Netanyahu, Biden and the Christian Right

Radical cleric John Hagee played a role in sabotaging Biden's peace effort in Israel

It turns out that there is a definite Christian Right connection to the amazing diplomatic snub that Benjamin Netanyahu's Israeli government gave to Joe Biden. Netanyahu had attended an event the day before Biden's scheduled arrival organized (formally, anyway) by the Rev. John Hagee, radical American cleric and Christian Zionist who really, really wants to see a war with Iran. These two articles report on the event, including video:

Netanyahu and Pastor Hagee’s Lovefest on Eve of Biden’s Arrival in Israel by Max Blumenthal 03.09.10

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and John Hagee Share Stage as Biden Arrives in Israel by Rachel Tabachnick Talk to Action 03/09/10

The video of Netanyahu at the event show him making an historically accurate and important point: Christian Zionism preceded Jewish Zionism.

Akiva Eldar describes the lack of evident seriousness in Biden's mission in U.S. gave Israel green light for East Jerusalem construction Haaretz 03/12/10:

In a sense, the uproar actually helped him: To wipe the spit off his face, Biden had to say it was only rain. Therefore, he lauded Netanyahu's assertion that actual construction in Ramat Shlomo would begin only in another several years.

Thus Israel essentially received an American green light for approving even more building plans in East Jerusalem.

Biden might not know it, but the Palestinians certainly remember that this is exactly how East Jerusalem's Har Homa neighborhood began: Then, too, Netanyahu persuaded the White House that construction would begin only in another several years. ...

And just in case anyone failed to realize how impartial a mediator the U.S. is, Biden said in his Tel Aviv speech that the U.S. has "no better friend" than Israel.

Tags: christian+zionism, john hagee

Pastor John Hagee

A group called JewsonFirst.org has put together this 16-minute documentary on McCain pal John Hagee and his unusual ideas about Jews and Judaism, narrated by Ed Asner:



The Google page link is at this link, since at this writing the embed doesn't seem to be working here.

Tags: anti-semitism, john hagee

The OxyContin Party and the broken press corps that enables it

Dark Lord Cheney, a faithful defender of regular white folks against those "elitist" Democrats, told an audience at the National Press Club that he discovered that he had Cheney ancestors among both his paternal and maternal ancestors. "So I had Cheneys on both sides of the family and we don't even live in West Virginia," the Dark Lord said. (Dick Cheney's Incest Joke Irks West Virginian Lawmakers by Mary Ann Akers Washington Post Online 06/02/08).

The Dark Lord apologized. Which I suppose is a bit better than when he shot that guy in the face, and the guy he shot apologized to Cheney! (I've always wondered what kind of phone call preceded that event.) But you've got to wonder, what does an apology mean coming from a guy with no conscience? But at least he's not one of those elitist Democrats acting "snootily", to use George Will's word.

Rush Limbaugh, the famous liar, drug addict and bigot, is one of most popular commentators among the Republican base. A big pal of Bush and Cheney, too. Cheney was planning to observe the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by appearing on Rush's show. Here's how Mr. OxyContin himself expresses the Christian love that overflows from today's sanctified Republican Party:

On the June 2 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio program, while discussing Sen. Barack Obama's presidential candidacy, Rush Limbaugh asserted that the Democratic Party was "go[ing] with a veritable rookie whose only chance of winning is that he's black." As Media Matters for America noted, Limbaugh said on his May 21 broadcast that "Barack Obama is an affirmative action candidate" and asserted during his May 14 broadcast that "[i]f Barack Obama were Caucasian, they would have taken this guy out on the basis of pure ignorance long ago."

Also during the June 2 broadcast, while referencing a May 26 column written by John Lott Jr., Limbaugh stated, "John Lott Jr. has this theory. He's done some research and found out that the growth of government can be traced to when women got the vote." Limbaugh later asserted, "The one observation you can make about this whole business, because he proved it. I mean, it's -- the growth of government started like crazy when women got the right to vote. Which just proves: Size does matter to 'em." (Media Matters, Limbaugh on Obama: His "only chance of winning is that he's black" 06/02/08

Yuk! Yuk! That Rush shore is funny, ain't he? You just cain't beat ole Rush for "political humor"! And size matters, git it? Haw! Haw!

