Right-Wing Ideology Trumps Common Purpose;
or, How Fascism Comes to America
I studied Fascism as part of my first degree in history. And I know enough not to throw the term around casually, emptying it of its meaning, and inuring us to its threat. I'd prefer not to debate names and make scary predictions. I've heard 'fascist' thrown against many conservative platforms in my life. But I know the politics of the hard and extreme right, I know the preference for the anonymous systemic force of economic power through markets, and I know the build up of the authoritarian state to enforce such power, and I know that, when all fails, there is resort to overt political coercion. There's more than a few Americans considering the way in which Fascism comes to America, which suggests something nasty afoot, and something with deep roots, both socio-economic and psychological.
I'll nail my colours to the mast immediately on this, and wholeheartedly concur with the sentiments expressed by Terry Eagleton in the passage with which he concluded After Theory all the way back in 2003:
"Few prospects could be more admirable in this respect than that of the millions of Americans who, in the face of this reckless, world-hating hubris, continue steadfastly to speak up for humane values, with the spirit of independence, moral seriousness, sense of dedication and devotion to human liberty for which they are renowned among the nations. If it is unAmerican to reject greed, power and ruthless self-interest for the pitiable frauds that they are, then millions of Americans must today be proud to call themselves so. It is this authentic America - these political friends and comrades - that I would wish to share the dedication of this book, and whom I wish well in the dark times that doubtless lie ahead."
I know those Americans and I do indeed wish them well in the times to come. We need that real America back and punching its true weight in the world. I know the other America too, the aggressors, exploiters, parasites, bullies, bigots and ignoramuses. The planet can do without their death-dealing delusions and world-hating resentment. And so can I.
I've seen enough of the authoritarian apologetics, anti-intellectualism, hate-mongering and fear-mongering of hard right Republicans and the seething, resentful mob of ill-educated Trump supporters, their heads full of Breitbart and Fox news, to last me a lifetime. I only regret not calling time on them sooner. I had hoped that something in the mass of materials - science, ethics, religion, literature, art, you name it - may filter into their world, and get them to see people and places without prejudices. But, no, the trolling of the world over the Paris accord was the final straw - the simplistic division of the world into 'us' and 'them'; rigid stereotypical thinking; the tendency to reduce complex arguments to pre-determined positions and prejudices; the mechanical adherence to conventional values; blind submission to power and authority; the division of the world into friends and enemies, winners and losers; the blind hatred of those who think differently, indeed, of those who think at all; the suspicion of outsiders; a bombastic anti-introspectiveness and aggressive self-assertion; intellectual emptiness; moral hypocrisy; a tendency for blind faith and superstition; vilification of others; a schizophrenic worldview, semi-moralistic and semi-cynical, affirming God and religion in the one aspect, asserting the narrow 'realism' of self-interest and survival of the fittest in the other; a poor view of human nature; projectivity of self-hatred upon others and the world ... I could go on (racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, fundamentalism, militarism, always presented in terms of a concern for one's own and one's way of life, of course, weasel words that fool no one, and which cover the explicit prejudices of those less gifted at ideological concealment), but I think that's more than enough. There's enough material to keep an entire university of world class French psychologists in work for a lifetime with these people.
Either way, I've had my fill of them. They are militant, smug, hectoring, proud know-nothing know-alls and you can lose the will to live trying to reason with them. You'd be better of teaching chipmunks to play chess. And if that is a piece of abuse that is best avoided, bear in mind it comes after the presentation of ample materials and strenuous efforts at arguing on the basis of logic, evidence and reason. I've seen these people, heard them, I stayed my hand - but no more. Just to say, this is all about extending the corporate form and entrenching corporate power - we need to keep a close eye on the structural transformations underway, and not be too preoccupied with the political puppets and their idiot followers.
'What [Trump] offers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence. His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger. His public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of “others” — Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans, Europeans, Arabs, immigrants, refugees — whom he depicts either as threats or as objects of derision. His program, such as it is, consists chiefly of promises to get tough with foreigners and people of nonwhite complexion. He will deport them, bar them, get them to knuckle under, make them pay up or make them shut up.'
by Jeffrey Sachs
'President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement is not just dangerous for the world; it is also sociopathic. Without remorse, Trump is willfully inflicting harm on others.
'Trump’s announcement was made with a bully’s bravado. A global agreement that is symmetric in all ways, across all countries of the world, is somehow a trick, he huffed, an anti-American plot. The rest of the world has been “laughing at us.” These ravings are utterly delusional, deeply cynical, or profoundly ignorant. Probably all three. And they should be recognized as such.'
Trump's complaint of the 'draconian' burdens that Paris places upon America bears no relation to the reality:
'The Paris climate agreement requires each country is to do its part with “common but differentiated responsibilities.” America’s differentiated responsibilities start with the fact that the US is, by far, the largest cumulative greenhouse-gas emitter in the world. As such, the US has contributed more to ongoing climate change than any other country. And US per capita emissions are higher than in any other large country, by far. The Paris accord does not victimize the US; on the contrary, the US has a world-beating responsibility to get its house in order.'
And that means getting politics and the public realm in order.
'Under the Trump administration, the truth is distorted for ideological, political and commercial reasons. Lying has become an industry and tool of power. All administrations and governments lie, but under Trump lying has become normalized. It is a calling card for corruption and lawlessness, one that provides the foundation for authoritarianism.Trump is a salesman and a bully. He constantly assumes the macho swagger of a used car salesman from a TV commercial while at the same time, as Rebecca Solnit observes, he bullies facts and truths as well as friends and acquaintances. He is obsessed with power and prides himself on the language of command, loyalty and humiliation.'
'A democracy cannot exist without informed citizens and public spheres and educational apparatuses that uphold standards of truth, honesty, evidence, facts and justice. Under Trump, disinformation masquerading as news -- often via his Twitter account -- has become a weapon for legitimating ignorance and civic illiteracy.'
