Category Archives: Hate Speech

Respecting Truth

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When liars lie people die

As America approaches a million deaths from COVID-19, many thousands of families have been left wondering whether available treatments and vaccines could have saved their loved ones. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, more than 230,000 deaths could have been avoided if individuals had gotten vaccinated.

— NPR: Their mom died of COVID. They say conspiracy theories are what really killed her, GEOFF BRUMFIEL

Ignorance is the lack of true knowledge. Willful ignorance is something more. It is ignorance coupled with the decision to remain ignorant. In saying this, it is tempting to believe that if one is willfully ignorant then one must know that one is ignorant, thereby revealing a bit of savvy whereby, presumably, one knows that there is some truth out there that one wants to be insulated from. A good example of this might be our suspicion that a vast majority of the people who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 did not actually believe the nonsense that they spouted about global warming, but instead merely pretended to believe it, so that they would appeal to those voters who were actually ignorant. But this is not willful ignorance; this is dishonesty. Instead, to be truly willfully ignorant, one could neither disbelieve in the truth (for, after all, one could simply think that one’s mistaken beliefs were correct), nor affect the mere pretense of disbelieving (for that is to look at the truth with one eye and pretend not to see it). Willful ignorance is instead marked by the conviction to shut both eyes against any further investigation, because one is so firm in one’s belief that any other sources of knowledge are not needed. Here one is not only ignorant but (like Euthyphro) prefers to remain so. One does not in any sense “know” the truth (even with one eye), even though one probably does suspect that there are further sources of contravening information out there. Yet these are rejected, because they might conflict with one’s favored beliefs; if there are other sources of information, they must be ignored. This is why the false beliefs cited in the polling results show more than just ignorance. For when there are such easily available sources of accurate information out there, the only excuse for such stunning ignorance is the desire to remain so; one has actively chosen not to investigate. More than mere scientific illiteracy, this sort of obstinacy reflects contempt. But why would someone embrace such a hostile attitude toward the truth?

— Respecting Truth: Willful Ignorance in the Internet Age by Lee McIntyre

At what point does “skepticism” become crackpot? How long before the preference for anecdotal over scientific evidence tips the balance toward a conspiracy theory that ranks with AIDS deniers and those who believe that NASA faked the Moon landing? Conspiracy theories are one of the most insidious forms of disrespecting truth for, even while they profess to be guided by the fervent desire to discover a truth that someone else is hiding, they simultaneously undermine the process by which most truths are discovered. Conspiracy theorists are customarily proud to profess the highest standards of skepticism, even while expressing a naïve credulity that the most unlikely correlations are true. This is disrespect, if not outright contempt, for the truth. (McIntyre, Lee. Respecting Truth (p. 47). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.)

Finally, we turn to the problem of rumor. After the foregoing account, it may seem that belief in rumors has nothing much in common with the set of irrational beliefs that we have dismissed so far as “crackpot.” Yet rumors too can be dangerous and far-fetched. In the absence of reliable sources of information, rumors can tempt us to believe things that in less exigent circumstances we would be highly likely to dismiss. (McIntyre, Lee. Respecting Truth (p. 47). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.)

The best example in recent years is the list of atrocities that allegedly occurred in New Orleans just after Hurricane Katrina. Armed gangs were beating and raping tourists in the street. Snipers were shooting at rescue workers. Inside the Superdome—which was home to some 25,000 refugees—muzzle flashes were said to portend mass killings with bodies piling up in the basement. Children’s throats were slit. Women were being dragged away from their families and raped. A seven-year-old girl was raped and murdered. Two babies had their throats slit. (McIntyre, Lee. Respecting Truth (pp. 47-48). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.)

The consequences of these reports were dire. When Governor Kathleen Blanco sent the National Guard in to restore order, she did so with a stark message to the perpetrators: “I have one message for these hoodlums: these troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so if necessary, and I expect they will.” She and Mayor Ray Nagin called off rescue efforts to focus on protecting private property. Helicopters were grounded. The sheriff of one suburb that had a bridge to New Orleans turned back stranded tourists and locals, firing bullets over their heads. New Orleans had become a prison city. A team of paramedics was barred from entering the suburb of Slidell for nearly ten hours based on a state trooper’s report that a mob of armed, marauding men had commandeered boats. An ambulance company was locked down after word came that a firehouse in Covington had been looted by armed robbers. New Orleans police shot and killed several lawbreakers as they attempted to flee across the Danziger Bridge. (McIntyre, Lee. Respecting Truth (p. 48). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.)

The problem is that none of the reported atrocities just described actually occurred. None. Three weeks after the storm, police superintendent Edwin P. Compass III, who had initially provided some of the most graphic reports of violence, said “we have no official reports to document any murder. Not one official report of rape or sexual assault.” During the alleged six-day siege inside the Superdome, Lt. David Benelli (head of the New Orleans Police Department’s sex crimes unit) lived with his officers inside the dome and ran down every rumor of rape or atrocity. At the final count, they had made two arrests, both for attempted sexual assault, and concluded that the other rumored attacks had not happened.44 (McIntyre, Lee. Respecting Truth (p. 48). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.)

A lying tongue hates its victims, and a flattering mouth works ruin. (Proverbs 26:28)

The snipers who were shooting at rescue workers turned out to be a relief valve on a gas tank that popped open every few minutes. The men commandeering boats turned out to be two refugees trying to escape their flooded street. The report of the robbery at the firehouse was simply false. When the giant refrigerated trucks backed up to the Superdome to haul out the bodies, there were only six: four had died of natural causes and one from suicide, with only one dying of gunshot wounds.45 The child who was raped—and indeed each of the rapes in the Superdome—turned out to be untrue. So did the story of the murdered babies. Despite police commitment to investigate, no witnesses, survivors, or survivors’ relatives ever came forward.46 (McIntyre, Lee. Respecting Truth (p. 48). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.)

What was very real, however, was the aftermath of the city’s stalled rescue efforts and the crackdown on all those alleged lawbreakers. The people who were shot by police on the Danziger Bridge turned out to include a middle-aged African American mother who had her forearm blown off. The other was a mentally disabled forty-year-old man on his way to his brother’s dental office, who was shot five times and killed. A teenager was also killed.47 And thousands of people suffered with little food, water, or medical attention for days inside the Superdome. Yes, there were confirmed reports of widespread looting after the storm, mostly for food, water, and other necessities. And there was some violence. But how did such small incidents get so wildly exaggerated? How did we all become so easily seduced into believing the worst about the refugees in New Orleans? (McIntyre, Lee. Respecting Truth (pp. 48-49). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.)

In a city that was two-thirds African American before Katrina hit, and substantially less diverse in the population of refugees who could afford to put thirty gallons of gas in their SUVS and flee the approaching storm, one doesn’t need to take an IAT to understand that racial bias may have had something to do with it. Indeed, many experts now feel that the power of rumor to feed into pre-existing racial stereotypes likely led to one of the most tragic instances of “confirmation bias” ever to play out on the world stage. And the tragedy is that the effect of this bias was borne by the refugees themselves, who had done nothing wrong and were begging for help. They were stranded not merely due to poor federal disaster planning and lack of supplies, but also by the palpable hesitancy of public officials to expose rescue workers to the kind of “animals” who would commit such atrocities. (McIntyre, Lee. Respecting Truth (p. 49). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.)

What to say about those of us who were nowhere near New Orleans? Are we off the hook? Yet how many of us even to this day knew that the reports of violence in New Orleans were untrue? Although the press bears some responsibility for not reporting the retractions with as much vigor as the alleged atrocities, the corrected stories were out there. Yet how many of us read them? How many of us were sufficiently skeptical of such incredible claims even to look? Will Rogers famously quipped that “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth can get its pants on.” Yet if we respect truth, isn’t it important to engage our critical faculties and search out better information? (McIntyre, Lee. Respecting Truth (p. 49). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.)

