Posted on 02/23/2004 10:26:22 AM PST by Wallace T.
There are several aspects to Mel Gibson and The Passion of the Christ that are worth noting.
It is clear that Anne Catherine Emmerich, a German Catholic nun, had a vivid imagination relative to the death of Jesus Christ. A mystic, she wrote an account of the death of the Savior that drew upon what she believed to be supernatural visions. Some of her statements were reflective of folk theology that reflected a disproportionate blame for the Crucifixion on the Jews. One has only to look at the passion plays in the German-speaking nations of Europe to observe the folk theology in action. Her beliefs in this respect do not reflect the orthodox Christian belief that Jesus Christ died for the sins of innumerable sinful human beings. His death was a substitutionary atonement for the punishment that those people rightly deserve for their sins.
The Old Testament foretold of His physical death on the Cross and His subsequent resurrection. A core belief of Christianity is the sovereignty of God. Thus, the Jewish leaders and the Roman government were mere instruments in the hands of God to accomplish His purpose. Jesus affirmed this in His response to Pontius Pilate, "Thou couldest have no power at all against Me, except it were given thee from above." (John 19:11 (KJV))
That the purpose of the Cross was to redeem sinners from the consequences of their transgressions is evident from the statements of Christian leaders over the centuries.
• “…who for us men and for our salvation, came down, took flesh, was made man; and suffered.”(Nicene Creed)
• “For the presence of the Savior in the flesh was the price of death and the saving of the whole creation.” (Athanasius, Letter to Adelphi)
• “Men were held captive under the devil and served the demons, but they were redeemed from captivity. For they could sell themselves. The Redeemer came, and gave the price; He poured forth his blood and bought the whole world.” (Augustine, Commentary on Psalm 95)
• “Him I seek who dies on our behalf; Him I desire who rose again for our sake.” (Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Romans)
• Whence it came to pass, that the Heavenly Father, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, when that blessed fullness of the time was come sent unto men Jesus Christ, His own Son who had been, both before the Law and during the time of the Law, to many of the holy fathers announced and promised, that He might both redeem the Jews, who were under the Law and that the Gentiles who followed not after justice might attain to justice and that all men might receive the adoption of sons. Him God had proposed as a propitiator, through faith in His blood, for our sins, and not for our sins only, but also for those of the whole world.” (Roman Catholic Council of Trent)
• "The Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience, and sacrifice of himself, which he, through the eternal Spirit, once offered up unto God, hath fully satisfied the justice of his Father; and purchased, not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father hath given unto him." (Westminster Confession of Faith)
• “Q. What is the propitiatory or atoning sacrifice of Jesus? A. The sacrifice of His sinless life, which He offered upon the cross, which was necessary to offer to God, and which He did that the divine Justice, which had been insulted by the disobedience of our First Parents, might be propitiated.” (Rev. Constas Demetry, Catechism of the Eastern Orthodox Church)
What Sister Emmerich expressed in her book is folk theology, not heretical per se, but also not giving due regard for God's redemptive purposes as do the confessions and statements of faith of the early church. However, this folk theology, emphasizing the collective guilt of Jewry, has persisted in what used to be known as Christendom. Martin Luther succumbed to the "blood libel" theory; his intemperate remarks concerning the Jews have since been repudiated by the denominations that bear his name. The statements of Second Vatican Council and the pronouncements by Popes since Pius XI have repudiated the concept of collective guilt by the Jews.
It is evident that Hutton Gibson, Mel's father, denies that six million Jews were killed by the Nazis. He has been long associated with the more radical of the Catholic traditionalists, the faction called sedevacantists, who believe that the Popes who succeeded Pius XII were not legitimate holders of the "keys of St. Peter." The Gibson family's emigration from upstate New York to Australia in the 1960s was predicated on Hutton Gibson's belief that the Vietnam War was an anti-Catholic war, an opinion based on the CIA's involvement in the assassination of South Vietnam's Catholic President Diem. The elder Gibson did not want his sons to fight in such a war and resultantly emigrated to the Land Down Under.
Not unlike the political right, the Catholic right runs from mainstream conservatives like the Eternal Word Network to a radical fringe of de facto schismatics. There are also strong affinities between the Catholic radical traditionalists and political conspiratorialists of the rightist flavor. For example, American rightist "Zionist" conspiracy advocates of the 1950s and 1960s such as Frank Capell and General Pedro del Valle were devout Catholics who also associated with the radical traditionalist element in the Catholic Church. It appears that Hutton Gibson is politically and religiously aligned with men like Capell and del Valle.
