A Christian Response to Fascism, Part 2 of 16
Fascism is notorious for being hard to define. No two fascist regimes are alike — they deomonstrate the particularities of their time and place. But scholars of tyranny agree on a number of characteristics that manifest in most fascist governments, and it’s these I want to address throughout the blog series.
To start us out, I’m going to concentrate on an early warning sign appearing in the rhetoric of all fascist leaders: nostalgia for an idyllic national past that the leader views as having been ruined.
Yale Professor Jason Stanley describes this dynamic in his book, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them:
Fascist politics involves a pure mythic past tragically destroyed. Depending on how the nation is defined, the mythic past may be religiously pure, racially pure, culturally pure, or all of the above. But there is a common structure to all fascist mythologizing. In all fascist mythic pasts, an extreme version of the patriarchal family reigns supreme, even just a few generations ago … In the rhetoric of extreme nationalists, such a glorious past has been lost by the humiliation brought on by globalism, liberal cosmopolitanism, and respect for “universal values” such as equality … These myths are generally based on fantasies of a non-existent past uniformity, which survies in the traditions of the small towns and countrysides that remain relatively unpolluted by the liberal decadence of the cities.
Fritz Stern writes extensively about this dynamic in 19th and 20th century Germany in The Politics of Cultural Despair.
What’s striking to me is how this theme of idealizing an imagined pristine past parallels the traditional reading of the Christian origin story in Genesis 1–3. Since Augustine of Hippo, many Christians read the beginning of Scripture as describing a literal glorious, perfect past that was destroyed by the disobedience of humans. In this telling, the woman, Eve, is especially at fault for ruining Paradise, since she fell for the snake’s tempting offer to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. She then gave the fruit to Adam, leading to his destruction as well.
Conservative Christians often talk about the Garden of Eden as a “blueprint” for perfection — a design for God’s creation that we humans messed up. As part of our collective punishment, Genesis chapter 3 outlines the penalties God doled out: the man will have to work harder to provide food, and the woman will painfully bear children and look to her husband, who will “rule over” her. Hence, in the most traditional of Christian communities, men are breadwinners and women are homemakers, with men serving as leaders in all segments of life. These Christians might say that the longing for what was drives the longing for what will one day be, when all is put to rights once again at the second coming of the messiah. And that we humans can be part of helping put things right in the meantime, to greater or lesser degrees.
I can see where a fascist nostalgia for the past resonnates with Christians on a foundational level — we’re primed to subscribe to a story that idealizes a mythical past. If only someone (the woman) hadn’t led us astray and polluted the glory and goodness of the world [sigh] … then the mythical past could still be present. Or, in the case of fascist leaders, if only the [immigrant, gays, people of color, press, and so on] hadn’t led us astray and polluted the glory and goodness of [said nation].
And so, the thinking goes, it will take all of us (us narrowly defined) to regain our former magnificence and purity — but it will especially require a strong messianic leader who can lead us back to the “glory days.”
But what if this traditional reading of the Genesis story is misleading? What if a better reading could help us counter the narratives spun out by authoritarian leaders?
What if the story is more about connection, and disconnection?
Genesis 1–11 is told in the style of epic poetic narrative, meaning that, while some parts of the Bible are written as literal history, this portion is not. It’s poetry. It’s the kind of prose that talks about big picture grand events — it’s in a style that’s less concerned for literal precision than it is for deeper truths.
The Garden of Eden story (chapters 1–2) displays a picture of holistic connection; nothing and no one is in rivalry. The Creator walks among humans and creation, humans live in harmony with said creation (eating only plants, naming animals), and the two humans live in peace with one another. The woman is generated as an equal to the man. She’s not produced from his head, that she would rule over him; she’s not fashioned from his feet, that she should serve him; she’s created from his rib, that male and female should stand side-by-side.
