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American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America
Audiobook8 hours

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America

Written by Chris Hedges

Narrated by Chris Hedges and Eunice Wong

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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About this audiobook

Twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists first spoke of the United States becoming a Christian nation that would build a global Christian empire, it was hard to take such hyperbolic rhetoric seriously. Today, such language no longer sounds like hyperbole but poses, instead, a very real threat to our freedom and our way of life. In American Fascists, veteran journalist Chris Hedges challenges the Christian Right's religious legitimacy and argues that at its core it is a mass movement fueled by unbridled nationalism and a hatred for the open society.

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. He points to the hundreds of senators and members of Congress who have earned between 80 and 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups as one of many signs that the movement is burrowing deep inside the American government to subvert it. The movement's call to dismantle the wall between church and state and the intolerance it preaches against all who do not conform to its warped vision of a Christian America are pumped into tens of millions of American homes through Christian television and radio stations, as well as reinforced through the curriculum in Christian schools. The movement's yearning for apocalyptic violence and its assault on dispassionate, intellectual inquiry are laying the foundation for a new, frightening America.

American Fascists, which includes interviews and coverage of events such as pro-life rallies and week-long classes on conversion techniques, examines the movement's origins, its driving motivations, and its dark ideological underpinnings. Hedges argues that the movement currently resembles the young fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, movements that often masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and that were willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power. The Christian Right, like these early fascist movements, does not openly call for dictatorship, nor does it use physical violence to suppress opposition-in short, the movement is not yet revolutionary. But the ideological architecture of a Christian fascism is being cemented in place. The movement has roused its followers to a fever pitch of despair and fury. All it will take, Hedges writes, is one more national crisis on the order of September 11 for the Christian Right to make a concerted drive to destroy American democracy. The movement awaits a crisis. At that moment they will reveal themselves for what they truly are-the American heirs to fascism. Hedges issues a potent, impassioned warning: We face an imminent threat. His book reminds us of the dangers liberal, democratic societies face when they tolerate the intolerant.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJun 15, 2007
ISBN9781400174577
Author

Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist. He spent nearly two decades as a correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, with fifteen years at the New York Times. He is the author of numerous bestselling books, including Empire of Illusion; Death of the Liberal Class; War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning; and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with Joe Sacco. He writes a weekly column for the online magazine Truthdig. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

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Reviews for American Fascists

Rating: 4.026971078838174 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Timely even though it was written in 2007. Must read.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I have watched some of Hedge's interviews and agreed with some of what he has said. I really try not to get dragged into Dems vs Repubs politics b/c that is all a sham. To summarize my political leanings, I believe in freedom for the individual and the Bill or Rights and principles set forth in the Constitution.
    Reading the summary of the book has completely turned me off of reading it. Hedges is stating fascism as a religious motivated authoritarian political movement. That is not the case. Fascism is defined as a political movement where the means of production is kept in private hands but tightly controlled by the government - very much what we have in the US right now. Historically, National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus, aka Nazism) leaned heavily on religion to help recruit citizens and legitimize their extreme views in the eyes of the religious. That does not mean that fascism typically is religious in nature - far from it. Anyone who is religious that I know, much prefers freedom of religion and is fearful of the state supporting any religion (Christianty or anything). Please don't read this book and think it is legit.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    As with everything about this group, frightening.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    While this book is well-researched on the growth of evangelical dominionists, the role of key evangelical players in the rise of a Christian nationalism, and a successful argument on the potential dangers of an Americanized fascism, there are some serious caveats that I have with this book:

    First and most obvious is that the book is comparatively old now. This was written in the Bush era, and much has happened since that reconfigures our understanding of American fascism: i.e., the Obama era, the Trump presidency, and the post-January 6th discourse. In some ways, the book feels naive and quaint in talking about American fascism as if, like Upton Sinclair ironically wrote, "it could never happen here." We now see real-world proofs of what Hedges was describing within the dominionist movement, but almost in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy kind of way--more on that later.

