Prophet of Peace

This is the sermon I gave at First Congregational Church of Maltby on Sunday, November 27, 2016.

Prophet of Peace

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

November 27, 2016

Scripture: Isaiah 2:1-5

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. Advent is the season of the church year when we anticipate and prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ at Christmas. Advent is in some ways a rather theatrical season. We suspend our disbelief and pretend that Jesus hasn’t been born yet, never mind that he was born over two thousand years ago. Advent is not Christmas, it is preparation for Christmas. Out there in the world it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, as the old song goes. In here it isn’t Christmas. It’s Advent. Christmas is coming. It’s on a Sunday this year, so in addition to our Christmas Eve service on the evening of the 24^th we will have a service on Christmas morning at our regular time. It will be Christmas then, but not now. Now it’s Advent.

Every year as we enter the season of Advent one question occurs to me more than any other: Who are we waiting for? The obvious answer of course is Jesus, but for me that response raises more questions than it answers. Who, after all, is Jesus? What does he mean for us? What does he mean for the world? How are we to understand him? The Christian church has long answered those questions by saying that he is the Son of God who came to earth for the purpose of suffering and dying to pay the price of human sin so that those of us who believe in him can go to heaven when we die. If that answer works for you, OK I guess. I won’t argue about it with you; but I am convinced from reading the Gospels that that is not primarily what Jesus was about. He was more about how God calls us to live this life.

Mostly he was about reviving the voice of ancient Hebrew prophecy. That part of the Hebrew tradition was already ancient by Jesus’ time. The voices he heard and echoed date mostly from the 8^th century BCE, more than seven hundred years before Jesus. That would be like someone today reviving a message from the 1300’s, which I’m sure sounds like a long time ago to all of us. It is a long time ago, and the Hebrew voices of faith that Jesus revived came from a long time ago in his time. One of those voices was the prophet Isaiah from whom we just heard in our first scripture reading. That passage gives us a wonderful vision of a glorious future of peace and international understanding and cooperation. It imagines that many people will come to Jerusalem to learn the way of the Lord, that is, of the god Yahweh, the god of the Hebrew people, the God we know as the one and only true God. It says God will settle the peoples’ disputes, which I think we can take to mean that the people will settle their own disputes peacefully because all of them will be seeking to follow the ways of God. Then there will be no more war. In some of my favorites lines from the whole Bible Isaiah says “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” Always reminds me of the old spiritual with the refrain “I ain’t gonna study war no more.” Isaiah then calls his people, and calls us, to that way of living when he says: “Come, O house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”

And I suppose it’s natural to ask at this point: Why does the lectionary give us this text for the first Sunday of Advent? After all, it doesn’t mention Jesus. Christianity has long thought that Isaiah predicts the coming of Jesus (which I don’t), but there’s nothing in this passage that sounds like a prediction of a person. So why this text for the first Sunday in Advent? I think it’s because, although this text doesn’t predict Jesus, it points to something profoundly true about Jesus. This vision of a world at peace with no war is a vision that Jesus picked up hundreds of years after Isaiah. It is a vision he developed and proclaimed to his world and to ours. The ancient Hebrew prophetic call for a world at peace resonated in Jesus’ soul because he knew that God is a God of peace not war, a God of peace not violence, a God of peace not fear, a God of peace not anxiety. We Christians call him the Prince of Peace, and indeed that is what he is. He spoke of the Kingdom of God as a time on earth when God’s vision of peace for all the world becomes a reality.

For me, when I think of peace, I think first of all about an end to war and to all physical violence between people. Indeed, Jesus is our prophet of that kind of peace; and that kind of peace is really important. But it is equally true that peace is like an onion. There are many layers to it. I remember a quote that I think is from the Dalai Lama, although I couldn’t find it online. It goes something like: If you want peace in the world, begin by being at peace in yourself. The idea is that outer peace begins with inner peace. That’s an idea Jesus would fully embrace, for he sought to transform the world by transforming individual souls. So today as we think of peace, let’s think first of all about the inner peace we can find in our Lord Jesus Christ. He calls us first of all to inner peace, and we can find that inner peace in him. In him we can be at peace because in him we know that God loves us unconditionally. We know that God forgives us unconditionally. We know that God is our eternal home that awaits us at the end of our time on earth. He said “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” He said “I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:28-29 That’s the inner peace we can find in him—rest for our souls. That peaceful rest in Jesus is the beginning of peace not only for our souls but for the whole world. If you want peace in the world, start with finding peace in your soul. That is a message I desperately need to hear today. Perhaps you do too.

Now, I’m preaching on peace today; but the Advent theme for this first Sunday of Advent is actually not peace but hope. So it occurs to me to ask: Is there really any hope for peace in the world? I sure struggle to find that hope these days, but I know that the answer to our search for a hope of peace is God. God is always the answer to any kind of hope. God is how we can hope for that which seems so unattainable in our lives and in our world. We can hope for peace or any other great thing that we lack because we know that God is present and active in our lives and in the world. God’s presence and activity in the world are always subtle. They’re always quiet. They can be hard to perceive, but they’re always there. Always working. Always calling us and the whole world to build that peaceful Kingdom of God of which Jesus spoke. So hope for peace? All the worldly evidence to contrary notwithstanding, yes. Yes, because God.

Recently I have seen two things that seem to me to be signs of a possible peace in the world. They are, of all things, two television commercials that are running this holiday season. One of them is an ad for amazon.com. In it a Muslim imam goes to visit his friend. An imam is a Muslim prayer leader, the closest thing Islam has to a priest or pastor. His friend is of all things a Catholic priest. They have a friendly visit. They talk. They laugh. In the course of their time together they both show signs of having knee pain. The imam bids his friend the priest good-bye. After he leaves, both of them unbeknownst to the other go online and orders his friend a pair of knee pads, from amazon.com of course. Both are surprised when their unexpected gift arrives. They both put on the pads and go to their places of worship, the imam to his mosque and the priest to his church. They both kneel on their new knee pads and pray. The ad doesn’t say so, but they’re both praying in their different ways to the same God, to the God of reconciliation and peace. That ad nearly brings me to tears, for it is a sign that some people in the world get it. They get it that peace and reconciliation are the way of God.

The other ad is for Apple, the computer company. It features Frankenstein’s monster. In the ad he appears as a large, dark, unhappy creature. The first thing he does is record a music box playing the song “There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays.” He records it on an i phone of course, for this is an ad for Apple. Then he screws red and green Christmas lights into sockets in his neck, where they light up. He walks into a town where people are celebrating Christmas. The people shrink back. They’re afraid. They don’t know what this man who looks like a monster will do. He starts to play his recording and to sing “There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays.” One of his Christmas lights goes out. A little girl beckons him to come to her. He does, and she tightens the light on his neck that has gone out so that it comes back on. She sings with him. Then everyone sings with him. They all relax and welcome him to their town. It turns out that this creature who everyone saw as a monster was just a lonely man looking for friendship and acceptance, looking for home. The ad ends with a line on the screen that reads: “Open your heart to everyone.” And I say thank you Apple, and amen. Open your heart to everyone indeed. That is the way of peace. That an enormous corporation like Apple would run an ad like this in a world like this is a sign of hope for peace, that peace we so lack and so badly need.

So in this Advent season as we await the birth of Jesus Christ, let us be at peace. And let us hope for peace in God’s world. Let us be hope for peace in God’s world, and let us start by being at peace in our souls. Let us begin by caring for the other, the stranger, the one very different from us, the ones who pray differently, the ones we might think are monsters when they really aren’t. Let us begin by opening our hearts to everyone. Then perhaps we will find the peace that Jesus brings. The peace that Jesus is. Thanks be to God. Amen.

America 1933

America 1933

The American fascist Donald Trump is President-Elect of the United States of America. Next January he will succeed Barack Obama in the highest office in our land. I have already expressed my anger and rage at that result in this blog, but I can’t stop being affected by it. Today one parallel in particular won’t leave my mind. It is the parallel, or at least the possible parallel, between Germany on February 8, 1933, nine days after Hitler became Chancellor, and the United States of America today, nine days after Donald Trump was made President-Elect. Of course I know that the parallel isn’t perfect. I am a professionally trained historian, so I get it that there are never perfect parallels between different places and different times. Still, one recent bit of really bad news out of a band of right-wing zealots Trump is installing around him is that they are planning to create a “registry” of American Muslims. I don’t know if the Nazi’s first act against Germany’s Jews was a registry, but it wasn’t the death camps. Those came later. They came as the logical conclusion of a policy of hatred and discrimination that began much more innocently. When I heard about Trump’s proposed registry of Muslims my first thought was: What’s next? Yellow crescents? If you don’t get that, go look up the yellow Stars of David the Nazis forced Jews to wear. In February, 1933, Germany was just starting to deal with Hitler and the Nazis. In November, 2016, we are just starting to deal with Trump and his followers.

Some people know how I have reacted to the election of Donald Trump as president. Readers of this blog know. And people say to me: Give him a chance. We don’t know yet what he’ll do. Get over it, we’ve had bad presidents before. And I think: Is that what the Germans who didn’t like Hitler should have said in February, 1933? Should they have said don’t worry, the worst won’t happen? Of course not. Part of the problem was that far too many Germans said things precisely like that. There’s a powerful scene in the movie version of the musical Cabaret. The setting is an outdoor German beer garden on a beautiful day somewhere outside Berlin. Ordinary Germans of different ages are sitting peacefully enjoying the sunshine and good German beer or white wine. A young man stands up. He’s wearing a Nazi uniform of some sort. He is the model of supposed Aryan racial perfection, tall, blond, and handsome. He starts to sing in a beautiful, trained high tenor voice. One by one the people in the beer garden stand and sing with him. First the young, the nearly everyone. As he ends his song he gives the Nazi salute. His song has a refrain:

O Fatherland, Fatherland, give us a sign.