In continental Europe, where conservatism is closely aligned with a "throne and altar" ideology, the right wing has usually been authoritarian, favoring strong leaders (crowned or not), a state-sponsored monopoly church (whether Catholic, Lutheran, or Orthodox), a pre-industrial, agrarian economy, and the traditional national culture. Traditional European conservatism could be considered moderately anti-Semitic, inasmuch as it put stock in the folk theology of the "blood libel" and favored restrictions on Jews, unless they converted to the state church. However, these attitudes were far milder than the extreme anti-Semitism of the Nazis, whose attitudes did not derive from folk theology, but from neo-paganism and racist psuedo-science. American conservatism, and to a lesser extent conservatism in Britain and her Empire, was more individualist and libertarian. America's "throne and altar" are the Constitution and a very decentralized Christian religion. American conservatism was also remarkably free of anti-Jewish sentiments, due mainly to the sola Scriptura positions of the largely Calvinist Christians, which rejected positions on the collective guilt of the Jews that were not supported by Scripture. Up until the 1880s, Jews suffered less social discrimination than did Catholics, Mormons, or Quakers.
In reaction to the revolutionary movements from the French Revolution of 1789 to the Communist insurgencies in Russia, Germany, and Hungary from 1917 to 1920, European conservatives started blaming secret forces behind the revolutionary movements. While the Freemasons (who in continental Europe were reputedly deistic or agnostic in belief) were blamed for the French Revolution and the 1848 uprisings by European conservatives, the prominence of atheist people of Jewish heritage, like Leon Trotsky in Russia, Bela Kun in Hungary, and Karl Liebknecht in Germany, in the leadership of the Communist revolutions of the 1910s led to a widespread belief that the Jews were the guiding force behind Bolshevism. Winston Churchill, in statements he made in 1920, blamed the Jews for the Bolshevik Revolution.
Because there were Jewish bankers and businessmen of great wealth and influence and because the Russian Bolsheviks appeared to be well funded, the inference was made that the Jewish bankers of New York, London, and Berlin were funding the Jewish-led Communists in Moscow. The apparent purpose of this conspiracy was to effect Jewish world supremacy, according to many European and American rightists. A book called The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, first circulated by the Tsarist secret police, described a plot by wealthy Jews to effect world dominion. This book proved primary ammunition for the American and European rightist antipathy toward the Jews, or at least those Jews they deemed to be "Zionists." (In addition, American and Northern European rightists were strongly influenced by the mutated Darwinism called Nordic supremacy. Under this theory, Nordic whites were the highest and most noble form of humanity, while Jews were an inferior race of Semitic or Turko-Slavic origin.)
On the farther shores of American politics, there has been a near crazy quilt of ideas. Libertarian concepts of property rights, gun ownership, and personal freedom co-exist with those who would suspend civil liberties to deal with the threats of Communism, terrorism, narcotics, and cultural decay. The traditional American isolationist posture competes with those who have favored forceful intervention to defeat international Communism and radical Islam. Pro-life libertarians, such as Lew Rockwell, who believe the fetus is a human being from inception, conflict with those libertarians, such as Harry Browne, who believe the "right to choose" is unlimited. Catholic rightists who fear Masonic and Jewish enemies have problems with Protestant rightists who add the Jesuits as co-conspirator and the Pope as the "Whore of Babylon" of the Book of Revelation to the usual Masonic and Jewish fare. Both Christian factions are uncomfortable with apostate groups like the Anglo-Israelites who believe Northern Europeans to be true Israel or with pagan groups like the Nazis who reject the Bible as "Jewish fables." There were also those, associated to a great extent with the John Birch Society, who proffered a universal conspiracy theory without blaming the Jews or the Masons.
The purpose of the above discussion is to indicate the environment in which Hutton Gibson operates. Were his name, say, Hutton Wilson, he would just be another crank in the eyes of most people, a superannuated relic of post-World War II American rightism. His audience would be, at most, a few thousand people attracted to his newsletter, audio/video tapes, shortwave broadcast, or Web site. In the overall world of politics and religion, he would be less significant than the turnip growers association or the model train collectors’ league. But Hutton Gibson is Mel Gibson's father and may be fairly perceived as a major influence on his son.
