San Antonio televangelist Pastor John Hagee wants the US to preemptively strike Iran in order to fulfil a biblical prophesy. A European antichrist has to be included. Enter the EU. Maybe this will shake followers of evangelical Christianity out of their slumber:


http://www.alternet.org/story/39748/

Mark, I somehow doubt it, these crazies believe they are going to be "raptured away"to sit at Gods right hand throughout the Earthly tribulations. What is truely terrifying is that many in this nut-job neo-con administration, Bush included, believe in essentially the same thing. Makes the Regan admin seem tame by comparison.

Hi Steve,

Abolish religion and most of the world's problems go away.

I think the topic being discussed here is the REAL danger in the world today for total destruction of the planet in very short order [a few years]. An amazing 20% of Americans believe (to some extent) in this crazy Christian-Fascism-Millenialist-Nationalist nonsense and those in the government now are almost all of this ilk - as is (I hear) Blair covertly. They feel they have a higher calling and duty then democracy or worldly things and are now hoping a major war in the middle east will bring their insane fantasies to fruition. 90% of all Christian TV and radio are of this insane cult in the US. They could easily invent a reason for a nuclear war in the middle east [some dream of this!] to bring about their lunatic ideas. While they point their fingers at Muslim fundamentalists, they {the Christian Fundamentalists) are the real danger today in the world and the very feature that Muslim fundamentalists grew up as a reaction to, for the most part. Sadly, these end-timers may well be the cause of the coming end times. I'm an atheist so assign zero to their religious ideas...but can also comment on their ethical and moral, let alone logical level as near absolute zero.

The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism
by Chris Hedges
www.theocracywatch.org, Nov 15, 2004
(This is an article by Chris Hedges that no major publication will print.)


Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School , told us that when we were his age, he was then close to 80, we would all be fighting the "Christian fascists."
The warning, given to me 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global, Christian empire. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible.
He was not a man to use the word fascist lightly. He was in Germany in 1935 and 1936 and worked with the underground anti-Nazi church, known as The Confessing Church, led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Adams was eventually detained and interrogated by the Gestapo, who suggested he might want to consider returning to the United States . It was a suggestion he followed. He left on a night train with framed portraits of Adolph Hitler placed over the contents inside his suitcase to hide the rolls of home movie film he took of the so-called German Christian Church, which was pro-Nazi, and the few individuals who defied them, including the theologians Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer. The ruse worked when the border police lifted the top of the suitcases, saw the portraits of the Fuhrer and closed them up again. I watched hours of the grainy black and white films as he narrated in his apartment in Cambridge .
He saw in the Christian Right, long before we did, disturbing similarities with the German Christian Church and the Nazi Party, similarities that he said would, in the event of prolonged social instability or a national crisis, see American fascists, under the guise of religion, rise to dismantle the open society. He despaired of liberals, who he said, as in Nazi Germany, mouthed silly platitudes about dialogue and inclusiveness that made them ineffectual and impotent. Liberals, he said, did not understand the power and allure of evil nor the cold reality of how the world worked. The current hand wringing by Democrats in the wake of the election, with many asking how they can reach out to a movement whose leaders brand them "demonic" and "satanic," would not have surprised Adams . Like Bonhoeffer, he did not believe that those who would fight effectively in coming times of turmoil, a fight that for him was an integral part of the Biblical message, would come from the church or the liberal, secular elite.
His critique of the prominent research universities, along with the media, was no less withering. These institutions, self-absorbed, compromised by their close relationship with government and corporations, given enough of the pie to be complacent, were unwilling to deal with the fundamental moral questions and inequities of the age. They had no stomach for a battle that might cost them their prestige and comfort. He told me that if the Nazis took over America "60 percent of the Harvard faculty would begin their lectures with the Nazi salute." This too was not an abstraction. He had watched academics at the University of Heidelberg , including the philosopher Martin Heidegger, raise their arms stiffly to students before class.
Two decades later, even in the face of the growing reach of the Christian Right, his prediction seems apocalyptic. And yet the powerbrokers in the Christian Right have moved from the fringes of society to the floor of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Christian fundamentalists now hold a majority of seats in 36 percent of all Republican Party state committees, or 18 of 50 states, along with large minorities in 81 percent of the rest of the states. Forty-five Senators and 186 members of the House of Representatives earned between an 80 to100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups - The Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council. Tom Coburn, the new senator from Oklahoma , has included in his campaign to end abortion a call to impose the death penalty on doctors that carry out abortions once the ban goes into place. Another new senator, John Thune, believes in Creationism. Jim DeMint, the new senator elected from South Carolina , wants to ban single mothers from teaching in schools. The Election Day exit polls found that 22 percent of voters identified themselves as evangelical Christians and Bush won 77 percent of their vote. The polls found that a plurality of voters said that the most important issue in the campaign had been "moral values."
President Bush must further these important objectives, including the march to turn education and social welfare over to the churches with his faith-based initiative, as well as chip away at the wall between church and state with his judicial appointments, if he does not want to face a revolt within his core constituency.
Jim Dobson, the head of Focus on the Family, who held weekly telephone conversations with K arl Rove during the campaign, has put the President on notice. He told ABC's "This Week" that "this president has two years, or more broadly the Republican Party has two years, to implement these policies, or certainly four, or I believe they'll pay a price in the next election."
Bush may turn out to be a transition figure, our version of Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck used "values" to energize his base at the end of the 19 th century and launched "Kulturkampt", the word from which we get "culture wars," against Catholics and Jews. Bismarck 's attacks split the country, made the discrediting of whole segments of the society an acceptable part of the civil discourse and paved the way for the more virulent racism of the Nazis. This, I suspect, will be George Bush's contribution to our democracy.
DOMINIONISTS AND RECONSTRUCTIONISTS
The Reconstructionist movement, founded in 1973 by Rousas Rushdooney, is the intellectual foundation for the most politically active element within the Christian Right. Rushdooney's 1,600 page three-volume work, Institutes of Biblical Law, argued that American society should be governed according to the Biblical precepts in the Ten Commandments. He wrote that the elect, like Adam and Noah, were given dominion over the earth by God and must subdue the earth, along with all non-believers, so the Messiah could return.
