Several writers who follow the Radical Right have commented on the confessed Norwegian Christian terrorist Anders Breivik's strong emphasis on a far-right, anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about what its advocates call "Cultural Marxism" in his political manifesto. It's key theme is that it blames the Frankfurt School, about whom I have written quite a bit on this blog the last couple of years, for "political correctness," by which the Radical Right means opposition to white racism and to other forms of bigotry.
Bill Berkowitz described the crackpot theory several years ago in Reframing the Enemy Intelligence Report 110 (Summer 2003).
I came across this particular crackpot theory several years ago. As Berkovitz noted in his piece, the Council of Conservative Citizens was pushing some DVD on it at the time. Chip Berlet provides a link to a different video advocating the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory: The History of Political Correctness. Berlet tweeted this link with the description, "History of Political Correctness: video--Lind, Islamophobe David Horowitz, and Nazi collaborator Laszlo Pasztor."
I've been aware of the actual Frankfurt School authors and their school of "critical theory" since my undergraduate time. And I've done some additional reading on them in recent years. "Frankfurt School" is shorthand for the Institut für Sozialforschung/Institute for Social Research, which had its first institutional home at the University of Frankfurt. This is the English version of the Institute's history at their website: Ludwig v. Friedeburg, History of the Institute of Social Research (Summary) n/d. It has a bibliography list, including histories of "critical theory" by Martin Jay and Douglass Kellner.
It made some kind of warped sense to me on the surface that far-rightists would pick the Frankfurt School as a bogeyman of multiculturalism. The most prominent figures associated with them were Jewish and they understood themselves as Marxists as well as Freudians. Since the far-right equates even American liberalism with Communism, no amount of actual history would persuade them of a more nuanced picture. But two of the most famous Frankfurt School writers, Franz Neumann and Herbert Marcuse, worked for the US wartime Office of Strategic Services doing intelligence analysis on Germany. And anyone who has read (or attempted to read!) an essay by any of the three core Frankfurt School figures - Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Marcuse - will seriously doubt whether even the more intellectually inclined among the Christian nationalist crowd have much direct exposure to what they actually wrote.
Lately I've been reading through the five studies in the "Studies in Prejudice" series, the results of a research project sponsored by the American Jewish Committee and led by Horkheimer, the most famous of which is The Authoritarian Personality. The AJC has made the texts available at their website: Studies in Prejudice Series. Reading through these, it occurred to me that this set of studies may particularly irritate the present-day Radical Right because of its careful analyses of the crackpot right of the 1940s.
Those were Old Right isolationists. But their kindred spirit to the Tea Party of today is readily evident, particularly in Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator by Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman. The AJC also has a typed, 4-page report from Lowenthal on a local 1945 meeting of a far-right group called the Christian Front that I found interesting reading. The website doesn't link it directly; you have to search for Leo Lowenthal and look for "Surveillance report on a Christian Front meeting in New York."
Various recent discussions of this include the following.
Ben Alpers, The Frankfurt School, Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories, and American Conservatism US Intellectual History 07/25/2011.
Chip Berlet, Anders Behring Breivik: Soldier in the Christian Right Culture Wars Talk to Action 07/23/2011
Chip Berlet, Breivik cited William S. Lind, Free Congress Foundation, & the LaRouchites Talk to Action 07/24/2011
Chip Berlet, Breivik's Core Thesis is White Christian Nationalism v. Multiculturalism Talk to Action 07/25/2011
Chip Berlet, Breivik 2011 Manifesto Echoes Weyrich 1999 Manifesto Talk to Action 07/25/2011
Chip Berlet, Author Cited by Anders Behring Breivik Regrets Original Essay Talk to Action 07/26/2011
Martin Jay, Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School as Scapegoat of the Lunatic Fringe Salmagundi (168/169) Fall 2010
Dave Neiwert, Norway terrorist Breivik was an ardent subscriber to theories of 'Cultural Marxism' C&L 07/23/2011
Dave Neiwert, Norway terrorist Anders Breivik leaves written, video manifestoes to explain his motives: He's a right-wing cultural warrior C&L 07/24/2011
Sarah Posner, How Breivik's "Cultural Analysis" is Drawn from the "Christian Worldview" Religion Dispatches 07/27/2011
Tags: anders behring breivik, anti-semitism, frankfurt+school, frankfurter schule, radical right
Showing posts with label anders behring breivik. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anders behring breivik. Show all posts
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Far-right Christianist terrorism, here and in Europe
This is a 24-minute report on far-right extremism in Europe from Aljazeera English's Inside Story - Is the right on the rise in Europe? 07/24/2011.
Like any terrorist attack, the killing in Norway calls for realism rather than a reaction based on fear. Fear and democracy don't go well together, as a rule. But I do hope it will make Americans more aware of the most significant domestic terrorist threat, the one from far-right Christianist groups.
Frank Schaeffer gives us a glimpse at the worldview of the American Christian nationalists in Christian Jihad? Why We Should Worry About Right-Wing Terror Attacks Like Norway's in the US Alternet 07/23/2011. I have reservations about Schaeffer's conceptual framework, for instance, when he focuses on the Radical Right's challenging the legitimacy of the US government as the core of the problem: "It was in the context of legitimizing our government that actions by domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh became thinkable." One can question the legitimacy of some aspect of our government or even the entire form of government without directly encouraging murderous violence against innocents. A more complex mix of white racism, hatred of democracy, sexual authoritarianism and the creation of exaggerated fears only vaguely based on reality produces the poisonous violence of most of the American far-right incidents we've seen in recent years.
But in that context, the deligimation of the democratic features of the American government does justify extreme actions. Schaeffer cites his own father, who was an important leader in the American Christian Right. "In my father's book he called for the overthrow of the US government unless non-violent ways were found to overturn Roe v Wade. He compared America to Nazi Germany."