Mel Gibson is a very unusual "bloke." He is neither truly American nor truly Australian. He eschewed upfront politically conservative statements that have marginalized actors and entertainers like Charlton Heston, Tom Selleck, and Ted Nugent in the strongly leftist environment of the mainstream media. (All three are Episcopal or Catholic white guys from Michigan, FWIW.) The traditionalist variant of Catholicism to which Mel Gibson adheres was apparently seen by the Hollywood elite as just a personal quirk, inasmuch as he did not proselytize in public and he was not an "EEEEEEEEvil" Protestant fundamentalist in any case. Yet the movies with which he has been associated in the last few years, notably Braveheart and The Patriot, have been the strongest expression of traditional, Biblically based values and mores in the cinema since the long gone days of John Ford and Frank Capra. Like those associated with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Mel Gibson has managed to successfully smuggle a Christian oriented worldview into a medium dominated for decades by hedonism and moral relativism. In so doing, he is a far more effective fighter against the Left than Heston, Selleck, or Nugent have been (or for that matter, old-time conservative actors like John Wayne, Ward Bond, or Gary Cooper were).
Making movies about wars in medieval Scotland or 18th Century America is one thing. Producing a film around the central event in human history (at least from a Christian perspective) is entirely another. Because Mel Gibson is so skilled in moviemaking, his potential to persuade and to offend far exceed the generally poorly crafted movies made in recent years by evangelicals depicting the end times from a premillenial, pre-Trib rapture dispensational viewpoint (FWIW, an eschatological position that is rejected by a substantial minority of conservative evangelicals, such as PCA Presbyterians, Missouri and Wisconsin Synod Lutherans, Nazarenes, Wesleyans, and Reformed Baptists).
Scripture declares the Crucifixion as an obstacle to nonbelievers. "Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." (I Corinthians 1:22-24 (NIV)) Jesus Himself recognized that He would not unite, but profoundly divide, humanity. "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn 'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.'" (Matthew 10:34-35 (NIV))
The opponents of Christianity also recognize the existence of the irreconcilable nature of the claims of the Bible.
• "It was not 'according to the Divine purpose' that Jesus was slain at the Passover, but it was according to a human invention that he is declared to have been slain at this time. These attempts to connect the crucifixion with the Passover afford the strongest proof that it is a myth." (John E. Remsberg, American freethinker)
• "There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that he believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment." (Bertand Russell, British philosopher and atheist)
• "Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people." (Karl Marx, founding father of Communism)
• "That they said (in boast), 'We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah' -- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them." (The Koran, Surah 4:157)
• “I shall go back a bit, and tell you the authentic history of Christianity.--The very word ‘Christianity’ is a misunderstanding--at bottom there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross. The ‘Gospels’ died on the cross.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist)
A Biblically accurate rendition of the death of Jesus Christ by a talented and proven movie producer is a serious blow to those secular humanists and moral relativists who have been on the winning side in the American (and Western) culture war, a conflict that has roots well before the cultural revolutions of the 1960s. Indeed, it goes back well before the French Revolution, to the Enlightenment era. (It could be argued that the conflict began in the Garden of Eden, with the temptation of Adam and Eve.) Thus, the liberal elite has a vested interest in stopping, or at least limiting the effect, of The Passion of the Christ.
This is where the marginal opinions of Hutton Gibson or an obscure work by a 19th Century Catholic mystic that Mel Gibson has read come into play. If the public, at least outside the evangelical Christian minority, the conservative Catholic minority, and other cultural and social conservatives, can be persuaded that Mel Gibson blames the Jews for Jesus' death and denies the severity of the Holocaust, the effect of the film will be blunted. In the mainstream culture, unjust accusations against the Jews equates to anti-Semitism, which equates to Nazism, which equates to the murder of six million human beings. Even if the film is financially profitable to Mel Gibson, it will have been segregated from the mainstream of casual Christians and nonbelievers as surely as, say, country music and NASCAR racing are largely compartmentalized to a cultural subgroup, white Southerners and Midwesterners.