    Second and perhaps most important is the kind of epistemological essentialism that hedges appears to be self-aware of and yet never truly addressed, i.e., the power of ideology to produce mass populism throughout the political spectrum. His position is one of a classical liberalism that denies the existence of liberalism's limitations while also affirming the need to be intolerant towards fascist ideology. It is a blatant incoherence that is allowed to go unchecked precisely because the object of study would become too complex and ambivalent. Hedges must obliquely attack any and all religious traditions that hint at possible revolutionary politics because, surprise surprise, they all have the tendency towards a broad definition of fascism. But to state that would be a theological suicide in pursuing a legitimacy for Hedges' position on liberal Christianity.

    I do not wish people to assume that this means, "liberals bad" or that their argument is made in bad faith. Quite the contrary: Hedges' argument is perhaps the only religious and non-religious position that can possibly function in a world that attempts to value ideological pluralism. But it is this rhetorical slight-of-hand where the liberal position is posited as being post-ideological or beyond the scope of fair criticism that has emboldened fascists to counterargue. It has also led otherwise reasonable people to come to the exact same conclusion that Hedges describes as the fundamentalist's rejection of the lettered, liberal elite: that the lack of acknowledgement of the liberal position's own ideological underpinnings betrays the liberal agenda.

    This is the self-fulfilling prophecy problem of Hedges' work here: rather than openly admitting that the liberal Christian position is based on an inherent limitation of tolerance and plurality, Hedges disavows the more difficult nuance in favor of very clearly-drawn lines of "good vs. evil" in an ironic reflection of the very people he scrutinizes like Falwell, Robertson, Hayas, etc.

    This leads to the third and last caveat I have with this work: the pseudo-sensationalist manner of presenting Evangelical religious movements in the 21st century. In a sort of eerie echoing of other anti-religious literalists that Hedges attempts to avoid mimicking, the examples of conventions, workshops, television revivals, and other cultural artifacts are barely given any sort of close reading aside from "look, bad faith Christian leaders are doing bad things behind closed doors!" Where is the opportunity to reflect on how these things overlap with secular ideological movements? Where is the reflection on how these Christian traditions cross-breed with non-evangelical religious cultures? Sometimes Hedges approaches these questions, most notably in the final chapter, but the answers are more innuendo than straightforward: "that's not what the Bible says," or, "the positions of some writers in the Bible are morally unjustifiable," are the cop-out excuses given so that the interrogation of power is never fully given its due.

    Finally (I know this is a long review and if anyone has read this far, congratulations), I don't want a potential reader to go away thinking this book is terrible or not worth reading. To the contrary, I think it is an important book to read given the current state of Christianity in the US. As a Christian myself, I am deeply troubled by the rise of fascist ideology among believers. But let us not have any delusions here, we are not in a post-ideological world like Hedges' prose would try to make us believe. Read the book, but don't accept Hedges' position of liberalism to be absolved of its own theological foundations that are just as violent, just as fallible, as anything cooked up by Trinity Broadcast Network.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It has alot of things I have read before but alot of interesting facts on James Dobson and James Kennedy.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    As a lifelong atheist who believes strongly in the separation of church and state, I have to say this author's Marxist propaganda is hyperbolic and very misleading. He mocks Christians' concern that communism is undermining America, while failing to mention that communism and its first cousin socialism killed over 100 million people in the 20th century alone. You'll notice he tries to stir up the reader's sympathy towards a (Christian) woman of Arabic descent who has her feelings slightly hurt at an event when some participants tell her that Muslims are terrorists. He of course fails to mention that Muslins have killed an estimated 250 million people since the inception of the religion ca. 1620 A.D. It's these intentional omissions that make him a fatally flawed messenger. I as an atheist have infinitely more freedom in any ("fascist") Christian nation on earth than any Islamic nation. (Fun Fact: There are 13 countries on earth in which one can be put to death for being an atheist; all 13 are Islamic.) Like most liberals, this author masquerades as a champion for the marginalized little guy, but actually is helping pave the way for the inevitable takeover of the world by the only real fascistic religion on earth. If you failed to ascertain which religion that is, reread this review. For some additional fun info, visit thereligionofpeace.com

    6 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Moronic and utterly clueless. Author suffers from delusion. Complete trash.

    4 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This was written during W Bush's time as President, yet a lot of what is being talked about here, built up over time and led to the January 6th, 2021 events of religious extremism we witnessed.

