America’s original sin, white supremacy, has never been exorcised from the body politic. With the advent of the Trump regime in 2016 and the ongoing expansion of his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement after his tumultuous ouster from the White House, this congenital social disease has experiences a renaissance of sorts which threatens to drive us, as unchecked racism invariably does to any society, deeper into the abyss of a fascist society. If that happens, it will not be a repetition of the Italian or German experience with fascism in the 20th century. Neither brown- shirted thugs nor black-shirted fascists will rule the streets of a fascist America beating opponents into submission or eternal silence. It will be Christian soldiers on a holy crusade to cleanse our society of “enemies of the people” by any means necessary. The troops have already been formed to varying extents in every American community, and as the world witnesses in horror on January 6, 2021, they have been initially deployed with a vengeance. Though they did not with the battle that day, these Christian fanatics and their allies are hell-bent on winning the war in the future and replace what’s left of American democracy with a fascist theocracy locked in an iron Christian cage.
To better understand the unique nature of this threat in contemporary America, it is necessary to operationally define Christian fascism. The classic formulation of fascism in general, the one embraced by the Left since the 1930s, has it that “Fascism is the open terrorist dictatorship the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, most
imperialist elements of finance capital”1 This is inadequate for our times and place. Religion, always a potent social force, plays a critical role in the fascist threat within the deeply divided America of today. The hard-core social base of the fascist MAGA movement consists primarily of white born-again evangelicals amplified by right-wing Catholics. Without them, Trump would never have received votes in 2016 and 11 million more in 2020. These are not merely Christian nationalists, zealots who have marked and marred Christianity in America for centuries. With the 1948 establishment of Israel, they have largely morphed into Christian Zionists; and with the advent of the Trump regime, they have degenerated further into Christian fascists. As discussed here, MAGA Christians and Christian fascists are synonymous, the strident call to Make America Great Again embraces the very core denominator of fascist regimes: an obsession with cleansing society of perceived filth and returning a deeply contaminated social order to a mythological former state of purity and glory.
Of critical importance in understanding the dynamics of fascist forces in contemporary America is the ideological and operative connection between false Christianity and real fascism. Christian fascism is really an oxymoron. There can be no fascism in a society that is truly based upon Christian principles. However, for a society based upon hijacked and manipulated Christianity, fascism becomes a distinct possibility. Both Benito Mussolini in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Germany combined fascist power with Christian rhetoric and succeeded in largely reducing Christian institutions of their time to servants of the fascist state. Hijacked Christianity enjoyed the publicly proclaimed allegiance of both fascist tyrants:
1 Togliatti, Palmiro Lectures on Fascism, International Publishers, New York; 1976, p.1
The fascist conception of life is a religious one, in which man is viewed in his immanent relation to a higher law, endowed with an objective will transcending the individual and raising him to conscious membership of a spiritual society…Fascism, in short, is not only a law-giver and a founder of institutions, but an educator and promoter of spiritual life…The Fascist State is not indifferent to religious phenomena in general nor does it maintain an attitude of indifference to Roman Catholicism, the special positive religion of Italians. The State has not got a theology but it has a moral code. The Fascist State sees in religion one of the deepest of spiritual manifestations, and for this reason it not only respects religion but defends and protects it. The Fascist State does not attempt, as did Robespierre at the height of the revolutionary delirium of the Convention, to set up a ‘god’ of its own; nor does it vainly seek, as does Bolshevism, to effect God from the soul of man. Fascism respects the God of ascetics, saints, and heroes; and it also respects God as conceived by the ingenuous and primitive heart of the people, the God to whom their prayers are raised.2
The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to re-establish the spiritual unity of our people and its will to cooperate. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our collective morality…May God Almighty bestows His blessing upon our work, strengthen our mission, bless our perception, and happily grant us the trust of our people.3
Today Christians stand at the head of our country. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press – in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during recent years.4
No, it is not we that have deserted Christianity; it is those who came before us who deserted Christianity…There has been no interference with the doctrine of the Confessions or with religious freedom, nor will there be any such interference. On the contrary, the State protects religion…National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary it stands on the ground of a real Christianity…in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world today, in our fight against a Bolshevist culture, against atheistic movements, against criminality, and in our struggle for a consciousness of a community in our national life…These are not anti-Christian these are Christian principles!5
2 Mussolini, Benito “The Doctrine of Fascism”, 1932, https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/2B- HUM/Readings/The-Doctrine-of-Fascism.pdf
3 Hitler, Adolf “Inaugural Proclamation to the German People”, February 1, 1933. 4 Hitler, Adolf, radio address to the German people, July 22, 1933.