Thus, we see the liberal propaganda machine in full throttle. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which represents the liberal wing of Judaism, is in the lead, as it carries the banner of the Jewish religion and people even as it does not recognize the authoritative nature of the Torah and Talmud. Observant orthodox Jews hold the ADL in contempt. However, it has proclaimed itself arbiter of what is anti-Semitic. Flanking the ADL are the apostate National Council of Churches and the liberal faction of the Catholic Church, to alienate the large body of Christians who do not adhere to the absolute authority of the Bible.
Gibson's opponents have a problem. Since the film is reflective of the New Testament accounts of Jesus' death, it shows the Jewish leadership of Roman Palestine circa 30 A.D. in a negative light. However, it is difficult to persuasively argue that this represents anti-Semitism. Many Israelis are critical of the government of Israel, yet they are not anti-Semitic. Orthodox American Jews disdain the dominant liberal faction of the nation's Jewish community, and they are not anti-Semitic. The Jewish leaders are depicted as treacherous in the Gospels. A movie that portrayed a Meyer Lansky-like character as treacherous, Godfather II, was not considered anti-Semitic. No one has argued that numerous negative portrayals of Roy Cohn in movies and television were anti-Semitic. How then, could a movie showing Caiphas as treacherous be considered anti-Semitic? To "prove" their charge of anti-Semitism, the detractors drag Hutton Gibson and Sister Emmerich into the picture. Sister Emmerich is long since dead. Unfortunately, Hutton Gibson is using his newfound fame to revive old grudges, to the detriment of his son's purposes.
In order to defame Mel Gibson and The Passion of the Christ, his liberal detractors use the smear tactic of guilt by association, the same technique these very liberals accused Joseph McCarthy of using to smear innocent men of Communist sympathies. Usage of the smear tactic only emphasizes the moral bankruptcy of the liberals. However much the liberals spout pious phrases, express self-righteous indignation, or wrap themselves in the Star of David, they only show their adherence to moral relativism (smearing is bad for thee, but okay for me) and their elitism (we are smarter and more perceptive than those ignorant people who are unaware of their subconscious anti-Semitism). To liberals, who are at the core secular humanists with (sometimes) a religious veneer and moral relativists, the end justifies the means.
Deuteronomy 24:16 states: "Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sins." Mel Gibson and The Passion of the Christ should stand (or fall) on their own merits, and not those of Hutton Gibson, nor on the imaginings of a long-dead nun.
First, the John Birch Society, which you say teaches a "universal" rather than "Jewish" conspiracy theory, is far from clean. Among its high-ranking or endorsed conspiratorialist writers were such avowed anti-Zionists and anti-Semites as Nesta Webster, Prince Michel Sturdza (Romanian Iron Guard apologist), and the Frank Capell whom you explicitly mentioned. If the Birch Society truly believed in a "universal" conspiracy, why would it invoke and/or publish these "authorities?" A former Bircher myself, I have come to the sad conclusion that the conspiracy theory the Society promotes is merely a bowdlerized anti-Semitism, which may explain why so many people exposed to it in the Society go to to become explicit anti-Semites and/or anti-Zionists (such as Jack Mohr and Howard Phillips).
But there's an even greater mote in the rightwing worldview you have described. I grew up in the Bible Belt and until my exposure to "right wing anti-Zionism" in the Birch Society (in my mid-twenties) I had never dreamed there could be such a thing! I thought all chr*stians (I was very naive back then) supported Israel not only for religious reasons but because Israel, like South Vietnam, South Korea, or Taiwan, was a target of the Communists. I still don't understand the "conservatism" that links Israel with Communism and Arafat with anti-Communism. But it's all too real and all too wide spread.
But as Robert Welch, the late founder of the Birch Society, wrote, "let's look deeper still." Why should "throne and altar" be anti-Semitic when ever chr*stian advocate has to get the doctrine, not from the "new testament," but from the TaNa"KH (Hebrew Bible)? Every chr*stian king has claimed as his prototype not Nimrod but David. Before Constantine chr*stianity was a rootless, cosmopolitan, proletarian, and largely urban apocalyptic religion. When the situation changed the regnant church could not find any "new testament" passage to authorize the new "chr*stendom" they were inaugurating, but instead (once again) appropriated the "old." So why now did David's people become so "subversive of order?"
