SA people with posters of the "German Christians" Berlin, July 1933. On 14 July 1933, Hitler's government approves the new Evangelist church.

Nazi Leaders, Theism, and Family Values

According to standard biographies, the principal Nazi leaders were all born, baptized, and raised Christian. Most grew up in strict, pious households where tolerance and democratic values were disparaged. Nazi leaders of Catholic background included Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and Joseph Goebbels.

Hitler did well in monastery school. He sang in the choir, found High Mass and other ceremonies intoxicating, and idolized priests. Impressed by their power, he at one time considered entering the priesthood.

Rudolf Hoess, who as commandant at Auschwitz-Birkinau pioneered the use of the Zyklon-B gas that killed half of all Holocaust victims, had strict Catholic parents. Hermann Goering had mixed Catholic-Protestant parentage, while Rudolf Hess, Martin Bormann, Albert Speer, and Adolf Eichmann had Protestant backgrounds. Not one of the top Nazi leaders was raised in a liberal or atheistic family—no doubt, the parents of any of them would have found such views scandalous. Traditionalists would never think to deprive their offspring of the faith-based moral foundations that they would need to grow into ethical adults.

So much for the Nazi leaders’ religious backgrounds. Assessing their religious views as adults is more difficult. On ancillary issues such as religion, Party doctrine was a deliberate tangle of contradictions.16 For Hitler consistency mattered less than having a statement at hand for any situation that might arise. History records many things that Hitler wrote or said about religion, but they too are sometimes contradictory. Many were crafted for a particular audience or moment and have limited value for illuminating Hitler’s true opinion; in any case, neither Hitler nor any other key Nazi leader was a trained theologian with carefully thought-out views.

Accuracy of transcription is another concern. Hitler’s public speeches were recorded reliably, but were often propagandistic. His private statements seem more likely to reflect his actual views, but their reliability varies widely.17 The passages Christian apologists cite most often to prove Hitler’s atheism are of questionable accuracy. Apologists often brandish them without noting historians’ reservations. Hitler’s personal library has been partly preserved, and a good deal is known about his reading habits, another possible window onto Hitler’s beliefs.18 Also important, and often ignored by apologists, are statements made by religious figures of the time, who generally—at least for public consumption—viewed Hitler as a Christian and a Catholic in good standing. Meanwhile, the silent testimony of photographs is irrefutable, much as apologists struggle to evade this damning visual evidence.

Despite these difficulties, enough is known to build a reasonable picture of what Hitler and other top Nazis believed.

Hitler was a Christian, but his Christ was no Jew. In his youth he dabbled with occult thinking but never became a devotee. As a young man he grew increasingly bohemian and stopped attending church. Initially no more anti-Semitic than the norm, in the years before the Great War he fell under the anti-Semitic influence of the Volkish Christian Social Party and other Aryan movements. After Germany’s stunning defeat and the ruinous terms of peace, Hitler became a full-blown Aryanist and anti-Semite. He grew obsessed with racial issues, which he unfailingly embedded in a religious context.

Apologists often suggest that Hitler did not hold a traditional belief in God because he believed that he was God. True, Hitler thought himself God’s chosen leader for the Aryan race. But he never claimed to be divine, and never presented himself in that manner to his followers. Members of the Wehrmacht swore this loyalty oath: “I swear by God this holy oath to the Fuhrer of the German Reich and the German people, Adolf Hitler.” For Schutzstaffel (S.S.) members it was: “I pledge to you, Adolf Hitler, my obedience unto death, so help me God.”

Hitler repeatedly thanked God or Providence for his survival on the western front during the Great War, his safe escape from multiple assassination attempts, his seemingly miraculous rise from homelessness to influence and power, and his amazing international successes. He never tired of proclaiming that all of this was beyond the power of any mere mortal. Later in the war, Hitler portrayed German defeats as part of an epic test: God would reward his true chosen people with the final victory they deserved so long as they never gave up the struggle.