This was a radically new interpretation for many in the evangelical movement. The Messiah, it was traditionally taught, would return in an event called "the Rapture" where there would be wars and chaos. The non-believers would be tormented and killed and the elect would be lifted to heaven. The Rapture was not something that could be manipulated or influenced, although believers often interpreted catastrophes and wars as portents of the imminent Second Coming.
Rushdooney promoted an ideology that advocated violence to create the Christian state. His ideology was the mirror image of Liberation Theology, which came into vogue at about the same time. While the Liberation Theologians crammed the Bible into the box of Marxism, Rushdooney crammed it into the equally distorting box of classical fascism. This clash was first played out in Latin America when I was there as a reporter two decades ago. In El Salvador leftist priests endorsed and even traveled with the rebel movements in Nicaragua and El Salvador, while Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, along with conservative Latin American clerics, backed the Contras fighting against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the murderous military regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile and Argentina.
The Institutes of Biblical Law called for a Christian society that was harsh, unforgiving and violent. Offenses such as adultery, witchcraft, blasphemy and homosexuality, merited the death penalty. The world was to be subdued and ruled by a Christian United States. Rushdooney dismissed the number of 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust as an inflated figure and his theories on race echoed Nazi Eugenics.
"The white man has behind him centuries of Christian culture and the discipline and selective breeding this faith requires...," he wrote. "The Negro is a product of a radically different past, and his heredity has been governed by radically different considerations."
"The background of Negro culture is African and magic, and the purposes of the magic are control and power over God, man, nature, and society. Voodoo, or magic, was the religion and life of American Negroes. Voodoo songs underlie jazz, and old voodoo, with its power goal, has been merely replaced with revolutionary voodoo, a modernized power drive." (see The Religious Right , a publication of the ADL, pg. 124.)
Rushdooney was deeply antagonistic to the federal government. He believed the federal government should concern itself with little more than national defense. Education and social welfare should be handed over to the churches. Biblical law must replace the secular legal code. This ideology remains at the heart of the movement. It is being enacted through school vouchers, with federal dollars now going into Christian schools, and the assault against the federal agencies that deal with poverty and human services. The Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives is currently channeling millions in federal funds to groups such Pat Robertson's Operation Blessing , and National Right to Life, as well as to fundamentalist religious charity organizations and programs promoting sexual abstinence.
Rushdooney laid the groundwork for a new way of thinking about political involvement. The Christian state would come about not only through signs and wonders, as those who believed in the rapture believed? , but also through theestablishment of the Christian nation. But he remained, even within the Christian Right, a deeply controversial figure.
Dr. Tony Evans, the minister of a Dallas church and the founder of Promise Keepers, articulated Rushdooney's extremism in a more palatable form. He called on believers, often during emotional gatherings at football stadiums, to commit to Christ and exercise power within the society as agents of Christ. He also called for a Christian state. But he did not advocate the return of slavery, as Rushdooney did, nor list a string of offenses such as adultery punishable by death, nor did he espouse the Nazi-like race theories. It was through Evans, who was a spiritual mentor to George Bush that Dominionism came to dominate the politically active wing of the Christian Right.The religious utterances from political leaders such as George Bush, Tom Delay, Pat Robertson and Zell Miller are only understandable in light of Rushdooney and Dominionism. These leaders believe that God has selected them to battle the forces of evil, embodied in "secular humanism," to create a Christian nation. Pat Robertson frequently tells believers "our aim is to gain dominion over society." Delay has told supporters, such as at a gathering two years ago at the First Baptist Church in Pearland , Texas , "He [God] is using me, all the time, everywhere, to stand up for biblical worldview in everything I do and everywhere I am. He is training me, He is working with me." Delay went on to tell followers "If we stay inside the church, the culture won't change."
Pat Robertson, who changed the name of his university to Regent University , says he is training his students to rule when the Christian regents take power, part of the reign leading to the return of Christ. Robertson resigned as the head of the Christian Coalition when Bush took office, a sign many took to signal the ascendancy of the first regent. This battle is not rhetorical but one that followers are told will ultimately involve violence. And the enemy is clearly defined and marked for destruction.
"Secular Humanists," the popular Christian Right theologian Francis Schaeffer wrote in one of numerous diatribes, "are the greatest threat to Christianity the world has ever known."
One of the most enlightening books that exposes the ultimate goals of movement is America's Providential History , the standard textbook used in many Christian schools and a staple of the Christian home schooling movement. It sites Genesis 26, which calls for mankind to " .have dominnion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth" as evidence that the Bible callls for "Bible believing Christians" to take dominion of America.
"When God brings Noah through the flood to a new earth, He reestablished the Dominion Mandate but now delegates to man the responsibility for governing other men." (page 19). The authors write that God has called the United States to become "the first truly Christian nation" (page 184) and "make disciples of all nations." The book denounces income tax as "idolatry," property tax as "theft" and calls for an abolish of inheritance taxes in the chapter entitled Christian Economics. The loss of such tax revenues will bring about the withering away of the federal government and the empowerment of the authoritarian church, although this is not explict in the text.