We'll be getting this by the bucketload between now and the November election. The formula of course is to find "clever" ways to say, "Obama's black! Did you know he's black? He's even got a black wife? Did you know they are black?" There'll be much worse, of course. Already is. Rush the dope fiend just gives us the respectable mainstream Republican variety.

That will have limited direct pull among swing voters, I'm guessing. Where it will have traction is that race is likely to make some white swing voters more ready to have doubts Obama due to wild tales about his politics, his religion, his transvestite ex-con Sikh boyfriend, and whatever other lunatic tales the Republican Swiftboaters come up with. Which will be faithfully told and retold and retold again by our sad excuse for a press corps.

Of course, St. McCain the 21st century Crusader has repudiated his former buddy John Hagee. But former Democrat Joe Lieberman, who recently has become somehow attached to McCain at the hip, it seems, is still tight with Rev. Hagee. He's scheduled to be the keynote speaker at an upcoming confab of Hagee's Christians United for Israel (CUFI) group that is dedicated to promoting war with Iran. Max Blumenthal - who's Sid Blumenthal's son, by the way, doing a good job carrying on the family tradition - has some info, with an assist from another video from Bruce Wilson, in Pastor Hagee: The Antichrist Is Gay, "Partially Jewish, As Was Adolph Hitler" (Paging Joe Lieberman!) Huffington Post 06/02/08.

I'm glad to see this kind of thing is getting more attention than in the past. It's not that there's anything terribly different about Hagee's brand of Christianism than what the Republican Party has been eagerly embracing in 1980 or so. A lot of the leaders of what is called the Christian Right promote just the kind of cracker bigotry that Hagee does. It's just that our lazy, intimidated press corps have been largely tippy-toing around them for decades now.

They've been too busy spreading sexual fantasies about Bill Clinton. And still are. Check out Vanity Fair finds no "proof" of Clinton affairs -- but spreads rumors anyway Media Matters.org 06/02/08, and Bill Clinton: Purdum a "Sleazy" "Slimy" "Scumbag" by Mayhill Fowler 06/02/08.

Say what you like about Bill or Hillary Clinton. (Shoot, everybody does anyway!) But they're both liberal Democrats. And they fight. The Democrats need that kind of willingness to fight if they're going to get the Republicans out of the White House.

For all my fondness for economic and class explanations, I still can't help but believe that there's something just wildly irrational about the press corps' weird, genuinely weird obsessions about both Clintons, which carried over to Al Gore, as well. Geez, people (i.e, Chris Matthews, Tucker Carlson, Maureen Dowd, 90% or so of the rest of the press corps), if you feel like making up sex stories, just write a porno novel! Or go visit a hooker, whatever. Do you have to dump the tawdriest, trashiest products of your troubled minds on us? Good grief! Try investigating Dick Cheney's torture program. There's enough sexual perversion there to shock the Marquis de Sade. At least you would be doing something constructive by exposing that.

Tags: bill clinton, christian right, christianism, culture war, hillary clinton, john hagee, racism, republican party, rush limbaugh

McCain cuts bait and runs from radical cleric John Hagee

The final (divine?) hammer blow to Christianist radical cleric John Hagee's alliance with "100 Years War" McCain was this post by Bruce Wilson at the Talk to Action Web site, Audio Recording of McCain's Political Endorser John Hagee Preaching Jews Are Cursed and Subhuman 05/15/08. The Huffington Post picked it up, political pressure built and, as the saying goes, the rest is history. Later in the day on Thursday, McCain also rejected the endorsement of another radical Christianist clerick, Rod Parsely.

Hagee was only the tip of the iceberg of the story of the Republican Party alliance with the radical Christianist right. But democrats (yes, I mean the small-d) need to enjoy victories when they happen. And Hagee's public discrediting among the broader public is a win for decency and democracy. The guy preaches a wretched, hateful, anti-Semitic version of Christian theology. He's a disgrace to Christianity and a disgrace to Republican politicians like McCain who kiss up to him.

(Graphic from the 2008 Bruce Wilson post linked here)

This is also a good example of how the blogosphere can play a constructive role in political activism and in spreading decent news and analysis. This wasn't CBS or the Washington Post pushing this story. It was Democratic activists and the blogosphere. Wilson's patient research into this dark corner of American Christianity paid off. And, for all the problems of the Internet spreading goofy rumors and pseudoscience and so on, good research and analysis occasionally makes its way to the top of the heap.

But there's also a collective effect here. The final blow to the McCain-Hagee alliance came with the dramatic nudge of Wilson's audio having Hagee distinctive bombastic voice proclaiming that Adolf Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews back to Israel. And triple-good on Bruce Wilson for putting it out there.

Still, Hagee's anti-Semitic bigotry has been no secret. He's a present-day version of Sinclair Lewis' Rev. Ezekiel Bittery in Gideon Planish (1943) who gradually nationally audience:

And during all this time, the Reverend Ezekiel himself will, as publicly as possible, to as many persons as he can persuade to attend his meetings, have admitted, insisted, bellowed, that he has always been a Ku Kluxer and a Fascist, that he has always hated Jews, colleges and good manners, and that the only thing he has ever disliked about Hitler is that he once tried to paint barns instead of leaving the barns the way God made them.

So there is a collective effect here of many activists chipping away at the Hagee story until Wilson's video finally burst the boil on the political scene.

This isn't to detract from Wilson's accomplishment with this story. It's worth remembering that some of the best investigative reporting has come from journalists like I.F. Stone who took the time to search through public records and put together a picture that was lying out there in public but most people couldn't quite see it yet.

As I said in connection with the Jeremiah Wright story, the traditional notion that God passes collective judgments through historical events on groups because some of them sinned is very problematic. But it's especially beloved by fundamentalists and Pentecostals like Hagee. In theological terms, it's a subset of the "theodicy" problem of what role God has in the suffering and evil of the world.

But it kind of makes my skin crawl to dignify Hagee's anti-Jewish fanaticism by observing that it's a part of a much larger theological issue. Because, let's get real. When a preacher like Hagee is saying that Adolf Hitler was sent by God to accomplish His divine purposes by mass murder and brutality, something stinks to high heaven about that brand of Christianity. You don't need to jump through theological hoops to see that.

This wasn't part of that particular video. But in Hagee's worldview, the reason God sent Hitler to run the Jews to Israel with the Holocaust is to prepare the End Times scenario in which most of the Jews of the world are slaughtered in a massive battle and the few remaining stop being Jews by converting to Christianity. And then the world will finally be rid of those Christ-killing Jews and Jesus can return to Earth. There are various ways to analyze that. But it's painfully obvious that any theory of history that has it be God's will to do away with Jews in such bloody fashion is just Jew-hating horse-poop.

(For more on that aspect of fundamentalist apocalypticism, see Intolerance: The Bestseller by Gershom Gorenberg The American Prospect 09/22/02; Friends Of Israel and AIPAC Envision "Israel's Final Holocaust" and "Jew Toast" by Bruce Wilson, Talk to Action 03/14/07.)

In addition to Bruce Wilson's post, check out McCain Renounces Hagee, Hagee Withdraws His Endorsement by Frederick Clarkson, Talk to Action 05/22/08. He gives a very good analysis of why McCain's comparison of his own radical cleric problem to Obama's relationship with Jeremiah Wright is off-base. An excerpt:

Obama has certainly had a longtime and now defunct, personal relationship with Rev. Wright. But Wright has had no role in Obama's presidential campaign. Wright is not a politically powerful figure and has not sought to be.

Conversely, McCain agressively [sic] sought out the endorsement of John Hagee - one of the most prominent and powerful figures on the religious right, and every bit as controversial as say, Pat Robertson. Nevertheless, McCain turned a blind eye to the extreme views in Hagee's published work and public statements.

Tags: anti-semitism, bruce wilson, christian right, christianism, john hagee, mccain

A good resource on the Christian Right

Radical cleric John Hagee, marching with the Maverick to the 100 Years War

Since that bold Maverick McCain is seeking and embracing the support of radical clerics like John Hagee in his campaign to become President and make the Iraq War a 100-year event, I thought I would mention one of the best blogs I've come across dealing with religion and politics in the US, Talk to Action. Some of their recent offerings:

Chris Rodda catches Ron Paul, darling of the white supremacist set, embracing theocratic pseudohistory in saying that the Constitution is "replete with references to God". Rodda points out that there is, count them - or, rather count it - one reference to the Almighty in the Constitution, contained in the phrase "in the Year of our Lord". (It's in Article VII.)