'There is more at stake here than the threat of censorship or the normalization of lying; there is also an attack on long-valued sources of information and the public spheres that produce them. Trump's government has become a powerful disimagination machine in which the distinction between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy are erased. Trump has democratized the flow of disinformation, and in doing so, has aligned himself with a culture of immediacy, sensationalism and theater where thoughtful reading, informed judgments and a respect for the facts disappear. He propagates fiction disguised as "news" as a way to discredit facts, if not thinking itself. This practice operates in the service of violence because it infantilizes and depoliticizes the wider public creating what Viktor Frankl has called in a different context, "the mask of nihilism."
'The dissolution of public goods and the public sphere has been underway since the late 1970s, and Trump capitalizes on that in an attempt to both depoliticize and bind the American people through a kind of dystopian legitimacy in which words no longer matter and anything can be said. He works to undermine the capacity for truth telling and political speech itself. Under the Trump regime, consistent narratives rooted in forms of civic illiteracy and a deep distrust of the truth and the ethical imagination have become the glue of authoritarian power.'
As important as the Trump-Comey affair is, it runs the risk of both exacerbating the transformation of politics into theater and reinforcing what Todd Gitlin refers to as Trump's support for an "apocalyptic nationalism, the point of which is to belong, not to believe. You belong by affirming. To win, you don't need reasons anymore, only power."
'The Trump-Comey affair must be understood within a broader attack on the fundamentals of education, critical modes of agency and democracy itself. This is especially important at a time when the United States is no longer a functioning democracy and is in the presence of what Zygmunt Bauman and Leonidas Donskis refer to in their book Liquid Evil as "the emergence of modern barbarity." Trump's discourse of lies, misrepresentations and fakery makes it all the more urgent for us to acknowledge that education is at the center of politics because it is crucial in the struggle over consciousness, values, identity and agency. Ignorance in the service of education targets the darkness and reinforces and thrives on civic illiteracy. Trump's disinformation machine is about more than lying. It is about using all of the tools and resources for education to create a dystopia in which authoritarianism exercises the raw power of ignorance and control.Artists, educators, young people, journalists and others need to make the virtue of truth-telling visible again. We need to connect democracy with a notion of truth-telling and consciousness that is on the side of economic and political justice, and democracy itself. If we are all going to fight for and with the most marginalized people, there must be a broader understanding of their needs. We need to create narratives and platforms in which those who have been deemed disposable can identify themselves and the conditions through which power and oppression bear down on their lives.This is not an easy task, but nothing less than justice, democracy and the planet itself are at risk.'
"The dissolution of public goods and the public sphere has been underway since the late 1970s ...." Admittedly, the focus here on Trump is myopic. Trump is a symptom of the decay of the public realm, not the architect. This malaise goes deep and it goes back a long way. We need to make that point clearly because, with or without Trump, with the prevailing system and without the necessary substantive transformation, justice, democracy and the planet are at risk.
From 'Why Arendt Matters: Revisiting “The Origins of Totalitarianism”' By Roger Berkowitz
'The reason fact-checking is ineffective today -- at least in convincing those who are members of movements -- is that the mobilized members of a movement are confounded by a world resistant to their wishes and prefer the promise of a consistent alternate world to reality. When Donald Trump says he's going to build a wall to protect our borders, he is not making a factual statement that an actual wall will actually protect our borders; he is signaling a politically incorrect willingness to put America first. When he says that there was massive voter fraud or boasts about the size of his inauguration crowd, he is not speaking about actual facts, but is insisting that his election was legitimate. 'What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part.' Leaders of these mass totalitarian movements do not need to believe in the truth of their lies and ideological clichés. The point of their fabrications is not to establish facts, but to create a coherent fictional reality. What a movement demands of its leaders is the articulation of a consistent narrative combined with the ability to abolish the capacity for distinguishing between truth and falsehood, between reality and fiction.'
'Another defense against totalitarianism — one that Arendt hints at in The Origins of Totalitarianism but only fully develops 20 years later in On Revolution — is the rejuvenation of local governance. Since all democratic governance is susceptible to totalitarian as well as tyrannical impulses, the great danger in democracy is a unified sovereignty. What Arendt understood is that “The great and, in the long run, perhaps the greatest American innovation in politics as such was the consistent abolition of sovereignty within the body politics of the republic, the insight that in the realm of human affairs sovereignty and tyranny are the same.” That is why Arendt regrets the failure of a proposal Jefferson had put forth for breaking counties into wards and having each ward act as a miniature self-government. On the model of town council government, the wards would offer a space for all Americans to engage in the act of free self-government. Only such local, contradictory, and pluralistic power centers offer both practice in self-government and a protection against tyranny and totalitarian government.At a time when the United States government increasingly resembles a sovereign nation state, the danger of totalitarianism at home is greater than ever. Alienation from government is widespread and bipartisan, among the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. Even mainstream Americans are despondent about a government that is corrupt, arthritic, and impervious to citizen control. A unified and sovereign government combined with a disempowered citizenry poses the greatest danger of totalitarianism. The best way to protect ourselves is, perhaps, to turn back to our roots in local self-government. We cannot turn back the clock. But we might begin to engage in the activity of politics and the multiplication of local power structures that can resist the totalizing impulses of sovereign states. In doing so, we would seek to rediscover the Jeffersonian project of local self-government that Arendt calls the lost treasure of the American Revolution.'
A comment on Trump and religion is also in order.
"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
There is some confusion as to the origins of this quote.
In a 1936 issue of The Christian Century, James Waterman Wise, Jr. wrote that if fascism comes to America, it will not be identified with any "shirt" movement, nor with an "insignia," but it will probably be "wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution." (The Christian Century of the Divinity School of Yale University, Volume 53, Feb 5, 1936, p. 245). Then there’s Professor Halford E. Luccock of the Divinity School of Yale University, who wrote in Keeping Life Out of Confusion (1938): When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled "made in Germany"; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, "Americanism." The quote has been attributed to Sinclair Lewis. In 1971 Harrison Evans Salisbury remarked: "Sinclair Lewis aptly predicted in It Can't Happen Here that if fascism came to America it would come wrapped in the flag and whistling 'The Star Spangled Banner.'"
Wherever the quote comes from, it contains a warning about the authoritarian threat to freedom and democracy through a toxic mix of nationalism and religion – false, surrogate collectivities in a world in which many people feel atomised and powerless in face of ‘alien’ forces. Luccock’s warning was that of a Christian theologian warning not merely of the political use and abuse of religion but also of the dangerous idolatry of nationalistic reverence.