Rumor has the power to keep us from looking for the truth only if we are willing to suspend our critical faculties. In a life-threatening situation, it is probably understandable to take rumors seriously. If we do not know what is going on and we are scared, we may feel that we cannot afford the risk to be gullible. Survival comes first. But when the danger has passed, or we are far removed from it, don’t we have an obligation to try to replace rumor with fact? (McIntyre, Lee. Respecting Truth (p. 49). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.)

Truth may be the first casualty of war, but respect for truth must survive the conflict. We may not like to think of ourselves among the “Seekers,” “Birthers,” “Truthers,” or other conspiracy theorists, but the fact is that we are all probably capable of believing in crackpot theories if the circumstances are right. We demonstrate respect for truth when we are willing to resist such pressure. (McIntyre, Lee. Respecting Truth (p. 49). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.)

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[B]ullshit results from the adoption of lame methods of justification, whether intentionally, blamelessly or as a result of self-deception. The function of the term is to emphatically express that a given claim lacks any serious justification, whether or not the speaker realizes it. By calling bullshit, we express our disdain for the speaker’s lack of justification, and indignation for any harm we suffer as a result. 

— On Letting it Slide: Bullshit and Philosophy

Suppose someone sits down where you are sitting right now and announces to you that he or she is Napoleon Bonaparte. The last thing we want to do with them is to get involved in a technical discussion of cavalry tactics at the battle of Austerlitz. If we do that, we’re getting tacitly drawn into the game that he or she is Napoleon. For those who espouse and believe conspiracist theories they would like nothing better than to drag everyone else down the rabbit hole into fruitless discussions of false claims of pseudo-evidence without a shred of fact or truth (real evidence); they are content disrespecting truth by repeating innuendo, outright falsehoods, rumors, and otherwise parroting hearsay and falsehoods they have heard or read on social media. To go down this conspiracist rabbit hole is to tacitly agree with their fundamental assumptions that there is something there to debate when there is nothing but empty falsehoods. Their goal is to draw you too into their bullshit and to distract you away from the scientific and rational methods of finding truth based upon evidence (fact). Thoughtful individuals who respect truth find such conspiratorial claims ludicrous and the most appropriate response is to treat them as ludicrous — that is, by laughing at such falsehood mongering — so as not to fall into the trap of giving the impression one takes such conspiratorial falsehoods seriously.

The Lady in Red

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People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.

—George Orwell

In the summer of 2009, many in the world’s media suddenly became aware of a new conspiracist phenomenon. A video shot by a citizen cameraperson sitting approximately halfway back in the auditorium at a town-hall meeting in Georgetown, Delaware, on June 30 was put on YouTube a week or so later, and within days went viral. (Aaronovitch, David. Voodoo Histories (p. 296). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 8))

The clip begins with the rangy figure of Congressman Mike Castle, Delaware’s sole representative in the U.S. House, face to the camera, choosing a questioner from the audience. “This lady in red . . .” he says. From the back it is hard to make out anything about the woman who now stands up, except that she seems to wear glasses and have her hair in what might be called a Sarah Palin semi-bun. The woman in red is brandishing something. She announces, “I have a birth certificate here from the United States of America, saying I am an American citizen, with a seal on it, signed by a doctor, with a hospital administrator’s name, my parents, my date of birth, the time, the date. I want to go back to January 20, and I want to know why are you people ignoring his birth certificate.” There is a loud cry of “Yeah!!!” and some applause, and a little booing. The woman continues, without specifying whom she is talking about—perhaps because she does not need to. “He is not an American citizen! He is a citizen of Kenya! My father fought in World War Two with the greatest generation in the Pacific theater for this country, and I don’t want this flag to change.” She waves a small American flag and shouts, “I want my country back!”1 And sits back down. (Aaronovitch, David. Voodoo Histories (pp. 296-297). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

Mr. Castle, a moderate Republican, seemingly taken aback by both the sentiment and the support for it, insists that “if you’re referring to the president there, he is a citizen of the United States.” Some catcalls follow. Apparently emboldened, the questioner rises and shouts out, “I think we should all stand up and pledge allegiance to the flag!” Several people yell, “Pledge allegiance!” and one loudly opines that Castle “probably doesn’t even know it!” Surreally, Castle then leads the people of Georgetown in this enforced act of loyalty, as though there had been a doubt about his patriotism that now needed to be expunged. (Aaronovitch, David. Voodoo Histories (p. 297). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

The Lady in Red was many people’s first Birther. But for the next few weeks the question of whether Barack Obama was an American citizen at birth, and the fact that there was a debate about that question, were hotly discussed on mainstream news channels in the United States, and the peculiarity that a significant number of Americans thought that he wasn’t a citizen (and that he was therefore ineligible to be president) was featured widely outside the country. One of the earliest Birthers, the Philadelphia lawyer (and 9/11 Truth activist) Philip J. Berg, observed that until the Delaware eruption, “the coverage has been minuscule” and confined to Internet and marginal radio stations, but that the Georgetown meeting had set off “a vast uptick.” On his radio broadcast, the sonorous CNN host Lou Dobbs, in “only asking” mode, repeatedly suggested that Obama set minds at rest by producing his long-form birth certificate. The more pungent right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh argued that the new president had “yet to prove that he’s a citizen.” (Aaronovitch, David. Voodoo Histories (p. 297). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

At the same time, a group of mostly Texan Republican congressmen sponsored a measure, drafted by Bill Posey of Florida, “to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require the principal campaign committee of a candidate for election to the office of President to include with the committee’s statement of organization a copy of the candidate’s birth certificate,” a requirement that had somehow been regarded as superfluous in the previous 230 years of the republic. By mid-August 2009, a quarter of Americans polled were of the opinion that Barack Obama was not an American citizen by birth, and another 14 percent were unsure, with 10 percent naming Indonesia as his place of birth, 7 percent opting for Kenya, and 6 percent agreeing that it was Hawaii, but a Hawaii that, in their opinion, was not part of the United States in 1961 when Obama was born. Twelve percent, when prompted by the mischievous pollsters, pronounced themselves unsure that Obama wasn’t French. There were political, gender, and ethnic disparities. Sixty-two percent of Birthers were Republicans (44 percent of Republicans believed that Obama was not a citizen, compared with 36 percent who thought he was), 57 percent were “conservative,” 56 percent were male, and 86 percent were white.2 (Aaronovitch, David. Voodoo Histories (pp. 297-298). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

How GOP Fascism Works

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The qualifications of a candidate should not be issue-oriented as much as character-oriented. They should be “able” and “experienced” men of course for the position which they seek. Beyond that, Scripture says they should be men who “fear God, ” that is, they should be Christians, as affirmed by John Jay. They should also be “men of truth” and “wise and discerning” men. This means that they should be Christians with a Biblical worldview–men who reason from absolute truth, not human wisdom. Many candidates may claim to be “Christians,” but do not hold to a Biblical worldview. Former President Jimmy Carter was an example of a Christian whose mind was unrenewed by Scripture and thus reasoned and governed from a “humanistic” worldview. Finally, Scripture says that our representatives must “hate dishonest gain.” This means that beyond a correct worldview, they must have Christian character, a godly home life, and pure motives…. Even if Christians manage to outnumber others on an issue and we sway our Congressman by sheer numbers, we end up in the dangerous promotion of democracy. We really do not want representatives who are swayed by majorities, but rather by correct principles.

