Chris Hedges - American Fascists (2007) - Synopsis

UFPPC (www.ufppc.org) Digging Deeper XXIX @ Mandolin Café (Tacoma, WA) 26, 2007, 7:00 p.m.

March

Chris Hedges, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (New York: Free Press, 2007). Epigraph: Pascal [vii]. Umberto Eco, “Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt” [ix-xiv]. [An excerpt from a 5,300-word essay published in the New York Review of Books on Jun. 22, 1995, under the title “Ur-Fascism.”] Ch. 1: Faith. Epigraph: Karl Popper (1). Summary of Hedges’s Presbyterian faith, full of doubt and respect for mystery, but which affirms the value of love and compassion (1-8). Those who claim to know worship idols (9). “God has not chosen Americans as a people above others.” (10). Dominionism is a radical fascist movement seeking political power that “seeks to cloak itself in the mantle of the Christian faith and American patriotism” (10; 10-12). Its “most important book” is R.J. Rushdoony’s The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973) (12-13). It is “a huge and disastrous” mutation of fundamentalism (13-14). Words like “liberty” and “love” are being redefined through “logocide” (14-18). Dominionists are only “a tiny minority” of the 70 million evangelists in the U.S.—perhaps 7-12% of the U.S. population—but “this minority is taking over the machinery of U.S. state and religious institutions” (19; 18-19). It exists as a “core group” within the evangelical movement (20-21). It sanctifies ruthless capitalism (21-22). It has “seized control of the Republican Party” (22-23). It has received billions of dollars from the U.S. government (2324). Kenneth Blackwell, secretary of state of Ohio, is an example of its involvement in manipulating election results (24-26). It is encasing believers in a non-reality-based hermetic world (26-27). Its enemy list has been extended from “secular humanism” to

include gays, liberals, immigrants, and Muslims (27-28). It is infatuated with militarism and apocalyptic violence (2830). Its has psychological appeal (3033). Its success depends on the “moral failure” of those who fail to confront them (33-36). Ch. 2: The Culture of Despair. Epigraph: Fritz Stern(37). Jeniece Learned of Youngstown, OH, convert to pro-live movement, encountered at Valley Forge, PA, meeting of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation (37-41). The decimation of the middle class due to loss of manufacturing jobs (42-44) “[D]espair . . . is the fuel of the movement” (44). Belief in Rapture goes along with hostility to social welfare programs (45-46). June Hunt, daughter of H.L. Hunt, speech to Christian broadcasters in Anaheim, CA (46-48). Ch. 3: Conversion. Epigraph: Dietrich Bonhoeffer (50). Conversion techniques as taught by Dr. D. James Kennedy, founder of the Coral Ridge Hour and director of the Center for Reclaiming America and the Center for Christian Statesmanship (50-72). Ch. 4: The Cult of Masculinity. Epigraph: Klaus Theweleit. Roberta Pughe of Fort Lauderdale, FL (73-78). “Hypermasculinity” of movement is “compensation” for “emasculation” (7880). James Dobson’s sexism (80-83). Freudian interpretation (83-85). The psychology of the movement is fearbased (85-86). The need for obedience is inculcated (87-88). Churches promote male dominance and female submissiveness (89-90). Karen Santorum (90-91). Televangelists as patriarchal potentates (91-92). Danuta Pfeiffer,

heretic (formerly co-host of The 700 Club) (92-94). Ch. 5: Persecution. Epigraph: Tony Kushner (95). Report on a Dobsonsponsored Love Won Out conference in Boston on overcoming homosexuality (95-112). Ch. 6: The War on Truth. Epigraph: Hannah Arendt (113). Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY (113-16; 120-23; 126; 128). The creationist movement (11617). Review of the modern debate over evolution (117). Darwinism seen as a threat to the Christian mythos (117-18). Demonizing Darwin and his effects (11819). The pseudoscientific veneer of creationism (119-20; 122-24). John Whitcomb, co-author of The Genesis Flood (1961) (124-26). Dr. Jason Lisle (126-27). Ch. 7: The New Class. Epigraph: Karl Popper (129). Report on National Religious Broadcasters annual convention in Anaheim, CA (129-46). A celebritydriven culture that regards capitalism as divinely sanctioned (131-33). Political themes (134-36). Ties to white supremacists (136-37). Anticommunist antecedents (137). Dominionists control organization (138-40). Luis Palau, a Billy Graham associate, is a dissenter (14042). Christian Zionism; vituperation against Muslims (142-46). Quotes Simone Weil in Gravity and Grace: “Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty” (147). Ch. 8: The Crusade. Epigraph: Elias Canetti (148). Pastor Russell Johnson’s Ohio Restoration Project (148-50). Rhetoric of depersonalization dehumanizes opponents: only fellow Christians matter (150-52). “The movement is creating a parallel system of institutions”—education, media (15254). J. Kenneth Blackwell, secretary of state in Ohio and Republican