5 Hitler, Adolf, “Speech to the Germans of the Saar”, Koblenz, August 26, 1934.
No one today would mistake either Mussolini or Hitler for Christians, but that was not the case during their reign of terror in the name of Christianity. They were, like their political descendants today, masters of deceit. Well into the depths of WWII, Hitler had the audacity to claim before the Reichstag, on 4 May 1941, “God knows that I wanted peace”. However, even the most effective propaganda campaign would have had no effect if there were mass enlightenment and true Christianity operative among the people rather than mass false consciousness and hijacked Christianity.
This antecedent union of mass false consciousness and hijacked Christianity is a hallmark of the MAGA movement in America today. MAGA Christian theology embraces some core themes of fascist ideology. These include an enamoration with power, totalitarian power; adoration of a supreme leader; demonization of all perceived enemies; elevation of patriarchy; glorification of militarism; restoration of former glory through thorough cleansing of defiled institutions; and anticipation of, even a yearning for, world war designed to annihilate the unclean and unsaved. As articulated by an astute contemporary analyst of fascism: “The core mobilizing myth of fascism which conditions isa ideology, propaganda, style of politics, and actions is the vision of the nation’s imminent rebirth from decadence”.6 That, of course, is precisely the overall goal of the MAGA movement.
To deliver the world from evil is also an inherent mission of Christianity in general. However, for MAGA Christians and assorted other fascists that evil is identified as liberalism or any other manifestation of the Enlightenment, including science and rationality. Born-again evangelicals envision evil and evil-doers as the Other, all those
6 Roger Grlffin, “The Palingenetic Core of Fascist Ideology” in Che Cos’e il Fascismo? Interpretazioni e Prospective di Recherche, Rome, 2003, pp.97-122.
unsaved individuals and decadent institutions outside the saving grace of Jesus Christ. For them, the bible is infallible; adult baptism by total immersion is indispensable; and war, holy war, is inevitable. Such convictions are enshrined in countless statements of beliefs codified in MAGA churches and denominations. Among the most revealing and repugnant are the woefully misanthropic beliefs of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod:
We reject all views that look upon people as basically good by nature; that consider their natural tendencies to be mere weaknesses, which are not sinful; or fail to recognize their total spiritual depravity and their inability to please God (Romans 3:9-18).
We reject universalism, the belief that all people are saved, even those without faith in Christ (John 3:36). We reject pluralism, the belief that there are other ways to salvation besides faith in Christ (John 14:6; Acts 4:12). We reject any teaching that says it does not matter what one believes so long as one has faith in God.
We believe and accept the Bible on its own terms..We believe that no authority – whether it is human reason, science, or scholarship – may stand in judgment over Scripture.
We reject all theories of evolution as an explanation of the origin of the universe and the human race and all attempts to harmonize the scriptural account of creation with such theories.
We reject any worship that is not directed to the triune God as revealed in the Bible. We reject the use of feminine names and pronouns for God because in Scripture God reveals himself as Father and Son. We reject the opinion that all religions lead to the same God.
We believes that women may participate in offices and activities of the public ministry except where that work involves authority over men (1 Timothy 2:11/12). This means that women may not serve as pastors nor participate in assemblies of the church in ways that exercise authority over men (1 Corinthians 11:3; 14:33-35).
We reject the teachings that Christians should look for one individual to arise in the end times as the great Antichrist. The characteristics of the Antichrist as presented in Scripture have been and are being fulfilled in the institution of the papacy (2 Thessalonians 2:4-10). We reject the opinion that the identification of the papacy with the Antichrist was merely a historical judgment valid only at the time of the Reformation.
We reject the view that people may decide for themselves what is right and wrong apart from God’s World. We reject any misuse of the term love to condone behavior contrary to God’s Word. We recognize these arguments as schemes of Satan to obscure the knowledge of God’s holy will and to undermine the consciousness of sin.7
Senator Ron Johnson, arguably the biggest MAGA cheerleader in the U.S. Senate, is a long-term member of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. He is also on record for dismissing the severity of the January insurrection and…..
