It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, April 06, 2021
Ex-Trump attorney attacks Dem senator as a 'heretic' and MSNBC hosts 'who don’t even pretend to be Christians’
Former Trump campaign and personal attorney Jenna Ellis is under fire for attacking U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) who is also the senior pastor of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s church, as a "heretic." She is also being criticized for attacking two MSNBC hosts "who don't even pretend to be Christians."
Ellis, whose career claim of being a "Constitutional law Attorney" is questioned by experts given her apparent lack of legal experience and having never argued a case before the Supreme Court, had no problem attacking Senator Warnock on Easter.
On Easter Sunday Ellis slammed Warnock for a tweet she called "heresy," which Warnock later deleted.
In it, he talked about how doing good work can help people to save themselves, something the religious right saw as an attack on the Christian church.
But she wasn't satisfied. Ellis continued to attack Warnock as a "heretic," and claims being pro-choice is "against the Bible and moral truth," despite the Bible not opposing abortion, according to some.
Ellis continued her attacks, going after MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan and Joy Reid, after they pushed back on her calling Rev. Warnock a heretic.
Hasan was happy to take on Ellis, who was incapable of grasping the gravity of her heresy attack:
Joy Reid also pushed back against Ellis's attack:
And then Ellis attacked both Hasan and Reid as "Leftists who don't even pretend to be Christians."
Reid's Christian faith is not in question, and Hasan is Muslim. Neither are "pretending." But Ellis' attack is larger than against the MSNBC hosts or "leftists."
The message Ellis is sending, whether she meant to or not, is that in America you have to either be a far right wing Christian or "pretend" to be one – which goes against everything our Founders stood for. She's attacking a person who has talked about his Islamic faith openly as someone who doesn't "even even pretend to be Christian," as if pretending to be Christian is something people should do – or have to do in Ellis' America.
What about people of no religious faith? What about atheists? Agnostics? What about people who are spiritual but not religious? Or people who believe in god, a god, or gods, but no organized religion? Or people of different faiths, like Hasan? What about people of the Jewish faith? Or other faiths?
Last week Gallup reported that "Americans' membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup's eight-decade trend. In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999."
Are they not acceptable to Ellis?
Why does anyone have to "pretend" to be Christian to be acceptable to Ellis and the religious right, many of whom have bastardized the Christian faith, used it as a sword, a shield, and for political advantage while not practicing its most important tenets?
Heresy, theological doctrine or system rejected as false by ecclesiastical authority. The Greek word hairesis (from which heresy is derived) was originally a neutral term that signified merely the holding of a particular set of philosophical opinions. Once appropriated by Christianity, however, the …
Apostasy in Christianity is the rejection of Christianity by someone who formerly was a Christian or who wishes to administratively be removed from a formal registry of church members. The term apostasy comes from the Greek word apostasia ("ἀποστασία") meaning "defection", "departure", "revolt" or "rebellion". It has been described as "a willful falling away from, or rebellion against, Christianity. Apostasy is the rejection
of Christ by one who has been a Christian...." "Apostasy is a theological category
‘Trial of the Chicago 7’ takes top honors at SAG Awards
In this video grab provided by the SAG Awards, the cast of "The Trial of the Chicago 7" accepts the award for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture during the 27th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on April 4, 2021. (SAG Awards via AP)
The starry cast of Aaron Sorkin’s 1960s courtroom drama “The Trial of the Chicago 7” took the top prize Sunday at a virtual Screen Actors Guild Awards where actors of color, for the first time, swept the individual film awards.
The 27th SAG Awards, presented by the Hollywood actors’ guild SAG-Aftra, were a muted affair — and not just because the red carpet-less ceremony was condensed to a pre-recorded, Zoom-heavy, one-hour broadcast on TBS and TNT. The perceived Academy Awards frontrunner — Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” — wasn’t nominated for best ensemble, making this year’s postponed SAG Awards less of an Oscar preview than it is most years.
Still, the win for Netflix’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7” marked the first time a film from any streaming service won the guild’s ensemble award. Written and directed by Sorkin, “The Trial of the Chicago 7” had been set for theatrical release by Paramount Pictures before the pandemic hit, leading to its sale to Netflix. The streamer is still after its first best-picture win at the Oscars.
Frank Langella, who plays the judge who presided over the 1969 prosecution of activists arrested during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, drew parallels between that era’s unrest and today’s while accepting the award on behalf of the cast.
