Christo-fascism is Here, Now!

In a 2004 article that served as the basis for his new book pulling the fire alarm on thuggish Christian fascism, Chris Hedges recalled:

'Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, told us that when we were his age, he was then close to 80, we would all be fighting the 'Christian fascists.'

The warning, given to me 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global, Christian empire. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it.

But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery.

The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible. ...

All debates with the Christian Right are useless. We cannot reach this movement. It does not want a dialogue. It cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. It is not mollified because John Kerry prays or Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday School. These naive attempts to reach out to a movement bent on our destruction, to prove to them that we too have "values," would be humorous if the stakes were not so deadly. They hate us. They hate the liberal, enlightened world formed by the Constitution.

Our opinions do not count. This movement will not stop until we are ruled by Biblical Law, an authoritarian church intrudes in every aspect of our life, women stay at home and rear children, gays agree to be cured, abortion is considered murder, the press and the schools promote "positive" Christian values, the federal government is gutted, war becomes our primary form of communication with the rest of the world and recalcitrant non-believers see their flesh eviscerated at the sound of the Messiah's voice.

The spark that could set it ablaze may be lying in the hands of an Islamic terrorist cell, in the hands of the ideological twins of the Christian Right. Another catastrophic terrorist attack could be our Reichstag fire, the excuse used to begin the accelerated dismantling of our open society.

The ideology of the Christian Right is not one of love and compassion, the central theme of Christ's message, but of violence and hatred. It has a strong appeal to many in our society, but it is also aided by our complacency. Let us not stand at the open city gates waiting passively and meekly for the barbarians.

They are coming.

They are slouching rudely towards Bethlehem.

Let us, if nothing else, begin to call them by their name." Hedges's book is a wake-up call to how the Christian-male "warrior" zealots are waiting for the chance to turn America into an Apocalyptic Unmerciful Christian Theocracy.

If you believe this is sensationalistic fear mongering, read the book. Hedges is a former award-winning New York Times reporter and mainstream journalist. He is writing based on his research and analysis. This is not fiction.One of the most striking conclusions we drew from "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America" is that it offers some indirect insight into the inexplicable political survival of George W. Bush.The world that Hedges enters and depicts is run by white Christian males who reach pinnacles of religious and political power through the use of fear. They see themselves as warriors for Christ. Male authority and apocalyptic violence are integral to the Christian fundamentlist movement.

George W. Bush couldn't be a better role model, could he?