Reich iconography, too, reveals that Nazism never cut its ties to Christianity. The markings of Luftwaffe aircraft comprised just two swastikas—and six crosses. Likewise the Kreigsmarine (German Navy) flag combined the symbols. Hitler participated in public prayers and religious services at which the swastika and the cross were displayed together.

Hitler openly admired Martin Luther, whom he considered a brilliant reformer.19 Yet he said in several private conversations that he considered himself a Catholic. He said publicly on several occasions that Christ was his savior. As late as 1944, planning the last-ditch offensive the world would know as the Battle of the Bulge, he code-named it “Operation Christrose.”

Among his Nazi cronies Hitler criticized the established churches harshly and often. Some of these alleged statements must be treated with skepticism,20 but clearly he viewed the traditional Christian faiths as weak and contaminated by Judaism. Still, there is no warrant for the claim that he became anti-Christian or antireligious after coming to power. No reliably attributed quote reveals Hitler to be an atheist or in any way sympathetic to atheism. On the contrary, he often condemned atheism, as he did Christians who collaborated with such atheistic forces as Bolshevism. He consistently denied that the state could replace faith and instructed Speer to include churches in his beloved plans for a rebuilt Berlin. The Nazi-era constitution explicitly evoked God. Calculating that his victories over Europe and Bolshevism would make him so popular that people would be willing to abandon their traditional faiths, Hitler entertained plans to replace Protestantism and Catholicism with a reformed Christian church that would include all Aryans while removing foreign (Rome-based) influence. German Protestants had already rejected a more modest effort along these lines, as will be seen below. How Germans as a whole would have received this reform after a Nazi victory is open to question. In any case, Hitler saw himself as Christianity’s ultimate reformer, not its dedicated enemy.

Hitler was a complex figure, but based on the available evidence we can conclude our inquiry into his personal religious convictions by describing him as an Aryan Volkist Christian who had deep Catholic roots, strongly influenced by Protestantism, touched by strands of neopaganism and Darwinism, and minimally influenced by the occult. Though Hitler pontificated about God and religion at great length, he considered politics more important than religion as the means to achieve his agenda.

None of the leaders immediately beneath Hitler was a pious traditional Christian. But there is no compelling evidence that any top Nazi was nontheistic. Any so accused denied the charge with vehemence.

Reich-Fuhrer Himmler regularly attended Catholic services until he lurched into an increasingly bizarre Aryanism. He authorized searches for the Holy Grail and other supposedly powerful Christian and Cathar relics. A believer in reincarnation, he sent expeditions to Tibet and the American tropics in search of the original Aryans and even Atlantians. He and Heydrich modeled the S.S. after the disciplined and secretive Jesuits; it would not accept atheists as members.21 Goering, least ideological among top Nazis, sometimes endorsed both Protestant and Catholic traditions. On other occasions he criticized them. Goebbels turned against Catholicism in favor of a reformed Aryan faith; both his and Goering’s children were baptized. Bormann was stridently opposed to contemporary organized Christianity; he was a leader of the Church Struggle, the inconsistently applied Nazi campaign to oppose the influence of established churches.22

The Nazis championed traditional family values: their ideology was conservative, bourgeois, patriarchal, and strongly antifeminist. Discipline and conformity were emphasized, marriage promoted, abortion and homosexuality despised.23 Traditionalism also dominated Nazi philosophy, such as it was. Though science and technology were lauded, the overall thrust opposed the Enlightenment, modernism, intellectualism, and rationality.It is hard to imagine how a movement with that agenda could have been friendly toward atheism, and the Nazis were not. Volkism was inherently hostile toward atheism: freethinkers clashed frequently with Nazis in the late 1920s and early 1930s. On taking power, Hitler banned freethought organizations and launched an “anti-godless” movement. In a 1933 speech he declared: “We have . . . undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.”This forthright hostility was far more straightforward than the Nazis’ complex, often contradictory stance toward traditional Christian faith.