For a view that this quote underestimates ‘Americanism’ as a highly-authoritative and dominating national project in and of itself, read Americanism Personified: Why Fascism Has Always Been an Inevitable Outcome of the American Project
I don’t go in for such ‘inevitabilities’ in politics and history, nor false fixities, nor myth of origins, nor any of the determinisms that those pursuing an agenda have used to rationalise some pretty voluntarist positions - so you can read and make your own mind up. I do remember my favourite American writer, Lewis Mumford, saying that nothing surprised him more than the way that fascism rode a coach and horses through liberal democracy in the 1930s. And I do know that ignorance tends to a reactionary politics – as well as a cowardice that seeks protection and security in a world of incomprehensible and dangerous forces. And I do know for a fact that the American government has a long and brutal history of crushing anti-capitalist dissent, as well as a less brutal, but also nasty line in harassing and marginalising left wing platforms (read up on the FBI file on Helen Keller, for instance, not nice). So make of this piece what you will.
I’m less interested in the politics here than in the religion – and in particular in the misuse of religion. So I return to Luccock’s words. In a sermon at the Riverside Church, Riverside Drive and 122d Street, Professor Luccock preached on the theme "Keeping Life Out of Confusion." His words are timely:
‘"The high-sounding phrase "the American way" will be used by interested groups, intent on profit, to cover a multitude of sins against the American and Christian tradition, such as lawless violence, tear gas and shotguns, denial of civil liberties," he said. "There is an obligation resting on us all to dedicate our minds to the hard task of thinking in terms of Christian objectives and values, so that we may be saved from moral confusion.
"For never, probably, has there been a time when there was a more vigorous effort to surround social and international questions with such a fog of distortion and prejudice and hysterical appeal to fear. We have touched a new low in a Congressional investigation this summer, used by some participating in it to whip up fear and prejudice against many causes of human welfare, such as a concern for peace and the rights of labor to bargain collectively.
"The old prayer in the Psalms, 'Let me never be put to confusion,' seems a strange one in a day when there seems to be little else but confusion in a puzzled world. We ought to recognize that uncertainty of mind is not all a bad thing. It is a sign that your mind is still alive, still sensitive. If you are not at all confused in this day you are dead mentally and spiritually.
"There is of course the peace of the cemetery. If you want that you can have it. But you will pay for such complacent serenity with blind eyes which do not see the world's fear and agony; with deaf ears, into which the still sad music of humanity never comes; with deadened nerves and unsensitized conscience.
"We will never be brought to confusion, even in such a baffling and muddled world as ours, if we have a faith in a God of love as the ultimate power in the universe. The words 'God is love' have this deep meaning: that everything that is against love is ultimately doomed and damned."
Luccock remained clear throughout the confusion of the age – continuing to affirm the power of love to save the world. And it is Luccock who shows the true meaning and value of religion.
‘To the faith that "God is love" and that love is the power that can save the world, many give the jaunty answer "What nonsense!" Very well. But one of the most impressive sights of 1951 was that of an elderly man giving a lecture at Columbia University. He was a man not ordinarily accounted one of the twelve disciples, and I am not baptizing him now — Bertrand Russell. It was rather amusing to many to see and hear the apologies and hesitations with which he made his announcement that Christian love was the world's greatest need. Here are his words, with all the apologies left in:
The root of the matter (if we want a stable world) is a very simple and old-fashioned thing, a thing so simple that I am almost ashamed to mention it, for fear of the derisive smile with which wise cynics will greet my words. The thing I mean is love, Christian love.
"Christian love." But trying to have Christian love, without its source in the revelation of a God of love in Christ, is trying to create something out of nothing.’
(Luccock, Marching Off the Map: And Other Sermons (1952), p. 83).
Russell has defended his use of ‘Christian love’ here by saying he was employing the term broadly, in contrast to sexual or physical love, and hence his view could not be taken to be an endorsement of Christianity. I cut my philosophical teeth on Russell and so take his point, that ‘Christian love’ he affirms doesn’t necessarily require that source in the God of love, the God of relationships. Russell criticised religion as being rooted in fear. And he didn’t like religion’s invitation to us to sacrifice reason and fact to faith. The sanity of Russell’s view is magnified when set as a contrast with the religious right and their pernicious influence in politics.
But Luccock’s view fits my view of a good world created by a good and loving God. You can argue over the source of this objectively valuable world – the basic point concerning the power of love to serve the health and vitality of life and save souls (or lives, whichever you prefer) is the same. I’ll go with that. Failing that, the creative universe is God enough and good enough. The God and religion of this people-hating, world-hating distemper is never an option.
And here’s the philosophical point of importance. I argue for the possibility of agreement at the level of values shared in common. Critics point out that human beings who disagree over statements of scientific fact, are even more likely to disagree over values – in truth, it is ideological divisions structured around social interests, positions and identities that lie behind controversies over the facts. In my work, I argue for the existence of transcendent norms, truths and values standing outside of time and place and serving as an objective standard by which to evaluate, criticise and orient the actions and institutions of time and place. I have argued for God as precisely this standard. And here’s an awkward problem – people with some very contrary views to mine also appeal to God … begging the question as to just what our reality check can be in terms of fact and value. Reality is reality. We can call it what we like, but that reality and our commitment to truthseeking – more than our thinking we possess the truth as such – gives us human beings who are culturally and politically different the possibility of talking a common language. I can remember Anatole France saying that human beings kill one another over the meaning of words whereas, if they had taken the trouble to understand what the words actually meant, they would have embraced one another. Knowing truth is important, but only if it is grounded in a knowledge of and respect for the value of truthseeking. The latter is the constant commitment to the reality check, guarding against any tendencies to dogmatism through certainty in the possession of truth.
"Fascism is now part of the American world: in its core assault on liberal democracy as Americans – and others – have come to understand it; in its cult of leadership – to whom the so-called responsible Vice-President Mike Pence recently expressed his fealty with an embarrassing North Korean political inflection; in its demonstrably phony claim to do away with elites by surrounding the leader with generals and billionaires; in its self-exoneration from any and all contradictions; and its contempt for precedent, conventions, international comity and civility. Familiar enough, to those with an ear for such things and who have allowed a moment to listen – don’t you think?"
