A new book argues most white US Christians worship a religion of whiteness

Michael Emerson and Glenn Bracey depict a Christianity that worships a white Jesus and a set of sacred symbols, including the flag, the cross and, increasingly, guns.

“The Religion of Whiteness: How Racism Distorts Christian Faith" cover and authors Michael Emerson, left, and Glenn Bracey, right. (Courtesy images)

May 21, 2024

By 

Yonat Shimron

(RNS) — In 2000, two sociologists wrote a book about the fraught efforts of white evangelicals to diversify their congregations to better address racial discrimination in the church.

Now, one of those authors, Michael Emerson, has teamed up with another sociologist, Glenn Bracey, for an update.

Their conclusions are grim.

In “The Religion of Whiteness: How Racism Distorts Christian Faith,” Emerson and Bracey suggest that as many as two-thirds of white Christians in the U.S. have elevated whiteness to a religion itself, one that rivals Christianity.

It’s a controversial claim, but one they support through interviews with Christian church leaders, many of them Black, about the state of race in the church, as well as a set of national surveys they conducted over the past few years.

Emerson and Bracey depict a Christianity that effectively worships the white race with a white Jesus at its center and a set of sacred symbols, including the flag (both the U.S. flag and sometimes the Confederate flag), the cross and, increasingly, guns. Though their churches may be slightly more racially diverse, this religion of whiteness strives to maintain whites at the top of the racial hierarchy as part of God’s ordained order.

Religion News Service spoke to Emerson, a fellow in religion and public policy at Rice University, and Bracey, an assistant professor of sociology at Villanova University, about their bold conclusions. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You’re not using the word “religion” metaphorically in this book. You’re actually saying there is a religion of whiteness. Explain how you mean it.

Michael Emerson. (Courtesy photo)

Emerson: This is hard for people to understand, but we’re saying we cannot make progress in our country on race until we understand the depth of what it all means. It is wrapped literally in a religion that has all the markers of the way we define religion. It’s a unified system of beliefs and practices that worships or sacralizes, not some God in this sense, but whiteness. Whiteness is the god. It declares that everything else that isn’t supporting whiteness is profane, it’s wrong, it needs to be shunned.

Bracey: And when we say whiteness, we’re talking about the dominance that white people enjoy over people of color. So it’s not as though someone is saying, ‘I attend the Church of Whiteness.’ It’s that they find themselves caught up in the worship of the dominance that white people enjoy.

As you say, this religion doesn’t call itself a Church of Whiteness. Why not?

Emerson: There’s a couple of rhetorical moves that are made so you never have to actually name it. One of them is that Jesus is white, and Jesus by definition is supposed to be for everybody. So Jesus is universal. So as long as Jesus is white and Jesus is universal, then whiteness is universal. And once you do that, you no longer have to name it, because that is truth. Anything else, is an argument against truth.

You also point out that churches across the country are becoming more diverse.You mention that 20% of Christian churches are racially diverse, up from 6% in 2000. Doesn’t that argue against a religion of whiteness?

Bracey: So that’s a very good question. It’s important to note that 80% of the churches are still homogeneous. The difficulty is, the whiteness of the church can remain, even when the church is not entirely white.

White evangelical churches in particular have race tests to either exclude people of color or make sure that people of color will support whiteness in the way that the church wants it supported. So those tests, I call utility-based tests, to tolerate and support these performances of white dominance. Those race tests are working. They’re doing a good job of filtering out people who would disturb the worship of whiteness in those churches.

Describe how these tests work.

Glenn Bracey. (Photo by Kevin C. Brown)

Bracey: I went to seven churches across four different states, all majority white and evangelical. In one church, I was asked on my first visit to go up on stage and sing, even though I have no history of singing in churches. In another church, I was asked if I wanted to adopt a biracial baby because this child had a biracial family and the father who was white had left, and they were looking for someone to step in and be a father.

Other times, there were exclusionary tests and the exclusionary tests are really obvious and painful. I went to a Bible study, segregated by sex. So I was in the men’s group, the men’s group was about eight people including six white men and a Latino man and me. It was his first time as well. They introduced themselves by saying what their names were and what their favorite gun was, and how recently they had shot it. So they established a gun culture, dominance and a sense of threat.

And at one point, the host of the Bible study stands up and says, I don’t know what the name of my favorite gun is. I just know when I shoot it, it goes chink, chink, chink. So I call it my China gun. So, without saying anything overtly, there was a performance that let you know the space was dangerous for people of color. It was racially stereotypical and hostile. If you were going to stay, you had to be willing to put up with the kinds of behaviors that established this space as a very white dominant space.

You also did some surveys to better define the belief systems of churches that practice the religion of whiteness. How did you get at whiteness in those surveys?

Bracey: We have a set of survey questions that ask people, do you think the Bible should be followed under all circumstances? The people who say “always” are the only people that we then ask follow-up questions. The Bible says not to speak unwholesome words. And so it’s wrong to curse. The majority say you should not curse. But then when we ask things that are racially inflected — how to treat immigrants, how to treat racial minorities within the church —  then they abandon their Christian commitment to the Bible and show a commitment to something else. And that something else is whiteness.

Some Blacks have embraced this religion of whiteness. How do you understand that?

Bracey: A lot of people get involved with the religion of whiteness, not because they’re attracted to whiteness, but because they’re attracted to the authentic or the real. Because whiteness is considered real, they come to think that real Christianity is what white folks say it is. People are attached to dominant things. There’s a lot of psychological benefit, in addition to monetary benefit, from being a person of color in the religion of whiteness. People are constantly telling you you’ve done the right thing, you’ve broken from what they would say is the Democratic plantation, you are serious about faith, you put God before race. Frankly, that is enough to sustain a lot of people.

How is there a monetary benefit?

Bracey: I’ll give you an example. (Earlier in my life) a pastor took me to meet one of the Republican members, a Black Republican in our county and recruited me to run for office. And he said plainly, if you want to be a Black Democrat, there’s a million of those. But if you want to be a Black Republican, we’ll give you a lot of money and attention and air time. So there was a material offer put there.

How did you two scholars find each other?

Emerson: My earlier book, “Divided by Faith,” focused on white evangelicals. At that time, evangelicals were considered to be making a big change, bringing race into the conversation, advocating racial reconciliation. In the book I show there are particular ways of understanding the religion that actually makes matters worse. I argue these churches have three main religious cultural tools that they use: individualism, personal relationships and an antistructuralism that does not allow them to understand issues of race and racial inequality and what the solutions would be.

When we met, Glenn asked me, “Did you ever wonder if maybe it isn’t by chance that white evangelicals have these three cultural tools that just happened to not allow them to see what race really is?” I thought, “OK, I’ve got to work with this man.”

What’s been the response to your findings?

Emerson: I get two extreme reactions. I literally can hear crying in the audience, usually people of color, sometimes clapping, cheering and then some really serious questions: What is my motive? Am I a Christian? What has happened to me? These are coming mostly from white folks really who are very, very angry.

Bracey: If I am attending a church that’s practicing the religion of whiteness, they’ll obfuscate in the way that Michael described. There’s a “not me” syndrome happening. I would just invite people to think a little longer and see where their attachment to white Jesus is. How strong is it? Where would they find themselves in the book?

These three anti-Zionists were just ordained as rabbis

The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College still defines itself as Zionist and is committed to Israel's existence and its right to self defense. But it is also open to other perspectives.

May 24, 2024
By Yonat Shimron



Hundreds of demonstrators calling for a cease-fire in Gaza gather in the U.S. Capitol’s Cannon House Office Building rotunda on Oct. 18, 2023. The group was primarily organized by Jewish Voice for Peace. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)

(RNS) — Late last year, hundreds of protesters crowded the U.S. Capitol to protest Israel’s brutal invasion of Gaza, shouting “cease-fire now,” and “not in our name.”

Among them were two-dozen rabbis and three self-declared anti-Zionist rabbinical students from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Pennsylvania.

Last week, their peers wrapped them in a tallit, or prayer shawl, and their elders handed them an ordination diploma at a graduation ceremony in the sanctuary of a nearby synagogue.

The three — Noah Rubin-Blose, Eli Carson Dewitt and Rachel Kipnes — are long-time activists in Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist organization. They are proud of their commitment both to equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians as well as to Jewish study and ritual.

They are among a small but growing group of rabbinical students who are challenging American Jews to rethink their long standing allegiance to Israel and to the Zionist project of building and maintaining a Jewish-dominated state.


The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College graduated and ordained 11 new rabbis on May 19, 2024, at the Old York Road Temple – Beth Am in Abington, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jordan Cassqay)

This year, following Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 35,000 Palestinians, the passion and organization of the anti-Zionist movement has become a force to be reckoned with. Mounting their largest demonstrations ever, they have grabbed national headlines, most recently helping to support a wave of campus encampments.

In the process, they have confounded mainstream Jewish institutions, some of which have labeled them antisemitic. After the shock of the Hamas attack on Israel that killed some 1,200 people, most of them Israeli, many American Jews found themselves fractured and divided.

“We have had our hearts broken repeatedly,” acknowledged Rabbi Deborah Waxman, president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College during the May 19 graduation, alluding to the difficult seven months since Oct. 7. “We have been forced to, like it or not, discover new resilience.”

Rabbi Deborah Waxman. (Photo courtesy Creative Commons)

But Waxman also made clear during the ordination ceremony that the Reconstructionist movement is willing to embrace critics of Israel, including anti-Zionists, as it forges a new post-Oct. 7 path.

The rabbinical school, she said, does not have a litmus test on Israel or Zionism.

“There is a litmus test,” Waxman told the graduates and their families. “It is a litmus test about the capacity to center relationships and to build covenantal communities across our differences.”

Reconstructionist Judaism is the smallest of the American Jewish denominations, with 95 congregations representing about 46,000 people. Founded in the early 20th century by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, Reconstructionism understands Judaism to be “the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people.”

The movement still defines itself as Zionist and is committed to Israel’s existence and its right to self defense. But, Waxman said, it is also open to other perspectives.


The college requires students to spend a 10-12 week summer session in Israel, although for some of the 11 men and women ordained as rabbis this month, that requirement was waived because of COVID. The three anti-Zionist rabbinical students said they were grateful for that exemption.

Most other Jewish rabbinical schools also require students to spend time in Israel. The Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College requires a full year of study at its campus there.


Eli Carson DeWitt, a rabbinical student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, is handcuffed and arrested at the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 19, 2023, during a protest calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. (Photo courtesy Rachael Warriner)

In interviews after their graduation, these anti-Zionist rabbis said it was precisely their activism that drove them to embrace a commitment to Jewish religious practice and a desire to study for the rabbinate.

“Organizing work was, and continues to be, very important to me, and it’s what drew me to rabbinical school as well — a desire to serve my Jewish community, which was, and is, the Jewish left,” said Noah Rubin-Blose, who is 40.

Last year, while still a student, Rubin-Blose started an anti-Zionist congregation called “Makom” in his hometown of Durham, North Carolina. Its outdoor High Holiday services this past fall drew about 200 people.

He is also continuing his activism. In April, he and 30 rabbis and activists flew to Israel in an attempt to deliver food aid to Gaza through the Erez crossing in the northern end of the Gaza Strip. They were repelled by the Israeli army, which prevented them from doing so.

Rubin-Blose, who is a trans man, was turned on to activism as a high school student through the global justice movement and later the LGBTQ+ movement and Black Lives Matter.


A delegation of American and Israeli rabbis from Rabbis for Ceasefire and other activists march toward the Erez crossing to the Gaza Strip with food aid for Gaza civilians and to call for a cease-fire, in southern Israel, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

Eli Carson DeWitt, 31, grew up in a Conservative Jewish home that valued “tikkun olam,” the Jewish imperative to “repair the world.” DeWitt, who uses they/them pronouns, said it was their older sister’s anti-war activism that set them on the anti-Zionist course.

Rachel Kipnes, 32, grew up a Reform Jew. She went to Jewish day school and attended Jewish camps and Jewish youth groups. While living in New Orleans after college, she became active in Jewish Voice for Peace and realized, she said, “her anti-Zionism and Jewish practice were actually one and the same.” She said her mission is to work toward envisioning a Judaism of liberation and solidarity — “one where Palestinians are free, one where antisemitism no longer exists, where Islamophobia is not baked into the core of institutions.”

Before 1948, unconditional support for Israel and for Zionism was not always a given in American Jewish society. But over the past few decades, especially since 1967, it has gradually evolved into the status quo. For many older and more traditional Jews, the reality of anti-Zionism has been hard to swallow.

At least two rabbinical students left the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College this past academic year saying they found it a hostile environment for pro-Israel Jews.

“We were … surprised by the loud anti-Zionist sentiment among the student body and the culture of silence and intimidation that dissuaded students from expressing any positive connection with Israel,” wrote Talia Werber and Steven Goldstein in an op-ed in The Forward.

Werber and Goldstein first tried to fight back by forming a Students Supporting Israel chapter. Of the 55 students at the rabbinical college this past year, only eight joined and several later withdrew.


The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College graduated and ordained 11 new rabbis on May 19, 2024, at the Old York Road Temple – Beth Am in Abington, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jordan Cassqay)

The two told RNS they were accused of being racist for supporting Israel.

“For me, as somebody who stood for racial justice, to be called a white supremacist because I believe Israel has the right to exist, this was brutal for me and, God knows, I have my problems with the Netanyahu government,” said Goldstein, a 61-year-old lawyer who is now enrolled at another Jewish rabbinic school.

Other graduates said they found the anti-Zionist students to be tolerant, supportive and caring of their Zionist peers.

“I don’t feel like any of us would say that we were disrespected,” said Adam Strater, who also graduated last week. “In spaces that have been traditionally Zionist, people who are non-Zionists or anti-Zionists, their very presence is interpreted as a sort of protest when they’re just trying to learn like anybody else.”

There are at least five other self-declared anti-Zionists at the school who will be ordained in the years ahead. More than half of the Jewish Voice for Peace’s 45-member rabbinical council is made up of Reconstructionists. Among the group, Rabbis for Ceasefire, which does not define itself as anti-Zionist, about 30% are Reconstructionist rabbis, far higher than their percentage in the American Jewish population.

“We can, and we will, do more at helping our students to know how to talk about the diversity of opinion around Israel and Palestine,” said Waxman. “Part of what we think about training rabbis is about helping them to be in community with people they don’t always agree with. We need communities of people who don’t always agree with one another.”

