Journal cyranoVR's Journal: CHRIS HEDGES: AMERICA'S HOLY WARRIORS 5

If the United States falls into a period of instability caused by another catastrophic terrorist attack, an economic meltdown or a series of environmental disasters, these paramilitary forces, protected and assisted by fellow ideologues in the police and military, could swiftly abolish what is left of our eroding democracy. War, with the huge profits it hands to businesses and right-wing interests that often help bankroll the Christian right, could become a permanent condition. And the thugs with automatic weapons, black uniforms and wraparound sunglasses who appeared on street corners in Baghdad and New Orleans could appear on streets across the U.S. Such a presence could paralyze us with fear, leaving us unable to question or protest the closed system and secrecy of an emergent totalitarian state and unable to voice dissent.
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ALSO BY CHRIS HEDGES: THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT AND THE RISE OF AMERICAN FASCISM
Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, told us that when we were his age, he was then close to 80, we would all be fighting the "Christian fascists."

The warning, given to me 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global, Christian empire. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible.
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WATCH ON C-SPAN BOOKTV
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America
from February 4, 2007

In "American Fascists," former New York Times foreign correspondent and Harvard Divinity School graduate Chris Hedges warns that the Christian Right is threatening a tolerant, free American society. Hedges describes what he considers to be the movement's ideological ancestors - the Italian and German fascist movements of the early 20th century - and also argues that contemporary "American Fascism" manifests itself in militant, sexist, and homophobic behaviors and policies.