MICHAEL MARRUS
‘Fascism is not an everyday designation, but nor is it a term for which one needs a comprehensive, precise matching of the 1930s. George Mosse, the great historian of the phenomenon, famously referred to fascism as a “scavenger ideology” – less a coherent body of thought and policy than a mood articulated by talented demagogues who patched together, from the popular culture, strident calls to action in the service of ill-defined myths of a nation’s greatness.’
‘Brands, of course, need customers. Let us never forget, fascism in its heyday had legions of fellow travellers – like the several millions of Americans who have rallied, to one degree or another, behind “America First,” the slogan of American supporters of Nazism in the 1930s.’
Isn't it interesting that those most vocal in their support of 'small' as against 'big' government are all too happy to support the biggest government of all in the form of an authoritarian politics. Their 'anti-government' rhetoric is aimed only against government as the sovereign power and collective force of the active, informed, associating citizens in pursuit of social and democratic purposes. When it comes to surveillance, police, repression, militarisation, the 'anti-government' ideologues become feverish supporters of the biggest government of all. Clearly, by anti-government, they mean anti-democracy, anti-socialism and anti-communism. They are anti-republican too, in that they wish to curtail, constrain and corporatize or privatize the 'things of the public.' As for Trump, he's had the genius to read the writing on the wall and read it, which is something in a conventional political realm that has long since sold out to globalised economic relations and 'free' markets and trade. He's spotted the disease at the heart of western democracies, and he's spotted the democratic deficit opened up by neo-liberal technocracy and engineering from above. But those who have found his words appealing shouldn't mistake style for substance - he is exploiting the grievances of people with respect to the ailments of globalised capitalism and liberal democracy, he has no cure for them. In his impotence and failure, he will either fall, with all that he represents, as ignorant and irrelevant. Or will seek to bend a recalcitrant reality - and people - into shape.
The Alt-Right don't give a damn about religion and ethics, they play hardball politics. But they need numbers to get anywhere. Where can they find these numbers? Enter the religious right, who seem all too happy to worship the symbol whilst forgetting the principle - a clear idolatry of words that blinds them to the way they contradict their deepest principles in practice.
The religious right in America portray themselves as besieged by humanism. The truth of that claim is that certain groups, normally overlooked, are having their rights respected – nothing like the extent to which they should, but more than in the past. Good. In taking aim against this, the religious right are evidently happy to demand a politics that is a plain inhumanism. How they square that politics with Jesus Christ is anyone’s guess, and I have better things to be writing on than giving the question anything more than a passing comment – it’s delusional and it's disgusting, and that’s about all that needs to be said.
It is very sad to say, but there are many whose faith is a cover for political commitments. That is precisely the abuse of religion that has had millions turning away from Christianity. It repels me too. Always, I emphasise the need for transcendent norms independent of the laws, institutions and politics of time and place, as a standard by which to evaluate our temporal affairs, check our reasoning against, and bring out actions in accord with. Any politics offered is in accordance with that standard. Earlier today in a comment on social media I stated that “we cannot have our God and eat it too” – meaning precisely that that transcendent standard always exists independently of our politics. I’m not interested in a politics masquerading as faith, and I’m not interested in a naked power politics that is independent of that faith.
'Trump’s cabinet and advisors consist largely of defenders of either Wall Street or White Christian America.The evidence, however, suggests that Trump’s unlikely victory is better understood as the death rattle of White Christian America—the cultural and political edifice built primarily by white Protestant Christians—rather than as its resuscitation.'
'White evangelicals have entered a grand bargain with the self-described master dealmaker, with high hopes that this alliance will turn back the clock. And Donald Trump’s installation as the 45th president of the United States may in fact temporarily prop up, by pure exertions of political and legal power, what white Christian Americans perceive they have lost. But these short-term victories will come at an exorbitant price. Like Esau, who exchanged his inheritance for a pot of stew, white evangelicals have traded their distinctive values for fleeting political power. Twenty years from now, there is little chance that 2016 will be celebrated as the revival of White Christian America, no matter how many Christian right leaders are installed in positions of power over the next four years. Rather, this election will mostly likely be remembered as the one in which white evangelicals traded away their integrity and influence in a gambit to resurrect their past.'
When religious faith is harnessed to a political ideology, that transcendent standard that judges politics and holds power to moral account is lost. The faith degenerates into a rationalisation of political acts, a mere apologetics. Power – the power of some – takes precedence over principle, the faith is emptied of meaning, withers, dies, or turns into its opposite – we get a blatant immoralism that does harm against people. When faith is tagged on to politics, it’s character and fate becomes subject to the vicissitudes of that politics – it ceases to be a transcendent standard outside of politics, criticising it, holding it to account according to principle. For a while, with some apparent political triumphs, the faithful can become excited, leading them to further misplace their hopes – but all politics is transitory, and soon the failures will come, and others will supply the critical and moral standard: when religious faith is conflated with political ideology, it will prove as ephemeral as every political movement and career.
I’m calling for a politics and ethics (practical reason) that is in tune with physics, a practical reasonableness that is informed and oriented by a grasp of realities. I say that includes a belief in a good world created by a good God. And I find that compatible with the notion of a creative and participatory universe.
That forms a complete contrast with the politics I have criticised above. And if this is how religious folk behave in politics …. I will have to sharply qualify and exercise a great deal of care in my critique of secular modernity – because I will have nothing to do with apologetics and the politics of coercive piety, inhumanism, irrationalism and immoralism – the world can well do without such forces.
This article, ‘The normalization of insanity,’ describes a world-hating, people-hating distemper that is immoral and insane.
‘Preposterous proposals of legislation are beginning to be treated as normal, to be considered doable, to be thought desirable, to be accepted as moral.’
This takes us to the really basic cultural and spiritual question.
‘Grounded in fear or greed, it can cause whole populations to shift social behaviors like schools of fish in swirling waters.’
‘What is it that can damp the humanity out of a government so quickly, so thoroughly?’