I pay attention to Frank Schaeffer's work on the Christian Right because he knows it well. Perhaps inevitably, given his own background as a former Christian Right activist and son of an important Christianist leader, he shows a tone of the convert warning the uninformed of the dangers of his former belief system. But he does seem to keep that particular enthusiasm in check most of the time.
And he's right about the role that the Hitler/Nazi comparison plays among the Christian Right, who use abortion (baby-killing to them) to say that American democracy is as bad as or not worse than the government of Hitler Germany. Obviously, the converse of that conviction would be that Hitler Germany's government was as good as or even better than the current American Constitutional democracy. Schaeffer:
Schaeffer captures the Christian Right's fanaticism here:
And Schaeffer points to the role Christian nationalism plays with the Tea Party and budget issues: "The extreme language of Evangelical/'pro-life' rebellion has now been repackaged in the debt ceiling showdown. It is the language of religion pitted against facts." He also sees something that our punditocracy doesn't, or at least pretends not to see, that the Tea Party "is nothing more than the Evangelical far right repackaged and renamed."
He also comes up with a term new to me that I'll probably make a part of my regular vocabulary, "Jesus Victims." He writes, "As they opened new institutions (proudly outside the mainstream), the Jesus Victims doing this 'reclaiming' cast themselves in the role of persecuted exiles."
Tags: anders behring breivik, christian right, christianism, frank schaeffer, norway attacks 2011, radical right
Like any terrorist attack, the killing in Norway calls for realism rather than a reaction based on fear. Fear and democracy don't go well together, as a rule. But I do hope it will make Americans more aware of the most significant domestic terrorist threat, the one from far-right Christianist groups.
 |
| Confessed Norwegian white Christian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik |
Frank Schaeffer gives us a glimpse at the worldview of the American Christian nationalists in Christian Jihad? Why We Should Worry About Right-Wing Terror Attacks Like Norway's in the US Alternet 07/23/2011. I have reservations about Schaeffer's conceptual framework, for instance, when he focuses on the Radical Right's challenging the legitimacy of the US government as the core of the problem: "It was in the context of legitimizing our government that actions by domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh became thinkable." One can question the legitimacy of some aspect of our government or even the entire form of government without directly encouraging murderous violence against innocents. A more complex mix of white racism, hatred of democracy, sexual authoritarianism and the creation of exaggerated fears only vaguely based on reality produces the poisonous violence of most of the American far-right incidents we've seen in recent years.
But in that context, the deligimation of the democratic features of the American government does justify extreme actions. Schaeffer cites his own father, who was an important leader in the American Christian Right. "In my father's book he called for the overthrow of the US government unless non-violent ways were found to overturn Roe v Wade. He compared America to Nazi Germany."
I pay attention to Frank Schaeffer's work on the Christian Right because he knows it well. Perhaps inevitably, given his own background as a former Christian Right activist and son of an important Christianist leader, he shows a tone of the convert warning the uninformed of the dangers of his former belief system. But he does seem to keep that particular enthusiasm in check most of the time.
And he's right about the role that the Hitler/Nazi comparison plays among the Christian Right, who use abortion (baby-killing to them) to say that American democracy is as bad as or not worse than the government of Hitler Germany. Obviously, the converse of that conviction would be that Hitler Germany's government was as good as or even better than the current American Constitutional democracy. Schaeffer:
In other words, Dad's followers were told that (1) force is a legitimate weapon to use against an evil government; (2) America was like Hitler's Germany--because of legal abortion and of the forcing of "Humanism" on the population--and thus intrinsically evil; and (3) whatever would have been the "appropriate response" to stop Hitler was now appropriate to do here in America to stop our government, which Dad had just branded a "counterfeit state."There is also a considerable amount of projection at work in such claims. Those who would like an authoritarian government comparable to Hitler's or Mussolini's project the image of Hitler onto those they hate. Their intellectual and political ancestors in the isolationist Old Right of the 1930s and 1940s opposed the US role in the Second World War because of their admiration of Hitler and their hostility to the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union.
Schaeffer captures the Christian Right's fanaticism here:
To understand the extremism coming from the right, the fact that there are members of Congress who seem to be genuinely mentally unhinged leading the charge on the debt ceiling, you need to understand that this hatred of all things government has theological roots that have nothing to do with facts.But this is a careless formulation. Mainstream and historical Christian theology doesn't reject reason or insist on the deniable of physical reality, although some forms stress irrational elements. (I've been wading through a book this weekend dealing with Hegel's early theological writings and their relation to Kant; trust me, Christian theology as such does not reject reason.) But what Schaffer puts his finger on in that passage is that religion, because it assumes that ultimate truth lies outside the world, is particularly well-suited for fanatical ideologies and cults of all sorts.
Theology is -- by nature -- not about reason but about faith. If God's will is to be served then so be it if America is plunged into chaos!
And Schaeffer points to the role Christian nationalism plays with the Tea Party and budget issues: "The extreme language of Evangelical/'pro-life' rebellion has now been repackaged in the debt ceiling showdown. It is the language of religion pitted against facts." He also sees something that our punditocracy doesn't, or at least pretends not to see, that the Tea Party "is nothing more than the Evangelical far right repackaged and renamed."
He also comes up with a term new to me that I'll probably make a part of my regular vocabulary, "Jesus Victims." He writes, "As they opened new institutions (proudly outside the mainstream), the Jesus Victims doing this 'reclaiming' cast themselves in the role of persecuted exiles."
Tags: anders behring breivik, christian right, christianism, frank schaeffer, norway attacks 2011, radical right
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)