American Fascists

Monday, April 23, 2007

A Review of Chris Hedges' Christian Fascism

by Stephen Lendman

Chris Hedges is a journalist who for two decades was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times spending much of his time reporting from conflict zones in El Salvador, the Middle East and from Serbia covering the Balkan wars of the 1990s that divided and destroyed a country under the guise of humanitarian intervention providing cover for naked imperialism. There it allowed NATO (meaning the US) to expand into Central and Eastern Europe to keep predatory capitalism on the march for markets, resources and cheap labor everywhere using wars to get them and eliminate "uncooperative" heads of state like Slobodan Milosevic who was kidnapped, Mafia/Mossad-style, by the ICTY kangaroo court in the Hague, hung out to dry when he got there, and in the end effectively or, in fact, murdered to shut him up and prevent ugly truths coming out about what the conflict was really about and who the real criminals were.

The wars and subsequent show-trials had nothing to do with myths about it fed us by Western media. Those wanting the truth can find it in excellent books like Diana Johnstone's Fools' Crusade; the extensive research and writings of Edward Herman, Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, law professor Michael Mandel; and the newest book out on the subject titled Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice by British journalist John Laughland. Edward Herman wrote a superb review of the book in the April, 2007 issue of Z Magazine now available in which he pointedly says "the rules of the (illegally constituted) ICTY (established by the US and UK) stood Nuremberg on its head" and Laughland states "instead of applying existing international law, the ICTY has effectively overturned it" to hide NATO's crimes and allow more of the same playing out now in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.

The Christian Right supports these type crimes and motives for them readers will understand from Hedges' new book. He's also written many articles and is the author of four books including his bestselling War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning drawing on his experiences in the conflicts he covered describing how people and nations behave in wartime. The book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. His newest book is American Fascists - The Christian Right and the War on America published in 2007 and subject of this review. It's an incisive examination of the huge threat extremist Christian fascists pose to a shaky free society most people in the US take for granted but no longer will after reading this important book.

Hedges was educated at Colgate University and received a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School. For a time he was a seminarian and is now a senior fellow at the Nation Institute as well as a writer and lecturer at Princeton University where he teaches in the Program for American Studies. He was also an early vocal critic of the Bush administration's plan to attack, invade and occupy Iraq characterizing war as "the most potent narcotic invented by humankind" while professing not to be a pacifist.

This review will cover the essence and flavor of American Fascists beginning with some background on the Christian right, its influence, and danger it poses that Hedges covers in detail. He said he wrote the book out of anger and fear of the fundamentalist Christian Right seeking to establish theocratic dominion over society in America in the name of God and is using the Republican party as their vehicle to do it. He compares the movement's messianic mission to Italian and German fascism of the last century cloaking itself in Christianity and patriotism as their way to gain political power under theocracy's literal meaning from the Greek words "Theos" meaning "God" and "cratein/crasy" meaning to rule.

They're not kidding and neither is the risk they'll gain control of government with some observers in Washington believing they already have it including journalist/commentator Bill Moyers saying "for the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington." Some call them "The Christian Mafia" noting they're well-funded by and allied with wealthy, powerful hard right businessmen like beer magnate Joseph Coors and Amway founder Richard DeVos, Sr. Hedges calls them American Fascists, and his powerful book leaves no doubt how great a threat they are to our cherished liberties in a free society now in great jeopardy. Below is an explanation of the Christian Right and fundamentalist movement overall before getting into the book.

The Christian Right and Its Fundamentalist Movement

The Christian or Religious Right is broadly defined to include adherents of the radical or hard right embracing their kind of extremist political, economic, social and religious ideology falsely called conservative which is a relative term referring philosophically to favoring traditional values including libertarian ones centered on the right of everyone to be master of his or her own fate.

Earlier, sociologist scholar Sara Diamond wrote extensively on the rise of right wing groups in the country providing readers with a wealth of information based on her firsthand research. In her seminal 1995 book, Roads to Dominion, she traced the various movements over the past 50 years identifying four types she discovered:

1. The anti-communist conservative movement that in the 1970s included moral traditionalism of the emerging Christian Right.

2. The racist Right including the KKK and other segregationist groups and later the paramilitary white supremacist movement.

3. The Christian Right with its evangelical roots, and

4. Neoconservatives with roots in the Cold War and Democrat party later finding a new home in the Republican party under Ronald Reagan.

Diamond explained these movements involved scores of organizations, not monolithic in beliefs, who nonetheless share a common set of policy preferences that unite them listing three core areas - the economy, the "nation-state in global context (military and diplomatic)," and moral norms relating to race and gender. The movements are also unified in their advocacy of free-market capitalism, anticommunism (now anything left of center), US worldwide military hegemony, traditional morality, superiority of native-born white male Christian Americans, and the traditional nuclear family. In addition, Diamond lists what she calls the "three pillars of the US Right" calling them "tendencies, not absolutes" - libertarianism, anticommunist militarism (now all liberal/progressive/leftist non-extremist Christian ideology), and traditionalism.

In her book, Diamond included a detailed history of the Christian Right explaining how it came to be the largest, most influential movement on the far right dominating policy-making in Republican-led governments and especially the one not yet in power under George W. Bush. She explained it all in over 300 fact-crammed pages and another 100 pages of notes and references. It's important background information summarized here briefly to set the stage for Hedges important account of what the Christian Right is up to today, why it matters, and why this dominant movement threatens freedom and democracy in America and the values most here hold dear, including most of the 70 million evangelicals, a minority of whom are radical ideologues selling their dogma of hate and domination to convert the others and destroy non-believers.

Our Secular State Founding Principles

Christians founded America believing church and state should be separated, and Jefferson called for "a wall of separation" between them in 1802 after freedom of religion became part of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Today that bedrock founding principle is jeopardized by the extremist Christian Right. If they get their way, they'll tear down that wall with considerable public support from the 40% in the country polls say take the Bible literally, and nearly one-third believe in the "rapture" as Hedges explains in his book. The notion comes from conservative Protestant eschatology denoting the final happening when "good Christians" on earth are saved and "raptured" to heaven to be with Jesus in eternal immortality while non-believers are doomed to a more hellish, less "rapturous" fate Hedges characterizes as suffering "unspeakable torments below."

These believers and all others are entitled to their views, but the Constitution forbids them forcing them on others. Earlier Supreme Courts agreed in decisions requiring a "wall of separation" between church and state prohibiting the adoption of any state religion and requiring government to avoid undue involvement in religion, its trappings or expressions.

That status was put in jeopardy following the introduction in Congress of the "Constitution Restoration Act of 2004." It was then reintroduced in near-identical form in 2005, never passed, and now awaits its fate in the Democrat-led 110th Congress or a future one that may or may not let it die. If it's ever adopted in its present form, it will turn the country into a de facto theocracy despite its supporters' denial. Don't believe them as getting this passed is key to the Christian Right's mission to turn America into a fascist theocracy where constitutional law is abolished in favor of extremist Christian dogma Dominionists like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and others in the movement want to be the supreme law of the land.

In their world, under their law, practitioners of other faiths will be lawbreakers including about 75 million non-Christians and many others of the faith not willing to go along with their interpretation of it. The "Constitution Restoration Act of 2005" will also deny the Supreme Court's right to challenge anyone in or affiliated with federal, state or local government acknowledging the Christian "God (in their canon) as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government." Henceforth, any judge at any level interpreting the new law differently would be subject to impeachment and prosecution in the United (extremist Christian) States of (fascist) America ruled by people like Pat Robertson and others like him.

American Fascists Masquerading as True Christians - Defiling the Teachings of Christ, His Twelve Apostles and Others of the Faith

Hedges begins his book with a powerful quote from Blaise Pascal that "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." Until the modern era, the best examples in Christendom were the first Crusades when Popes like Urban II sanctioned holy wars between 1095 - 1291 to wrest Jerusalem and the "Holy Land" from "heretic" Muslims and later ones in the 16th century against infidels - in the name of God.

Today in America, Dominionists are the new "crusaders" Hedges equates with 20th century fascists because of their fanaticism. They cloak their ideology in Christianity and patriotism as their way to gain political power they claim is sanctioned by the Almighty to give the movement moral legitimacy. But beneath the surface, their doctrine is dark and foreboding posing real dangers to a free society not to be taken lightly. It comes from their view of Genesis 1:26-31 they interpret to mean God gave man "dominion....over all the Earth," and that Jesus commanded his followers to impose godly rule over everyone denouncing people of other faiths and non-believers. The modern blueprint for this ideology comes from the writings of RJ Rushdoony's 1973 book, The Institutes of Biblical Law, calling for a Christian government. It advocates torture and death for gays, non-Christians resisting conversion, anyone committing blasphemy, and women guilty of "unchastity before marriage."