— Beliles, Mark A. and McDowell Stephen K. (1991, 265) America’s Providential History
A Demagogue’s Playbook

In book 8 of Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues that people are not naturally led to self-governance but rather seek a strong leader to follow. Democracy, by permitting freedom of speech, opens the door for a demagogue to exploit the people’s need for a strongman; the strongman will use this freedom to prey on the people’s resentments and fears. Once the strongman seizes power, he will end democracy, replacing it with tyranny. In short, book 8 of The Republic argues that democracy is a self-undermining system whose very ideals lead to its own demise. (Stanley, Jason. How Fascism Works (p. 41). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

Fascists have always been well acquainted with this recipe for using democracy’s liberties against itself; Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels once declared, “This will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed.” Today is no different from the past. Again, we find the enemies of liberal democracy employing this strategy, pushing the freedom of speech to its limits and ultimately using it to subvert others’ speech. (Stanley, Jason. How Fascism Works (p. 41). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

Desiree Fairooz is a former librarian and activist who was present at the confirmation hearing of U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions. Sessions is a former Alabama senator whose nomination to the federal bench had been rejected by the U.S. Senate in 1986 over accusations of far-right extremism, particularly racism (as a senator, Sessions had made a name for himself by fomenting panic about immigration). When Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama declared that Sessions had a “well-documented record of treating all Americans equally under the law,” Fairooz chuckled. She was immediately arrested and charged with disruptive and disorderly conduct. The Justice Department, headed by Sessions, pressed charges against her. After a judge dismissed the charges in the summer of 2017 on the grounds that laughter is permitted speech, Sessions’s Justice Department decided in September 2017 to continue to pursue charges against her; it was not until November of that year that the Justice Department abandoned its attempt to bring Fairooz to trial for chuckling. (Stanley, Jason. How Fascism Works (pp. 41-42). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions is hardly a defender of free speech. And yet the very same month that his Justice Department was again attempting to bring an American citizen to trial for laughing, Sessions delivered a speech at Georgetown Law School excoriating university campuses for failing to live up to a commitment to free speech because of the presumption that the academy discourages right-leaning voices. He called for a “national recommitment to free speech and the First Amendment” (in the week Sessions gave this speech, news was dominated by President Trump’s call for the owners of National Football League teams to fire players who knelt during the national anthem to protest racism, an exercise of First Amendment rights if ever there was one). (Stanley, Jason. How Fascism Works (p. 42). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

Grass Roots Fascism

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Charles Lindberg was an isolationist and Nazi sympathizer during WWII, and rabid anti-Semite like many other wealthy American’s, e.g., Henry Ford who published half a million copies of the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory The Protocols. He was a propagandist for the Nazi regime that was backed by a new isolationist organization — America First Committee — dedicated to keeping America out of WWII. Lindberg claimed America could not defeat the Nazis, it was not in America’s interest to defend Britian or democracy, and that it didn’t matter to America’s or for that matter the world’s future if the Nazis won WWII. Behind such isolationist ideologies was anti-Semitism, nativist xenophobia, and racism that remains a part of America even to this day and is once again seen in Donald Trump’s America First Policy Institute. America has always had antidemocratic Demagogues who appealed to the prejudices of nativist xenophobic racists to whip up “angry mobs” to a violent frenzy. From Charles Lindberg to Father Coughlin to Huey Long Trump is one more in a long line of American demagogues. Trump, himself a Neo-Nazi sympathizer, is not an aberration in American history but a periodic eruption of the same impulse of Americans to give vent to such nativist sentiments.

In short, Americans have long had an authoritarian streak. It was not unusual for figures such as Coughlin, Long, McCarthy, and Wallace to gain the support of a sizable minority—30 or even 40 percent—of the country. We often tell ourselves that America’s national political culture in some way immunizes us from such appeals, but this requires reading history with rose-colored glasses. The real protection against would-be authoritarians has not been Americans’ firm commitment to democracy but, rather, the gatekeepers—our political parties. (Levitsky, Steven; Ziblatt, Daniel. How Democracies Die (p. 36). Crown. Kindle Edition.)

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom to terrorize or incite hatred…. Hate speech denigrates people on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, gender, age, physical condition, disability, sexual orientation, and so forth. (Sedler, 1992) Hate speech says much more about the messenger than the target. Hateful words spoken with the blessing of absolute legal protection (based on the supremacy of the First Amendment) have muted minority messages and have resulted in micro-aggressions and other forms of unequal treatment. (Cortese 2006: Preface)

— Anthony Cortese (2006) Opposing Hate Speech

America is not imperialistic; that is when you are going to take over by force. Expansionism is a much, much better and more accurate word.

— Don McLeroy, Texas School Board

The qualifications of a candidate should not be issue-oriented as much as character-oriented. They should be “able” and “experienced” men of course for the position which they seek. Beyond that, Scripture says they should be men who “fear God, ” that is, they should be Christians, as affirmed by John Jay. They should also be “men of truth” and “wise and discerning” men. This means that they should be Christians with a Biblical worldview–men who reason from absolute truth, not human wisdom. Many candidates may claim to be “Christians,” but do not hold to a Biblical worldview. Former President Jimmy Carter was an example of a Christian whose mind was unrenewed by Scripture and thus reasoned and governed from a “humanistic” worldview. Finally, Scripture says that our representatives must “hate dishonest gain.” This means that beyond a correct worldview, they must have Christian character, a godly home life, and pure motives…. Even if Christians manage to outnumber others on an issue and we sway our Congressman by sheer numbers, we end up in the dangerous promotion of democracy. We really do not want representatives who are swayed by majorities, but rather by correct principles.

— Beliles, Mark A. and McDowell Stephen K. (1991, 265) America’s Providential History
Trumpism is Fascism

A Kulturkamp may well take place in which rival totalitarianisms clash, violently perhaps, to mobilize consent and enforce political order. Under less dire circumstances, after all, as it was predicted a decade ago, “Christian doctrine, made an adjunct to right-wing and capitalist policies, could provide the necessary self-imposed order that a fascist movement in America would require to maintain control over the country.” And more recently, “a state religion, compulsory in character, authoritarian in tone, ‘traditional’ in outlook,” has been seriously foreseen. “America would be ‘socialized’ not in the name of Marx but of Jesus, not in the name of communism but of Christian republicanism.”

None of these possibilities is inevitable, of course, or even likely. But one thing at any rate seems certain. Whatever shape the creationist cosmos may take at the hands of Protestant fundamentalists, it will break free from its flourishing subculture and hold sway over people and nations only when it is commended in its integrity: not as a mere science among sciences, but as the one religious answer, among uniquely religious answers, to the unfathomable mystery of existence.

— Marty, Martin E. and Appleby R. Scott. et. al. Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1993; 2 pp. 62-64. The Fundamentalism Project.

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Many of those who supported Trump and Trumpism and ilk like Marjorie Taylor Green are so-called evangelical Christians who believe the lie that America is a “Christian Nation” or use other euphemisms like “Anglo-Saxon political traditions.” These are code words for a form of Christian Nationalism rooted in White Supremacist hateful ideology. Let there be no mistaking this is a right-wing nativist nationalism that is an incarnation of the American Taliban. Democracy, our very democratic institutions, are considered dangerous by these ignorant religious bigots. That is why Trump and his sycophants attacked the very foundations of democracy and attacked the heart of democracy on January 6th. What they seek is a white Christian Nationalism aka authoritarian theocracy.

The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.

