“American Fascists:The Christian Right’s War on America

[jaysunb]

A very long, but very good interview

Harris: Chris, a lot of people may not know that you are a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, and your new text, “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America,” I like your perspective, because you, obviously from an educated standpoint, can speak to the theology around this war.

Hedges: I look at the religious right, the radical religious right, those people who want to create a Christian nation, as a mass movement. I don’t give them much religiosity at all. I think they have acculturated the Christian religion with the worst aspects of American imperialism and American capitalism. They prey on the despair of tens of millions of Americans in this country who have been completely disenfranchised and shunted aside with the creation of this American oligarchy. That is the engine of the movement. These people, their lives have become train wrecks, their communities have been physically obliterated with the flight of manufacturing jobs, or they live in these soulless exurbs, in places like Orange County, with no community center, no community rituals—you know, they don’t even have sidewalks. And they’re lonely, and they’re alienated, and they’re lost. And that’s the fodder that demagogues use to amass totalitarian movements. And they do that by offering these people a world of magic, of belief in destiny and miracles and angels, that Jesus has a plan for them. And they essentially remove them from the reality-based world. That’s what creationism is about. And everybody who’s written about despotic movements, from Hannah Arendt to Karl Popper to Fritz Stern to Robert Paxton, cites this despair as being the kindling that allows despotic, totalitarian movements to tear apart the open society. So for me the radical Christian right is very much a manifestation of the inequities and the injustices that plague American society. We now live in a country where the top 1 percent control more wealth, or have more wealth, than the bottom 90 percent combined. The absolute destruction of the working class—and much of my family has been a victim of this—has now been accompanied by an assault on the middle class. So anything that can be put on software, from engineering to finance to architecture, can get outsourced, where it’ll end up in India, where they’ll work for a third of the wages, with no health insurance, no benefits. These kinds of assaults against the working and middle class are absolutely deadly to a democratic state. And that’s something that even the Greeks wrote about. I mean, Plutarch and Thucydides understood that.

Harris: Clarify for me, though, the relation to the evangelical right, or evangelists in general. I understand the preying on a particular class—because they’re vulnerable. When you live without for most of your life, you’re vulnerable to anything that looks appealing to you. How are the evangelists using this to influence government? Because you seem to be implying that they have a profound effect on the way that American government works.



http://www.truthdig.com/interview/item/20070206_chris_hedges_christian_right_war_on_america/

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Started the book last night. Read about 4 chapters, It's good.

[Corgigal]

3. Good

I just ordered this book yesterday. He one of my favorite authors.

[jonnyblitz]

4. He is one of my favorites also.

he isn't as well known as others. i sometimes come across his writings in somewhat obscure places. it's always worth reading.

[jonnyblitz]

2. i just bought the book a few weeks ago.

I liked his other book, too, "War is the Force that Gives Us Meaning". :thumbsup:

I will now read this interview. thanks for posting.