Max Blumenthal’s explosive new book, Republican Gomorrah, includes a great description of the Christian Zionists as part of a death cult on the right–political forces that invoke mortality and hellish eschatology as a means of building subservient movements. Here’s a passage:
In July 2007, I covered Christians United for Israel’s “Washington- Israel” Summit. Staged inside the cavernous halls of Washington, DC’s Convention Center, the event was more than a political rally—it was a gigantic vaudeville of doom, despair, and destruction. Speakers from Newt Gingrich to former Israeli Ambassador Dore Gold stoked the anxieties of the nearly three thousand attendees with graphic descriptions of Iran’s fearsome Shihab missile, warning that it could strike as far as Israel, into the heart of Europe, and beyond. After the Cornerstone Church chorus belted out a saccharine rendition of the Zionist folk anthem “Jerusalem, City of Gold,” and evangelical crowd members, many clad in kippas and tallis, blew supersized shofars and danced in the aisles, [Pastor John] Hagee [head of CUFI] waddled to the rostrum.
“It is time for America to embrace the words of Senator Joseph Lieberman,” Hagee rumbled, “and consider a military preemptive strike against Iran to prevent a nuclear Holocaust in Israel!” The crowd leapt to its feet and roared.
When I interviewed summit attendees about their theological views, I was unable to find a single person among them who did not lust for a blitzkrieg of biblical proportions. “I’m looking forward to Armageddon and to the cleansing of the Earth!” exclaimed John G. Rogers, a pastor from California. William Baker, another Californian, told me he was “absolutely” elated about the prospect of “a battle between the Christians and the anti-Christians.” “I got a bag packed,” a man named Walter Farnham revealed to me. “And when we disappear, you better start to worry. Because if you haven’t seen the ‘Left Behind’ series, it’s scary.” Two kindly older women standing beside Farnham nodded approvingly at the mention of Left Behind.
Written by the Reverend Tim LaHaye, a founder of the Council for National Policy, the Left Behind series is the Christian right’s most effective recruitment vehicle. Larded from cover to cover with coded anti-Semitic conspiracies about “international bankers” plotting with UN chief Nicholai Carpathia (the evil characters in Left Behind all have ethnic names), who represents the anti-Christ, Left Behind is replete with descriptions of pornographic violence against unbelievers, whose “bodies burst open from head to toe at every word that proceeded out of the mouth of the Lord.”
According to evangelical pollster George Barna, Left Behind “represents one of the most widely experienced religious teaching or evangelistic tools among adults who are not born-again Christians.” LaHaye’s impact on millions of lives cannot be attributed to his storytelling prowess—his prose is painfully turgid—but rather his ability to mesmerize—or terrorize—unbelievers with the prospect of a gruesome death and eternal anguish in the flames of Hell. By literally scaring the devil out of unbelievers, LaHaye and his acolytes have plumbed the country’s most panic-prone elements within the ranks of the Christian right and thus have expanded their movement in a startlingly rapid fashion.
Hey, Max, you’re spot-on. And kudos to the braintrust of Zionists who have successfully manipulated the Evangelicals to be “useful idiots” after being enraptured (pardon the pun) by the “Left Behind” series. You gotta love it — the series was originally deemed to be anti-Semitic by some, and yet, it has become a brainwashing tool for the Zionist neo-cons who have encouraged the Hagees of the world to take up arms against Obama in anticipation of some apocalyptic moment in the Middle East that will trigger The Rapture.
Still, the hard-core guys are suspicious of the Goyim. Here’s Ron Kampeas on Foxy Abe Foxman and several Jewish leaders expressing discomfort with embracing Hagee’s army of rapturists on the I/P issue (“Gift Horse or Trojan Horse”):
Israel needs all the useful American idiots it can recruit, following the Goldstone Report.
link to thenewstandard.com
My sense is that Jews are just as leery of fundamentalist Christians as their neighbors, the liberal Episcopalians, Methodists and Catholics. However, the fundies’ pro-Israel line breaks down some of that mistrust.