— Evangelical Scholar Mark A. Noll, in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

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Trump is a wicked demagogue (悪人) whose fruits are rotten evil deeds (悪因悪果). Many of his sycophantic followers know full well what they do. The dystopian Trumpism the GOP has spawned is a symptom of a deeper sickness within American culture and that sickness is racism, xenophobia, and nativist nationalism. Racism and xenophobia have existed in all cultures throughout history as these prejudices are the natural consequences of ignorance of the “other” that one does not know or understand. Ignorance breeds suspicion and suspicion nurtures fear and fear manifests as stereotypes and sometimes even violent hatred. Ignorance born of suspicion is incompatible with the essential attitude of sympathy and love.

Make America Fascist Again

We have seen ignorant racist and xenophobic historical revisionism before, as Don McLeroy’s make plain. Once again it raises its ugly face in ilk like Marjorie Taylor Green and her America First Caucus that promotes ignorant historical revisionism, racism, and xenophobia in the name of so-called “first principles” and American values. Truth has no currency with such ignorant bigots. Just as the Nazis in 1930s Germany poisoned German culture over decades with hateful anti-Semitic propaganda so too AM Hate Radio and Faux News and ilk like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Green spread hateful propaganda directed at immigrants, people of color, and the LGBT community. They preach a twisted gospel of exclusion and hate called Eliminationism and Fascist Trumpism.

Nativist Fascist Historical Revisionism aka Rehashed 18th Century White Supremacist Manifest Destiny Ideology

Next week, the Texas State Board of Education will vote on new ideologically driven curriculum standards for the Texas public schools. Elected officials are going line-by-line — deciding what should and should not be included in state textbooks. And as one of the biggest textbook buyers in the country, Texas could influence what kids learn in other states, as well.

Don McLeroy, dentist and active board member, has proposed adding a requirement to study the rise of conservative icons like Phyllis Schlafly, the Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority. There’s also a new emphasis on the role religion played in the founding of the country, and on the constitutional right to bear arms. In all, there were more than 300 amendments proposed to the social studies standards. All these amendments will fundamentally change what kids are taught in school. (Karla Murthy. Is the Texas school board rewriting history? [Web Page]. 2010 May 14)

— Karla Murthy. Is the Texas school board rewriting history? [Web Page]. 2010 May 14

Whoever you hate will end up in your family.

— Chris Rock, actor/comedian

Our family was living in Japan in 2002 when some culturally conservative/nationalist Japanese bureaucrats decided to rewrite history by cleansing their history textbooks of terms they deemed offensive. They engaged in the same type of historical revisionism that these ignorant fundamentalist Christians in Texas are trying to perpetrate upon American children. Some Japanese nationalists decided that the term “invaded” did not accurately describe what the Japanese did in Southeast Asia when they colonized (another term that would be expunged) Korea and Manchuria. They took some earlier textbooks that in reference to Japan’s invasion of Southeast Asia said “Japan invaded China,” and changed them to read “Japan advanced into China,” as though Japan was merely executing a routine military maneuver while engaging in war. Of course, this hides the fact that the entire pretext for war that led to the invasion of Japan into Southeast Asia was orchestrated by Japan to justify an already planned invasion so that Japan could carry out its colonialist policies in Korea, China, Southeast Asia.

I suspect if McLeroy was asked what Japan did when it invaded Korea, China, and Southeast Asia no doubt he would describe their acts as acts of aggression and “imperialism.” Of course, this is exactly what American did in Cuba and the Philippians too. Based upon trumped up pretext invaded to take control of valuable resources, i.e., engaged in imperialism and colonialism, which was the typical behavior of Western nations under the ideology of “manifest destiny.” Of course, McLeroy won’t be explicit that he still thinks America has a “manifest destiny,” but that is the dirty little secret that lies behind his disingenuous revisionist maneuvers to rewrite history according to his religious ideology when he replaces “imperialism” with “expansionism.” Expansionism can be justified in his mind, for America was only fulfilling her “manifest destiny” in bringing civilization to those poor uncivilized peoples which she invaded and conquered by force.

America has been made great by our diversity. And it will be through this very diversity that we overcome the ignorance, fear, suspicion, and xenophobia that Trumpism represents. We are greater than this; love and compassion, wisdom and understanding are able to overcome evil with good.

But history has sent us a warning. America is not immune from grass roots fascism. It can happen here.

Galileo Goes to Jail

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Falsehood is not a matter of narration technique but something premeditated as a perversion of truth…. The shadow of a hair’s turning, premeditated for an untrue purpose, the slightest twisting or perversion of that which is principle—these constitute falseness. But the fetish of factualized truth, fossilized truth, the iron band of so-called unchanging truth, holds one blindly in a closed circle of cold fact. One can be technically right as to fact and everlastingly wrong in the truth. (Urantia Book 48:6.33)

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Among some astronomers and even more astrologers, Copernicus’ claim won converts. But in 1615, the Roman Catholic Church declared the idea a heresy and in 1632 condemned the scientist Galileo Galilei to life in prison for disseminating it.
— Ken Zimmerman, RWER : More on what’s missing, 9/1/2020

[T]he great Galileo, at the age of fourscore, groaned away his days in the dungeons of the Inquisition, because he had demonstrated by irrefragable proofs the motion of the earth.
— Voltaire, “Descartes and Newton” (1728)

[T]he celebrated Galileo … was put in the inquisition for six years, and put to the torture, for saying, that the earth moved.

— Giuseppe Baretti, The Italian Library (1757)

[T]o say that Galileo was tortured is not a reckless claim, but it is simply to repeat what the sentence says. To specify that he was tortured about his intention is not a risky deduction, but it is, again, to report what that text says. These are observation-reports, reports, not magical intuitions; proved facts, not cabalistic introspections.

— Italo Mereu, History of Intolerance in Europe (1979)

The trial ended on June 22, 1633, with a harsher sentence than Galileo had been led to expect. The verdict found him guilty of a category of heresy intermediate between the most and the least serious, called “vehement suspicion of heresy.” The objectionable beliefs were the astronomical thesis that the earth moves and the methodological principle that the Bible is not a scientific authority. He was forced to recite a humiliating “abjuration” retracting these beliefs. But the Dialogue was banned. (Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion (Kindle Locations 757-760). Kindle Edition.)

The lengthy sentencing document also recounted the proceedings since 1613, summarized the 1633 charges, and noted Galileo’s defense and confession. In addition, it provided two other extremely important details. The first described an interrogation: “Because we did not think you had said the whole truth about your intention, we deemed it necessary to proceed against you by a rigorous examination. Here you answered in a Catholic manner, though without prejudice to the above-mentioned things confessed by you and deduced against you about your intention.” The second imposed an additional penalty: “We condemn you to formal imprisonment in this Holy Office at our pleasure.” (Kindle Locations 760-764)

The lengthy sentencing document also recounted the proceedings since 1613, summarized the 1633 charges, and noted Galileo’s defense and confession. (….) The text of the Inquisition’s sentence and Galileo’s abjuration were the only trial documents publicized at the time. Indeed, the Inquisition sent copies to all provincial inquisitors and papal nuncios, requesting them to disseminate the information. Thus news of Galileo’s fate circulated widely in books, newspapers, and one-page flyers. This unprecedented publicity resulted from the express orders of Pope Urban, who wanted Galileo’s case to serve as a negative lesson to all Catholics and to strengthen his own image as an intransigent defender of the faith. (Kindle Locations 760-767)

(….) The impression that Galileo had been imprisoned and tortured remained plausible as long as the principal evidence available about Galileo’s trial came from these documents, the sentence and abjuration. The story remained unchanged until—after about 150 years for the prison thesis and about 250 years for the torture thesis—relevant documents came to light showing that Galileo had suffered neither. (Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion (Kindle Locations 775-777). Kindle Edition.)

