On Jan 25, 2021, at 12:38 PM, [email protected] wrote:
>
> Perhaps, in terms of fascism, fundamentalist religion is what is being
>> substituted for the state.
>>
>
> Contradiction doesn't bother these people. They are anti-state
> nationalists. Traditional fascism gets folded in as part of nationalism.
> For them, being against the state means getting rid of those aspects of
> government that don't fit their world picture. Ideally, a Christian state
> would solve all their problems, but in the meantime, the White nation is
> good enough. If you try to find coherency here, there is none.
I’m not sure that it’s worth getting into this, but maybe it is, I don’t know.
The idea that the Right has a monopoly on Christianity, much less, organized
religion and spirituality, is not really grounded in history or reality.
Of course it would be ridiculous to ignore the rhetorical use of Christian
morality by dominant sectors of the US Right… I mean Pompeo’s press conferences
alone reveal the extremes of such rhetoric being at the heart of their vision
of foreign policy. But I think it’s spurious to claim that the US Right depends
on religious fundamentalism to make its claims of white nationalism (as Brian
notes), misogyny, and minoritarian rule. I don’t think the “White nation” is
simply "good enough” for the US Right, it is the goal that (their use of
religious fundamentalism) serves, IMO. Lots of rightwing conspiracies are as
grounded in secular apocalyptic fantasies as they are Biblical gnosticism.
But, maybe more important, giving the US Right sole claims to organized
religion does extreme disservice to the ongoing history of liberatory
spirituality, from Catholics protesting early colonial violence to
abolitionists, to the spread of Liberation Theology across the Americas. Yes,
there are all kinds of problems with the missionary tendencies in some of these
examples, but there is also the rise of the AME Church to the SCLC to the
contemporary Moral Monday movement and reimagined Poor People’s Campaign.
I guess I’m just suggesting that to ignore the role of “the church” and
organized religion in liberatory and leftist politics in the US Left would be a
huge mistake. As is suggesting that the left-right divide in the US is
synonymous with one that is rational vs religious. This recent radio segment
(from the United States of Anxiety) features a couple of Black theological
scholars/leaders who make this case better than I can.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/anxiety/episodes/how-martin-luther-king-jr-changed-american-christianity
<https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/anxiety/episodes/how-martin-luther-king-jr-changed-american-christianity>
Anyway, possibly also of interest, this recent podcast on the rise of
post-1970s white supremacy in the US features some discussion of the early
adoption of online message boards to form a broad, decentralized culture, and a
lot of the talking points then mirror the underlying fantasies of QAnon
adherents today.
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/940825490
<https://www.npr.org/transcripts/940825490>
I hope everyone is doing well,
Ryan
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