The actual work is delegated to the likes of the Orthodox Rabbi Eckstein, but folk don’t actively oppose Israel’s Christian allies.
btw, Allies for Armageddon by Victoria Clark is another wonderful book on Christian Zionism and its role in creating Jewish Zionism. She’s a journalist: it’s an easy read and well documented.
link to amazon.com
I should think Jews should be more leery of Christian fundamentalists than Muslim ones. Just as a matter of history alone, Christians have been, quite literally, the genocidal threat to Jews and that really only changed after WWII where it just about actually took place. On the other hand, Muslims and Islamic governments have traditionally sheltered Jews and shown respect for the Jewish faith.
If you talk to mainstream Palestinians nowadays, you’ll find that it’s not Jewish people they hate, but Israel specifically and its oppressive policies. Myself? I’m not Jewish but as somebody who’s tried to stand back and look at the situation from all angles, I get disgusted when ever Israelis use American Jews (and the entirety of Judaism in general) as their personal ideological human shields.
Does Foxman hate Christianity more than he loves Israel, or vice versa. Some inquiring mind must want to know.
Those are the people which Zionism makes our allies. Such a deal.
They both have that genocidal bent in the religious ethos. When you’ve seen one apocalyptic you’ve seen them all. Both want to move the “prophetic clock,” and they want to do it with violence. One speaks of the redemption to the land through force and other speaks of spectacular wars, both adhere to plenty of “wars and rumors of wars” in the so-called end times, they take their precedent in the genocidal “lord of hosts.”
If you were to take all religious nut cases and move them across the world, they would find each other and unite in no time. They both have a virulent mythology, taking religious writings as literal rather than obvious works of redaction and myth, and both rip off other regional religions or world religions but act as though they were some sort of revelation specifically to them. Whether it is the Calvinism of the chosen few in North America, the same in the Dutch Calvinism of the Afrikaners, or the chosen of Judaism, all reek of this special calling which sets them apart for every atrocity with the blessing of their god.
Both have leaders which use their religious wares to incite people against specific races and and regions. Whether it is the repugnant “manifest destiny” with its Christian religious overtones, or “redeeming the land” they are mutually twisted variations of the same story that brings death and destruction. They have a propensity to racism, violence, and both are the supposed “fulfillment of prophecy.” The elites use this as much as possible to inflame ignorant religious zealots who sing “Onward Christian Soldiers” or Hatikva through bloody force. In the case of Judaism, Zionism took its moderate peaceful quality and made it just like its fruitcake rivals – so now they are bedfellows. Now they all have the “White Man’s Burden,” trying to colonize they’re “lesser” people of color through brute force and murderous violence and discriminate against their so-called equal citizenry domestically.
All I have to say is they better hurry up and enlist the skinheads – see Phil’s article on September 12th entitled “English Skinheads wave…Israeli Flag!!!” God is a real estate broker, and every science like the archaeological spade is used as some sign of damned birthright to theft and murder. Yet people STILL have not understood the major thrust of religion, or the dictum of Voltaire – “those who cause you to believe absurdities can get you to commit atrocities.”
Part 1:
Extremist right-wing Israel needs the Christian Zionists to hold down their US support. Without it, the hew and cry to stop annual payments to Israel would have reached teabagger volume, as it has in spots across the web. Hagee claims a 70 million-strong membership in his beliefs, when, if anything, that number represents the number of evangelicals in the country, and evangelicals are not uniform in believing the CUFI tripe.
Part 2 wont go through.
I’ve got to get Max’s book soon. I noticed one of the chapters is “The Family That Prays Together.” If he has not put the title together yet (since I have not read the book) a good one is would be – “The Family That Prays Together Slays Together.”
I watched Norman Podhoretz lecture at Harvard very recently, peddling his new book
Why Are Jews Liberals? the thrust of the book (covering western history) is Norman explaining to himself why the bulk of his
fellow American Jews have not joined him in his veer to the right–the only American
ethnic/religious block who voted more for Obama were the blacks (at 93%, the Jews voted–I forget, 80% for Obama?). Basically, Norman says it’s because of the Torah
Of liberalism. Explaining the Christian Zionists, he says they are reliably hard core
pro-Israel because of a passage in what Christians call “The Old Testament” which they read as literally as they do their New Testament. That passage can be paraphrased:
“You help the Jews and god will help you,” i.e., assure you your spot in heaven. He downplayed the end-timers’ scenario, stating only the Dispensationalists sect of the Evangelicals
believe so (things as in the Left Behind series).
