Roots of Right-Wing Populist Rage -- Reds to Beds

Today Republican Congressman Steve King of Iowa said Gay Marriage was part of socialist plan. Why does this make sense in a Christian Right worldview?

How did the post WWII Christian Right shift from a focus on the military defeat of godless global communism to a policing of our bedrooms—straight or gay? What happened? Why care? How do they justify vilifying President Obama?
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Teabaggers and Townhallers come from several pre-existing constituencies:
Economic Libertarians
Christian Right activists
Nebulous Anti-Elite Conspiracists
White Nationalists (xenophobic & anti-immigrant)
Organized White Supremacists
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At last weekend’s Values Voter Summit in the nation’s seat of power, the closing banquet keynote speaker Phyllis Schlafly praised the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade (CACC) and its founder, Dr. Fred Schwarz. CACC came to life in 1953 at the height of anti-communism during the Cold War and its witch hunts. Recent Christian Right crusades, however, have largely been based on rolling back gay marriage and undermining gay rights, outlawing abortion, replacing comprehensive sexuality education in schools with abstinence-only curricula, and other gender-related issues.
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Among the most influential leaders of the countersubversion movement against the global communist conspiracy following the McCarthy period was Dr. Fred Schwarz and his California-based Christian Anti-Communism Crusade (CACC). A tireless lecturer, Schwarz in 1960 authored You Can Trust the Communists (to be Communists) which sold over one million copies. The incessant assault on America by forces of godless communism were central themes in several other widely distributed books used to mobilize support for Goldwater’s Presidential campaign in 1964.

Schwarz signaled the shift toward a secular humanist boogeyman (constructed as a scapegoat) in an essay written in 1981 where he explained to his audience the sinister plan to corrupt America’s youth through abortion, sex education, and homosexuality. When populated by fully depraved, decadent, and disarmed Americans, the country would fall like a rotting plum into the patiently–waiting outstretched hands of communist agents at home and abroad. A collectivist totalitarian state would follow.

Thus the current focus on gender issues is rooted in an anti-communist conspiracy theory, but also serves to defend traditional patriarchal and heterosexual societal norms. This defense of traditional heteropatriarchy is often a subtext masked by pseudoscientific claims, alarmist conclusions, and the invocation of God’s name in defense of “traditional family values.”
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Schwarz then listed some of the "sources of outrage." Here are some excerpts with Schwarz's original subtitles:
1-Legal Slaughter of the Unborn
2-Promotion of Venereal Disease and Illegitimacy Disguised as Sex Education
3-Homosexuality Disease and Mass Murder
4-Compulsory Busing for Racial Integration
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So an elite liberal secular humanist conspiracy of collectivists put Barack Obama in the Oval Office. From there, Obama can coordinate the encircling of America for the final assault on freedom. This includes the seizure of all firearms in private possession; the roundup of Patriots into “FEMA Concentration Camps;” and the establishment of a New World Order totalitarian state.

For apocalyptic Christians, this is all part of the grand evil plan of Satan in the End Times. For older Christian Right activists, this all is just another stage in the fight against global communism.

Evangelicals who came of age after the Cold War, however, need more than anti-communism as motivation. So the Christian Right reaches them through invoking God's name filtered through an idiosyncatic interpretation of sacred text in the Bible, while supplying them with copius pseudo-scientific "studies" proving abortion, homosexuality, and other liberal secular humanist moral outrages are dangerous to society, especially children.

There are tens of millions of conservative Christian evangelicals who read, watch, or hear these messages on a weekly basis. Stop laughing and start organizing.

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2009/9/24/134056/732/Front_Page/Roots_of_Right_Wing_Populist_Rage_Reds_to_Beds

Rep. King was dog-whistling right past a lot of people to a core group of fundies. Apparently, they have an agenda based on the teachings of Dr. Fred Schwarz.

As the author points out, they interpret the Bible in their own way to back up these views. By using Biblical points, they try to reach a much larger group that probably doesn't have anyone pointing out the problems with their interpretations.

We dismiss these people at our own peril. They are trying to mobilize large groups using methods that slip under a lot of people's radar. Astroturfing is one ready made vehicle to lauch their protests without being so obvious.

Just because they can't spell that doesn't mean they can't mobilize.

with the bullying of those perceived to be "sissies," etc. It's also convenient for themselves to feel that they are better than anyone who is different in any way. Everyone is lumped as "friends" or "enemies" ("with me or against me").

This childish and over-simplified attitude is carried into adulthood, where, with a few more variables, it is twisted into an ever more complex, paradoxical, and paranoid mentality. Some of these extremists concoct these far-fetched conspiracies, in part, just to try to get a grip on their own psychoses.

Crippled by poor education, and racked by constant confusion, fear, and rage, they can't help but accept the shiny piles of goo offered as "news" or "religion." Hatred of gays is just one of the ingredients that is mashed up and included in this mess. The people caught up in this process can't really tell it from the other parts of the mix.

with the Christian Right. I was going to college in Austin, but a friend and I were doing our student teaching in Dallas. We were at a restaurant and I could hear a middle-aged lady at the table next to us going on and on to her husband about a "secular humanist manifesto". She was worked up about it. I remember thinking at the time "What the hell is that all about?", but it was many years later that I finally recognized how all the pieces were fitting together.

the complete picture. If they do see the pieces, they are dismissed as unimportant ideas.

For all the huffing and puffing of a David Berkowitz, here is what a political agenda and indoctrination program is all about. The fundies push home schooling as a great way to push what they call "values" without those evil "humanists" daring to inject reality (which they call "socialism" or some other ism) into their overloaded heads. The perversions of scripture and politics has always been a letal combination and has turned people who were supposed to stand for social justice and compassion into elitists who hate anything and everything that they don't control.

Right now the GOOP is hanging on to what's left of its disintegrating party. The moderates have been chased out of the party and the crazies are driving this train. King knows what he's saying and how that leads to his horde to send in the cash and fill the church busses...not necessarily for a national gain but for his own survival.

:kick: