The New Persecution Continues to Build
Yesterday Double-H highlighted a typically hysterical Christophobic LA Weekly piece entitled "The New Blacklist" which took, shall we say, a dim view of evangelicals exercising their First Amendment rights as American citizens to try and dissuade companies like Proctor & Gamble from sponsoring pro-sodomite broadcast programming. It debuted an anti-Christian slur, "Christer," that I hadn't heard before, though from the immediately preceding link I see it's not exactly a new vituperation. And featured, or at least catching of Hugh's eye, was this quote from lefty jackoff of all trades and current associate dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at USC:
HH calls these remarks "inane" and "repulsive," which they certainly are. He also points out the trademark hypocrisy of lefties shieking in mock horror at Christian activist boycotts in the wake of their own attempt last fall to intimidate Sinclair Broadcasting into dropping plans to broadcast the anti-Kerry documentary Stolen Honor (a successful boycott, I hasten to remind).
But, as with Dick Durbin's equating of Club Gitmo to the Holocaust, Soviet gulag, and Pol Pot's killing fields last night, I find it increasingly difficult to ascribe Kaplan's abusive slander to mere ignorance. There is certainly no shortage of tenured hacks in academia these days, to be sure, but Kaplan's resume is too long and distinguished to render believable the suggestion that he really doesn't know what fascism is or thinks "theocracy" in America to be (1) possible and (2) sought by anything remotely close to even a sizeable minority of religious conservatives. Atheocracy, unquestionably, but theocracy? Not a chance.
What we're left with once the ignorance option is discarded is something far darker and more sinister: the systematic attempt to excise an entire demographic segment from American public life. And the last time and place that something like this happened was...to the Jews in Nazi Germany in the early-to-mid 1930s.
The saving grace for the time being is that compared to today's atheocrats, the Nazis had a much larger foundation of culturally-ingrained anti-Semitism - several centuries' worth - upon which to build, and a ready-made catalyst in the Great Depression and the hated (by Germans) Versailles Treaty. Adolph Hitler, already a skilled demagogue, merely had to combine the two, which he did with a vengeance. And Marty Kaplan ain't no Adolph Hitler.
But that's not to say that his crowd won't eventually produce one. A constant drumbeat of hate rhetoric aimed at people of faith has already seeped into the public consciousness sufficiently to convince the bulk of an entire major political party that their opponents are, or are controlled by, a Christian equivalent of the Taliban. That's just as "inane" as calling them "religious fascists," but eventually even inanities leave their mark. Figure in a future catastrophe like an Iranian or North Korean EMP attack that fries our electronic infrastructure, devastates our economy, and throws society into upheaval, and I can see a, shall we say, "charismatic" Kaplanoid blaming it on Bush's war on terror and "those Christers" who elected him, conflating Islamism and the Way to declare evangelicals a "homeland security threat," and launching into outright pogroms. Krystalnacht all over again. And "Christer," as a HH caller pointed out yesterday, is eerily reminiscent of the term "Juden" that German Jews came to know all too well.
I would only ask Mr. Kaplan one question: if you are this genuinely concerned over what you perceive to be a "drumbeat of religious fascism" in this country, what would you propose be done about it?
If he's honest, he would have to recommend direct and open repression against biblical Christians. If not, he would "humina-humina-humina" his way to a verbosity that boiled down to "beating them in the next election."
Either way, he should get a pie in the face.
But not from me; what do you take me for, a fascist?
Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center [Oh, brother...] at the Annenberg School of Communication at USC, calls the new Christer offensive a drive toward 'theocratic oligopoly. The drumbeat of religious fascism has never been as troubling as it is now in this country,' adding that 'e-mails to the FCC are more worrisome to me than boycotts' in terms of their chilling effect.
HH calls these remarks "inane" and "repulsive," which they certainly are. He also points out the trademark hypocrisy of lefties shieking in mock horror at Christian activist boycotts in the wake of their own attempt last fall to intimidate Sinclair Broadcasting into dropping plans to broadcast the anti-Kerry documentary Stolen Honor (a successful boycott, I hasten to remind).
But, as with Dick Durbin's equating of Club Gitmo to the Holocaust, Soviet gulag, and Pol Pot's killing fields last night, I find it increasingly difficult to ascribe Kaplan's abusive slander to mere ignorance. There is certainly no shortage of tenured hacks in academia these days, to be sure, but Kaplan's resume is too long and distinguished to render believable the suggestion that he really doesn't know what fascism is or thinks "theocracy" in America to be (1) possible and (2) sought by anything remotely close to even a sizeable minority of religious conservatives. Atheocracy, unquestionably, but theocracy? Not a chance.
What we're left with once the ignorance option is discarded is something far darker and more sinister: the systematic attempt to excise an entire demographic segment from American public life. And the last time and place that something like this happened was...to the Jews in Nazi Germany in the early-to-mid 1930s.
The saving grace for the time being is that compared to today's atheocrats, the Nazis had a much larger foundation of culturally-ingrained anti-Semitism - several centuries' worth - upon which to build, and a ready-made catalyst in the Great Depression and the hated (by Germans) Versailles Treaty. Adolph Hitler, already a skilled demagogue, merely had to combine the two, which he did with a vengeance. And Marty Kaplan ain't no Adolph Hitler.
But that's not to say that his crowd won't eventually produce one. A constant drumbeat of hate rhetoric aimed at people of faith has already seeped into the public consciousness sufficiently to convince the bulk of an entire major political party that their opponents are, or are controlled by, a Christian equivalent of the Taliban. That's just as "inane" as calling them "religious fascists," but eventually even inanities leave their mark. Figure in a future catastrophe like an Iranian or North Korean EMP attack that fries our electronic infrastructure, devastates our economy, and throws society into upheaval, and I can see a, shall we say, "charismatic" Kaplanoid blaming it on Bush's war on terror and "those Christers" who elected him, conflating Islamism and the Way to declare evangelicals a "homeland security threat," and launching into outright pogroms. Krystalnacht all over again. And "Christer," as a HH caller pointed out yesterday, is eerily reminiscent of the term "Juden" that German Jews came to know all too well.
I would only ask Mr. Kaplan one question: if you are this genuinely concerned over what you perceive to be a "drumbeat of religious fascism" in this country, what would you propose be done about it?
If he's honest, he would have to recommend direct and open repression against biblical Christians. If not, he would "humina-humina-humina" his way to a verbosity that boiled down to "beating them in the next election."
Either way, he should get a pie in the face.
But not from me; what do you take me for, a fascist?
posted by JASmius at 5:44 PM
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