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American Fascists

The Christian Right and the War on America

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American Fascists

Written by: Chris Hedges, Eunice Wong
Narrated by: Chris Hedges, Eunice Wong
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Twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other televangelists first spoke of the United States being a Christian nation that would build a global Christian empire, it was hard to take such hyperbolic rhetoric seriously. Today, such language no longer sounds like hyperbole but poses, instead, a very real threat to our freedoms and our way of life. In American Fascists, the Christian Right's religious legitimacy is challenged, and Hedges argues that, at its core, it is a mass movement fueled by unbridled nationalism and a hatred for the open society.

Hedges, who grew up in rural parishes in upstate New York, where his father was a Presbyterian pastor, attacks the movement as someone steeped in the Bible and Christian tradition. He points to the hundreds of senators and members of Congress who have earned between 80 and 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups as one of many signs that the movement is burrowing deep inside the American government in order to subvert it.

The movement's call to dismantle the wall between church and state, and the intolerance it preaches against all who do not conform to its warped vision of a Christian America, are pumped into tens of millions of American homes through Christian television and radio stations, and are reinforced through the curriculum of Christian schools. The movement's yearning for apocalyptic violence and its assault on dispassionate, intellectual inquiry are laying the foundation for a new, frightening America.

©2007 Chris Hedges and Eunice Wong; (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc. Political Science Politics & Government Middle East Iran Socialism Social justice Capitalism

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What the critics say

"This urgent book forcefully illuminates what many across the political spectrum will recognize as a serious and growing threat to the very concept and practice of an open society." ( Publishers Weekly)
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This is an account of the liars, conmen, and criminals who use Christianity to amass wealth and power in the United States. The author does a great job describing their pursuit of totalitarian dominance over the very minds of Americans, but the connection with classical Italian fascism as suggested in the title is a bit of a stretch. The movement described is closer to that of the Taliban or the murderers of the Iranian ayatollahs in ideology but cloaked in the terms and language of Christianity rather than Islam. But for the people condemned to misery and death if these hate-mongers get true dominance, does it matter if the ideology empowering their oppressors is nazism or fundamentalist Islam or Christianity?

Depressing but important reading

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I was not expecting a holy roller POV, I was expecting more of a political stance regarding fascism. Stories of devout Christians falling on their knees is a distinct distraction and one that had me declare it was finished before getting 3/4 of the way through. I kept expecting the narrator to get on the subject of fascism in America but this audiobook is more about fervent Christianity than it is about fascism. Disappointed.

The Unexpected

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