Hedges - American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America

P RAISE FOR American Fascists

Chris Hedges may be the most credible figure yet to detect real-life fascism in the Red America of megachurches, gay-marriage bans and Left Behind books. American Facists is at its most daring when it enunciates... the perversities that are obvious to those of us not beholden to political exigencies.

New York Observer

Throughout, Hedges documents, and reflects on, what he feels is the bigotry, the homophobia, the fanaticismand the deeply un-Christian ideologythat pose clear and present danger in our previous and fragile republic.

O , the Oprah magazine

This is a powerful book that looks inside some of the darkest movements on American soil.

Time Out New York

P RAISE FOR Losing Moses on the Freeway

Telling his own story, Mr. Hedges writes better than anyone else in the game, without sentiment but full of love and hate.... He walks out of these pages as a good enough manbetter than most, perhapsbut best of all, he emerges as a teller of human tales with the unusual capacity to get them right.

New York Observer

At a time when the mere mention of religion can excite so much passion, anxiety, and discord, Chris Hedges Losing Moses on the Freeway offers a sane and bracing way to think about, and rethink, the whole subject of faith. Each of the deeply felt essays finds spiritual lessons in the most unlikely places. Hedges reminds us that the point of religion is not to make us disdain those who think differently but rather to help us become decent, responsive, and moral human beings.

O , the Oprah magazine

Hedges brings a broad and secular perspective to a deep examination of the principles of the Ten Commandments. He turns a sharp eye toward a variety of human experiences touching on elements of the commandments in ways that are uncommon and insightful. The commandments bind us together and provide guideposts against excessive human temptations. A deeply insightful and moving book.

Booklist

P RAISE FOR What Every Person Should Know About War

A straight-faced study of how war works and what it looks like on the ground. Without any polemics, What Every Person Should Know About War is one of the most powerful antiwar statements in recent memory. The unadorned and brutal facts speak for themselves.

New York Observer

P RAISE FOR War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

A brilliant, thoughtful, timely and unsettling book... it will rattle jingoists, pacifists, moralists, nihilists, politicians and professional soldiers equally... Abounds with Hedges harrowing and terribly moving eyewitness accounts... Powerful and informative.

The New York Times Book Review

[A] powerful chronicle of modern war... A persuasive call for humility and realism in the pursuit of national goals by force of arms... A potent and eloquent warning.

The New York Times

The best kind of war journalism: It is bitterly poetic and ruthlessly philosophical. It sends out a powerful message to people contemplating the escalation of the war against terrorism.

Los Angeles Times

No one is in a better position than Hedges to pronounce on the revolting things war does to everyone caught up in it.... A confession of rare and frightening honesty.

Slate.com

As the war on terror continues on its... potentially catastrophic course, America would do well to heed Hedges... warning.

Salon.com

I highly recommend Chris Hedges splendid little book.... His understanding is profound and was earned on the ground.

Molly Ivins, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

If... I thought Bush and Blair would give it time I would happily send them a copy to read.

Jonathan Power, The Toronto Star

[Hedges] doesnt tell us that war is hell. He escorts us through the streets made slick with the blood... of innocents.

The Dallas Morning News

A compelling read and a valuable counterweight to the more antiseptic discussions common among strategic analysts.

Foreign Affairs

Small but readable... [Hedges] is a brilliant reporter... Its the book to read now.

Liz Smith, syndicated columnist

Rarely is a book so timely as Hedges latest... a refreshing jolt of cerebral and emotional clarity to wars all-encompassing destruction...

Willamette Week

This should be required reading in this post-9/11 world as we debate the possibility of war with Iraq.

Publishers Weekly

Chris Hedges has written a powerful book, one which bears sad witness to what veterans have long understood... [A] somber and timely warning to thosein any societywho would evoke the emotions of war for the pursuit of political gain.

General Wesley K. Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, and author of Waging Modern War

ALSO BY CHRIS HEDGES

Losing Moses on the Freeway

What Every Person Should Know About War

War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

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For Chris Marquis, a gifted writer, a courageous reporter and a generous friend whose loss has left a hole in my heart.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully

as when they do it from religious conviction.

Blaise Pascal

Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt

By Umberto Eco

In spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various historical forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.

1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition. Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counterrevolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but it was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of the faiths indulgently accepted by the Roman pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history. This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of forgotten languagesin Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little-known religions of Asia.

This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, the combination of different forms of belief or practice; such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and although they seem to say different or incompatible things, they all are nevertheless alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.

As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.

If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine, who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehengethat is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.

2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism . Both Fascists and Nazis worshipped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon blood and earth ( Blut und Boden ). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life. The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism .