Fascist Phobia

Featured in Answers Magazine

They are ready to take over America and destroy American democracy,” according to a former New York Times correspondent. Who are these new “fascists”? Bible-believing Christians. On the frontlines is the growing creation movement, according to Chris Hedges, author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.

Hedges’ premise is that theologically conservative Christians (including biblical creationists) are attempting to take over America—fascist-style. It would be tempting to dismiss this book as rantings of the lunatic fringe. But Hedges, a divinity school graduate, was once a prominent foreign correspondent with the Times. Also, the book is printed by the major publisher Simon and Schuster.

A huge chunk of chapter six is devoted to Answers in Genesis (AiG) and the nonprofit organization’s new Creation Museum. Hedges believes AiG proclaims a “subversive message” and that the goal of the creationists “is the destruction of the core values of the open society.” Yet Hedges freely admits that he does not want creationists tolerated in the open society he so much desires to see. Who, then, is manifesting a fascist tendency?1

Answers Magazine

July – September 2007

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Footnotes

  1. On the very first page of his book, Hedges quotes (sympathetically) the late philosopher Karl Popper, who once wrote that we can “therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.” In addition, after comparing evangelicals to Nazis, he approvingly recalls a former professor of his who presented the argument that, if there were 1,000 people who came together in “heroic resistance,” they would have stopped Hitler. Hedges appears to accept the use of force against evangelicals.

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