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"Fighting for the Work of the Lord"
Everybody's Talkin' About Christian Fascism

Commentators right and left are talking about fascism in the U.S. of A. Libertarian conservative Lew Rockwell, in a recent article entitled "The Reality of Red-State Fascism," declares, "what we have alive in the US is an updated and Americanized fascism."

Fellow libertarian Justin Raimondo, in a piece called "Today's Conservatives are Fascists," calls the neocons shaping U.S. foreign policy "fascists, pure and simple." United Methodist minister Rev. William E. Alberts accuses some of Bush's followers of upholding a "super religion displaying tendencies similar to Hitler's super race with its fascist ideology of superiority."

Meanwhile the Revolutionary Communist Party circulates in the tens of thousands a statement declaring that "Bush and his people" are "Christian Fascists---dangerous fanatics who aim to make the U.S. a religious dictatorship and to force this upon the world." This is quite a wide spectrum of anti-fascist opinion.

I think it's good the f-word is out there, and the issue on the table. Fascism needs to be discussed. I thought so in October 2002, when I wrote an essay posted on CounterPunch, "Talking to Your Kids About Fascism." It was a presented as a quiet talk one might have with preteens, delivered with the simple clarity and sobriety one might assume when talking with one's young about drug use or sex or any serious issue. My point at the time was fascism's not just a phenomenon unique to 1930s and 40s and defeated in 1945 but something that can recrudesce. One should be alert for warning signs.

That was over two years ago, before the criminal invasion of Iraq, based on lies, and the cynical exploitation of racist-based fear. It was before British officers complained that their U.S. counterparts in Iraq were treating the Iraqis like Untermensch (subhumans, a term the Nazis applied to various non-Aryan groups). It was before the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture revelations, and the reorganization of the "intelligence community" to better disseminate disinformation in the service of ongoing war. It was before the Bush campaign to amend the constitution, for the first time to specifically prevent the expansion of liberties. It was before persons in and around the administration defended Japanese-American wartime concentration camps with an eye towards new camps for other groups in the future. The fascist tide has surged in the interim, as I thought, back in 2002, was very likely. ...

...The question in my mind is this: Given that this fascist tide is so related to a post 9-11 foreign policy so shaped by non-Christians, can we indeed call the movement "Christian fascist"? If one does so, one acknowledges the obvious: that Bush's social base is largely a Christian fundamentalist one, committed to what it perversely terms a "family values" agenda. But Christian fundamentalists, who have been agitating for years for prayer in the schools, textbook censorship, public display of the 10 Commandments, etc., haven't from the grass roots been demanding U.S. military action to achieve regime change in the Middle East. The movement to achieve that central aspect of the fascist program comes from the elite, with the neocons in and out of government playing key roles. Their plans for the Middle East do happen to dovetail with the fundamentalists' "End Times" hopes and expectations for that region, such that even the collapse of the original justifications for the Iraq War doesn't daunt the latter in their support for what they see as God's plan. The neocons in power, in concert with their fundamentalist colleagues (Bush and Cheney among them) have played the Christian fascists at the grass roots like a harp....