THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT AND THE WAR ON AMERICA CHRIS HEDGES Free Press NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY ft FREE PRESS A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Copyright © 2006 by Chris Hedges All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. FREE PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc. For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales: 1-800-456-6798 or [email protected] Designed by Paul Dippolito Manufactured in the United States of America 7 9 10 8 6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hedges, Chris. American fascists : the Christian Right and the war on America / Chris Hedges. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Fascism—United States. 2. Fundamentalism—United States. 3. Conservatism—Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Title. JC481 .H38 2007 322/. 10973—dc22 2006047123 ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-8443-1 ISBN-10: 0-7432-8443-7 The author gratefully acknowledges the kind permission of Harcourt to reprint Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt by Umberto Eco from Five Moral Pieces. Copyright © 2001 by Umberto Eco. For Chris Marquis, a gifted writer, a courageous reporter and a generous friend whose loss has left a hole in my heart. Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. —Blaise Pascal Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt By Umberto Eco In spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various historical forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it. • • • 1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition. Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counterrevolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but is was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. In the Medi terranean basin, people of different religions (most of the faiths indulgently accepted by the Roman pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human his tory. This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of for gotten languages—in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little-known religions of Asia. This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, "the combination of different forms of be lief or practice;" such a combination must tolerate contradic tions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and although they seem to say different or incompatible things, they all are nevertheless alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth. As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learn ing. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message. If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine, who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge—that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism. 2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism. Both Fascists and Nazis worshipped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its indus trial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the sur face of an ideology based upon blood and earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life. The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism. 3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for ac tion's sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emascula tion. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has al ways been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Hermann Goer- ing's fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play ("When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "egg heads," "effete snobs," and "universities are nests of reds." The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in at tacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for hav ing betrayed traditional values. 4. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distin guish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scien- tific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason. 5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or pre maturely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition. 6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustra tion. That is why one of the most typical features of the his torical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political hu miliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old "proletarians" are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority. 7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most com mon one, to be born in the same country. This is the ori gin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the United States, a promi nent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson's The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others. 8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assis tance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be con vinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally in capable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy. 9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such "final solu tions" implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament. 10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak. Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people in the world, the members or the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler. 11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but