The US Attitude to the ICC Has Always Been Defined by Self-Interest

Washington’s approach to the court has largely been tied to a broader assessment of U.S. foreign policy goals and the anticipated costs and benefits that supporting the court could bring.

By Andrea Furger

May 26, 2024

Source: The Conversation


The International Criminal Court is pictured in The Hague, Netherlands. (Photo: Vysotsky/Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 4.0)

This week, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, or ICC, applied for arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, in connection with the ongoing war in Gaza.

The reaction of the United States, Israel’s main backer, was swift. U.S. President Joe Biden condemned the prosecutor’s action against Israel’s leaders as “outrageous” and accused the ICC of drawing false moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel.

While it is not yet clear if the ICC’s judges will decide to issue the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, the Biden administration has already hinted at the possibility of imposing U.S. sanctions against ICC officials.


The U.S.’ apparent about-face when the court targeted its ally is nothing new. Nor is it surprising.

Yet, just a year ago, when the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and another Russian official for alleged international crimes in the Ukraine war, U.S. officials were full of praise for the court. Biden welcomed the action, calling it “justified.”

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in fact, the U.S. has continually displayed its support for the ICC. One top U.S. official, the ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, said the ICC “occupies an important place in the ecosystem of international justice.”

The U.S.’ apparent about-face when the court targeted its ally is nothing new. Nor is it surprising.

Rather, this vacillating approach is merely symptomatic of the U.S.’ complicated relationship with the ICC since its creation in 1998. Its hostile reaction to the Israel-Palestine situation will certainly have been expected by court officials.
Wariness From the Court’s Inception

I worked for many years as a cooperation advisor at the ICC’s office of the prosecutor. During that time, Washington’s position towards the court shifted several times—it supported the court at certain times and criticized it at others.

This has largely been tied to a broader assessment of U.S. foreign policy goals and the anticipated costs and benefits that supporting the court could bring.

The U.S. was initially a keen supporter of the creation of a permanent international criminal court and was an active participant in the ICC treaty negotiations in the 1990s.


This law also allowed the U.S. president to use “all means necessary”—a phrase understood to include armed force—to free American officials or servicemembers should they ever be detained for prosecution in The Hague, the seat of the ICC.

But it ultimately voted against the Rome Statute that created the court in 1998 due to concerns with the court’s jurisdictional framework. The U.S. feared it could allow for the prosecution of Americans without U.S. consent.

Although the U.S. still signed the Rome Statute, President George W. Bush later effectively unsigned it, saying the U.S. would not ratify the document and had no legal obligations to it.

The U.S. remains a non-member state to the ICC today.

Once the ICC was created, the U.S. adopted laws to restrict its interactions with the new court. Most importantly, it passed the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act of 2002 (ASPA) that prohibited providing any support to the ICC.

This law also allowed the U.S. president to use “all means necessary”—a phrase understood to include armed force—to free American officials or servicemembers should they ever be detained for prosecution in The Hague, the seat of the ICC. This earned it the nickname of “ The Hague Invasion Act.”

That same year, however, an amendment was passed to the law allowing exceptions for when the U.S. could assist international courts to bring to justice:


Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosovic, Osama bin Laden, other members of al Qaeda, leaders of Islamic Jihad, and other foreign nationals.

The amendment created significant flexibility, demonstrating that the U.S. was ready to assist international justice efforts as long as they targeted designated U.S “enemies” or other foreign nationals.
U.S. Support in African Cases

The U.S. soon adopted a pragmatic approach toward the court, supporting its activities depending on the circumstances and its interests.

In 2005, Washington allowed a United Nations Security Council referral to the ICC in relation to possible genocide and war crimes committed in Darfur, Sudan. The conflict was among the U.S.’ top foreign policy priorities in Africa at the time.

Later, the Obama administration formally adopted a “case-by-case” strategy to cooperate with the ICC when it aligned with U.S. interests.

Under this policy, the U.S. played an important role in the 2011 referral of alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Libya to the ICC. This was, again, in line with U.S. foreign policy interests.

U.S. diplomats also provided vital support in the arrest of Congolese warlord Bosco Ntaganda, who was later sentenced to 30 years in prison by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity. And the U.S. assisted with the arrest of Dominic Ongwen of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, who was later sentenced to 25 years.
Another Falling Out Over Afghanistan

The relationship between the U.S. and the court soon soured again, though, during the Trump administration.

This was in part because of developments in the ICC’s investigation into alleged crimes committed in Afghanistan, which marked the first time the court probed possible crimes committed by U.S. forces.

In 2020, ICC judges authorized an investigation into U.S., Afghan, and Taliban forces. Soon after, the U.S. imposed sanctions on the ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and another senior ICC official.


This week’s request for arrest warrants for Israeli leaders demonstrates yet another shift in the U.S. approach to the court.

After some delays, the investigation is continuing again, with a focus solely on crimes allegedly committed by the Taliban and Islamic State Khorasan Province. Other aspects of the investigation have been “deprioritized,” an implicit reference to the U.S. and its allies.

Soon after taking office, the Biden administration lifted the sanctions against the ICC officials, returning to a seemingly more collaborative period in U.S.-ICC relations.

These relations became closer following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with the adoption of new laws that broadened the possibilities of U.S. cooperation with the court. The goals of the U.S. and ICC had seemingly aligned again, at least for the time being.

But this week’s request for arrest warrants for Israeli leaders demonstrates yet another shift in the U.S. approach to the court. It continues the pattern of the U.S. supporting the court when it suits it, prioritising its own foreign policy goals over wider international criminal justice efforts.

Call for the ICC to Investigate Ursula von der

 

Leyen for Complicity in War Crimes and

 

Genocide

BY GENEVA INTERNATIONAL PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE

 MAY 27, 2024
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Call to the International Criminal Court to investigate on Ursula von der Leyen for complicity in war crimes and genocide committed by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in Gaza

27 May 2024, Geneva. On May 22, 2024, the Geneva International Peace Research Institute (GIPRI), the Collectif de Juristes pour le Respect des Engagements Internationaux de la France (CJRF) and a group of international concerned citizens, submitted a legal brief to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Karim Khan requesting the opening of an investigation against Ursula von der Leyen for complicity in war crimes and genocide against Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including the Gaza Strip.

This legal brief, endorsed by various human rights groups and prominent academics and experts in international criminal law, calls the Prosecutor to initiate investigations on the basis of the information provided against Mrs. Ursula von der Leyen. The latter has been repeatedly informed of violations of international humanitarian law committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, particularly in the Gaza Strip, through reports from international organizations and foreign governments. This is evidenced by a letter sent to her on February 14, 2024, by the President of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, and the then Irish Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar. 1

Mrs Ursula von der Leyen is responsible for aiding and abetting the commission of crimes and violations of international humanitarian law, within the meaning of Article 25(3)(c) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Mrs von der Leyen enjoys no functional immunity before the International Criminal Court by virtue of Article 27 of the Rome Statute.

The President of the European Commission is complicit in violations of Articles 6, 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute by her positive actions (military, political, diplomatic support to Israel) and by her failure to take timely action on behalf of the European Commission to help prevent genocide as required by the 1948 Genocide Convention. Mrs. Ursula von der Leyen cannot deny awareness of the plausibility of these crimes, especially following the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures order of 26 January 2024 in the pending ICJ case South Africa v. Israel. More importantly, Mrs. Von der Leyen has failed to take appropriate action to prevent such crimes, whereas the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the Statute of the International Criminal Court make prevention an erga omnes obligation.

For any further information, please contact:

Gilles-Emmanuel Jacquet,
Vice-President of the Geneva International Peace Research Institute (GIPRI), Geneva, Switzerland.
Contact : ge.jacquet@gipri.ch ; +41 78 895 24 40

Collectif de Juristes pour le Respect des Engagements Internationaux de la France (CJRF), Paris, France.
Contact : comite.cjrf@gmail.com

1 Leo Varadkar and Pedro Sánchez, Letter to the President of the Commission of the European Union Mrs. Ursula von der Leyen, Oifig an Taoisigh (Office of the Taoiseach) and Gobierno de España – Presidencia del Gobierno, 14/02/2024: https://www.lamoncloa.gob.es/presidente/actividades/Documents/2024/Letter-to-Commission-President-Ursula-Von-der-Leyen.pdf

The Geneva International Peace Research Institute (www.gipri.ch) is a non-governmental organization with UN consultative status.  It was founded in 1980 by Professor Roy Adrien Preiswerk, Director of the Institut Universitaire d’Etude du Developpement and Professor at the Institut Universitaire des hautes Etudes Internationales in Geneva

GREEN SYNDICALISM

Elizabeth Fiedler Is Uniting Labor and Environmental Leaders

As the new chair of the Pennsylvania House Blue-Green Caucus, Philadelphia socialist Elizabeth Fiedler is bridging a political divide that once seemed impassable: environmental advocates and the building trades.

By Elizabeth Fiedler, Jordan G. Teicher 

May 27, 2024
Source: Jacobin


Pennsylvania state representative Elizabeth Fiedler gives a press conference with labor leaders and members of the Blue-Green Caucus on April 16, 2024, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (Elizabeth Fiedler / X)



Robert Bair would probably be the first to admit that his participation in a Pennsylvania House Blue-Green Caucus news conference this month may have once seemed unlikely.

The president of the Pennsylvania State Building and Construction Trades Council — an organization representing 130,000 members — Bair has, over the years, found himself at odds with environmental leaders on key legislative issues. But now, at the Pennsylvania capitol building, he found himself standing side by side with representatives of the Sierra Club and Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania.