Your children are waiting to see.

A future will come when the world is mine.

Tomorrow belongs to me.

Only one old man remains seated. He drops his head in despair. The English character Brian says to the German character who is with him witnessing the scene “Do you still think you can control them?” The German character shrugs his shoulders and drives away. We know what happened. We know decent people couldn’t control them. World War II happened. Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau happened. Stalingrad and the blockade of Leningrad happened. D-day and the Battle of the Bulge happened. Does tomorrow belong to Trump and the rightwing, racist fringe in our country? To the alt-right? To the KKK? To the deniers of climate change? Will we just shrug our shoulders and drive away? Will we get over it? Will we give him a chance like the Germans gave Hitler a chance? I can only pray that we won’t.

I don’t think Trump and his band will create an American Auschwitz for Muslims. I don’t think they’re that bad, but I do know that one of Trump’s people cited the internment camps for Japanese Americans at the beginning of World War II as a precedent for a registry of Muslims today. I do know that Trump has said we should ban all immigration by Muslims. I know that he considers all Muslims to be suspect because there are terrorists who say they are Muslims. I know that Trump has called immigrants from Mexico rapists and murderers. I know that he scapegoats Muslims and immigrants much the way Hitler scapegoated Jews. And I’m supposed to get over it? I’m supposed to give him a chance? I’m supposed to think it won’t be that bad?

I’ve heard all of that, and to all of that I shout a loud and vehement No! No, now is not the time to get over it. Now is not the time to give this American fascist we’ve elected a chance. Now is the time to work to prevent the worst, not just to sit around thinking the worst won’t happen. I’ve said before in this blog that now is the time for anger and rage. It is, and it is time to turn our anger and our rage into action. I don’t know yet what action (although as a Christian I am convinced it must be nonviolent action), but it sure seems that we are America 1933. We are where Germany was at the beginning of Nazi rule. No, I don’t think Trump is as bad as Hitler; but Hitler didn’t have nuclear weapons. Hitler didn’t have a planet on the brink of irreversible climate change. Trump does. He may not be as bad as Hitler, but his potential for causing irreparable damage to God’s earth and her people is far greater than Hitler’s was. So America, wake up. It’s 1933. What are we going to do about it?

Time for Anger, Time for Rage

A Time for Anger, A Time for Rage

November 14, 2016

It is finally starting to sink in. This country really made the American fascist Donald Trump President-elect. No, he didn’t win the popular vote, but that won’t stop him from becoming president. He won the electoral college, part of our constitutional system that disproportionately advantages small population states. He truly is an American fascist. See my post on this blog with the title “American Fascist” for an examination of why it is appropriate to call him that. He is a bigot. He is racist, misogynist, and xenophobic. He targets the vulnerable who are not responsible for the problems our country faces. He panders to those who struggle with today’s economic realities, promising them jobs he can never produce and a restored security he can never deliver. It is finally starting to sink in. The American fascist Donald Trump is going to be President of the United States.

In a gathering of some of my UCC clergy colleagues that I attended earlier today we were asked how we were dealing with that unexpected reality. I said I was depressed and angry. I said I didn’t know what the hell I was doing or what I’m going to do. Then a colleague who happens to be Black and Gay spoke. He said he’d been to a prayer service where the message was feel your anger, then let it drain out of your body. He said that message was just wrong, and he’s right about that. Anger is precisely the appropriate response to the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. Not to be angry is not to understand who he is, what he stands for, and what the election says about our country. To understand who he is, what he stands for, and what this election says about our country is to become angry. For anyone with a moral conscience or moral sensitivity it is to feel rage. A member of the church I serve said to me yesterday that Donald Trump is not a monster. She’s wrong about that. He is a monster, and to know that all we have to do is listen to his own words. Ban all Muslims from entering the country. Build a wall along the entire Mexican border. Grab women by the pussy. I’m sorry for using that crude word, but that’s what he said. A full collection of the deplorable, immoral, unconscionable things Trump has said would fill a sizable book. He is a monster, an American fascist monster whom we have made our President-elect. How can we not be angry? How can we not be filled with rage?

But you say: Wait! You’re a Christian, even an ordained Christian minister. Anger isn’t Christian. No Christian can feel rage. Christianity is about loving everyone. So get over your anger, give up your rage. And I say no. I say anger is precisely the proper Christian emotion today. I say true Christians must feel rage today. Perhaps we are called in some way to love Donald Trump as a child of God, hard as that is for me to do. Yet we are called to be angry at injustice. We are called to rage against racism, sexism, xenophobia, and every other sinful prejudice that Donald Trump represents. We are called to rage against every hatred, every injustice that diminishes any of God’s people—and Donald Trump even diminishes himself by his hatred and his bigotry. We are called to rage against egomania and megalomania. Our Christian rage must be nonviolent, but it must be rage nonetheless. To let go of our anger, to let go of our rage would be to forget how immoral Donald Trump’s positions, words, and actions have been. It would be to become complacent in the harm he intends to do to millions of God’s people.

