Red State, Blue State: Cracking the Christian Fascist Code

mods: permission granted for full repost http://rwor.org/posting.htm

Red State, Blue State: Cracking the Christian Fascist Code
Thoughts on Truth and Repolarization

by Sunsara Taylor

Revolutionary Worker #1272, March 27, 2005, posted at rwor.org

After last November's election all the pundits were non-stop talking about the Red State/Blue State divide. E-mails bounced around featuring re-drawn maps appending the east and west coasts into the "United States of Canada" and re-labeling the mass in the middle as "Jesus-Land."

While the country is never so simply or geographically divided, there is something profound and important in some recent remarks made by Newt Gingrich when he compared the gulf in this country to that which preceded the U.S. Civil War, saying "This isn't a divided government—it's a divided country." (Continetti)

This essay is in response to the chilling echoes from history I hear in the voices that call for "healing" the divide or "seeking common ground"; to the excruciating slowness with which people in Germany in the 1930s, to Rwanda in the 1990s—and the United States of today— recognized the significance of a growing gulf in worldviews so fundamental that no resolution may be possible without the obliteration of one by the other.

Far from writing off or dismissing the millions and millions of "values voters" who've been pulled into standing on a horrendous side of history, I seek to deepen and broaden the conversation over how to analyze and transform the scary situation where this country is being dragged towards full blown Christian fascism.

******
EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

[etherealtruth]

1. Whoooo...Bookmarked to read carefully when I've time- thanks

9. Let me know what you think. nt.

.

[mhr]

2. "Forgive Us Father For We Know Not What We Do" - Wrong!

The republicans led by the Christian Fascists and Nationalistic Freepers are driving us into the gutter.

Excellent article!

[mcscajun]

3. I've read enough. Maoist Communism ain't for me.

No thanks. Sunsara Taylor lost me when she started quoting Bob Avakian.

We have to find our own answers.

4. I suppose you prefer "answers" from Clark...

to each their own. In my opinion Clark represents exactly the accomodationist politics that Sunsara is warning against.

[Tinoire]

5. Excellent article!

Thank you for posting this excellent, thought-provoking article. I hope more people, especially lurkers, read it and THINK!

===

Facts and science become suspect, perhaps even the work of the devil, because they contradict God's truth as revealed in the Bible.

(snip)

One of the peculiar twists of the current End Time theology is that God is seen to be actively working through George Bush's presidency. Things like the invasion of Iraq, the theft of Palestinian land by Israel, the decadence and "moral decay" within U.S. society, even the disastrous recent tsunami, are all proof that the second coming of Christ and His Judgment are near.

(snip)

Many other elements of this fundamentalist End Times outlook are brought out in the Left Behind fiction series. As I have plowed through this mind-numbing writing, I have been repeatedly shocked by how openly these books dovetail with the political program of U.S. military and economic supremacy and Dark Ages philosophy currently running rampant from the halls of Congress to local pulpits.

(snip)

In The Nazi Conscience , Claudia Koonz discusses how a similar type of dividing up of the population, the "separating those who deserve our concern from alien 'others' beyond the pale of the community" (Koonz, 1), was central to how the Nazis compelled millions of Germans to go along with their extreme horrors. Then she notes that "although it might seem that a human catastrophe on the scale of the Holocaust was caused by an evil that defies our understanding, what is frightening about the racist public culture within which the Final Solution was conceived is not its extremism but its ordinariness—not its savage hatreds but its lofty ideals." (Koonz, 2)

[dsnail]

6. Sunday in a Red State

Fantastic article, thanks for posting it. Here's a related article by a writer who hailed from but escaped his Pentecostal upbringing. Links to more of his article can be found at the bottom:

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar05/Bageant0322.htm

[gtar100]

7. Nietzsche's Anti-Christ writings are amazingly insightful

Nietzsche saw a sickness in Christianity that manifests itself throughout history bridled to corruption, war and oppression. Christianity is a closed system of thought that encircles itself with justifications, promises, and threats that keep people away from free thought and unbridled inquiry into the nature of existence.

To me, the idea of being 'born in sin' has truly been a tragedy to human kind. It breeds a contempt for life that is not easily shaken, especially if one fears hell for letting go of it.

Jesus said after his resurrection that a helper would be sent in his place - the Holy Spirit which would reside within ourselves. I don't recall anything about him also promising to send an infallible book along with that spirit. Yet somehow a book is contemplated a whole lot more than the internal spirit.

[sarcasmo]

8. When the Country has it's first Evangelical leader, IMHO it will be Ralph

Reed. We will all learn what Christian Fascism is all about and it will be a real NIGHTMARE.

10. Why was this post edited? & link to rest of article.

I clearly show that permission was granted for full repost and that there is no copyright concern.

For those who want to read the full article go to this link: http://rwor.org/a/1272/red-state-blue-state-taylor.htm