Considering the events of the last seven years, I think that needs to be rephrased in the past tense now.
Yes.
This ad is not the herald of American evangelism rebuilding itself from the ground up as a positive, open-hearted, truly Christian philosophy that Jesus would recognize and support.
This campaign is about waving a taste of a warm and cheerful Jesus at the edge of the playground as an innocuous invitation before trapping adherents in the crack den of Old Testament judgment and retribution.
“So, aren’t you tired of the woke mob pushing their political agenda into everything? Well, so is Jesus, and here’s who he wants you to vote for to make them all go away…”
Hyperbole can be an effective rhetorical tactic. I have no problem with AOC calling this fascist, considering the groups behind the message.
I disagree. As several other posters have noted, I think that what she was calling “fascist” is the political agenda of the ad’s funders, not the ad itself.
The ad itself, according to AOC, is just the “benign look” concealing the underlying political agenda.
Well no, people are complaining because the Jesus reflected in the TV ads is not the Jesus these people are ultimately selling. It’s a deceptive ad.
But speaking for myself, yes, I would rather not see any Jesus ads at all.
I don’t think the message is all that hidden. One just needs to interpret what they are explicitly saying a little differently. Yes, they are preaching about stopping the hate. The impression I get, however, is the hate that they are concerned about isn’t hatred that is targeted against LGBQT people, or Black people, or poor people, or any other minority who is at a disadvantage. They are concerned about hatred from those people directed at the wealthy, Trumpish Republicans.
In other words, they’re saying "you all should love us (wealthy, conservative, white Christians) instead of hate us (despite all the evil shit we’ve done to you and continue to do to you) because Jesus says so. I think AOC is right to call that message wrong, even if fascist is not quite the correct term grammatically.
As a liberal Christian from a very liberal ELCA congregation I agree, but I have a better view of the people who are funding it after looking at the website. I do think they are attempting to talk about a Jesus who is more open and loving than those denominations have been in the past. The website doesn’t even really link to a church or political group - the only time you may run into conservative fundys is you click to learn more or join a group, but even then mainline churches can join to receive text messages, and some already have. The website convinced me that they are trying something new.
The site says:
Jesus loved the people we hate. - He Gets Us
Which isn’t all that bad at all… so far I’m ok with it.
They are correct that this is what Jesus preached. Turn the other cheek and all that. But what’s happening here is that the people doing the slapping are in essence telling the people getting slapped to turn the other cheek, because that’s what Jesus would have wanted. Don’t hate the people that are slapping you, love them, because Jesus said so.
ETA. At least that’s the message I take from the ad. Others, of course, might not agree with that interpretation.
ETA 2. Jesus taught a lot of stuff I agree with. Turning the other cheek isn’t one of those things.
Imagine that someone ran an ad about, oh, moneychangers operating out of the temple, and suggesting that Jesus wouldn’t want us to be angry because we really ought to strive to hear from both sides. That’s… not Jesus, right? Jesus told us to love everyone, but he also whipped ass when it came to corruption and abuse of power.
People need to wrap their heads around the fact that every utterance of the word “Jesus” isn’t actually invoking Jesus, in fact it’s often used to signal a darker agenda.
Or imagine that the ad had different visuals:
-People marching with Black Lives Matter signs.
-People kneeling during the national anthem.
-People feeding the homeless in city parks while cops look on disapprovingly.
I’m no theologian, but I seem to recall an instance or two where Jesus ran afoul of the government and law enforcement of his time–am I misremembering?
“He gets us” should pretty explicitly reference his willingness to stand up to injustice, even when it made him hated by the folks in power. Without that, I think it’s a deceptive pabulum.
I think that in threads asking “is this fascism”, it’s time-honored tradition that the “no” side cannot be bothered to state what would qualify as fascism, and so far that seems to be holding.
So
Isn’t it enough that they are putting out the message as you describe it above, and then are donating loads of money to hateful organizations. I assume they collect money from people who want to support the message, and give it to organizations that those people would never support. And – side benefit – they may recruit people into Christianity who could be further recruited into a more conservative view
I don’t see it that way at all. And, in fact, far-right Christians on Twitter have been mad at this campaign because “it’s too woke” (which is their new boogeyman), so I think it is touching a nerve there. After all, plenty of conservative Christians aren’t acting in a loving manner.
My understanding is that He Gets Us is pulling from a pan-Christian fund, one that is used for many different Christian projects. Some of those projects are bad, but, so far, HGU doesn’t seem to be one of those. And I won’t begrudge an organization taking advantage of money that originally came from hateful people.
But even if I’m wrong, I still think you have to judge an ad campaign based on what it is trying to convince people to do. Sure, these sorts of things are reasons to be wary, but jumping straight from that to dismissing it only empowers the Christian persecution complex, IMO.
