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The Rise of Christo-Fascism - Printable Version +- Deep Politics Forum (https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora) +-- Forum: Deep Politics Forum (https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/forum-1.html) +--- Forum: Players, organisations, and events of deep politics (https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/forum-32.html) +--- Thread: The Rise of Christo-Fascism (/thread-16152.html) |
The Rise of Christo-Fascism - Lauren Johnson - 05-12-2019 Wayne Madsen writes on the rise of the radical religious fascism in Central and South America Quote: The recent coup d'état in Bolivia that overthrew President Evo Morales was not merely a standard right-wing putsch aided and abetted by the US Central Intelligence Agency but also placed into power politicians affiliated with a rising fundamentalist Protestant movement in Latin America that can be termed "Christo-fascist." Many of the far-right and out-of-the-mainstream Protestant sects that have gained power in Guatemala, Colombia, Brazil, and, now, Bolivia have decried traditional Roman Catholicism in Latin America as heretical to their religious ideology and even pro-Communist. As for mainstream Protestant religions, the fundamentalist sects view them as hopelessly liberal, as well as heretical. The Rise of Christo-Fascism - James Lateer - 06-12-2019 Sorry, but I guess I am like that New Testament Icon, the "Doubting Thomas". Since the current Pope is from Argentina and has historical ties to the Argentinian Junta of the 70's and 80's, it's hard to imagine how any Protestant Christian Fascists could be positioned to the right of the Catholic Church in Latin America. Just off the top of my head, this looks like a "bait and switch" operation. So Mike Pompeo is a member of a Evangelical Presbyterian sect. As I am a very active Methodist who was raised Presbyterian, I can say pretty much for sure that any "breakaway" Presbyterian Church (which I have never heard of before) couldn't possibly be a conspiratorial covert ops force of any kind whatever. Mainline Protestant churches are kind of "on the ropes" due to the mainstream media brainwashing that convinces people that Jesus was a Republican and that Evangelicals should officially become Republican. If there is a resurgence of right wing Fascism in Latin America, (which is apparently the case), then the blame would overwhelmingly point to the "usual suspects", i.e. the people who gave us Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. This leopard can't really change its stripes. We are talking about an institution that has been continually in operation since the first century AD. If somebody thinks that Latin America could up and reject Catholicism in favor of The Assembly of God or similar narrow-minded and hard-bitten sects, then I would personally have to see a heck of a lot of proof before I would buy that sort of concept. I think that P T Barnum said that "there's a sucker born every minute." This "Evangelical Latin America" theory seems to be a theory invented to convince a very naive part of the world (and American) population. James Lateer The Rise of Christo-Fascism - Lauren Johnson - 06-12-2019 Actually JL, the conservative protestant church in central and south America is quite real. I have experienced it first hand in three trips I took to Nicaragua and Guatemala. The population was either protestant or catholic. The protestant churches were were obnoxious -- really obnoxious. The worst was in Guatemala where the protestant churches played their "music" with their amps and drums cranked up to "painful" and musically unrecognizable. The preachers would scream horrible invectives towards the Catholics about how they were all going to hell. The worst was in the city of Chichicastenango. This city is famous as a center of Mayan culture, its market, and the 400 year old Iglesia de Santo Tomas. I was in a hotel a half mile from the protestant church and could barely sleep with the window shut, ear plugs in my ears, and the pillow wrapped around my head. It is well known that the CIA has used the evangelical churches as their assets to destabilize and infiltrate the catholic cultures of the rural areas. The urban catholic churches are more Rome centered whereas the rural areas are more liberation theology (Marxist) oriented. I heard a sermon given to a small catholic church about the rich man and the poor man -- el rico y el pobre. And yes, the people who brought over the nazis after WWII are the ones who helped introduce fascist christianity. It's very real. In fact, it's very real in the US and has been nurtured by the CIA as well. The Rise of Christo-Fascism - James Lateer - 06-12-2019 Thanks to you, Lauren for shining the light on my (admittedly) arm-chair knowledge of Latin America. Your travels there sound very significant regarding these issues. Myself, I have only been one week in Cancun, and a day trip each to Nogales and Tijuana. Never having been to those Latin American places, I admit I may be thinking in stereotypes. Further, my personal childhood experience with Protestant/Catholic hostility also colors my perceptions. I have at least twice been surprised by major actual facts. First, my publisher Kris Millegan suggested that I read "Thy Will Be Done..." by Gerard Colby. That book details the generations-long (and multi-million dollar) effort by the Rockefellers to promote their Baptist religion everywhere in Latin America. I had no clue about that. Further, I had always been taught since high school that the Colony/State of Maryland was a refuge for Catholics during the Colonial period. After just having finished a colonial history of Maryland recently, the reality was very different. Maryland was, in fact, mostly a refuge for Puritans fleeing Virginia. There were five generations of Lords Baltimore. The first were Catholic by the later ones actually renounced their Catholicism in order to keep the title to their patent, i.e. to keep their title to Maryland. It seems that almost all of the colonies were overwhelmingly anti-Catholic all though some colonies were much more tolerant of all "dissenters" including Catholics. In Maryland in 1655 we had the "Battle of the Severn" which was a pitched armed conflict between Cromwell and Royalist sympathizers, (i.e. Protestant vs. Catholic) in coastal Maryland. In examining the distribution of Catholicism and Protestantism around the world, I have notices the following: some countries like Italy are almost 99% Catholic and others maybe 1% Catholic. By contrast, it seems like most foreign countries have around 5% Protestant citizens, no matter their geographical location. But not very many are majority Protestant, not nearly as many as are majority Catholic. Getting to my main point, your highlighting of the recent "stealth revival" of Latin-American fascism is a huge story and a huge issue. Much more needs to be said and analyzed. Sadly, American historians and textbooks tend to completely whitewash religious differences and their influence on recent (U.S.) history. The flagrant examples are the Christian vs. Buddhist bad blood in Vietnam and also the religious nature of Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist crusade. In reality, IMHO Communism was at least a quasi-religion. It was battled almost exclusively worldwide by the Russian Orthodox Church and established churches in Europe, again mostly (but not exclusively) Catholic. Let me get to the point----this website could use much more info from you and others about this nasty turn of events in Latin America, be it in Brazil, in Bolivia or in Venezuela. I totally believe that right-wing Protestant sects are ripe for exploitation by the CIA in their covert ops in Latin America. But IMHO, that issue is totally beside the point compared to the question as to opinion (and position) of the Catholic Church about Christo-Fascism. Most notably, you mentioned that urban Catholics in Latin-America are Rome-centered and rural Catholics are fans of "Liberation Theology". But please tell us your opinion about what that means DYNAMICALLY in the current political and power struggles in Bolivia, Venezuala, Brazil, Ecuador, Cuba, etc. etc. etc. When you tell us that the cities are Rome-centered (by comparison to the rural areas), does Rome-centered equal extreme right-wing? Or does it mean that the Catholic Church (in these recent events) is neutral or is trying to be neutral? What I do feel that I learned from my studies involving European Catholic political action in the 1930's and the 1940's is that the Vatican is over-blown in its alleged power and influence. From what I have found, the Vatican has only 109 acres in Rome and that includes St Peter's church. So they just don't have space for a large bureaucracy or a "Vatican Pentagon" so to speak. As far as I have found, in their limited quarters, they have only a library, an archives, a bank and one Secretary of State (in addition to living quarters). The power and influence (according to some experts) resides in the Bishops of whatever country is the most powerful at a given time. Just before WWII, that happened to be Germany. Further, in the mid-20th Century, half of all the Vatican revenues came just from Germany alone. In fact, before the 1929 Lateran Treaty with Mussolini, the Vatican was basically financially bankrupt. Backing your side in the debate of the above issues, it would be easy to see that Protestant Evangelical sects would be much better candidates for CIA exploitation than the worldwide Catholic Church. In fact, I could more easily imagine the Catholic hierarchy exploiting the CIA rather than the other way around. My final point is that one of the major problems, maybe the most important of all surrounding this Latin American question is the role of Methodist Clergy (which is significant) as well as the role of other Christian groups in setting up this immigration "Trail of Tears" leading through Latin Amerca where children are being grossly exploited for extremely evil purposes. I could see the hand of the CIA in this also. Thanks again for the terrific attention you have drawn to this growing problem in our Western Hemisphere neighborhood. I wonder how long it will be before US troops are again deployed in Latin America (as has been the history there)? James Lateer The Rise of Christo-Fascism - Peter Lemkin - 11-12-2019 The Rise of Christo-Fascism - James Lateer - 13-12-2019 After listening to the first of the above videos, it seemed to me that the speaker Chris Hedges spoke a lot of words but didn't really get to the point regarding anything. As for my two cents---Karl Barth wrote that Calvin, (the most influential of Protestant theorists) was mainly responsible