So no, I will not give up my anger at Donald Trump and the country who made him president. I will not give up my rage at policies that destroy God’s world and harm God’s people. After all, Jesus felt anger. Jesus felt rage. He overturned the tables of the moneychangers in the temple at least in part because they were cheating God’s people. (There’s more to that story than that, but I won’t go into that matter here.) Jesus did things and told stories that condemned the authorities of his day, both secular and religious. I have no doubt whose side he would be on in the pending struggle between Donald Trump and justice, and it sure wouldn’t be Donald Trump’s. I have no doubt that Jesus would feel anger. I have no doubt that Jesus would feel rage. So no, this is not a time for calm. This is not a time for easy sentimental love. This is a time for anger. This is a time for rage.

Light in the Darkness

Light in the Darkness

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

November 13, 2016

Scripture: John 1:1-5

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

(Take off stole) For a moment I’m going to speak for myself here. That’s why I have taken off my stole, the symbol of my status as an ordained minister and as your pastor. I’m going to speak for myself because I have to. If someone tells me that I can’t do that, that I’m only up here because I am the pastor of this church, I won’t argue with them; but I’m going to speak for myself anyway. I’m not speaking now in my role as your pastor. I’m speaking only as an American citizen. For me, last Tuesday, the world became a very dark place, much darker than I had ever thought of it being before. I don’t need to tell you about the result of our election of that day. You know it already. You know who won, and you know as much about that person as I do, maybe more. Some of you already know how I took that result. For the rest of you, I took it very badly. I reacted to it with powerful negative emotions, emotions of depression and even anger. I see nothing but harm coming from it, harm to our nation, harm to the world, especially harm to the vulnerable, to minorities, immigrants, non-Christians, and people with disabilities like my six-year-old granddaughter Calnan, who has a significant visual disability that will probably only get worse as she grows up. I grieve the result of our presidential election, and I suspect that I will for years to come. I never thought my country would make a decision I consider to be this bad, but it did. So I have prayed for help for my nation and for myself as we enter what I fear will be a very difficult time for us and especially for the ones Jesus called “the least of these.” I have struggled and continue to struggle with the question of how I can keep doing the work, the ministry, that I have been doing for years, for last Tuesday’s result frankly makes it all seem small and meaningless. Tomorrow I am going to a two-day retreat for UCC clergy on the subject of how to be the church. I am hoping that spending time with my UCC colleagues, as far as I know all of whom have reacted to the election much as I have, will help me get my feet back under me; for they sure haven’t been under me since last Tuesday. I hope you understand that I had to tell you what’s going on with me, for you need and deserve to know.

(Put stole back on) OK. I’m back as your pastor. One thing that Christianity has always known is that the world is a dark place. Our world today is hardly unique in being a dark place. There has always been war. There has always been injustice. There have always been charlatans and reprobates in seats of power. The good has always struggled with evil. Indeed, sometimes it seems to us Christians that the world is nothing but an arena for the cosmic struggle between good and evil. Frankly, I have never understood how Christians can see the world any other way, for we follow a Lord and Savior whom the darkness of the world tortured and executed as a common criminal, as a threat to public order. Yet we call our crucified savior the Son of God. We call him Emmanuel, God With Us. We call him God Incarnate. And the world killed him as if he were nobody. Yes, he rose again, but our faith truly grew out of the darkness of the world.

Our New Testament knows that. We heard it say it in our reading from John this morning. I used the New Revised Standard Version translation of those verses because they are the form in which I have long known these verses and because I think they are a better translation than the NIV we use here, especially in their last phrase. Those verses are the New Testament’s most profound proclamation of Jesus as God Incarnate. And they know that Jesus came precisely into a world of darkness. They are so profound that I’m going to recite them to you again. They say:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Jesus is the light of all people, and he came into darkness. His light shines in that darkness. And this Bible verse says “the darkness has not overcome it.” That’s the line that’s translated better in the NRSV than in the NIV. The darkness has not overcome it. Folks, I’ve had a hard time holding onto that one since last Tuesday, but I know it is true. The darkness of the world has never overcome the light of Christ. He is the light in our darkness. Thanks be to God.

This last week one of you forwarded to me a letter that proclaims not the light of Christ in the world exactly, for its author is Jewish, but the light of God in a world of darkness. That’s the same light that shines in Jesus. This letter is from Rabbi Will Berkovitz, the Chief Executive Officer of Jewish Family Services in Seattle. It is so beautiful and so powerful that I am going to share most of it with you. Last Wednesday Rabbi Berkovitz wrote:

"What happens now?" was the question my children asked me last night as I was putting them to bed. "What can we do? What will we do?"

