The end of last week, rightwing Christian leader Gary Bauer wrote a classic piece of conservative victimology, "If Christians Were Treated Like Muslims", complaining about how victimized poor Christians are here in America. His first example:
If Muslims were treated like Christians in America, Muslims would have to tolerate the defamation of their holiest images in our national museums, acts which would be called "artwork" -- and, if particularly provocative, even given taxpayer-funded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.
It's an odd choice, given that Muslims actually take seriously the Biblical injunction against "graven images", and thus have no "holiest images". Their religious art--which is profoundly beautiful--is entirely abstract. The fact that Bauer launches his pity party with such a blatant display of his utter ignorance of Islam is most revealing: It shows both how ignorant Bauer is, and how far from mainstream influence and acceptance Islam is--the exact opposite of the lie that Bauer is pushing.
But there's an even deeper layer here: Christians only have "holiest images" because they have intentionally disregarded a clear literal teaching of their sacred texts--and not an obscure or marginal passage, but the Second Commandment (from Exodus 20:4-5 (King James Version):
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God,
One of the underlying assumptions of Bauer's pity party is that all the indignities visited on Christians are signs of persecution from non-Christian--even anti-Christian "elites". But the reality is that Christians have virtually always had profound differences amongst themselves, and have often done things that other Christians vigorously objected to and even considered blasphemous and offensive. The almost universal Christian use of graven images is but one example of this.
In this broader historical context, the sorts of "offenses" that Bauer cites are almost entirely the result of intra-Christian differences, and it's almost certain that America's active encouragement of religious autonomy and diversity--which works to accentuate such differences--is a major reason why Americans are markedly more religious than those who live in countries with historical state churches and traditions of imposing religious orthodoxy. In short, one reason that Bauer is angry is because America is America
...a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
Then laying out its development, which started thus:
In the first stage, a mature industrial state facing some kind of crisis breeds a new, rural movement that's based on nationalist renewal. This movement invariably rejects reason and glorifies raw emotion, promises to restore lost national pride, co-opts the nation's traditional myths for its own purposes, and insists that the country must be purged of the toxic influence of outsiders and intellectuals who are blamed for their current misery.
(Sound familiar yet?)
In the second stage, the movement takes root, turns into a real political party, and seizes a seat at the table.
I also featured a clip from Countdown of Sharron Angle's latest attack ad on Harry Reid, all about the threat of illegal immigration and crime:
This ad is, in fact, a perfect embodiment of what Paxton was writing about. We already saw this in Arizona with Jan Brewer and SB-1070. The immigrant/crime narrative was a very big part of that, with Brewer making outlandish claims about beheaded bodies in the desert that obviously had no basis in fact, In fact, the entire attempt to link crime and immigration is driven almost entirely by the anti-immigrant logic of proto-fascism, with a sprinkling of a few annecdotal incidents that in turn are highlighted in the media precisely because they fit this narrative so well.
But when one looks at statistics, one discovers that the immigrant/crime connection is precisely the opposite of that alleged: immigrants are far less likely to be perpetrators of crime. If anything, they're more likely to be victimized--particularly undocumented ones who are afraid of turning to the police. That was the reason for LA's Special Order 40, instituted by the very conservative Chief Daryl Gates, precisely to encourage all immigrants to cooperate with police, to enable them to do their job. This not only protected immigrant communities, it protected everyone, since crime allowed to fester in one sub-community may eventually produce threats to others as well.
First she quickly reviewed the foundations of those posts in Robert Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism, first citing Paxton's definition, then some key stages in the development of fascism, and finally a set of three questions to ask if you've crossed the line to the stage where there's no turning back. There are very few movements that cross this line, but the ones that do enter into decades-long nightmares. Could we be next? With that in mind, she then looks at three possible outcomes of the coming election. All this, obviously, was written before Lauren Valle had her head stomped on by Rand Paul's thugs. But it provides the historically appropriate background for understanding what we saw happening. Perhaps--just perhaps--this violent thuggery got out ahead itself, and tipped its hands to the wider public in time to turn the tide. We won't really know until late election night. But it's well worth reviewing what Robinson warned us of.
