fascism is a state of mind

I just watched Hotel Rwanda last night. It is a story of the good inside one person that can be found when faced with evil on all sides. The nightmare of Rwanda, is of course repeating itself in the Sudan as we speak.

I have heard a lot of tough talk from all sides about stopping genocide in Africa, but something I heard on NPR a while back was that Congresspeople felt like nobody really cared about Rwanda, and they weren't willing to do anything about it because they didn't really see the benefit of acting outweighed the cost politically. They reached this conclusion because the volume of correspondence on Rwanda was a torrential trickle. Therefore they suggested that concerned folks should write their Congresspeople and get their friends to do the same. However, the movie went to great pains to demonstrate that a human life is worth far more than just money, or votes, or anything else for that matter.

So, since 180,000 people being butchered in the desert did not seem as significant as 3,000 people being blown up in an office building, I forced myself to readjust my internal calculus. Here is a letter from Amnesty International that I think you should sign. You'll need to sign up as a member, but you do not need to donate anything if you don't want to. However, I could think of worse places to send your tithe.

However, the film also got me thinking about fascism. Now, I'm still working my way through A New Kind of Christian, and I must say that I am very excited that this book is getting attention. I still do think it is a tad pedantic, but extremely thoughtful, and hopefully, evolutionary in the way that we see ourselves as Christians. I intend to post more at length about this.

One of the things that McLaren brings to light—and I don't think that American Evangelicals are very willing to face this obvious truth—is that if there is anyone in the Bible most like us, it is the Pharisees. Now the last time I read the New Testament, it did not paint the most flattering picture of these folks. In fact, I would argue that it showed them as fascists of the mind.

Now, Phil had a great post in which he used the term "Sauron's ring", which I found quite delightful. Of course, the ancient Roman equivalent of this symbol would be the fasces, hence the term, fascista.

My brother has argued that the term "fascist" becomes meaningless if not applied to the early 20th century Italian political philosophy. However, I believe that the term is only meaningful in the context of it's etymology. In fact, if we define "fascism" as "reaching for Sauron's ring," "believing in the power of violence," or, most descriptively, "believing in power as an end unto itself," then I think we have a really useful term to explore the dimensions of the human soul.

For instance, the conflict in Rwanda fits into this paradigm perfectly. The Tutsis were created by the Belgians for the purposes of maintaining their power. When they left with the Hutus in power, the then powerless Tutsis found themselves the subject of reprisals for the abuse of power by the Belgians. The Hutus felt that to make up for their colonial loss of power, they needed to abuse their "Hutu power" over the Tutsi minority.

Now, I could go on ad infinitum picking out parallels in history—revolutions American, French, or Russian; shirts blue, black, or brown; mass murder in Armenia, Cambodia, or Bosnia. However, I would like to make a philosophical move here, and suggest that believing in power as an end unto itself often necessitates a belief that oneself will exercise power in a benevolent, or at least "good" way, and that others would be malevolent or bad in their exercise of power.

Of course, this ethical system has an important consequence. It means that one cannot be self-critical, because oneself is the standard of goodness. Therefore, Socrates would tell us that the life of a fascist (he would say "tyrant") is not worth living. In fact, I would suggest that hypocrisy is fascism. Guilt and shame are what drive fascists to their pursuits. Some say that Hitler was partly Jewish and gypsy, had retarded close relatives, and—although this is probably not true, but when Chris Kattan portrayed it on Saturday Night Live it was hilarious—gay. In fact, it seems like closeted gay Republicans come out of the woodwork every week. These folks can't accept themselves for the imperfect people they are, but demand perfection, not through grace, nor even through works, but by inquisition.

Therefore, our fascist evangelical friends, like my portly onetime U.S. representative from Wheaton may be right about how wrong Bill Clinton was to get a B.J. and then lie about it. However, they are wrong in that they merely see this episode as a means unto an end, to crucify their political opponent to give them whatever greater power this might mean. In fact, just while Henry Hyde was politically stoning his president, it was made quite clear that his "youthful indiscretion" meant that he did not meet Jesus' sole criterion for doing so.

Of course, Jesus can be all too easy to ignore, whether you are a liberal or conservative. However, if Islam means submission and Islamo-fascism means blowing yourself up on a bus, then Christianity means following Christ and Christiano-fascism means not following Christ.