Fascist elements in the religious right
By Heraclitus
Two excellent posts from two of my favorite bloggers, Jill Filipovic and Amanda Marcotte, on the resemblance between certain strands of conservative Christianity in the US today and classical fascism. They were prompted by this interview with Chris Hedges, a New York Times war correpsondent and author of a new book, American Fascists. The mention of fascism might seem alarmist or overly polemical to some, even an instance of the justly dreaded reductio ad Hitlerum. But see especially Jill's link-rich post, which is particularly thoughtful and well-informed. And Amanda's post identifies more pervasive, dehumanizing or alienating dynamics in our society which give rise to these problems, in addition to delivering some characteristically penetrating and brilliantly caustic criticisms of the religious right in particular.
But I mention these posts not only to bring them to your attention but to say something about the larger phenomenon or problem they're discussing (my observations here are no doubt unoriginal, but I'm not knowingly stealing them from anyone). I remember years and years ago, it may have been during the 2000 election or its aftermath, reading a guest op-ed piece in The New York Times about Pat Robertson. The author argued, persuasively, I thought, that Robertson's political achievement relied on the almost total ignorance of the American working class on the part of our political elites. Robertson was thus able to convinced politicians and their handlers that factory workers in the Midwest and farmers in the Great Plains cared more about stem cells than about health care. In other words, I want to blame this, as I do everything else, on the lack of a viable, real left-wing in this country.
My point is not just that it's a huge problem that there's no one making as much noise about health care and related issues as Robertson and his ilk make about stem cells and teh gays. My point is that even the politicians who don't court Robertson and company buy what he's selling, a vision of American politics defined and driven by symbolical issues. The primary example of this is, of course, the Clintons, but I think I'll save my thoughts about them for another post. The point here is just that when politicians on the alleged "left" as well as on the right play the game of symbolic politics -- or white, lower middle-class identity politics -- people like Robertson have already won. The political landscape has already become a void into which the more or less fascistic obsessions and impulses Jill lists in her post move and gain increasing traction.
All of this is also by way of saying something about John Edwards' candidacy. You all probably know that I'm holding out to endorse McCain (I can see the headlines now: "Random commie bastard endorses wise-cracking war hero renting soul to demented godbags"). But this is one obvious and, I think, very important advantage Edwards has. He is discussing economic reality, and I don't think he's going to be bullied into triangulatin'. He has a clear vision of what American politics should look like, and I don't think he's going to allow himself to be derailed by anxieties about whether he's pandering successfully to "Nascar dads." I'm not saying I simply endorse him at this point, because I think Gore would probably be the best candidate (oof--think of what the past six years would have been like with Gore as president), but I think it's very important, and gives Edwards a crucial advantage over candidates like Clinton and those who want to play her brand of symbolic/identity politics.
Two excellent posts from two of my favorite bloggers, Jill Filipovic and Amanda Marcotte, on the resemblance between certain strands of conservative Christianity in the US today and classical fascism. They were prompted by this interview with Chris Hedges, a New York Times war correpsondent and author of a new book, American Fascists. The mention of fascism might seem alarmist or overly polemical to some, even an instance of the justly dreaded reductio ad Hitlerum. But see especially Jill's link-rich post, which is particularly thoughtful and well-informed. And Amanda's post identifies more pervasive, dehumanizing or alienating dynamics in our society which give rise to these problems, in addition to delivering some characteristically penetrating and brilliantly caustic criticisms of the religious right in particular.
But I mention these posts not only to bring them to your attention but to say something about the larger phenomenon or problem they're discussing (my observations here are no doubt unoriginal, but I'm not knowingly stealing them from anyone). I remember years and years ago, it may have been during the 2000 election or its aftermath, reading a guest op-ed piece in The New York Times about Pat Robertson. The author argued, persuasively, I thought, that Robertson's political achievement relied on the almost total ignorance of the American working class on the part of our political elites. Robertson was thus able to convinced politicians and their handlers that factory workers in the Midwest and farmers in the Great Plains cared more about stem cells than about health care. In other words, I want to blame this, as I do everything else, on the lack of a viable, real left-wing in this country.
My point is not just that it's a huge problem that there's no one making as much noise about health care and related issues as Robertson and his ilk make about stem cells and teh gays. My point is that even the politicians who don't court Robertson and company buy what he's selling, a vision of American politics defined and driven by symbolical issues. The primary example of this is, of course, the Clintons, but I think I'll save my thoughts about them for another post. The point here is just that when politicians on the alleged "left" as well as on the right play the game of symbolic politics -- or white, lower middle-class identity politics -- people like Robertson have already won. The political landscape has already become a void into which the more or less fascistic obsessions and impulses Jill lists in her post move and gain increasing traction.
All of this is also by way of saying something about John Edwards' candidacy. You all probably know that I'm holding out to endorse McCain (I can see the headlines now: "Random commie bastard endorses wise-cracking war hero renting soul to demented godbags"). But this is one obvious and, I think, very important advantage Edwards has. He is discussing economic reality, and I don't think he's going to be bullied into triangulatin'. He has a clear vision of what American politics should look like, and I don't think he's going to allow himself to be derailed by anxieties about whether he's pandering successfully to "Nascar dads." I'm not saying I simply endorse him at this point, because I think Gore would probably be the best candidate (oof--think of what the past six years would have been like with Gore as president), but I think it's very important, and gives Edwards a crucial advantage over candidates like Clinton and those who want to play her brand of symbolic/identity politics.
posted by . at
2:44 PM
2 Comments:
Robertson was thus able to convinced politicians and their handlers that factory workers in the Midwest and farmers in the Great Plains cared more about stem cells than about health care.
Do you really think this is the explanation for this phenomona? Really?
I'd suggest you look into the possibility that the religious right was/is more of a bottom-up event than a top-down one.
Treating the religious right as if there is anything monolithic about it doesn't hold water. There has hardly been an example of a powerful social force in America that has been more fractured and less centralized than the religious right. Remember the "Moral Majority"? What could you call that but an attempt to centralize the "movement" that ultimately failed. What was the "Christian Coalition" but exactly the same thing.
You simply cannot have fascism without such centralization. There is nothing like the centralization needed to call the religious right fascist.
This all sounds like a sophisticated attempt to justify name calling.
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Anonymous, at 7:35 PM
I agree that the "religious right" is not a simple monolith, but it's obviously unified enough that you and I are both using the term to describe a recognizable phenomenon. That's what I titled the post "Fascist elements in the religious right," rather than simply equating fascism and religious conservatism. And I'm sure it is, at least in places, a bottom-up movement, but, again, it's simply a fact that people like Robertson and Falwell have enormous political power because they're perceived as being the leaders of a vast movement. If they in fact are not, that just further proves my point that their power is based on the ignorance of our political overlords about their constituents. Finally, I wasn't arguing that the religious right has organized into a neo-fascist organization like the Blackshirts or Brownshirts, but simply that there are elements in the ethos of today's religious right that they share with traditional fascists. In fact, I wasn't so much arguing that as taking it from the posts of Jill and Amanda I cited, especially Jill's, which contains a lengthy list of defining attributes of fascism taken from Umberto Eco, which Jill illustrated with literally dozens of links showing these same tendencies in today's self-identified conservative movement, especially the religious wing of that movement.
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., at 11:27 PM
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