First off, there's Paxton's definition:
Paxton defined fascism as:
...a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
There there's Paxton's stages. She doesn't go through them all--as she did in her original. But she goes through enough:
In the first stage, a mature industrial state facing some kind of crisis breeds a new, rural movement that's based on nationalist renewal. This movement invariably rejects reason and glorifies raw emotion, promises to restore lost national pride, co-opts the nation's traditional myths for its own purposes, and insists that the country must be purged of the toxic influence of outsiders and intellectuals who are blamed for their current misery.
(Sound familiar yet?)
In the second stage, the movement takes root, turns into a real political party, and seizes a seat at the table. Success at this stage, Paxton writes, "depends on certain relatively precise conditions: the weakness of a liberal state, whose inadequacies condemn the nation to disorder, decline, or humiliation; and political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner."
(Paging the Party of No....)
In the face of this deadlock, the corporate elites forge an alliance with rural nationalists, creating an unholy marriage that, if it continues, will soon breed a fascist state. And, of course, this is precisely what's happening now between the Koch Brothers, the oil companies, Americans for Prosperity, and the Tea Party.
And, of course, candidates like Sharron Angle:
This is where most proto-fascist movements die, primarily because of "the basic authoritarian ineptitude of their leadership," as Robinson puts it. Now, however, we have some of the slickest, most experienced professionals around. But there are also some real loose cannons and wild cards as well. So were definitely still could get lucky. We can use all the luck we can get:
All through the dark years of the Bush Administration, progressives watched in horror as Constitutional protections vanished, nativist rhetoric ratcheted up, hate speech turned into intimidation and violence, and the president of the United States seized for himself powers only demanded by history's worst dictators. With each new outrage, the small handful of us who'd made ourselves experts on right-wing culture and politics would hear once again from worried readers: Is this it? Have we finally become a fascist state? Are we there yet?
Previously, the answer had been "As bad as this looks: no -- we are not there yet.". Now, though...
In tracking the mileage on this trip to perdition, many of us relied on the work of historian Robert Paxton, who is probably the world's pre-eminent scholar on the subject of how countries turn fascist. In a 1998 paper published in The Journal of Modern History [pdf], Paxton argued that the best way to recognize emerging fascist movements isn't by their rhetoric, their politics, or their aesthetics. Rather, he said, mature democracies turn fascist by a recognizable process, a set of five stages that may be the most important family resemblance that links all the whole motley collection of 20th Century fascisms together. According to our reading of Paxton's stages, we weren't there yet. There were certain signs -- one in particular -- we were keeping an eye out for, and we just weren't seeing it.
And now we are. In fact, if you know what you're looking for, it's suddenly everywhere.
Back in April, conservatives were all up in arms over a report from the Department of Homeland Security warning of the possible rise of rightwing violence in the wake of a worsening recession and the election of the nation's first black President. The word "conservative" never appeared in the report, but conservatives were certain it was aimed at them.
Suddenly, now that the shooting has begun to grab major mindshare, they've changed their minds. The murderer of Dr. George Tiller was a lone nut, not one of them. And Bill O'Reilly's incessant haranguing of "Tiller the baby-killer" had nothing to do with Tiller's murder. What's more, James W. Von Brunn, the Holocaust Museum killer, why, he's a leftist!
Gosh, it seems that the DHS report wasn't about conservatives after all! But are the conservatives now apologizing to Janet Napolitano? Don't hold your breath.