Ideology of Radical Christian Right Fascists

Christian Right extremists advocate a frightening ideology detailed below. It includes:

-- Racial hatred.

-- White Christian supremacy.

-- Blind adoration and obedience of the movement's leadership while discouraging free and independent thought.

-- Male gender dominance portraying Jesus as a real man dominating through force like a powerful warrior ignoring fundamental Christian "thou shall not kill" doctrine. It's an ideology of hyermasculinity centered in a male-dominated authoritarian church and in the home where men are encouraged to dominate their wives, and women and children are taught to submit.

Well-known Christian Right leader James Dobson built his career on these ideas and now has a huge media empire dispensing advice as a Christian therapist over his Focus on the Family program. He's heard on more than 3000 radio stations and 80 TV stations reaching 200 million people in 116 countries from his 81 acre campus in Colorado Springs, Colorado employing 1300 people. He's fiercely anti-choice and anti-gay and has backed political candidates advocating abortionists be executed. He also calls stem cell research "state-funded cannibalism" and urges Christian parents take their children out of public schools and put them in Christian ones teaching his ideology.

Dobson preaches male dominance calling non-submission a violation of God's law. He also thinks murder is wrong but not when committed against infidel Iraqis or Islamic terrorists saying all non-believers, heretics and sinners will be consumed in an End Times Tribulation of terrible calamities and torment lasting seven years with non-redeemers condemned to eternal punishment. True believers adhering to holy scriptures, however, will be saved and "raptured" to eternal life and bliss in heaven. But getting there means going along with what he, End Times guru Timothy LaHaye, and other dominant Christian Right figures like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell preach including that they have a divine right to rule and must be obeyed.

Hedges notes that televangelists like Robertson, Benny Hill, Paul and Jan Crouch and others "rule their fiefdoms as despotic potentates" some adherents might think isn't God's way of doing things. They travel with burly bodyguards in kingly luxury on private jets; have amassed huge personal fortunes, much of it gotten from listener subjects; and show up everywhere in limousines with all the pomposity of heads of state and billionaire CEOs but in their case playing God as false prophets "clutching the cross and the Bible (offering seductively), like Mephistopheles, to lead us to a mythical paradise and impossible, unachievable happiness and security" provided we surrender our will to theirs and our money too, which is one way they get rich.

They preach a false gospel of prosperity and well-being preying on the gullible to believe faith alone cures illness, overcomes emotional distress, and assures financial and physical security so there's no need for traditional secular institutions, social service organizations and government regulatory agencies to exist. The movement preaches those not trusting them lack faith, that God alone is enough, and that fate is determined by a personal relationship with Jesus Christ in a world in which individuals surrender their will to a higher authority dictated by the leadership. Hedges sums it up saying tyranny follows when "fealty to an ideology becomes a litmus test for individual worth" and a world of "miracles and magic" is the only "place to turn for help" ruled by Christian Right extremists "grow(ing) rich off (the vulnerable) who suffer" becoming passive in the process.

-- Hatred of gays, the "gay agenda," and everyone in the LBGT movement with Christian Right adherents believing "same-sex attraction" can be cured like a virus their ideological medicine can fix. They define the problem as "male gender deficit" for which "reparative therapy" is the antidote gotten from a close connection with a strong heterosexual man "comfortable in his male role." With nonsensical ideological fervor, they believe bonding with a straight man makes homosexuality disappear while at the same time denouncing gays as depraved perverts and criminals threatening all Christians.

-- Disdain for non-believers and rational intellectual inquiry.

-- Condemnation of self-criticism and debate as apostasy.

-- Frequent use of the death penalty including for abortionists, gays, Muslim "terrorists" and other "heretics."

-- Adoration of militarism, war and apocalyptic violence. Adherence to these notions is so extreme that in the run-up to the Iraq conflict, many Christian Right leaders and End Times believers preached opposing war was anti-American and contrary to God's plan and what's written in the Bible as they interpret it. Their many supporters in Congress include Minority Leader John Boehner, who supports endless wars. He recently said "The spread of radical Islamic terrorism is a threat to our nation (and) the free world....They are (everywhere and) growing right here in America....dedicated to killing Americans (and) our allies, and ending freedom and wanting to impose some radical Islamic law on the entire world." With leaders like Boehner in Congress and the administration, it's easy to see the influence of radical Christian fundamentalist poison infecting the body politic and threatening everyone with it.

-- Illegalization of abortion even in the case of rape and incest.

-- Ending public education with Bush administration help budgeting billions of dollars for extremist Christian faith-based organizations. They renounce proved science like evolution allowing only creationism repackaged as "intelligent design" to be taught as well as other extremist Christian values sold through the "big lie" to trick those in the movement to believe mysticism and magic are facts. Hedges calls the process a "war on truth" where the culture war front lines are in classrooms, and the battle is one traditional educators are losing. Core values of a free and open society are being destroyed and replaced through a process of thought control based on pseudoscience assaulting the real thing on everything challenging extremist Christian ideology from creation to HIV/AIDS to pregnancy prevention to global warming to war and peace.

It's also happening inside government alarming the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) advocacy organization to write in its March, 2004 Scientific Integrity in Policymaking report: "There is significant evidence that the scope and scale of the (scientifically unethical) manipulation, suppression, misrepresentation of science by the (Christian Right dominated) Bush administration are unprecendented."

-- A primary Christian mission to proselytize non-believers to the faith by recruiting "soldiers in the army of Jesus Christ" quoting Dr. D. James Kennedy of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Coral Ridge, Florida near Fort Lauderdale, just north of Miami. His voice is dominant in the Christian Right and carried over the huge multimedia empire he built with his weekly broadcasts heard and seen on more than 600 TV stations, four cable networks and the Armed Forces Network reaching millions of people.

He also has a six day a week radio show on 744 stations reaching millions more preaching his radical ideology that "the Christian view of morality (according to the Christian Right) is the (only) one that should prevail in America" while denouncing liberal churches and other religions as godless. He holds workshops teaching how to sell his brand of religiosity using the same kinds of brainwashing/marketing techniques political and other extremist movements know work. They promise believers eternal life while those not saved are damned to eternal punishment.

-- Rejection of secular humanist notions of reason, ethics, social equity and justice believing a better world is possible through good will in a free and open society. Also claims secular humanist organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP, National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood and others want to destroy a Christian America. They further include the major TV networks (for airing sex and violence); major newspapers and magazines; US State Department; foundations like Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie; the UN; the Democrat party left/liberals; Harvard, Yale and 2000 other universities; and all others not buying their gospel of extremist white Christian dominionism and hate.

-- Seizing on the common denominator of pain, disillusion, dislocation, suffering and despair felt by millions caused by a culture of "soulless landscapes filled with strip malls and highways" to build a mass movement of servile, unthinking followers. They've replaced the real world of science, law and rationality with unquestioning belief in the word of the leadership and a glorious other utopian unreal world of prophets, mystical signs and magical mumbo jumbo that's real to them and in which they're "protected, loved, guided and blessed." It promises what followers don't have - a stable home and family, loving community, fixed moral standards, financial and personal success, and abolition of doubt and uncertainty based on religious vision and moral clarity. It also frighteningly promises a final apocalyptic battle of their "good" against all else they call "evil" exterminating the forces believers blame on their despair after which they will emerge victorious and saved.

-- A Christian totalitarian ethic based on a gospel of "free -market" capitalism, militarism and intolerance of democratic freedom of thought and action.

-- A fanatical devotion to and support for the state of Israel as Jerusalem, and specifically the Temple Mount Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary, is where Fundamentalist Evangelical Christians believe the second coming of the Messiah will be and thus is the holiest site in the world for Christians and Jews as well who want it for a third and final Temple. Enter Rev. John Hagee of the 18,000-strong Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, global TV ministry, and his Christians United for Israel (CUFI) radical organization founded in early 2006. He's perhaps the most extremist, bellicose and influential Christian Zionist in America today preaching Muslims are Islamic fascists waging war against Western civilization. His antidote is a gospel of preemptive war against Islam in self-defense including one against Iran now if he had his way. The danger is warmongering hate-preachers like Hagee and others reach large audiences convincing millions of adherents they're right.