We can hold our place while not denying others theirs. We can walk with the vulnerable so they know they are not alone. We can be a place of peace and not darkness. We can be kind with ourselves and others. And we can transform that kindness into deeds of love. We can acknowledge the fear and uncertainty that may exist within us, but to which we must not succumb. 
 
With clarity and conviction, we will re-affirm the core beliefs that have always guided us. We will value the dignity of each individual. The one who prays differently or not all. The one whose color, gender, education, sexual orientation, abilities, aspirations, ethnicity or geography is not the same as ours. The one whose experiences and worldview are different than our own. 

We will look within and re-commit ourselves to the work ahead. We will be a place of refuge and gathering where we respect and offer compassion to those who are most vulnerable, embracing the orphan, the widow, the stranger, the poor and the brokenhearted. 

One more time, we will remind our children and ourselves of our collective story, so each of us learns anew and remembers always there are reasons we are obligated to do all we can to repair what is broken. And we will come together to build sanctuaries of peace with the power to shine light out into the darkness.

Jesus is our light in the darkness, but other faiths also know that God is light in the world’s darkness. Rabbi Berkovitz speaks powerfully here of what God’s light, the light we know through Jesus Christ, means in the world today—and not just since last Tuesday. He speaks of what it means for all people of faith to be called to be that light in the world. For us it is Christ’s light, for Rabbi Berkovitz and others it is the light of God known in other ways, but it is the same light. To live in that light, indeed to be that light, means we walk with the vulnerable so they know they are not alone. We become a place of peace. We are kind with ourselves and others. We perform acts of love. We value the dignity of every person, even, or rather especially, those who worship differently than we do or don’t worship at all, those who differ from us in color, gender, education, sexual orientation, abilities, and ethnicity. We become a place of refuge where we offer respect and compassion to the most vulnerable among us. In the grand tradition of Jewish prophecy Rabbi Berkovitz lists the orphan, the widow, the stranger, the poor, and the brokenhearted as those who are most vulnerable. Those yes, but there are others too. Women, whose equal human value and dignity we men so often disparage and deny. Racial minorities, who live among us in a land founded in and deeply tainted by racism. Sexual minorities, who have been told for millennia and are still told today that they are somehow broken when they are no more broken than the rest of us. The immigrants living far from what was their home, hoping for a better life for themselves and their children. Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, and other religious minorities whom we Christians have told for centuries that their faith is false and they are damned if they don’t become Christian, a diabolical falsehood that far too many Christians still believe and still proclaim.

As Rabbi Berkovitz says, there are reasons we are obligated to do all we can to repair what is broken. The world didn’t break last Tuesday. It has been broken from its beginnings. It didn’t get dark last Tuesday, it has been dark from its beginnings. The reason we have to know that we are obligated to do what we can to fix it, that we are obligated to be Christ’s light in today’s darkness, is that we are Christians. We say that we follow Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ and as our Lord and Savior. He came as the Word of God in human form to be light in the darkness, and he came to tell us that we too are to be light in the darkness. We are to carry the light he brought into the world’s darkness and make the world brighter.

Folks, today God’s call to us to do that is more urgent than ever. More people than ever will need help. More people than ever will be afraid and need a safe place to be. Many already are and do. Some of them may be Christians, but most won’t; and that doesn’t matter at all. Some of them may be straight, able-bodied, and white like most of us, but most won’t; and that doesn’t matter at all either. Those things matter not at all in how we are called to be there for them, to be the light of Christ, the light of God for them, to assure them that they are dearly beloved children of God. To say you are valuable. To say you are loved. To say that regardless of what the world says to you, regardless of what your government says or does to you, you matter. You matter to us, and much more importantly you matter to God.

Being and doing those things is what it means to be Christian today. Not to be and do those things is to fail in our call to follow our Lord Jesus Christ. Are we willing to be Christians today? Are we willing to be the light of Christ for a dark and hurting world? May it be so. Amen.

Harry Reid statement on Donald Trump

I don't think I've ever posted someone else's piece in its entirety here, but this is too true and too important not to spread as broadly as I can. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada today, November 11, 2016, released the following statement:

