‘God Told Me to Do It': The Dangers of America’s Lunatic
Right
By Peter-SterryPeter Sterry
April 20, 2015 "ICH" - "21st
Century Wire" - These
are truly insane times.
Aside from the odd grumblings about being a “Christian nation”, here in Britain
we are mostly divorced from strong religious themes in our politics. Not so in
the US, and I’m not talking about Prayer in Schools here either.
Something big is brewing in America, and it’s not all good. It’s not just the
usual war hawk talk from the rank and file Rambo crowd like John McCain, Lindsey
Graham and new baby hawks like Senator
Tom Cotton. We understand them and their desire to act on behalf of the
military industrial complex to sell more Apaches, planes, bombs, boats and
missiles. Men such as these can be found everywhere throughout history. They
love and want war, and always will.
That’s not it though. There is something else. There exists a rather ugly
anti-Arab, or more specifically – anti-Islam wave which is being pushed
along, gradually building up into a Zeitgeist in US right-wing
political and ‘Christian’ discourse. Presently, this is threatening to go
mainstream in America. This is partly due to 15 years of the West’s war against
Arabs, and a classically conditioned
Pavlovian western anxiety surrounding Muslims. This is not just traditional
bigotry, or even racism. It is both disturbing – and frightening, not unlike
similar Nazi rhetoric which ushered in Germany’s modern dark age. The same
patterns are now being mirrored in certain side-shows within the US political
circus. This is exactly how Hitler gathered steam in
the early days of the Third Reich – by employing an overtly jingoistic,
and even genocidal, racist party line – in order to invigorate his hard
core supporters whom he knew would form the phalanx of his foot soldiers later
on. In this kind of jagged political environment, facts do not matter at all,
but FEAR is everything. If a politician or a street agitator can instil fear
into the crowd, then he, or she, knows that power is well within their grasp.
To super charge the political narrative, and rally the remaining foot soldiers
who don’t necessarily understand politics too well but are still eager to
follow, a leader must evoke fundamentalist religious, mythological, or
occult-based belief systems. To make this ideological jump, no goosestep
is required. Here, fellow travelers Adolph Hitler, Rudolf Hess
and Heinrich Himmler were able to quietly coordinate a masterful mix,
establishing a popular and potent cocktail of reactionary politics and
derivative
occult and mythological lore and corresponding symbology.
The soil for this kind of convergence has never been more fertile in the US as
it is today. Since the early 1980’s, when the
Republican Party discovered how important the Evangelical and Christian Zionist
right-wing movements were in providing a strong political base, ‘End
of Times’ mythology has steadily propagated throughout the United
States. With that, a collection of bizarre, yet well-organized movements and
sub-movements have evolved, and in each instance, these have provided universal
backing to US wars and interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere, seeing
these as ‘Holy Wars’ – in a Clash of Civilisations – rather than
geopolitical maneuvers. As writer
Daniel Spaulding explains, “The United States has long been the home of a
wide assortment of bizarre and eccentric sects and cults, most being harmless,
or at least lacking the ability to do any serious harm outside of their
immediate proximity without large-scale followings nor serious political access.
But there are always exceptions, and one of the more prominent and influential
ones is the highly politicised and well-funded
Dispensationalist movement, a vocal and well-represented faction among
fundamentalist Protestants. Not only do Dispensationalists have a large scale
following, but they also manage to wield considerable influence in Washington,
especially on US foreign policy.”
Within this contrived
‘End Times’ meets the Crusader, or
Samuel P. Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilisations’
dialectic, Arabs and Muslims are almost universally characterized as terrorists
and generalised as a universal threat which “must be dealt with”. Given enough
time, these same preachers will be eventually craft a similar ‘End Times’
narrative around Russia, or China (some already have).
