Thursday open thread: No, it's not the "Christian Taliban"
I think many of us like to create epithets for the rancid right wing in our country.
"Christian Taliban."
"Christian Shariah law."
"It sounds better in the original German."
Sure, it's funny, and it's shorthand. But it's also deceptive.
Why do I say it's deceptive? Because such terms obfuscate the source of the radicalization in this country.
By comparing our own radicals to foreign radicals, it in many ways softens the sources of their radicalization. By using such terms, we lessen the impact of our right wing radicals. "Oh, they're just like X foreign actor." But, at the end of the day, they're not.
American right wing reactionaries are their own breed. They're their own brand. One cannot compare them to Muslim radicals, or German Nazis. Their genesis is here in the United States, arising from a uniquely American milieu.
"They're just like..." hides their very American roots. You don't see this replicated in Europe. Muslim fundamentalism is a different beast. And it in some ways absolves this country from harboring such vipers.
Christian nationalism. That's what we're facing. And I'm loathe to even use the term "Christian," for this is no Christianity any mainstream church embraces. But when Marjorie Taylor Greene embraces the term, then this is what it is. Christian fascist nationalism. White Christian fascist nationalism. And it doesn't matter that the movement has non-whites in it. They are the minority, and window-dressing. And they would go to the camps with the other mud people if these radicals ever assumed power.
American Christian fascism is unique to this country. It is the result of our religious history. It really could not have arisen anywhere else in the Christian West. And by calling it anything other than what it is, it obscures its source. It obscures that this is a very American movement, fed by the dark tides of American history and culture.
No one wants to think that "it can happen here." Surely, our traditions are not like that, not wellsprings for hatred and fascism. But the fact is that our American traditions are very much the source for the likes of Ken Paxton and Donald Trump. They are as American as Martin Luther King, Jr. Along with light and justice, there is a dark, fetid strain of paranoia and animus in this country. Any cursory perusal of our history makes this clear.
Comparing our would-be authoritarians to foreign ones muddies the waters. We can't place this movement as outside of our culture. It is very much a part of our culture. It is bred in the American psyche. We have to accept that these people are our countrymen and women, and learned different but no less real lessons from this nation's history. Dismissing them with cute epithets does a disservice. This is our problem, and we have to solve it.