While I'm certain Amanda Marcotte and I have different ideas about how to actually fight fascism, I agree strongly with her argument that Marco Rubio's cable asking State Department employees to use a snitch line to report each other for "anti-Christian bias" is both an indicator of the regime's theocratic intentions and an ominous portent of the next moral panic the Trumpenreich will use to purge its enemies and continue installing a fascist dictatorship.
https://archive.ph/7Zge0
Marco Rubio's hunt for "anti-Christian bias" is creeping theocracy
"Unsurprisingly, a deeper read of the cable shows that "anti-Christian bias" is the cover story propped up to justify Rubio's actual assault on freedom of religion at State. He's giving Christian nationalists at the agency a tool to harass and even purge people who don't share their far-right beliefs. The definitions of "anti-Christian bias" throughout add up to outrage that conservative Christians are expected to treat people who believe differently with fairness and decency.
For instance, the memo asks for reports of "mistreatment for opposing displays of flags, banners or other paraphernalia," specifically during Joe Biden's administration. It doesn't take a doctorate in bureaucratese to interpret this. Rubio is seeking stories where conservative Christians were told to mind their own business after objecting to a colleague putting up a Pride flag, a Black Lives Matter sign or perhaps a religious knickknack from a non-Christian faith. This might be more comprehensible if, say, any Christians had being told they couldn't wear a cross or have a picture of Jesus on their desk. Instead, what Rubio is suggesting is that Christians have a prevent other people from having the freedom to express views and positions they dislike — and that it amounts to "bias" if they can't control what others do or say.
Also defined as "anti-Christian bias" is alleged mistreatment for "opposing official media content due to religious objections." Under Biden, the State Department flew the Pride flag, validated the passports of trans people, allowed LGBTQ employees to be out at the office, and expected employees to use the correct name and pronouns for trans colleagues. Under this new policy, if State employees objected to these policies, they are now free to punish those who asked them to show professional courtesy to co-workers. This is not an anti-discrimination policy, but a pro-discrimination policy."
Throughout the rest of the piece, Marcotte does a solid job of debunking the idea that anti-Christian bias is a significant problem in an increasingly Christian Nationalist/fundamentalist America, and pointing out that what Rubio is doing is enabling Christian Nationalists working at State to harass and potentially purge anyone opposed to their odious ideology; including other Christians who do not conform to the very narrow definition of believer the Christian Nationalist worldview allows for.
"What's ironic here is that, because of American demographics, most of the people who risk being targeted by these authoritarian policies are either Christian or grew up Christian. But a large part of the MAGA project is redefining "Christian" only to mean people who share a white nationalist, anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQ worldview — and want to use force to bring everyone else in line."
In other words, it's just another project to install fascist ideology as the only acceptable way to think and act inside the Trumpenreich-controlled US government. Where I think Marcotte's analysis shines however, and what I hope readers take away from this story, is the author's direct connection of this nascent argument for another fascist purge, with its prior two arguments for doing so as we watch them evolve into their horrifying final forms in real time; specifically the regime's fake wars against "antisemitism" and "gang activity."
Like most fascist movements, what some call "Trumpism" is actually a giant quilted patchwork of reactionaries, supremacists, and eliminationists who are ideologically aligned under the big picture fascist umbrella, but have (at times) wildly different priorities and concerns on the micro level, inside each individual clique. One of the core constituencies in the fascist Trump alliance are Christian Nationalists and the evangelical right; whose loyalty to the regime was rewarded with an anti-trans pogrom and assaults on public education (among other things) the moment Trump was inaugurated. Now, slightly staggered as their two prior fake moral panics become exposed as just bog standard fascism, what better way to right the nazi ship of state than to drum up a third moral panic about anti-Christian bias? This would rally the Christian right around Trump's banner, while the regime continues its project to purge "enemies" and install a fascist dictatorship, in what it hopes will become a white ethno-state.
#Fascism #Trump #Rubio #Theocracy #Purge #ChristianNationalism
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