Jesus, Endless War, and the Unstoppable Rise of American Fascism

0

The Democratic Party – which had 50 years to write Roe v. wade in law with Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in full control of the White House and Congress at the start of their presidencies – orients its electoral strategy around the Supreme Court’s expected decision to lift the judicial ban on the ability states to pass laws restricting or prohibiting abortion.

I doubt that will work.

The hypocrisy and duplicity of the Democratic Party are the fertilizer of Christian fascism. His exclusive focus on culture wars and identity politics at the expense of economic, political, and social justice fueled a right-wing backlash and stoked the bigotry, racism, and sexism he sought to curtail. His choice of image over substance, including his repeated failure to guarantee abortion rights, has left Democrats suspicious and reviled.

The Biden administration invited Amazon union president Christian Smalls and unionized workers from Starbucks and other organizations to the White House at the same time it re-awarded a $10 billion contract to Amazon and the National Security Agency (NSA) for the cloud. computing. The NSA contract is one of 26 federal cloud computing contracts Amazon has with the U.S. Army and Air Force, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Security Interior, the Ministry of the Interior and the Census Bureau. Withholding federal contracts until Amazon allows free and open labor organizing would be a powerful stance on behalf of workers, still awaiting the $15 minimum wage promised by Joe Biden as a candidate. But behind the walls of the Potemkin village of the Democratic Party stands the billionaire class. Democrats have failed to address the structural injustices that have turned America into an oligarchic state, where the filthy rich bicker like children in a sandbox over multi-billion dollar toys. The longer this political theater game continues, the worse things will get.

RELATED: Democracy vs. Fascism: What Do These Words Mean – and Do They Describe This Moment?

Christian fascists have coalesced like a cult around Donald Trump. They are financed by the most retrograde forces of capitalism. The capitalists allow the stupidities of the Christian fascists and their self-destructive social and cultural wars. In return, the billionaire class gets corporate monopolies, privatized union-busting and municipal services, including public education, revoked government regulations, especially environmental regulations, and are free to engage in a tax boycott. virtual.

The war industry loves Christian fascists who turn every conflict, from Iraq to Ukraine, into a holy crusade to crush the latest version of Satan. Christian fascists believe that military power, and the “manly” virtues that come with it, are blessed by God, Jesus and the Virgin Mary. No military budget is too big. No war waged by America is bad.

The hypocrisy and stupidity of the democrats is the fertilizer of Christian fascism, which is financed by the most retrograde forces of capitalism in exchange for the destruction of the welfare state.

These Christian fascists make up perhaps 30% of the electorate, roughly equivalent to the percentage of Americans who believe abortion is murder. They are organized, attached to a vision, even a perverse one, and flooded with money. John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, mediocre jurists and Federalist Society ideologues who carry the banner of Christian fascism, control the Supreme Court.

Establishment Republicans and Democrats, like George Armstrong Custer on Last Stand Hill, surrounded the cars around the Democratic Party in a desperate attempt to prevent Trump, or a mini-me of Trump, from returning to the White House. . They and their allies in Silicon Valley are using algorithms and overt de-platforming to censor critics from left and right, mindlessly turning the likes of Trump, Alex Jones and Marjorie Taylor Greene into martyrs. This is not a battle for democracy, but the spoils of power waged by billionaires against billionaires. No one intends to dismantle the corporate state.

The ruling class of both parties has told lies about NAFTA, trade deals, welfare ‘reform’, the abolition of financial regulations, austerity, the war in Iraq and neoliberalism that have caused far more harm to the American public than any lie from Trump. Reptilian slime seeps from every pore of those politicians, from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to Biden, who supported the 1976 Hyde Amendment banning federal funding for abortions and in 1982 voted to support a constitutional amendment that would allow states to cancel Roe v. Wade. Their hypocrisy is not lost on the public, even with their armies of consultants, pollsters, press courtiers, PR teams and ad agencies.


Want a daily recap of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.


