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Fascism and the religious right
Over at The Reaction, co-blogger Heraclitus looks at the development of disturbingly fascistic elements on the religious right. No, this isn’t yet another Bush=Hitler analogy. Heraclitus, a McCain supporter, is more troubled by what he calls “the almost total ignorance of the American working class on the part of our political elites”. This has allowed right-wing demagogues to play on divisive social issues at the expense of issues like health care.
You may not agree with him entirely, but it’s a thoughtful post.
And you can find it here.Â
11 Responses to “Fascism and the religious right”
Wow, I’m not sure there is a single thought expressed there that I can agree with at all. Sounds like thinly disguised liberal elitism to me: ‘America really cares more about the issues we think are important, but they just don’t realize it because we haven’t worked hard enough to show them that they really do care about them.’ While ostensibly blaming the left for allowing the right wing fascists to dominate, he reveals his true attitude of utter condescension for poor dumb Americans who just don’t know enough to realize what is really important.
At least you got something out of it, C. I’ve read and reread the whole blog trying to figure it out. It makes absolutely no sense to me so therefore I can’t even comment on it. I don’t know I just can’t comprehend it. It’s like a point wasn’t even made except that “The left blah blah blah is causing the right blah blah blah” and that’s all I got out of it. *shrug* It was an extremely confusing read.
“My point is that even the politicians who don’t court Robertson and company buy what he’s selling, a vision of American politics defined and driven by symbolical issues. “
Maybe I’m wrong, but what I got out the article was the use of red-herrings or straw-men tactics to draw attention away from other issues that they do not want to talk about. These are the “wedge-issues” that we’ve talked about before.
Robertson, or even the religious-right in general, are not the only ones to use this tactic. I’ll grant they’ve been very good at it lately, but they didn’t invent it.
I do not agree that the average American voter is too dumb or uneducated to know what’s best for them. But some voters have been distracted by these wedge-issues, usually of the social flavor, in recent elections for one reason or another.
Wasn’t there a post on TMV a few weeks ago about how most bills aren’t even written by the congress or senate members and how they are written by lobbyists or other interested parties?
Another issue is that our congress & senate members are only human with only so much time to devote to each bill they have to vote on. So they rely (too much so in my opinion) upon their staff to explain the bills to them. These bills are huge and even the staff doesn’t always have time to fully realize all the pros/cons about the bills. If true, this is another opening that these “interested parties” have to slip items into the bills.
What’s so hard to understand? If you read the linked to articles, especially this one. The parallels are just too obvious, especially for a nonchristian as myself.
I don’t understand how people cannot understand the article. It’s truly crystal clear.
I found it understandable, but he did spend most of his time veering off the topic of whether or not the religious right is fascist. He then went on to mainly discuss how this is filling the void that he perceives in concern for issues of the working class, and that was where I found him to be so condescending. Rambie expresses it better when saying that there has been a use of social values wedge issues to gain power on the right, but also acknowledging that the left does this too. And, I’d add, that wedge issues wouldn’t work if people didn’t care about them, so rather than just being so dismissive, liberals could accept that maybe people in the Red states really do care about the social issues, and find a way to bridge the gap by finding common ground instead of driving the wedge even deeper.
The constant veering off topic is what screwed me up. I’ll reread later this evening when I actually have time to.
I get the article, politicians have been using hot button issues to distract the voters for years. Here in CA we had the Prop 187 bill to fire everyone up while they snuck deregulation thru. 187 got all the airtime, meanwhile the state got set up for the 2000 energy crisis that Enron played a big part in.
Abortion, gun control, school prayer, these are ultimately minor issues that consume a huge portion of the political emotion in this country. Lobby reform, resource management, and education somehow get sidelined even though they are easily the issues that have the largest impact on this country as a successful nation now and down the road. I’m sorry CStan, but many of the voters out there are way too wrapped up in issues that are much more of a personal nature. To the point they are shooting themselves in the foot by electing someone just because they agree on the current hot-button issue.
What I don’t get is the connection between those tactics and fascism. Thats a political slur that gets tossed about fairly casually these days without much support. I think that is the case here.
“What I don’t get is the connection between those tactics and fascism.”
Agreed, I didn’t get that either. You don’t have to be a Facisist to use wedge-issues to distract the public and/or voters. I didn’t find the connection in my first browsing of the article, maybe I’ll try it again tonight after work. I’ll admit I didn’t read all the linked articles the first time.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you one this, Sam. I’m probably not being clear (posting in between doing other things today). I think people have become too wrapped up in certain issues. I think a lot of times that’s because these particular issues strike an emotional chord. I think voters shouldn’t vote on single issues, and they shouldn’t allow themselves to be polarized by political parties that have agendas. So to some degree, I guess as I’m thinking about it, I do have some common ground there with Heraticlus. But my point is that his solution to that is for the left to make more noise about other issues, as though people only care about the issues that our politicians make a lot of noise about. I think that attitude is condescending to the voters and also neglects to see that the left has driven wedges too. I don’t think the politicians would have been able to exploit concerns of the religious right unless the left had been pushing for their own social agenda. If both sides would look for the common ground on these social values issues and tell their fringe elements to take a back seat, then the focus would shift to other issues. But Heraticlus seems to just want to pretend that the people in the Red States only became confused because of people like Pat Robertson. The reality, I think, is that these people really do care about the social issues AND the economic ones. It’s time for someone to start offering them real solutions for both.
CS and Rambie said it very well. I think it would be wise to recognize that the religious right is no nuttier or less sincere than the secular left. However, it is much easier to simply write off the folks you disagree with as ‘nuts’ or ‘evil’ than it is to come up with thoughtful differing opinions. The fact is, the social and economic values of the red state voters are different from the values of blue state voters. No big surprise. The problem is we have gotten too lazy, and simply create caricatures and straw men when talking about differing opinions.
If one seriously thinks the biggest problem the US has is the religious right, I don’t think that person has the depth of knowledge or understanding that would be useful in politics by allowing the government to reach a consensus. The point is, the Democrats can easily lose their hold on power just as the Republicans did, simply by playing to the anti-religious left fringe. The Republicans made the same mistake, except they played too hard to the religious right. The majority of Americans probably want a centrist government, but the politicians keep playing to their party’s fringe elements.