Rushdooney's son-in-law, Gary North, a popular writer and founder of the Institute for Christian Economics, laid out the aims of the Christian Right.
"So let's be blunt about it: We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God." (Christianity and Civilization, Spring, 1982)
Dominionists have to operate, for now, in the contaminated environment of the secular, liberal state. They have learned, therefore, to speak in code. The code they use is the key to understanding the dichotomy of the movement, one that has a public and a private face. In this they are no different from the vanguard, as described by Lenin, or the Islamic terrorists who shave off their beards, adopt western dress and watch pay-for-view pornographic movies in their hotel rooms the night before hijacking a plane for a suicide attack.
Joan Bokaer, the Director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University , who runs the encyclopedic web site theocracywatch.org, was on a speaking tour a few years ago in Iowa . She obtained a copy of a memo Pat Robertson handed out to followers at the Iowa Republican County Caucus. It was titled, "How to Participate in a Political Party" and read:
"Rule the world for God."
"Give the impression that you are there to work for the party, not push an ideology.
"Hide your strength.
"Don't flaunt your Christianity.
"Christians need to take leadership positions. Party officers control political parties and so it is very important that mature Christians have a majority of leadership whenever possible, God willing."
President Bush sends frequent coded messages to the faithful. In his address to the nation on the night of September 11, for example, he lifted a line directly from the Gospel of John when he said "And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it." He often uses the sentence "when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law," words taken directly from a pro-life manifesto entitled "A Statement of Pro-Life Principle and Concern." He quotes from hymns, prayers, tracts and Biblical passages without attribution. These phrases reassure the elect. They are lost on the uninitiated.
CHRIST THE AVENGER
The Christian Right finds its ideological justification in a narrow segment of the Gospel, in particular the letters of the Apostle Paul, especially the story of Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus in the Book of Acts. It draws heavily from the book of Revelations and the Gospel of John. These books share an apocalyptic theology. The Book of Revelations is the only time in the Gospels where Jesus sanctions violence, offering up a vision of Christ as the head of a great and murderous army of heavenly avengers. Martin Luther found the God portrayed in Revelations so hateful and cruel he put the book in the appendix of his German translation of the Bible.
These books rarely speak about Christ's message of love, forgiveness and compassion. They focus on the doom and destruction that will befall unbelievers and the urgent need for personal salvation. The world is divided between good and evil, between those who act as agents of God and those who act as agents of Satan. The Jesus of the other three Gospels, the Jesus who turned the other cheek and embraced his enemies, an idea that was radical and startling in the ancient Roman world, is purged in the narrative selected by the Christian Right.
The cult of masculinity pervades the ideology. Feminism and homosexuality are social forces, believers are told, that have rendered the American male physically and spiritually impotent. Jesus is portrayed as a man of action, casting out demons, battling the Anti-Christ, attacking hypocrites and castigating the corrupt. This cult of masculinity brings with it the glorification of strength, violence and vengeance. It turns Christ into a Rambo-like figure; indeed depictions of Jesus within the movement often show a powerfully built man wielding a huge sword.
This image of Christ as warrior is appealing to many within the movement. The loss of manufacturing jobs, lack of affordable health care, negligible opportunities for education and poor job security has left many millions of Americans locked out. This ideology is attractive because it offers them the hope of power and revenge. It sanctifies their rage. It stokes the paranoia about the outside world maintained through bizarre conspiracy theories, many on display in Pat Robertson's book The New World Order . The book is a xenophobic rant that includes vicious attacks against the United Nations and numerous other international organizations. The abandonment of the working class has been crucial to the success of the movement. Only by reintegrating the working class into society through job creation, access to good education and health care can the Christian Right be effectively blunted. Revolutionary movements are built on the backs of an angry, disenfranchised laboring class. This one is no exception.
The depictions of violence that will befall non-believers are detailed, gruesome and brutal. It speaks to the rage many believers harbor and the thirst for revenge. This, in large part, accounts for the huge sales of the apocalyptic series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. In their novel, Glorious Appearing , based on LaHaye's interpretation of Biblical Prophecies about the Second Coming, Christ eviscerates the flesh of millions of non-believers with the mere sound of his voice. There are long descriptions of horror, of how "the very words of the Lord had superheated their blood, causing it to burst through their veins and skin." Eyes disintegrate. Tongues melt. Flesh dissolves. The novel, part of The Left Behind series, are the best selling adult novels in the country. They preach holy war.
"Any teaching of peace prior to [Christ's] return is heresy." said televangelist James Robinson.
Natural disasters, terrorist attacks, instability in Israel and even the fighting of Iraq are seen as signposts. The war in Iraq was predicted according to believers in the 9 th chapter of the Book of Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of men." The march towards global war, even nuclear war, is not to be feared but welcomed as the harbinger of the Second Coming. And leading the avenging armies is an angry, violent Messiah who dooms millions of non-believers to a horrible and painful death.
THE CORRUPTION OF SCIENCE AND LAW
The movement seeks the imprint of law and science. It must discredit the rational disciplines that are the pillars of the Enlightenment to abolish the liberal polity of the Enlightenment. This corruption of science and law is vital in promoting the doctrine. Creationism, or "intelligent design," like Eugenics for the Nazis, must be introduced into the mainstream as a valid scientific discipline to destroy the discipline of science itself. This is why the Christian Right is working to bring test cases to ensure that school textbooks include "intelligent design" and condemn gay marriage.
The drive by the Christian Right to include crackpot theories in scientific or legal debate is part of the campaign to destroy dispassionate and honest intellectual inquiry. Facts become interchangeable with opinions. An understanding of reality is not to be based on the elaborate gathering of facts and evidence. The ideology alone is true. Facts that get in the way of the ideology can be altered. Lies, in this worldview, become true. Hannah Arendt called this effort "nihilistic relativism" although a better phrase might be collective insanity.
The Christian Right has fought successfully to have Creationist books sold in national park bookstores in the Grand Canyon , taught as a theory in public schools in states like Alabama and Arkansas . "Intelligent design" is promoted in Christian textbooks. All animal species, or at least their progenitors, students read, fit on Noah's ark. The Grand Canyon was created a few thousand years ago by the flood that lifted up Noah's ark, not one billion years ago, as geologists have determined. The earth is only a few thousand years old in line with the literal reading of Genesis. This is not some quaint, homespun view of the world. It is an insidious attempt to undermine rational scientific research and intellectual inquiry.
Tom Delay, following the Columbine shootings, gave voice to this assault when he said that the killings had taken place "because our school systems teach children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial mud." (speech Delay gave in the House on June 16, 1999 )
"What convinces masses are not facts," Hannah Arendt wrote in Origins of Totalitarianism, "and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system which they are presumably part. Repetition, somewhat overrated in importance because of the common belief in the "masses" inferior capacity to grasp and remember, is important because it convinces them of consistency in time." (p.351)
There are more than 6 million elementary and secondary school students attending private schools and 11.5 percent of these students attend schools run by the Christian Right. These "Christian" schools saw an increase of 46 percent in enrollment in the last decade. The 245,000 additional students accounted for 75 percent of the total rise in private school enrollment.
THE LAUNCHING OF THE WAR
Adams told us to watch closely what the Christian Right did to homosexuals. He has seen how the Nazis had used "values" to launch state repression of opponents. Hitler, days after he took power in 1933, imposed a ban on all homosexual and lesbian organizations. He ordered raids on places where homosexuals gathered culminating with the ransacking of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin . Thousands of volumes from the institute's library were tossed into a bonfire. Adams said that homosexuals would also be the first "deviants" singled out by the Christian Right. We would be the next.
The ban on same sex marriages, passed by eleven states in the election, was part of this march towards our door. A 1996 federal law already defines marriage as between a man and a woman. All of the states with ballot measures, with the exception of Oregon , had outlawed same sex marriages, as do 27 other states. The bans, however, had to be passed, believers were told, to thwart "activist judges" who wanted to overturn them. The Christian family, even the nation, was under threat. The bans served to widen the splits tearing apart the country. The attacks on homosexuals handed to the foot soldiers of the Christian Right an easy target. It gave them a taste of victory. It made them feel empowered. But it is ominous for gays and for us.
All debates with the Christian Right are useless. We cannot reach this movement. It does not want a dialogue. It cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. It is not mollified because John Kerry prays or Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday School. These naive attempts to reach out to a movement bent on our destruction, to prove to them that we too have "values," would be humorous if the stakes were not so deadly. They hate us. They hate the liberal, enlightened world formed by the Constitution. Our opinions do not count.
This movement will not stop until we are ruled by Biblical Law, an authoritarian church intrudes in every aspect of our life, women stay at home and rear children, gays agree to be cured, abortion is considered murder, the press and the schools promote "positive" Christian values, the federal government is gutted, war becomes our primary form of communication with the rest of the world and recalcitrant non-believers see their flesh eviscerated at the sound of the Messiah's voice.
The spark that could set it ablaze may be lying in the hands of an Islamic terrorist cell, in the hands of the ideological twins of the Christian Right. Another catastrophic terrorist attack could be our Reichstag fire, the excuse used to begin the accelerated dismantling of our open society. The ideology of the Christian Right is not one of love and compassion, the central theme of Christ's message, but of violence and hatred. It has a strong appeal to many in our society, but it is also aided by our complacency. Let us not stand at the open city gates waiting passively and meekly for the barbarians. They are coming. They are slouching rudely towards Bethlehem . Let us, if nothing else, begin to call them by their name.

