It is tragic that it took the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the murder and wounding of 18 others to bring home to most of us the horror of years of rightwing violence, threats of violence, and public murder fantasies.
While the actual views of alleged shooter Jared Loughner are hazy, and whether far rightwing influences on his thinking played any role in his motives for the shooting remains to be seen, we find ourselves nevertheless talking about the climate of hate and violence, as well as the actual violence itself that has been building for a very long time.
Many examples of the uses of violent imagery and open suggestion of violence have been discussed in the past few days, but I have not seen any reference to, let alone discussion of Ann Coulter's repeated (sometimes winking) justification -- before two national Religious Right political conferences, in her syndicated column, and on Fox News -- of the assassination of abortion providers.
(In light of the shootings in Arizona today, I wanted to provide the Open Left community with the best sort of deep background coverage possible. That's why I invited Frederick Clarkson, co-founder of Talk2Action, to cross-post this diary from his site. NOTE: Idiot Wind Will be delayed to late Sunday afternoon, because of special circumstances - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
In light of the attempted murder of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) in a shooting spree resulting in the death of 6 (including federal judge John Roll) and the wounding of 12 others, I want to underscore the culture of violence and threats of violence being furthered by the Religious Right by reprising (a slightly edited) post from 2009 in which I discussed how Arizona pastor Rev. Steven Anderson called on God to kill Barack Obama, and encouraged a member of his congregation to protest an Obama speech by carrying an assault rifle outside the venue.
It is also worth noting that during the election campaign Giffords Opponent, Jesse Kelly, Held June Event to "Shoot a Fully Automatic M16? to "Get on Target" and "Remove Gabrielle Giffords"; and Sarah Palin put Giffords in a crosshair target graphic on her web site. There is no apparent connection between these events and Anderson. However, all are part of the far-right political culture that encourages such ideas and actions. Anderson has continued to promote violent ideas since 2009 and the Southern Poverty Law Center recently listed that Anderson's church as a hate group. We could also discuss the history of how the theology of hate and violence and related rhetoric directed at abortion providers relates to the quarter century of arson, bombings and murders and more that have been directed at abortion providers and how this part of, and not separate from the rest of the far right. But for today, let's recall the words and deeds of Rev. Steven Anderson.
In 2009, I published an essay at Religion Dispatches that discussed the Religious Right back story behind Anderson and his congregation. Here are a few excerpts:
Chris Broughton, 28, made national news when he showed up to protest a speech by President Barack Obama in Phoenix, Arizona with an AR-15 automatic rifle slung over his shoulder and a handgun. While Broughton claims that his (apparently legal) actions were not meant to threaten the president, there was more to the story than a single citizen's dubious actions and pronouncements. Local print and television coverage in Phoenix, and bloggers all over the country, have led the way on an interesting and important story of religion and politics that has been almost entirely ignored by the traditional media.
Here is what they missed.
The night before Broughton's fifteen minutes of fame, he attended a fiery Sunday sermon by his pastor, Rev. Steven L. Anderson, at Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. Rev. Anderson, also 28, explained not only "Why I Hate Barack Obama," but also why he and God both want the president dead. "When I go to bed tonight," Broughton's pastor declared, "Steven L. Anderson is going to pray for Barack Obama to die and go to hell." He even goes so far as to claim that:
"God appointed [Obama] to destroy this country for the wickedness of the United States of America. God appointed him because that's what our country has turned into. That's who we deserve as a president."
Longtime social justice activist Urvashi Vaid has an exceptionally thoughtful essay at her blog titled "Ideas Needed to Defeat the Right." One needn't agree with every point in order to find it an excellent starting off point for people seeking to approach the subject of what to do. It is long, nuanced and well worth reading and discussing among those who take the long view.
One point that she highlights as a critical need is for serious research and documentation that can lead to better understandings of the Right. Excerpts on the flip.
(Glenn Beck is FAR from the only show in town when it comes to mobilizing rightwing shock troops. Others have been at it a whole lot longer than he. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
The Christian Right has often sought to stay the hand of God, angry with our failings as a nation, by 'standing in the gap' at large prayer rallies and pleading for mercy. They have made a special point of doing so in the run up to national elections since 1980, praying for godly government and righteous candidates, and this year is no exception. The beneficiaries are almost always Republicans and this year is probably no exception in that regard as well. But there is also an ominous element that mostly transcends parties and is on vivid display as we enter the fall campaign season.