“I have personally been on the ballot in Nevada for 26 elections and I have never seen anything like the reaction to the election completed last Tuesday. The election of Donald Trump has emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America.
“White nationalists, Vladimir Putin and ISIS are celebrating Donald Trump’s victory, while innocent, law-abiding Americans are wracked with fear – especially African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Muslim Americans, LGBT Americans and Asian Americans. Watching white nationalists celebrate while innocent Americans cry tears of fear does not feel like America.
“I have heard more stories in the past 48 hours of Americans living in fear of their own government and their fellow Americans than I can remember hearing in five decades in politics. Hispanic Americans who fear their families will be torn apart, African Americans being heckled on the street, Muslim Americans afraid to wear a headscarf, gay and lesbian couples having slurs hurled at them and feeling afraid to walk down the street holding hands. American children waking up in the middle of the night crying, terrified that Trump will take their parents away. Young girls unable to understand why a man who brags about sexually assaulting women has been elected president.
“I have a large family. I have one daughter and twelve granddaughters. The texts, emails and phone calls I have received from them have been filled with fear – fear for themselves, fear for their Hispanic and African American friends, for their Muslim and Jewish friends, for their LBGT friends, for their Asian friends. I’ve felt their tears and I’ve felt their fear.
“We as a nation must find a way to move forward without consigning those who Trump has threatened to the shadows. Their fear is entirely rational, because Donald Trump has talked openly about doing terrible things to them. Every news piece that breathlessly obsesses over inauguration preparations compounds their fear by normalizing a man who has threatened to tear families apart, who has bragged about sexually assaulting women and who has directed crowds of thousands to intimidate reporters and assault African Americans. Their fear is legitimate and we must refuse to let it fall through the cracks between the fluff pieces.
“If this is going to be a time of healing, we must first put the responsibility for healing where it belongs: at the feet of Donald Trump, a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate. Winning the electoral college does not absolve Trump of the grave sins he committed against millions of Americans. Donald Trump may not possess the capacity to assuage those fears, but he owes it to this nation to try.
“If Trump wants to roll back the tide of hate he unleashed, he has a tremendous amount of work to do and he must begin immediately.”

Despair

Despair

November 9, 2016

The unthinkable has happened. Our country, supposedly the beacon of freedom for the whole world, has elected to the most important office in the land, indeed in many ways the most important office in the world, a misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, egomaniacal, megalomaniacal, sexually predatory fascist who is committed to nothing and no one but himself. Donald Trump, a dishonest real estate wheeler dealer without a single qualification for the office, will become President of the United States. In electing him my fellow Americans turned their backs on the best that our country sometimes represents. They turned their backs on the “liberty and justice for all” that they so love to recite when they pledge allegiance to our flag. They turned their backs on personal morality, even simple human decency. They have said no to the inexorable arc of the universe toward justice. They have sought to turn back the tide of history and return to a time that denied equal opportunity and even equal human dignity to women, racial minorities, sexual minorities, and immigrants. They have said to everyone that if you are not a white, straight, Christian, native-born American male you are less than us, and you are neither welcome nor even safe here. They let their fear not their hope decide their vote. This morning I am in shock. This morning the world is in shock. May God have mercy on us all.

American Fascist

American Fascist

Donald Trump is an American fascist. About that I have no doubt, but to understand why it is appropriate to call him such and what it means when we do, we must first understand that both of the words in the phrase “American fascist” matter. Donald Trump is not a Nazi, that is, he is not a German fascist. He is not a follower of Benito Mussolini, that is, he is not an Italian fascist. He is an American fascist. He is a fascist in the specifically American context in which he lives, speaks, and works. We need then to start our exploration of what it means to call Donald Trump an American fascist by understanding what the words of that phrase mean in this setting.

We start with the word fascist. Historically speaking the word comes from the political party and movement led by Benito Mussolini in Italy that began during World War I and grew in the 1920’s, 30’s, and 40’s. The word fascism comes from the Italian word “fascio,” which means only a bundle of rods. The Italian word comes from the Latin word “fasces,” which also meant a bundle of rods but which referred to a symbol of official authority in ancient Rome. It is a figure of a bundle of wooden rods bound together by a cord with an ax head coming out of it to the viewer’s right. It became the symbol of Italian fascism. Mussolini’s fascism was the specifically Italian form of a much broader right-wing phenomenon in Europe in the 1920’s and 30’s. Its most powerful and destructive manifestation was Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

 Today’s definitions of fascism try to capture just what that phenomenon was about, what the fascist regimes of Italy, Germany, and elsewhere stood for and how they operated. One such definition has as its first meaning of the term fascism

 a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti [i.e., Mussolini’s Italian fascists] that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.[1]

This site’s second definition of fascism is “a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control….” Another online dictionary gives as its first definition of fascism “an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.” This site’s second definition of the term is “(In general use) extreme right-wing authoritarian, or intolerant views or practices.”[2]

From this brief historical overview and from both of these sets of definitions we see that the term fascism has come to have both specific and more general meanings. The most specific meaning of the term is the party and movement headed by Mussolini in Italy in the early decades of the 20^th century. A more general understanding of the term says that it applies to any movement or regime that is more or less like Mussolini’s regime, that is, a regime or movement characterized by nationalism, often racism, dictatorial control of a society, and forcible, often violent, suppression of opposition. The most general meaning of the term is that is applies to any extremist, right-wing, authoritarian and/or intolerant views and practices. Since Donald Trump is an American and not an Italian or other sort of fascist, it is this more general understanding of fascism that applies to him, the more specific definitions of the term less so.

