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NEWS & LETTERS, June 2004Converging right wing reviewedLIFT HIGH THE CROSS; WHERE WHITE SUPREMACY AND THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT CONVERGE, by Ann Burlein Author Ann Burlein compares the white supremacist movement's "hard sell" of their beliefs with the "soft sell" of the same beliefs within the religious right. She compares Pete Peters' white supremacy propaganda "ministry," Scriptures for America, with James Dobson's family counseling "ministry" and political influence machine, Focus on the Family. She explains how both groups use "counter memories," their own reinterpretations of history, to form their philosophies. Both point to Old Testament stories of God abandoning a wayward nation of Israel and of kings winning back God's favor by purging Israel of the religious influence of other cultures. Peters and other white supremacists believe that Israelites were white and that they later went on to build a new "JerUSAlem" in the U.S. He believes that the influence of "satanic" Jews and "bestial" people of color must be battled to win back God's favor. Dobson's beliefs are less garish: the U.S. was intended by the forefathers to be a Christian country but the revolutionary movements of the '60s led to social chaos that can only be remedied by "bringing back" a supposedly "Biblical," authoritarian family structure. Both believe that gender roles and heterosexuality are natural, but hold a contradictory belief that they need to be taught and enforced to keep order in society. Peters considers abusive marriages normal and uses them as a metaphor to explain why God punishes his bride, Israel, because he is "hurt" by her unfaithfulness. He also believes that men are naturally warriors who must submit to God by carrying out acts of violence. Dobson allows women to have a degree of personal empowerment in the hopes of luring them away from feminism, which he describes as extremist. He believes that fathers must lovingly control and physically punish their children so that they will identify their submission to their father with submission to God. In both cases, "submitting to God" means to submit to right-wing ideology. Peters and Dobson use sentimental imagery of frontier homesteads and rugged individualism to promote the idea of private property ownership and a private sphere that they are trying to preserve from the corruption of big government and the inner city. Burlein demolishes this myth of self-reliance by describing the communal nature of frontier life and how frontier and home ownership in the 1950s (sentimentalized by Dobson) were subsidized by the government. Burlein's occasional use of postmodernist jargon and rambling makes some of the book incoherent, especially in the conclusion, where she attempts to construct a progressive response to the right wing. However, the book is valuable in helping the reader to understand the thinking and the activities of white supremacy and the Christian right. --Adele |
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