American Fascists

by Chris Hedges

  People have a very hard time believing the status quo of their existence, or the world around them, can ever change. There’s a kind of psychological inability to accept how fragile open societies are. When I was in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, at the start of the war, I would meet with incredibly well-educated, multilingual Kosovar Albanian friends in the cafés. I would tell them that in the countryside there were armed groups of the Kosovo Liberation Army, who I’d met, and they would insist that the Kosovo Liberation Army didn’t exist, that it was just a creation of the Serb police to justify repression.

  You saw the same thing in the café society in Sarajevo on the eve of the war in Bosnia. Radovan Karadzic or even Milosevic were buffoonish figures to most Yugoslavs, and were therefore, especially among the educated elite, never taken seriously. There was a kind of blindness caused by their intellectual snobbery, their inability to understand what was happening. I think we have the same experience here. Those of us in New York, Boston, San Francisco or some of these urban pockets don’t understand how radically changed our country is, don’t understand the appeal of these buffoonish figures to tens of millions of Americans.

  But don’t you feel like the tipping point is still quite a way off? Speaking personally, when I’ve read about totalitarian movements, I’ve always imagined that I’d know enough to pack up and go. That would seem to be a very premature thing to do here.

  Well, most people didn’t pack up and go. The people who packed up and left were the exception, and most people thought they were crazy. My friends in Pristina had no idea what was going on in Kosovo until they were literally herded down to the train station and pushed into boxcars and shipped like cattle to Macedonia. And that’s not because they weren’t intelligent or perceptive. It was because, like all of us, they couldn’t comprehend how fragile the world was around them, and how radically and quickly it could change. I think that’s a human phenomenon.

  Hitler was in power in 1933, but it took him until the late ’30s to begin to consolidate his program. He never spoke about the Jews because he realized that raw anti-Semitism didn’t play out with the German public. All he did was talk about family values and restoring the moral core of Germany. The Russian revolution took a decade to consolidate. It takes time to acculturate a society to a radical agenda, but that acculturation has clearly begun here, and I don’t see people standing up and trying to stop them. The Democratic policy of trying to reach out to a movement that attacks whole segments of the society as worthy only of conversion or eradication is frightening.

  Doesn’t it make sense for the Democrats to reach out to the huge number of evangelicals who aren’t necessarily part of the religious right, but who may be sympathetic to some of its rhetoric? Couldn’t those people be up for grabs?

  I don’t think they are up for grabs because they have been ushered into a non-reality-based belief system. This isn’t a matter of, “This is one viewpoint, here’s another.” This is a world of magic and signs and miracles and wonders, and [on the other side] is the world you hate, the liberal society that has shunted you aside and thrust you into despair. The rage that is directed at those who go after the movement is the rage of those who fear deeply being pushed back into this despair, from which many of the people I interviewed feel they barely escaped. A lot of people talked about suicide attempts or thoughts of suicide—these people really reached horrific levels of desperation. And now they believe that Jesus has a plan for them and intervenes in their life every day to protect them, and they can’t give that up.

  So in a way, the movement really has helped them.

  Well, in same way unemployed workers in Weimar Germany were helped by becoming brownshirts, yes. It gave them a sense of purpose. Look, you could always tell in a refugee camp in Gaza when one of these kids joined Hamas, because suddenly they were clean, their djelleba was white, they walked with a sense of purpose. It was a very similar kind of conversion experience. If you go back and read [Arthur] Koestler and other writers on the Communist Party, you find the same thing.

  This is a question that I get all the time, and you’ve probably heard it too: Do you think Bush is a believer, or do you think he and his administration are just cynically manipulating their foot soldiers?

  I think he’s a believer, to the extent that this belief system empowers his own arrogant sense of privilege and intellectual shallowness. When you know right and wrong, when you’ve been mandated by God to lead, you don’t have to ask hard questions, you don’t have to listen to anyone else. I think that plays into the Bush character pretty well.

  I think there are probably other aspects or tenets of this belief system that he finds distasteful and doesn’t like. But in a real sense he fits the profile: a washout, not a very good family life—apparently his mother was a horror show—he was a drunk, allegedly used drugs, coasted because of his daddy, reaches middle age, hasn’t done anything with his life, finds Jesus. That fits a lot of people in the movement.

  What do you think of the argument, exemplified by David Kuo’s book, Tempting Faith, that this administration has duped the Christian Right and hasn’t really given them much in exchange for their support?

  It’s given them a lot of money. It’s given them a few hundred million dollars. I wouldn’t call that nothing.

  Kuo’s argument is that Bush promised $8 billion for the faith-based initiative but that there was actually very little new funding. What’s missing in what he says, I think, is that while there was little new money, there was a massive effort to shift money that was already appropriated from secular social services to evangelical groups. But if you believe, as Kuo apparently did, that compassionate conservatism really meant helping the poor, then Bush hasn’t really done anything to further it.

  Well, [Bush] never wanted to help the poor. That was just to sell us on a program—he didn’t have any intention of helping the poor.