for bringing Christianity into synchrony with the Age of Enlightenment (Thomas Jefferson, French Revolution, Descartes, Newton, etc.). Because the Calvinists harnessed the raw power that comes from true belief in rationalism, the Calvinists in Germany, England, Netherlands and the fugitive Huguenots from France basically took over the world in very short order. The tiny country of the Netherlands founded the City of New York as well as ruled the massive group of Islands that we now know as Indonesia. And then it promptly took over England, too in the "Glorious Revolution of 1688) The Calvinist Netherlands was truly "the mouse that roared". And there was much more on top of that. Calvinists in England brought in the Cromwell government which founded the British Empire. In Germany, Calvinists were influential in German unification under Bismark and all the results that came from that. Calvinists in England and the US ended the gigantic empires of France and Spain which were based on the tunnel vision of the Catholic rulers and clergy that ran them. The the French and Spanish empires simply self-destructed. And for the same reason, the Anglican (legally established Church) also brought about the failure of the British Empire in America and was the main cause for the American Revolution. And then the American Revolution morphed quickly into the French Revolution. And what was the secret of the Calvinists that still rules in the world today though the power of the US (mainly) and to a lesser extent Germany and the UK? The secret is this: The mainline US Protestant Churches are the only religions in the world that believe that your religion is purely your own affair. And that your relationship with God does not really involve your relationship with any other co-religionists at all, necessarily or (much less) primarily. You come into the world as an individual single human being and you will leave this world the same way. We are born one at a time and we die one at a time. Clergymen don't like it, but the teaching of Jesus is clear. When he revealed the Lord's Prayer, he "looked up to Heaven" and prayed, "Our Father, who art in Heaven". That's right. God is in Heaven. In the Greek it says that Jesus look up to the Heavens. The Greek word is ouranos, which means the firmament, the Zodiac, the Milky Way, etc. etc. etc. The speaker on the above video, Chris Hedges, spoke strongly against "utopians." Well IMHO there are some religions that are not mostly with God up in "Heaven" but they are PURSUING WORLDLY GOALS. Too many people view their religion like a labor union. If you're Catholic, then maybe you can get a job through your Catholic network. And there are other religions that are heavy into networking for jobs and money. If you're a Muslim in Iran, then your religion runs the goverment. So that will be of major benefit to you RIGHT HERE IN THIS WORLD. If you're an atheist in Iran, you may have to pay the price. Probably a nasty price at that! The watchword is this--James 4:4 "Friendship with the world means enmity with God". Ironically, the Calvinists believed in (or invented) the separation of Church and State. That means that worldly affairs are just that---affairs of the world. Godly affairs are basically centered outside this world. We will see God, if we do at all, AFTER WE LEAVE THIS WORLD AND GO ONTO ANOTHER. Some even interpret the Bible as stating the "Satan is the ruler of the World". That makes sense to me. God created the world, but Satan through the fallen man, rules it (unfortunately). So the Calvinists i.e. our forefathers, the Pilgrims and the founders of New Netherlands (New York) were free of having the "monkey-on-the-back" which (for others) was THE LEGALLY ESTABLISHED RELIGION with all it's coercion. This freedom allowed the Calvinists to welcome to New York and Pennsylvania especially, any and all forms of "dissenters". They let the Jews, Catholics, Quakers, Lutherans and others alone, or at least tolerated them, which was more than the coercive religions would allow. They had a religion that was (theoretically) free from coercion (though they didn't much like witches)!!!! It was a matter of individual conscience, not coercion. In the Anglican and Catholic empires of England, France and Spain, they were ridden by the oppressive efforts of taxpayer-funded clergy to suck the financial blood from their parishioners. A clergy that is supported only by voluntary donations, not tax money, is obviously more likely to be somewhat humble. And I would say, closer to God and further from the world. To sum it up, your religion should work for you, you shouldn't work for your religion. You should work for your fellow man, which doesn't mean you work for your religion. IMHO your religion should not be a monkey-on-your-back, but should rest on your shoulder as lightly as a feather. As written 1 Corinthians 7:15 "...for God wants his children to live in peace and harmony". This quote is in the context that people shouldn't feel a sense of bondage which requires them to live in a bad marriage. I personally believe that people should't have to live under any kind of coercion which is the same as bondage IMHO. And so, I would maintain, that the above principles, if observed, will handle the problem of "Christo-Fascism" pretty easily. It should be pretty obvious that Jesus would not approve of Fascism. Or Auschwitz. James Lateer |