The other term in our phrase American fascist is of course American. Donald Trump is after all an American, and it is in the American context in all of its facets that he operates. American history, culture, and traditional values and priorities affect what it means to be an American fascist as opposed to some other sort of fascist. Violence (other than assassination of presidents or others by isolated individuals) has never played much of a role in our selection of a president. We have chosen and changed presidents through an electoral process not through violence for well over two hundred years now. We have a tragic history of violence against non-dominant populations such as African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans, but no president has ever assumed power through the application of violence. American fascism will then be less violent than European fascism was or is. European fascist movements had well organized bands of thugs that terrorized and killed the movement’s opponents or the kinds of people generally on whom the movement blamed a nation’s problems. Hitler’s use of the so-called brown shirts against political opponents and the Jews is a prime and tragic example of that phenomenon. Mussolini and other European fascist leaders had similar groups. American fascism has no such groups and very probably never will, the presence of small, white supremacist militia groups to the contrary notwithstanding. The European countries in which fascist movements came to power did not have long, well established democratic traditions. The United States of America does. Yes, Hitler was elected to office, and Mussolini was appointed by the king of Italy, but neither Hitler, Mussolini, nor any other European fascist had any qualms about taking power through extra-electoral processes. Both Hitler and Mussolini soon abolished all pretense at democracy after they came to power. At least at this stage of our history American fascist movements have not tried to take political power through force. For the most part at least, American fascism works through the country’s established political institutions and processes. After all, today David Duke, a white supremacist American fascist, is running for election to the US Senate in Louisiana, not trying violently to overthrow the American government.

Then there is the question of the group or groups that a fascist movement identifies as the nation’s enemies or as the source of all of the nation’s ills. Hitler and his Nazis are again the best example of this aspect of European fascism. Hitler made Europe’s Jews the target of his hatred and the scapegoat for all of Germany’s economic and other problems following World War I. American fascism is often strongly anti-Jewish, but America’s Jews are not the primary targets of the hatred of American fascism. There are probably two reasons why they are not. One is that there just aren’t that many American Jews. Yes, New York City has the largest Jewish population of any city in the world; but relative to America’s large total population the Jews are a small group among us. The other is that America’s Jews are well assimilated into American life and the American economic and political systems. American Jews are not a likely primary target for American fascists.

The Jews are not that, but immigrants are. America is of course a nation of immigrants. We often say that the Native Americans are the exception to that rule, but if you go back far enough they’re immigrants too, immigrants from Siberia through Alaska.. We are all either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. Despite that obvious historical reality, American culture has an ambivalent attitude toward immigrants. Many of us value the diversity that immigration from many different nations in many different parts of the world has brought to our country. Yet there have always been populist movements opposed to the people of whatever the most recent wave of immigration has been at any particular time. We have an unfortunate history of prejudice and even violence against Irish, Polish, Italian, Chinese, Hispanic, and other immigrants to our country. That aspect of American history makes immigrants an appealing target for American fascists.

American history makes one group of immigrants and their descendants particularly vulnerable to fascist calumny and a particularly appealing target for people looking for a group to blame for our country’s real or imagined problems. That group is African Americans. Racism against Black and Native American people is America’s original sin, one from which we still suffer so long after the first white people came here. For the most part African people did not come here voluntarily. They came as the slaves of white people. They were kidnapped from their homes in Africa, often by other Africans, and forced into slavery before being transported, under horrific conditions, to the Americas, both North and South. American culture is rooted in racism. It reflects racism in virtually every one of its expressions. It is essentially impossible to grow up American and not be a racist. Even those of us who reject and condemn racism must admit, if we’re honest, that we learned racist attitudes toward Black people as we grew up. Black people are an appealing target for American fascists. They are distinctly “other” than what fascists think of as the American norm, namely, white. It isn’t quite politically correct to be overtly racist in most of American society today, so, except for extremists on the fringes of the movement, American fascists will not say explicitly racist things. Instead they rail against “the inner cities,” parts of our country populated primarily by Black people. They rail against crime and demand law and order, the targets of these demands again being in reality mostly Black Americans even though most crime is committed by white Americans.

Then there is the question of America’s democratic traditions. Our nation differs in significant ways in this respect from the European nations in which fascism took hold. When Mussolini came to power in Italy the Italian nation was only a few decades old, and it did not have a strong democratic tradition. When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 the unified German state was only 63 years old, having been formed in 1870. That state had at least some democratic structures from the beginning, but Germany had no longstanding democratic traditions. We do. When German and Italian fascists did away with meaningful democratic institutions they were not undoing anything that had firm root in their nation’s soil. Doing away with democratic institutions in the United States would mean doing away with a central and deep-seated aspect of our history, identity, and culture. So American fascists will be cautious about sounding anti-democratic in a way that European fascists did not need to be.