Chris Hedges, a reporter for The New York Times, is the author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning . He holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School . His next book , Losing Moses on the Freeway: America 's Broken Covenant With The Ten Commandments is published by The Free Press.

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I beg to differ Peter. I don't believe the Christian Right (or more accurately, the Christian-Zionist-Right) and its undue power in the USA is the main danger we face.

In fact, I believe its power is greatly overstated by writers such as Ms Posner and Chris Hedges.

There are two reasons why analysts are inclined to do this.

The first is that the Christian Right is a safe target. Lacking real power, it is open to attack (and occasional vilification) by the more liberally minded. This is quite acceptable and commonplace in contemporary America, just as robust criticism of 'liberals' is a common part of the general political discourse.

The second reason is more devious. I do not want to imply that all analysts who make the Christian right their key target are devious in this way - but I believe that some are.

This 'devious' reason for attacking the Christian Right is that it's a convenient way of deflecting attention and blame from Jewish Zionists, who collectively wield a lot more power and influence.

Name one US TV network, major US newspaper or Hollywood studio controlled or dominated by Christian fundamentalists. I doubt you can. By contrast, the power of Zionist Jews in these key opinion-guiding industries is legendary.

Name one banking giant run or dominated by Christian rightists...

Name one “intelligence service” operating on behalf of the Christian Right…

It's like the distinction between pawns and the Queen in chess. Yes, pawns are numerous - but the Queen is far more powerful and typically causes a lot more havoc.

The 'Christian Right' may have tens of millions of adherents in the USA and every now and again, it may score a win for one of its stated objectives - tightening abortion regulations and so forth - but it is not in effective control of the main game.

There is some evidence that some of its ridiculous leaders - such as Jerry Falwell – are effectively bought and paid for by Zionists. Strip away the ‘Christian’ paintwork and its clear that Falwell & co serve as just one more channel for Zionist disinformation.

Doubt what I say? If so, I suggest reflecting on the furore generated anytime someone prominent makes the kind of claim I'm making now. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, the politician / journalist / academic / talking head in question is viciously attacked and often suffers severe, if not terminal, career damage. On talkboards, it usually provokes moral panic and calls for bans and excommunication.

As the old saying has it, if you are in a strange land and want to discover where power really lies, find out whom you may not easily criticize.

One final point. Although the Christian Zionists are undoubtedly numerous, there are many Christians – and mainstream Christian organizations – that have a much more balanced approach to the middle east conflict. The Roman Catholic Church is an example. So is the Church of England.

These two Churches have called – on numerous occasions – for a better deal for Palestinians, just as they have argued against militarism and in favour of a peaceful approach to conflict resolution. Their calls have gone unheeded and generally receive less than headline coverage by the mass media.

Christian Zionists make a lot of noise not only because of their numbers, but because their message is amplified by the mass media, whereas other voices within Christianity are downplayed.

People who are no friends of Christianity amplify the message of pro-Israel Christian fundamentalists. The agenda of these folk, if influenced at all by eschatological beliefs, owes nothing to Christian eschatology.

I may be an atheist, but I am also an ethnic Jew and very proud of my heritage. I sense you may have some latent anti-semitism or are greatly mis-informed. The myth of Jewish disproportunate power in the USA is just that, a myth. It is an overwhelmingly Christian nation and now there are about 20% who follow the real ultra-Right brand of Christian philosophy. There is a link between these Christian groups and Right-Wing in Israel, but don't confuse Jews and those who support ultra-nationalist Zionism. There are Jews in Israel and in the USA who are fighting against all that.... Just so you know, I don't support Israel in most of what it is now doing. I do support the idea of a homeland for both Jews and Palastinians as equals - or a two state solution - however the people there want [with equal vote on how it unfolds]. I am worried by fundamentalist Jews and ultra-militarist-neofascist Jews...as I am by fundamentalist Christians and ultra-militarist-neofascist Christains in USA (or elsewhere) - same for fundamentalist Muslems. The Israel lobby groups in the USA is disproportionatly powerful, but that is because they has found a responsive and resonant chord in the Christian Right, military and in conjunction with US foreign policy and plans for global imperialism - especially in the Middle East IMO. Just as JFK was assassinated to turn the country to the right, so has Israel suffered as similar assassination IMO for the same reasons. It is not the religions nor the practicioners of them that are the problem per se, but the fundamentalist strain of them - all three of them....

Very interesting discussion. I never thought about it that way, Sid.

I think this difference of opinion can be easily solved: Do the Jewish Zionists share the Christian Right's beliefs concerning the end times as written by the prophet Ezekiel, and more importantly, are some of them advocating bringing the end times to bear, as Pastor Hagee is publicly advocating? The Christian Right are citing these prophesies from the Old Testament, so it's a fair question, IMO.

Yes, "legendary" is the appropriate word. See here.



