(TPJ 178)
by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
– February 07, 2008
This week I am offering you part 3 of chapter 10 of “Jonathan
Westminster’s” book entitled The 15% Solution: A Political History of
American Fascism, 2001-2022, originally published in 1996 and purported to
be published in 2048, on the 25th Anniversary of the Restoration of
US Constitutional Democracy, following the conclusion of the Second Civil
War. Previously I presented the “text” of the 2008 Inaugural address of
the putative President, Jefferson Davis Hague, who in his speech announced the
transformation of the Republican Party into the American Christian Nation Party,
and certain commentary on it by a member of his staff and the author.
This week I present additional commentary by the author, Westminster, and by an
English journalist, Alec Poughton. And yes, there is a contemporary
Addendum this week, just as there were for Parts 1 and 2.
Hague
and the "Christian Nation" Concept
In analyzing and understanding the Hague approach to this issue, it is
important to note that neither in his Second Inaugural nor elsewhere did he ever officially declare or decree the U.S. to be a
"Christian Nation." Note too that as noted above, the quotes
from "The 15% Solution's" Godfather Pat Robertson that Hague
chose to include, themselves never referred directly to the concept but
only alluded to it. In fact, Robertson was usually quite careful not
to use the words directly, even though most of his followers and most of
his allies had the "Christianizing of America" right at the top of
their agenda, and just "knew" that Pat did too. But not using the
phrase gave the Reverend Reaganesque "deniability."
Following this pattern of obscurantism, even the New American Republics
would not be officially designated a "Christian Nation." In
practice, of course, both the NAR and the old U.S. under Hague and the
Republican-Christian Alliance were "Christian Nations" as the
term was understood by those who had promoted the notion during the Transition
Era, and their ideological successors. But by never saying so in so many
words, and never making "Christian Nationhood" official policy,
Hague was always able to deny that that was indeed the case, a politically
useful maneuver.
The
"Rightward Imperative"
The "Rightward Imperative" I mentioned in an "Author's
Note" to the Hague Address (see p. 131) described a pattern of a constant
rightward policy shift that could be observed in the old Republican Party
during the Transition Era, and then in the R-CA/ACNP during the pre-NAR
Fascist Period. First on economic issues, then on social ones, so-called
"moderates" were read or ridden out of the Republican Party, unless
they radically moved their positions to the Right on both economic and
social issues. For example, the Republican Senate Majority Leader
Robert Dole of Kansas did that in the run-up to the 1996 Presidential
election (Kramer) (see below).
It became de rigeur in the 1980s to recite the mantra of "tax
cuts/balanced budget amendment/free market" that would have horrified old-line
"moderate" Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller, former Governor
of New York and Jacob Javits, former Senator from New York. Even
former President Richard Nixon and George Bush, before he became Ronald
Reagan's Vice-President, had problems with certain sections of
that agenda.
Then came the '90s mantra of "ban abortion/prayer in the schools/no
civil rights for homosexuals." This was designed specifically
to appeal to the growing Religious Right and the Rev. Pat's Christian
Coalition. They formed the core vote of an ever-rightward moving
Republican Party, they were the constituency which made "The 15%
Solution" possible. They had to be kept in tow.
During the Transition Era the Rightward Imperative was perhaps best
personified by Senator Dole (mentioned above). He had been a Nixon
Republican, tough on rhetoric in practice but relatively progressive on
domestic issues (Berke, 1995). He had, for example, introduced the
Nixon health care reform plan in the Senate in 1973, a plan that had much in
common with the (Pres. Bill) Clinton Health Plan that Dole played a major role
in defeating, primarily for political reasons, in 1994.
For most of his career, Dole had downplayed the Right-Wing Reactionary
"social issues" such as banning freedom of choice in the outcome
of pregnancy, requiring voluntary prayer in the schools, and introducing
censorship into the entertainment industry. In 1995-6, running for
President in a Republican Party already well under the spell of the Christian
Coalition, he quite suddenly became a supporter of their position on these
matters and related ones. He was being realistic. As he said
(Berke, 1995): "Any survey research you or I have seen shows that these
are the issues that [Republican] primary voters [Author's Note: read
"Far Right Republicans"] care about or are motivated
by."
The
Stirring of Political Violence
Once "The 15% Solution" had succeeded, during the pre-NAR Fascist
Period Right-Wing Reaction found that its policies did not indeed solve
problems, as noted above. It also found that there was, therefore,
an increasing amount of labor and racial unrest. Too, there was
potential political trouble, as various groups tried to reinvigorate the
still Democratic Leadership Council-lead Democratic Party or set up
some left alternative to it. Political violence, unofficial to
be sure, increasingly became the order of the day. The Rightward
Imperative continued to operate.
Political violence was to be intensified by the formal establishment in
2009 of the force known as the Helmsmen. This was part of the campaign
to promote and enforce the Proclamation of Right (see the next chapter).
An important prototype for the Helmsmen was the German Nazi dictator
Adolf Hitler's Sturmabteilung (SA), the Storm Troopers. The SA was
a private army of thugs used primarily to terrorize the center and
left opposition before Hitler's official takeover of the German
government in 1933.
Preparing the way for the formation of the Helmsmen, a number of the
groups that Hague welcomed into the official American Christian Nation Party at
the time of its founding had armed wings. While uncoordinated to be
sure, for the R-CA in its later stages and the ACNP in its early one they
generally served the purpose that the SA had for Hitler in pre-Nazi
Germany. Faced with increasing although unfocussed resistance, the
Hagueites needed armed support for repressive purposes. By officially
recognizing and indeed embracing them, the successors of the old Republican
Party were just continuing at a different level the Rightward Imperative it had
experienced for the previous three decades.
An
Alex Poughton letter
December 31, 2008
Dear Karl,
You may recall that I wrote to you just four years ago this date, commenting
on Hague's First Inaugural. I don't know which address, the first or
the second, will be considered more depressing by future historians.
But I am depressed enough thinking that this poor benighted country
has another four years of this guy to endure. [Author's Note: Poughton had no way of knowing that the country would have coming many more
than four more years of Hague.]
The formation of this new "American Christian Nation Party” comes as
something of a shock, although I suppose using the retrospectoscope you could
have seen it coming. The good news? Hague straddled on the
"Christian Nation" issue itself. The bad news? The official
welcoming into the party of the goon elements that have been unofficially
been providing Hague and his men with street-muscle for a few years now.
The worst news, I suppose, is that Hague had to form the party at all. He
wouldn't have done it if things had been going well here. Noticeable
by its absence in his speech is any consideration of the myriad current
problems this country faces. Noticeable also by its absence is any
presentation, even in the most general terms, of policies he intends to follow
to try to deal with them. And he's got to have something in mind, because
everything major they've tried so far, each of course supposed to
"solve the problem" and "set the country on the right
track" hasn't worked. (He could have talked about that too, but
somehow I don't think he would have.)
And so, going back with these guys to the 90s, the first Balanced Budget
Amendment was supposed to do it; then Term Limits; then the "Real War
on Drugs" (the subject of my very first letter to you); then ending that
"burdensome immigration" with the Preserve America Amendment; then
getting that "meddlesome" Supreme Court out of the way with Anderson
v. Board of Education; then putting into the Constitution the
definition of "when life begins," what can and cannot be taught to
kids about sex, a full legal sanction for homophobia, and outlawing
freedom of choice in the outcome of pregnancy; then ending any form of
"welfare;" then repealing the income tax, having another go at trying
to get to a balanced budget by amending the Constitution, making any tax
increases virtually impossible, and ensconcing the line-item veto; then
giving the President decree powers (which he has yet to use) and ending the
Constitutional prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure (that
one, I hear, is being widely used—but even there, to deal with the
apparently rising unrest, they have been rumored to be making use of these
unofficial "militias"); then making the "Law of God" supreme,
and finally Constitutionally putting God "back in the schools"
(although he, or she, has firmly been there since Anderson v. Board of Education).
And of course, nothing "did it" because none of these policies addressed
any of the underlying problems of this country, that I wrote to you about
earlier this year during the election campaign. (And ah yes, the election
campaign. The Democrats still didn't get it. They still haven't
learned that "me too" doesn't work. And the real left?
"Oy," as my Jewish friends are wont to say.)
So anyway, Hague needed some new distraction, and the formation of the
ACNP is it. We'll see what comes next, but I cannot imagine it will
be anything good. At the rate he's going, it could be a full-blown
police state.
Well, enough gloom and doom for now.
Your friend, Alex
Addendum: This is from an article by the British
historian Eric Hobsbawm, who as a student was living in Berlin at the time of
the Nazi takeover on January 30, 1993. It appeared in The London Review
of Books on Jan. 24, 2008.
“This [1933, before the takeover] was the last time Germany was at
the centre of modernity and Western thought. It might have held out better if
the Weimar Republic had been followed not by Hitler’s wrecking crew but by a
more traditional reactionary government. Yet in retrospect this option was as
unreal as was the prospect of stopping Hitler’s rise by a comprehensive
anti-Fascist union. The fact is that no one, right, left or centre, got the
true measure of Hitler’s National Socialism, a movement of a kind that had not
been seen before and whose aims were rationally unimaginable. Not even his
intended victims fully recognised the danger. After the summer election of 1932
which left the Nazis as much the largest party, but short of a majority, the
(Jewish) editor of the Tagebuch, a left-liberal weekly we took
at home, published an article whose headline struck me even then as suicidal. I
still see it before me: ‘Lasst ihn heran!’ (‘Why not let him in!’) A few months
later, with very different intentions, the reactionaries around the aged
President Hindenburg manoeuvred Hitler into office thinking that he could be
controlled. . . .
“Moments when one knows history has changed are rare, but this was
one of them. That is why I can still see myself walking home from school with
my sister on the cold afternoon of 30 January 1933, reflecting on what the news
of Hitler’s appointment as chancellor meant. A few days later someone brought
the duplicating machine of the SSB, my Communist schools organisation, to store
under my bed. They thought it would be safer in the flat of a foreigner. But
from now on nowhere was safe. Still, it was a strange and wonderful time in
which to discover oneself and the world in a Berlin that looked like the
potential capital of the 20th century, until the barbarians took over. When I
go there today, I still feel it has never recovered from 1933.”
Comment: At least the German people had
an excuse. What was about to happen to them at the hands of a vocal and
violent minority had never happened before (the Italian and Hungarian
experiences with Fascism in the 1920s being rather different). We, the
citizens of the United States, have been warned by history. If it does
happen here, that excuse we will not have.
The references for this whole chapter are available on request to:
sjtpj@aol.com