To have a rebirth from decadence, a central theme of fascist ideology, it is necessary to cleanse society of that which is unclean and restore purity. For Nazis that meant cleansing educational institutions of Enlightenment curricula; museums of decadent art; libraries of leftist and liberal books to be burnt; and society of subhuman peoples to be exterminated. For MAGA Christians, the social cleansing translates into vehement opposition to Common Core curricula; establishment of “patriotic” studies; removal of left-wing, even liberal, professors; deportation of “illegal aliens”; suppression of votes from minorities; cancelling progressive thinkers; converting homosexuals; outlawing abortions; and, for some, even killing Democrats and other political opponents.
Such a rigid dichotomy of humanity and culture into the clean and unclean is also echoed with Christian fascism with the imposed labels of “saved” and “unsaved” as well as “righteous” and “unrighteous”. Whereas the former are mission-driven to convert the latter, the end result of failure to convert is eternal damnation in the End Times. Typical of other MAGA churches, the First Baptist Church in Branson (whose membership includes U.S. Senator Roy Blunt) makes the destiny of the unrighteous clear:
7 “This We Believe”, Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, wels.net
God, in His own time and in His own way, will bring the world to its appropriate end. According to His promise, Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly in glory to the earth; the dead will be raised; and Christ will judge all men in righteousness. The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell, the place of everlasting punishment. The righteous in their resurrected and glorified bodies will receive their reward and will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord.8
The doctrine of End Times is particularly pronounced in MAGA churches, and like fascist ideology, it subscribes to the inevitability of war, world war, to achieve God’s restoration of purity on earth. MAGA Christians are uniformly Christian Zionists and they overwhelming concur with a belief in Rapture as measured by the Rapture Index, considered to be “the prophetic speedometer of end-time activity”. As of mid-2021, the Rapture Index stood at ; anything over 145 is an indicator that “pre-tribulation rapture” is about to occur. For Christian Zionists this is very good news. For them and like-minded fanatics it means that their version of a biblical prophecy about the apocalypse is about to be fulfilled. Fulfillment of that dismal prophecy, in their clouded minds, requires the unavoidable and welcomed annihilation of countless humans through war, famine, disease and pestilence. The sequence of coming events is clear and bloody: First, Israel must occupy all of its allegedly God-given lands (Eretz Yisrael), an outcome that necessarily demands repression if not outright extermination of Palestinians and other Arab populations. Armed resistance to Zionist expansion will come from the unleashed forces of an Antichrist with a final battle in the valley of Armageddon. Jews who have not converted to Christianity will be burned, whereupon Christ will come again to gather his people into the safety of heaven above. From their heavenly security, Christians rescued by Rapture – a literal and physical ascent to a bodily Christ awaiting them in the sky – will watch as the earth is purged of evildoers
8 “Our Beliefs”, First Baptist Church, Branson MO, fbcbranson.com
and all impurities by a series of horrific plagues and natural catastrophes during the Great Tribulation.
Christian Zionism is part of a larger madness known as premileenial dispensationalism or dispensational premillenialism. Long before the Nazis projected the existence of a 1000-year purified Reich, the eccentric founders of this bizarre doctrine from 19th century America envisioned a millennium of Christ’s rule on earth preceding the Last Judgment. They also insist that the reign of Christ must be proceeded by the Great Tribulation in which the ungodly, all who are not bona fide born-again Christians, are mercilessly tortured and slaughtered. The primary promoter of this doctrine of mandated genocide and destruction was the late Rev. Tim LaHaye, a member of the rabidly anti-liberal John Birch Society, whose fantasy-filled novels about the Rapture and Tribulation have sold over 60 million copies. The third book (Rise of The Anti-Christ) of his trilogy (Tribulation Force) has been put into what its promoters call “faith-based entertainment”, a 2005 film, “Left Behind: World at War”, described as an “end-time political thriller. The film, like the book, opens with the conviction that “It was the worst of times; it was the best of times”. According to this maniacal vision, the world is controlled by a self-proclaimed Messiah (Nicolae Carpathia) and his One World Government (an extension of the United Nations). The US President, Gerald Fitzbugh, at first enthusiastically supports this new world order until some born-again Christian resistance fighters convince him that Nicolae is really the Antichrist. Wholesale destruction the world over ensues in accordance with biblical prophecy from the Book of Revelation, and, under God’s guidance, the “wrath of the Lamb” consumes all those who did not receive Christ as their personal Savior in a pan-human campaign of
religious cleansing. No explanation is given by LaHaye as to why he chose “Gerald Fitzbugh” as the President’s name, but it is obviously a nod to “George Fitzbugh”, a virulent racist apologist for chattel slavery forcefully expressed in his white supremacist publications, Sociology for the South: The Failure of Free Society (1854) and The Blessings of Slavery (1857). LaHaye and his disciples fit squarely into a political tradition cloaked in Christianity which fiercely promotes oppression and tyranny. So does megachurch pastor John Hagee, a leading voice of Christian Zionism, who boasts about the potential potency in politics from a union of evangelism and Zionism: “Think of our potential future together”, proclaimed Hagee to the 2007 AIPAC conference, “50 million evangelicals joining in common cause with five million Jewish people in America on behalf of Israel is a match made in heaven”.