On Labor Day weekend, Lou Engle, head of the fiery neo-Pentecostal group, The Call, is leading a worship service in a sports arena in Sacramento, California and a "solemn assembly" at the state Capitol the next day.
(Fred is one of the long-time leading scholar-activists of America's religious culture wars. I'm pleased to have him speaking out here. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
The responses to something new and different can be as interesting as the new and different thing itself. Even the best of us sometimes have difficulty with new ideas, fresh approaches, and especially anything that challenges certain Conventional Wisdoms. Thanks to the invention of writing, we can see this play out when books and articles that question status quo thinking cause cognitive dissonance among the gate keepers. The intellectual debris left in the wake of such dissonance-induced crashes have much to teach us about the way things are and the nature of struggles that lie ahead.
A recent development in the Ugandan 'kill the gays' bill story once again shows how the religious right is permeated lies. Indeed, violating the Ninth Commandment--"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor"--seems to be the core belief of the religious right. (Not to mention the rest of the right, as well.)
Ugandan Member of Parliament David Bahati, who introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Act into Parliament, appeared on the BBC's Focus On Africa program to talk about his handiwork. Bahati appears not to have gotten the memo about the death penalty being eliminated or the trial balloon of dropping the whole bill that was floated on the Uganda government's official Media Centre web site. Bahati remained firmly behind the bill, saying that it is all about responding to child sexual abuse:
David Bahati says the new offence of "aggravated homosexuality" is a penalty against "defilement" of under-18s. "There has been a distortion in the media that we are providing death for gays. That is not true," he said. "When a homosexual defiles a kid of less than 18 years old, we are providing a penalty for this."
This, of course, is an outright lie.
The story goes on to quote the bill in full, but most telling is this:
3. Aggravated homosexuality. (1) A person commits the offense of aggravated homosexuality where the
....(f) offender is a serial offender, or....
So a second offense--potentially charged simultaneously with a first offense--was sufficient for the death penalty. And the man who wrote the law simply lied flat out about it.
Some paragon of virtue he is!
But that lie to the BBC was not an isolated one. Indeed, the entire rationale of the Uganda crusade to kill gays is permeated with the same vast array of lies that have been used in the US to attack gay rights since the 1970s. That it's unnatural, that gays are child-molesters, that gays are sick, that gays are a product of cultural decadence, etc., etc., etc. And, of course, those big lies bring innumerable smaller lies in their wake. Which is why it's no surprise that--as Rachel Maddow indicated on Thursday --Rick Warren lies so effortlessly where gay-related issues are concerned:
Public opinion on Question 1 in Maine, which would reject the state's law allowing same sex couples to marry, is knotted up two weeks before election day. 48% of voters in the state support it and 48% oppose it.
With most voters' minds made up the election is not really about persuasion at this point but turnout. Even a small difference in the ability of supporters and opponents of the referendum to get their folks out to the polls could tip the scales with the issue this close.
PPP says it can't get any closer. It was an automated (robodial) poll, so I guess it's to be expected that their numbers would be different from the live callpolls' results. We can argue over whose method produces more accurate results, but ultimately all the polls point to a close race. No matter what, we have our work cut out for us.
A federal judge has ruled that a history teacher at a Southern California public high school violated the First Amendment when he called creationism "superstitious nonsense" in a classroom lecture. The judge, James Selna, issued the ruling after a 16-month legal battle between a student, Chad Farnan, and his former teacher, James Corbett. Mr. Farnan's lawsuit said Mr. Corbett had made more than 20 statements that were disparaging to Christians and their beliefs. The judge found that Mr. Corbett's reference to creationism as "religious, superstitious nonsense" violated the First Amendment's establishment clause. Courts have interpreted the clause as prohibiting government employees from displaying religious hostility.
So a public school teacher is in violation of the first amendment by speaking disparagingly against a religious belief? Really?
Here's the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I guess someone can interpret that to mean that a teacher speaking in a classroom is establishing a religion or prohibiting its exercise by disparaging one, (or maybe because that comes first in the clause such an interpretation supercedes the very clear provision against abridging the freedom of speech) but it sure looks like a stretch to me. In fact, it seems like a ruling that could only be made in bizarroworld.
Bizarroworld, indeed. But that's really just par for the course.
The main reason why the Religious Right became powerful is not what most people may think. Some would undoubtedly point to the powerful communications media.
Others might identify charismatic leaders, the development of"wedge issues," or even changes in evangelical theology in the latter part of the twentieth century that supported, and even demanded, political action. All of these and more, especially taken together, were important factors. But the main reason for the Religious Right's rise to power has been its capacity for political action, particularly electoral politics.
Given my own repeated writing about the one-sided Gramscian "culture war"/"war of position" it's no wonder that I have a lot in common with him. But it's my hunch that I'm not the only one who does. His own welcoming diary begins on the flip.
On the plus side for McCain, just about everyone agreed that putting an anti-abortion mother-of-five on the ticket would delight the evangelical Christians who were so crucial to George Bush's re-election.
Although the "pro-family" interest groups applauded McCain's choice, I had a hunch that Palin wouldn't be unanimously embraced by the evangelical rank and file.
I lurk and occasionally comment at a few "mommy blogs" written by religious conservatives. Checking in on some popular sites in the evangelical Christian blogosphere over the weekend, I did find some commentaries that praised Palin for her views and for continuing a pregnancy while carrying a child with Down syndrome.
However, if you join me after the jump, you'll see that plenty of evangelicals are far from "fired up and ready to go" for this Republican ticket.
My series, "Shadow Elites And Religion" was interrupted after its first two installments (Part 1, Part 2), mostly because I'd built up such a head of steam that I wanted to do a lot more digging for the third installment, focused on John McCain and his ties to two Word of Faith ministers--John Hagee and Rod Parsley. All sorts of other stuff intruded, and, well, the hiatus continues.
But meanwhile, Sarah Posner, Word of Faith expert extraordinaire, has posted an excellent piece over at Huffington Post--"McCain's Pastor Problem", while Gary Kamiya chimes in at Salon with "Psycho Christians and the media", and there's even signs of catchup with my second installment, "Shadow Elites And Religion--Part 2: Sun Myung Moon", as noted in a frontpage post at DKos, "Moonshadows ", by DarkSyde, which focuses on recent attention to the connections between Moon and Bush Sr.--connections that I didn't delve into in my post, because I wanted to focus on the deep structural connections, but that are quite considerable in themselves.
Darkside highlights this piece at the Houston Chronicle, and John Gorenfeld's book, Bad Moon Rising.
I'll be writing more this weekend, but one thing worth highlighting now is the thinness of the McCain defense--"He's not my pastor, so it's not my fault."
In 1995, Jerry Falwell was on the brink of financial ruin, $73 million in debt, when he was saved by the Korean cult leader Sun Myung Moon. The transaction was hidden from sight, as Moon and Falwell used a pair of Virginia businessmen as cut-outs.
Moon has been a major player on the right since at least 1982, when he established the Washington Times, which he has subsidized to the tune of $3 billion over the years, according to investigative journalist Robert Parry, who was the leading journalist uncovering the Iran/Contra affair in the 1980s, and who has an extensive series on Moon at his website, Consortiumnews.com.
Until the emergence of Fox News in the late 1990s, the Washington Timeswas unquestionably the leading national news/propaganda organ of the right, and thus none of the movement higher-ups questioned him or his organization. (Even today, it remains a vital hub of the rightwing noise machine.) But Moon's theology and practices were so clearly heretical that appearances required significantly soft-peddling his enduring role and influence. It's impossible to fully grasp the hypocrisy and projection involved in rightwing politics without a consideration of the role of Sun Myung Moon.
For example, Moon claims to be the Second Coming--but he also claims to be better than Jesus, saying that Jesus failed in his mission, because he didn't procreat. Moon, in contrast, has been married three times, had various affairs, and numerous children. He has never disclosed where his money comes from, but Parry cites substantial evidence that much of it comes from underworld figures in Asia and Latin America. He served 18 months for filing false tax returns and conspiracy in the early 1980s.