Heck, if I wanted to be cynical, that is what I would think was the point. Bait people into condemning it while the average person sees nothing to object to, thus making it look like these people are just attacking Christianity.
But I think it’s more likely that these are people who see the secularization of America in part due to Christians promoting certain hateful beliefs, and they want to change that. People now seem to believe your choice is between being a Christian and being kind to LGBT people. You can be a Christian or liberal/progressive, but not both. And that sucks if you believe that Christianity is a good thing.
Granted I admit I may be projecting my own beliefs on them. But I definitely hope this is not some cynical ploy, and am not ready to jump to the conclusions others are jumping to.
Yeah I’m with the OP here. The ads (and the fact 10s of millions of were spent on them that could have been spent doing actual christian stufff like helping the poor, refugees, prisoners) were bs but they weren’t fascist.
Reading the article I guess she is saying that by drawing a false equivalence between facist attempting overthrow the government and people protesting black people being killed by police is encouraging fascism. But it basically comes across as accusing a pretty basic uncontroversial christian message (that Jesus loves Maga protestors just as much as BLM protestors, you could add in actual serial killers and literal nazi stormtroopers and it would still as theologically speaking) as fascist. Which doesn’t help matters where there are actually real fascists worming their way into the political mainstream:
If an ad campaign was just trying to convince people that candy is good, would you judge it any differently if it were paid for by NAMBLA?
Everything feeds the Christian persecution complex.
Anything anyone says or does will be twisted to make them into martyrs, and even if there isn’t anything at all for them to complain about, they will simply make stuff up.
Yeah, it was pretty trolling in that way. Racists aren’t the only ones who know how to dog whistle.
Ehhhh… they may want to change the perception, but they don’t want to stop with those certain hateful beliefs.
Right, that’s because Christians are the ones saying that.
I know, I know #notallchristians…
Sure, but what sucks even more if you believe that Christianity is a good thing is all the people doing evil in Christ’s name.
Based on who is funding it, yes, it is.
Who said that the ads were fascist? AOC didn’t, the only ones I see making that remark are those strawmanning it.
They said that it makes fascism benign. It is presenting a benign face that is promoted by fascists. If the ad itself was fascist, it wouldn’t have the same effect, where it both fools the naive into thinking that the people behind it are full of love and kindness, and also fools them into thinking that people are overreacting when they point out where the ad comes from and what kind of organization it is trying to whitewash.
I’m gonna have to go ahead and completely disagree with this summary.
I’d say that she pointed out, quite rightly, that this is a deceptive ad.
Anyone remember the Dianetics commercials back in the 80’s? They all talked about how it would help you quit smoking, or help with your rebellious teen. It didn’t talk about how you would be signing up to give away all your money and sign a 5 billion year contract.
People defending the ad are probably the same people who thought those Dianetics commercials were benign.
My problem with the ad campaign is that their saying “love your enemies” along with images of angry people (particularly angry black men) screaming at each other is that it presupposes that they are enemies. So the message is, yes, these people (blacks, gays, immigrants) hate you and want to destroy your way of life, but you should treat them compassionately because you are better than they are. Which, while a significant step up from “you should shoot them with your AR-15” is still not what should be the true message which is they are good people just like you and the main thing they have against you is that you seem to want to outlaw your existence.
I would have been happier if they had interspersed the angry images with contrasting images of unity and compassion showing the other sides humanity. Instead its just reinforcing the culture war lines. Note that you can do a lot of harmful things out of love. For example when justifying anti-gay/trans legislation its often portrayed that they are doing out of compassion for the poor souls who like drug addicts would be much happier if they could be prevented from falling into their deviant life style.
She said “Something tells me Jesus would not spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign,” Yeah technically she was making more nuanced point (that I don’t entirely disagree with) but at the end of the day she said "ads to make fascism look benign” if you have to argue “well actually what she is really saying is…” then you’ve already lost the argument, it says right there in black and white she called the ads fascist. That choice of phrase weakens the discourse, “Trump is having lunch with a fascist? Whatever, you think everything is fascist even those christian super bowl ads”
I’m gonna have to go ahead and completely disagree with this summary.
I’d say that she pointed out, quite rightly, that this is a deceptive ad.
Her criticism (and its a valid one) that it apparently draws a false equivalence between BLM protestors and MAGA insurrectionists, these examples could have been chosen better (and the funders I’m sure had something to do with that choice of examples). But still there is nothing remotely deceptive about the ad saying that Christians believe Jesus equally loves BLM protestor and MAGA insurrectionist (and actual serial killers, and people that donate kidneys to strangers, and literal Nazi stormtroopers.) Its a uncontroversial part of christian theology you could look up in a comparative religion 101 textbook.