My Thoughts On The Significance Of The Recent Racist Murders And Attacks Against Asians

 My Thoughts On The Significance of The Recent Violence and Anti-Asian Murders

March 19

First, I should say that Martha and I have for ten years been a Host Family for International English Language Students, coming from 15 different Nations. Of the 26 Students we have hosted, half have been Asian (Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea), and most them have been young women. They have been and still are like our very own, and we love them more than I have words for. I've been struggling with how to write about the recent events out of fear that I would give full rein to my anger, and say things that I couldn't take back. So it's taken a few days to put aside my unhinged initial reaction, and get to the fundamentals. 

 What happened in Georgia should make clear that what has been unleashed in the USA is not "politics" or culture war, or even the same old historic problem of White Male Supremacy alone.  This is a marker of an extreme "variant" of a pre-existing cultural virus. The wave of violence against AAPI is something even worse than you think. It's emphatically not the same old American racism or misogynism for that matter, which is unfortunately the mainstream media line. 

These acts of violence occur in a context.  which is the current insanity spreading through the GOP, exemplified by their voter suppression campaign  as a "revival of Jim Crow", or the racist legacy of slavery. Also, the continuing violent political Insurrection which that Party is fomenting through embrace of Terrorism. 

No one wants to say what this really is. I will. It is the literal Nazification of the American Evangelical Protestant Churches, and their Right Wing Catholic allies. It is a virtual repeat of the process through which Hitler's anti-Semitic movement in 1920's and 1930's Germany harnessed the pre-existing hatred of Jews in Germany. Hitler exploited the rage and demoralization of the general population for his purposes. A German population driven half mad by devastating War, Civil War, Hyperinflation and Food shortages became cannon fodder for Hitler's propaganda and reign of terror.

The Nazis recruited the leaders of the Evangelical Protestants and Catholic leaders to their cause. Hitler himself in "Mein Kampf" espoused what he called "Positive Christianity", which was rooted in anti-Semitism. They argued that Jesus was sent to get rid of the Jews, as symbolized by his action to overturn the tables of the Moneychangers and drive the Jews from the Temple and Jerusalem. He spread the belief that the mission of Christianity was the eradication of Jewry, and that Jesus himself was a "Wagnerian" God of full Aryan Blood. 

And in the majority, the German population was so broken by its previous decade and a half when Hitler came on the scene, they were prepared to embrace a violent purge of their most convenient scapegoat, European Jewry. The German Churches created and ran the majority of Center/Right Parties in the Reichstag, so Hitler's takeover through Nazification of the Churches and banning all but his own political Party were the biggest steps toward consolidating power. They used German Christianity as an engine for launching the Holocaust, and neutralizing internal opposition to it. In that sense, the German Nazified Churches had more power over the people than the Nazi Party or the Gestapo, because the people tend to fear Eternal Damnation more than the actions of the State. 

There were exceptional people within the Churches who resisted Nazification. They were murdered in most cases, but their history is indelible as Martyrs for Justice.  However, the reality is that the acceptance of Hitler's anti-Semitic campaigns, and the Laws which enforced them were the product of the marriage between Adolf Hitler and the German Christian Churches. 

This process was virtually the same as what has happened in the United States since 2015. Donald Trump has weaponized both the latent and already active race hatred, misogynism and religious bigotry embedded in our culture into a new Nazi movement, which has been harnessed to the powerful psychological control mechanisms of Religious Fundamentalism. They are conducting a terror campaign to bring into existence a Theocratic Dictatorship.

Make no mistake about it. These racist mass shooters are being jacked up to do it under the influence of Donald Trump, and the Pastors who imbibe in Proto-Nazi versions of Christian belief. It is a Parade of so-called "lone nuts" acting in concert with the same agenda, all being poured from the same mold. 

This needs to be said. What you are seeing in America is the degeneration of American Christianity into something Evil, like the Nazified German Churches of the 1930's. That process, unleashed personally and amplified by Donald Trump in the context of Coronavirus, (for which Asians are being scapegoated) and against the mass reaction to the murder of George Floyd is what we are living through. 

Try as you will to believe that your own Church is an exception, you need to ask whether they are going far enough in its acts of resistance. If they are, I'm happy to hear that they are standing up. But what they are doing is not enough to save the United States or Christianity. It is an attempt at rear guard actions which are weak and isolated. 

The hatred, violence, the ugliness you see unfolding is not political. And it is an entirely new version of mass psychosis, whose only precedent in US history is the thousands of Southern Ministers who were leaders of the KKK after the Civil War, the same who had before preached the Biblical nature of Slavery from their pulpits to recruit to the Confederate Army, and incite Rebellion. 

This is the utter catastrophic failure of organized Religion in America. Just like what happened in Germany. Someone needs to say this. The refusal to face this fact and state it clearly is the biggest obstacle to effectively combatting it. 

Don't be timid. You have every right to question someone's Faith or beliefs, if it leads them to support, condone, or remain indifferent in the face of an evil like Nazism. If their Christian belief and reading of the Bible brings them to embrace an American Hitler like Donald Trump and his fascist Political Party, then they are part of a Nazified Church. They need to do what Beth Moore did, formerly of the Southern Baptist Convention, and leave. Say why, and say it loud. Tell your Pastors that if they support Donald Trump, they will burn in Hell. Quit, and take friends and family with you. 

That, for a start, will put you in the proper frame of mind to do what will be needed to save this country and Christianity from what they are becoming, and the extreme danger of losing our Democracy.