‘we have seen in our own era what happened when the slow erosion of principle in Europe hardened into World War. With the fear of terrorism and the rise of racism as an excuse, so-called Christian countries simply abandoned all patina of Christianity in favor of racial superiority and national defense. They wanted to be “great again,” too. And they failed — as we will — because no country, no group, can become great by being cruel, by taking from vulnerable sectors of society to enrich the privileged of it. And yet, now we are watching the illogicality of that paradox played out again right before our eyes.’
We have an obligation to speak out against those who disrespect and despoil the basic human dignity of others, to speak up for the poor, the marginalised and the oppressed, and speak for the intrinsic humanity of each and all. From this position, the central question is how has politics degenerated to such a condition that such actions could even be entertained – where has the moral criteria judging power and holding it to humane standards gone?
This is a political world that is normalizing the irrational and the immoral, and it is all the more sickening to see so many people who consider themselves Christians and believers in God actively supporting such a politics, for the reason that, thinking themselves under assault by the forces of secularism and humanism, they believe Trump will fight for them! And that misplacing of faith and hope in an inhumane politics will justify secularists for a long time to come in keeping God and religion well away from the public sphere – yet again we have the unedifying spectacle of the religious abusing morality and rationalising thoroughly immoral actions.
‘In a political world that is normalizing the irrational more and more every day, our obligation is not to be like those who would secure themselves by making others insecure. Our obligation is to be like the One who said, “Give what you have to the poor and then come follow me” — no matter who calls you insane.’
Trump and the Religious Right: A Match Made in Heaven
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/13/trump-and-the-religious-right-a-match-made-in-heaven-215251
Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, says: “Donald Trump fights. And he fights for us.”
Christianity isn’t under threat by secularism and humanism – the right wing appropriation of religion is – and right wingers are evidently more interested in fighting for their skewed understanding of what is right and proper than they are with any true understanding of Christianity.
‘“George W. Bush was one of them, but he was a compassionate conservative. They want someone who’s a fighter, and they view Trump as a fighter,” says Travis Korson, senior vice president of Madison Strategies, a consulting firm that does extensive work with conservatives and Christian groups. “It’s a lot of things: the policy battles, the way he ran his campaign, the way, frankly, that he’s handling the FBI investigation into Russia. Trump doesn’t back down. And that kind of leadership, evangelicals feel like they haven’t seen it from the White House.”
So far, Trump hasn’t just been fighting their battles—he’s been winning them.’
For now … but Trump is wrong, all right minded people see it clearly – and when he goes, as he will, he will take these so-called Christians with him – they will have shown themselves to be people who so easily jettison their principles in order to win some temporary and worthless political victory.
Amazing Disgrace
How did Donald Trump—a thrice-married, biblically illiterate sexual predator—hijack the religious right?
https://newrepublic.com/article/140961/amazing-disgrace-donald-trump-hijacked-religious-right
“The church of Jesus Christ ought to be the last people to fall for hucksters and demagogues,” Russell Moore wrote in Onward: Engaging the Culture Without Losing the Gospel, a book he had just published at the time. “But too often we do.”
By backing Trump, white evangelicals were playing into the hands of a new, alt-right version of Christianity—a sprawling coalition of white nationalists, old-school Confederates, neo-Nazis, Islamophobes, and social-media propagandists who viewed the religious right, first and foremost, as a vehicle for white supremacy. The election, Moore warned in a New York Times op-ed last May, “has cast light on the darkness of pent-up nativism and bigotry all over the country.”
Evangelicals have traded Ronald Reagan’s gospel-inspired depiction of America as a “shining city on a hill” for Trump’s dark vision of “American carnage.” And in doing so, they have returned the religious right to its own origins—as a movement founded to maintain the South’s segregationist “way of life.”
“The overwhelming support for Trump heralds the religious right coming full circle to embrace its roots in racism,” says Randall Balmer, a historian of American religion at Dartmouth College.
‘That’s why white evangelicals were the key to Trump’s victory—they provided the numbers that the alt-right lacks. Steve Bannon, Trump’s most influential strategist, knows that the nationalist coalition alone isn’t big enough “to ever compete against the progressive left”—which is why he made a point of winning over the religious right. If conservative Catholics and evangelicals “just want to focus on reading the Bible and being good Christians,” Bannon told me last July, “there’s no chance we could ever get this country back on track again.” The alt-right supplied Trump with his agenda; the Christian right supplied him with his votes.’
Unpleasant in the extreme … and about as far from Jesus Christ as it is possible to be.
‘Schenck fears that “Trump and his gang” have exposed an evangelical culture “that doesn’t know itself.” Sitting in his Capitol Hill townhouse, Schenck picks up his copy of Ethics, by the anti-Nazi theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer, he says, argued that because Jesus was a “man for others,” Christians are called “not to hold the other in contempt, or to be afraid of the other, or contemptuous of the other.” Yet when Schenck visited evangelical churches during the Obama years, he lost count of how many times he was asked, quite earnestly: “Is the president the Antichrist?”
Schenck still holds out hope, as does Moore, that a new generation of evangelicals will ultimately reject what Trump and the alt-right represent. “I do think something is going to emerge out of this catastrophe,” he says. “It’s going to help us to define what is true evangelical religion and what is not.”
But for now, he concedes, the religious right has forfeited its moral standing by aligning itself with the alt-right’s gospel of white supremacy. “Evangelicals are a tool of Donald Trump,” Schenck says. “This could be the undoing of American evangelicalism. We could just become a political operation in the guise of a church.”
Donald Trump, the Religious Right’s Trojan Horse
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/sunday/donald-trump-the-religious-rights-trojan-horse.html?mcubz=2
‘Mr. Trump is known for failing to honor his debts, but in this case, he’s fully repaying his Christian conservative supporters. For all his flagrant sinfulness, he’s assembling a near-theocratic administration, his cabinet full of avowed enemies of church-state separation.’