The Dark Side of Radical Christian Morality

Hedges notes the movement's appeal is from the leadership's promise of a moral Christian nation promising renewal. But the message hides a darker side with Dominionists awaiting a fiscal, social and/or political crisis great enough to end democratic constitutional government replacing it with their vision of a Christian fascist theocratic America. In the meantime, they spent a generation working for this and now have great influence at state, local and federal levels of government.

Hedges notes the movement already controls the Republican party. In addition, Christian fundamentalists hold a majority of seats in 18 of 50 states plus large minorities in the others. Also, (as of the book's publication) 45 senators and 186 House members got 80 - 100% approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups: The Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum and Family Resource Council. This represents a dominant mass movement succeeding because mainstream Christians and the major media aren't confronting it, and their passivity threatens the constitutional rights of a democratic state on life support sinking fast with help from the Christian Right on the ascendancy.

They're influence is spread by Christian broadcasters commanding large audiences estimated to be 141 million in the US through radio and TV. They preach the Christian Right gospel flaunting their wealth, power and celebrity status to show it works for believers of the faith. They believe in unrestrained free-market capitalism, divinely sanctioned to freely create a global marketplace of (non-Christian, non-believing) serfs, denied all rights, forbidden to organize, and left to the mercy of a repressive state and corporate predators out for profit and to be allowed to dictate wages and control the right to work.

Compassion for the less fortunate is left to individual acts of charity and the churches with government out of it entirely and only dedicated to social control and aggressive militarism dictated by a warrior God (meaning Jesus) giving Christian America the right to rule the world and assure corporate giants can suck all the profit and life out of it. Hedges explains the Christian Right sells an ideology believing it's a "Christian duty to embrace the exploitation of others, to build a Christian America where freedom means the freedom of the powerful to dominate the weak....to bring about (their notion of ) a Christian utopia (that when no legal or social protections remain) it will be too late to resist (and the movement's leadership will be in control of everything)." Their plan is to "convince the masses to agitate for their own incarceration" shocking as that notion sounds, but it's working.

The movement is on a "crusade" against constitutional government working for now within the political system it wants to destroy and remake in its own image. Awaiting the time they'll take over, they're creating a parallel system within the existing one in which only "Bible-believing" judges, Christian teachers, and pseudo-reporters on Christian broadcasts are tolerated. And only white Christian men championing their extremist doctrine will be allowed to rule. Students are taught this ideology in Christian schools Hedges says are the fastest growing segment of the private school system. Textbooks used call Islam, Buddhism and African religions "false," Hinduism "pagan," and even Catholicism "distorted."

It's also heard on the campaign trail from candidates like "stalwart on the Christian Right" 2006 Ohio gubernatorial losing candidate Kenneth Blackwell who as secretary of state and co-chair of Ohio's Committee to Reelect George Bush in 2004 "arranged" for enough votes in the state to go to the sitting president to swing Ohio and the election for him. In his own losing effort in 2006, he appeared at Christian Right rallies laying out a blueprint for an authoritarian state where all dissent is heresy yet campaigned carefully not to offend those outside the movement by avoiding religious terminology.

Christian Right Fascism in Real Time in "Bush's Shadow Army" - Blackwater USA

Journalist and author Jeremy Scahill characterizes Blackwater USA as "the world's most powerful mercenary army" in his new book about them. Like Hedges' book, it's frightening reading needing exposure. It describes a "shadowy mercenary company....largely off the congressional radar....having remarkable power and protection within the US war apparatus" with no accountability or oversight on the ground in Iraq, (working for the State Department, not the Pentagon, with a $300 million no-bid contract), Afghanistan, on US streets and in neighborhoods like New Orleans, and coming soon to a city and neighborhood near you courtesy of the Gestapo-like Department of Homeland Security. With backing from the Bush administration, it operates outside the law and Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and is immune from civil lawsuits like the military. Scahill calls Blackwater the "Bush Administration's Praetorian Guard (along with the CIA long-serving in that capacity and that uses Blackwater in its illegal covert operations abroad and at home)."

Blackwater was founded in 1996 by former Navy SEAL and now super-rich Erik Prince who's closely tied to the Christian Right he funds and supports. It came into its own post 9/11 becoming a dominant player in the Bush administration's "Global War on Terror" (GLOB) now rebranded "The Long War." Today, Blackwater employs 2300 personnel in nine countries with 20,000 or more private mercenary contractors ready to go wherever needed and are part of the 100,000 contractors in Iraq, 48,000 of whom are paramilitary mercenaries. It also has a fleet of 20 aircraft (believed to have been used covertly as part of the Bush administration's "extraordinary renditions" of targeted individuals), including helicopter gunships, a private intelligence division, and operates at home on its 7000 acre Moyock headquarters Scahill calls "the world's largest private military base."

It's not enough for Blackwater in the burgeoning world of privatized secret mercenary paramilitary armies coming soon to a neighborhood near you, so the company is preparing by seeking an environmentally sensitive protected agricultural preserve southeast of San Diego, CA for it current expansion plans. It's an 824 acre site in Potrero, CA surrounded by the Cleveland Forest Blackwater wants for a military training base with 15 firing ranges for automatic and non-automatic weapons and various types of commando-type training facilities residents don't want near their community for obvious reasons concerning safety. People everywhere should object, for what may endanger one isolated community now or a larger one in New Orleans already may threaten us all in a paramilitarized America we're heading for locked down by Blackwater-type storm troops enforcing Christian Right fascist dogma.

In the meantime, Blackwater is cashing in big as a war profiteer getting huge no-bid Bush administration contracts Congress belatedly is showing interest in wanting to oversee to eliminate abuses. Whether it will happen, however, is problematical as current laws on the books aren't enforced making it likely new ones won't be either on all matters relating to foreign wars, so-called "terrorism," or anything claimed for national security. As long as the nation is in wars both parties support and the Christian Right is dominant, companies like Blackwater will thrive. With them, wars are easier to get into and harder to end meaning the culture of militarism will grow abroad and at home that's part of the Christian Right's agenda to impose its extremist theocratic rule on the country where, if it happens, democratic freedom, as we know it, is incompatible. Under it, Blackwater's private army will be on our city streets as thuggish paramilitary enforcers licensed to terrorize and kill with impunity bringing to America what they're well paid to do abroad.

"Eternal" Fascist Chickens Coming Home to Roost

A generation ago, the notion of a "global Christian empire" was barely credible, but Hedges' ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, 80-year old Dr. James Luther Adams, warned back then we'd all one day be fighting "Christian fascists." It was when Pat Robertson and other radical televangelists began preaching a new political religion aimed at creating a dominant Christian world according to their extremist views. Adams was in Germany in 1935 and 1936 and saw with horror what happened there firsthand. Hedges says he "was not a man to use the word 'fascist' lightly." He understood before most others the similarities of that time in Germany to what was developing here around 1980. He saw "how the mask of religion hides irreligion (and) our world is full to bursting with (various) faiths, each contending for allegiance." It was a virtual "battle of faiths, a battle of the gods who claim human allegiance."

Adams knew deep-seated resentments and bigotry exist in all democratic societies like Weimar Germany and saw it emerging in 1980s America promoting the destruction of democracy. He feared late in his life a movement here was on the march, more cleverly packaged and sophisticated than in the past and this time with no serious opposition. He saw hatreds being stoked, progressive forces weakening, and the despair of tens of millions of Americans losing good manufacturing and other well-paying jobs being easy prey for smooth-talking fanatics like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell promising miracles and visions of apocalyptic glory.

Adams said then to watch the Christian Right's treatment of gays knowing the Nazis used their "values" to repress opponents and just days after coming to power in 1933 Hitler banned all gay and lesbian organizations as his first target with many others to follow. Pastor Martin Niemoller warned us in different versions of his famous quotation listing Jews, communists and trade unionists targeted but omitting the one Hitler chose first. He didn't speak out because he wasn't one of them, and when they came for him there was no one left. It was too late.

Adams explained gays in a Christian Right dominated American would be the first "social deviants" singled out for condemnation, disempowerment and elimination as in Nazi Germany. Other targeted groups would follow, and we would be next. He then warned as does Hedges that forces 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." The Christian Right awaits that time "with gleeful anticipation" wanting adherents to be ready.