  Did you start out to research this book with the intellectual framework that comes from Hannah Arendt and Karl Popper in mind?

  Yes. I studied a lot of Christian ethics, a lot of Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, that’s how I was formed, so when I covered conflicts as a foreign correspondent, the peculiarity of my education made me look at those conflicts a little differently. I was always very wary of utopian movements because I had it pounded into me that utopianism is a dangerous phenomenon, of the left or the right. I was very critical of liberation theology because it essentially endorsed violence to create a Christian society. The way that I articulated that was really through writers like Popper and Arendt. I needed Karl Popper and Hannah Arendt to get a lot of the despotic movements that I was covering, to give myself a vocabulary by which to explain these movements to myself. Even when I teach journalism classes I tend to make them read The Origins of Totalitarianism because I think it’s such an important book. I’ve read the book seven or eight times.

  When did you see its relevance to the Christian Right?

  Because of my close coverage, or close connection with movements like Hamas or Milosevic, or even some of the despotic movements in Latin America like Efraín Ríos Montt in Guatemala, I’d already been conditioned to smell these people out. And then, of course, coming out of the church and coming out of seminary, the combination was such that as soon as I came back from overseas, I had a sense of who these people were. There was a strange kind of confluence from my experience as a reporter and my academic background that came together and gave me a kind of sensitivity to the Christian Right that maybe other people didn’t have immediately. I don’t know how much it’s apparent, but it’s an angry book.

  That’s very apparent.

  Good. My father remains the most important influence on my life, and he was a Presbyterian minister, a devout Christian. I quote Reinhold Niebuhr saying, “Religion is a good thing for good people and a bad thing for bad people.” I wouldn’t describe myself as particularly pious but I certainly would describe myself as religious. And when I see how these people are ma
nipulating the Christian religion for personal empowerment and wealth and for the destruction of the very values that I think are embodied in the teachings of Jesus Christ, I’m angry.

  This article first appeared in Salon. com at http://www.Salon.com. An online version remains in the Salon archives. Reprinted with permission.

  ALSO BY CHRIS HEDGES

  Losing Moses on the Freeway

  What Every Person Should Know About War

  War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

  Notes

  Chapter One: Faith

  1. Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), 1:263.

  2. Quotations from the Bible are taken from the Revised Standard Version unless otherwise noted.

  3. Reinhold Niebuhr, as reported to me by Reverend Coleman Brown.

  4. William Sloane Coffin, Credo (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 159.

  5. Richard K. Fenn, Dreams of Glory: The Sources of Apocalyptic Terror (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 60.

  6. William Sloane Coffin, The Heart Is a Little to the Left (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999), 44.

  7. Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H., stanza 96, in The Poetic and Dramatic Work of Alfred Lord Tennyson (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1899), 246.

  8. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), 37.

  9. Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 218.

  10. Ibid., 219.

  11. Davidson Loehr, America, Fascism and God: Sermons from a Heretical Preacher (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2005), 88.

  12. Rousas John Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Dallas, TX: Craig, 1973), 585–590.

  13. In September 2002, Tommy Thompson, then U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced the award of 21 grants from the White House’s new faith-based initiative. More than 500 institutions had applied. Operation Blessing was one of the winners, receiving more than $500,000. See remarks by Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, in a Pew forum titled “The Faith-Based Initiative Two Years Later: Examining Its Potential, Progress and Problems,” March 5, 2003, Washington, DC, http://pewforum.org/events/index.php?EventID=41. More than 7 percent of the $2,154,246,246 going to faith-based grants was awarded to abstinence-only education programs. See “Federal Funds for Organizations That Help Those in Need,” Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/fbci/grants-catalog02-06.pdf.

  14. Katherine Yurica, “What Did Mr. Bush’s 2nd Inaugural Address Really Mean? Biblical Code Unraveled,” The Yurica Report, February 24, 2005, http://www.yuricareport.com/BushSecondTerm/WhatMr Bush2ndInauguralMeans.html.

  15. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, 581; 583–584.

  16. Mark A. Beliles and Stephen K. McDowell, America’s Providential History (Charlottesville, VA: Providence Foundation, 1991), 26.

  17. “The Vision of GRN,” Global Recordings Network, http://globalrecordings.net/topic/vision.

  18. “True Liberty,” Global Recordings Network, http://globalrecordings.net/script/ENG/171.

  19. Joseph Goebbels, Signale der neuen Zeit (Munich: Eher, 1934), 34; Gerd Albrecht, Nationalsozialistische Filmpolitik: Eine soziologische Untersuchung über die Spielfilme des Dritten Reiches (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1969), 464.

  20. Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2003), 73.

  21. Paxton, Anatomy of Fascism, 202.

  22. Garry Wills, Under God: Religion and American Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 15. The Gallup data are found in George Gallup and Jim Castelli, The People’s Religion: American Faith in the 90s (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 56, 58, 61, 63 and 75. Data on the Rapture are found in Marlene Tufts, “Snatched Away Before the Bomb: Rapture Believers in the 1980s” (PhD dissertation, University of Hawaii, 1986), vi.