As someone who has consistently criticised the separation of fact and value in the disenchanted modern world, who has sought to bring politics and ethics together, and restore a conception of the good life to the public realm … Trump’s irrationalism and immorality, cheered on by the religious right, is a disaster – it justifies liberalism and the idea of a neutral public sphere that holds the ring between all competing – and private and particular – notions of the good, for the simple reason that, yet again, we learn that human beings cannot be trusted not to shove their moral views down the throats of others. I will continue to argue for a remoralised public life, and I will continue to argue for the creation of the social relations and conditions of such a remoralisation – and I will resist as vehemently as any liberal the vicious politics of coercive piety practised by the rabid right – they are bigots, extremists and hardliners, and the world would thrive without them – and as a Christian believer in God, I would happily side with liberals, secularists, humanists and atheists against this crowd – they are unChristian and, in thought and deed, are the true betrayers of Jesus Christ.
I make these points against not religion but against the abuse of religion. The depressing thing is that such abuse happens all too often, and often enough to justify the liberal argument for a neutral public sphere. I'll keep arguing for the good life and for the recovery of a public sphere that is grounded in an ontology of the good for human beings. But the extent to which the religious faithful can so easily discard their principles in order to win political victories against their perceived enemies (and the extent to which these enemies are people pushing for the recognition of the rights and dignity of others) makes caution a watchword of any such reenchantment and remoralisation. Cheering Trump's temporary victories on - victories which trash all standards of fact and value - is an unedifying spectacle. That's depressing and disgusting. I remind myself that every leader of every religion on the planet has made it clear that tackling climate change and practising earthcare is a moral obligation. It is worth making that point, just to make clear that this abuse of faith and religion is, first and foremost, a matter of political ideology related to specific social identities and relations. But, yes, I have no time for those who claim to be big on God, only to show themselves more than willing to subordinate principle to a blind faith in a politics that is at quite some distance from all that is moral, decent, rational and humane. Nasty, in fact, and more than enough to turn any believer in a good God into an atheist who thinks the ceaselessly creative universe based on the insurgency of life is good enough and God enough. I think we need more, and I set out the reasons for that in my work. I am, however, happy to settle for this 'God enough' position if it means we can lose religious bigotry, intolerance, stupidity, fanaticism, dogmatism, hypocrisy, and delusion - the world would be a much better place without all those things.
This is a very sad situation indeed - the misuse and abuse of religion is precisely why there is an insistence on secularism in politics and public life, and a scepticism towards all attempts - such as mine - to interwine ethics and politics and recover an overarching conception of the good life by which to inform, organise and orient our public life. I have extolled the virtues of Jonathan Clatworthy's new book Why Progressives Need God, and I will continue to argue for that transcendent norm and truth standing outside of time and place, by which to evaluate and criticise the existing world. Lose that, and all we have is conventions determined within prevailing power relations - might is right in a world divided between winners and losers - the zero-sum politics of a Trump ... So it is worth ending this expression of disappointment and disgust with a reminder that the religious right do not represent religion as such. Even in the USA, various religious people and bodies have does good work on climate change. Katharine Hayhoe has made a point of bringing the science and religion together, framing climate change in terms of moral values. Around the world, all the main leaders of all religions are on board; they know that soulcare is earthcare. It's just the religious right, people out at the extreme, who peddle the nonsense that God will look after them (if you believe in a Creator God, you surely must know that that God enjoins you to look after the Creation!) or that money matters more than morals ... Beware of making religion a handmaiden of political ideology - politics comes and goes like the wind, and if you tag your ethics onto it, it will be blown away with it. In the meantime, you'll find that the politics of coercive piety will rub most people up the wrong way, and big time, inviting a reaction against both your politics and religion. But there it is, I can hear secular liberals affirming the primacy of the right over the good saying 'I told you so' - that's the problem, you just can't trust religious folk with something as powerful as religion, least of all when they mix it with the temptations of politics. Fascists, fundamentalists, fanatics, fantasists, dogmatists, all those possessed with complete certainty, shoving their views down the throats of others - utterly uncivil and thoroughly unpleasant, leaving us with having recourse to protective mechanisms with which to guard our liberties against the encroachment of offensive others. Liberalism keeps winning by default, but in the end, it is not enough.
I'll add this article to the above. It was written some time after by Chris Hedges, but sums things up nicely.
Posted on Jul 23, 2017
By Chris Hedges
‘Donald Trump’s ideological vacuum, the more he is isolated and attacked, is being filled by the Christian right. This Christianized fascism, with its network of megachurches, schools, universities and law schools and its vast radio and television empire, is a potent ally for a beleaguered White House. The Christian right has been organizing and preparing to take power for decades.’
Trump ‘embraces the white supremacy, bigotry, American chauvinism, greed, religious intolerance, anger and racism that define the Christian right.’ He also favours business over the public realm, the corporate rich over the democratic will of the people as expressed through political action, policy and legislation. Rolling back civil rights legislation and business and environmental regulations is all part of the agenda.
Hedges writes of ‘Trump’s disdain for facts and his penchant for magical thinking and conspiracy theories’ and how these mesh well with the worldview of the Christian right, which sees itself as besieged by the onslaught of the satanic forces of secular humanism in the form of media, academia, the liberal establishment, Hollywood and the Democratic Party. Within this mindset, Barack Obama is a Muslim and climate change is not happening – reality is in abeyance … until we get the reality check of the worst kind.
Hedges refers to the Manichean worldview that unites Trump and his team with the Christian right. ‘They see the world in black and white, good and evil, them and us. Trump’s call in his speech in Poland for a crusade against the godless hoards of Muslims fleeing from the wars and chaos we created replicates the view of the Christian right.’
Hedges warns:
‘If the alliance between these zealots and the government succeeds, it will snuff out the last vestiges of American democracy.’
Why on earth would Christians surrender their principles to a man who stands in flagrant abuse of all they profess to believe? I think it’s political ideology trumping religious belief, and I think these people see Trump as someone who will fight for them against all they loathe and fear. They are a seething, resentful mob armed with fear and loaded with prejudice. No wonder Trump appears to be a second coming to them.
