Book Review: American Fascists

Once in a while you read a book that scares the living daylights out of you. Chris Hedges' American Fascists is that kind of book.

Hedges is the son of a minister and a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. He identifies himself as a practicing Christian, and as a practicing Christian he is dismayed at what he is seeing developing in the United States. While the book covers events in America, some elements are directly transferable to other western nations, including my own Canada.

American Fascists is an in-depth look at right wing Christian organizations and their attempts to change the face of American politics -- and society -- in the past several decades. According to Hedges, the Christian "dominionist" movement goes beyond a call to moral rejuvenation to take on the aspects of the German Nazi movements.

The book is filled with numerous examples to back up Hedges' claims. Both movements, for example, are stridently anti-homosexual. Both movements seek to keep women in subordinate roles, both in society and in the home. Both movements have sought to control the future by influencing the education of the nation's youth. Both movements prefer ideologically acceptable pseudoscience -- "blood and soil" racial science for the Nazis and "intelligent design" for the dominionists -- over established scientific thought.

Both movements see the world in conflict-ridden, apocalyptic terms: the Nazis with their eternal struggle against the forces of communism; the dominionists with their struggle against Satan and his allies, Muslims, homosexuals, and liberals. Both movements also believe that their nations have God-given rights not only to empire, but to world domination.

It is impossible to give Hedges' arguments the detail they deserve in a short posting like this one, so let me just say, "READ THIS BOOK". If you have $30, go to your local bookstore and buy it. If you don't have $30, borrow it from the library. If you have to, surreptitiously read a few pages at a time at the bookstore. You may not agree with everything that Hedges says, but I guarantee you will not see the religious right the same way again.

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America
Chris Hedges
Free Press, New York, 2006
ISBN: 978-0-7432-8443-1