In reality that match has more ominous origins and affiliations. Despite its name Christian Zionism has precious little in common with authentic Christianity. However,, there is an ideology, one also fundamentally anti-humanistic, which shares much of the same vehement racism and virulent militarism found in Christian Zionism. What the NSDAP did in Germany generations ago is not unlike what the CZ and MAGA movements are doing in America today. These reactionary social movements rely upon widespread false consciousness among a distressed social base easily manipulated and deluded into thinking that an alien Other is the enemy. For the Nazis, the scapegoats were the Jews and other targeted groups; for Christian Zionists it is Islam and the Muslims, those who – in a case of classic projection – are castigated as “Islamofascists”. In his address to the AIPAC conference, Hagee claimed that Muslims “believe they have a mandate from God to kill Christians and Jews”; that “Iran is
Germany and Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler”; and that the UN is an “international brothel”9. Loud and sustained applause by AIPAC members greeted his speech, which was also widely broadcast through his propaganda network.
Another striking similarity between Nazism and Christian Zionism lies in the conceptualization of the material holy. What Berlin was to the Nazis, Jerusalem is to Christian Zionists, the hold center of a holy nation. Although WWII prevented its realization, the Nazis had plans to reshape Berlin into a grand world capital called Germania with a wide north-south axis in the center having the Brandenburg Gate at one end and a vast Peoples Palace at the other. Had it been built with a dome sixteen times larger than that as St. Peter’s in the Vatican, the Peoples Palace would have been the largest enclosed space in the world at that time. However, its greatest value lay in its symbolic message of power and glory for a triumphant people. The triumph of the master race, chosen by destiny to restore their ancient glory, is materially proclaimed in Berlin by a magnificent domed edifice in Germania for all to see at the center of a 1000-year Reich ethnically and politically cleansed. Change the wording and the same mad vision is echoed by today’s Christian Zionists. The triumph of a master people, chosen by God Almighty to retire their ancient glory, is materially proclaimed in Jerusalem by a magnificent domed Temple, the third temple, for all to see at the center of 1000-year new age in a land cleansed of Palestinians and left-behinders. The move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018 is seen as part of the fulfillment of this prophecy and legitimacy of this ideology. At a ceremony celebrating the embassy’s opening, Hagee was called upon to give the benediction: “We thank you,
9 “John Hagee’s complete AIPAC Speech”, by Rabbi Jason Miller, 3/21/2007; rabbijason. com
oh Lord for President Donald Trump’s courage in acknowledging to the world a truth established 3,000 years ago that Jerusalem is and always shall be the eternal capital of the Jewish people”.10 MAGA Christians and Christian Zionists, linked by a common political allegiance and religious dogma, are both manifestation of hijacked Christianity. The ferocity of that allegiance and dogma became glaringly evident during the weeks before and after the game-changing 2020 presidential election.
On September 26, forty days before the election, a massive public celebration of Christian Zionism took place on the Mall in Washington, D.C., which was ostensibly designed to get America to repent for its many sins but really organized to prevent a Biden victory by mobilizing the Christian Right nationwide. Heard throughout this all- day rally from scores of MAGA Christian speakers were fiery mini-sermons and fervent prayers calling for repentance from ungodly ways, uniformly associated with liberal policies and practices, and a return to God and his ways, uniformly associated with GOP ways. Demands for repentance at this functional MAGA rally escalated into calls of “death to the traitors” by fascists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 in response to Trump’s marching orders delivered that day at his Save America rally “to fight like hell”. The gates of hell did burst open on January 6, and what stormed out was the rotten core of the Trump regime and the MAGA movement: the raw rage of fascism stripped of its tattered cloak of civility.
10 “Pastor Hagee gives benediction at opening of U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem: ‘Israel lives’” by Penny Stark, Breitbart, 19 May 2018.
(Chapter One, Hijacking Christianity, in “Onward Christian Soldiers: The MAGA March Toward a Fascist America” by Werner Lange, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, 2021)