For some reason I’m reminded of Anne Coulter’s remark that Jews are great; they merely have to
get themselves “perfected.”
Re v’s suggested title “The Family That Prays Together Slays Together.” Damn, v, you’re good! Channeling Gore Vidal?
No not channeling Gore, but I have read most of his works. It is good to be able to turn a phrase in reality for a change. When dealing with the subject on my blog and commenting on Max’s documentary it was titled –
“HOLY” JOE – “SATANIC” MUSLIMS – AND THE ESCHATOLOGY OF DEATH
You have got to see these kooks to believe this! This is a veritable three ring circus of holy rollers that want to incinerate Iran and usher in the “End.” The next time you see rhetoric and threats to Iran coming out of this current U.S. administration remember this group of goons. This is the crazy constituency.
Max Blumenthal’s latest takes us on a shocking and at times bizarre tour of right-wing Pastor John Hagee’s annual Washington-Israel Summit, blowing the cover off the Christian Zionist movement in the process. Starring Joe Lieberman, Tom DeLay, Pastor John Hagee, Ambassador Dore Gold and a host of rapture-ready evangelicals praying for Armaggedon (circa 2007).
Thanks v… I didn’t know you had your own blog. I just went to it. Tons of useful information there and I for one agree with your blog’s general POV–hard to leave it not angry because the real sin is not protest but the sheeple’s devotion to the shallow version of the very status quo that is not in their best interests, not just on the I-P situation, but, e.g., on Darfur & the USA’s financial system–incident to that, Ron Paul was on C-Span2 (BookTV) yesterday, pushing his new book to kill the Fed and at least take a first step by backing his congressional bill for a first ever Fed audit, and taking question from the audience on a range of hot subjects.
RE: “[Pastor John] Hagee [head of CUFI] waddled to the rostrum. – ‘Republican Gomorrah”
MY COMMENT: Yes indeed, he is a portly fellow, but it is possible that he was quite sore from trying to “breed” a ‘perfect red heifer’ on his 7,600 acre spread down in Texas (in a venture with Hagee’s Texas Israel Agricultural Research Foundation). That can be quite strenuous work; even for great, big bull like Hagee. I ‘pray to God’ the heifers are heavily tranquilized beforehand so as to lessen the severity of the PTSD (which nonetheless is probably far worse than that suffered by the mother of “Rosemary’s Baby”).
SEE: “Pastor Strangelove”, by Sarah Posner, 05/21/09
(EXCERPT) …Besides his million-dollar compensation package, Hagee has a portfolio of other ventures, including a cattle ranch in south Texas that may have religious significance. Many evangelicals believe that the arrival of a “perfect red heifer” will signal the end times. In the Old Testament, burning a red heifer and sprinkling its ashes is described as a purification ritual for priests entering the temple. Ultra-orthodox Jews believe that the birth of a modern perfect red heifer will herald the arrival of the messiah, leading to a confrontation with Muslims over the Temple Mount, where Jews believe the Temple will be rebuilt. Some evangelicals likewise regard the red heifer as a harbinger of the ultimate showdown at the Temple Mount, which they believe will be the site of the Second Coming. And they believe that time is near.
To many other observers, the advent of the red heifer threatens to provoke a violent struggle for control of the Temple Mount, with worldwide repercussions. In the late 1990s, a group of unidentified Texas ranchers reportedly bred a perfect red heifer, which generated excitement in evangelical circles until the animal sprouted some black hairs….
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to prospect.org
P.S. I am satisfied that the ‘neocons’ would turn this country over to the demagogic Christian theocrats in a ‘New York minute’. Their fondest ‘wet dream’ is having this country run by the likes of Pat Robertson, “Pastor” John Hagee, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabe etc and their zombie-like followers who are convinced that if the U.S. does not do exactly what Israel wants us to do then God Almighty will smite us with a fierce vengeance and they just might not get their precious ride on the ‘Rapture Express’!