Then there is the question of fascism’s relationship to objective reality, to the facts of reality that can be sufficiently established by observation and research. Fascism tends not to operate in the world of those facts. Rather, it creates an alternative reality, one of its own invention. That reality is most likely a mythical place that echoes aspects of a nation’s history and plays to and reinforces all of the prejudices and emotions of the group that the fascist leader sees as his base, the people he sees as actual or potential participants in his movement. To cite one obvious example, Germany’s Jews were not the cause of that nation’s real and serious economic woes following World War I. Yet Germany had a long history of virulent anti-Judaism. Hitler created a reality in which that vulnerable population became guilty of everything that people thought was wrong in their lives and in the life of their nation. A German landlady with whom my family and I lived in 1957-58 in Berlin, when I was 11 years old, whose deceased husband had been a Nazi, said to us: “Yes, it is too bad what happened to the Jews; but then something did have to be done.” That “something did have to be done” comes from the alternate reality the Nazis created through their propaganda, through their lies. That’s how fascism works, by creating an alternate reality and convincing people that it truly is reality.

There is also the question of a fascist movement’s target group. I mean here not the group fascism blames for a nation’s problems, but the one it sees as its target audience, as the group among which it seeks to find a following and create a movement. That group is always one in which people feel themselves dismissed, ignored, and discriminated against. It is usually a group of people who once were dominate in their land who feel they are losing or have lost that dominance. In Germany it was a whole nation that was once proud and highly productive that had just lost a war, been treated horribly by the victors in that war, and had fallen on extremely hard times economically. In Italy it was a nation that had a proud heritage going all the way back to the Renaissance and ancient Rome that felt itself diminished and discredited in the eyes of the world. In both of those countries the fascist movements promised to restore what people believed they had lost. Mussolini would reclaim much of the Roman Empire. Hitler would create the Third Reich, the Third Empire, a glorious and triumphant successor to the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. Fascism promises to restore what people think they have lost, and it really doesn’t matter whether what people think they have lost was ever real. For the most part it probably wasn’t. Nonetheless, fascists say they can make it real, can create a reality in which that which never was in a glorious past that can be regained.

Donald Trump is an American fascist in all of the ways I have outlined here. He imagines an authoritarian government under his personal, unchallenged leadership. He is using the American electoral process, but he advocates positions and makes demands that are solidly authoritarian and anti-democratic. He says his primary opponent in the current presidential election, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, should be in jail and that she should never have been allowed to run for president in the first place. He threatens to call the election illegitimate and the results invalid unless he wins. He does not explicitly call his followers to resort to violence to achieve their ends, but he plays to a crowd given to violence and does nothing to restrain any violent tendencies that appear among them. His audience consists mostly though not entirely of undereducated white men who feel themselves displaced in today’s America and fear the loss of the only way of life they have ever known. They are men who once were in many ways privileged in our society who now see themselves losing that privilege and are afraid of what life without it would be. These Americans have legitimate interests and concerns, but Trump plays to them in unconstructive, even destructive, ways. Trump has a target hate group too, or rather several of them. He represents classic American xenophobia, fear of the other, fear of the outsider, together with traditional American hatred toward whoever the latest group of immigrants happen to be. He rails against Hispanics, calling them all, or mostly, murderers and rapists. He wants to build a wall all along the US/Mexican border to keep them out. He hates non-Christian people in a classically American way. His target here are the Muslims who live among us either as natural Americans or as immigrants and the Muslims around the world who want to move here. He hasn’t advocated doing to them what Hitler and his Nazis did to the Jews, but he has advocated profiling and discrimination directed toward them that at least echo some of the early stages of Hitler’s campaign against the Jewish minority in Germany.

Donald Trump then is indeed an American fascist. Calling him a fascist is not mere name-calling. When we truly understand what the word fascist means and how it can be adapted to our American context, Donald Trump is indeed an American fascist. To apply that term to him is merely to give an accurate description of his style and his actions as a presidential candidate. He is an American fascist, and he is as dangerous in our context as Mussolini, the original fascist, was in his. I like to think he’d never be a true Nazi. He panders to white supremacists, who love him, but I’m not sure he is one himself. I don’t think he would ever create an American Auschwitz. Still, he is a threat to the best American values. He plays to the worst angels of our nature not the better ones. He wants to rule as an authoritarian autocrat, not as a democratic president. He tells his followers that he will “make America great again,” playing on a popular image of an America that never was and that cannot now be created. He has no tolerance for those who disagree with him, saying (as I have already noted) that his primary political opponent, Hillary Clinton, should be in jail and claiming that the people who oppose his election have rigged the system against him. He plays to fear and hatred, not to love and inclusion. He promises disgruntled and fearful people things he can never deliver. He demonizes Hispanics and Muslims and subtly procures the support of white racists. He is a true misogynist, having no real respect for women. He cares not at all about the actual facts of American life. He doesn’t understand those facts and doesn’t want to. He invents his own reality, one that plays to his followers who are disenchanted with today’s America but that bears little resemblance to actual American life. Do we want a true American fascist like Donald Trump as President of the United States? I pray, and I trust, not.

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[1] Merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism.

[2] en.oxford dictionaries.com/definition/fascism.