As for a pre-industrial agrarian economy, what sort of economy do people think ancient Israel had? Where did all that wheat and other grain come from? Or the grapes for the wine? Or all those sacrificial animals? Why are the Jewish holy days so tied to the agricultural seasons if "agrarians" should be so inherently suspicious of Judaism? Yet today there are people who insist that the Jews are the only people in history who have never practiced agriculture! (What with being so "modern" for 3300 years and "alienated from the soil.")
So when all is said and done the question still remains: why would anyone be opposed to JUDAISM or ZIONISM because of agrarianism, traditionalism, or attachment to "throne and altar?" Rightwing anti-Zionism has never made any sense to me . . . not when it was a fringe or now that Pat Buchanan has brought it back into "polite" company. Can all rightwing anti-Semitism be blamed on liberal American Jews? If so, why is it that so many people who invoke the ADL and "Jewish Communism" are so fanatically hostile to the late Rabbi Me'ir Kahana' (zt"l, y'sh"v) who was their absolute antithesis? Why is it that the people who shout the most about "rootlessness," "cosmopolitanism," and "alienation from nature" are more hostile to Israel (where these trends, by the very nature of things, must be reversed) than to any liberal Jew in the exile?
Do not misunderstand me. As a Noachide I despise the ADL and all it stands for more than any Jew could ever do. It is the ADL and "Jewish liberalism" that obscures the Truth of Noachism more than anything else in the world. In fact, it is not only their secularism (in the name of a religion that never heard of the doctrine of "separation of church and state") but their rank hypocrisy that rankles me. American chr*stians rightly bristle when, in the name of "pluralism," chr*stmas celebrations are attacked while celebrations of Chanukkah (ironically, a holiday that celebrates the obligation of all Jews to adhere to the Torah rather than the "religious freedom" we are so used to hearing about) are often postponed from an early date precisely to compete with chr*stmas. Yet the very pagan/chr*stian holidays of halloween (which is almost mandatory), "st. valentine's day, and "mardi gras" (the orgy tomorrow) are never subjected to a peep of protest. Indeed, I, as a Noachide, will be practically alone in knowing when Purim comes next month. The rest of the population will instead be celebrating the post-Biblical chr*stian holiday of "st. patrick's day," without, again without a peep of protest from those who have made a martyr of chr*stmas and sullied the good Theocratic name of Chanukkah. (In fact, I attempted to locate a mailing address so I could register my "offense" with the ADL and demand that they promote Purim the way they do Chanukkah but I couldn't find one.)
But even with all that, that does not explain "rightwingers" whose hatred of Judaism is so great that they join with modernists, Communists, rootless cosmopolitans, urbanites, etc., to attack it, or when they wish to see Israel destroyed before a Theocratic Torah society can be built there. Why would people who invoke the ADL for their prejudices hate Rabbi Kahana' (zt"l, y'sh"v) or wince in terror at the thought of a rebuilt Holy Temple of G-d? Whatever happened to "throne and altar," eh?
Jewish liberalism also obscures the fact that an awful lot of irreverent modernistic iconoclasm is preached in the name of chr*stianity itself. It is chr*stemdom (or its secular successor) that spawned the blasphemy known as "Biblical criticism." While chr*stians understandably scream bloody murder about the hypocrisy of Jewish liberals in december, why do they not protest the promotion of the Bible as mythology or the Torah as a "composite" work in their commentaries and their seminaries? One of the crimes of Jewish liberals is to obscure chr*stian liberalism. It was not any Jewish liberal, but the official paper of a Catholic diocese in the United States, that printed a commentary advocating the teacing of the documentary hypothesis to American children in public schools. And they got away with it, too, because everyone was focused on Jewish liberals and creches.
If I must, because of my otherwise "palaeoconservative" instincts and beliefs, be a minority of one because those beliefs are predicated on Torah and the election of the Jewish People (and the Land of Israel), then so be it. I suppose to all the "sane" people out there I seem like an awfully peculiar fellow. But from my side the rest of the world seems stark raving mad.
How much do our Savior's teachings contrast with the universalistic and relativistic strains that dominate mainstream culture!
Furthermore, the Birch Society expelled or "disfellowshipped" several prominent members who were anti-Semites: Col. Jack Mohr, Revilo Oliver, and John Schmitz come to mind. Several anti-Semitic authors, such as Mr. Oliver and Eustace Mullins, believe the Birchers are part of the "Zionist" conspiracy. Others claim that Robert Welch was a high-ranking Mason and a double agent.