“‘God give us leaders,’ said the Rev. Martin Luther King before he was shot down in cold blood on this very date in 1968 — a profound injustice,” said Langella, citing events leading up to those dramatized in “The Trial of the Chicago 7. “The Rev. King was right. We need leaders to guide us toward hating each other less.”
The win came over two other Netflix releases — “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “Da 5 Bloods” — as well as Amazon’s “One Night in Miami” and A24’s “Minari.” Had Lee Isaac Chung’s Korean-American family drama “Minari” won, it would have been the second straight year a film largely not in English won SAG’s top award. Last year, the cast of “Parasite” triumphed, becoming the first cast from a non-English language film to do so.
The SAG Awards are a closely watched Oscar harbinger. Actors make up the largest branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and SAG winners often line up with Oscar ones. Last year, “Parasite” went on to win best picture at the Academy Awards, and all of the individual SAG winners — Renée Zellweger, Brad Pitt, Laura Dern, Joaquin Phoenix — won at the Oscars, too.
Those awards this year went to a group entirely of actors of color, potentially setting the stage for a historically diverse slate of Oscar winners: Chadwick Boseman, best male actor for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”; Viola Davis, best female actor for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”; Yuh-Jung Youn, best female supporting actor for “Minari”; and Daniel Kaluuya, best male supporting actor for “Judas and the Black Messiah.”
Of those, Davis’ win was the most surprising in a category that has often belonged to Carey Mulligan (“Promising Young Woman”) or Frances McDormand (“Nomadland”). It’s Davis’ fifth individual SAG award.
“Thank you, August, for leaving a legacy for actors of color that we can relish the rest of our lives,” said Davis, referring to playwright August Wilson.
As it has throughout the awards season, best male actor again belonged to Boseman for his final performance. Boseman, who died last August at age 43, had already set a record for most SAG film nominations — four — in a single year. He was also posthumously nominated for his supporting role in “Da 5 Bloods” and shared in the ensemble nominations for both Spike Lee’s film and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”
It was the SAG Awards where Boseman gave one of his most memorable speeches. At the guild’s 2019 awards, Boseman spoke on behalf of the “Black Panther” cast when the film won the top award. “We all know what it’s like to be told that there is not a place for you to be featured,” Boseman said then. “Yet you are young, gifted and Black.”
The Academy Awards frontrunner, “Nomadland” missed out on a best-ensemble nomination possibly because its cast is composed of largely non-professional actors. Zhao’s film previously won at the highly predictive Producers Guild Awards, as well as at the Golden Globes. “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” up for best picture at the Oscars and four other awards, could pose a challenge to the frontrunner.
In an interview following the pre-taping of the award for “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” Langella called the virtual experience much more civilized. “I’m in my bedroom slippers,” he said from New York’s Hudson Valley. “I have no pants on,” added his co-star Michael Keaton.
Eddie Redmayne, who plays Tom Hayden in the film, credited Sorkin and casting director Francine Maisler for assembling such a disparate group of actors — including Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Rylance, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Jeremy Strong — into an ensemble.
“It was like a clash of different types of music, whether it was jazz or rock or classical -- but all of that coming together under Aaron. He was the conductor, almost,” said Redmayne. “It was a joy day and day out to watch these great and different and varied actors slugging it out.”
In television categories, the ensembles of “Schitt’s Creek” (for comedy series) and “The Crown” (for drama series) added to their string of awards. Other winners included Anya Taylor-Joy (“The Queen’s Gambit”), Gillian Anderson (“The Crown”), Jason Sudeikis (“Ted Lasso”), Jason Bateman (“Ozark”) and Mark Ruffalo (“I Know This Much Is True”).
The awards are typically the highest profile event for the Screen Actors Guild, though the union’s faceoff earlier this year with former President Donald Trump may have drawn more headlines. After the guild prepared to expel Trump (credits include “The Apprentice,” “Home Alone 2”) for his role in the Capitol riot, Trump resigned from SAG-Aftra.
OTTAWA/MONTREAL (Reuters) - Struggling tour operator Air Transat is in talks with the federal government on aid but may not reach a deal by an April debt deadline, a source close to the situation said, putting pressure on Quebec to ride to the rescue of another troubled aerospace brand in the province.
An Airbus A330-200 aircraft of Air Transat airlines takes off
in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, July 10, 2018.
REUTERS/Regis Duvignau
Air Canada dropped its merger plans with Transat on Friday, saying European regulators had signaled it was unlikely to pass antitrust concerns.
Canada’s largest carrier first bid for Transat in 2019 and discounted its offer last year as the pandemic decimated the travel and tourism sector.
Airlines have been in talks with Ottawa since last year about a possible aid package. Transat’s aborted deal adds fresh urgency to the talks, given the jobs at risk if the carrier fails and the political importance of Quebec ahead of an expected federal election this year.
Transat, which last month suspended flights until June due to pandemic guidelines, has said it needs at least C$500 million in financing this year.
It has obligations due on April 29 for a $50 million revolving facility and a C$250 million short-term loan that matures on June 30. If it does not meet the April 29 requirements, or obtain another extension, creditors could accelerate the repayment obligation.
“There are ongoing negotiations and there is a budget coming up and there is no guarantee at this point that they will get there before the budget,” said a source close to the situation, referring to the federal budget slated for April 19.
“I think politically it would be a problem in Quebec. The federal government therefore absolutely has to come up with a solution,” the source added, noting that “Transat has more of a cachet in Quebec (than Air Canada).”
Both airlines are Montreal-based but Air Canada originated in Winnipeg before moving its headquarters to Quebec in the 1940s. Transat was founded by a group of Quebec businessmen, including the province’s current premier, in 1986 and grew to become the country’s third-biggest airline.
The airline was “confident we will be able to secure the necessary financing in the coming weeks,” spokesman Christophe Hennebelle said on Sunday, reiterating it was at an “advanced stage” of discussions with Ottawa on sector aid and accessing specific pandemic-aid to businesses.
Asked about the status of government talks with Transat, a spokeswoman for Canada’s finance minister said: “I can’t speak to which creditors or lines of financing Air Transat is pursuing. As a private company, they’d be best placed to answer that.”
Ottawa said on Friday that protecting jobs and securing the long-term viability of Transat were a priority for the government. The carrier employs 5,000 people, mostly in Quebec, home to much of Canada’s aerospace sector. ‘COLLECTIVE INTEREST’
The survival of Transat, its Montreal headquarters and employees puts significant pressure on the Quebec government to secure its future.
Quebec has come to the aid of struggling aerospace companies before. In 2015, the previous provincial government sunk US$1 billion into planemaker Bombardier’s then-struggling CSeries program. Two years later, Airbus paid Bombardier one dollar for control of the commercial jet program.
“The Quebec government is caught between a rock and a hard place on this one,” said John Gradek, a former airline executive and program coordinator at McGill University’s aviation management program.
“There will be a lot of pressure on (Premier Francois) Legault to come to (Quebec businessman) Pierre Karl Péladeau’s aid in terms of funding.”
Péladeau, who proposed buying Transat for $5 a share, said on Friday his offer is still available. Transat had previously said the bid lacked the required level of financing.
Péladeau, chief executive of Quebecor Inc, said in a statement that his offer includes “a rigorous business plan focusing on areas of the company with high growth potential, on expertise and job creation in Quebec” and a continued Montreal head office.
A second source familiar with the matter said Péladeau’s offer did not call for funding from the Quebec government, which said in February it was looking at scenarios for Transat “with or without Air Canada.”
A spokesman for Quebec’s economy minister declined comment on Sunday.
The separatist Bloc Quebecois said it wanted to ensure Quebec ownership would be favored for the carrier and blamed Ottawa, which approved the merger in February, for delaying an airline aid package.
“Air Transat is a flagship that has made Quebecers proud while offering Francophones a career in aviation,” BQ transport critic Xavier Barsalou-Duval said in a statement.
“It is in our collective interest that its decision-making center as well as its control remain in Quebec.”
Chauvin Trial: Systemic Racist Police Violence, Not Just “Bad Apples”
As the murder trial of Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd proceeds, the prosecution will try to portray the defendant as a “bad apple.” In his opening statement, prosecutor Jerry Blackwell alerted the jurors that they would hear police officials testify Chauvin used excessive force in violation of departmental policy to apply restraints only as necessary to bring a person under control. However, this argument obfuscates the racist violence inherent in the U.S. system of policing.
The first prosecution witness to testify about Minnesota Police Department (MPD) policies was retired Sgt. David Ploeger, the supervising police sergeant on duty the day Chauvin killed Floyd. It was his job to conduct use of force reviews. Ploeger testified, “When Mr. Floyd was no longer offering up any resistance to the officer,” when he was handcuffed on the ground and no longer resisting, “they could have ended the restraint.”