Christian Fascists Attack Mainstream Churches

Along with their assaults on science, education, art, the judiciary, and every other institution, the Christian Fascists have another target: the churches which disagree with them.

Yes, the Christian Fascists have a systematic plan to seize control of what are called the "mainline" Protestant churches, as well as the National Council of Churches, and to transform them into fascist strongholds. These churches have had a mainstream liberal character for decades, and have been the churches of what used to be called the "establishment"--the elite and upper middle classes of most of the 20th century.

The takeover of these institutions is a very strategic part of the chess game the Christian Fascists are playing; this is a further effort to remove any platform in society from which any dissent at all against the new order can be mounted. In addition, the Christian Fascists derive their claim to legitimacy from their insistence that they represent "Gods word," morality, and people of faith; this makes it all the more pressing for these fascists to undercut, destroy and finally suppress voices from the pulpit that counter that claim.

The Attack Dogs of the Institute for Religion and Democracy

The move to split and take over the mainline churches has been orchestrated by the Institute of Religion and Democracy (IRD). IRD has focused its attack on the United Methodist Church (UMC), Presbyterian Church, USA, and the Episcopal Church. The IRD Executive Summary for 2000 identified these churches as the "bulwark of the Religious Left" and goes on to say that "while comprising only 10% of the organized religious forces in the U.S., [these mainline churches] have exerted a powerful influence in American life throughout the 20th Century, with a disproportionate number of higher income and educated Americans...They have billions of dollars in endowments. They are affiliated with hundreds of colleges, universities, seminaries, academies and charitable outreach centers." The IRD report reads like a corporate hostile takeover strategy and, in fact, that is the intention of the IRD.

The tactics the IRD uses are remarkably similar to those of David Horowitz's right-wing attack dogs against progressive professors in academia. They recruit and train spies and snitches to go to lectures and conferences of liberal clergy and theologians, and to "write them up" in resolutions exposing "misguided church activity and calls for church reform." Then they distribute publications with these accusations about the clergy and leaders directly to the membership of the denomination. These witchhunts target "liberal bishops who decline to uphold church law, especially on issues relating to marriage and sexuality." The IRD offers training and counseling to church members who want to bring charges against clergy.

They have set out to take over leadership positions, especially national policy-setting posts. They proudly admit that they targetted and won a reapportionment of delegates to the Methodist General Conferences so that what they call "declining (and liberal) regions of the church will receive fewer delegates, and growing (and more conservative) regions will receive more." They have also taken aim at the leadership of seminaries and key church agencies that they consider too liberal and replaced them with conservatives.

Besides going after the progressive mainline denominations, the IRD has targetted the National Council of Churches (NCC) and World Council of Churches. The IRD recently went after Bob Edgar, the general secretary of the NCC, for his "strident political advocacy." For the Christian Fascists to oppose "strident political advocacy" is the height of hypocrisy; what they actually oppose is the CONTENT of the NCCs activism. The NCC has come out against the war in Iraq, against U.S. government torture, for the Kyoto global climate accords, for raising the minimum wage, against the Patriot Act, and against the religious right. The IRD also aims to change the NCC program into one that would advocate cutting federal government social welfare programs and replacing them with church-sponsored, private charities. This is part of the Christian Fascist program to institute government-sponsored faith-based programs with mandatory religious indoctrination that blames the people for their poverty and oppression ("God must have done this to you because of your sin").

In short, the IRD is carrying out a coordinated drive to reverse church positions on key issues and bring them into line with the hateful morality of the Christian Fascists and the political program of the Bush regime. The aim to subjugate women under Biblical patriarchy by preventing women from controlling decisions on reproduction and sexuality. Their answer to teen pregnancy and sexuality is abstinence. They are, of course, opposed to abortion and do "exposures" of key mainline leaders and organizations and their funding agencies that support the right to abortion. They are actively promoting a "marriage initiative" that would cut off welfare and force people to marry as the solution to poverty for poor women and children.