However, it cannot be doubted that many Birchers got on the conspiratorial train with books like None Dare Call It Conspiracy and stayed on board until they found Mein Kampf excellent bedtime reading.
This phenomenon occurs outside of JBS circles. For example, ten years ago Texe Marrs was a fundamentalist prophecy author who sold sensationalist stories about a future one world government and the end times. Over the years, he has morphed into a full blown anti-Semite whose viewpoints on the evils of Jewry are not much different from those of the Catholic Michael Hoffman, a Holocaust denier and severe critic of the Talmud.
We may also see a similar declination on the Left from support of moderate reform and democracy to advocacy of revolution and merciless persecution of the opposition. Remember that "Free Speech" advocacy and opposition to the Vietnam War circa 1964-67 morphed into massive riots and the creation of revolutionary bands like the Weathermen and the Symbionese Liberation Army in the 1968-73 period. Within the Left, the difference between the Old Left and the New Left was not one of ideology, but of cosmology. The 1960s generation of leftists, often the children of Communists and fellow travelers, accepted postmodernism and deconstructionism, contrary to the strictly materialist and rationalist views of their Marxist forbears.
My inclination is to believe that ideological drift from a more moderate position toward a more drastic view, whether among rightist conspiratorialists or leftist revolutionaries, is better explained by sociology or psychology than by reason. It may occur in part because holders of a "fringe" belief tend to self-segregate into cliques where viewpoints and presuppositions tend to intensify and harden.
As for the existence of anti-Semitism among professed Christians, I believe there are several causes. One of these is "folk religion": beliefs supported by neither Scripture nor the tradition revered by Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, but nonetheless widely held. A belief of this folk religion is the "blood libel." Some may argue that the "blood libel" is a logical consequence of the view of the church, in the broad sense of the community of saved Christian believers, as a type of Israel in the church age. Even dispensational fundamentalists, those Christians most favorably disposed toward the Jews, believe that eternal salvation can be found only within the church, broadly defined. However, while Scripture teaches that unsaved Jews are outside said church, it says the same relative to unsaved Gentiles. The doctrine of "Christ alone" is not grounds for belief in an eternal curse on the Jewish people. However, evangelical Christian exclusivity with regard to sotierology does create a barrier between them and nonbelievers.
That is precisely the problem. Without mentioning the Jews the Birch Society has a nasty track record of manufacturing anti-Semites out of people who were formerly pro-Zionist Fundamentalist chr*stians. It is hypocritical to claim (as the Society does) that it sees Nazism and Communism as identical if it continues to canonize the old, pre-World War II pro-Nazi Right and publishes books by people like Prince Michel Sturdza.
One could argue that if you mention historically Protestant families like the Rockefellers and Morgans, or old WASP institutions like the Ivy League colleges (especially the elite clubs like Skull and Bones), the Council on Foreign Relations, or the blue chip Wall Street investment and law firms) as the dominant player in the conspiracy, you have excised any basis for anti-Semitic accusations, even if you also mention powerful and wealthy people of Jewish background like the Rothschilds or Bernard Baruch.
But they don't stay with the "WASP conspiracy," do they? True, they criticize the Rockefellers, but why then make heroes out of Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh or promote the works of Nesta Webster? It still always manages to boil down to "Jewish bankers," doesn't it? And note that for every anti-Semite kicked out there is one who isn't (such as Capell) or who leaves in disgust because the Society won't go public with anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism (such as Chuck Carlson, a high-ranking Bircher who quite [he wasn't kicked out] and whose web page now attacks Fundamentalist Zionism full time and has a nasty little feature called "Pharisee Watch.") Even Alan Stang, the Jewish Bircher who was the principal reason I joined (and boy, did I believe he was a knight in white armor!) is now some sort of dominionist "Baptist preacher" who writes articles against "Zionism"--though he defends Israel, which he believes is now a "Zionist" target!!! These people are freaking disgusting, and I thank G-d that their "magic" didn't work on me.
As for the WASP factor, there is an uncomfortable connection between Birch conservatism and late "19th Century" populism, which was a socialist movement. The Birch Society's villains are the same as the populists (and before them, the Jacksonians and Jeffersonians). It was the anti-Rockefeller populists who gave us the income tax which today's populists hate so much! It cannot but disturb me that on today's political map the Democratic coasts of today are identical with the Republican coasts of the days of William McKinley and the "conservative heartland" is identical to the progressive belt. Is today's leftism nothing more than McKinley Republicanism with a slightly different ideological justification?