Hedges warns we also must be ready quoting Alvin Toffler saying "if you don't have a strategy you end up being part of someone else's strategy." It means challenging the Christian Right's gospel of hate, "exclusion, cruelty and intolerance in the name of God" with a doctrine of life, hope and respect for the worth and dignity of everyone, and their right to practice their beliefs openly in a free society. That's the American dream shared by free people everywhere. At the book's end, Hedges says preserving it means giving up "passivity, challeng(ing) aggressively this movement's deluded appropriation of Christianity (and fighting back) to defend tolerance." Wishing won't make it so. Defending democracy means working at it every day. Today we face an imminent threat to our freedom against which "tolerance coupled with passivity is a (deadly) vice" that will destroy us unless we're on guard to be sure it doesn't.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen each Saturday to the Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on The Micro Effect.com noon US central time.

The Brutality of Rudy Giuliani

Thursday, April 5

Today former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is often painted as "America's Mayor" after his decisive response to the attacks on September 11, 2001.

What is often forgotten and ignored is the well worn streak of brutality and totalitarianism that runs like a river through both his public and private actions. Let us look back to before the 9/11, to 1999 and Giuliani's dramatic reforming of the NYPD for both the better and the worst.

From Human Rights Watch.

New York is enjoying a dramatic drop in violent crime, with some attributing it to the police department's emphasis on more minor, "quality of life," crimes, such as graffiti, squeegee windshield washing, and subway turnstile-jumping, pursued as a way to demonstrate control of the streets and to apprehend individuals who may have outstanding arrest warrants against them.

...

Police abuse experts have wondered why, if the police leadership is eager to stop crime by aggressively pursuing minor criminals and crimes, it is failing to demonstrate the same aggressiveness in dealing with officers before they commit more serious offenses.

In 1997 the Giuliani dichotomy of being tough on civilians who commit minor offense and light on police who abuse their authority gradually began to be exposed and led to several tragic incidents.

First there was the wrongful arrest, torture and sexual abuse of Abner Louima by NYPD officers who mistakenly thought he had insulted one of them outside of a night club.

A federal court jury in Brooklyn convicted three New York City cops March 6 of conspiring to cover up the 1997 station house torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima.

Thomas Weise and Thomas Bruder each face five years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to obstruct a federal investigation into the savage assault on Louima. The third cop, Charles Schwarz, was convicted in a previous trial as an accomplice with Justin Volpe in torturing the immigrant worker inside the bathroom of the 70th Precinct in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn.

Volpe, convicted of sodomizing Louima with a broken piece of a broomstick, tearing a one-inch hole in his rectum and bladder, was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Schwarz, who was found guilty of holding Louima down during the attack, faces up to a life sentence.

The three cops greeted the verdict with disbelief and rage. "They're f—-ing liars; this is f—-ing bullshit," exclaimed Schwarz, who turned his wrath on his lawyer. As he was taken back into custody he slammed the wall and shouted out other obscenities.

Let me point out again that Louima wasn't even the guy they were looking for in the first place! This kind of brutality doesn't just happen, there has to be a permissive attitude in play at the department in order for anyone - let alone several officers - to believe that kidnapping and assaulting someone this way, not to mention intimidating witness and the victim to "keep quiet" could possibly work.

And how did Rudy react at the time? (From Human Rights Watch)

In August 1997, after the alleged torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima by police officers made national headlines and outraged city residents, the anti-crime record of the mayor and police department was tarnished. In uncharacteristic fashion, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir condemned the officers implicated in the incident as well as those who reportedly did nothing to stop it or report it.2 These were welcome condemnations, but conflicted with the mayor's persistent and seemingly automatic defense of officers accused of abusive treatment - even when he lacked a factual basis to do so - in his first term.

So did Rudy then take decisive steps to correct the problem? Not really.

Even when the mayor himself asked a task force to review police-community issues following the alleged beating and torture of Abner Louima, he immediately criticized the task force's majority report: "Some of the things [recommended] we've already done. Some of the things I've opposed in the past, I'll continue to oppose them. And some of the things are unrealistic and make very little sense."

Two years after Louima, another high profile police misconduct case landed on Rudy's lap - the murder of Amadou Diallo.

In February 1999, four New York City policemen searching for a rape suspect knocked on Amadou Diallo's door to question him. When he came to the door he reached inside his jacket, at which point the officers shot at him 41 times, hitting him with 19 bullets. The object Diallo was reaching for turned out to be his wallet.

Many New Yorkers were incensed and began to raise cries of W.W.B. - "Walking While Black!"

In New York City under Rudy Giuliani, we have seen the terrible resurgence of officially condoned police racism. Not long ago, a black cast member of a Broadway play was arrested and held overnight, missing his performance. Like Diallo, his only "crime" was that of being a black man in his own building at a time when it came under police attention. Ask any young black man in New York City, neatly dressed teenager or even a computer consultant wearing a suit, how many times he has been stopped and harassed by the police.

...

Giuliani's first Mayoral campaign began in a police riot, which no-one today remembers. The cops were demonstrating in front of City Hall, then inhabited by a black mayor, David Dinkins. Giuliani stood on the steps and delivered a speech so incendiary that the cops, many of them already drunk, began beating journalists and blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. It is heavily ironic that Giuliani no longer permits demonstrations on the steps of City Hall.

After Diallo, there was also the case of shooting of Patrick Dorismond:

On March 16, 2000, an undercover New York City narcotics officer approached Haitian-American Patrick Dorismond to solicit marijuana. Dorismond reportedly grew upset at officer's request, and scuffled with Detective Anthony Vasquez, who fatally shot Dorismond. Dorismond was later found to not have any drugs or weapons on him.

As he had done before, Giuliani blamed the victim.

Before Patrick Dorismond's body was cold, the Giuliani administration launched an obscene campaign to vilify the dead security guard and all but portray him as someone who had a police bullet coming to him. Having little to work with, Giuliani ordered Police Commissioner Safir to unseal a juvenile record on the man, disclosing that he had been arrested for robbery and assault in 1987, when he was 13.

The charge, reportedly stemming from a childhood fist fight over a quarter, was dropped and his record sealed because he was a child. But Giuliani's legal advisers took the position that once he was dead, Dorismond's right not to have police records from his childhood publicized by the mayor died with him. It allowed Giuliani to declare that Dorismond was no "altar boy" and that his previous brush with the police "may justify, more closely, what the police officer did."

As for the cop who shot the security guard, Giuliani praised him for his "distinguished" career as an undercover officer, declaring that in going out and shooting an innocent, unarmed man to death in the street he "put his life on the line in the middle of the night to protect the safety and security of this city."

But then 9/11 happened washed all this away from our collective memories, remaking Rudy into a brand new golden boy for the G.O.P.

He became a key speaker at the G.O.P's 2004 Presidential Convention even while NYPD officers continued their suppression tactics and even engaged in political espionage. Milking the situation for every ounce of juice Rudy wrote to the Republican faithful in an RNC mass-mailing on the eve of the 2004 elections repeating what he'd stated on the Convention floor.

On September 11, our nation faced the worst attack in our history.

On that day, we had to confront reality. Our people were brave in their response.

At the time, we believed we would be attacked many more times that day and in the days that followed. Spontaneously, I grabbed the arm of then Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik and said to Bernie, "Thank God George Bush is our President." I've been saying that every day since.

We needed George Bush then; we need him now; and we need him for four more years!

That conversation has since been shown to have been a complete fabrication, while Bernard Kerik who Giuliani had been pushing as the new head of Homeland Security has since been unceremoniously tossed off the bus in the wake of ethics issues and alleged ties to organized crime.

Skip forward to the here and now.

I have recounted all the above in such detail in order to provide context for what may be some of the most chilling aspects of Rudy Giuliani radical authoritarianism to be yet revealed : His belief in absolute Presidential Authority.

From Glenn Greenwald.

Rudy was asked about the Iraq supplemental. He said he finds it "irresponsible and dangerous." Then he began to muse about, after a veto, "would the president have the constitutional authority to support them [the troops], anyway?" He said he's a lawyer so he wouldn't offer an opinion "off the top of his head," then he proceeded to do just that.

He seemed to suggest that Bush could fund the Iraq war without Congress providing funding, but it was confusing. In an interview with a New Hampshire TV reporter after his remarks, he seemed more categorical and said, since the war had been authorized by Congress, the president has "the inherent authority to support the troops." But he added, "You have to ask a constitutional lawyer."