The new information about imprisonment comes from correspondence in 1633, primarily from the Tuscan ambassador to Rome (Francesco Niccolini) to the Tuscan secretary of state in Florence, and secondarily that to and from Galileo himself. The Tuscan officials were especially interested in Galileo because he was employed as the chief mathematician and philosopher to the grand duke of Tuscany, had dedicated the Dialogue to him, and had successfully sought his help in publishing the book in Florence. Thus the Tuscan government treated the trial like an affair of state, with Niccolini constantly discussing the situation directly with the pope at their regular meetings and sending reports to Florence. Moreover, Galileo was on very friendly terms with Niccolini and his wife. (Kindle Locations 777-781)

(….) With the possible exception of three days (June 21-24, 1633), Galileo was never held in prison, either during the trial (as was universal custom) or afterward (as the sentence decreed). Even for those three days he likely lodged in the prosecutor’s apartment, not in a cell. The explanation for such unprecedentedly benign treatment is not completely clear but includes the following factors: the protection of the Medici, Galileo’s celebrity status, and the love-hate attitude of Pope Urban, an erstwhile admirer. (Kindle Locations 792-795)

(….) In view of the available evidence, the most tenable position is that Galileo underwent an interrogation with the threat of torture but did not undergo actual torture or even territio realis. Although he remained under house arrest during the 1633 trial and for the subsequent nine years of his life, he never went to prison. We should keep in mind, however, that for 150 years after the trial the publicly available evidence indicated that Galileo had been imprisoned, and for 250 years the evidence indicated that he had been tortured. The myths of Galileo’s torture and imprisonment are thus genuine myths: ideas that are in fact false but once seemed true—and continue to be accepted as true by poorly educated persons and careless scholars. (Kindle Locations 839-843)

~ ~ ~

Simple stories are poor vehicles for complex nuanced historical truth. The Catholic Church — like all human institutions — is full of justifiable blame for the errors of evil and sin, even iniquity, but let the blame be laid on firm evidentiary foundations and not half-truths of simple stories careless with fact and truth, lest we be guilty of twisting hairs and casting shadows of half-truth for untrue purposes.

Nextdoor Eliminationism

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In 1950, McCarthy gave a routine speech at an obscure forum in Wheeling, West Virginia, in which, according to audience members, he claimed:

I have here in my hand a list of 205 … a list of names that were made known to the secretary of state as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.

McCarthy possessed no such list and apparently made up the number 205, which changed with further iterations. But no matter. McCarthy had struck a match in a political climate that was saturated with the fumes of suspicion and fear, and in the media explosion that followed he became the most famous man in the country. Over the next several years, he falsely accused numerous people—government officials, journalists, Hollywood writers, lawyers, professors—of espionage and communist associations. McCarthy did not possess any solid information that any of them were communists, just rumor and innuendo that had long ago been checked out by the FBI and other government agencies. In a series of committee hearings, he and his colleagues bullied, smeared, and humiliated a long line of witnesses—none of whom was ever convicted of a crime in a court, but many of whom lost their jobs because of skittish employers. Hollywood screenwriters drawn into the net were blacklisted.

— Posner (2020, 195-196) The Demagogue’s Playbook.

The social media site Nextdoor has implemented a Good Neighbor Pledge. The evidence above in which Nextdoor user Brandon Kask posts — without a shred of evidence of who said what when and where — accuses collectively the Black Lives Matter movement, protesters, his neighbors, and elected officials of being part of a “communist” conspiratorial plot to bring about a “coup” simply by changing the sheriff’s position from an elected position to an appointed position. As with all hate speech, it is meant to incite others to follow on and amplify the malicious hate rhetoric that is meant to result in elimination of those who are targeted. It is not meant to foster intelligent discussion of informed citizens, but merely to demonize the “other” through hate speech rooted in fear mongering, racist and eliminationist rhetoric exhibited in Scott Neiman’s response in which he refers to those who hold a different view on the issues as being followers of “leftism,” “extreme leftism,” “commies,” and advocating “authoritarianism.” These are examples, detailed below, of eliminationism and eliminationist rhetoric — a form of hyper-partisan political hate speech. Left unchecked this kind of hateful rhetoric, whether from the extreme left or extreme right culminates in acts of violence towards the targeted group.

QAnon Conspiracy Parrot Calling for Elimination of Democrats

Hateful rhetoric escalates over time, first labeling people of another political party as “liberals,” then commies,” and eventually it will be a call to “get rid of the Democrats.” This is classic hate speech meant to harm others and aimed at demonizing an entire segment of the population. Yet, Nextdoor moderators let it sit there until someone reports it despite the fact this bile attracts trolls who pile on the “likes” spreading hate into our neighborhoods. Judy Hampson is a perfect example of the kind of hate mongers who foster eliminationism.

How is that moderators on Nextdoor cannot see this? How is it that they let this kind of hateful rhetoric which clearly violates Nextdoor’s own guidelines sit on the site collecting “likes” from other like minded hate mongers? Their silence and lack of action is consent to such forms of hatred being pumped into our neighborhoods by Nextdoor.

Is calling someone a “puke” neighborly?

It is clear that Nextdoor has no intention of fulfilling its phony Good Neighbor Pledge. It is the same cast of characters, like Greg Robel, who engage in debased and degenerate form of demeaning communication to others on Nexdoor’s platform. And when such hate filled bile is posted on Nextdoor and it is reported (as Robel was) it sits there despite Nextdoor claiming that such hateful rhetoric has no place on its platform.

Yet another example of hateful rhetoric that passes as acceptable on ND. Homophobic posts also find a home on ND as a post by “Sam A.” (always best to spew hateful homophobia anonymously, for such is how cowards behave). Nextdoor claims to not tolerate discrimination, yet one finds homophobic posts sitting on the site collecting likes from religious bigots and homophobes. Here we see a so-called Christian engaging in hateful homophobic discriminatory posting those in the LGBT community are somehow not healthy but are like drug addicts who need treatment. Of course, this is simply blatant ignorant religious bigotry which Nextdoor claims it does not tolerate, yet clearly ND moderators do tolerate it for there it sits.

Bad social media platforms (e.g., Nextdoor) need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men and women (aka paid employees of ND) should look on and do nothing, or worse, publish greenwashed falsehoods while bile is still pumped into our social fabric.

— John Stuart Mill, Updated for Modernity

This is evidenced in the fact that Nextdoor relies on volunteer moderators that are so incompetent that they remove Scott Neiman’s hateful eliminationist rhetoric but leave Brandon Kask’s original eliminationist hate speech that makes baseless accusations without a shred of evidence aimed at anyone who holds a view different from his own that they are communists part of a communist plot to bring about a coup. How ludicrous considering the issue would be voted on and only implemented if passed by a majority, a very democratic thing to do and which alone refutes this hateful rhetoric.

The fallacious absurdity of Brandon Kask’s claims is evidenced in the history of King County Council itself. The post of sheriff was changed from an elective position to an appointed position in 1968 and then back to an elective position in 1996 all by a democratic process of free and fair elections just as this initiative too will be decided. (See King County — Thumbnail History)

Brandon Kask and Scott Neiman are through their words revealing they are intellectual parrots of AM Hate Radio and the rhetoric of eliminationism that has been pumped into American minds over the last thirty years of a fratricidal culture war that eschews intellectual political discussions grounded in mutual respect of one’s neighbors and restrained by reason and logic and evidence. That Nextdoor allows such hate speech to pass as civil reveals how dangerous it is as a social media platform, not unlike Twitter or Facebook, in that it allows toxic hateful messages to pass as neighborly conduct when it is anything but neighborly to call, without evidence or proof, one’s neighbors, one’s elected officials, and entire groups of people “communist.”