They have fought to bar clergy from performing marriage ceremonies for gays and "legitimizing sexual expression outside of heterosexual marriage." And in a chilling self-exposure of what they really stand for, the IRD opposes the demand for laws against hate crimes, especially for hate crimes against gays.

The High Stakes

The Christian Fascists insist that to reverse what they see as the "moral downfall" of American society a radical remaking must take place where orthodox religion dominates the society and reinstates the concept of "sin" and God's wrath for sinners. This is the theology that led various major Christian fascist spokesmen to declare that the attacks of September 11, 2001 reflected gods anger at feminists, liberals and gays; or that Hurricane Katrina was god's punishment for the supposed "moral degeneracy" of New Orleans. The IRD aims to make that message uniform throughout the Protestant denominations in the U.S.

As communists, we do not believe in gods, whether literal or metaphorical. Such gods are not real, and belief in them ultimately stands in the way of people figuring out how, by relying on themselves, they can bring in a world without exploitation and oppression (and without, therefore, the "need" for the consolation provided by religion). At the same time, we can and certainly do unite with religious people in various struggles today, appreciating their contributions and insights, and struggling with each other over these questions as we unite for larger ends.

And we also understand very clearly the stakes involved with this Christian Fascist strategy to take over and/or destroy these churches. These are not arcane debates over obscure details of Church doctrine. If the fascists succeed in silencing and eliminating the progressive religious voice and replacing it with the cruel fundamentalist theocratic program, they will transform the organized strength of these churches to serve their deadly fascist cause. And this is integral to their whole strategy, both because of the institutional power of these churches and because they provide a voice that undercuts the Christian Fascists particular claim on legitimacy. The attempts by the Christian fascists to take over these churches and turn them into battering rams for theocracy are part of a strategy to clamp fascist culture and thinking on people in every sphere. They must be recognized as such and opposed by all progressive people.

Here again, we find the example of Martin Niemoller--the German Protestant minister who resisted the Nazis--to be extremely relevant. Hitler too, at a certain stage, moved to dominate the churches of Germany, and Niemoller was among those who resisted and ended up serving eight years in Nazi prisons. The problem, Niemoller strongly pointed out at the end of the war, was that the resistance came too little and too late, with each group only fighting when its own narrowly conceived interests came under fire.


That must not happen this time.

14 characteristics common to those fascist regimes.
5.) Rampant Sexism: The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

The Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance

The Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance seeks to defend equal marriage in this state by challenging the Washington Supreme Court’s ruling on Andersen v. King County. This decision, given in July 2006, declared that a “legitimate state interest” allows the Legislature to limit marriage to those couples able to have and raise children together. Because of this “legitimate state interest,” it is permissible to bar same-sex couples from legal marriage.

The way we are challenging Andersen is unusual: using the initiative, we are working to put the Court’s ruling into law. We will do this through three initiatives. The first would make procreation a requirement for legal marriage. The second would prohibit divorce or legal separation when there are children. The third would make the act of having a child together the legal equivalent of a marriage ceremony.

Absurd? Very. But there is a rational basis for this absurdity. By floating the initiatives, we hope to prompt discussion about the many misguided assumptions which make up the Andersen ruling. By getting the initiatives passed, we hope the Supreme Court will strike them down as unconstitutional and thus weaken Andersen itself. And at the very least, it should be good fun to see the social conservatives who have long screamed that marriage exists for the sole purpose of procreation be forced to choke on their own rhetoric.
Initiative 957

If passed by Washington voters, the Defense of Marriage Initiative would:

* add the phrase, “who are capable of having children with one another” to the legal definition of marriage;
* require that couples married in Washington file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage automatically annulled;
* require that couples married out of state file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage classed as “unrecognized;”
* establish a process for filing proof of procreation; and
* make it a criminal act for people in an unrecognized marriage to receive marriage benefits.