“People say, ‘Rob, do you have a lot in common with the environmental community?’ Two and a half years ago, I probably said, ‘Eh, maybe not,’” Bair said at the conference. “But then the representative immediately to my left and I decided that to actually get something started, we needed to sit down together and talk about our issues.”

The representative he was referring to was South Philadelphia socialist Elizabeth Fiedler, who became chair of the fifty-five-member caucus last January. Through her role in the caucus, she and Bair have developed a close working relationship. Now, they’re united behind an unprecedented eleven-bill legislative agenda that spans solar energy production, transit funding, and protections against water privatization.

“For so long, we’ve been told environmental and labor groups don’t get along. They don’t really like each other. They don’t talk at all. In this building, we of course know that is not true,” Fiedler said. “We have so much more we can be doing.”

Fiedler spoke with Jacobin about bringing the environmental and labor movements together, and her plan to expand renewable energy production in Pennsylvania.


Jordan G. Teicher

What challenges have existed for those trying to bring labor and environmental groups together in Pennsylvania around renewable energy?


Elizabeth Fiedler

I think that the move to a renewable energy economy in Pennsylvania in some ways is a much greater lift than in other places because of our historical reliance on the fossil fuel industry. It is very deeply rooted in not just the economy of Pennsylvania, but in the culture of many parts of our state. There are people whose families have worked in these industries for generations.

Environmental groups and labor groups weren’t really talking until the Blue-Green Caucus really set out to make that happen. Now I do feel like it’s baby steps, but we are heading in a direction that makes me hopeful.


Jordan G. Teicher

How do you overcome some of the historic distrust between labor and environmental leaders?


Elizabeth Fiedler

I think a lot of it is personal connections, having someone’s cell phone number, having dinner with them. Maybe we agree, maybe we disagree, maybe a little bit of both, but there are pieces that we can work on together.

Those personal connections, I think in many cases were lacking. Building those relationships, both between individuals and organizations, is very intentional work that has been done over the last couple of years. And I’ve really enjoyed it, I think in part because just a couple of years ago, it didn’t seem likely.

In doing this work, it has been important to recognize the urgency of acting swiftly and also, at the same time, recognize that we are talking about the lives and the livelihoods of people. How do we include those people in the renewable energy transition, and how do we do it in a thoughtful way rather than as an afterthought?


Jordan G. Teicher

Robert Bair, the head of the Pennsylvania State Building and Construction Trades Council, attributes a lot of his investment in the blue-green agenda to you. How did that relationship develop?


Elizabeth Fiedler

Just over a year ago, he and I started talking about some other renewable energy issues that we respectfully disagreed on, and he made an appointment to meet with me in my office. I didn’t really know what to expect, but it was awesome. Really from that first day, we had the most pleasant conversation about the widest spectrum of issues. Since then, I have considered him to be one of my strongest allies in this work.

Just a couple of years ago, being able to say that about the head of the building trades would have been beyond my wildest dreams. Rob is intensely dedicated to making sure his workers have good work. And at the same time, he recognizes that his workers and their families want this to be a healthy and safe planet. And I think he’s really unwilling to accept that only one of those things is possible.


Jordan G. Teicher

The building trades are clearly interested in growing the renewable energy sector in Pennsylvania. But the state is still the country’s second-largest natural gas producer, and unions are bound up in that work. How do you navigate that reality in your position?


Elizabeth Fiedler

Much of the work of the Blue-Green Caucus is really focused on the areas where blue and green agree. We want to throw down hard on those areas, and we want to be as respectful and professional as possible on the issues where we disagree. I think this is one of them.

It’s important to recognize we can’t just shut down an industry. There needs to be a real alternative — not just the promise of an alternative, but real work in solar and wind and other renewable energy industries. People need to be able to feed their families today, tomorrow, and next month. These are people who are deeply invested in making sure that they have work and making sure that they are part of the state’s energy economy. People are very proud of the work that they do. If we can be really intentional and bring them into the conversation, I think it gives us the greatest shot that we possibly have of building the economy that we need.


Jordan G. Teicher

Your “Solar for Schools” legislation is a key part of the blue-green legislative agenda. How did that come together?


Elizabeth Fiedler

Addressing education funding or school facilities was the primary focus of my work for my first couple of terms and it continues to be at the heart of my work. I wanted to bring labor more into those efforts. So, last November, I started talking with the building trades about projects we could work on related to schools.

One of the things that we here in Harrisburg have heard for quite a long time is that schools need billions of dollars to fix their buildings and we just don’t have that sum of money. We’re going to keep pushing to try to get the commonwealth to invest the huge sums of money it should be investing in schools and school buildings. The idea of Solar for Schools really came out of a desire to find tools that we can give school districts directly in the meantime so that they can save money and reinvest those dollars how they see fit.

The legislation would create a state grant program that would help schools across the commonwealth install solar panels. And the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act] will pay for 30 to 50 percent of every single one of these Solar for Schools projects. That promise of the federal money from the IRA was really the thing that made us 100 percent certain that this was a very good idea and we’ve got to give it everything we can to make it happen.