Brandon Kask and Scott Neiman (and since it is allowed to pass as “neighborly” discussion, Nextdoor too) are no different than the Nazis who used hateful and malicious false labels of those they viewed as the “enemy” and didn’t agree with politically to demonize them and thereby make them the target of group hate. This is exactly how the Nazi’s used anti-Semitism:

The Nazis equated all opposition movements—socialist, liberal, communist, humanitarian, cosmopolitan, individualist, democratic—to the Jewish cabal. (Tsesis 2002, 24)

The truth and facts have absolutely no place in Kask’s and Neiman’s rhetoric. Its purpose is to incite hatred and nothing more. And Nextdoor as a social media platform amplifies such hateful rhetoric and undermines our neighborhood’s social fabric by treating such as good neighborly forms of communication when it is anything but good for our social well being. Such rhetoric as Kask and Neiman post is a form of prejudice and scapegoating perpetrated through hateful stereotypes.

Stereotypes may be words specially formulated for disparaging a particular group or may simply be natural language expressions that channel hatred against an outgroup. These communications are geared toward representing the victims as objects of derision and designating a course of action against them—be it judicial unfairness or job discrimination. In Kantian terms, stereotypes are schemas for memory, retrieval, evaluation, and understanding. Concepts assigned to outgroups, such as lasciviousness, greed, immorality, and infidelity, become integral parts of vernacular descriptions and imaginings about them. Stereotyping eases the processing of information because it furnishes an already established scheme for compartmentalizing sense stimuli. After having been exposed to negative images of blacks, people are more likely to anticipate that blacks are dangerous. Completely innocuous events—for example, a black man approaching in the middle of the street at night—are often interpreted as perilous even when no factual reason for fear or added anxiety exists. The event may be recorded in the memory as having been a hazardous situation even though no evidence substantiates such a conclusion. (Tsesis 2002, 87-88)

Prejudices are means for convincing oneself why it is appropriate to act in ways that contradict basic ethical standards against inflicting harm. They are instrumental for excusing behavior that undermines the underlying structure of well-ordered society. Supremacism has profound consequences both when opportunities to discriminate are present and in conditioning sentiments that can be conducive for later unfairness. Ethnocentric people recognize that oppressive acts are not humane. So, derogatory images portraying outgroups as inferiors help them dismiss the notion that the others are by nature worthy of compassionate treatment, too. A violation of ethical norms is easier to explain away if the victims belong to an outgroup and are widely portrayed as demonic adversaries who are purportedly menacing to the population. (Tsesis 2002, 91)

In July of 2008, a graying, mustachioed man from the Knoxville suburb of Powell, Tennessee, sat down and wrote out by hand a four-page manifesto describing his hatred of all things liberal and his belief that “all liberals should be killed.” (Neiwert 2016, 1)

When he was done, Jim David Adkisson drove his little Ford Escape to the parking lot of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville. A few days before, the church had attracted media attention for its efforts to open a local coffee shop for gays and lesbians. Leaving the manifesto on the seat of the car, he walked inside the church carrying a guitar case stuffed with a shotgun and 76 rounds of ammunition. (Neiwert 2016, 1)

The congregants were enjoying the opening scene from the church’s production of the musical Annie Jr. when Adkisson, in a hallway outside the sanctuary, abruptly opened the guitar case, pulled out the shotgun, fired off a harmless round that startled everyone, then walked into the sanctuary and began firing indiscriminately. Witnesses report he was saying “hateful things.” An unsuspecting 61-year-old grandmother and retired schoolteacher named Linda Kraeger was hit in the face with a shotgun blast. A 60-year-old foster father named Greg McKendry got up to shield others from the attack and was hit in the chest. (Neiwert 2016, 1-2)

(….) A detective who interviewed Adkisson and examined his four-page manifesto reported to his superiors that Adkisson targeted the church “because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets.” (Neiwert 2016, 2)

When the detective interviewed Adkisson, he said he’d decided that since “he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office.” (Neiwert 2016, 2)

Knoxville’s police chief told reporters the next day that Adkisson was motivated by his “hatred of the liberal movement” and “liberals in general, as well as gays.” He was also frustrated by his inability to get a job, a problem he also blamed on liberals. His neighbors in Powell described Adkisson as “a Confederate” and a “believer in the Old South.” (Neiwert 2016, 2-3)

When detectives went to Adkisson’s home in Powell, they found—scattered among the ammunition, guns, and brass knuckles—books written by leading conservative pundits: Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder by Michael Savage, Let Freedom Ring by Sean Hannity, and The O’Reilly Factor by Bill O’Reilly, among others. Adkisson’s manifesto, released some months later to the public, was largely a distillation of these works, ranting about how “Liberals have attack’d every major institution that made America great. … Liberals are evil, they embrace the tenets of Karl Marx, they’re Marxist, socialist, communists.” (Neiwert 2016, 3)

(….) The events that sunny Sunday left the church’s pastor, Rev. Chris Buice, with a shattered congregation. “People were killed in the sanctuary of my church, which should be the holy place, the safe place. People were injured,” he told PBS’s Rick Karr a couple of weeks later. “A man came in here, totally dehumanized us—members of our church were not human to him. Where did he get that? Where did he get that sense that we were not human?” (Neiwert 2016, 4)

Such incidents—the nasty personal encounters, the ugliness at campaign rallies, the violent acts of “lone wolf” gunmen—are anything but rare. If you’re a liberal in America—or for that matter, anyone who happens to have run afoul of the conservative movement and its followers—you probably have similar tales to tell about unexpected and brutal viciousness from otherwise ordinary, everyday people, nearly all of them political conservatives, nearly all directed at their various enemies: liberals, Latinos, Muslims, and just about anyone who disagrees with them.

What motivates this kind of talk and behavior is called eliminationism: a politics and a culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas in favor of the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through suppression, exile, and ejection, or extermination.

Rhetorically, eliminationism takes on certain distinctive shapes. It always depicts its opposition as beyond the pale, the embodiment of evil itself, unfit for participation in their vision of society, and thus worthy of elimination. It often further depicts its designated Enemy as vermin (especially rats and cockroaches) or diseases, and disease-like cancers on the body politic. A close corollary—but not as nakedly eliminationist—is the claim that opponents are traitors or criminals and that they pose a threat to our national security.

Eliminationism is often voiced as crude “jokes,” a sense of humor inevitably predicated on venomous hatred. And such rhetoric—we know as surely as we know that night follows day—eventually begets action, with inevitably tragic results.

Two key factors distinguish eliminationist rhetoric from other political hyperbole:

1. It is focused on an enemy within, people who constitute entire blocs of the citizen populace.
2. It advocates the excision and extermination of those entire blocs by violent or civil means.

(….) Eliminationism—including the rhetoric that precedes it and fuels it—expresses a kind of self-hatred. In an American culture that advertises itself as predicated on equal opportunity, eliminationism runs precisely counter to those ideals. Eliminationists, at heart, hate the very idea of an inclusive America.

— David Neiwert (2009, 11-12) The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right. Routledge.

Trump’s Fascism is Trumpism

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From the early stages of his campaign and right into the Oval Office, Donald Trump has spoken harshly about the institutions and principles that make up the foundations of open government. In the process, he has systematically degraded political discourse in the United States, shown an astounding disregard for facts, libeled his predecessors, threatened to “lock up” political rivals, referred to mainstream journalists as “the enemy of the American people,” spread falsehoods about the integrity of the U.S. electoral process, touted mindlessly nationalistic economic and trade policies, vilified immigrants and the countries from which they come, and nurtured a paranoid bigotry toward the followers of one of the world’s foremost religions. (Albright 2018, 5)

(….) He is president because he convinced enough voters in the right states that he was a teller of blunt truths, a masterful negotiator, an effective champion of American interests. That he is none of those things should put us on edge, but there is a larger cause for unease. Trump is the first anti-democratic president in modern U.S. history. On too many days, beginning in the early hours, he flaunts his disdain for democratic institutions, the ideals of equality and social justice, civil discourse, civic virtues, and America itself. If transplanted to a country with fewer democratic safeguards, he would audition for a dictator, because that is where his instincts lead. (Albright 2018, 246)

Spreading Group Hatred

The psychic health of a society can be measured by the extent to which its policies and laws exclude and constrain prejudices. One sign of social stability is the degree to which a community and the individuals who compose it are willing to acknowledge the humanity and learn from the cultures of other people. Many cultures have resorted to discrimination and prejudice despite their self-destructive consequences. Dehumanizing representations of minorities disseminated through social discourse [e.g., social media] are integral to the formation of movements bent on harming outgroups. (Tsesis 2002, 99)

The victims of hate speech are at greater risk form groupwide threats than from personal attacks. Counterspeech is less effective against a group with deeply held beliefs, which feels the power of its numbers and the passions of its hateful convictions, than against an individual expressing only his or her biased ideas. Labels reify prejudices through stories that exaggerate and falsify outgroup traits and extol the presumed advantages of excluding minorities from ingroup privileges. The broad dark strokes that are then applied to scapegoats make for an auspiciously hostile environment filled with slights and vilifications. Aggressive names schematize the world into groups of good guys and bad guys…. Destructive messages are the main vehicles for spreading ideology. Hate speech is an essential means for popularizing hate groups. (Tsesis 2002, 1010)

Hate Speech qua Free Speech

Freedom of speech is critical to the growth and maturation of societies and is a much vaunted benefit of living in the United States. However, that freedom has not always led to the collective improvement of all citizens. History is littered with examples of harmful social movements, in various countries and cultures, employing violent racist rhetoric. Such hate-filled ideologies lie at the heart of human tragedies such as the Holocaust, U.S. slavery in the antebellum South, nineteenth-century Indian removal, and present-day slavery in Mauritantia. (Tsesis 2002: 1)

Donald Trump’s Racist Rhetoric

Propaganda [link] is essential for eliciting widespread cultural acceptance of exclusionary and supremacist ideologies. When hate speech is systematically developed, it sometimes becomes socially acceptable, first, to discriminate and, later, to oppress identifiable groups of people. Racialist rhetoric has been effectively harnessed to formulate and spread racism on national and even international scales…. Bigots have rationalized all these biases through threads of thought that are subtly woven into the fabric of everyday language [i.e., dog whistles]. (Tsesis 2002: 1)

Speech plays a pivotal role in communicating ideas—both progressive and regressive. Over time, the semantics of a language will mirror the historical development of a people. The context of phrases and the subtle nuances of demonstrative messages can contain the kernels of a cultural worldview. Traditionally accepted perspectives permeate the unconscious and form an often unquestioned social “reality.” Prejudices that reflect collective outlooks gradually find their way into laws. (Tsesis 2002: 1)

GOP/Trump’s Dog Whistles

People intent on maintaining power [such as demagogues like Trump] manipulate stereotypes that echo their followers’ preconceptions. Orators [and demagogues] and authors strategically exploit imbedded cultural meanings not just to create grammatically sentences, but also to persuade their audience. They use repeatedly uttered, dogmatic imagery to influence attitudes toward particular groups of people. Large audiences more readily recognize tenets when they draw on deeply held beliefs. (Tsesis 2002: 2)

Hate speech and the prejudice it fosters deny individuals [like the] fundamental rights like autonomy and tranquility…. “Misethnicity” [i.e., the institutionalized hatred of ethnic groups, something Trump has facilitated] …. is sometimes preferable to “racism” and “ethnocentrism.” “Racism” is the diminished respect and unequal treatment of people based on their biological particularities. “Ethnocentrism” is the sense of superiority of one’s own ethnic group. “Misethnicity” is more specific in recognizing that ethnic prejudice is a groupwide hatred. (Tsesis 2002: 2)

They were innocent … which to this day Trump denies …

Misethnicity is deeply nestled within conventional practices [such as Donald Trump’s full-page ad in the Daily News on May 1, 1989 calling for the death penalty for five innocent black teenagers]. By drawing attention to the centrality of language in perpetuating discrimination, we may be able to dislodge some deep-rooted racist thoughts and behaviors. Charismatic leaders can harness subtle and explicit misethnic statements to instigate active or complicit participation in hate crimes. Expressions such as these create an atmosphere of combustible intolerance: “Most Indians are drunks, but he’s a hard worker”; “He may be a Jew, but he’s not greedy”; “I’m usually careful around blacks, but he can be trusted.” These statements reflect the same animosity as their more flagrant counterparts; “Indians are drunks,” “Jews are greedy,” and “blacks are dangerous.” Studying the linguistic development of Misethnicity and its relation to socially destructive conduct is critical to realizing, anticipating, and thwarting its potentially catastrophic consequences. (Tsesis 2002: 2)

(….) Historical analysis is crucial because it exposes the association between hate propaganda and discriminatory action. Oppressors justify inequities by making their targets out to be less than human, unworthy of fair treatment or even of mercy ordinarily shown to animals…. Negative stereotypes and ideological schemas, designed to rationalize power in the hands of dominant groups, precede crimes against humanity such as genocide. Many lives may be ruined before the views of those who rebuff popular prejudices trickle into the community conscience. Even societies striving for equality, steeped in natural rights theory, and vigilant against intolerant majorities are not wholly immune from becoming havens for supremacists promulgating aggressive ideologies. (Tsesis 2002: 2-3)

Pondering the effectiveness of anti-Semitic and racist messages brings into stark relief the dangers that purveyors of hate pose to representative democracies. Scrutinizing the foundations of genocidal hatred in Germany and of dehumanizing and devaluing dogma in the United States yields abundant information about how, particularly in times of social and economic unrest, hate speech builds upon established ideologies. By understanding the progression from hatred to destruction, we can know better how to prevent Misethnicity from being exploited by provocative rhetoricians intent on generating dangerous social movements. Studying how unjust political movements, such as the National Socialist party or the Confederate Nullificationists [or Donald Trump’s “America First” rallies in which he incites the “angry mob” with such rhetoric like the free press and democratic party are the enemies of the people, or his attacks on the justice system and separations of power, etc.], manipulated cultural stereotypes is instructive in avoiding future calamities. (Tsesis 2002: 3)

American Taliban: It Is Happening Here

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Evangelicals still believe in the commandment, “Thou shalt not have sex with a porn star.” … However, whether the president violated that commandment or not is totally irrelevant for our support of him.

— Robert Jeffress

How did we get from John F. Kennedy’s eloquent speech at the Rice Hotel in Houston on September 12, 1960, in which he urged voters effectively to bracket a candidate’s faith out of their considerations when they entered the voting booths, to George W. Bush’s declaration on the eve of the 2000 Iowa precinct caucuses that Jesus was his favorite philosopher?

— Balmer, Randall. God in the White House: A History. New York: HarperOne; 2008; p. Preface.

