The danger of American fascism & what really needs to be done about the religious right

By Diane Silver

A fascinating and frightening interview with Chris Hedges has been posted at Salon. A former New York Times bureau chief in the Middle East and the Balkans, Hedges has a new book out called American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.

After a career spent covering fascism overseas, Hedges started examining the Religious Right in the United States and discovered amazing similarities between the American right and totalitarian movements.

I think there are enough generic qualities that the group within the religious right, known as Christian Reconstructionists or dominionists, warrants the word. Does this mean that this is Nazi Germany? No. Does this mean that this is Mussolini's Italy? No. Does this mean that this is a deeply anti-democratic movement that would like to impose a totalitarian system? Yes.

Two things stand out in the interview, which was conducted by Michelle Goldberg, who also wrote about the religious right in Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism.

One is Hedges' assessment that this country is only one crisis away from seeing the dominionists come to power. Such a crisis could take the form of worsening economic problems or a terrorist attack, and the resulting upheaval and fear would drive the push for fascism.

The other thing that struck me was Hedges diagnosis of the problem that is driving people to the religious fight. The problem is despair, both economic and personal. Others have done a great job of describing the economic despair, but few have tackled the issue of the psychological despair. (Michael Lerner in The Left Hand of God is one of the few who has tried.)

For me, the engine of the movement is deep economic and personal despair. A terrible distortion and deformation of American society, where tens of millions of people in this country feel completely disenfranchised, where their physical communities have been obliterated, whether that's in the Rust Belt in Ohio or these monstrous exurbs like Orange County, where there is no community. There are no community rituals, no community centers, often there are no sidewalks. People live in empty soulless houses and drive big empty cars on freeways to Los Angeles and sit in vast offices and then come home again. You can't deform your society to that extent, and you can't shunt people aside and rip away any kind of safety net, any kind of program that gives them hope, and not expect political consequences.

Like Hedges (and Lerner), I believe these problems are at the heart of the desperation in so many people's lives.

Books like Hedges are important. We all need to be aware and be politically involved in the fight against the religious right.

However, political action, no matter how strong and organized, will never stop such an anti-democratic movement. Fascism can't be stopped until we heal our society and create a culture that provides hope, community and meaning to people's lives.

Clergy oppose same-sex marriage ban, saying it has “the smell and feel of Salem”

Once again, we need to call your attention to the fact that the headline is right. Clergy are working against the GOP’s attempt to write a ban on same-sex marriage into the U.S. Constitution. The outrage of the new group -- called Clergy for Fairness -- mirrors the fury we saw in Kansas from mainstream ministers when a similar proposal was passed here.

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention: This is relevant today because a Senate vote on the ban is expected during the week of June 5.

Although the New York Times covered the new organization’s press conference, the conservative Cybercast News Service had the most complete coverage. They report:

Rev. Paul Simmons, director of the Center for Ethics at the University of Louisville, called the amendment "misguided, prejudicial and unwarranted legislation."
…

Simmons added that the measure reflects "the thunder of the religious right," which he argued "represents neither the majority of religious voices nor of the American people." He also labeled the FMA "an effort to deprive a certain group of people in the United States, who are citizens, rights guaranteed" in the U.S. Constitution.

"The FMA (Federal Marriage Amendment) has the smell and feel of Salem" -- the Massachusetts town where witchcraft trials held in the late 1600s led to the deaths of 24 people -- "and the Puritan experiment in America," he stated, which "never seems to die."

Although the amendment isn’t expected to have enough support in the Senate to pass, the emergence Clergy for Fairness is significant. For too long moderate and progressive clergy have either been silent in the face of the onslaught of the radical religious right, or they have been ignored by the news media.

Journalists still seem tend to define religious leaders as being solely of an evangelical or ultra-conservative Catholic bent. The smattering of coverage of yesterday’s news conference, though, is a sign that some of that is changing.

Out here in the reddest of red states, last year’s campaign to ban same-sex marriage became a rallying cry for mainstream clergy who had simply had enough. The Kansas campaign led to the formation of two groups that have already begun to be active.

There are signs that the moderate and progressive religious community is finally finding its voice. Last week more than 1,000 people met in Washington, D.C., in a conference held by the new Network of Spiritual Progressives. Beliefnet.com reports:

"We're talking about first, baby steps here," said Rabbi Michael Lerner, head of the Network of Spiritual Progressives and editor of the progressive Jewish magazine Tikkun.

Let us hope that the formation of Clergy for Fairness and the “baby steps” of the Network of Spiritual Progressives are signaling the arrival of a new force in American politics. At the very least, it is time that the news media and politicians realized that people of faith are represented by more than one, narrow brand of Christianity.

The political problem with ridiculing people of faith

Bruce Wilson has an interesting critique of Michael Lerner over at Talk 2 Action. I agree with some of what he says and disagree with other things, and I’ve engaged in a tiny bit of debate with him. In my most recent post, I noted:

I never feel attacked by the ACLU. I don't feel attacked by Americans United for Separation of Church and State or any of the other good organizations working so hard to keep that wall up between religion and government. What I feel is a personal attack that tends to blindside a person at dinner parties, on Internet forums and postings, and in a variety of other personal ways.

Some (not all) folks walking a secular path look down on and denigrate anyone of any sort of faith. The ridicule is real, and it can be pretty nasty. If I feel this as a very Leftist, very liberal person of faith, then anyone of a traditionally Christian and even a politically moderate bent might feel it even more. And if I am not just hallucinating this, then we in the anti-theocratic movement need to understand that this kind of anti-religion ridicule is hurting us politically.