Trouble arises when the humans, at the invitation of the serpent, start to view their Creator as a rival. God asked the humans not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil because it’s not good for them. Only God is capable of fully understanding the difference between good and evil; the humans are not competent to hold such knowledge — they can not be trusted with it. Distinguishing between good and evil allows humans to imagine they can place themselves in God’s shoes — judging others. Jesus clearly instructs us not to judge others.
Do not judge other people. Then you will not be judged. You will be judged in the same way you judge others. You will be measured in the same way you measure others.
“You look at the bit of sawdust in your friend’s eye. But you pay no attention to the piece of wood in your own eye. How can you say to your friend, ‘Let me take the bit of sawdust out of your eye’? How can you say this while there is a piece of wood in your own eye? You pretender! First take the piece of wood out of your own eye. Then you will be able to see clearly to take the bit of sawdust out of your friend’s eye. (Matt. 7:1–5)
So now the humans, having taken from the Tree of the Knolwedge of Good and Evil, feel they can judge others on par with God, placing them in rivalry with the Creator. But the Creator tried to warn them of this weakness — tried to warn them that they couldn’t, in fact, do God’s job. The natural consequence, Creator warned, is that this false belief will lead to the destruction of a non-rivalous connection between all things. It will lead to death. There is the tree of life, which the humans are welcome to choose, and the tree of judgment, deterioration, and death (aka the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil). Humans chose — and oh-so-very-often still choose — the latter. We choose to judgment and disconnection, blame and scapegoating.
The consequences for humanity are awful and widespread, as depicited in the poetic pictures of the human curses (Gen. 3), the flood, and the Tower of Babel. The curses on humans — men working extra hard to provide food, women bearing children and being subservient to men — are not to be codified and lived out. They’re bad things. They’re not how God hoped the world would be in the Christian narrative, so why perpetuate them? The humans were made to live side-by-side, in partnership: adam, the human, and eve, the sustainer of life.
More on patriarchy in the next post, but the main gist of what I’m getting at here is that disruptions in the connections between people, God, and creation are the outcomes of human judgment and rivalry. We humans are in such rivalry with the creation (aka nature) right now that we’re literally destroying the beautiful world we live in. It’s not the “woman disobeying and polluting the pure world” that is the main takeaway, but the “humans placing themselves in rivalry with God, the creation, and each other resulting in massive disconnection, disruption, and death.”
Any fascist mythologizing harkens to a time of purity that some group of people “contaminated.” With the Nazis, it was Jewish people, gay people, differently abled people — anyone who didn’t meet an Aryan ideal; with Trump, it’s immigrants, Muslims, transgender people, people of color, the press, and whomever is the scapegoat of the moment. We American white people in particular need to resist any attraction the narrative of a purer, happier time holds.
“Make America Great Again” is a slogan meant to invoke just such a narrative. I’m married to a woman, so as I told a friend who asked me what was so wrong with the slogan: America’s the best it’s ever been for me. It’s not perfect, but at least I can get married. Why would I want to go back to a time when I couldn’t? Who wants that? Not people of color. They don’t want to go back to a time when Jim Crow permeated the culture. It’s still really hard for people of color in America — the U.S. has always been awful to its non-white citizens. Just ask the indigenous populations. The only people who want to go back to some idealized “pure” time are straight white people — and most especially men.
The Jesus we see in the gospels wasn’t contaminated by people considered ritually impure in his day. Rather he touched them and restored them to community (so that them became us), declaring the purity restrictions unjust. Today when we consider fellow human beings — like Guatemalan immigrants trying to reach the U.S. for asylum — as dangerous contaminates to our way of life, we contradict the Jesus who himself became a refugee, taking asylum in Egypt. The prophetic voices of the Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament) consistently chide the powers that be when the state treats foreigners with contempt.
Rather than coupling our politics and religion with a narrative of former renown and strength, a Jesus path suggests we fasten our faith to a narrative of weakness and the laying down of power. We fasten our faith to a narrative that embraces the down-and-out, the oppressed, the afflicted — be they undocumented, transgender, etc. They are us. We are not the judges of their stories, but a people of divine love, acceptance, healing, and restoration.
To read other posts in this series:
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