Jordan G. Teicher

What got labor leaders excited about Solar for Schools?


Elizabeth Fiedler

There are provisions within the IRA that can make them feel good about the promise of their workers doing these projects. These are labor leaders who want to be part of growing energy in Pennsylvania. So this was a chance to do that and be aligned with education and environmental groups in a way that doesn’t often happen, especially in Pennsylvania.

One of the motivations behind this that I’ve mentioned is saving money, and we definitely see that as a way in which local municipalities could pass down the savings to taxpayers, either in the form of reducing taxes or certainly in the form of not having to raise taxes. So I think for their members, it was just a no-brainer.


Jordan G. Teicher

Pennsylvania is consistently one of the states with the slowest renewable energy growth. How do we change that?


Elizabeth Fiedler

We have a long, long way to go. There’s discussion from both the administration and some of my colleagues about ways in which Pennsylvania can increase the amount of energy we get from renewables. There are a couple of proposals out there, but it’s very much recognized among my colleagues and also the governor’s office that we have an incredibly long way to go, which is frustrating because we don’t have a lot of time. The governor’s own plan would be 30 percent renewable electricity by 2030.

I think there are real signs that the trend of Pennsylvania is renewable energy growth, which in the past has really lagged behind other places. And I think it’s important that as we do these things, we are working hand in hand with labor. One of the things that we hear over and over from workers is, “Oh, they did this energy project here and all the license plates were from out of state.” If we can be really intentional about including these workers, I think that’s only to our benefit as we try to move very quickly.


Jordan G. Teicher

How does your perspective as a socialist inform the work you’re doing in the Blue-Green Caucus?


Elizabeth Fiedler

I think being a socialist means caring about the lives of all people: caring not just that they have their basic needs met, but also free time to be able to spend with their families, enjoy their community, enjoy arts and culture, and just exist as a full person.

That kind of future won’t be possible without taking meaningful climate action. And climate action is not going to be possible without the input of the workers who will make the changes to our infrastructure that we need. That’s what the Blue-Green Caucus is about: it’s bringing workers and environmentalists together to participate in democracy and to find steps forward through legislation. This work is just a start, but eventually, could it look like workers at energy companies making workplace decisions together, or all of us having true public ownership of utilities? I hope so.

Sometimes that big-picture stuff is hard to keep focused on when you’re in the belly of the beast in state government. But that vision is helpful motivation for me at times when I feel frustrated.

Spain’s Vox Party Is the Center of the Global Far Right

Last Sunday, Spain’s Vox party hosted a rally featuring far-right leaders from around the world, including everyone from Marine Le Pen to Javier Milei. It shows how coordinated the movement is becoming — and how Vox is playing a central role.

By Eoghan Gilmartin

May 26, 2024

Source: Tribune

Argentina's far-right president Javier Milei addressed the Vox rally.



Three weeks before the European parliament elections, the global far-right gathered in Madrid last Sunday in an unprecedented display of its international coordination. Hosted by Spain’s neo-Francoist Vox, the three-day event ended in a mass rally with speakers that included France’s Marine Le Pen, Portugal’s André Ventura, Argentine president Javier Milei, Israeli Likud minister Amichai Chikli — as well as via videolink Italian prime minister Giorgia Melonia and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán.

The closing event, attended by more than 10,000 people, kicked off with a video denouncing the United Nations’ development goals as an ‘ecofeminist’ conspiracy while distorted images of Bill Gates and Greta Thunberg flickered on screen. If such imagery plays on traditional antisemitic tropes of cosmopolitan elites orchestrating a new world order, it was quickly followed by the ex-Trump official Mercedes Schlapp leading a pro-Zionist chant of ‘Viva España! Viva Israel!’

Indeed, while clear contradictions between the various far-right discourses were on display, the collective animosity towards shared, overlapping enemies and an allegiance to forms of reactionary authoritarianism outweighed any differentiating factors. Vox could both invite neo-Nazi Holocaust denier Pedro Varela and declare Israel ‘an international reference in the fight against Islamic terrorism’, while Milei’s anarcho-libertarianism and Le Pen’s chauvinistic protectionist rhetoric could both be warmly received.

‘We patriots must remain united’, insisted American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp at the rally. ‘We are not going to let George Soros or Biden divide us.’

In this respect, Sunday’s rally was also further proof of Vox’s increasingly central role in linking reactionary political movements from across the world. It not only operates as a key bridge between the European and Latin American far-right but, ahead of the European parliament elections, is also pursuing closer ties between the two major far-right families within the EU: Meloni’s pro-NATO and more traditionalist European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and Le Pen’s more pro-Russian and extremist Identity and Democracy grouping.

As polling shows the far-right making significant gains in June’s elections, Vox’s Santiago Abascal is now positioning himself as a central figure within this ‘reactionary international’ — even as his own party has lost ground domestically over the last year. One party official even went so far as to boast that ‘only Vox is capable of holding such a [far-right] gathering.’