Lt. Richard Zimmerman of the MPD also testified about what constitutes authorized use of force. He said that once a person is secure or handcuffed, “you need to get him out of the prone position as soon as possible because it restricts their breathing.” When a person is cuffed behind his back (as Floyd was), “it stretches the muscles back,” making it “more difficult to breathe.” Once cuffed, Zimmerman added, “you have to turn them on their side or have them sit up,” noting, “you have to get them off their chest” because that constricts the breathing “even more.”
“If your knee is on a person’s neck, that could kill him,” Zimmerman said. “Pulling him down to the ground facedown and putting your knee on a neck for that amount of time, it’s just uncalled for,” he declared. Zimmerman saw “no reason why the officers felt they were in danger,” which is “what they would have to feel to use that kind of force.” The restraint of Floyd “should have stopped once he was prone on the ground and had stopped putting up resistance,” he stated.
Prosecutors will likely try to isolate Chauvin as one of “a few bad apples.” That may be an effective prosecutorial strategy to convince jurors they should convict him. But this “rogue cop” characterization — also used after the 1991 Rodney King beating and the police killings of Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling and Breonna Taylor — obscures the systemic nature of police violence against Black and Brown people in the United States. Even the best training in the world cannot teach police, who are licensed to kill and deployed to enforce a racist system, not to be racist.
Many Minneapolis police officers receive “Killology training” through the police union, where they are taught to kill rather than de-escalate conflict situations.
Black people who are unarmed or not attacking police are 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white people, the Brookings Institution found. Moreover, police kill Black people at more than twice the rate of whites even though Black people account for less than 13 percent of the U.S. population. More than 75 percent of the time, chokeholds are applied on men of color.
Prosecutors were compelled to bring charges against Chauvin because the whole world had seen him kill Floyd. After massive protests erupted following the horrifying video of Chauvin’s torture of Floyd — now known to have lasted nine minutes and 29 seconds — the MPD fired Chauvin and prosecutors charged him with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. They later added a charge of second-degree murder.
But what would have happened if eyewitnesses had not recorded Floyd’s death? Would Chauvin have been fired and charged with murder?
Police Impunity Is the Norm
Officers know that they rarely face any semblance of accountability for killing Black people. “Officers were charged with a crime in only one percent of all killings by police,” Mapping Police Violence reported in 2020.
For nine minutes and 29 seconds, Chauvin continued to choke Floyd as several bystanders watched, many visibly recording the killing. Chauvin didn’t try to hide what he was doing. As eyewitness Genevieve Hansen testified, Chauvin looked “comfortable” with his weight on Floyd’s neck.
Other police killings of Black people have happened in similarly open ways. Michael Brown was killed while walking down a public street, his body left on the ground for four hours. Eric Garner was choked to death on a public sidewalk after he was suspected of selling illegal untaxed cigarettes. Both of those killings, which occurred in 2014, sparked public outrage. Although there was video footage in each case, none was as clear and graphic as the images that documented Floyd’s death. Neither Officer Darren Wilson who killed Michael Brown nor Officer Daniel Pantaleo who killed Eric Garner was ever indicted.
“Excited Delirium” Is a Racist Myth Used to Blame Victims
As eyewitness after eyewitness who saw Chauvin torture Floyd to death presents emotional testimony, the defense is attempting to distract the jury’s attention away from his brutal murder by laying the ground work to falsely claim that Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes was not the cause of death.
Defense attorney Eric Nelson alerted the jury during his opening statement that it would “learn about things such as … excited delirium.” MPD Officer Thomas Lane pointed his gun at Floyd who was sitting in his car before he was pulled out and choked to death. Although Lane aided and abetted Chauvin by holding Floyd’s legs, Lane asked at one point while Chauvin was choking Floyd, “Should we roll him on his side?” Chauvin replied, “No, staying put where we got him.” Lane then said, “I am worried about excited delirium or whatever,” as Chauvin maintained his knee on Floyd’s neck.
“Excited delirium” is a catch-all defense used to absolve police for killing Black people. According to the Brookings Institution, “[t]he diagnosis is a misappropriation of medical terminology, used by law enforcement to legitimize police brutality and to retroactively explain certain deaths occurring in police custody.” This diagnosis “inaccurately and selectively combines various signs and symptoms from real medical emergencies.”
Indeed, Chauvin’s defense attorneys are falsely implying that Floyd died from drug abuse, as Mike Ludwig reported in Truthout. Pursuant to the “war on drugs,” Black people are disproportionately targeted by police, although they use drugs at the same rate as whites.
Even the best training in the world cannot teach police, who are licensed to kill and deployed to enforce a racist system, not to be racist.
