In the Nation’s article, Hillary’s Nasty Pastorate, it is revealed that one reason she has been so docile about Obama’s pastor is that her own is something of a bottom feeding worm who courts the wealthy and powerful using a rightwing prayer cult called “The Family”. Hillary has praised him, and has attended his services in Washington for many years.
But Jeff Sharlet, a Mother Jones reporter, is about to let the cat out of the bag in May with a book called * The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power*. It will be interesting to see whether Obama haters somehow defend Hillary’s neo-nazi mentor even as they attacked Rev. Wright. But even more interesting will be how they move to disconnect her from her cult leader.
Looks like the shoe is going to be on the other foot.
People know about this. They don’t care. I don’t care. It’s similar to when Readers Digest & even 60 Minutes ran stories on the National Council of Churches’ playing footsie with various Marxist causes & governments in the early 1980s. (Of course, I did care about that, but I’ve never been part of an NCC church, so I didn’t do anything about it.)
From what I’ve read of the history of “The Family”, yeah- in the 1930’s, the founder was courting the Nazis, because of their anti-Communism. Alas, a lot of well-meaning people did. However, I see no evidence that when the true nature of Naziism became obvious, they went on to support it, unlike Gerald L.K. Smith, Winrod, Wesley Swift & the Identity bunch. And also alas, in it’s continued anti-Communism, the Family also did court some pretty nasty foreign leaders, much like the U.S. Gov’t- both Democratic & Republican Administrations.
Of course, the foreign leaders courted & supported by the U.S. Left and the liberal “mainstream” NCC were all noble humanitarians.
Basically, no real story here except in the views radical secularists, ultra-lefties &, I bet, a certain type of ultra-fundy.
Jeff Sharlet- “Ooooh, they followed me! Eek! They call me late at night to meet them alone in diners!.. Mom, he looked at me funny!”
I just went back & re-read the Mother Jones article. Heck, it really soft-pedals the deal. I read one expose’ that tried to cast the Family as present-day Christo-fascists. (I think that was linked from the Wikipedia entry.)
Oh, plenty did. Specifically, the people who were trying to save people from the ultimate evil of godlessness. It’s an example of one of my major criticisms of religion; that it promotes evil by convincing people to base their morality on imaginary things like gods and souls, and not real things, like the tyranny and atrocities that then Nazis committed. The Nazis had plenty of well meaning supporters; supporters who considered anything the Nazis did in the mere material world a side issue at most. The fight against atheism was more important than a few million dead.
My cynical thoughts : First, Hillary has better connections; she’s more the establishment candidate. And second, since Obama has had the apparent edge for a while, they’ll go easy on Hillary to help keep her in the race long, producing more tension and better ratings.
Gee DT, we… kinda agree. Except that I’m referring to people who had no idea what atrocities the Nazis were committing or would commit.
Seriously, BG, you don’t think there were good people in the 1930’s who were duped by Adolf Hitler? How about the people who visited Soviet Russia & extolled the new workers’ paradise it was building?
The article mentions that one of the things Ehrenreich objects to is that 'in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand “Communists” killed marks him as one of the century’s most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators", which makes it sound like Suharto was leading a prayer group affiliated with the same group as Hilary.
The article mentions that this “Family” worships Jesus. I thought Suharto was Muslim. Am I missing something?
ISTM that the worst thing they can find to say is that twenty or thirty years ago the group helped “form friendships” between a Salvardoran general and the US government, which is a little vague, and that apparently currently or recently had some Republican members. No doubt for Ehrenreich the second charge is much worse than the first, but don’t we even have some inflammatory, out-of-context quotes where the Family members call on God to damn America or accuse the feds of inventing AIDS or something?
Perhaps, but my sense is that too many other prominent political figures are connected with the Family. Since so many are exposed, the media has to consider whether they want to cause a potentially more serious bloodbath.
I’m reading these articles about Hillary Clinton being part of a right wing cult, and it is the intellectual equivalent of taking a sip from an ice-cold bottle of Coke and tasting piping-hot coffee. I just have a hard time understanding it.
To the extent that’s true, that required an extreme level of willful blindness, and in no way lets them off the hook. Hitler’s rise to power was intensely violent all the way, and he was never Mr Subtle when it came to his hatreds.
The difference is that Soviet Communism was a case of an admirable ideal, one which did appeal on its own stated terms to many people of good will, gone horribly wrong.
Nazism, OTOH, was evil in its very concepts and values, and when you speak of “well-meaning people” feeling sympathetic to it I flash on anti-semites like Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, or on those described by George Orwell in this passage from “The Lion and the Unicorn”:
These were not “well-meaning people.” Everything they had against Soviet Communism had nothing to do with what was actually wrong with it.
Except that I’m referring to people who had no idea what atrocities the Nazis were committing or would commit.