Glenn Greenwald is a Constitutional Lawyer, and he's not down with this.

Not only does Rudy believe that the President has some magic ability to fund a War on his own (ala Iran/Contra) but he also believes that the President has the authority to imprison American Citizens without charges, justification or review.

This view flies totally in the fact of Hamdi v Rumsfeld which clearly called for Judicial Review in such cases:

It would turn our system of checks and balances on its head to suggest that a citizen could not make his way to court with a challenge to the factual basis for his detention by his government, simply because the Executive opposes making available such a challenge. Absent suspension of the writ by Congress, a citizen detained as an enemy combatant is entitled to this process.

Following Hamdi the 109th Congress via the MCA effectively suspended the writ for foreign combatants - but it did not suspended for U.S. Citizens and the President certainly does not have that power independent of Congressional authority.

Giuliani may simply be confused on this point - but I doubt it since also think the President has the inherent power to defy the will of Congress.

In fact, it may well be this very long and clearly defined authoritarian streak of Giuliani's that is making him the darling of the Neo-Con Sect, causing them to brush aside his pro-abortion, pro-gay stances even among the deepest, darkest hearted of the red-staters. Especially among them.

For you see, they love nothing so much as a whip-cracking, brutal authoritarian in those parts. Just listen to what Katie O'Beirn and Rich Lowry have said about how Giuliani "women issues" have actually helped him. Lowry via Greenwald...

Have been talking to some smart people today about Giuliani. Two of them said independently that the appeal of Giuliani is he'd be "a tough SOB -- for you," and that he'd be "a d*head -- for you." Another said . . . that a Giuliani supporter he knows considers the nasty divorce a kind of asset because it speaks to his toughness. . . .

I think it's clear he'd be a "tough dickhead son of a bitch" for somebody - but there's no guarantee that it's going to you.

Greenwald on O'Beirn:

O'Beirne passed along an email from a friend which stated: "Contrary to popular speculation, the apparently brutal public dumping of Donna Hanover can only bolster the popularity of the man with conservatives." O'Beirne also suggested that an old Giuliani campaign ad showcasing his lovely family could be revised to say: "Don't worry. I dumped them all because I am that tough guy."

The Past is Prologue.

If you look back, the signs are all there. With a Giuliani Presidency we can not expect to see an actual moderate Republicanism, we will not see "Compassionate Conservative" finally realized, instead we can expect to see an even more extreme version of the Unitary Executive Theory than we have from John Yoo, more corruption and cronyism (Kerik), and even more excuses and justifications of racial profiling (against Muslims, Blacks and probably Latinos), illegal detainment of suspects and possibly even torture than we've seen so far from President Bush.

And that's saying something.

Even back in 1998 in response to Louima and Diallo - some New Yorkers saw it all clearly. He is George Bush Redux.

The kind of mayor I want for my city would be deeply agitated by the killing of Amadou Diallo and would ask why he had such poorly trained, highly strung "heroes" patrolling in plainclothes. Giuliani, on television, merely seemed pained, as he always does. Undoubtedly he wishes it had not happened, but only because it is a nuisance to deal with and (had it gotten out of control,

Yes, exactly how George Bush looked pained by the aftermath of Katrina - not because he was sorry that it had happened to all those who lost their lives and homes, but that it had happened to deeply embarrass him.

More from 1999:

Rudy Giuliani is a dictator in waiting. He is self righteous, absolute, has no sense of humor, and will go to any lengths to punish his enemies. He is temperamentally completely unsuited to be senator [As he was vying at the time], as it is a job requiring negotiation, collegiality, and charm. I believe he is interested in the job for one reason only: as a stepping stone to the Presidency. If so, he would be the most dangerous president since Richard Nixon. In fact, I think he would be more dangerous: Nixon doubted himself and sometimes hesitated at the opportune moment; Giuliani feels no doubt and will not hesitate.

He feels no doubt and would not hesitate, as Bush continues to "feel no doubt" about his decision to attack, invade and occupy an unarmed Arab nation?

This "lack of doubt", his self-righteous and authoritarian nature is exactly why he continues to be the rights true darling, and why should he succeed in claiming the Republican nomination he should be opposed by all who abhor neo-con fascists at all costs.

Vyan

It could happen here

In an excerpt from his new book, Salon's columnist explains why, for the first time since the resignation of Richard M. Nixon, Americans have reason to doubt the future of their democracy.

By Joe Conason

Feb. 19, 2007 | Can it happen here? Is it happening here already? That depends, as a recent president might have said, on what the meaning of "it" is.

To Sinclair Lewis, who sardonically titled his 1935 dystopian novel "It Can't Happen Here," "it" plainly meant an American version of the totalitarian dictatorships that had seized power in Germany and Italy. Married at the time to the pioneering reporter Dorothy Thompson, who had been expelled from Berlin by the Nazis a year earlier and quickly became one of America's most outspoken critics of fascism, Lewis was acutely aware of the domestic and foreign threats to American freedom. So often did he and Thompson discuss the crisis in Europe and the implications of Europe's fate for the Depression-wracked United States that, according to his biographer, Mark Schorer, Lewis referred to the entire topic somewhat contemptuously as "it."

If "it" denotes the police state American-style as imagined and satirized by Lewis, complete with concentration camps, martial law, and mass executions of strikers and other dissidents, then "it" hasn't happened here and isn't likely to happen anytime soon.

For contemporary Americans, however, "it" could signify our own more gradual and insidious turn toward authoritarian rule. That is why Lewis's darkly funny but grim fable of an authoritarian coup achieved through a democratic election still resonates today -- along with all the eerie parallels between what he imagined then and what we live with now.

For the first time since the resignation of Richard M. Nixon more than three decades ago, Americans have had reason to doubt the future of democracy and the rule of law in our own country. Today we live in a state of tension between the enjoyment of traditional freedoms, including the protections afforded to speech and person by the Bill of Rights, and the disturbing realization that those freedoms have been undermined and may be abrogated at any moment.

Such foreboding, which would have been dismissed as paranoia not so long ago, has been intensified by the unfolding crisis of political legitimacy in the capital. George W. Bush has repeatedly asserted and exercised authority that he does not possess under the Constitution he swore to uphold. He has announced that he intends to continue exercising power according to his claim of a mandate that erases the separation and balancing of power among the branches of government, frees him from any real obligation to obey laws passed by Congress, and permits him to ignore any provisions of the Bill of Rights that may prove inconvenient.

Whether his fellow Americans understand exactly what Bush is doing or not, his six years in office have created intense public anxiety. Much of that anxiety can be attributed to fear of terrorism, which Bush has exacerbated to suit his own purposes -- as well as to increasing concern that the world is threatened by global warming, pandemic diseases, economic insecurity, nuclear proliferation, and other perils with which this presidency cannot begin to cope.

As the midterm election showed, more and more Americans realize that something has gone far wrong at the highest levels of government and politics -- that Washington's one-party regime had created a daily spectacle of stunning incompetence and dishonesty. Pollsters have found large majorities of voters worrying that the country is on the wrong track. At this writing, two of every three voters give that answer, and they are not just anxious but furious. Almost half are willing to endorse the censure of the president.

Suspicion and alienation extend beyond the usual disgruntled Democrats to independents and even a significant minority of Republicans. A surprisingly large segment of the electorate is willing to contemplate the possibility of impeaching the president, unappetizing though that prospect should be to anyone who can recall the destructive impeachment of Bush's predecessor.

The reasons for popular disenchantment with the Republican regime are well known -- from the misbegotten, horrifically mismanaged war in Iraq to the heartless mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. In both instances, growing anger over the damage done to the national interest and the loss of life and treasure has been exacerbated by evidence of bad faith -- by lies, cronyism, and corruption.

Everyone knows -- although not everyone necessarily wishes to acknowledge -- that the Bush administration misled the American people about the true purposes and likely costs of invading Iraq. It invented a mortal threat to the nation in order to justify illegal aggression. It has repeatedly sought, from the beginning, to exploit the state of war for partisan advantage and presidential image management. It has wasted billions of dollars, and probably tens of billions, on Pentagon contractors with patronage connections to the Republican Party.