Marjorie Taylor Greene is distraught and out of whack. She claims that Hillary Clinton was involved in a child mutilation and pedophilia ring and that several high-profile shootings were staged. But armed, like Trump, it is a political cruise missile aimed directly at the heart of the discredited centers of traditional power.

Hatred is the fuel of American politics. Nobody votes for whoever they want. They vote against those they hate. Marginal black and brown communities have suffered worse assaults than the white working class, but they have been politically disorganized with militarized police operating as internal armies of occupation. The erosion of due process, the largest prison system in the world, and the disenfranchisement of all rights, often including the right to vote due to felony convictions, as well as the loss of access to most social services and jobs, reduced many black and brown people to subsistence level at the lowest rung of the American caste system. They are also prime targets for Republican-sponsored voter suppression and redistricting.

The cement that maintains this Christianized fascism is not prayer, even if we will have many, but war. War is the raison d’etre of all systems of totalitarianism. War justifies a constant search for internal enemies. It is used to revoke basic civil liberties and impose censorship. War demonizes those in the Middle East, Russia or China who are blamed for the economic and social debacles that inevitably worsen. The war diverts the rage engendered by a dysfunctional state towards immigrants, people of color, feminists, liberals, artists, anyone who does not identify as heterosexual, the press, antifa, Jews, Muslims , Russians or Asians. Make your choice. It’s an assortment of fanatics. Every item on the menu is fair game.

I spent two years with the Christian Right reporting and researching my book”American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on AmericaThese Christian fascists never hid their agenda or their desire to create a “Christian” nation, any more than Adolf Hitler hid his demented vision of Germany in “Mein Kampf”. They feed, like all fascists, on the despair of their followers. They paint gruesome portraits of the end times. when the long-awaited annihilation of unbelievers portends the glorious return of Jesus Christ. The battle of Armageddon, they believe, will be launched from the Antichrist’s world headquarters in Babylon once the Jews regain control of Israel. The closer we get to Armageddon, the dizzier they become.

These people believe this stuff, like they believe in QAnon or the election fraud that supposedly put Biden in power. They are convinced that a demonic, secular and humanist ideology propagated by the media, the United Nations, elite universities, the ACLU, NAACP, NOW, Planned Parenthood and the Trilateral Commission, as well as the State Department American and the great foundations, seeks to destroy them.

Christian fascists do not fear nuclear war. They welcome him. The marriage of the eternal war industry with Christian fascists who yearn for the apocalypse is terrifying.

Violence is seen as a cleansing agent, a key part of any fascist movement. Christian fascists do not fear nuclear war. They welcome him. The Biden administration’s senseless provocations of Russia, including the decision to provide $33 billion in aid to Ukraine, target 10 Russian generals for assassination, and pass Ukraine the intelligence needed to sink the Moskva, the missile cruiser that was the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, is supercharging the ideology of the Christian right. The marriage of the war industry, determined to wage war forever, with Christian fascists yearning for the apocalypse is terrifying. Biden is sleepwalking us into a war with Russia and possibly China. The Christian fascists will accelerate the bloodlust.

The political deformities we have engendered are not unique. They are the product of a society and government that no longer operates on behalf of the citizens, that has been seized by a small cabal, in our case a corporation, to serve its exclusive interests. The flimsy promises made by politicians, including the announcement by candidate Barack Obama that the first thing he would do in office would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which he never had time to do during his eight years as president, are worth nothing. Next week’s vote in the Senate on a bill affirming that abortion is legal in the United States, which is expected to be blocked by Republicans’ use of filibuster, a Senate procedural rule that requires 60 votes to advance most laws in the 100-member chamber is another empty gesture.

We saw the consequences of this dysfunction in Weimar Germany and Yugoslavia, a conflict I covered for The New York Times. Political stagnation and economic misery breed rage, despair and cynicism. It gives birth to demagogues, charlatans and crooks. Hate animates political discourse. Violence is the main form of communication. Revenge is the greatest good. War is the main occupation of the state. It is the vulnerable and the weak who pay.

Read more from Chris Hedges on war, peace and the global crisis of democracy:

Share.

Comments are closed.