Life comes from God and returns to God. All life and all races follow God's ordinances. No people and no race can ignore them. We want the German youth to again recognize the religious nature of life. They must realize that God wants the individual as well as the whole people, and that they lose contact with life when they lose contact with God! God and nation are the two foundations of the life of the individual and the community. We want no shallow and superficial piety, rather a deep faith that God guides the world, that he controls it, and a consciousness of the relationship between God and each individual, and between God and the live of the people and the fatherland. The National Socialist state will promote such a deeply religious educational system. We want parents to support and strengthen this by honesty and by good example.

CHRIS HEDGES: These are -- you know, they’re not -- we use terms like “evangelical” and “fundamentalist” to describe them, and I think that those are incorrect terms. Traditional fundamentalists always called on believers to remove themselves from the contaminants of secular society, shun involvement in politics. Evangelical leaders like Billy Graham's always warned followers to keep their distance from political power. He, of course, was burned by Richard Nixon, came to Nixon’s defense and then when it publicly came out that Nixon lied, it taught a lesson to Graham.
Democracy Now interview

On April 29, 1985, Billy Graham, the respected and world famous evangelist, told Pat Robertson’s audience on the 700 Club show that:

“[T]he time has come when evangelicals are going to have to think about getting organized corporately….I’m for evangelicals running for public office and winning if possible and getting control of the Congress, getting control of the bureaucracy, getting control of the executive branch of government. I think if we leave it to the other side we’re going to be lost. I would like to see every true believer involved in politics in some way shape or form.”
The Despoiling of America - By Katherine Yurica

Haldeman's own diaries briefly noted the unseemly conversation. He wrote that there was discussion "of the terrible problem arising from the total Jewish domination of the media, and agreement that this was something that would have to be dealt with."

He continues, "Graham has the strong feeling that the Bible says there are satanic Jews and there's where our problem arises." No such comments about the Bible are found on the tape released Thursday but, since it contains several long deletions, it's believed such remarks were excised.
The lengthy chat opens with Graham praising Nixon's prayer breakfast remarks. "There were a lot of people in tears when you finished this morning and it's very moving. That's the best I've heard you at one of those breakfast things."

After offering Nixon tips on preparing himself for big speeches, as well as strategy for his re-election campaign, Graham notes that he's just been invited to lunch with editors of Time magazine. "I was quite amazed since this is the first time I've heard from Time since (Time founder) Henry Luce died."

"You meet with all their editors, you better take your Jewish beanie," says Haldeman.

Graham laughs. "Is that right? I don't know any of them now."
Nixon, Billy Graham make derogatory comments about Jews on tapes

God's Warriors and the homegrown 'Battle Cry'
by Pam Spaulding · 8/18/2007
Video of Christofascist Rally
CNN's upcoming Christiane Amanpour documentary on religious extremism in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, "God's Warriors," airs starting on Tuesday. Right here in the U.S. we have an example of one of those warriors, Ron Luce, whose call to action to retake America from the "virtue terrorists" (gays, pro-choice supporters, etc.) is "Battle Cry," a youth crusade that Amanpour visits at its stop in San Francisco.


Luce screams intolerance cloaked in nifty pyrotechnics, Christian rock music, and big-screen graphics to the teen-packed venue. The evils of secular society and pop culture have forced him to tell his young charges to be ready and "armed with faith, prepared for battle." Luce talks about "virgins being raped on the sidewalks."

Rolling Stone did a piece on Luce and his movement back in April, "Teenage Holy War."

They rise, heartened; the crowd, en masse, swears off "harlots and adultery"; the twenty-one-year-old MC twitches taut a chain across the ass of her skintight red jeans and summons the followers to show off their best dance moves for God.

Someone please tell me how delusional (or cravenly manipulative) do you have to be to put on a show this outrageous:

[T]hese 4,000 teens are about to become "branded by God." It's like getting your head shaved when you join the Marines, Luce says, only the kids get to keep their hair. His assistants roll out a cowhide draped over a sawhorse, and Luce presses red-hot iron into the dead flesh, projecting a close-up of sizzling cow skin on giant movie screens above the stage.

