The immediate crisis and menace of white Christian supremacy

The most important contemporary social issue related to religion in the United States is the dramatic rise of violent white Christian supremacy.  This toxic tendency was imported to the Americas by the conquistadors and colonials and has been present ever since (Zinn, 2003).  Progress has been made throughout history, but the process is cyclical.   

Since the “war on terror” was announced there has been virulent racism and bigotry targeting anyone from the Middle East, or anyone who even remotely looks like they are, and all Muslims.  Trump’s campaign promoted this form of racist bigotry by advocating a “Muslim ban” and has since his assumption of the executive been fighting to fully enact such a religiously bigoted policy.  Trump’s bringing such racism and bigotry to the executive has emboldened white Christian supremacists.  This is evidenced by the events in Charlottesville where white Christian supremacists marched through the streets chanting, among other racist slogans, “Jews will not replace us”, before one of them drove through a crowd of counterdemonstrators in an act of domestic terrorism, killing Heather Heyer.   

The recent act of domestic terrorism, the mass shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh perpetrated by a white Christian supremacist, illustrates the life or death significance of these social issues related to religion in the United States.  These movements of white Christian supremacy that have recently erupted in heinous acts of terrorism must in the immediacy be opposed by any means necessary.  Constructive social outreach, exchange and education ought to be pursued in order to at minimal temper such hatred, bigotry and racism.  It is devastating that what Sigmund Freud diagnosed as the narcissism of minor differences appears to be ineradicable, though his prognosis of it as a relatively harmless manifestation of aggression is fatally erroneous (Freud, 1989), it must at all costs be defused.    

           

References

Zinn, Howard, (2003). A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present. HarperCollins. 

Freud, Sigmund, (1989). Civilization and Its Discontents (p. 72). W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1930). 

Trump's Assault

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice.  He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” – Karl Marx 

The assumption of the executive by Donald Trump is a naked expression of the emptiness of United States representative democracy, and consequently the most damning.

Beyond the subversion of democracy by the electoral college, created in the drafting of the Constitution for the purpose of securing slavery and the political power of the slave states, the foundation of representative democracy in the United States is itself an erosion of democracy.  

 

Noam Chomsky observes that the form of ratification whereby two positions are offered and the voter merely selects one of the two positions is an impoverished form of democracy.  He observes further that the electoral process in the United States decades ago became “stage-managed elections, with the public relations industry” managing.  Trump’s campaign turned this tragedy into an utter farce, with a reality-show celebrity and his cadre of ultra-right-wing media propagandists (Bannon and others) turning the election into a complete spectacle.

Ever since the end of the Cold War and the hostilities with jihadi terrorist groups (most of whom were either directly or indirectly organized and armed by the United States) the so-called “war on terror” has effectively replaced the cold war ideology of anti-Communism hysteria.  Trump has taken this already shameful and violent history of aggression and pulled away the masks, revealing the naked racism and bigotry undergirding the rationalizations for imperial hegemony and extending this towards outright ethnic cleansing with, conspicuously, the fight for a “Muslim ban.” 

With the vicious history of the United States’ depredations in the middle east which has stoked the fires of conflict there since the end of WWII (Iran in 1953, etc.) and exacerbated by George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq (the international crime of aggression), of Trump’s new developments has been to toss a Molotov cocktail into the fires in the form of declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel while the Israeli state continues to occupy the Palestinian territories and expanding settlements into them.

Trump’s erratic and unhinged threats to North Korea are putting the entire human species and most others as well into jeopardy.  The international politics of the Trump administration are entirely inadequate and often dangerous, yet the threats to North Korea of a nuclear strike are of altogether another category.  It’s enough that human civilization has since the cold war only by a miracle avoided nuclear holocaust (Chomsky, 2016) while the United States and others have ensured the failure of the nonproliferation treaty (Chomsky & Barsamian, 2017), requiring more miracles yet still.  To trespass beyond such a terribly precarious reality and threaten a nuclear armed state with a nuclear strike is something like combining the game of chicken and Russian roulette into the most dangerous, potentially terminal game ever played. 

In light of Trump’s comments about the fascist violence and terrorism in Charlottesville and every comment that he has so far uttered regarding the “Muslim ban,” immigration and the border wall, it is evident that the only consistent position and policies for which Trump advocates and attempts to enforce are those of white Christian supremacy.  It is of principle importance to resist the Trump-led whitelash and one must defend oneself and one's allies by any means necessary.

It is clearer than ever that the impoverished form of democracy within the United States is inadequate for the attending to of the most serious and pressing issues.  It recalls to mind Rosa Luxemburg writing in her Junius Pamphlet, before she was murdered by the Freikorps, elements of which fermented into the Nazi party: “Friedrich Engels once said: ‘Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.’  What does ‘regression into barbarism’ mean to our…civilization?...A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means…The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization.  At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable consequences.  Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it…either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration – a great cemetery.  Or the victory of socialism…”

Chomsky, Noam, (2016). Who Rules the World? (pp. 100-114). Metropolitan Books.

Chomsky, Noam, Barsamian, David, (2017). Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy (pp. 108-109). Metropolitan Books.

Observations on contemporary resistance to proto-fascism and violence

To consider the advocating of erratic violence against the proto-fascist elements in the contemporary United States (which have always been latent, yet have taken to the streets more markedly since Trump’s assumption of executive power) it is worth observing some significant elements of the situation. 

There is a conspicuous lack of principle and analysis in the comments advocating violence.  In fact, many of the comments are so utterly devoid of reasoning that there is little to merit the taking of them seriously as genuine expressions of belief and practice.  The phenomenon of trolling, so rampant as it is on the internet, necessitates any serious person posting assertions to buttress them with at least a minimum of evidentiary premises.    

When calculating the ethical calculus of actions and tactics it is required to assess the predictable consequences of the actions and tactics being advocated and engaged in.  As a general principle, physical violence requires meeting a very significant burden of proof.  It must be stressed that within the current United States’ specific situation, violence is only ethically valid as a means of self-defense; in fact, such is essentially always the case. 

When there are confrontations in the streets between the racist, proto-fascist movements and those groups of people opposing them, it is crucial that one be nonviolent, lest one be guilty of igniting a highly combustible situation.  When one is confronted by violence, no doubt self-defense by any means necessary is justified.  Yet when there are racists and proto-fascists in the streets in whatever number they are, charging them and assaulting them with violence is not self-defense, to the contrary.  Further, when assaulting these repugnant people one of the most predictable consequences is their further entrenchment into their hideous ideologies and their engagement of violence in reaction. 

There are by far too many unhinged, armed white supremacists, many of whom are literally itching to harm people and those who are homicidal, if the violence is yet latent, it is irrational and unethical to assault and provoke these elements from their latencies into overt action. 

Those advocating “combat” are a combination of insincere, irrational and unethical in whatever specific composite. 

It is again worth taking account of the conspicuous lack of expressed principle and analysis of those advocating violence.  There has been clearer expressions of principle and analysis, if still fallacious in important ways, by Leninists, Maoists and other deviations from the communism of the “Marxist” movements.  This is another of the instances in which the holders on to the Bolshevism long since passed and discredited are in welcome agreement to other leftists in their revolutionary analysis. 

Don’t advocate assault and violence, instead organize.