There Is No Liberal Democracy In Israel

Max Blumenthal Demolishes Talking-Points About Israel's 'Liberal Democracy' 

Key members of Israel's opposition parties say Israel's rightward-turn poses a threat to its democracy. 

By Joshua Holland 
March 12, 2012 
Courtesy Of "Alter-Net"

Terror wars tend to lead to blow-back on domestic populations. Not only do they come with almost inevitable restrictions of civil liberties, but hard-right political factions also capitalize on the specter of terrorism to gain legitimacy and win power. Israel is no exception – the country's far-right has gained an enormous amount of influence in recent years, and has used it to  enact a series of laws that many on the left call a dire threat to Israeli democracy.

This week, Max Blumenthal – author ofRepublican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party -- appeared on the AlterNet Radio Hour to explain what is happening to “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Below is a transcript that has been lightly edited for clarity (you can also listen to the show here).

Joshua Holland: Max, I don’t want to talk about Iran today. I don’t want to talk about the Israeli lobby in the United States, and I don't want to talk about the Occupation. I want to talk about something I don’t think gets enough attention in this country, which is the sharp rightward turn of the Israeli government.

One of the great non-sequiturs of our political discourse is that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. And I say it’s a great non-sequitur because it’s usually used as a response to, for example, criticism of the Occupation. You say this Occupation is terrible, and people say it’s the only democracy in the Middle East.

Anyway, Tzipi Livni, the leader of the opposition Kadima Party, accused Benjamin Netanyahu recently of, “an attempt to transform Israel into a type of dictatorship.” Kadima lawmakers said that recent legislation passed by the Knesset represented, “the gravest challenge to democracy since the establishment of the state in 1948.” Tell me about the sharp rightward lurch. When did this happen, because I remember when I was a kid Israel was almost a socialist country.

Max Blumenthal: Well, by not wanting to talk about Iran you’re an anti-Semite and I condemn that.

JH: Max, I’m a self-loathing Jew -- please get this straight.

MB: Part of Netanyahu’s goal in focusing on Iran is taking the Palestinian question off the table, and so it’s good that you’re talking about this. Israel has never been a democracy in the sense that we think about a democracy. It’s a settler, colonial state that privileges the Jewish majority, which it created through violent methods of demographic manipulation over the indigenous Palestinian outclass.

That’s true even inside Israel. So when you hear people like Tzipi Livni -- who is for now the head of the Kadima Party but soon to be ousted, and actually came out of the Likud Party and was aide to Arial Sharon – when you hear liberal Zionists, people on the Zionist left, warning that Israel is turning into a fascist state what they’re talking is the occupation laws creeping back over the green line, and that these right-wing elements are actually starting to crack down on the democratic rights that have been afforded to the Jewish master class inside Israel. So Jews who are left-wingers, who are dissidents and speak out against state policy are actually beginning to feel a slight scintilla of the kind of oppression that Palestinians have felt since the foundation of the state of Israel. That’s where this criticism is coming from.

I think we really need to get beyond the discourse of occupation and the discourse of fascism, and instead to talk about institutional discrimination and apartheid, which is what has been present since the foundation of the state of Israel.

JH: Now I want to talk about some of the specific measures that have been proposed, some of which have passed. There are some things that have been pulled back or tabled temporarily due to international pressure, and other have actually gotten through and become law. Tell be about the crackdown on NGOs.

MB: Well first of all, all of these laws we’re going to talk about -- there’s a new anti-democratic law every week, and these are mostly advanced by right-wing parties -- are applying sinew to a pre-existing skeleton that was created upon the establishment of the state Israel and has maintained the colonial relationship between Jews and Palestinians.

One of the most extreme of these new laws, and there are several laws targeting human rights NGOs inside Israel like B’Tselem, is designed to force them to reveal who their foreign funders are, thereby making it easy to portray them as traitorous to the Jewish state of Israel. These are laws pushed mostly by Avigdor Lieberman’s mostly Russian Yisrael Beiteinu party, but Netanyahu has given a lot of verbal support, rhetorical support for punishing NGOs, even attacking NGOs like the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

Then you have to recognize that these are organizations that really represent the Zionist left in Israel. These are people who believe in a Jewish state who run these NGOs, and they go to the occupied territories and document abuses by the Israeli army because they want Israel out of the West Bank. They want a partition, which I think is no longer possible. So the attack on them is really to consolidate Israel’s hold the West Bank, and in turn what they’ve done is create a sense among the Zionist left, among the enlightened public in Israel that they are victims of a kind of fascist onslaught.

JH: Now this measure specifically goes after leftist human rights organizations, but it is on its surface ostensibly content-neutral. My understanding is that the reason it effectively targets NGOs on the left is that they rely on overseer funding from organizations like the European Union, whereas the right-wing non-governmental organizations are generally funded by private donors and domestic sources.

MB: Right, but that's false. I was actually a witness to a Knesset debate in which some left-wing members of the Knesset demanded that the bill be politically neutral, which would then force groups like Im Tirtzu, which is a right-wing student group which has created blacklists of supposedly traitorous professors on Israeli campuses, to disclose its funding from groups like Pastor John Hagee, who is the head of Christians United for Israel and the leading Christian Zionist figure in Israel. So these pro-settlement organizations and right-wing organizations are also getting foreign funding, but it’s clearly targeted politically at left-wing groups.

JH: What is the Nakba Law? Tell me about that.

MB: Well the Nakba refers to the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians, which began with the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians in 1947 and 1948 to make way for a demographically contiguous Jewish state. It is forbidden in Arab schools in Israel for teachers to teach about the Nakba or to teach the Palestinian narrative. Now through legislation proposed by Yisrael Beiteinu, this ultra-nationalist party run by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman which controls 18 seats in the Knesset out of 120, there’s been a proposal which has been approved and written into law that applies financial penalties for anyone associated with an NGO or a nonprofit organization who observes the ceremonies associated with the Nakba where Palestinians mourn this dispossession. This is an attack on the Arab sector and their civil society inside Israel. It’s designed basically to defund them and to consolidate their image even further as a fifth column or a Trojan horse for Arab nationalism inside Israel.

JH: There’s increasing calls to boycott the occupied territories. A law has been passed, I believe has been passed and is on the books, banning calls for boycotting Israel or, “any of its settlements built in occupied territory.” Tell me about the details on this one.

MB: There’s a movement called the BDS movement, the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel, which has had a lot of success in forcing businesses to move out of the Occupied Territories. It also calls for Israel to obey international law, which challenges Israel’s status as a Jewish exclusivist state. It’s considered a threat to the Jewish state of Israel, and legislation has been enacted and approved by the prime minister after passing through the Knesset to establish civil penalties for anyone who calls for BDS who is a citizen of Israel.

So if I’m a citizen of Israel and I say that Israeli businesses who do business in the occupied territories should be boycotted; if I just say that or I write an op-ed in the newspaper about that, then any settler who runs a business in the West Bank, any Israeli, can sue me even without evidence in a civil court and seek financial penalties claiming that I damaged his or her business. So the law is designed to create a chilling effect and attack freedom of speech, and it’s been approved and it’s on the books. I’m not sure if there are any other laws like this in Western democratic countries.

JH: Now I want to talk about another measure that I believe is on hold. You can tell me the status. According to Adrian Bloomfield in theTelegraph, “Members of the Kadima, the principal opposition party, waved black flags to mourn the death of democracy after Israel’s Parliament passed two bills that will tilt the balance of the country’s Supreme Court sharply to the right. The legislators involved had their flags confiscated before being expelled from the chamber.”

Tell me what’s going on with the courts.

MB: Well, the court has been tilting to the right since Aharon Barak, who attempted to create some kind of basic laws that protected human rights in Israel and the occupied territories. Barak by the way had always sided with the army and given it carte blanche to pretty much do what it wanted in the occupied territories. So these rulings were always just kind of suggestions. Now you have a Supreme Court that is increasingly packed with right-wing figures. For the first time there’s a kippah-wearing settler on the Supreme Court.

One of the things the Supreme Court recently did was it made permanent a law, which it had validated in 2003 temporarily, and was passed through the Knesset, called the law of Entry and Return. This law bans Palestinians who live in the West Bank from marrying Palestinians who are citizens of Israel or uniting with family members who live there. Israel has always said these kinds of rulings are for security purposes. They need to limit their freedom of movement for security reasons. Really, for the first time the Supreme Court’s ruling on this law acknowledged that demographics were the reason. They can’t allow more Palestinians to marry and form families inside Israel and maintain Israeli citizenship because the greatest threat to the Jewish and democratic state is gestating Arab fetuses.

JH: You say that the court has tilted to the right, but at the same time there have been a number of decisions in terms of land use issues that have gone against settlers. The increasingly conservative Knesset has talked about proposals to seek limits for who can petition the court. This is court-stripping, basically, closing the courthouse doors to litigants. Another law would require justices to have served in the Israeli military. What does that do, effectively?

MB: By requiring justices to have served in the Israeli military you prevent any Arabs from serving on the court. There’s one Arab there who is there for symbolic reasons like Clarence Thomas replacing Thurgood Marshall, and his rulings carry very little weight as a representative of the Arab sector inside Israel.

There was another ruling recently -- you mentioned land rights in the West Bank -- the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Israel can annex or expropriate Palestinian land in the West Bank to establish quarries and conduct mining that will profit companies that exist inside Israel proper. Another occurrence in the Supreme Court recently was the Arab justice I mentioned refused to stand for Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem, because it is an anthem that really is an ode to Jewish nationalism, which does not acknowledge the Arab minority inside Israel. There are now efforts in the Knesset to strip him of his position on the Supreme Court for doing that.

JH: And of course the definition of democracy is not only majority rule, but also protection of minorities.

Tell me about land use. I think this is a poorly understood issue. William Quandt of the University of Virginia said on NPR, “Israel was established as a state for Jews. It has a minority who of course has citizenship rights, but the specific way in which land is owned in Israel is predominately that the Jewish agency purchases land on behalf of the Jewish people, and then leases it out to its Jewish citizens.”

Can you unpack that for me?

MB: This is very complex. To understand apartheid in Israel you have to understand the land laws, which do not specifically refer to Arab or Jew. First of all, Palestinian citizens of Israel are citizens, but they have no national rights. On their ID cards it will identify them as Arab. On an Israeli Jew’s ID card it will identify them as Jewish. There is no Israeli national identity. It’s one of the only countries in the world like that. Palestinians who live inside Israel are unable to lease land because the land is controlled by the Israeli Land Authority, which is itself controlled by the Jewish National Fund.

Through legislation passed by the Knesset the Jewish National Fund controls seven out of the 13 seats on the Israeli Land Authority’s Board, a majority. The Jewish National Fund’s mission, it says it on its Web site, is to provide land for the Jewish people, which means it’s Jews-only land. So the JNF, Jewish National Fund, officially controls only 20 percent of land in Israel, which is some of its best and most arable land. But through its control of the Israeli Land Authority, it actually controls far more.

The state of Israel has not allowed a single Arab town to be established since its foundation. The only Arab towns it has allowed to be created have been to, “concentrate the Bedouin population” after they ethnically cleanse them from their land in the Negev desert, something that the Jewish National Fund is currently doing right now with a village called Al-Araqeeb, a Bedouin village of people who are supposedly citizens of Israel. And their village has been demolished 32 times. I’ve seen it be wiped off the map. They’re planning to build a pine forest funded by an evangelical television station called God TV. In place of the Bedouins they will place small Jewish communities for army veterans who have just had children. The Knesset recently passed a law called the Communities Acceptance Law to kind of consolidate the exclusive nature of these communities. It allows communities of under 500 people in Israel to discriminate on the basis of ethnicity.

That’s a very condensed version of Israeli land law. To say that Palestinian citizens of Israel are second-class citizens really misses the point. They have absolutely no national rights and no property rights.

JH: That’s Max Blumenthal talking to us about the only democracy in the Middle East. Max, thank you so much for joining us, we’re about out of time. 

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. He is the author of The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy: And Everything else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know About Taxes, Jobs and Corporate America. Drop him an email or follow him onTwitter.

Secretive Secret Christian Group Building A 'God-Led' Government

AC: Does the Fam

The Family

Jeff Sharlet, the journalist who helped expose a cohort of powerful lawmakers promoting a Christian Agenda at home and abroad, discusses his new book.

By Anna Clark

October 8, 2010

Courtesy Of "Alter Net"

The Family, also known as the Fellowship, is a cohort of powerful lawmakers seeking to create a "God-led government" at home and abroad. Chief among the journalists who brought the Family to light is Jeff Sharlet, author of the new book, C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy. (The title of the book refers to the Washington townhouse that serves as the gathering place and sometime residence of Family members.)

While Sharlet has been digging into the secretive Family for years, it wasn’t until last year’s trio of sex scandals that a glaring spotlight was cast on the group. The adulterous affairs of Sen. John Ensign, R-Nevada, Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, and Rep. Chip Pickering, R-Mississippi, revealed their common membership in the secretive group.

The Family was founded in 1935 by Abraham Vereide, who believed that Christianity made a 2,000-year-old mistake by focusing on the poor. Vereide believed God told him to minister to the powerful; the modern-day "kings" chosen to enact divine will. Since then, these “key men” -- powerful politicians, well-placed executives and influential global leaders -- meet for Bible studies and "prayer cells." Members of the family try to cultivate powerful leaders around the world -- many of them despots -- to enact their Christian agenda globally.

The Family has always operated in secret; for more than 70 years, the group has influenced policy and business deals in the U.S. and abroad almost entirely without the public’s notice.

Family members have advocated for the violently anti-gay legislation currently before Uganda’s legislature; David Bahati, MP who introduced the bill to Uganda’s parliament, has been a longtime darling of the Family and a guest at the group’s only public event, the National Prayer Breakfast. Their involvement in the Uganda anti-gay bill isn’t an outlier: in the past, the Family has done business favors and supported dictatorships in Indonesia, Somalia and Haiti, among other nations under authoritarian rule. Meanwhile, Family forces connected to the U.S. military seek to spread fundamentalist Christianity. An organization of 15,000 officers is dedicated to what is described as “reclaiming territory for Christ in the military.”

While elected leaders in the U.S. ostensibly represent a democracy, with ideals of transparency and the separation of church and state, the Family urges its members to choose secrecy and consolidated power. Journalist Jeff Sharlet has managed to break through the Family's secrecy, writing two books that dig deep inside the shady organization. AlterNet spoke to him by phone.

Anna Clark: Do you believe members of the Family sincerely believe they are doing God's work, or is that language consciously used by them as a cover?

Jeff Sharlet: Not all of them, but most of them do sincerely believe it. One guy—whose name I can't put on record, but who was very intimately involved—I went to sit down with him because he wanted to know what I was working on. I told him that I'm not attacking religion at all. He told me ‘I don't care. It's about money.' There are a lot of people there just using it, definitely.

But the more disturbing thing is that move you get with someone like Sen. Inhofe. He travels the world and talks to these oil-rich dictators, telling them he loves them, they melt his heart, their brothers in Christ. He becomes their champion back in America. Well, the oil industry likes that, they like that he's speaking out on sanctions on the industry in Nigeria. Inhofe gets a lifetime achievement award from the petroleum industry, and the industry donates heavily to his re-election campaign. Inhofe doesn't experience that as cynicism or corruption. He experiences it as that he's doing God's work.

[Members of the Family] are in it for the cash, but they're in it for God too. Are they cynical or sincere? The answer is: yes. Both. Simultaneously.

AC: Does the family have any other counterparts in U.S. politics – groups of people that, religiously based or not, are contracting the scope of democracy?

JS: Yes, absolutely. I'm not saying that these guys are the secret puppet-masters that control the world. All I'm doing with this story is adding one more power base to our pantheon.

But the real key thing about the Family is the secrecy. Now, I disagree with Pat Robinson and James Dobson completely, 100 percent. I know they do secret things, but they are out there in the public square. They engage in democracy. Sure, it's for an undemocratic vision, but that's legitimate. But [the Family's] unusual and uncommon influence is that for so long they denied their own existence. That's starting to change, though, because of all this publicity.

AC: It's amazing that the strategy really works. The founder articulated that it would be more powerful and efficient if the Family denied its own existence, and he was right!

Ronald Reagan once said at the National Prayer Breakfast, the Family's only public event, he said to the journalists in the room about the Family: ‘I could tell you more about it, but I can't. It's working precisely because it's private.' And then he said this: “I've had my moments with the press, but I have to commend them for their discretion.”

You're a journalist, you know that any time a politician compliments you on your discretion, it's a problem! But a lot of these journalists see that as a sign that they're in, they're in the inner circle. They say they're "cultivating sources." No, you're not, you hack! You're auditioning for a talking heads spot, that's what you're doing. … A lot of these journalists practice knee-jerk centrism. This idea that the center must hold – not that it will hold, but that it must hold. It's when journalists see themselves as guardians of that balance that you get in a very dangerous place.

AC: While the Family came most forcefully into the public consciousness in the wake of last year's scandals of three of its members, you write in C Street of the importance of resisting the urge to gloat about moral hypocrisy. Can you talk about why such finger-pointing is a flawed response?

JS: Because that liberal glee at right-wingers acting on desire comes from the same prudish, small, little, hard-hearted place. It's the same counting of sins that right-wingers themselves do. Maybe it's a bait-and-switch – people think they will buy this book and hear about all the naughty things Republicans do. And they will—but those things are about money and violence overseas.

Look at the story of [South Carolina Gov.] Mark Sanford in particular. He's something of a tragic figure, right? He's in this terrible, terrible marriage. Here was this guy evidently late in life going through this important stage where he realized that we love who we love and we desire who we desire, and that these things aren't based on status or calculation.

So for Sanford, the awfulness wasn't that he went to Argentina; the awfulness was that he came back. And C Street brought him back. C Street said "you must work on your marriage as an obedience to God."

When these Republicans have their sex scandals, we should all say "great." Here is an opportunity for these conservative politicians to realize that love and lust and desire are complex, that they are not about obedience. Which is not to say that you should go cheat on your wife or your husband – just that we want these guys to reach their emotional maturity. When liberals gloat over it, they just play the same game, and round and round we go. It's the same kind of erasure of desire.

AC: Given what the real stakes are, why do you think the public is inclined to slip into the superficial criticisms of C Street?

JS: Well, let me clarify, I don't think talking about sex is superficial. Here is where I differ from a lot of people. There are people who are gloating about [the scandals], and then there are people saying, why are we talking about sex when we should be talking about serious things? I think sex is a pretty serious thing. We need to understand that when people talk about sex, they're talking about many things.

When my first book came out, I got a fair amount of press, but reporters didn't really get it, and people weren't really interested in it. The secrecy was really complex. But then the sex scandals and affairs come up, that's a kind of secrecy the public understands. Suddenly the sex and secrets become a metaphor. The public can easily see that politicians may be keeping things from us. They may not have our best interests at heart. People understand it because most of us have done, or have had done to us, something like it. That's what makes it a great news story. You're a journalist, you know that people don't want a new story; they want stories they know. And I'm not making fun of people – people want a story they already know because they're thinking about things, working it out in their own mind.

So I don't think it's superficial to talk about sex. You begin the conversation with sex … and I suppose if you're very lucky, you end it with sex. But in between, we must move on to serious things. We must see that the same justification that C Street uses to cover up the sex scandals of Ensign and Sanford and [Rep. Chip] Pickering is the exact same move for what their doing with their involvement in Uganda, and Nigeria, before that, Papa Doc in Haiti. It's the same erasure of desire. 

AC: You write that the threat of the Family isn't theocracy, but 'the conflation of democracy with authoritarianism.' Logically, how does the Family reconcile these two seemingly oppositional ideas?