    4 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Absolutely hyperbole. If you believe that christian conservatives are fascists, you'll get what your after. If you want truth and facts, or a basic understanding of fascism, skip it.

    3 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Author doesn't understand what being a Christian means. Skip this title.

    3 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Absolute trash. Ideological demogogery masquerading as a rational analysis. Typical liberal fascists projecting their garbage...

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A must read. Most educated, digestible, and truthful argument. If you are a liberally-minded person who still thinks America is a democracy that tolerates all, this book will challenge your ideas of what the reality actually looks like.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Well versed book. I enjoyed every minute. Thank you Chris

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A very interesting and thoughtful analysis of the ways the Christian far-right mirrors fascist ideology and tactics. Giving four stars instead of five because the organization of the content is unclear. Long anecdotes are added that are difficult to put in the context of the chapter topics. Chapters can jump around and are not in a seemingly purposeful order. Would still recommend.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It's a fine book, the 2 narrators complemented each other quite well. The book was published a little more than a decade ago, it seems prescient today. Now we have a pandemic for the religious right to exploit in addition to the environmental disaster.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Horror fiction has never scared me since I was I think nine years old reading ghost stories. By a similar token, horror movies never scare me - startle, maybe, but not scare. I once commented that "Jesus Camp" was the scariest movie I had ever seen. This is nearly as scary, if only that things have gotten even worse since it was published in 2006. So much worse. Mr. Hedges describes in ten chapters - Faith, The Culture of Despair, Conversion, The Cult of Masculinity, Persecution, The War on Truth, The New Class, The Crusade, God: The Commercial, Apocalyptic Violence - the genesis (sorry, couldn't resist) of modern wrongwing Christianity, the techniques of control of the cult, some of the players at the time who are/were bent on destroying the country, the words, the mission, the war on humans. Mind you, that summary is of my words and if you think I'm editorializing...these manics and this threat to our country are truly scary. Hedges talks about "...one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups." And the appeal to the demographic that elected the worst possible of all candidates (who incongruously is everything the evangelicals despise...except they embrace him???)...made easier because of strategic rhetoric: All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.Sound familiar? That's T’s rallies, pressers, and twits for sure. Hedges' book talks about how they recruit, how they keep, and how they plan to make war on humans. Now, 14 years later, that they have even greater access to small minds they can manipulate, including and excitedly for them, an elliptical work space at the seat of the government, their goals are coming to fruition:Dominionism, born out of a theology known as Christian reconstructionism, seeks to politicize faith. It has, like all fascist movements, a belief in magic along with leadership adoration and a strident call for moral and physical supremacy of a master race, in this case American Christians. It also has, like fascist movements, an ill-defined and shifting set of beliefs, some of which contradict one another. In addition to the impoverished vocabulary, "They engage in a slow process of “logocide,” the killing of words. The old definitions of words are replaced by new ones." Witness conservative/liberal...my example, not his. The former is a perversion that doesn't mean anything close to what it used to, and the latter is used as a pejorative, though it is still in my book enlightened intellectual progressivity (my version of their definitions..."conservative": against the Democratic party; "liberal": not against the Democratic party).The Christian right preys on the downtrodden:The bleakness of life in Ohio exposes the myth peddled by the Christian Right about the American heartland: that here alone are family values and piety cherished, nurtured and protected. The so-called red states, which vote Republican and have large evangelical populations, have higher rates of murder, illegitimacy and teenage births than the so-called blue states, which vote Democrat and have kept the evangelicals at bay. The lowest divorce rates tend to be found in blue states as well as in the Northeast and upper Midwest. Things that are "fake news", right? And how do they maintain control once snared (or if born into it, indoctrinated)? through The Cult of Masculinity The hypermasculinity of radical Christian conservatism, which crushes the independence and self-expression of women, is a way for men in the movement to compensate for the curtailing of their own independence, their object obedience to church authorities and the calls for sexual restraint. It is also a way to cope with fear. Those who lead these churches fear, perhaps most deeply, their own internal contradictions. They make war on the internal contradictions in others. [...]The use of control and force is also designed to raise obedient, unquestioning