  23. Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 9.

  24. Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution (New York: Random House, 1965), 154–155.

  25. Ibid., 157–158.

  26. Ibid. 164.

  27. I heard Kennedy say this at my seminar with him at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.

  28. Curtis White, “The Spirit of Disobedience,” Harper’s, April 2006.

  29. The Christian Coalition of America lists 15 issues as key to its “Legislative Agenda.” Its 2004 “Congressional Scorecard” rated (on a 100-point scale) members of the House of Representatives on 13 of these issues; 163 members of the House received an overall rating of 90 or higher on all 13. Members of the Senate were rated on six issues; 42 members of the Senate received an overall rating of 100 on all six. See “Congressional Scorecard,” Christian Coalition of America, http://www.cc.org/2004scorecard.pdf. Also Glenn Scherer, “The Godly Must Be Crazy,” Grist, October 27, 2004.

  30. “American Values: The Triumph of the Religious Right,” Economist, November 11, 2004, http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=375543; Transcript of interview with Jim DeMint, NBC News’ Meet the Press, October 17, 2004, http://www.msnbc.com/id/6267835; Hanna Rosin, “Doctor’s Order: Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn Is Back on Capitol Hill, Budgetary Scalpel at the Ready,” Washington Post, December 12, 2004, D1, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58361-2004Dec11.html.

  31. MSNBC.com, “Exit Polls—President,” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5297138.

  32. President Bush created the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives by executive order on January 29, 2001, just nine days after his inauguration. Congress has not passed legislation allowing for faith-based initiatives, so President Bush has repeatedly used executive orders to push the policy through. See “Executive Orders,” Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, http://www.white house.gov/government/fbci/executive-orders.html. In February 2006, President Bush signed the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, reauthorizing welfare reform for another five years and extending the “charitable choice” policy, which allows faith-based groups to continue receiving funding “without altering their religious identities or changing their hiring practices.” See “Fact Sheet: Compassion in Action: Producing Real Results for Americans Most in Need,” Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, http://www.white house.gov/news/releases/2006/03/print/20060309-3.html.

  33. In fiscal year 2003, $1.17 billion out of a $14.5 billion budget in competitive social-service grants were awarded to FBOs. See “Grants to Faith-Based Organizations FY 2003,” Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/fbci/final_report_2003.pdf.

  34. President George W. Bush, “President Highlights Faith-Based Results at National Conference,” http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060309-5.html.

  35. Out of $19,456,713,768 in grants, $2,004,491,549 went to FBOs. See “Grants to Faith-Based Organizations FY 2004,” Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/fbci/final_report_2004.pdf.

  36. Out of $19,715,661,808 in grants, $2,154,246,246 went to FBOs. See “Grants to Faith-Based Organizations FY 2005,” Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/fbci/final_report_2005.pdf.

  37. David M. Fine, “Ohio Counties to Adopt Diebold Voting Machines,” The Mill, January 18, 2004, http://www.gristforthemill.org/010418diebold.html.

  38. Ibid.

  39. Mark Crispin Miller, “None Dare Call It Stolen,” Harper’s, September 7, 2005, http://www.harpers.org/ExcerptNoneDare.html; Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, “Hearings on Ohio Voting Put 2004 Election in Doubt,” Columbus Free Press, November 18, 2004, http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=views04/1118-30.htm.

  40. Ray Beckerman, “Basic Report from Columbus,” November 4, 2004, http://www.freepress.org/departments/php/display/19/2004/834.


  41. Mark Crispin Miller, “None Dare Call It Stolen.”

  42. The National Center for Education Statistics in the U.S. Department of Education estimated that 1.1 million students were home-schooled in 2003, a 29 percent increase from 1999. The National Home Education Research Institute says that 1.7 million to 2.1 million children were home-schooled during the 2002–2003 academic year. From Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming, 2.

  43. Barbara Parker and Christy Macy, “Secular Humanism, the Hatch Amendment, and Public Education,” People for the American Way, Washington, DC, 1985, 8.

  44. Quoted in Bill Moyers, “9/11 and the Spirit of God,” address at Union Theological Seminary, September 7, 2005, http://www.uts.columbia.edu/index.php?id=605.

  45. Sunsara Taylor, “Battle Cry for Theocracy,” Truthdig.com, May 11, 2006, http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060511_battle_cry _theocracy.

  46. Augustine, quoted in William Sloane Coffin, The Heart Is a Little to the Left, 6.

  Chapter Two: The Culture of Despair

  1. Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), xii.

  2. Beth Shulman, “Working and Poor in the USA,” Nation, February 9, 2004.

  3. Robert Morley, “The Death of American Manufacturing,” Trumpet, February 2006, http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?page=article&id=1955.

  4. Martin Crutsinger, “United States Cites China and Other Nations in Report on Unfair Trade Practices,” Associated Press, March 31, 2006.

  5. Dale Maharidge, “Rust and Rage in the Heartland,” Nation, September 20, 2004, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040920/maharidge.