Reading Time: 5 minutes Christian nationalism is an idea that is becoming a growing specter in the political landscape around the world. Does Christianity in general, or certain manifestations of it, have characteristics of fascism? Now, please understand that I am not labeling all Christians as fascists. Instead, I am comparing the structure of the Christian church and its […]
fascism
Posted inDeep Dive
2022: The year in global review, Part II
Reading Time: 9 minutes Our exercise in the folly of year-end lists continues! In Part I of this global review for 2022, three key themes emerged from this year’s major news events. The first was “Europe on fire”, and the implications of energy infrastructure policy for the environment and future imperialist tyranny. The second dealt with the collapse of […]
Posted inMyth & Folklore
The myth of the lost golden age
Reading Time: 5 minutes In the service of recapturing a mythical perfect past, humans have committed the most terrible evils.
Posted inPolitics
From Hitler to Trump, strongmen’s lies have devastated the world
Reading Time: 3 minutes At the risk of exaggerating a connection to today’s American political environment, bald-faced lies disingenuously and persistently applied over time destroyed Germany’s pre-World War II Weimar Republic. The lies were spread by the racist Nazi Party’s fascist leader, Adolf Hitler, in a cynical and diabolical propaganda campaign inflicted on the German people during years of […]
Posted inPolitics
Resisting the new F-word
Reading Time: 4 minutes There is a South Park episode in which the kids use an “f-word” to mock a bunch of obnoxious bikers. The word is obviously offensive, which is why the kids use it. A violent struggle erupts. In the end, the bikers embrace the epithet and admit that they are f@gs. But at that point, the […]
Posted inLaw
A 2002 gang rape in India is still revealing worlds of injustice
Reading Time: 8 minutes Christopher Hitchens was once asked to defend atheism from the charge of hopelessness, by a Christian who found comfort in the idea of a god who would remedy all earthly injustice after death. In answer, Hitchens spoke of Elisabeth Fritzl, who spent 24 years as her father’s captive, sexually abused and birthing children also trapped […]
Posted inReligion
Fascism in India: The weaponization of religious custom
Reading Time: 8 minutes Where I live, Navidad and Semana Santa are significant religious affairs, times when the hustle and bustle of city life eases for a month and a week respectively: to observe Catholic customs, to be with family, or simply to travel to nearby towns and farms. One side effect, though, is the impact of reduced foot […]
Posted inPolitics
Fascism in India: The global turn toward nationalist politics
Reading Time: 9 minutes Although I never needed to “deconvert” from a religious tradition, I was fascinated by New Atheism’s debate circuits at the turn of the century: The eloquence of its speeches. All those witty rejoinders. The rallying of knowledge from a range of disciplines to out-fact an opponent. It was easy to fall prey to the idea […]
Posted inHistory
Fascism in India: Who’s ‘in charge’ of 1.4 billion?
Reading Time: 9 minutes There’s something fascinating, if also disturbing, about Western incuriosity around the world’s largest democracy. 1.4 billion of our world’s 7.8 live in India, a country a third the size of the US, which has under a quarter of India’s population. How can the fortunes of so many mean so little? Nevertheless, India exists in the […]
Posted inPolitics
The GOP Sustained Assault on Democracy
Reading Time: 11 minutes There are some really terrible moves being made by the GOP at all levels of politics in the US. This has arguably been going on for decades, but most pointedly so since Trump’s election in 2016. There is a very good case to suggest that the GOP is following the Viktor Orban playbook in Hungary. […]