and fearful children, children who as adults will not be tempted to challenge powerful male figures. These children are conditioned to rely on external authority for moral choice. They obey out of fear and often repeat this pattern of fearful obedience as adults. They don’t want anyone thinking for themselves...but the young males they groom have to be able to when they assume their own power.Hedges talk more than once of the Creation Museum. To any human, or any thinking Homo retrorsum (another humanoid species that I've given that taxonomic classification...you can look up the Latin and know what I mean)...they are rarer than you think...absurdities being hawked like thisDr. Jason Lisle, who works for the Creation Museum, sets up his slide projector for a lecture. He begins his presentation by disabusing his audience of about 150 people, mostly students, teachers and parents, of the notion that dinosaurs were frightful creatures. “God didn’t make monsters,” he says, explaining his theory of the dinosaurs’ diet. “The first T. rex would have eaten plants. Dinosaurs, along with all animals originally, were vegetarians." ...drop the jaw. I really don't know what to say to "Dr." Lisle.Hedges talks about the Left Behind series, a comical (my word) collection of highly imaginative and delusional fantasy:[co-authors]LaHaye and Jenkins had to distort the Bible to make all this fit—the Rapture, along with the graphic details of the end of the world and the fantastic time line, is never articulated in the Bible—but all this is solved by picking out obscure and highly figurative passages and turning them into fuzzy allegory to fit the apocalyptic vision. Neither of those two, nor their followers likely know anything about apocalypses. Hint: there were hundreds, if not more apocalypses written in the first few hundred years of the Common Era. Why that one was chosen is a mystery, and all reputable scholars conclude it was written in response to some Roman tyranny a couple of hundred years before it became canon. Apocalypse means "one of the Jewish and Christian writings of 200 b.c. to a.d. 150 marked by pseudonymity, symbolic imagery, and the expectation of an imminent cosmic cataclysm in which God destroys the ruling powers of evil and raises the righteous to life in a messianic kingdom". There is no "The" apocalypse...there are many, all equally meaningless to a modern world. Except when crazies try to use them in their war.These fascists are a threat: Democracy is not, as these Christo-fascists claim, the enemy of faith. Democracy keeps religious faith in the private sphere, ensuring that all believers have an equal measure of protection and practice mutual tolerance. Democracy sets no religious ideal. It simply ensures coexistence. It permits the individual to avoid being subsumed by the crowd—the chief goal of totalitarianism, which seeks to tell all citizens what to believe, how to behave and how to speak. [...]Once this wall between church and state, or party and state, is torn down, there is an open and subtle warfare against love, which in an open society is another exclusive prerogative of the individual. Hedges concludes with this:The attacks by this movement on the rights and beliefs of Muslims, Jews, immigrants, gays, lesbians, women, scholars, scientists, those they dismiss as “nominal Christians,” and those they brand with the curse of “secular humanist” are an attack on all of us, on our values, our freedoms and ultimately our democracy. Tolerance is a virtue, but tolerance coupled with passivity is a vice. I'll conclude this with Hedges' quoted words of Vice President Henry Wallace, on April 9, 1944:The really dangerous American fascist…is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power. They claim to be superpatriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjugation.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This books sounds an alarm, about the goals and methods of the Christian Dominion movement. Hedges takes us on a bit of a tour of some of the places and event and people associated with this movement. For example, we get to see LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind series, giving a talk in Detroit.Hard to say what effect a book like this might have. For a lot of people, the danger of the Tea Party and Fox News is all too apparent. I can imagine some folks who are conservative Christians but without the fascist dimension of the Dominion movement, perhaps such folks might have been giving Pat Robertson the benefit of the doubt. Hedges mentions folks like Billy Graham as examples of conservative Christians who are not associated with the Dominion movement and don't get caught up by the lure of power and money. Probably many of these folks understand the dangers but don't see quite how far the Robertson - LaHaye crew have fallen into that trap. Actually it seems from what Hedges writes that LaHaye comes more out of a John Birch background so his Christianity is likely to be even more of a veneer. Hedges gives us a few clues here on how to distinguish genuine religion from this kind of cross-waving crowd incitement. He gives us some hints about what to do to steer us away from the abyss we are approaching all too closely. But there is not much such constructive material here. Mostly it is just an alarm. I think of the folks Hedges depicts here being like sorcerers. Religion deals with power. Black sorcery is when you channel that power for personal gain and glory. Maybe some of Dion Fortune's works on fighting black sorcery could be part of the medicine needed to free our society from this growing plague!