JS: They do it through the soft sell. They do it through the appeal to unity. Unity and harmony sound good. The subtitle I originally wanted for my book was "The Fundamentalist Abduction of Democracy." That idea, that conflation of democracy and authoritarianism, is very learned. Authoritarianism is kind of a bad word. But then you take one step over to paternalism. Well, that's still a bad word, but now you're talking about fathers. You get into the evangelical expressions of Father-God, and now you're talking about love, and love as an expression of authority.

People love hearing powerful white men telling them they're just a nobody, they didn't do anything, instead of telling them, ‘I'm a leader, I like being in charge. I have ideas about what we can do. I have what Martin Luther King called the drum major instinct.

That's where leaders come from. Leaders engage the prophetic voice. How does the Family conflate democracy with authoritarianism? They basically take Christianity and strip it of its prophetic voice. Cornel West writes a lot about this is in his theological work. The prophetic voice is a kind of democratic speech; it's about speaking truth to power. It's asserting that things as they are, are not as they should be. The prophetic voice means conflict, it means argument. It means we have different ideas. People don't like conflict, and that's where authoritarianism comes in – it's called harmony. The Family in its early days thought that after World War II, we would become a one-party state and they thought that was a great idea. Democracy is sharp edges, but that's how they reconcile it – that's their word, "reconciliation." It's cutting off the sharp edges and saying, "come over here where there's common ground and we all agree."

AC: It seems like the same people who would chafe at hearing a politician advocate authoritarianism don't recognize it when it doesn't show up in words, but in actions.

JS: Yeah, exactly. If it doesn't come articulated, people don't get it. [Members of the Family] do tend to be nice people, and I'm not just saying that. Most of them are very charitable on a personal level. It's the bigger picture they miss.

The fundamentalist abduction of democracy is the way they've abused the word reconciliation. It's the way of valuing common ground at all costs, even if some people will be left out, or erased, or forgotten, because they can't be reconciled to that story.

The reality is both this book and the last book is about fundamentalism, but in a way, it's speaking to and against liberalism as well. Liberalism bears a lot of responsibility for loving this myth of harmony more than they love democracy.

AC: Your book makes it clear that this fundamentalism conflated with politics isn't going to be vanquished by simply not electing one or another legislator; it's too pervasive for that. What, then, is the impact you hope this book will have on the November election?

Oh, how dare you ask that question! … My publishers want me to say that this is a rallying call. But the thing is, C Streeters aren't in danger. Jim DeMint in South Carolina is facing Alvin Greene – I think he'll do just fine. There are very few competitive races right now.

But on the other hand, I am going down to Lancaster County in Pennsylvania. Rep. Joe Pitts has been part of this organization since 1980. He keeps saying he doesn't have a connection to the Family, but that's not true; there's a long paper trail. So he's a dishonest man. Now, this is a conservative area and he's been around for a long time. Based on his votes, they aren't going to throw him out [of office]. He could've supported all his issues and been supported. But the reason the race is this close for the first time in a long time is because he was shady about it. I'm going down to talk at the Democratic banquet there for Lois Herr. I wouldn't normally do that, but this guy has got to go. He doesn't understand the Constitution, he never read the First Amendment, he lied to his constituents, and most dangerously, he's involved in overseas work.

The real danger of fundamentalism, to be honest, is the long shadow of the right wing overseas. That's why I spend so much time on the Uganda chapter [of C Street]. The real danger of C Street is not here, but there. Toufic Agha, who I write about in the Lebanon chapter of the book, he's been getting death threats for talking to, quote, “that Jew Jeff Sharlet.” That's the danger.

In the end, though, I didn't write this book as a campaign book. I wrote it because there's a story. If you restrict all your conflict and all your debate on this electoral ritual, you'll sacrifice the real conversations about authority and where it comes from – top up or top down.

Anna Clark's writing has appeared in The American Prospect, Utne Reader, Hobart, and Writers' Journal, among other publications. She is the editor of the literary and social justice Web site, Isak.

