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UPDATED:  FEB 7, 2008 

“THE CHRISTIANIZING OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, PART 3”

This week I am offering you part 3 of chapter 10 of “Jonathan Westminster’s” book entitled The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022, originally published in 1996 and purported to be published in 2048, on the 25^th Anniversary of the Restoration of US Constitutional Democracy, following the conclusion of the Second Civil War.  Previously I presented the “text” of the 2008 Inaugural address of the putative President, Jefferson Davis Hague, who in his speech announced the transformation of the Republican Party into the American Christian Nation Party, and certain commentary on it by a member of his staff and the author.  This week I present additional commentary by the author, Westminster, and by an English journalist, Alec Poughton.  And yes, there is a contemporary Addendum this week, just as there were for Parts 1 and 2. 

Hague and the "Christian Nation" Concept 

     In analyzing and understanding the Hague ap­proach to this issue, it is important to note that nei­ther in his Second Inaugural nor elsewhere did he ever officially declare or decree the U.S. to be a "Christian Nation."  Note too that as noted above, the quotes from "The 15% Solution's" Godfa­ther Pat Robertson that Hague chose to include, themselves never re­ferred directly to the concept but only alluded to it.  In fact, Robert­son was usually quite careful not to use the words direct­ly, even though most of his followers and most of his allies had the "Christianizing of America" right at the top of their agenda, and just "knew" that Pat did too. But not using the phrase gave the Reverend Reaganesque "deniability." 

            Following this pattern of obscurantism, even the New American Re­publics would not be officially designated a "Christian Nation."  In practice, of course, both the NAR and the old U.S. under Hague and the Republican‑Christian Alliance were "Christian Nations" as the term was understood by those who had promoted the notion during the Tran­sition Era, and their ideological successors.  But by never saying so in so many words, and never making "Christian Nationhood" official poli­cy, Hague was always able to deny that that was indeed the case, a politically useful maneuver. 

The "Rightward Imperative" 

     The "Rightward Imperative" I mentioned in an "Author's Note" to the Hague Address (see p. 131) described a pattern of a constant rightward policy shift that could be observed in the old Republican Par­ty during the Transition Era, and then in the R‑CA/ACNP during the pre‑NAR Fascist Period.  First on economic issues, then on social ones, so‑called "moderates" were read or ridden out of the Republican Party, unless they radically moved their positions to the Right on both econom­ic and social issues.  For example, the Republican Senate Ma­jority Leader Robert Dole of Kansas did that in the run‑up to the 1996 Presi­dential election (Kramer) (see be­low). 

     It became de rigeur in the 1980s to recite the man­tra of "tax cuts/balanced budget amendment/free market" that would have horrified old‑line "moder­ate" Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller, former Gov­er­nor of New York and Jacob Javits, former Sen­ator from New York.  Even former President Rich­ard Nixon and George Bush, before he be­came Ron­ald Reagan's Vice‑President, had problems with cer­tain sec­tions of that agenda. 

     Then came the '90s mantra of "ban abor­tion/prayer in the schools/no civil rights for homosex­uals."  This was designed specifically to appeal to the growing Religious Right and the Rev. Pat's Christian Coalition.  They formed the core vote of an ever‑rightward moving Republican Party, they were the constituency which made "The 15% Solution" pos­sible.  They had to be kept in tow. 

     During the Transition Era the Rightward Impera­tive was perhaps best personified by Senator Dole (mentioned above).  He had been a Nixon Republican, tough on rhetoric in practice but relatively progres­sive on domestic issues (Berke, 1995).  He had, for example, intro­duced the Nixon health care reform plan in the Senate in 1973, a plan that had much in common with the (Pres. Bill) Clinton Health Plan that Dole played a major role in defeating, primarily for political reasons, in 1994. 

     For most of his career, Dole had downplayed the Right‑Wing Reac­tionary "social issues" such as banning freedom of choice in the out­come of pregnancy, requiring voluntary prayer in the schools, and intro­ducing censorship into the entertainment industry.  In 1995-6, running for President in a Republican Party already well under the spell of the Christian Coalition, he quite suddenly became a supporter of their posi­tion on these matters and related ones.  He was being realis­tic.  As he said (Berke, 1995): "Any survey research you or I have seen shows that these are the issues that [Republican] primary voters [Author's Note: read "Far Right Republicans"] care about or are moti­vated by." 

The Stirring of Political Violence 

     Once "The 15% Solution" had succeeded, during the pre‑NAR Fas­cist Period Right‑Wing Reaction found that its policies did not indeed solve problems, as noted above.  It also found that there was, there­fore, an in­creas­ing amount of labor and racial unrest.  Too, there was poten­tial political trouble, as various groups tried to reinvigorate the still Demo­cratic Leadership Council‑lead Democratic Party or set up some left alterna­tive to it.  Political violence, unoffi­cial to be sure, increasing­ly became the order of the day.  The Rightward Imperative continued to oper­ate. 

     Political violence was to be intensified by the formal estab­lishment in 2009 of the force known as the Helms­men.  This was part of the cam­paign to promote and enforce the Proclamation of Right (see the next chap­ter).  An important prototype for the Helmsmen was the Ger­man Nazi dicta­tor Adolf Hitler's Sturmabteilung (SA), the Storm Troopers.  The SA was a private army of thugs used primarily to ter­ror­ize the center and left opposition before Hitler's offi­cial takeover of the Ger­man govern­ment in 1933. 

