Chris Hedges charts the rise of the US Christian right in American Fascists, says Nicholas Lezard. American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. Chris Hedges, Author. Free Press $25 (p) ISBN American Fascists by Chris Hedges – Twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists first spoke of the United States becoming a.
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Today, such language no longer sounds like hyperbole but poses, instead, a very real threat to our freedom and our way of life. It expands the void, the mindlessness that makes the magic, mythology, and irrationality of the Christian Right faecists. That is changing the definition of words, hijacking language, and thereby strangling thought.
From misinterpreting the Bible to misstating beliefs and actual statements the book runs the gamut. But this tactic has required the airbrushing out of past racists creeds—an effort that, sometime aftersaw Jerry Falwell recall all copies of his earlier sermons warning against integration and the evils of the black race.
Hedges argues that the movement currently resembles the young fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the s and ’30s, movements that often masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and were willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power.
As a Harvard Divinity School graduate, his investigation of the Christian Right agenda amercan even more alarming given its lucidity. Want to Read saving…. Television cheis itself perfectly to this world of signs and wonders, to the narcissism of national and religious self-exaltation. Christian Rightists abuse this emotion and target the vulnerable.
It is easer to look for hope and comfort in hdges mystical hand of God. After moving maerican the south, I had joined a certain Club whose members were Christian and whose politics were Republican. According to Hedges, Gedges argues that:. And they understand the enticement of credo quia absurdum—I believe because it is absurb. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. The movement awaits a crisis. Now granted there the author did make some hasty generalizations about things and americah sugarcoat other groups that were not Christian but the message and correlation to facism was too much to ignore.
But both the best of American democracy and the best of Christianity embody important values, values such as compassion, tolerance and belief in justice and equality. Please help improve it by removing promotional content and inappropriate external linksand by adding encyclopedic content written from a neutral point of view.
View all 88 comments. Throw out the religious right. This most certainly does not speak for every Christian out there, not at all. Hedges describes and documents in frightening detail the people we have most to fear. This new, exclusive community fosters rigidity, conformity and intolerance.
Hedges claims that the only way to combat those on the Religious Right is to take “acts of faith,” thereby using the tools of these potential oppressors against them. We should bear in mind that not only do they believe in the Rapture and that people once co-existed with dinosaurs and that, until the Fall, Tyrannosaurus rex was a vegetarian ; they also believe in a fiery apocalypse and are getting closer and closer to a position in which they can bring it about.
The rest of the book deals with how evangelists spread their faith using different tactics like scaremongering, love-bombing, massive tv and radio networks, God-reviewed articles disproving science. Its rapid frames and movements, its constant use of emotional images, its sudden shifts aemrican one theme to an unrelated theme, banish logic and reason with dizzying perplexity.
Rushdoony who published The Institutes of Biblical Law in Her comments to me whenever we ran into each other were always, “Have a blessed day,” now I imagine she is thinking, “I hope you rot in hell.
By itself this short essay goes a long way toward describing the so-called Christian Right in America.
Review: American Fascists by Chris Hedges | Books | The Guardian
I’m “one of Satan’s minions”. I initially saw author Chris Hedges speak on BookTV about this book, and was enchanted by the fiery invective and seething passion he had for his subject matter.
Do I believe that it is dangerous to combine state and religion? Such projection on their part. You may not be fond of “religion” in general or Christianity in particular, but don’t depend on this volume for your arguments OR your facts.
Very interesting and scary book. They do not reflect the teachings of Christ. The chief goal of totalitarianism is to tell all citizens what to believe, how to behave and how to speak.
Onward to the apocalypse
Much of the rhetoric used by the fundamentalists featured in the book is maddening; for example, many of the leaders qmerican this burgeoning fascistic movement make the ludicrous claim that America was founded on Christian ideals, which is a revisionist spin of nedges magnitude, whole cities could by powered by dynamos attached to it. Hedges, who grew up in rural parishes in upstate New York where his father was a Presbyterian pastor, attacks the movement as someone steeped in the Bible and Christian tradition.
Hedges’ analysis of the Christian Right’s rise to power in the U. Photograph c Michael Nigro. And we must remain as such. In short, the movement is not yet revolutionary. America will suddenly become a Third World power, and Europe, ruled by the Antichrist, will dominate the planet. Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt. I want to learn the truth not the truth according to Pat Robertson or other wacko like him. More By and About This Author.