Hedges sees Trump’s characteristics as those of most of the leaders of the Christian right too. ‘Trump has preyed on desperate people through the thousands of slot machines in his casinos, his sham university and his real estate deals. Megachurch pastors prey on their followers by extracting “seed offerings,” “love gifts,” tithes and donations and by selling miracle healings along with “prayer clothes,” self-help books, audio and video recordings and even protein shakes. Pastors have established within their megachurches, as Trump did in his businesses, despotic fiefdoms. They cannot be challenged or questioned any more than an omnipotent Trump could be challenged on the reality television show “The Apprentice.” And they seek to replicate their little tyrannies on a national scale, with white men in charge.’
Hedges proceeds to detail the scandals of the Christian right. I remember these from years and years ago. I remember Jimmy Lee Swaggart making a very public declaration in 1988: ‘I have sinned.’ And I remember Frank Zappa saying ‘what else was he going to do? They had him bang to rights with the hairiest hooker in Christendom.’
I’d prefer not to go into the sordid details of life in this company. Hedges has written a book on it, and his article shows why these religious hucksters are some of the most accomplished con artists in the country. Unfortunately, they are conning some genuine folk by manipulating their fears and prejudices – never follow a multitude to do evil!
Hedges wrote a book on the Christian right in 2007 called “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.”
I shy away from using the term ‘fascist’ for many reasons, not least because, having studied the history of fascism, it became clear how difficult it is to see it as a generic concept. But the chief characteristics of right-wing reaction and authoritarianism are easily enough identified. Hedges approached two of the country’s foremost scholars on fascism— Fritz Stern and Robert O. Paxton – and asked: Did this ideology fit the parameters of classical fascism? Was it virulent enough and organized enough to seize power? Would it go to the ruthless extremes of previous fascist movements to persecute and silence dissent? Has our deindustrialized society replicated the crippling despair, alienation and rage that always feed fascist movements?
Terms like the ‘Christian right’ don’t actually explain much, and group very different kinds of people together. So Hedges identifies his target precisely.
‘The evangelicalism promoted by the Christian right is very different from the evangelicalism and fundamentalism of a century ago. The emphasis on personal piety that defined the old movement, the call to avoid the contamination of politics, has been replaced by Christian Reconstructionism, called Dominionism by some. This new ideology is about taking control of all institutions, including the government, to build a “Christian” nation.’ And that entails a commitment to act to ensure the physical eradication of the forces of Satan – secularism, rationalism, humanism, modernism, you know the forces, you should do, you are probably in there yourself if you are not lining up with the elect to ‘rescue’ the world so Christ can return.
‘This is an ideology of death. It promises that the secular, humanist society will be physically destroyed. The Ten Commandments will form the basis of our legal system. Creationism or Intelligent Design will be taught in public schools. People who are considered social deviants, including homosexuals, immigrants, secular humanists, feminists, Jews, Muslims, criminals and those dismissed as “nominal Christians”—meaning Christians who do not embrace the Christian right’s perverted and heretical interpretation of the Bible—will be silenced, imprisoned or killed. The role of the federal government will be reduced to protecting property rights, “homeland” security and waging war. Church organizations will be funded and empowered by the government to run social-welfare agencies. The poor, condemned for sloth, indolence and sinfulness, will be denied government assistance. The death penalty will be expanded to include “moral crimes,” including apostasy, blasphemy, sodomy and witchcraft, as well as abortion, which will be treated as murder. Women will be subordinate to men. Those who practice other faiths will become, at best, second-class citizens and eventually outcasts. The wars in the Middle East will be defined as religious crusades against Muslims. There will be no separation of church and state. The only legitimate voices will be “Christian.” America will become an agent of God. Those who defy the “Christian” authorities will be branded as agents of Satan.’
It’s a bizarre, deluded and dangerous mindset indeed, but it is one that embraces millions of Americans fed a daily diet of conspiracy theories and lies on the internet, in their churches, in Christian schools and colleges and on Christian television and radio.
Hedges warns against dismissing these people as stupid. It misses the point, and reinforces the idea of an embattled minority fighting the satanic secularist hordes. And it fails to address the real source of anxiety and insecurity – socio-economic decline and distress. Fail to identify the real targets here, and ‘primal yearnings for vengeance, new glory and moral renewal’ will be easily diverted and exploited politically by the architects of this distress. And that’s when religious belief loses touch with reason and descends into delusion.
‘Those who embrace this movement need to feel, even if they are not, that they are victims surrounded by dark and sinister groups bent on their destruction. They need to elevate themselves to the role of holy warriors, infused with a noble calling and purpose. They need to sanctify the rage and hypermasculinity that are the core of fascism. The rigidity and simplicity of their belief, which includes being anointed for a special purpose in life by God, are potent weapons in the fight against their own demons and desire for meaning.’
The way expresses the delusion has the merit of touching the point of truth in the resentment and fear. He notes that ‘These believers, like all fascists, detest the reality-based world.’ And the way he elaborates indicates the extent to which their frustration is grounded in some truth – they reject a reality that has indeed departed from true standards.
‘They condemn it as contaminated, decayed and immoral. This world took their jobs. It destroyed their future. It ruined their communities. It doomed their children. It flooded their lives with alcohol, opioids, pornography, sexual abuse, jail sentences, domestic violence, deprivation and despair.’
There is more to reality than these things. Evil is the privation of the good. The world is good; these things are a perversion of truth. They are real enough, but untrue. Our task is to identify the sources of the perversion and uproot them. I’d go to social arrangements and relations, economic organisation and distribution of power and resources. I find all of that compatible with a belief in God. But here is where a split between reason and faith can open up, to the detriment of both – and to the endangerment of all.
‘And then, from the depths of suicidal despair, they suddenly discovered that God has a plan for them. God will save them. God will intervene in their lives to promote and protect them. God has called them to carry out his holy mission in the world and to be rich, powerful and happy.
The rational, secular forces, those that speak in the language of fact and evidence, are hated and feared, for they seek to pull believers back into “the culture of death” that nearly destroyed them. The magical belief system, as it was for impoverished German workers who flocked to the Nazi Party, is an emotional life raft.’
Hedges is spot on with that diagnosis. They cling on to this deluded, dangerous belief system because it all that they have to support them in a reality that has turned against them. The way to turn this around is not to abuse these people as stupid and bigoted – and here is why I worry about throwing the term ‘fascist’ around – but to transform reality in such a way as to each and all a stake, and a future, integrating people within an inclusive social order, ensuring social purpose and economic stability through improving the quality of social connections, providing jobs that pay well, giving meaning and self-esteem. ‘They need to live in a society that is not predatory but instead provides well-funded public schools, free university education and universal health care, a society in which they and their families can prosper.’