Everyone knows, too, that the administration dissembled about the events leading up to the destruction of New Orleans. Its negligence and obliviousness in the wake of the storm were shocking, as was its attempt to conceal its errors. It has yet to explain why a person with few discernible qualifications, other than his status as a crony and business associate of his predecessor, was directing the Federal Emergency Management Agency. By elevating ethically dubious, inexperienced, and ineffectual management the administration compromised a critical agency that had functioned brilliantly during the Clinton administration.

To date, however, we do not know the full dimensions of the scandals behind Iraq and Katrina, because the Republican leaders of the Senate and the House of Representatives abdicated the traditional congressional duties of oversight and investigation. It is due to their dereliction that neither the president nor any of his associates have seemed even mildly chastened in the wake of catastrophe. With a single party monopolizing power yet evading responsibility, there was nobody with the constitutional power to hold the White House accountable.

Bolstered by political impunity, especially in a time of war, perhaps any group of politicians would be tempted to abuse power. But this party and these politicians, unchecked by normal democratic constraints, proved to be particularly dangerous. The name for what is wrong with them -- the threat embedded within the Bush administration, the Republican congressional leadership, and the current leaders of the Republican Party -- is authoritarianism.

The most obvious symptoms can be observed in the regime's style, which features an almost casual contempt for democratic and lawful norms; an expanding appetite for executive control at the expense of constitutional balances; a reckless impulse to corrupt national institutions with partisan ideology; and an ugly tendency to smear dissent as disloyalty. The most troubling effects are matters of substance, including the suspension of traditional legal rights for certain citizens; the imposition of secrecy and the inhibition of the free flow of information; the extension of domestic spying without legal sanction or warrant; the promotion of torture and other barbaric practices, in defiance of American and international law; and the collusion of government and party with corporate interests and religious fundamentalists.

What worries many Americans even more is that the authoritarians can excuse their excesses as the necessary response to an enemy that every American knows to be real. For the past five years, the Republican leadership has argued that the attacks of September 11, 2001 -- and the continuing threat from jihadist groups such as al Qaeda -- demand permanent changes in American government, society, and foreign policy. Are those changes essential to preserve our survival -- or merely useful for unscrupulous politicians who still hope to achieve permanent domination by their own narrowly ideological party? Not only liberals and leftists, but centrists, libertarians, and conservatives, of every party and no party, have come to distrust the answers given by those in power.

The most salient dissent to be heard in recent years, and especially since Bush's reelection in 2004, has been voiced not by the liberals and moderates who never trusted the Republican leadership, but by conservatives who once did.

Former Republican congressman Bob Barr of Georgia, who served as one of the managers of the impeachment of Bill Clinton in the House of Representatives, has joined the American Civil Liberties Union he once detested. In the measures taken by the Bush administration and approved by his former colleagues, Barr sees the potential for "a totalitarian type regime." Paul Craig Roberts, a longtime contributor to the Wall Street Journal and a former Treasury official under Reagan, perceives the "main components of a police state" in the Bush administration's declaration of plenary powers to deny fundamental rights to suspected terrorists. Bruce Fein, who served as associate attorney general in the Reagan Justice Department, believes that the Bush White House is "a clear and present danger to the rule of law," and that the president "cannot be trusted to conduct the war against global terrorism with a decent respect for civil liberties and checks against executive abuses." Syndicated columnist George Will accuses the administration of pursuing a "monarchical doctrine" in its assertion of extraordinary war powers.

In the 2006 midterm election, disenchanted conservatives joined with liberals and centrists to deliver a stinging rebuke to the regime by overturning Republican domination in both houses of Congress. For the first time since 1994, Democrats control the Senate and the House of Representatives. But the Democratic majority in the upper chamber is as narrow as possible, depending on the whims of Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, a Republican-leaning Democrat elected on an independent ballot line, who has supported the White House on the occupation of Iraq, abuse of prisoners of war, domestic spying, the suspension of habeas corpus, military tribunals, far-right judicial nominations, and other critical constitutional issues. Nor is Lieberman alone among the Senate Democrats in his supine acquiescence to the abuses of the White House.

Even if the Democrats had won a stronger majority in the Senate, it would be naive to expect that a single election victory could mend the damage inflicted on America's constitutional fabric during the past six years. While the Bush administration has enjoyed an extraordinary immunity from Congressional oversight until now, the deepest implication of its actions and statements, as explored in the pages that follow, is that neither legislators nor courts can thwart the will of the unitary executive. When Congress challenges that presidential claim, as inevitably it will, then what seems almost certain to follow is not "bipartisanship" but confrontation. The election of 2006 was not an end but another beginning.

The question that we face in the era of terror alerts, religious fundamentalism, and endless warfare is whether we are still the brave nation preserved and rebuilt by the generation of Sinclair Lewis -- or whether our courage, and our luck, have finally run out. America is not yet on the verge of fascism, but democracy is again in danger. The striking resemblance between Buzz Windrip [the demagogic villain of Lewis's novel] and George W. Bush and the similarity of the political forces behind them is more than a literary curiosity. It is a warning on yellowed pages from those to whom we owe everything.

From "It Can Happen Here" by Joe Conason. Copyright (c) 2007 by the author and reprinted by permission of Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin's Press.

National Socialism and National Greatness

Posted by Justin Raimondo on February 05, 2007

In the Museum of Discarded Notions and Laughable Nostrums, surely the concept of “national greatness” deserves a special place. It was all the rage in neoconservative circles circa 1997, when David Brooks, then an editorialist for the Weekly Standard, penned his ode to the sense of “grandeur” and America’s imperial greatness as embodied, he thought, in the Library of Congress building. With its golden curlicues, and overly ornate projection of self-importance, and ideological symbolism, this structure represented, for Brooks, the spirit of an American past that had, by the 1990s, been nearly exhausted:

“The designers of the Library of Congress, like so many of their countrymen, thought America was on the verge of its own golden age. At the dawn of the 20th century, America was to take its turn at global supremacy. It was America’s task to take the grandeur of past civilizations, modernize it, and democratize it. This common destiny would unify diverse Americans and give them a great national purpose.”

With the end of the cold war, and the absence of any overwhelming threat to American national security, this great national purpose had shrunk to something no more impressive than, as Francis Fukuyama, the neocons’ former philosopher-in-residence, put it, “economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.”

We had reached, said Fukuyama, “the end of history,” which, he averred, “will be a very sad time” because “the struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one’s life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism” will be replaced by such mundane matters as earning a living, recycling old wine bottles, and the eternal problem of keeping both wife and mistress happy. The age of heroism is past, and from now on our task will merely be the “endless care-taking of the museum of human history” and “centuries of boredom.”

Without any wars to fight, you see, or any causes requiring the spilling of copious amounts of blood, your archetypal neocon is bored—not that these typically soft, physically incapable, often dwarfish and invariably pear-shaped policy wonks would ever consider personally fighting for any of these noble causes, mind you: Their role is to instigate the wars, it is for others to fight them. War, for the neocon, is strictly a spectator sport, rather than a hands-on business. However, the very idea of a world without any really serious conflicts struck them as the ultimate in ennui, although at the end of his “end of history” essay, Fukuyama was hope that “perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again.”

He was right about history getting started again, albeit not in the manner he or anyone else anticipated: the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon put the neocons back in business again, opening up, as it did, a new world fresh with possibilities of conflict.

The end of the Soviet empire had made their cachet as ex-Commies—which imbued them with an aura of expertise, and gained them easy entry to the then-booming field of Kremlinology—obsolescent, and deprived the world of its Manichean gloss. Post-9/11, what Fukuyama termed “the worldwide ideological struggle” was revived, albeit with an Islamic-Arabic adversary rather than a Slavic one. Once again, the cry went up: “To the barricades!” And its echoes were heard from Washington to Tel Aviv.

Instead of building monuments to our global supremacy, and devoting ourselves to the endless caretaking of the museum of human history, we could once again get back to the noblest cause of them all—war. And not any ordinary war, but a “War on Terrorism” —a war without end. Oh, for joy! History was back —with a vengeance.

The neocon response to this was to develop a new ideology; or, rather, to distill and perfect their old ideology—warmed over Social Democratic nostrums combined with a merciless devotion to the cult of Ares —that has morphed, in its later stages, into what might be categorized, without a whole lot of Procrustean maneuvering, as a variant of fascism. The contempt for the “bourgeois” virtues, as given expression by Senor Fukuyama, the longing for the heroic, the valorization of death for the sake of an abstraction —these “aristocratic” virtues, as Fukuyama characterized them, are back in vogue, along with the cult of militarism, the idea of Big Government, and the revival of genuinely authoritarian impulses in the West.