"When you enlist in the military, there's a code of honor," Luce preaches, "same as being a follower of Christ." His Christian code requires a "wartime mentality": a "survival orientation" and a readiness to face "real enemies." The queers and communists, feminists and Muslims, to be sure, but also the entire American cultural apparatus of marketing and merchandising, the "techno-terrorists" of mass media, doing to the morality of a generation what Osama bin Laden did to the Twin Towers. "Just as the events of September 11th, 2001, permanently changed our perspective on the world," Luce writes, "so we ought to be awakened to the alarming influence of today's culture terrorists. They are wealthy, they are smart, and they are real."

Even as he tells kids to swear off pop culture, Luce doesn't swear off capitalism, cashing in for Jesus by making money selling Battle Cry books, t-shirts, and videos.

When you have cult of personality BS going at this level, you know the power over these kids has likely gone to Luce's head. At this rate, how long will it be before he's caught with a hooker, or at a rest stop blowing some guy, or, heaven forbid, molesting an underage kid? It's only a matter of time with folks like this if the current trend holds.

Yesterday and Today: Nazis and the Righteous Right
by Donna Glee Williams
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0502-33.htm

History is tapping us on the shoulder and pointing. The sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz followed so closely by the popification of an ex-member of the Hitler Youth combine to force our attention back to the Nazi catastrophe. We study World War II and the Holocaust and ask ourselves “How could it happen? How could civilized people let it come to this? How could they consent to let their flag become the registered trademark for collective evil and let their country walk into history with the blood of millions on its conscience?” We shake our heads and turn away from the questions because our historical gaze is dazzled by the enormity of what happened in the 1940’s. “Never again!” we say with tears in our eyes.
But if we truly want some calamity to happen Never Again, we won’t just study that calamity. We’ll study what went before. We’ll study its precursors. What allowed, invited, or caused it to happen? Who were catastrophe’s midwives? If we learn to recognize them, there is hope that we can turn them away when they again show up, smiley-faced, at our door. Before World War II and the Holocaust, there was Germany of the 1920’s and ‘30’s. That’s where we need to focus our cross-generational telescopes.

If we take a look at pre-WWII Germany, we notice it has some things in common with the United States now. Start with the concept of exceptionality. Nazi ideology grew out of Germans’ belief that their country was uniquely privileged because it was uniquely valuable. This made them an exception to rules and norms. The average “Proud to Be an American” bumper-sticker-buyer believes the same thing. (I’m still waiting for some churchgoing patriot to notice that being born American is a gift of grace and to begin marketing “Humble to be an American” decals.) A belief in your country’s exceptionality takes you way out beyond the warm self-appreciation of patriotism; in naming your heritage “exceptional,” you cut your ties to the family of nations and set yourself above the rules. Our belief in our own exceptionality erodes the walls that hold back human greed, fear of otherness, and violence. Exceptionality makes the unthinkable possible, even reasonable.

Before the Nazi rise to power, German society bloomed with cultural, artistic, and social openness, as did the United States in the last third of the twentieth century. The dominant culture enriched itself by cross-pollinating with other groups. Creativity, innovation, and freedom held sway in art, music, drama, and dance. In lifestyle choices, openness and experimentation were possible.

A part of this bubbling cultural ferment was caused by physics. We think of physics as an esoteric branch of science that is of interest only to the The Few, The Proud, The Geeks whose quirky neuroanatomy makes them able to emote in equations. But where physics goes, culture follows. The big metaphors in all areas are based on the physics of our time. And both Nazi Germany and the American Whatever-the-Hell-You-Call-What-We-Are-Becoming were preceded by advances in physics that announced reality to be much different from what we’d always assumed it to be. In the early part of the twentieth century, Einstein’s and Heisenberg’s physics of relativity and uncertainty—largely centered in German universities—proclaimed that some of our most fundamental understandings about the universe were Wrong, Wrong, Wrong. As quantum mechanics and the new cosmology developed in the later part of the twentieth century—largely centered in U.S. universities—their outrageous paradoxical observations once again taught the lesson that common sense isn’t always right. Things aren’t always—or ever—the way they seem.