gubernatorial candidate (154-58). Rod Parsley, head of the World Harvest Church, speaks in prophetic tones with “crossover appeal among African Americans (158; 158-63). “Parsley is one of the masters at peddling this message of greed, hatred and intolerance as gospel truth. The Christian rhetoric, on the surface, is the same. . . . But the heart of the Christian religion . . . has been tossed aside . . . Only the shell, the form, remains, its empty carcass wrapped around these wolves like a cloak. Christianity is of no use to Parsley, Blackwell and the others. In its name they kill it” (163). Ch. 9: God: The Commercial. Epigraph: Walter Lippmann (164). Miracle saving Arthur Blessit claimed by Jan and Paul Crouch of Trinity Broadcasting Network (164-70). The venal Crouches’ opulent lifestyle (17071). TBN broadcasts “some of the movement’s most reactionary and bizarre preachers” (like Benny Hinn) in 75 countries (171-73). Scandal & controversy have not impeded TBN’s success (173-74). Mindlessness of TV makes it “the perfect medium” for the movement’s “destruction of critical thought” (174-75). Devotee interviewed in TBN’s gift shop in Costa Mesa, CA (175-79). Crouches’ theology undermines support for social programs (179-81). Ch. 10: Apocalyptic Violence. Epigraph: Stephen D. O’Leary (183). Timothy LaHaye, author of the Left Behind series (62 million copies in print) depicting an apocalyptically violent “stygian nightmare,” speaks at a daylong End Time conference at Gilead Baptist Church in Detroit (182-94). A prediction of Christian fascism “nearly 25 years ago” by Harvard Divinity School Prof. James Luther Adams, who worked in Nazi Germany in 1935-1936 and was a friend of Paul Tillich (194-201). “Those arrayed 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 and strength” (201-02). “Debate with the radical Christian right is useless. . . . This movement is bent on our destruction” (202). A call for resistance (202-03). Huckleberry Finn (204-05). “Ironically, it is idealism that leads radical fundamentalists to strip human beings of their dignity and sanctity and turn them into abstractions. Yet it is only by holding on to the sanctity of each individual . . . that we survive as a community and as individual human beings” (205). Appeal to “honesty and humility” (206). Refusal to engage in dialogue with the intolerant: “This movement seeks, in the name of Christianity and American democracy, to destroy that which it claims to defend. . . . All Americans . . . who care about our open society must learn to speak about this move-ment with a new vocabulary, to give up passivity, to challenge aggressively this movement’s deluded appropriation of Christianity and to do everything possible to defend tolerance. . . . Tolerance is a virtue, but tolerance coupled with passivity is a vice” (207). Notes. 14 pp. Bibliography. 148 books.

Acknowledgments. Support from the Nation Institute. Gratitude to Hamilton Fish, Jonathan Schell, Katerina vanden Heuvel; Princeton University & colleagues there (Sean Wilentz, Elaine Pagels). Assistants. “I owe a tremendous debt to those few who have been among the first to investigate and explain dominionism. They include Katherine Yurica, who produces the Yurica Report, available online; Frederick Clarkson, . . . and Sarah Diamond, whose books, such as Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States [1995], are indispensable” (233-34). Also: Ralph Nader, Robert J. Lifton, Fritz Stern, Robert O. Paxton, William Sloane Coffin, and the Rev. Coleman Brown, inter alia. Wife Kim. John “Rick” MacArthur of Harper’s. Agent Lisa Bankoff of International Creative Management. Index. 18 pp. About the Author. B.A. in Eng. Lit. from Colgate, M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School. Foreign correspondent for nearly 20 years (more than 50 countries). Author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning [2002], What Every Person Should Know about War [2003], and Losing Moses on the Freeway [2005].