Fundamentalism At The Heart Of American Power

Secret Fundamentalism

-A Book Review-

By NorthWestrain
Posted on February 15, 2010
Courtesy Of Imagination Plus Politics

Part One

The FAMILY, by Jeff Sharlet, sounds rather like the title to a book about the Mafia. And in a way this book is about a religious fundamentalist mafia. The problem is that the very people who should read this book and be warned probably won’t be bothered to take the time. The Genealogy of American Protestant Fundamentalism goes back to the early history of this country, and further back to England and Europe, Lutherans and the wars among the Christians, Catholics and Protestants. Sharlet explores the early history and traces where the “Experimental” Fundamentalists breaks away from the traveling preachers or revival preachers – the Evangelical brand that is closely identified with the American Frontier.

Missionaries are part of many religions. The need to convert others, to save others, to offer salvation to the world, the heathen world has been a driving force behind the colonization of the globe by European Nations – oh that and the allure of Gold and other high values commodities. Set this concept of Missionary aside and think of the one very special class in need of salvation. Then set this aside and think of an even more exclusive class, the ruling class and even despot dictators.

The goal of the Secret Fundamentalist cult is to turn the US into a Theocracy followed by the whole world. Just a simply little goal – and as usual with cultist only the supreme leader is able to speak directly with their God. Democracy is messy. This Fundamentalist cult has a history of seeking the powerful politically and corporate leaders. Their idea of creating Christ’s heaven on earth is using the existing power structure.

Jeff Sharlet takes us from his first encounter with the Family and then backward in time to the roots of this Dominionist religion. If you were raised in one of the many American Christian Fundamentalists sects you will no doubt be familiar with much of the religion-speak. But forget about the Jesus of the New Testament and his beatitudes, of caring for those less fortunate than ourselves. The very wealthy corporatists aren’t interested in welfare and social security. Their version of God smiles on the rulers and leaders. The reason people are poor it is God’s will and it is the fault of the poor, they have been bad and are evil. The gilded era of America is when the missionaries to the top tier of the wealthiest began their form of American Fundamentalism. These missionaries are not interested in spreading democracy. The reign of Jesus on earth will not be through democracy in the view of the founders of this brand of Christians.

The problem is that this Dominion over the world brand of fundamentalist has a vision of their perfect world. There are several different versions of God’s Kingdom on earth according to the different evangelical fundamentalist sects, each has their own path to their perfect world. Free will or choice doesn’t enter into their perfect world. Independent women, or women’s view equal human rights to those of men isn’t part of the perfect world of the Dominionist’s world view. Women can and have been used a soldiers to further the goals of these Secret Fundamentalists.

It wasn’t Sharlet’s goal to write about the Domination of women by men, but that thread runs through his book. This is not surprising since ALL fundamentalist religions have as a foundation belief that women are evil and must be controlled or dominated. In some fundamentalist religions women who do not comply with the patriarchal rulers demands are eliminated. Wealthy women, especially widows who willingly fund the spread of the Dominionist fundamentalism are promised a special place in the new kingdom of Jesus on earth. These women have fallen for the oldest con in the world – the promise of heaven and “life everlasting.” This is one of the code words that fundamentalists use, which others who are believes, recognize instantly. These code words are spoken by politicians to let voters know that these politicians are working for goals specific to the Fundamentalist movement. GW Bush used code words, as have other politicians.

The wall between church and state have been breached; the Constitution is becoming a meaningless document filled with meaningless words that have no relationship to the Nation of God that the Secret Fundamentalists want for America. Many of the so call liberal blogs have been taken over by moles who do their best to block any discussion of the Dominionists efforts to take over the US. Anyone who brings this up is branded crazy.

Sharlet’s book is a must read, it is not an easy book to read because of the world view, the point of view of the Dominionist Fundamentalists so far from Democracy and Free will that most people simply won’t believe that such a thing could happen in America. To understand the Secret Fundamentalists means that you need to understand the history and the philosophy of Narcissistic personalities who founded this ministry to the despots and Corporatist of the world.

Uganda’s role. Gays are evil – so say the fundamentalist Dominionist. Missionaries of this sect have spread the word of their particular God to Uganda political leaders. Witch trials of the Dark Ages may be visiting Uganda.