That these impulses were manifesting themselves among rightist intellectuals, rather than nesting exclusively on the left, as in the past, was merely a function of the neoconservative mindset, which is as much a history as it is an ideology. Many of the leading neocons, after all, had been leftists, usually of the Trotskyist variety, and retained the universalist-totalitarian frame of reference long after abandoning left-sectarian politics. Neoconservatism, in an important sense, is merely Trotskyism turned inside out. Instead of exporting the “world socialist revolution,” they are intent on spreading what George W. Bush described as the “global democratic revolution.” And they do it with the same revolutionary fervor that they —or their intellectual ancestors —once hailed the Red Army and its founder.

On domestic matters, historically, the neocons have been all over the map: their one true and abiding belief is in the liberating power of American military might. With the implosion of the Leninist project, and the apparent “end of history,” the neocons were essentially put out of business — until the worst terrorist attack in American history revived their fervor, and their fortunes. And this marked yet another milestone in their long odyssey from Marxism to a new kind of authoritarianism on the right.

I hesitate to use the far too often abused term “fascism,” which has been used to describe everyone to any opponent of the New Left during the 1960s to anyone who opposed U.S. entry into World War II. The Communists, during the “third period” of the 1930s, routinely describe the Social Democrats as “social fascists,” and this has been a favorite term of abuse employed by the neocons to smear anyone who crosses their path. Yes, even I, a libertarian, i.e., one who believes that the best government is no government, have been so described, by no less an authority than David Horowitz’s Frontpage.

Yet there is such an ideology as fascism, historically speaking, and its main themes are being revived in contemporary neoconservative ideology to a chilling degree. Aside from the fin-de-siecle romanticism of Fukuyama’s pining for a rebirth of history, the neocons have replicated most if not all of the classic symptoms of the fascist mindset, if not quite yet generated all the characteristics of fascism in power. No, we don’t have a single-party state, which is the central organizational principle of fascist ideology. But that’s only because the neocons have yet to seize total power, and sweep away the last vestiges of constitutional democracy. However, they lack none of the telltale symptoms of fascists out of power, that is, of aspiring authoritarians..

The essence of neoconservatism is war and the valorization of conflict, and, as such, seems tailor made for the post-9/11 era. To the early fascist theoreticians, and the first successful fascist politician, Mussolini, war was the noblest cause of them all, not merely a necessity but a sacred obligation. Acts of war were, for the fascists, acts of worship: Ares replaced Zeus in the fascist Olympus. The one true abiding faith of the fascists was in the efficacy of military force as a means to shape society, and this militarism dominated every aspect of fascist society, which was built around war and preparations for war. Mussolini sought to recreate the Roman Empire —an ambition shared by neoconservative columnist and military maven Max Boot, whose “The Case for An American Empire” lays out the American claim to the imperial purple.

The faith of the neocons in the ability of the American military to “transform” the Middle East, and create Jeffersonian republics where before there had been nothing but tyranny and grinding poverty, is surely a mystical phenomenon, just as surely and frankly religious as faith-healing or Christian Science. Whereas the foreign policy of a constitutional republic is necessarily limited to the defense of the nation and its interests, a nation that declared its foreign policy goal to be “benevolent global hegemony”—as Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan put it in their 1996 foreign policy manifesto — is a creature of a different type. It is surely not a republic, in any meaningful sense of the term, but an empire: perhaps even an evil empire, for all its “benevolent” pretensions. Not since the fascist and national socialist movements of the 1930s had any mass political movement put forward a program of world conquest as a political goal.

The ideal fascist model was Sparta —a warrior nation geared for conquest, in a permanent state of mobilization for war. For the fascist, life is war, nations are necessarily always in conflict, and this inevitable clash of interests must always in end war —and in the victory of one over the other. This worldview is mirrored in the endless “war on terrorism,” which our rulers promise us will last at least a generation. Perpetual war, as far as the eye can see —this is the core doctrine of neoconservatism, and the animating spirit of classical fascist movements, as well as German national socialism.

War abroad means an atmosphere of conformity and hostility to dissent on the home front, and this has translated, in contemporary neoconservative thought, to the equation of antiwar sentiment with treason. In his infamous smear attack on paleoconservative and libertarian critics of the Iraq invasion, David Frum, the neocon Vyshinsky, attacked yours truly, as well as an entire platoon of antiwar right-wingers, as “unpatriotic conservatives.” On a lower level, where neocon ideology meets talk radio and Fox News, we have Sean Hannity howling “Enemy of the State” at war critics and dissenters from the neocon party line. Like classic fascist movements of the past, neoconservatism today values and promotes uniformity of thought, and seeks to enforce intellectual homogeneity with strictures equating dissent with treason. Andrew Sullivan, a leading warmonger and neocon shill, infamously accused a “fifth column” on “both coasts” with not so secretly sympathizing with Osama bin Laden and other enemies of America. On a cruder level, we have the rantings of David Horowitz, who routinely accuses his political opponents of being in league with the terrorists, either consciously or “objectively,” as the Marxists used to say.

Conservatism used to mean anti-statism. Today, under the rubric of neoconservatism, this has been stood on its head. It is a Bizarro World conservatism, where the individualism of Barry Goldwater and Frank S. Meyer has given way to the militarized groupthink of David Frum and the Dittohead demagoguery of Rush Limbaugh. From The Conscience of a Conservative [.pdf] (or, perhaps, A Choice, Not an Echo) to An End to Evil is a long way to travel: it has been a long way downward, but it seems today’s ostensible “conservatives,” committed as they are to what is rapidly becoming an openly fascist movement, are finally scraping rock bottom.

Racism is not necessarily related to fascism, yet the example of German national socialism makes the connection inevitable. And here, too, there are ominous parallels. Neoconservatism, like Nazism, has its “Other,” it’s equivalent of the Eternal Jew, and that is the Eternal Arab. A great deal of how the neocons see the Arab and Muslim worlds is rooted in a brazenly racist mindset, exemplified in the writings of Raphael Patai, whose book, The Arab Mind, reportedly had a large influence in official Bush administration circles, as well as among neoconservatives outside the government. As Seymour Hersh pointed out in his investigation into the horrors of Abu Ghraib:

“The notion that Arabs are particularly vulnerable to sexual humiliation became a talking point among pro-war Washington conservatives in the months before the March, 2003, invasion of Iraq. One book that was frequently cited was The Arab Mind, a study of Arab culture and psychology, first published in 1973, by Raphael Patai, a cultural anthropologist who taught at, among other universities, Columbia and Princeton, and who died in 1996. The book includes a twenty-five-page chapter on Arabs and sex, depicting sex as a taboo vested with shame and repression. ‘The segregation of the sexes, the veiling of the women . . . and all the other minute rules that govern and restrict contact between men and women, have the effect of making sex a prime mental preoccupation in the Arab world,’ Patai wrote. Homosexual activity, ‘or any indication of homosexual leanings, as with all other expressions of sexuality, is never given any publicity. These are private affairs and remain in private.’ The Patai book, an academic told me, was ‘the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior.’ In their discussions, he said, two themes emerged —’one, that Arabs only understand force and, two, that the biggest weakness of Arabs is shame and humiliation.’"

Torture as a political act, the central theme of a propaganda campaign, is something we must surely associate with fascist movements. Furthermore, to single out persons of a particular ethnicity or religion —in this case, Arabs and Muslims —is so evocative of the National Socialist German Workers Party that one has to wonder if it’s intentional. That the neoconservatives are now carrying the pro-torture banner is a major milestone is their journey to a peculiarly Americanized form of fascism.

In terms of ideology and policy, as well as in style and spirit, the post-9/11 neoconservative movement exhibits all the classic characteristics of a genuinely fascist phenomenon: militarism, leader worship, intellectual authoritarianism, delusions of “national greatness,” hatred of the Other, the romanticization of violence, and a program of permanent war. All that is lacking is a one-party state —and we are, perhaps, a major terrorist attack away from that.

Justin Raimondo

Justin Raimondo is Editorial Director of Antiwar.com.

The Whole Fish

Part I
by One Pissed Off Liberal
rshields_30064@netzero.net
Sat Feb 03, 2007

The fish rots from the head down as the saying goes, but make no mistake; the whole damned fish is rotten. And yes, I'm talking about our government.