In physics as in lifestyle and the arts, Germany and the United States both saw a great questioning of old values, limits, and presuppositions of all kinds—followed by an iron backswing of the pendulum rushing to shut down all the openness, answer all the questions, replace uncertainty with certainty, and relativism with absolutes. Does our anxiety in the face of uncertainty and relativity drive us to cook up fake certainties, like which language is better, who is going to Hell, who must live, and who should die? Did Germany, and will the United States, overcompensate for being uncertain like Napoleon did for being short?

Another family resemblance between Germany of the ‘20’s and ‘30’s and the Righteous Right of today is the feeling that somebody done us wrong. For Germany, the sense of being aggrieved was related to the famously vindictive Treaty of Versailles that settled the overt hostilities of World War I but left Germans with smoldering bitterness against what they saw as injustice and injury. The core resentment that energizes the swing toward right-wing “Christian” totalitarianism is the confusing, painful panic at seeing The Way and The Truth become one of many ways and many truths. As one pulpiteer expressed it, “having our culture become a subculture” is felt as a wound, an assault. On September 11th, the cultural assault on our inner landscape then manifested as a physical attack on our outer landscape, echoing the unsolved burning of the Reichstag building in 1933. Then, as now, terrorism coupled with an effective propaganda machine helped those in power to bring the country together while separating it from its civil rights. Once we feel ourselves to be under attack, are there any limits to what we will permit in the name of “self-defense?”

The backlash against openness and uncertainty, together with perceived national victimization, led Germany to begin to pick off voices of dissent in its own house. Some of these were political. Some were religious. German Christian churches were systematically nazified. The governing boards of seminaries were taken over seat by seat. Seminary faculties were pruned of opposition, guaranteeing that the pulpits of Germany would spout preaching that supported the Nazi agenda. The prophetic voice of the church was silenced. The systematic right-wing takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, board by board, professor by professor, pulpit by pulpit, is so eerily similar that it could be an echo of the same shout.

And then there were the Jews. For historical reasons, the Nazi party had, ready to hand, a tiny subgroup of people that they could call “evil” and have that name stick. Once the “evil” was identified, people projected onto the Jews every disowned trait they hated in themselves. Enormous energy was mobilized to oppress, exile, and destroy the theoretically contagious corruption of Jewishness. The righteousness of the cause was “proved” by the visceral disgust the oppressors felt towards the oppressed. Hatred kept the dominant group bonded, energized, focused, and easy to manipulate. Today, similar rhetoric is mobilizing hatred for another tiny minority, homosexuals, who are similarly represented as undermining the entire fabric of American life and values. In the same way, appeals to disgust as a moral arbiter “prove” the validity of the argument. Incidents of violence against gays remind us of the spotty street violence against Jews that came before the systematic, state-sponsored violence of the Holocaust.

They say that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat trite sayings. But when history lands a big one-two punch like “Happy Birthday, Auschwitz Survivors, Now Guess Who’s Pope?” the teacher gets our attention. And what we notice are a lot of parallels between the Nazi rise to power 80 years ago and the “Christian” right-wing rise to power today. Do we keep our wide-eyed mystification—“How could they have done those things?”—or do we do what Germans failed to do, what we revile them for not doing: Do we recognize the road we’re on, wrestle the steering wheel away from the mad bus-driver, and stop the bus before we get to the last stop, the town of Ultimate Consequences, Pop. 11 Million?

Donna Glee Williams is the Director of the Holocaust Education Program at the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching and a free-lance writer. In 2005, NC Governor Mike Easley appointed her to the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust. She is also a registered nurse.