Twenty-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.
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