It’s called reconstituting the public realm and recovering the social, as well as the moral, grounds of hope. Hope, Alasdair MacIntyre writes, is a social virtue. We reject the complacency of recent decades in politics, and reject the cynicism and despair it has engendered. ‘Let us openly defy the liberal establishment, which will not save us, to demand and fight for economic reparations for the poor and the working class. Let us give all Americans a reality-based hope for the future.’
The only options before us are radical. The age of tinkering top-down technocracy peddling globalisation and neoliberalism is dead, and good riddance, because it has brought us to this. If we do not resolve this crisis in public life positively – defined in terms of ideals and values we are for - then others will do so negatively and destructively – defined in terms of what people are against. This is where we need to focus our efforts, with a positive agenda based on a constructive model of social transformation and integration.
‘If we do not act, American fascists, clutching Christian crosses, waving American flags and orchestrating mass recitations of the pledge of allegiance, united behind the ludicrous figure of Donald Trump, will ride this rage to power.’
“The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state,” Martin Luther King Jr. said. “It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool.” Today, far too many evangelical Christians are tools of the Trump presidency.To be sure, the people with whom I have differences on this matter often do worthy work in other areas of their lives. But in this area, I believe their words and actions are harming the faith we share.
We can all be part of a politics of redemption.
By Peter Wehner
'the worry is that now that the election is over and there is no binary Trump-Clinton choice, many evangelical Christians have lost the capacity to hold the president accountable when he transgresses norms, violates principles and acts in malicious ways. In fact, they have become among his most prominent and reliable public defenders.'
'Evangelical Trump supporters aren’t responsible for the character flaws and ethical failures of the president. But by their refusal to confront those flaws and failures, they are complicit in the debasement of American culture and politics. Even more painful, they are presenting a warped and disfigured view of Christianity to the world.'
In many cases, this needs to be phrased in stronger terms than complicity. What Wehner writes of Trump applies to far too many of his evangelical supporters:
'The same qualities that Mr. Trump showed during the campaign have continued in his presidency. He lies pathologically. Mr. Trump exhibits crude and cruel behavior, relishes humiliating those over whom he has power and dehumanizes his political opponents, women and the weak. He is indifferent to objective truth, trades in conspiracy theories and exploits the darker impulses of the public. His style of politics is characterized by stoking anger and grievances rather than demonstrating empathy and justice.'
Ask a Trump supporter who is a Christian to make a statement that affirms principle as something that transcends political divisions and you will see the extent to which political ideology trumps values for these people. These people are indifferent to 'objective truth' not merely with respect to science and fact but also with respect to values. Of course, they claim to be on the side of truth, a 'truth' they have manufactured by way of selection and distortion, contriving 'debates' over false positions, forcing choices that deny reason, evidence and conscience. The simplistic 'black' and 'white' divisions through which such a mindset filters events and issues sends the world to extremes.
It all makes for bad and dangerous politics and for rotten religion. It's abusive of people and principle, politics as a common endeavour and religion as an expression of faith.
'I’m speaking out at this time because I’m a Christian who places himself in the evangelical tradition and senses that some important lines have been crossed, some significant damage is being done, and some substantial repair work needs to take place. I hope others who share these concerns – who might feel anguished by what they perceive as the abuse of their faith – will take a stand in their own lives and in their own way. We can all be part of a politics of redemption.'
David Lay Williams shows how Trump's politics are a throwback to the sophist Thrasymachus.
'Thrasymachus defends the life of the unjust over that of the just because it is more profitable and pleasurable.
Thrasymachus’s arguments in Plato’s “Republic” are part of a larger worldview that individuals ought to disregard any pretense of moral or political obligation, objectively understood, if they inhibit our own success. Rather, the priority should always be to acquire as much as possible, maximizing one’s own personal happiness.
Plato criticized Thrasymachus’s philosophy as “pleonexia” — the condition of insatiable appetites, whereby the satisfaction of one’s own interests assumes the status of a highest good. The burden of pleonexia, for Plato, is that it can never be satisfied. There is no amount of money that ever constitutes “enough.” There is no amount of public praise that is enough. It is a quest that reaches its summit in becoming a political tyrant.
Plato warned that this attitude can lead a public person to become a tyrant.
But as Plato’s Socrates warns subsequently in Book 9 of “The Republic,” even acquiring this kind of power fails to satisfy pleonexia’s demands. In fact, it only intensifies the miseries both of the ruler and his subjects. The citizens live in constant fear of the ruler’s arbitrariness, and the self-obsessed ruler lives in fear of his subjects.
As such, Plato reasons, the fabulously wealthy lack principles and a moral anchor outside of themselves. They feel no obligations to speak the truth or promote the common good, and no obligation to pay taxes or uphold contracts. To avoid these obligations, for such souls, is considered “smart.”
It won't end well.
“And according to the report of the messenger from the other world this was what the prophet said at the time: 'Even for the last comer, if he chooses wisely and will live diligently, there is appointed a happy and not undesirable existence. Let not him who chooses first be careless, and let not the last despair.' And when he had spoken, he who had the first choice came forward and in a moment chose the greatest tyranny; his mind having been darkened by folly and sensuality, he had not thought out the whole matter before he chose, and did not at first sight perceive that he was fated, among other evils, to devour his own children.
But when he had time to reflect, and saw what was in the lot, he began to beat his breast and lament over his choice, forgetting the proclamation of the prophet; for, instead of throwing the blame of his misfortune on himself, he accused chance and the gods, and everything rather than himself. Now he was one of those who came from heaven, and in a former life had dwelt in a well-ordered State, but his virtue was a matter of habit only, and he had no philosophy….”
Plato, The Myth of Er, from the “Republic”.
My question is this: how on earth had politics and the public realm become so corrupted that a man such as this come to be trusted with high office? Because if we don't answer that question satisfactorily, then the forces that led to his rise will still be festering away, throwing up something even more grotesque and monstrous in time.