Derek Chauvin is a rotten apple. So is Officer Lane who held Floyd’s legs, and Officer J.A. Kueng who held Floyd’s back while Chauvin choked him to death. So is Officer Tou Thoa who kept bystanders from providing aid to Floyd.
But they are only four of myriad officers who kill Black people with impunity. They are not just “a few bad apples.” These officers are emblematic of the systemic racist police violence against Black people in the United States. Regardless of the outcome in the Chauvin trial, the entire system must be indicted as racist and violent, in and of itself.
The International Commission of Inquiry on Systemic Racist Police Violence against People of African Descent in the United States, for which I am serving as a Rapporteur, heard testimony from family members and attorneys about police killings of 43 Black people and the paralyzing of another, all of whom were unarmed or not threatening the officers or others. The commission, which is investigating whether police violence against Black people in the U.S. amounts to gross violations of international human rights and fundamental freedoms, will release its 200-page report in mid-April. It contains recommendations addressed to national and international policy makers.
As Chauvin’s trial continues, we must remember that this is not simply the story of one “rogue cop.” It is a window into the anti-Black violence perpetrated routinely by police in this country, as part of a brutal and racist system.
Adream shared by many will finally come to fruition Sunday night when the April 4 anniversary of Dr. King’s murder serves as a springboard for reflection on King’s radical vision for a transformed America. For purposes of the launch, it helps that Sunday also happens to be Easter and the last night of Passover: sacred days that still signify revolutionary hope. Over thirty national faith leaders have signed a statement of support for the project; some of these leaders, like Rev. James M. Lawson, Jr., were close collaborators with King during his lifetime.
What’s called the April 4 Project represents a “beloved community” collaboration among the National Council of Elders, the National Black Justice Coalition, and a host of other justice-oriented organizations. Due to ongoing Covid concerns the event will take place in the form of a webinar, during which a celebrity cast of readers (among them Jane Fonda, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Ibram X. Kendi, Andrew Bacevich, and Bill T. Jones) will present King’s 1967 speech at The Riverside Church—”Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” Afterward, a panel featuring Bill McKibben, Medea Benjamin, Ash-Lee Henderson, and Corrine Sanchez will discuss the significance of King’s vision for the current moment.
King’s speech, given to a packed Riverside Church exactly one year before he was killed in Memphis, is notorious for the way it provoked fury, condemnation and distress at the time. Fury from the Johnson Administration and its pro-war supporters; blistering condemnation in the mainstream media; and acute distress among many of King’s allies who felt that he was sacrificing domestic civil rights goals on the altar of the antiwar cause.
Given how the practice of radical nonviolence implies a willingness to sacrifice, how much are you personally willing to sacrifice for the achievement of the long-awaited radical revolution of values?
Written in large part by the late Vincent Harding, Jr.—a legendary figure in his own right—the speech builds quietly until it rises to a mighty coda. King begins by describing his calling to speak out as a “vocation of agony,” signaling that he knows this speech will be inflammatory and does not take lightly what he considers to be his prophetic duty. He says that he approaches his task with humility and acknowledges how all of us operate with limited vision. He makes it clear that he is addressing “my beloved nation” as a patriot and not as a mouthpiece for either North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front (“Viet Cong”)—entities which he does not regard as “paragons of virtue.”
Then King proceeds to make the antiwar case with unparalleled clarity, citing the reasons he’s calling for the slaughter in Southeast Asia to end:
The war has eviscerated domestic anti-poverty efforts; war is always “the enemy of the poor.”
War punishes the poor in a second way by sending the poorest to do the fighting and dying; King is scandalized that the United States finds it possible to make poor whites and poor Blacks fight and kill Asians together but won’t allow them to be schooled together here at home.
War’s organized lethal violence represents a defeat for the wider cause of nonviolence—and here is where King enraged liberals and conservatives alike by calling the U.S. “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”
King must and will remain true to his faith in Jesus Christ as a peacemaker and reconciler.
People of genuine faith have loyalties that transcend nationalism: the idea that all are brothers and sisters, created equal under one God, cannot just be some empty slogan that has no application in the real world.
The true meaning and value of nonviolence is how it “helps us to see the enemy’s point of view.”
The last point opens to the part of the speech I’d forgotten but that came back with tremendous force upon re-reading: a very long section detailing the utter corruption of the U.S. “cause” in Southeast Asia: this country’s nine years of covert support for French recolonization efforts, its failure to recognize the Vietnamese determination to be independent from China, its abhorrent marching of Vietnamese women and children into concentration camps (the U.S. military called these “strategic hamlets”), and its indiscriminate use of napalm and Agent Orange to lay waste to the land and its people, killing millions of noncombatants in three countries (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia).