However, it cannot be doubted that many Birchers got on the conspiratorial train with books like None Dare Call It Conspiracy and stayed on board until they found Mein Kampf excellent bedtime reading.
Exactly! And for that alone they have much to answer for.
I do not deny that the movement toward anti-Semitism occurs outside the Birch Society; that is self-evident. But the Birch Society, because it eschews open anti-Semitism and acts as if it has never heard of pro-Zionist Fundamentalism is an excellent way to introduce pre-World War II anti-Semitic Rightism to people who otherwise would never subscribe to it or maybe would never otherwise hear of it. (And btw, the Talmud's attitude toward non-Jews is identical to that of the Bible. It is only because the chr*stian bible contains "the new testament" that it seems so much more "multicultural!")
When I was a member I received mail from anti-Semitic conspiratorialist organizations. Do they share their mailing list with them or something?
With regard to theology and "J*sus only," that's a completely different ball of wax and though I no longer subscribe to it I understand those who do, and therefore I am not at all "offended" by it nor do I think anyone should be.
I thought you were one of those people who claim the Israelites who came out of Egypt under Moses weren't Jews but were "white aryan chr*stians?"
So since you acknowledge that the ancient Biblical Israelites were indeed the ancestors of today's Jewish people, does that mean you don't like them either? Maybe you think Moses was the "first Jewish Communist?"
Actually, I think that "title" goes to Abraham.
That "Welch Foundation" bunch are a hoot. They claim to adhere to the original philosophy of Robert Welch yet what they want is to make "Rapture Cult" post-millenialist "chr*stian reconstructionism" the official position of the Society. Welch himself was religiously way over on the Left. He was a Unitarian, believed in evolution, and thought orthodox religion had outlived its usefulness. Anyone who reads The Blue Book will see these things.
Still, the fact that these people claim to adhere to the "original philosophy" of the Society is very problematic from a pro-JBS perspective. Their web site bristles with nasty comments about Israel, they have endorsed a petition on the USS Liberty that carries the signatures of many avowed anti-Semitic organizations (I don't recall the Society of Welch's day saying a word about the Liberty while I was a member) and generally gives the impression of being a bunch of Cartoites.
Zionist Fundamentalists have been around for some three hundred years, their theology dominates the Heartland, and they are the most consistently literal interpretators of the Bible. That the JBS completely ignores them in favor of the old Henry Ford/Charles Lindbergh/John T. Flynn/Westbrook Pegler/Russell Maguire right wing shows exactly what they are, and I will never trust them again.
BTW, with regard to socialist populism as a predecessor of some of today's radical rightism, William P. Hoar wrote articles lionizing Charles Lindbergh's father (a radical Minnesota Farmer/Labor congressman) as well as Henry Ford (despite the fact that Ford built plants for Stalin). And their attacks on the "banks" are right out of Jefferson (no rightwinger, he).
For a little while in the early days of the Reagan administration the Society almost went mainstream conservative, even defending some members of Reagan's cabinet. Now of course they hate GW Bush and especially Attorney General Ashcroft for creating a "plice state" (too bad his name's not "Franco" or "Pinochet").
The best book that I know of regarding the history of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory is The "Jewish Threat": Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army, by Joseph Bendersky. The book suffers from liberal bias, as it ignores the fact that the Communist movement was subversive and truly conspiratorial. However, the book does trace the widespread nature of beliefs that the Jews were the primary force behind Communism in the Army's officer corps, especially in the intelligence corps. Even generals not themselves anti-Jewish, like MacArthur and Eisenhower, were surrounded by advisers who were convinced that the Jews were out to rule the world. Although the author does not stress the point, there is a nearly seamless connection from the early 20th Century conspiracy theories based on The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion to those promoted by the Birchers and Liberty Lobby in the 1970s. There is also a common thread of junior officers in the pre-World War II Army, who, as retired senior officers, helped promote rightist causes and opposition to American aid to Israel.
I was aware of McDonald's reconstructionism. He was slated to succeed Robert Welch as president of the JBS, so I assume that if original succession plans had prevailed the Society would have switched from non-sectarian anti-Communism to full-blown "chr*stian reconstructionism" at Welch's death. The "Welch Report" people seem to be those who are disappointed that this original plan was not fulfilled.