Perhaps the best place to turn to understand what's happening--not just the outbreak of violence, but the intimate relationship it has to the actually existing rightwing movement in America, is David Neiwert's new book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right. One way or another, David's been on this beat since the 1990s, covering the "Patriot" movement in the Northwest first as journalist, then as author, and writing a number of seminal diary series, including the 2003 Koufax winner, Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An Exegesis (pdf) and the 2004 Koufax winner, "The Rise of Pseudo Fascism" (pdf), both of which contribute substantially to the content of The Eliminationists.
David's the founder of the blog Orcinus, and is currently managing editor at Crooks and Liars, where he had an excellent post yesterday, "How on-target was Homeland Security's right-wing extremism bulletin? Very", which covers a lot of ground (typically for him), including an extensive quotation from The Eliminationistts (mostly finished by last October), from which the following is but a tiny snippet:
Regardless of how much attention the media pays, the explosion of support for the Paul campaign yesterday is much more than a one-time event. The Paul campaign is now a bona fide phenomenon of real significance, and it is difficult to see this as anything other than a very positive development.
It is, in fact, quite easy to see the Paul campaign as quite negative in several respects. For example: (1) It promotes rightwing conspiracy theories. (2) It provides organizing opportunities for racist and nativist hate groups. (3) It promotes emotionally satisfying, but simplistic political analyses that short-circuit development of more mature critical analyses. (4) It's a form of tribalism that, per Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World, works synergistically with the globalization it ostensibly opposses to undermine democratic republicanism, which is the one thing that can actually save us. Taking just those four aspects into account, the end result is that Paul's candidacy must be judged a mixed bag, at best. So far, however, Glenn has dug in his heels, refusing to address more than the surface of the objections raised about Paul. Although mistaken, in my view, Glenn's approach to Paul deserves serious reflection. It has a consistency with his overall work, which is grounded in his earlier career as a constitutional lawyer. He is thinking in terms of procedural fairness, and the attacks on Paul seem both unjust and fallacious-primarily in the way of guilt-by association. This individidualist/case-oriented approach differs significantly from the group/social historical approach that informs David Neiwart and Sara Robinson's work at Orcinus, which I referenced.
Not only is Ron Paul a rightwing nut, as others have noted (the most conservative member of the House, by the DW-Nominate scale, compared to Tancredo who fell short by 7, 13 and 16 slots in the 108th, 109th and 110th Congresses, respectively), he's a longtime magnet for the white supremacist fringe, and the rest of the hard right.
Glenn responded:
Paul Rosenberg:
I'm really uncomfortable with judging someone by the support they attract. When The NY Sun wanted to discredit Walt/Measheimer, they did it by asking David Duke if he agreed with their book, and when he said that he did, they published a big article about it, implying that Duke's agreement must mean the argument is racist.
And, of course, a lot of the money that has been donated to Clinton and Obama -- A LOT -- is from the largest corporations that many of their supporters blame for most of the nation's ills. Should Clinton or Obama be responsible for the actions of their corporate donors?
Paul is out there arguing against worldwide organizations as well as clearly oppposing our unbending support for Israel. That is going to attract some anti-semites and other assorted crazies and haters, but that is most assuredly not the same as saying that Paul himself is anti-semitic or hateful.
Connecting a candidate to the views of some of his supporters without more smacks a little of guilt by association (not say you're doing that), and I doubt any candidate is really immune to that sort of thing.
The only problem is that I wrote a good deal more than that single paragraph. I referenced some of the long-running commentary on Paul at Orcinus, among other things, and although Glenn has responded ("Ron Paul distortions and smears") to a more recent post by David at Orrinus ("Ron Paul's record in Congress"), he did so in an uncharacteristically superficial way, while ignoring another post altogether ("Ron Paul and his followers"), which went much more directly into the material that Greenwald was not examining, which details Paul's history of intentionally courting "anti-semites and other assorted crazies and haters."
There are, as I see it, at least two major factors at work here. One is a difference in fundamental operating orientation, the other is political orientation. On the flip, I begin the process of critiquing Glenn's analysis of Paujl, and what it leaves out, by explaining what I mean about these two factors.
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