Reason and Radical

America's Taliban

That as my thought this morning as I listened to this NPR piece about the death of Sgt. Ben Isenberg who died in Taji on Sept. 13 (scroll down for the link to the audio).

Isenberg's father said that the war in Iraq was a spiritual war and that Bush was the spiritual leader to lead this spiritual war, as predicted in whatever apocalyptic piece of fiction Mr. Isenberg believes in (the Bible, I guess).

This is terrifying thinking. And all too common. And very, very much like other fundamentalist movements around the world (i.e. the Taliban).

This fundementalist, apocalyptic Christianity is part and parcel of growing American fascism. This piece by David Neiwart, part two of a series, details more about the role of fundamentalist Christianity in American fascism.

"[E]ach national variant of fascism draws its legitimacy, as we shall see, not from some universal scripture but from what it considers the most authentic elements of its own community identity. Religion, for example, would certainly play a much larger role in an authentic fascism in the United States than in the first European fascisms, which were pagan for contingent historical reasons."

posted by Leimodnu @ 10:22 AM