between good and evil, between those who act as agents of God and those who act as agents of Satan. The Jesus of the other three Gospels, the Jesus who turned the other cheek and embraced his enemies, an idea that was radical and startling in the ancient Roman world, is purged in the narrative selected by the Christian Right.

The Christian Right finds its ideological justification in a narrow segment of the Gospel, in particular the letters of the Apostle Paul, especially the story of Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus in the Book of Acts. It draws heavily from the book of Revelations and the Gospel of John. These books share an apocalyptic theology. The Book of Revelations is the only time in the Gospels where Jesus sanctions violence, offering up a vision of Christ as the head of a great and murderous army of heavenly avengers.

Dominionists have to operate, for now, in the contaminated environment of the secular, liberal state. They have learned, therefore, to speak in code. The code they use is the key to understanding the dichotomy of the movement, one that has a public and a private face. In this they are no different from the vanguard, as described by Lenin, or the Islamic terrorists who shave off their beards, adopt western dress and watch pay-for-view pornographic movies in their hotel rooms the night before hijacking a plane for a suicide attack.

The book denounces income tax as "idolatry," property tax as "theft" and calls for an abolish of inheritance taxes in the chapter entitled Christian Economics. The loss of such tax revenues will bring about the withering away of the federal government and the empowerment of the authoritarian church

One of the most enlightening books that exposes the ultimate goals of movement is America's Providential History

These leaders believe that God has selected them to battle the forces of evil, embodied in "secular humanism," to create a Christian nation.

Promise Keepers

The world was to be subdued and ruled by a Christian United States.

1,600 page three-volume work, Institutes of Biblical Law

an ideology that advocated violence to create the Christian state

The Reconstructionist movement, founded in 1973

Bush may turn out to be a transition figure, our version of Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck used "values" to energize his base at the end of the 19 th century and launched "Kulturkampt", the word from which we get "culture wars," against Catholics and Jews. Bismarck 's attacks split the country, made the discrediting of whole segments of the society an acceptable part of the civil discourse and paved the way for the more virulent racism of the Nazis. This, I suspect, will be George Bush's contribution to our democracy.

Christian fundamentalists now hold a majority of seats in 36 percent of all Republican Party state committees, or 18 of 50 states, along with large minorities in 81 percent of the rest of the states. Forty-five Senators and 186 members of the House of Representatives earned between an 80 to100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups - The Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council.

Tags: religion fascism

Posted by: amortal

American Police State

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:35:03 -0000

Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State

Tags: fascism america

Posted by: amortal

FOURTEEN CHARACTERISTICS OF FASCISM

Sat, 09 Sep 2006 12:22:48 -0000

Comments:

very sobering stuff posted by amortal

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

FOURTEEN CHARACTERISTICS OF FASCISM

notice anything familiar? posted by amortal

Tags: characteristics fascism

Posted by: amortal

Amortal's Favorite Links on fascism from Diigo

Fascism watch

The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism by Chris Hedges

American Police State

FOURTEEN CHARACTERISTICS OF FASCISM