Throughout the usual paranoid rhetoric (from the usual suspects) on this
subject, no specific mention is made as to how exactly the millions of Arabs
and ‘potential’ radical Islamic terrorists – should be “dealt with”. So say the
hawks and the zealots. The only thing missing from this 21st century remix of
Nuremberg’s Greatest Hits is talk of a
“final solution” – even though this is what is clearly being inferred by
certain politicians and American talk radio hosts who relentlessly pander to
their highly lucrative, but helplessly terrified audiences. Some
right-wing American pundits have even come out openly advocating a
nuclear final solution to this ‘problem’.
To a lesser degree, and only on paper (so far anyway), Minnesota’s
Michele Bachmann represents a mixture of these. Ever since her exit
from politics last year, Tea Party favorite Bachmann has since been flirting
with media regarding a possible 2016 Presidential run, although many believe she
is already a spent force. Now she is urging more pastors around the country to
speak from their pulpits about the coming “end of times”, which Bachmann insists
is just around the corner. She believes that America’s ‘Christian believers’ are
now in competition with Muslims, who themselves are already speedily preparing
their own ‘end times’ pathway, in what she describes as, “the coming of their
twelfth imam.”
Daniel Spaulding adds, “Indeed, the late American intellectual Gore
Vidal whimsically
observed that the practical result of this Dispensationalist theology was a
“military buildup that can never, ever cease until we have done battle for the
Lord”.
Not by coincidence, the Dispensationalist theological narrative also happens to
feed directly into the State of Israel’s own geopolitical and territorial
expansion goals and objectives. As a mantra for geographical and cultural
expansion, modern Zionism is not so different from the “Glory of Rome”, 19th
century America’s ‘Manifest Destiny’, Britain’s Empire on which “the sun never
sets”, or Nazi Germany’s
“Lebensraum” (living space). Israel desires and is actively pursuing its own
Lebensraum too, which is called the Greater Israel Project (see
their map here). This is where the American Christian and evangelical
right-wing, along with the
Israeli Zionist lobby crossover with America’s Republican and Tea Party
wings, and the glue which keeps it all together is
money - lots and lots of money – for anyone willing to get up in public
and sell this bizarre, albeit antiquated, pre-Medieval doctrine of the
‘Tribe of Israel’, the
‘Israelites‘ or ‘God’s chosen people’. According to this new doctrine, any
threat to go off script, in other words, any threat to the Jewish State of
Israel – is a threat to ‘destiny’ as prescribed by the End Times
religious movement. You could go even further into depth and dig into the
Anti-Christ and Jesus returning etc, but we’ll hit pause there. Some Islamic
branches are also pushing a similar End Times narrative (including
ISIS). Notice also how this plugs directly into the current fictional narrative
(invented by the very same parties) that “Iran wants to wipe Israel off the
map”. And there you have it – a potent religious justification for a preemptive
military strike against Iran, as the centre piece for World War III.
Preachers and snake oil salesmen are one thing, but heads of state are another.
When God speaks to political leaders these days, it seems that all God wants to
talk about is war. On this count, both the US President
George W. Bush and British Prime Minister
Tony Blair claimed that, ‘God told me to bomb and occupy Iraq.’ We should
all understand the dangers of mixing religion with geopolitics by now.
Even though US President Barack Obama is on the way out with only a year and
half to go in office before he retires to a predictable life of opening
libraries, foundations, speeches and travel around the globe brokering peace
deals – Bachmann and her fellow ‘Christian Soldiers’ (onward!) are convinced
that Obama is reciting the Koran in the Oval Office and secretly organising
ISIS training seminars over the border in Mexico. The big question is: what
will they do when Obama finally leaves office? Will they blame him for all of
America and the world’s ills for the next 8 years (exactly as the Democrats have
done for the last 6 years, same show, different channel)?
Her recent remarks only reinforce what we already suspected: that
Obama is the least of worries….
Michele Bachmann
Says Jesus’ Second Coming is ‘Imminent;’ Obama’s Nuclear Negotiations With Iran
Are ‘Pro Islamic Jihad’
By Samual Smith
Christian Post
Former congresswoman and 2012 Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann
has accused President Barack Obama of being “pro the goals of Islamic jihad,”
which she explains includes welcoming the “hidden imam” to
bring on the apocalypse.
Continue this story at Christian Post