It's very clear that his organization functions as an authoritarian cult, and Moon is deeply hostile to the United States. He also has clearly visible ties to Bush Sr. So, naturally--based on the principle I'm writing about here-- the money he funnelled to Falwell helped Falwell to project all these negatives onto a shadow liberal elite. And so he did, devoting enormous amounts of attention to peddling The Clinton Chronicles, a pseudo-documentary film that attempted to paint President Clinton as the mastermind of a vast criminal enterprise.
Falwell not only peddled the film on his TV program, he appeared in it, and later admitted he had no idea if any of it was true. Apparently, the commandment against bearing false witness didn't make it into Falwell's Bible.
This is the flip side of the manufactured hate-fest directed at Jeremiah Wright. Figures like Moon and Falwell break every Commandment in the Book, but are regarded as revered pillars of the conservative establishment. The more they sin, the more they have to savagely attack someone else. On the flip, we'll look at just a few of the things Sun Mung Moon has done that no liberal could possibly get away with.
It's relatively easy for an elite to create a "shadow" elite, meaning something akin "shadow" in the Jungian sense of the unacknowledged dark side of the self. The mass of people resent the elite for things the elite cannot admit or accept about itself--above all, the arbitrariness and injustice of its position in the world--and so it projects its shadow onto another group.
In that diary, I talked about the conservatives' creation of the truest form of shadow elite-the non-existent "Bavarian Illuminati" who had been disbanded a decade prior to the French Revolution they were accused of master-minding. In this diary set, I want to talk about shadow elites and religion-a topic which necessarily evokes a much earlier point in time, peg some further observation look much farther back in time, to the reign of the Roman Emperor Constantine (306-337), the first Christian Roman Emperor.
The changes that took place in Christianity as a result gave rise to or intensified contradictions that are with us still, as a pacifistic religion of the downtrodden and peripheral was transformed into an imperial religion. Although tremendous intellect was devoted over the ages to attempting to perfect this transformation, it was, at bottom, an impossible task. This partly explains the distinctive nature of America's Black Church, since its practitioners are in the same position as the early Christians and their Hebrew forbearers-a fact which Black Christians seemed to have grasped almost immediately, though it seems to have entirely escaped the understanding of their slavemasters.
White Christians, OTOH, are all too vulnerable to sliding into Crusade mode, as this new release from Brave New Films-highlighting John McCain's excessive praise for holy war enthusiast Rod Parsley--reminds us:
[More on Parsley below the fold]
In the heat of a presidential campaign, it is perhaps understandable that Reverend Jeremiah Wright should be castigated for causing trouble for Barack Obama, yet, whatever one thinks of his actions, he does have a point: He is acting out a traditional Christian role, and he is correct when he claims to be articulating Biblical principles. He seems a cantankerous outsider, and so he is. So were all the Hebrew prophets, so was John the Baptist, and so, too, was Jesus, as were his followers for generations, up until the time of Constantine.
In contrast, the Christian elite, from at least Constantine onward, has struggled with the contradictions of its own existence, and often, in doing so, has resorted to projecting its own contradictions, its own hypocrisy, its own confusion onto others, including, of course, its shadow elites, and rival religious traditions.
In this diary set, I want to focus on a four main contradictions underlying imperialist Christianity, as a cultural mainstream, and the religious right as it has specifically articulated itself since the 1970s....
The good thing about being a political scientist in New Jersey is that there is always plenty of work. Having our state elections in odd years guarantees that election season starts about the time the counting of votes stops. I'm not saying it makes for a better or more efficient government, but it makes for busier poli sci folks.
This year's election held a big suprise. It wasn't in the State Assembly (where it looks like Dems lost between one and three seats but retained control) or State Senate (they picked up one seat), though. It was in defeating two of the ballot questions - the first time since 1990 a ballot measure was defeated. But the fate of two questions gives me an opportunity to get a rough measure of the dedicated religious right in New Jersey. Click on through to the other side.
STATE BLOGS