Re both topics (McDonald and the Army), what astounds me is how I never heard of Jews being so much as associated with Communism, much less being behind it. I used to listen to shortwave radio broadcasts and all Communist broadcasts were stridently anti-Israel. Not only did I never suspect that "conservatives" were anti-Israel, but I assumed that after 1948 even groups such as the Ku-Klux Klan had to support Israel to even create the impression that they were anti-Communist.
Plus all the Fundamentalist preachers on radio and television were pro-Israel. So did I grow up in a vacuum or something? Why was there such a discrepancy in the "coservatism" I always knew and this anti-Jewish "rightism" everyone else knows about?
I'll still never understand it.
This attitude is not unique to Jews. Protestant mistreatment of Irish Catholics has made the latter group virtually immune to Protestant evangelism, even by denominations like the Baptists, who had nothing to do with the Protestant Ascendancy. Even though many conservatives view Martin Luther King favorably and support the 1960s era civil rights laws, black Americans are by and large hostile to conservatism. To a great extent, this is based on their perception that conservatives dominated the South during the Jim Crow era (a false perception, inasmuch as the most virulent segregations like Tom Watson were Populists, i.e., rural socialists).
I can understand the lingering fear based on historical experience, though I can't understand why only certain militant chr*stians are feared and not others (ie, Black Fundamentalist Protestants, indigenous Middle Eastern chr*stians). However, I sincerely feel that the reduction of the entirety of Jewish history to the past two thousand years of exile under regnant chr*stianity serves the purpose of a (wait for it!) scapegoat. Liberal Jews are probably sincerely unaware of the fact that Judaism invented all that "chr*stian" stuff they so loathe (Theocracy, slavery, extermination of indigenous heathens, "irrational" rituals such as animal sacrifice). All this has been forgotten and liberal Jews see themselves only as the "Canaanites of chr*stendom." Unfortunately, they are never confronted with these facts because too many chr*stians accept at face value the liberal Jewish claim that Judaism is leftwing, and too many Torah Jews (who know better) are utterly silent once they leave their study halls. I have often wondered why non-religious Jews want their secular Jewish ethnic state to be in the Holy Land and with its capital in undivided Jerusalem (since the purpose of undivided Jerusalem is to be the place of the Temple Service). Perhaps by creating a model secular democracy in the name of "Judaism" there they feel they are erasing the memory of their unenlightened Theocratic ancestors.
This attitude is not unique to Jews. Protestant mistreatment of Irish Catholics has made the latter group virtually immune to Protestant evangelism, even by denominations like the Baptists, who had nothing to do with the Protestant Ascendancy. Even though many conservatives view Martin Luther King favorably and support the 1960s era civil rights laws, black Americans are by and large hostile to conservatism. To a great extent, this is based on their perception that conservatives dominated the South during the Jim Crow era (a false perception, inasmuch as the most virulent segregations like Tom Watson were Populists, i.e., rural socialists).
I guess you could say that I'm a "rural socialist" myself, since I don't go into conniptions about the "size of the government" or freak out that the ban on tobacco ads is a violation of the First Amendment (which it would magically cease to be once those ads became pornographic), though I am not a populist because I don't believe in the innate goodness and wisdom of the mass of humanity. However, please be aware that even today's "far right" Southern nationalists invoke these very same populists and their anti-capitalist, anti-banker ideology, while at the same time condemning "socialism" (ie, populism on behalf of people of color). That may explain why Southern nationalists support leftist national liberation movements in Quebec and the British Isles; since these people are white they can't be considered "socialists."
Your points on Irish Catholics is well taken (hey, I was Catholic for six years, remember?). And as for Blacks, if the evolutionists were ridiculing them and whamming them over the head with Origin of the Species they might change their tune. But liberals aren't going to confront Black Fundamentalists, so they'll remain in the "coalition."
I hope sometime you'll share your thoughts on why traditional American rightism is so freaking different from the only "conservatism" I ever knew growing up in the Bible Belt, or how anyone with access to a Jewish prayer book or worship service could believe that Communism was a plot to rebuild the Holy Temple.
I ask forgiveness for this unintentional act of disrespect toward a great and G-dly man.
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