American Fascism

Chris Hedges has written a new book called American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America. I have not yet read it, but I can direct you to the 2004 article which prompted it, and to this interesting interview with Hedges, who also wrote War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. This excerpt from the 2004 piece stands out:

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.

This movement will not stop until we are ruled by Biblical Law, an authoritarian church intrudes in every aspect of our life, women stay at home and rear children, gays agree to be cured, abortion is considered murder, the press and the schools promote "positive" Christian values, the federal government is gutted, war becomes our primary form of communication with the rest of the world and recalcitrant non-believers see their flesh eviscerated at the sound of the Messiah's voice.

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.

I think there is much truth here, especially in the "Reichstag" observation. The jihadists may not realize that they could achieve theocracy in America more easily than in Jordan or Syria or Egypt or Iraq.

Still, I would like to think that Hedges overstates his case. I am not certain that he does, but I would like to think that.

One reason why the myth of the Illuminati is so widely believed in American fundamentalist circles (the obscenely-popular Tim LaHaye has pushed it for decades) may have to do with the fact that Thomas Jefferson explicitly endorsed the values of Adam Weishaupt, which are the values of the Enlightenment. In a metaphorical sense, America was always an experiment in Illumination. The Obscurati -- the forces of "Christian" Darkness -- have sought to undermine that experiment since its inception.

Still, every movement depends on soldiers -- on legions of human beings, who can, theoretically, be reached. Are Jesusmaniacs the American Borg? Or can they rediscover their humanity?

I was as frightened as anyone else by the film Jesus Camp, in which youngsters in a large class are told to "speak in tongues" en masse, the way normal kids are told to recite the alphabet. This is psychosis, not Pentacost. These kids are literally being taught to go mad. Can these victims of psychological child abuse ever regain normality?

A few posts down, I wrote "There is no hope." The afore-linked video still makes me feel despondent -- especially when I recall the cosmic blonde who, when asked how many sides a triangle has, answered "There's no sides!" Or when I think of the conspiracy buff who averred that Al Qaeda was a "wing of the Masonic order."

(By the way: When Jay Leno does similar interviews, surprisingly little footage hits the cutting room floor, or so I've been told. Leno once went to Cal State Northridge and asked a guy "How many moons does the Earth have?" The answer: Ten.)

(Man, I still can't get over the idea of a triangle with "no sides." Trying to visualize such a thing fries my last brain cell. Doesn't that sound like a line from The Matrix or The Book of the Law?)

Still, I would like to think that I'm wrong, and that Hedges is wrong. Is there hope? Can we find grounds for conversation with the brainwashed masses who know absolutely nothing of the world except that they must worship Ares renamed as Jesus? Can we reach those people? Or must we view tens of millions of our fellow citizens as The Eternal Enemy?