King broadens his critique of this war into a sobering look at how a country—ours—that once claimed to stand for revolutionary ideals became the ally of dictators and tyrants and counterrevolutionary forces everywhere. He cites examples of U.S.-sponsored counterinsurgency: Venezuela, Guatemala, Peru, South Africa, Mozambique.
Once he has placed the United States squarely “on the wrong side of the world revolution,” King delivers the gut punch—the part of the speech everyone remembers if they remember it at all:
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered…
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
And these haunting words—haunted by our knowledge that the Second Indochina War would grind on for eight more excruciating years:
We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late.
Hard questions for today
Reading “Beyond Vietnam” today stirs up deep memories and raises difficult questions for me. I was just cutting my activist teeth in 1967, and I wondered then—as I do now—about my vocation and our vocation as seekers of justice and peace.
Today, as then, the Left is divided between so-called “centrists” (ignoring how far to the right the center has moved) and those who claim a radical perspective. Both camps want to be considered “progressive,” but the centrists deride the radicals as delusionary and naive about how politics work, whereas the radicals dismiss the centrists as sellouts to the corporate agenda and as uncritical champions of American exceptionalism. The presidency of Joe Biden—a centrist politician par excellence—brings these fissures to the fore and creates irresistible catnip for the chattering classes.
I will always identify proudly with the radical camp. I don’t think there can be any compromise with white supremacy or entrenched corporate power. But I do still wonder whether my side is really as radical as it claims to be. I worry about performative wokeness and virtue signaling and the kind of celebrity activism that these days is often fueled by Hollywood and hedge fund money (in some ways reenacting the much-derided radical chic of the 1960s).
It’s painful to have to say it, and in no way do I intend to give aid and comfort to the howling hyenas of the Right who now focus their attacks on Critical Race Theory, but representation by itself can never substitute for reparation, let alone revolution. All of the elite institutions that are striving for diversity and inclusion will not disturb the peace of the Corporate State in the slightest degree. A more diverse elite is still an elite. There’s even a name for what we see emerging now (and an illuminating new book about it): identity capitalism. King long ago recognized this trap; he said he feared “integrating my people into a burning house.”
To be clear, I have no doubt that if he were here today, Dr. King would celebrate the way in which race and the toxic legacy of white supremacy have been moved front and center in the national conversation. But I also think he might have hard questions for us oldsters who are still trying to fight the good fight as well as for the young woke ones.
Among those questions:
How serious are you about building power—about using the political levers that remain the primary means for changing things—while also practicing radical nonviolence and exercising message discipline? Put another way, what’s your strategy (because your enemies definitely have one)?
How prepared are you to challenge the still-standing structure of American imperialism—the enormous military and “intelligence” footprint of this country—which is just as much an expression of white supremacy as is domestic police terrorism and anti-Black repression? (It would surely strike King as odd that the cost of maintaining this footprint hardly enters into today’s political conversation and that nearly everyone seems to be more or less okay with dropping $6.4 trillion—and killing at least 800,000 people—in an ineffective and counterproductive “war on terror.” When will we understand that defunding the police and defunding the Pentagon reflect one and the same struggle?)
Finally, given how the practice of radical nonviolence implies a willingness to sacrifice, how much are you personally willing to sacrifice for the achievement of the long-awaited radical revolution of values?
This last question is clearly the hardest to answer. King himself was spiritually prepared all his life to make the ultimate sacrifice. Not all of us need to go to that limit, but all of us do need to ask ourselves whether we really believe there can be fundamental transformation without sacrifice. For me, and especially during this Easter week, the answer is obvious.
, "The day the KKK in Alabama accepted women to its ranks" by Ninian Reid is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Recently I started reading Frauen, Alison Owings’s 1993 collection of oral histories of women who lived through the Third Reich. Owings realized that nobody had bothered to ask the women of Germany their thoughts on the war or the rise of Nazism. Men—the generals, the guards—had been interviewed so much that the phrase “I was only following orders” became a part of our cultural understanding of World War II. But what about the women? Owings wondered. Why did so many good Christian German women support the Nazi Party?
The answer is complicated, of course, and the collected testimonies show this to be true. But Owings found several commonalities. For one, there was a firm belief that German systems were above reproach and corruption and that German leaders were law-abiding. (Indeed, many Jewish Germans trusted the government so much they refused to leave despite growing anti-Semitism.)
