American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America
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Product Description
Twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and additional radio and televangelists first spoke of the United States apt a Christian nation that would erect a global Christian empire, it was hard to take such hyperbolic speechifying seriously. Today, such language no longer sounds like hyperbole but poses, as a replacement for, a very real threat to our freedom and our way of life. In American Fascists, Chris Hedges, veteran journalist and leader 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 jingoism 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 a name 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 praise ratings from the three most influential Christian Right promotion groups as one of many signs that the movement is burrowing deep inside the American government to sabotage 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 regularly 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 challenger. In fleeting, 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 ruin 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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It is historically appealing that Hedges tags “radical calvinism” for totalitarian roots. The Reformers were fighting that very thing on both sides. In fact, they establish the Counter Reformation and the radical Anabaptist movement to be of a kind with roots in the same history. Furthermore, both German nazism and Italian fascism have their roots in Catholicism, exactly the opposite direction in which Hedges points. This is historicism of the worst kind. Hedges may have a divinity degree but that does not a historian make.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
How can a sane and honest person compare few extreme cases of so-called Christian right to the fascist movement that is reliable for millions of deaths between 1930-1945? If anything, fascism was closer in its ideology to the democratic party of today. Huge role of the government, socialistic ideals, limiting freedom of speech-sounds familiar? I see the liberals of today getting there honestly quick. I just heard Hedges on Dennis Prager show. When questioned about his book, his research and conclusions all he had to say was “I will stick to my words”. It’s a pretty weak defense of ones work. I didn’t expect more. There is an Islamofascist movement growing every day. We have 150 million muslims wanting to kill the West and we worry about Rudolf and few others. It just shows the ignorance of the left. Why don’t you research the theme, get out of your comfort zone and challenge the fake premises and conclusions in this and additional books whining about non-existing problem of “Christian fascism”? Start looking for burkas and stop shaving your facial hair. The Christians that you despise so much will be your only defense.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Amazon deleted my previous review of American Fascists.
Perhaps I should rephrase:
By quoting Stephen Metcalf’s paraphrase of a WH Auden poem, “I refuse to extract even the thinnest gauze of self-importance or rhetorical urgency from the thing I despise, even by detesting it; because by drawing on its power, I only enhance its power.”
By quoting the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assembly, and to petition the Government for a restore of grievances.”
And by quoting the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in part: “No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I just saw Mr. Hedges on The Colbert Report and I am appalled. It’s incredible for Mr. Hedges to come out with his thesis that persons who call Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, and Pat Robertson respectable are “fascists”. Anyone who does not see the world as Mr. Hedges has been lumped in with the likes of Mao, Stalin, and Hitler.
Every time I hear a name moan about the absolutes of the Christian faith is a name who has fallen to the clutches of Moral Relativism. This basically renders the first chapter of the Book of Romans obsolete. God does not judge people anymore because He likes everyone even though they might not obey what He says in His word. Mr. Hedges should look at what sort of Christian faith was taught at the time of the Revolutionary War and stop listening to his brothers at Sojourners Magazine and/or Jimmy Carter.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
It’s yet another Jesus-bashing book from the far left. they continue to promote the evils of Christianity and the lie that fascism is a product of the right. Hitler was a socialist. National Socialist Party is kinda a clue. every major world dictator of the 20th century was a left-wing fascist, and yet this despise-monger continues the myth that it was all the work of persons “evil” Jesus Freaks.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5