--MORE--

The Radical Christian Right Is Built on Suburban Despair

Millions of Americans live trapped in soulless exurbs which lack any kind of community, leaving them feeling isolated and vulnerable. Without alternatives for their social despair, they flock to demagogues promising revenge and a mythical utopia.

By Chris Hedges, AlterNet
Posted on January 19, 2007

The engine that drives the radical Christian Right in the United States, the most dangerous mass movement in American history, is not religiosity, but despair. It is a movement built on the growing personal and economic despair of tens of millions of Americans, who watched helplessly as their communities were plunged into poverty by the flight of manufacturing jobs, their families and neighborhoods torn apart by neglect and indifference, and who eventually lost hope that America was a place where they had a future.

This despair crosses economic boundaries, of course, enveloping many in the middle class who live trapped in huge, soulless exurbs where, lacking any form of community rituals or centers, they also feel deeply isolated, vulnerable and lonely. Those in despair are the most easily manipulated by demagogues, who promise a fantastic utopia, whether it is a worker's paradise, fraternite-egalite-liberte, or the second coming of Jesus Christ. Those in despair search desperately for a solution, the warm embrace of a community to replace the one they lost, a sense of purpose and meaning in life, the assurance they are protected, loved and worthwhile.

During the past two years of work on the book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, I kept encountering this deadly despair. Driving down a highway lined with gas stations, fast food restaurants and dollar stores I often got vertigo, forgetting for a moment if I was in Detroit or Kansas City or Cleveland. There are parts of the United States, including whole sections of former manufacturing centers such as Ohio, that resemble the developing world, with boarded up storefronts, dilapidated houses, pot-hole streets and crumbling schools. The end of the world is no longer an abstraction to many Americans.

Jeniece Learned is typical of many in the movement. She stood, when I met her, amid a crowd of earnest-looking men and women, many with small gold crosses in the lapels of their jackets or around their necks, in a hotel lobby in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. She had an easy smile and a thick mane of black, shoulder length hair. She was carrying a booklet called "Ringing in a Culture of Life." The booklet had the schedule of the two day event she is attending organized by The Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation. The event was "dedicated to the 46 million children who have died from legal abortions since 1973 and the mothers and fathers who mourn their loss."

Learned, who drove five hours from a town outside of Youngstown, Ohio was raised Jewish. She wore a gold Star of David around her neck with a Christian cross inserted in the middle of the design. She stood up in one of the morning sessions, attended by about 300 people, most of them women, when the speaker, Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, asked if there were any "post-abortive" women present. Learned ran a small pregnancy counseling clinic called Pregnancy Services of Western Pennsylvania in Sharon, where she attempted to talk young girls and women, most of them poor, out of abortions.

She spoke in local public schools, promoting sexual abstinence, rather than birth control, as the only acceptable form of contraception. And she had found in the fight against abortion, and in her conversion, a structure, purpose and meaning that previously eluded her. The battle against abortion is one of the Christian Rights's most effective recruiting tools. It plays on the guilt and shame of woman who had the abortions, accusing them of committing murder, and promising redemption and atonement in the "Christian" struggle to make abortion illegal, in the fight for life against "the culture of death."

Her life, before she was saved, was, like many in this mass movement, chaotic and painful. Her childhood was stolen from her. She was sexually abused by a close family member. Her mother periodically woke Learned and her younger sister and two younger brothers in the middle of the night to flee landlords who wanted back rent. The children were bundled into the car and driven in darkness to a strange apartment in another town. Her mother worked nights and weekends as a bartender. Learned, the oldest, often had to run the home. Her younger sister, who was sexually abused by another member of the family, eventually committed suicide as an adult, something Learned also considered. As a teenager she had an abortion.

She was taking classes at Pacific Christian College several years later when she saw an anti-abortion film called The Silent Scream. "You see in this movie this baby backing up trying to get away from this suction tube," she said. "And, its mouth is open and it is like this baby is screaming. I flipped out. It was at that moment that God just took this veil that I had over my eyes for the last eight years. I couldn't breathe. I was hyperventilating. I ran outside. One of the girls followed me from Living Alternative. And she said, 'Did you commit your life to Christ?' And I said, 'I did.' And she said, 'Did you ask for your forgiveness of sins?' And I said, 'I did.' And she goes, 'Does that mean all your sins, or does that mean some of them?' And I said, 'I guess it means all of them.' So she said, 'Basically, you are thinking God hasn't forgiven you for your abortion because that is a worse sin than any of your other sins that you have done.'"

The film brought her into the fight to make abortion illegal. Her activism became atonement for her own abortion. She struggled with depression after she gave birth to her daughter Rachel. When she came home from the hospital she was unable to care for her infant. She thought she saw an 8-year-old boy standing next to her bed. It was, she is sure, the image of the son she had murdered.

"I started crying and asking God over and over again to forgive me," she says. "I had murdered His child. I asked Him to forgive me over and over again. It was just incredible. I was possessed. On the fourth day I remember hearing God's voice. 'I have your baby, now get up!' It was the most incredibly freeing and peaceful moment. I got up and I showered and I ate. I just knew it was God's voice."

In the United States we have turned our backs on the working class, with much of the worst assaults, such as NAFTA and welfare reform, pushed though during President Clinton's Democratic administration. We stand passively and watch an equally pernicious assault on the middle class. Anything that can be put on software, from architecture to engineering to finance, will soon be handed to workers overseas who will be paid a third what their American counterparts receive and who will, like some 45 million Americans, have no access to health insurance or benefits.

There has been, along with the creation of an American oligarchy, a steady Weimarization of the American working class. The top one percent of American households have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. This figure alone should terrify all who care about our democracy. As Plutarch reminded us "an imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."

The stories believers such as Learned told me of their lives before they found Christ were heart breaking. These chronicles were about terrible pain, severe financial difficulties, struggles with addictions or childhood sexual or physical abuse, profound alienation and often thoughts about suicide. They were chronicles without hope. The real world, the world of facts and dispassionate intellectual inquiry, the world where all events, news and information were not filtered through this comforting ideological prism, the world where they were left out to dry, abandoned by a government hostage to corporations and willing to tolerate obscene corporate profits, betrayed them.

They hated this world. And they willingly walked out on this world for the mythical world offered by these radical preachers, a world of magic, a world where God had a divine plan for them and intervened on a daily basis to protect them and perform miracles in their lives. The rage many expressed to me towards those who challenge this belief system, to those of us who do not accept that everything in the world came into being during a single week 6,000 years ago because it says so in the Bible, was a rage born of fear, the fear of being plunged back into a reality-based world where these magical props would no longer exist, where they would once again be adrift, abandoned and alone.

The danger of this theology of despair is that it says that nothing in the world is worth saving. It rejoices in cataclysmic destruction. It welcomes the frightening advance of global warming, the spiraling wars and violence in the Middle East and the poverty and neglect that have blighted American urban and rural landscapes as encouraging signs that the end of the world is close at hand.

Believers, of course, clinging to this magical belief, which is a bizarre form of spiritual Darwinism, will be raptured upwards while the rest of us will be tormented with horrors by a warrior Christ and finally extinguished. This obsession with apocalyptic violence is an obsession with revenge. It is what the world, and we who still believe it is worth saving, deserve.

Those who lead the movement give their followers a moral license to direct this rage and yearning for violence against all those who refuse to submit to the movement, from liberals, to "secular humanists," to "nominal Christians," to intellectuals, to gays and lesbians, to Muslims. These radicals, from James Dobson to Pat Robertson, call for a theocratic state that will, if it comes to pass, bear within it many of the traits of classical fascism.

All radical movements need a crisis or a prolonged period of instability to achieve power. And we are not in a period of crisis now. But another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil, a series of huge environmental disasters or an economic meltdown will hand to these radicals the opening they seek. Manipulating our fear and anxiety, promising to make us safe and secure, giving us the assurance that they can vanquish the forces that mean to do us harm, these radicals, many of whom have achieved powerful positions in the Executive and legislative branches of government, as well as the military, will ask us only to surrender our rights, to pass them the unlimited power they need to battle the forces of darkness.

They will have behind them tens of millions of angry, disenfranchised Americans longing for revenge and yearning for a mythical utopia, Americans who embraced a theology of despair because we offered them nothing else.

Chris Hedges, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and former Pulitzer-prize winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
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