     Preparing the way for the formation of the Helms­men, a number of the groups that Hague welcomed into the official American Christian Nation Party at the time of its founding had armed wings.  While unco­ordinated to be sure, for the R‑CA in its later stages and the ACNP in its early one they generally served the purpose that the SA had for Hit­ler in pre‑Nazi Germany.  Faced with increasing although unfocussed resistance, the Hagueites needed armed support for repressive purposes.  By officially recognizing and indeed embracing them, the successors of the old Republican Party were just continuing at a different level the Rightward Imperative it had experienced for the previous three decades. 

An Alex Poughton letter 

December 31, 2008
 

Dear Karl,
 

    You may recall that I wrote to you just four years ago this date, com­menting on Hague's First Inaugural.  I don't know which ad­dress, the first or the second, will be considered more depressing by future histori­ans.  But I am depressed enough think­ing that this poor benighted coun­try has another four years of this guy to en­dure. [Author's Note: Poughton had no way of knowing that the country would have coming many more than four more years of Hague.]

 

    The formation of this new "American Christian Nation Party” comes as something of a shock, although I suppose using the retrospectroscope you could have seen it coming.  The good news?  Hague straddled on the "Christian Nation" issue itself. The bad news?  The official welcom­ing into the party of the goon elements that have been unofficially been providing Hague and his men with street‑muscle for a few years now.

 

     The worst news, I suppose, is that Hague had to form the party at all.  He wouldn't have done it if things had been going well here.  No­tice­able by its absence in his speech is any consideration of the myriad current problems this country faces.  Noticeable also by its absence is any presentation, even in the most general terms, of policies he intends to follow to try to deal with them.  And he's got to have something in mind, because everything ma­jor they've tried so far, each of course supposed to "solve the problem" and "set the country on the right track" hasn't worked.  (He could have talked about that too, but somehow I don't think he would have.)

 

     And so, going back with these guys to the 90s, the first Bal­anced Budget Amendment was supposed to do it; then Term Lim­its; then the "Real War on Drugs" (the subject of my very first letter to you); then ending that "burdensome immigration" with the Preserve America Amendment; then getting that "meddle­some" Supreme Court out of the way with Anderson v. Board of Education; then putting into the Consti­tution the definition of "when life begins," what can and cannot be taught to kids about sex, a full legal sanction for homophobia, and out­lawing freedom of choice in the outcome of pregnancy; then ending any form of "welfare;" then repealing the income tax, having another go at trying to get to a balanced budget by amending the Constitution, making any tax increases virtually impossible, and ensconcing the line‑item veto; then giving the President decree powers (which he has yet to use) and ending the Constitutional prohibition on un­rea­sonable search and seizure (that one, I hear, is being widely used—but even there, to deal with the apparently rising unrest, they have been rumored to be making use of these unofficial "militias"); then making the "Law of God" su­preme, and finally Constitutionally putting God "back in the schools" (although he, or she, has firmly been there since Anderson v. Board of Educa­tion).

 

     And of course, nothing "did it" because none of these policies ad­dressed any of the underlying problems of this country, that I wrote to you about earlier this year during the election campaign.  (And ah yes, the election campaign.  The Democrats still didn't get it.  They still haven't learned that "me too" doesn't work.  And the real left?  "Oy," as my Jewish friends are wont to say.)

 

     So anyway, Hague needed some new distraction, and the for­mation of the ACNP is it.  We'll see what comes next, but I can­not imagine it will be anything good.  At the rate he's going, it could be a full‑blown po­lice state.

 

    Well, enough gloom and doom for now. 

                                                  Your friend, Alex 

Addendum:  This is from an article by the British historian Eric Hobsbawm, who as a student was living in Berlin at the time of the Nazi takeover on January 30, 1993.  It appeared in The London Review of Books on Jan. 24, 2008. 

“This [1933, before the takeover] was the last time Germany was at the centre of modernity and Western thought. It might have held out better if the Weimar Republic had been followed not by Hitler’s wrecking crew but by a more traditional reactionary government. Yet in retrospect this option was as unreal as was the prospect of stopping Hitler’s rise by a comprehensive anti-Fascist union. The fact is that no one, right, left or centre, got the true measure of Hitler’s National Socialism, a movement of a kind that had not been seen before and whose aims were rationally unimaginable. Not even his intended victims fully recognised the danger. After the summer election of 1932 which left the Nazis as much the largest party, but short of a majority, the (Jewish) editor of the Tagebuch, a left-liberal weekly we took at home, published an article whose headline struck me even then as suicidal. I still see it before me: ‘Lasst ihn heran!’ (‘Why not let him in!’) A few months later, with very different intentions, the reactionaries around the aged President Hindenburg manoeuvred Hitler into office thinking that he could be controlled. . . .

“Moments when one knows history has changed are rare, but this was one of them. That is why I can still see myself walking home from school with my sister on the cold afternoon of 30 January 1933, reflecting on what the news of Hitler’s appointment as chancellor meant. A few days later someone brought the duplicating machine of the SSB, my Communist schools organisation, to store under my bed. They thought it would be safer in the flat of a foreigner. But from now on nowhere was safe. Still, it was a strange and wonderful time in which to discover oneself and the world in a Berlin that looked like the potential capital of the 20th century, until the barbarians took over. When I go there today, I still feel it has never recovered from 1933.”

Comment: At least the German people had an excuse.  What was about to happen to them at the hands of a vocal and violent minority had never happened before (the Italian and Hungarian experiences with Fascism in the 1920s being rather different).  We, the citizens of the United States, have been warned by history.  If it does happen here, that excuse we will not have.

The references for this whole chapter are available on request to: sjtpj@aol.com

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