Falwell has probably been bought off by the "Zionists." However, he has also been bought off by Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his Moonies, who are quite politically powerful here in America and also have a small media empire. See here.



People will also get offended if you start suggesting that a cabal of black people run everything, or say that slavery wasn't really such a bad thing for black people. It will probably also bring about about "moral panic and calls for bans and excommunication." Many of your postings are at that level. And it is not even the case that anti-Semitism is a career ruiner, anyway. Some of the biggest right-wing media pundits here in America can spew anti-Semitic crap and get away with it with hardly any scrutiny at all. See here and here.



There is also a range of opinion among Orthodox Jews that is downplayed (e.g. Neturei Karta, who are Orthodox Jews and extremely anti-Zionist). Whats your point?

Here is some additional reading material for Sid (although I know he won't read it, as his mind is made up):

* The Demographics of American Jews by Lenni Brenner
* A Response to Paul Eisen's "Jewish Power" by Joel Finkel
* The Influence of the Christian Right on U.S. Middle East Policy by Stephen Zunes
* The Israel Lobby: How Powerful is it Really? by Stephen Zunes
* The Israel Lobby: Its not Either/Or by Norman Finkelstein

Also, Peter, Sid has outed himself as a Holocaust "revisionist" in the Political Conspiracies forum, so I think there may be more than just latent anti-Semitism at play here.

I believe that the divergence of thought indicated on this thread illustrates how complex the overall issue is in many facets, however I would like to ask a question in the form of an informal poll.

How many feel that the socio-political influence of individuals of the religious far-right in our epoch in the person's of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the latter recently advocated the assassination of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, ["What would Jesus Do?"] are essentially no different, than those of W.A. Criswell and Billy James Hargis [The Christian Crusade tour with General Edwin Walker] in the 1960's?

Put me down in the affirmative column. And don't forget their ancestor, Father Coughlin, former FDR booster-turned anti-Semitic demagogue. A clear abuser of his pulpit and his mission.

MV

You raise a most interesting question Robert.

I do not feel well informed about the history of the American ‘radical’ right-wing and would like to learn more.

My impression, however, is that it was largely anti-Zionist until the 1960s – or neutral on the issue of Zionism.

Elements of the American radical right were also, I have little doubt, anti-Jewish in ways we might all find distasteful.

Pro-Israel policies – and strong affinity for Jewish causes and culture – were more common on the left of US politics.

The Zionist movement has since plugged its former weakness on the far right – and the right in general.

It still faces anti-Zionist – and some blatantly anti-Jewish – opposition from within elements of the right wing. However, unlike the situation in the 1950s and 1960s, it now has almost total control of the Republican Party – and enjoys substantial dominance within the sizeable proportion of the population that can be characterized as ‘right-wing Christian America’.

This enables the Zionist movement to dominate the drift of American policy to an extent it could only have dreamed about 50 years ago.

It helps explain the tilt from a relatively even-handed approach to middle eastern politics pursued by Eisenhower and Kennedy to the massive pro-Israel bias we see today.

Peter, I agree with much of what you say here and have respect for the fundamental values evinced by your posts.

However, if the proposition of "Jewish disproportunate power in the USA" is pure myth, surely critical analysis of the facts about this topic in open debate would be of benefit and help quash the myth?

More likely, I suggest, it's myth in its extreme formulation, but does not rest entirely on imagination.

In any case, it's better to know the truth than not, isn't it?

Let's examine just one aspect of this alleged myth: the claim of disproportionate Jewish control and influence within the US mass media.

In another post, Owen Parsons cited an article from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

I was interested to read it: "The Jewish Media: The Lie That Won't Die".

I hoped to read a well-documenting rebuttal of the proposition that Jewish-Zionist interests dominate the US mass media. Unfortunately (you may think I'm being unfair) I found the article to be mostly froth.

The only paragraphs that really came to grips with the article's subject were the following:



I don't find that a powerful rebuttal.

I could go into some detail explaining why, but for now I'd like to ask if there's a better source on this topic that you, Owen or anyone else can suggest?



Anyone care to comment on escatological beliefs within the various strands of Jewish funamentalism?

I have the impression that one needs to understand Hebrew to make a fair stab at this subject - or else rely on sources that would send the likes of Owen into a lather.

Well Sid, I'd really have to know what I'm being asked to rebut. You always pose this sort of thing in the form of a rhetorical question with no supporting evidence. The evidence in the Mark Crispin Miller FAIR article, which names names of powerful (non-Jewish) media seems to me to trump the non-evidence offered by the likes of Walker. If you mean that it isn't valid because the mainstream media shills for Israel, that is true, but it is not the point.

Also, if one of your sources on Jewish fundamentalism and its eschatology is Israel Shahak, I don't have a problem with that. I've bashed him here at least once in the past, but now that I've actually read some of his writings, I retract my previous attacks. He's been misread and misrepresented by both the pro-Israel attack dogs and anti-Semites (and perhaps not unintentionally ).

If that is so, I won't be engaging in ANY discussion with him further. That is beyond the pale. The European part of my family was wiped out in the Holocaust. My uncle Raphael was the man who coined the word genocide, wrote the Genocide Convention at the UN and was a legal expert at Nuremburg... He spent his second part of his life studying the Holocaust and I am currently working on a book on the subject. I do NOT discuss with Holocaust revisionists. Period. The Holocaust happened. It included Gypsies, Gays and others than Jews...but AT LEAST 7.000.000 Jews, and I think perhaps more. End of my discussion of that or with anyone who thinks that - on any topic. Any attempt to say it happened otherwise has a most sinister and evil logic behind it. It is like saying we [European invaders] didn't kill off untold millions of Native peoples in the Americas over the centuries - or that millions didn't die in WWI....it has an agenda and nothing to do with history nor fact. I have met hundreds of survivors, knew Weisenthal until his death, and am a student of the Holocaust my whole life. I have documents here in my office confirming the facts. There is some shit I will not eat and Holocaust Denial is not on my diet of things to discuss.

Interestingly, the BBC is now doing an extended report on this branch of Christian belief now infecting the USA. If you can't get them on the radio you can see it on their website www.bbc.worldservice.co.uk

It isn't Owen. I don't intend to provide any sources on Jewish fundamentalism.

The subject matter is too weird for me at this time in my life. But then I have the same reaction to Christian Dispensationalism.




Peter. It saddens me that you - someone who I had understood to be a rationalist with the shared intellectual heritage of The Enlightenment, could post such a response.

On the strength of someone else's report about another thread you apparently haven't read, you decide to send me to Coventry. Your preogative, I guess, although not very rational behaviour.

You then proceed to make assertions about the events of World War Two - including the remarkable claim that AT LEAST 7,000,000 Jews were victims of genocide during World War Two.

Even Raul Hilberg wouldn't go along with that figure - not even close.

I didn't mention the subject of The Holocaust in this thread. Recurrently raising this red herring is a trick played by Owen and Len in an attempt to marginalise me and shirk discussion of the contemporary issues that I do intend to discuss and learn about while I participate in this forum. Owen's desire to see me banned is never far from the surface - odd for one who in a not so recent post claimed to be an ex-Zionist, if I recall correctly.

I am sorry your relatives were victims of genocvidal acts during World War Two. As you are aware, tens of millions of other people also perished in the horrors of that terrible war.

People close to my family and friends were also victims of the Second World War. Some suffered dreadfully before dying - and the scars of family loss last a lifetime for the survivors.

Nevertheless, I don't feel the need to refuse further communication with other people on the basis of a second hand report about someone else's apparently differing beliefs about that event. If I did give up in exasperation and decide to shun them publicly, I would at least have the decency to cite specific offending statements.

One thing I do believe is that if matters are to be discussed, they should be discussed without limits based on a priori assumptions and dogmatic assertions.

I also don't believe in locking up historians - or anyone else - for their historical beliefs.

I'm sorry if that offends you. You should understand, however, that I find abandonment and betrayal of the principles of The Enlightenment offensive too. It's bad enough when I find gross irrationality and a refusal to think outside a specific frame of reference in religious types. You, Peter, claim to be an atheist.

There you go again with your odd insinuation that I only "claim" to believe what I post. What my taking offense at Holocaust "revisionism" has to do with Zionism I don't know. Your Holocaust postings were relevant to Peter's questioning of your motives and/or information, so I brought them up. And no, I'm not trying to get you banned, nor could I if I wanted to; I've said it before and I'll say it again here.



Affirmative, these people follow a pretty linear course.