The qualifications of a candidate should not be issue-oriented as much as character-oriented. They should be “able” and “experienced” men of course for the position which they seek. Beyond that, Scripture says they should be men who “fear God, ” that is, they should be Christians, as affirmed by John Jay. They should also be “men of truth” and “wise and discerning” men. This means that they should be Christians with a Biblical worldview–men who reason from absolute truth, not human wisdom. Many candidates may claim to be “Christians,” but do not hold to a Biblical worldview. Former President Jimmy Carter was an example of a Christian whose mind was unrenewed by Scripture and thus reasoned and governed from a “humanistic” worldview. Finally, Scripture says that our representatives must “hate dishonest gain.” This means that beyond a correct worldview, they must have Christian character, a godly home life, and pure motives…. Even if Christians manage to outnumber others on an issue and we sway our Congressman by sheer numbers, we end up in the dangerous promotion of democracy. We really do not want representatives who are swayed by majorities, but rather by correct principles.

— Beliles, Mark A. and McDowell Stephen K. (1991, 265) America’s Providential History

Trump wears religion like a John wears a condom. And the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there isn’t much of any mind … Or much of any soul, or moral integrity, or spiritual truth, or compassion, or empathy, or love, or fruits of the spirit. They have slid drip by drip from evil, into sin, and having made sin habitual, fully embraced the cup of iniquities and are drinking Trump’s spiritual blindness and venomous bile to the full as they scream “Barabbas! Barabbas! Barabbas!” crucifying the living Christ as they worship an abomination incarnate in Trumpism.

— God Mocking: Be not deceived; God is not mocked. Whatever Social Media sows, this our Social Fabric all will also reap. (Galatians 6:7)

What was emerging from this and similar meetings was a political force — the so-called Religious Right — that injected into the Republican Party a new emphasis on the promotion of religious morality (an area of concern which most early Goldwater activists thought belonged in the private, not public, and not political, arena). The focus of this new religion-centered “conservatism” was not on liberty and limited government but on what Russell Kirk had called the “transcendent moral order.”

By 1989, the Moral Majority, the late Jerry Falwell’s organization which had emphasized religious values across sectarian lines and often shared a common purpose with many conservatives and orthodox Jews, had all but disappeared. In his place rose the Christian Coalition, led by Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed. The Religious Right had become the overtly Christian Right. (Edwards 2008: 40-41)

(….) Through aggressive grassroots activism the movement’s members and supporters won elections, took over party organizations, and dominated party conventions. Later, when George W. Bush’s political advisor Karl Rove would speak of “the Republican base,” this was who he had in mind. (Edwards 2008: 41)

The Christian Right was hardly the Republican base (the party’s voters were often much more moderate in their views than were Robertson and his followers), but because Robertson’s forces tended to dominate conventions and primaries in which voter turnout is often low, they exerted influence far beyond their numbers. In the process, they transformed the republican Party and indeed the conservative movement itself into an arm of religion, precisely the outcome the First Amendment of the Constitution was designed to prevent. There were instrumental in galvanizing the conservative opposition to death with dignity laws in Oregon, private medical decisions in Florida, and scientific advances in the nation’s medical laboratories. (Edwards 2008: 41)

A wall was erected between church and the state … as an extension of the founder’s experience with religious persecution in Europe. Placing religion in a position to dictate, or heavily influence, national policy had led to sanctions, torture, murder, and war. European battlefields were littered with the corpses of men sent to war on behalf of one religious sect or another. In a nation founded on Lockean principles of individual rights, there would be no place given to sectarian terror. (Edwards 2008: 64)

The wall between religion and statecraft serves an additional purpose. The enemy of civility (a necessary ingredient in the governance of a diverse society) is certitude. And nothing breeds certitude more than religious belief. Religion is often a positive force in the lives of individuals, but when the true believer feels compelled to impose upon the whole of the society the truths that have enriched his or her life, the threads that bind us as a nation begin to fray. (Edwards 2008: 123)

(….) Conservatism’s central philosophy has long been based on the regard for the individual rather than the collective. Yet today many are willing to support the imposition of the personal beliefs of some, be they a majority or a minority, on others, who do not subscribe to those beliefs. The title of Sinclair Lewis’s novel about a politician who rose to power on a wave of religious fervor was ironic: It Can’t Happen Here. Its message was: yes, it can. (Edwards 2008: 124)

Because the Constitution’s central premise is liberty — it is a document designed for a free people–it was created to prevent both the concentration of power in a few hands … and the ability of the majority to impose its will on the minority… The rule of law, not the rule of the masses or rulers, defines American constitutional government. But that is a lesson conservatives have forgotten. (Edwards 2008: 128-129)

The Constitution is for all Americans — Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, and nonbeliever alike. We are free to practice or not as we deem fit. Religion is a personal thing; government is what we hold in common, and that distinction lies at the heart of American conservatism [opposed to extremist fundamentalism as exhibited above]. Community is not the same thing as government. The U.S. government is a secular institution, and its policy decisions should not be required to conform to religious doctrine. (Edwards, Mickey. Reclaiming Conservatism. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2008; pp. 40-166) 

Now is the time to remember that our great religious traditions, notably Christianity, once upon a time could not even conceive of reducing religious engagement with public life to a narrow list of hot-button issues. They were too concerned with the whole person and the whole of society to limit their reach to a handful of questions. Now is the time to heed the call to social justice and social inclusion embedded deeply in in the scriptures. (E. J. Dionne Jr., Forward, in Lew Daly (2009) God’s Economy: Faith Based Initiatives & the Caring State. University of Chicago Press)

American Demagogue

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America has seen her share of demagogues before. But never before has an aspiring demagogue made it to the highest office in the land. The two-party system has effectively, up until now, refused to turn its future over to a demagogue. But with the GOP’s endorsement of Donald Trump this history of keeping dangerous demagogues out of the highest office in the land was overturned with the rise of Trump to the United States presidency. All demagogues share common characteristics. A demagogue eschews reason and facts, making appeals primarily to people’s irrational instincts, prejudices, and fears—frequently scapegoating religious and/or ethnic minorities as the cause of their follower’s economic and/or social problems. Demagogues promise all things to all people without hope or intent on making good on such pledges. Demagogues use “exhibitionism” and circus like “Barnumism” poisoned with violent rhetoric to whip up their followers into an “angry mob,” frequently inciting violent behavior.  Demagogues pose as a professional “man of the people,” and popularize and even encourage anti-intellectualism and distrust of educated men and women as citizens and public servants. Demagogues are the enemies of the free press and free educational systems. In the past demagogues have failed in America because they were unable to reach a level of national appeal that transcended isolated “localism,” but this has changed with the rise of Trump; none before approached nation-wide appeal and potentialities of a Mussolini, a Hitler, or a Stalin. But today America is witnessing the rise of a demagogue into the highest office in the land with a nation-wide appeal. Indeed, we may be witnessing today a proto-fascism that could well bring into a reality a culture of fascist intolerance that is anti-democratic and hostile to American ideals of democracy:

A Kulturkamp may well take place in which rival totalitarianisms clash, violently perhaps, to mobilize consent and enforce political order. Under less dire circumstances, after all, as it was predicted a decade ago, “Christian doctrine, made an adjunct to right-wing and capitalist policies, could provide the necessary self-imposed order that a fascist movement in America would require to maintain control over the country.” And more recently, “a state religion, compulsory in character, authoritarian in tone, ‘traditional’ in outlook,” has been seriously foreseen. “America would be ‘socialized’ not in the name of Marx but of Jesus, not in the name of communism but of Christian republicanism.”

None of these possibilities is inevitable, of course, or even likely. But one thing at any rate seems certain. Whatever shape the creationist cosmos may take at the hands of Protestant fundamentalists, it will break free from its flourishing subculture and hold sway over people and nations only when it is commended in its integrity: not as a mere science among sciences, but as the one religious answer, among uniquely religious answers, to the unfathomable mystery of existence.

Marty, Martin E. and Appleby R. Scott. et. al. Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1993; 2 pp. 62-64. The Fundamentalism Project.