Bruce Wilson looks into the wild and whacky world of the End Times theology of the Maverick's buddy John Hagee. Hagee's views, he tells us, "veer far to the right, lie along the extreme end of the theocratic spectrum and espouse an intransigent and radically bellicose approach to Mideast politics." Just what we need. No wonder Mr. 100 Years War sought out his support.

Frederick Clarkson reports that Maverick McCain Courted Hagee for at Least a Year.

Frank Cocozzelli reports on how the obnoxious rightwinger Bill Donahue of the Catholic League managed to at least get something "half right" in his criticism of Hagee and his pal the Maverick. Cocozzelli also tacks on about a bizillion links to his posts on the Catholic Right.

Tags: christian right, christianism, john hagee, mccain, ron paul

Answered prayers

The Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly, who has a brilliant talent for creating elaborate images in a very few words, has a song called "Be Careful What You Pray For" that includes the lines:

Be careful what you pray for
You just might get it

That particular one is not exactly an original sentiment. It's just that when the thought comes into my head it's set to the tune of Kelly's song.

I thought of that today when that bold Maverick McCain started to take a tiny bit of the heat he deserves for embracing the support of radical cleric John Hagee, who Sarah Posner ably profiled in Pastor Strangelove The American Prospect 05/21/06.

The Republicans have worked hard since Nixon's Southern Strategy to appeal to white Christian fundamentalists, no small portion of whom were and are Southern segregationists. They succeeded. Now, white fundis are the hardcore base of their Party. The Maverick can't afford to tick them off in a general election. And John Hagee, despite being one of the nastiest bigots and snarling warmongers among Christianist leaders in the US, is too big of a star among the Party faithful for the Maverick to easily denounce him.

If the fundis didn't want the ugliest aspects of their theology - the anti-Semitism, the warmongering, the bloody-minded exclusivity, the anti-science fanaticism - to be held up to public scrutiny and debate in a political context, well, they should have been more careful what they prayed for. Mixing Church and State - or Church and Party, which to the authoritarian Republican Party is largely the same thing - is an involvement that goes both ways.

Tags: christian dominionism, christian fundamentalism, christian right, christianism, john hagee, mccain, sarah posner, republican party

Radical clerics and Presidential candidates

Glenn Greenwald has some thoughts on the fact that Big Pundits like Tim Russert are so concerned about the potential influence of some radical Muslim cleric on Barack Obama, while the overt embrace of radical Christianist clerics by the Maverick McCain and lots of other Republicans doesn't seem to bother them nearly so much.

In Some hateful, radical ministers - white evangelicals - are acceptable Salon 02/28/08, he writes about John McCain's supporter John Hagee who has been a loud advocate for launching a preventive war on Iran. Because Jesus was, you know, a big fan of war and killing and stuff. At least on Planet Hagee. Greenwald has the following to say about the Establishment press' approach to radical Christian clerics:

Hagee believes that "the president's support for Israel fulfills a biblical injunction to protect the Jewish state," which "will play a pivotal role in the second coming." These views are not unrelated to Hagee's support for McCain. Quite the contrary; Hagee cited McCain's so-called "pro-Israel views," his belligerence towards Iran, and his social conservatism as reasons for the endorsement. And in critical contrast to Obama and Farrakhan, McCain actually seems to share some of Hagee's more twisted views, as evidenced by McCain's joyful singing about dropping bombs on Iran.

The GOP has long been given a pass on courting the most warped and twisted religious figures around. George Bush spoke regularly with Pat Robertson - never once forced to "denounce" or "reject" him. In 2006, Rev. Hagee had a private meeting with uber-White House neocon (and convicted criminal) Elliot Abrams, who just happens to run Middle East policy in the Bush administration, and afterwards, Hagee gushed that he and Abrams (like he and Lieberman) shared similar views towards the Middle East: "we felt we were on the right track."

Watching the media's treatment of Farrakhan and Hagee, is it possible to imagine a more transparent, and grotesque, double standard? In the framework of the Russert-led establishment press, white evangelical Christians are, by definition, entitled to great respect no matter how radical, extreme and hateful their professed views are. These are, after all, religious Christians - People of Faith - and, as such, it is wrong, even bigoted, to suggest that they should be repudiated. There is nothing ever radical, hateful or dangerous about the views of white evangelical Christians like Hagee.

Tags: christian fundamentalism, christian right, christianism, glenn greenwald, john hagee, mccain