An Anti-Communist International

News headlines around the convention have been dominated by the diplomatic row that erupted after Milei called the wife of Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez ‘corrupt’ on stage. Yet the Argentinian president’s relationship with Vox predates his entry into frontline politics, having been one of the signatories of the 2020 Madrid Charter alongside the likes of Eduardo Bolsonaro and Peruvian extremist Jose Antonio Kast. This was the founding document of the Vox-led, anti-leftist alliance, the Madrid Forum, which seeks to combat the spread of ‘communist-inspired totalitarian regimes’ in Latin America.

As Podemos founder Miguel Urbán notes in his 2024 book Trumpismos, the Madrid Forum is looking to achieve something distinct from that of CPAC in the United States. Whereas the latter organises periodic events bringing together international right-wing leaders and activists, the Madrid Forum aspires to be a permanent ‘international organisation of far-right parties’, with a yearly plan of action. As Urbán writes, ‘Vox has maintained a frenetic agenda of networking, trips and events with the objective of constructing the first stable framework for the coordination of far-right Latin American forces, one, moreover, which would have [itself] at the centre.’

This cross-border organisation remains somewhat incipient. Yet according to a recent report from the Progressive International, the Madrid Forum’s ‘most important impact’ so far ‘has been its ability to create and mobilise a network…to undermine left-wing governments in the region.’ In this respect, a major investigation by a consortium of Latin American publications found politicians associated with the alliance have engaged in coordinated campaigns aimed at ‘delegitimising the electoral results in several countries’ — working across borders to amplify fake news stories of electoral fraud in Peru, Columbia and Chile and backed up by organised online trolling campaigns.

In reality, the Madrid Forum also forms part of a broader far-right infrastructure of extremist Catholic associations, Latin American exiles, and reactionary think tanks in the Spanish capital , which have also helped turn the city into a key meeting point for authoritarian forces globally. Madrid regional premier Isabel Ayuso, from the radical wing of the conservative Popular Party, has adopted the Cuban exile slogan ‘Liberty or Communism’ while during a month of violent street protests over Sánchez’s reelection last November, the same far-right network and insurrectional rhetoric was mobilised in an attempt to cast doubt on the legitimacy of his parliamentary majority.

Tipping the Balance of Power

Milei carried over these tactics into Vox’s convention as he flew into Spain looking to pick a fight with the country’s centre-left prime minister — even going so far as to denounce Sánchez’s ‘totalitarianism’ and describing him as an ‘arrogant and delirious socialist’ on his return to Buenos Aires. The ensuing diplomatic row, which saw Spain withdraw its ambassador to Argentina, kicked off Vox’s European election campaign with a bang.

Yet Abascal had also hoped to launch the campaign with both Le Pen and Meloni present on stage with him as he sought further protagonism internationally through fostering increased cooperation between two existing wings of the European extreme right. Both Meloni’s post-fascist Fratelli d’Italia and Le Pen’s Rassemblement National are currently leading in the polls in their respective countries, while the combined projected seats of their two EU-wide groupings would make the extreme right the second largest force in the European parliament.

Furthermore with the Greens and Macron’s liberal Renew grouping expected to both suffer heavy losses, the European parliament could potentially have a right-wing majority of MEPs for the first time in its history. This would not necessarily displace the dominant grand coalition of centrist parties but could allow the conservative European People’s Party (EPP) to secure an alternative majority in certain votes — such as those around environmental issues, civil liberties or immigration.

Yet as academic Cas Mudde notes, this historic far-right surge ‘could become a Pyrrhic victory, if [the] parties remain so divided.’ The ECR, which includes Fratelli, Vox and Eric Zemmour’s Reconquête diverges most from Le Pen’s Identity and Democracy group on foreign policy — as well as, as a result of that, on their degree of mainstream respectability. With her strict pro-NATO positioning, Meloni has cultivated closer links with the EPP since becoming prime minister and wants to keep the door open to a pact with Ursula von der Leyen over her re-election as head of the European Commission after June’s elections.

In this respect, her decision not to attend last Sunday’s event in person saw her seeking a difficult balancing act, with her videolink intervention designed to neither shut down Vox’s overtures to Le Pen or align herself with them. ‘We will see what happens after the elections’, one Vox official insisted — with the party seeing itself as best placed to operate as a pivot between the various groupings over the coming term.

In particular, the announcement this Tuesday from Le Pen and Matteo Salvini that their parties would no longer sit in the same group as Germany’s AfD opens up the possibility of a significant realignment on the European far-right after the elections — as does the expected incorporation of Orbán’s Fidesz into ECR.

In any case, the threat of a major far-right advance is clear. ‘We the patriots must occupy Brussels’, proclaimed Orbán in his intervention at Vox’s convention while Chega’s Ventura asserted: ‘Europe is ours. Europe is ours!’ In the wake of the 9 June poll, it will become clear how realistic this prospect is.