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America by Chris HedgesAt first, I was a little (or maybe a lot?) turned off by the title. After reading the book, I still am. Nevertheless, I understand why he uses this terminology.Hedges wrote a couple of other books, which I couldn’t get into. Losing Moses on the Freeway about how the Ten Commandments are part of our culture. The other book I tried to read, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning was about the culture of war in this country. However, this book kept me reading asking for more.Hedges begins this book with an outline of his own theology. His views on the Bible, for instance, which he views as a book written “by a series of ancient writers, certainly fallible and at times at odds with each other, who asked the right questions and struggled with the mystery and transcendence of human existence.” He takes the Bible seriously and “therefore could not take it literally”. He talks about the many contradictions within the Bible.On other issues, Hedges says, “Faith presupposes that we cannot know. We can never know. Those who claim to know what life means play God.” He refers to the Pat Robertsons, Jerry Falwells and the James Dobsons as “false prophets”. He talks about how these “false prophets” have changed Christianity—a religion that helps outcasts and the poor to a religion, which supports “the god of capitalism”.Then he tackles another pet peeve about evangelical Christians. They seem to say all one needs to do for eternal life is to “accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior”. Good deeds or a good life doesn’t seem to be important.He speaks about the “cult of masculinity” within religious right circles. They emphasize the importance of the man being “head of the household” and the “head of the church”. A society that tells our young boys that danger can be fun. “Even if the father drops the kid and cracks his head a little bit, at least he will be straight. A small price to pay I tell you”Politically, Hedges talks about the “irregularities” in regard to 2000 and 2004 elections. Just one example was in Ohio. Kenneth Blackwell, an African American Republican Secretary of State, “banned photographers and reports from polling places, making irregularities and harassment harder to document.” (Blackwell ran for higher office in 2006 and was defeated).Hedges points out one of my pet peeves. How Republicans are now regarding themselves as to heroes of the civil rights movement. They act as if they were the leaders in the field of civil rights, when in fact they blocked us every inch of the way just as they are doing now for gays and others. They have destroyed most evidence of their hatred. In 1970, for instance, Jerry Falwell “recalled all copies on his earlier sermons warning of integration and the evils of the black race.”Then the author points out that the red states, which vote Republican and have large evangelical populations are the states with the highest murder rates, illegitimacy and teenage births.Hedges indicates we must take up this challenge of speaking up about the religious right before it is too late to resist. “This is the genius of totalitarian movements. They convince the masses to agitate for their own incarceration”.He quotes from a right wing Christian textbook America’s Providential History that indicates, “We really do not want representatives who are swayed by majorities, but rather by correct principles.”Hedges speaks to the issue of how these right wing Christians talk about how “homosexuals are recruiting” when in fact they are the ways who are brainwashing children into their false creeds.Mussolini said before Fascism was a political party it was a religion. Compare that to what Vice President Henry Wallace said in 1944, “The really dangerous American fascist…is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did to Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascists and his group more money or more power. They claim to be super patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. Finally Hedges feels the “debate with the radical Christian right is useless”. “The radical Christian right calls for exclusion, cruelty and intolerance in the name of God.” Hedges believes “all dialogue must include the respect and tolerance for the beliefs, worth and dignity of others especially those outside the nation and faith”.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Despite the three stars I believe reading this book was a good use of my time.The book had a bit of repetition and fear mongering but his basic message was that the Christian leadership in America has abandoned the salvation mission of Billy Graham and has consumed itself with the quest for power. Instead of trying to convince people to accept salvation they are determined to pass laws to make people act like christians. "Democracy keeps religious faith in the private sphere, ensuring that all believers have an equal measure of protection and practice mutual tolerance. Democracy sets no religious ideal. It simply ensures coexistence. It permits the individual to avoid being subsumed by the crowd--the chief goal of totalitarianism, which seeks to tell all citizens what to believe, how to behave and how to speak. The call to obliterate the public and the private wall that keeps faith the prerogative of the individual means the obliteration of democracy." Hedges, C. (2006). American Fascists. Free Press: New York. p 196
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Scary and mobilizing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Frightening but hopeful