In other words, the secular Left cannot expect to be able to make common cause with and work with people of faith, even those who agree with them, if individual secularists continue to make fun of people with a spiritual life.

Some of my other comments on Lerner can be found at:

Love and Fred Phelps

While the Left Abdicates...

Love and Fred Phelps

In his new book, The Left Hand of God: Taking Our Country Back From The Religious Right, Michael Lerner argues that people take two different two approaches to both life and politics.

One approach is based on hope and love and seeks to heal the world. The other is based on fear and seeks to dominate all who disagree with the fearful. People who operate out of fear believe they have to dominate others because they believe those other people are trying to dominate them, Lerner writes.

I'm still reading Lerner's book, so I can't tell you yet, if I agree with everything he says. However, if he does nothing more then describe the politics based on hope vs. the politics based on fear, then Lerner will have made an important contribution to public debate. I suspect that Lerner's paradigm isn't new or even unique to him. However, I've never seen its political ramifications discussed as clearly and in as much detail as Lerner does.

This week we witnessed an interesting example of that paradigm at work on In This Moment.

I blogged in Yet Another Fred Phelps Commentary about the need for all of us -- myself and my political allies included -- to admit that there are times when we should let go of politics and be silent. The topic was the Phelps family's new hobby of picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq. I noted that I thought that such picketing was a bad idea and should end.

A member of the Phelps family hopped over (electronically speaking) and posted a series of furious comments, designed to insult me and anyone who agreed with me. In often incoherent and increasingly lengthy lists of Bible quotes, he also appeared to be trying terrify me with thoughts that I was going to be horribly punished by a vicious God.

My crime? I am a woman who is in love with another woman. I suspect I may also be doomed to burn, in his mind, for disagreeing with him about the law and the First Amendment.

What I find most fascinating about this person's response to my blog is that he missed the point. Yes, I was arguing that his family should stop picketing funerals, but I was also arguing that everyone deserves to be treated with love and decency -- even families who work so hard to hurt others. I don’t mean this as a put down. I am not saying this in a kind of sneer, declaring that even those people deserve love. I mean this sincerely.

What I said is that all mourners should be treated with compassion. No one's funeral -- not even the funeral of Fred Phelps when his time comes -- should be picketed.

However, the Phelps family emissary missed the point. The fact that I think his family should be treated with compassion, apparently, was of no interest to him. In reading his responses, I got the feeling that he may not even have been able to see that I was offering him compassion.

"You cannot understand the love of God until you understand His hate," this fellow wrote.

I disagree.

I believe that you cannot understand God at all, or even understand the secular universe, without first understanding love. And you can't do that until you are able to see when love is being offered to you.

Peace to you all this weekend.
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Mike Hendricks at the Kansas City Star had an interesting take on the Phelps family.

Meanwhile, the Kansas Senate unanimously passed a bill Thursday limiting picketing at funerals. "We want people to be able to bury their dead in peace," Sen. Jean Schodorf, R-Wichita, said.

While the Left abdicates, real pain drives voters into the arms of the Religious Right

Given the fact that you folks – all couple hundred of you – read me because I am totally brilliant (note sarcasm), it pains me to have to admit that another author has figured out something I’ve been fumbling with for months now.

Please click over to AlterNet and read Finding Spirit Among the Dems and then run out and buy Michael Lerner’s new book “The Left Hand of God: Taking Our Country Back From the Religious Right.” (HarperSF 2006). Lerner is the rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synogogue and editor of TIKKUN magazine: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society.

The writer at AlterNet called Lerner’s new book a paradigm-shifting work that “doesn't just change the view so much as it changes our way of viewing.” From what I can tell from reading the story, I think that writer may well be right.

First, Lerner clearly identifies the chasm that separates the two sides in what I suspect is the real cultural struggle going on in the world right now. That war isn’t necessarily between political ideologies, but between approaches to life. Lerner says:

The Left Hand of God means looking at the universe through the perception that love, kindness, generosity and caring for others are the central ontological realities of life, and that when they do not manifest in the world in which we live, the world is distorted and needs to be healed. The Right Hand of God, conversely, means looking at the universe through the perception that life is a struggle of all against all, and that the only path to security is through domination of others.

I find those words compelling because they match my spiritual approach to life. However, Lerner also has ideas for the secular and the political. He explains that the reason the Religious Right is drawing people is not because those folks are brainwashed or idiots. It’s because they are in real pain, suffering from the flaws in our society, and the Religious Right is not only talking about that pain but claiming to have a cure.

This is the point I was fumbling to make in my piece, The Lesbian and the Fundamentalists, when I talked about a “hole” in society.

Lerner says it so much better and clearer than I did.

[M]any of the millions of people who get attracted to the Religious Right are not motivated by excitement for their political program, but by the experience of community, caring for others, and its ability to recognize and address the deep distortions in life that are caused by a societal ethos of materialism and selfishness.

Unless Democrats and the political Left understand this, they will never succeed at the ballot box again, Lerner argues.

By its tone-deafness to the spiritual suffering of the American people, the Left continues to miss the fundamental crisis that demands a social transformation, and in so missing this reality, it clears the path for reactionary forces to enter the spiritual arena and manipulate that crisis in destructive and potentially fascistic directions.

Amen to that.

Now that Lerner has defined the problem, what are we going to do about it?