American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On AmericaTwenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists first spoke of the United States becoming a Christian nation that would build a global Christian empire, it was hard to take such hyperbolic rhetoric seriously. Today, such language no longer sounds like hyperbole but poses, instead, a very real threat to our freedom and our way of life. In American Fascists, Chris Hedges, veteran journalist and author of the National Book Award finalist War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, challenges the Christian Right's religious legitimacy and argues that at its core it is a mass movement fueled by unbridled nationalism and a hatred for the open society. Hedges, who grew up in rural parishes in upstate New York where his father was a Presbyterian pastor, attacks the movement as someone steeped in the Bible and Christian tradition. He points to the hundreds of senators and members of Congress who have earned between 80 and 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups as one of many signs that the movement is burrowing deep inside the American government to subvert it. The movement's call to dismantle the wall between church and state and the intolerance it preaches against all who do not conform to its warped vision of a Christian America are pumped into tens of millions of American homes through Christian television and radio stations, as well as reinforced through the curriculum in Christian schools. The movement's yearning for apocalyptic violence and its assault on dispassionate, intellectual inquiry are laying the foundation for a new, frightening America. American Fascists, which includes interviews and coverage of events such as pro-life rallies and weeklong classes on conversion techniques, examines the movement's origins, its driving motivations and its dark ideological underpinnings. Hedges argues that the movement currently resembles the young fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s, movements that often masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and were willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power. The Christian Right, like these early fascist movements, does not openly call for dictatorship, nor does it use physical violence to suppress opposition. In short, the movement is not yet revolutionary. But the ideological architecture of a Christian fascism is being cemented in place. The movement has roused its followers to a fever pitch of despair and fury. All it will take, Hedges writes, is one more national crisis on the order of September 11 for the Christian Right to make a concerted drive to destroy American democracy. The movement awaits a crisis. At that moment they will reveal themselves for what they truly are -- the American heirs to fascism. Hedges issues a potent, impassioned warning. We face an imminent threat. His book reminds us of the dangers liberal, democratic societies face when they tolerate the intolerant. |
From inside the book
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Page 4
... wrote, are children of the devil, the father of lies (John 8:39–44). Jesus calls on his followers to love their enemies and to pray for their persecutors (Matthew 5:44), a radical concept in the days of the Roman Empire. He says we must ...
... wrote, are children of the devil, the father of lies (John 8:39–44). Jesus calls on his followers to love their enemies and to pray for their persecutors (Matthew 5:44), a radical concept in the days of the Roman Empire. He says we must ...
Page 6
... wrote, not biblical literalists, as they claim, but “selective literalists,” choosing the bits and pieces of the Bible that conform to their ideology and ignoring, distorting or inventing the rest.4 And the selective literalists cannot ...
... wrote, not biblical literalists, as they claim, but “selective literalists,” choosing the bits and pieces of the Bible that conform to their ideology and ignoring, distorting or inventing the rest.4 And the selective literalists cannot ...
Page 7
... wrote about the creation of the world in seven days, knew nothing about the process of creation.6 They believed the earth was flat with water above and below it. They wrote that God created light on the first day and the sun on the ...
... wrote about the creation of the world in seven days, knew nothing about the process of creation.6 They believed the earth was flat with water above and below it. They wrote that God created light on the first day and the sun on the ...
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... wrote, “is therefore morally tolerable only if it includes values wider than those of the community.”8 These values, democratic and Christian, are being dismantled, often with stealth, by a radical Christian movement, known as ...
... wrote, “is therefore morally tolerable only if it includes values wider than those of the community.”8 These values, democratic and Christian, are being dismantled, often with stealth, by a radical Christian movement, known as ...
Page 14
... wrote Rushdoony in Institutes of Biblical Law: Whenever freedom is made into the absolute, the result is not freedom but anarchism. Freedom must be under law or it is not freedom. . . . Only a law-order which holds to the primacy of ...
... wrote Rushdoony in Institutes of Biblical Law: Whenever freedom is made into the absolute, the result is not freedom but anarchism. Freedom must be under law or it is not freedom. . . . Only a law-order which holds to the primacy of ...
Contents
1 | |
CHAPTER TWO The Culture of Despair | 37 |
CHAPTER THREE Conversion | 50 |
CHAPTER FOUR The Cult of Masculinity | 73 |
CHAPTER SEVEN The New Class | 129 |
CHAPTER EIGHT The Crusade | 148 |
The Commercial | 164 |
Notes | 209 |
Bibliography | 223 |
Acknowledgments | 233 |
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American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America Chris Hedges No preview available - 2007 |
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