Another thread is the Christian history of Germany, including the legacy and life of Martin Luther, and the cultural belief that God divinely grants power to the leader. A song popular in Germany before the time of Hitler pleaded, “Oh God, send us a Führer who will change our misfortune by God’s word.” One woman told Owings she loved this song and that she, like many others, welcomed Hitler because Germany needed a strong man sent by God to beat the threat of communists.
Owings did interview several women who resisted the Nazi Party in large and small ways. But the majority of her interviews reflect the wider German public: most women were either supportive of the Third Reich or passively upheld it by conforming to its norms, staying silent, and focusing solely on their own families.
The truth is, good Christian women supported Nazism because it benefited them, and it seemed to reinforce the cultural values that gave meaning and purpose to their lives. They believed God was in control and had blessed their culture and their leader for special greatness—and that outsiders and foreign influence needed to be subjugated or eradicated in order for Germans to protect themselves.
Reading the oral histories of German women, I was struck by how familiar their rationale for supporting Nazism sounded to my ears. By joining the Nazi Party, these women were assured better schools and education for their children. How could they pass that up? When the Nazis came to power, there were more jobs for the “true” Germans; unemployment was almost nonexistent. The economy was up. Children obeyed their parents and prayed and sang Christian songs in school. Middle class, bourgeois, White Christian values were espoused and approved of by the majority of the culture—and this thrilled the good Christian women of Germany.
Growing up evangelical, I learned a bit about the Holocaust, but much of my information came from a single book: The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom. Ten Boom’s Dutch family sheltered a Jewish family in their house during Nazi occupation. When they were discovered, the Ten Booms were sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Corrie survived, but her father and sister did not. As a child, I read and reread her book, which ends with a story of a former Ravensbrück guard coming up to speak to her after she gave a talk on forgiveness. Ten Boom, filled with the love of God, was able to forgive him. I found it to be an incredibly inspirational story. The entire book was about people who loved Jesus taking great risks to love their neighbors. Reading it, I understood that we should follow suit.
Only later, much later, did I wonder about the particulars of that last story. The guard who came up to Corrie Ten Boom said that after the war, when he was done being a guard, he “became” a Christian. He did not remember ten Boom or the pain he inflicted on her personally, although she remembered him and his whip well. He asked her to say aloud the words of forgiveness so he could rest assured in the blessings of being a forgiven Christian.
In truth, the vast majority of Germans were already Christians during the Holocaust. More than half of the German population was Lutheran, while 40 percent was Catholic. Did this guard happen to be among the small minority of non-Christians? Or had he identified as a Christian the entire time he tortured and killed his fellow neighbors? The latter is much more likely to be true. But this was not a part of the narratives I heard growing up.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was another name familiar to me as an American evangelical. The theologian, pastor, and member of the small resistance movement in Germany was held up to us as an example of what “real” Christians did during the Nazi regime: stand up to the evil Nazis, risking death in order to love their neighbors and end a horrific war.
Bonhoeffer is better known today than Ten Boom, in part because of best-selling biographies like Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, a 2010 book by Eric Metaxas that continues to sell at a brisk pace. American readers are taken with the idea of a “real” Christian who did not capitulate to power or culture but resisted evil. But Metaxas is a prominent spokesman for Christian nationalism in the United States. On his popular radio show, he encouraged Christians to “fight to the death, to the last drop of blood, because it’s worth it” to overturn the “fraudulent” 2020 election and keep Donald Trump in power. Metaxas, someone who prides himself on being able to point out the dangers of Nazi Germany, has thrown all of his cards in with Trumpism and those who support it.
Metaxas says Bonhoeffer was a “real” Christian among posers. He says the same thing about himself and the Christians who support Donald Trump and his promise to make America and White evangelicalism great again. Metaxas does not view Nazis as Bonhoeffer’s only foes; there were also the more liberal Lutherans and Catholics of his own community. White American evangelicals are adept at conjuring and tracing a history in which exemplar figures are cast in the narrow role of their own theological forebears: Bonhoeffer and Corrie ten Boom are the heroes we could see ourselves being, because we are the only true Christians we know.
To view history this way is to engage in a triumphalist retelling of the story of dominant-culture Christians, marrying the flourishing of their particular religion to the politics of their nation-state. And it leads to Bonhoeffer biographers stumping for abusive politicians and dismissing the wide range of Christians calling for other ways of being in the world. History demonstrates that the fruits of Christian nationalism are always horrific, descending into violent rhetoric and violent means to uphold power. Nor does it bode well for the church’s own thriving. Today, just 55 percent of Germans claim to be members of Catholic or Protestant churches.
While prominent Christians like Metaxas, Jerry Falwell Jr., and others might make national headlines for their support of authoritarianism that protects them, they aren’t acting alone. White women make up one of the largest voting blocs in the United States, and since the 1950s they have consistently voted majority Republican, including in 2016 for Donald Trump. White evangelicals as a whole turned out in record numbers for Trump in 2016, and despite claims that the tides were turning, 2020 showed much of the same. White evangelical women voted for policies that would protect them and their interests over the interests of their neighbors.
Jane Junn, a professor of gender studies and political science, says this isn’t earth-shattering news to anyone who has been paying attention. “The Republican Party is the party of keeping the white heteropatriarchy intact,” she said in a recent interview. “These women have agreed to accept second-class status with their gender, as long as the Republican Party puts them first with race and keeps them safe.”
Of course, not many women would frame it in these terms for themselves. They might say that they voted with their families, culture, and religion in mind. They voted to protect themselves from the specter of socialism, for their 401k balances and for lower taxes, for the choice to educate their children in the way they see as best, to keep their neighborhoods “safe,” for “godly Christians” to take back America and make it great again. And for good Christian women to be prioritized and protected in society (no matter what the costs might be to others).
This is similar to what the women in Frauen said when asked about their support of the Third Reich. It is similar to what Corrie ten Boom wrote about many of her fellow townspeople, all good Dutch Christians, who joined the Nazi Party because of the physical benefits—more food, clothing, the best jobs and housing—but also because of their conviction that this was the best course of action for them and their culture. It was decades before the women of the Third Reich were forced to reckon with the horrors of the Holocaust. (One of the main ways this cultural reckoning happened in Germany was through the US series Holocaust, which aired on German national television in 1979.) The increased awareness of how Jewish people were treated during the war split some families apart.
One woman told Owings that her children, who grew up learning about the Holocaust in school as part of the cultural reckoning curriculum, could not believe she supported Hitler. They dismissed her version of history. Meanwhile, friends around her own age would gather to have whispered conversations about how things were better back in the old days and how accounts of atrocities were highly overblown.
Owings writes in the introduction to Frauen that the more she talked to and thought about German women—the half of the German population that had been ignored in efforts to understand how the Third Reich was so successful in its devastation—the closer these women seemed to American women. I am only now starting to understand the parallels between Christian nationalism in the United States and that of the Third Reich, partly because my education focused only on the few Christians who resisted evil. The majority did not. But focusing on those few who did made it easier for me and others to ignore the reality that most good Christians did not call out evil during the Third Reich.
As for the exceptions, what made them able to resist the pervasive call of privilege and protection offered by Christian nationalism? Ten Boom credits her father’s love for all people, along with her brother’s urging her to break evil laws in order to help save people’s lives, with helping her lead the resistance movement in her city. Reggie L. Williams, author of Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus, makes the compelling case that the only reason Bonhoeffer was able eventually to resist the fervent nationalism of his countrymen was that he had spent a year marinating in the Black church in Harlem, absorbing a real relationship with a suffering servant Jesus. Without this necessary and world-shaking experience, Bonhoeffer most likely would not have been able to resist the tides that drove the rest of his people to seek safety in power.
And yet today we find ourselves with a best-selling Bonhoeffer biographer declaring he would die for Trump and that blood should be spilled over the “stolen” election of 2020. Metaxas, as much as I would like to ignore it, is a “real” Christian—just as much as I am, just as Bonhoeffer was, just as the 80 percent of White evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump are, just as 98 percent of the citizens of Nazi Germany were.
Instead of daydreaming about being one of the very few who resisted, I am now faced with a much more complex reality. It is true that Christian faith led Corrie ten Boom and Dietrich Bonhoeffer to explicitly renounce evil against their neighbor and risk their lives for love. We should read those stories and continue to share them. But we also need to remember the Christian faith of the majority of Germans who supported Nazism, including the “good” and “virtuous” Christian women who were the backbone of the Third Reich. While they may not have been on the front lines of the battlefield, there are multiple ways to fight a war—and one way is through upholding ideology on the home front.
The sickness and violence of Christian nationalism in the United States today have striking historical parallels. And good White Christian women like myself will one day have our own reckoning with how our choices affected our neighbors. From The Christian Century https://www.christiancentury.org/user/register
A version of this article appears in the print edition under the title “The ones who didn’t resist.”
D. L. Mayfield is the author of The Myth of the American Dream and Assimilate or Go Home.
