Author Topic: American Fascists, by Chris Hedges  (Read 110 times)

forbitals

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American Fascists, by Chris Hedges
« on: October 17, 2019, 04:23:36 pm »
American Fascists

The Christian Right and the War On America


by Chris Hedges


https://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284461/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=American+Fascists&qid=1570920324&sr=8-1


So a number of interesting books referred to.


Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (2004)


Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (1952)


Sara Diamond, Spiritual Warfare: the politics of the Christian Right (1989)


--- Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States (1995)


--- Not by politics alone: the enduring influence of the Christian Right (1998)


William Slone Coffin, The Heart is a Little to the Left: Essays on Public Morality (1999)


there is also James Luther Adams


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Luther_Adams


Chris Hedges was one of his students.


Hedges starts with this from Umberto Eco


https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism


I find the above to be extremely insightful, but I only partially agree with it.  If you go with Eco, then Nietzsche is is a fascist, and so are Deleuze and Guattari.  I do not agree with this.

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forbitals

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Re: American Fascists, by Chris Hedges
« Reply #1 on: November 04, 2019, 07:44:42 pm »
American Fascists
The Christian Right and the War On America
by Chris Hedges

"
In this version of the Christian Gospel, the exploitation and abuse of other human beings is a good.  Homosexuality is an evil.  And this global, heartless system of economic rationalism has morphed in the rhetoric of the Christian Right into a test of faith.  The ideology it espouses is a radical evil, an ideology of death.  It calls wanton destruction, destruction of human beings, of the environment, of communities and neighborhoods, of labor unions, of a free press, of Iraqis, Palestinians or others in the Middle East who would deny us oil fields and hegemony, of federal regulatory agencies, social welfare programs, public education--in short, the destruction of all people and programs that stand in the way of a Christian America and its God-given right to dominate the rest of the planet.  The movement offers, in return, the absurd but seductive promise that those who are right with God will rise to dominate the rest of the planet.  The movement offers, in return, the absurd but seductive promise that those who are right with God will rise to become spiritual and material oligarchs.  They will become the new class.  Those who are not right with God, be they poor or Muslim or unsaved, deserve what they get.  In the rational world none of this makes sense.  But believers have been removed from a reality-based world.  They believe that through Jesus all is possible.  It has become a Christian duty to embrace the exploitation of others, to build a Christian America where freedom means the freedom of the powerful to dominate the weak.  Since believers see themselves as becoming empowered through faith, the gross injustices and repression that could well boomerang back on most of them are of little concern.  They assuage their consciences with the small acts of charity they or their churches dole out to the homeless or the mission fields.  The emotion -filled religious spectacles and spiritual bromides compensate for the emptiness of their lives.  They are energized by hate campaigns against gays or Muslims or liberals or immigrants.  They walk willingly into a totalitarian prison they are helping to construct.  They yearn for it.  They work for it with passion, self-sacrifice and a blinding self-righteousness.

"





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