Note: This is the first of a three part series discussing Chris Hedges' new book American Fascists.

Chris Hedges is a journalist who for two decades was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times spending much of his time reporting from conflict zones in El Salvador, the Middle East and from Serbia covering the Balkan wars of the 1990s that divided and destroyed a country under the guise of humanitarian intervention providing cover for naked imperialism. There it allowed NATO (meaning the US) to expand into Central and Eastern Europe to keep predatory capitalism on the march for markets, resources and cheap labor everywhere using wars to get them and eliminate "uncooperative" heads of state like Slobodan Milosevic who was kidnapped, Mafia/Mossad-style, by the ICTY kangaroo court in the Hague, hung out to dry when he got there, and in the end effectively or, in fact, murdered to shut him up and prevent ugly truths coming out about what the conflict was really about and who the real criminals were.

The wars and subsequent show-trials had nothing to do with myths about it fed us by Western media. Those wanting the truth can find it in excellent books like Diana Johnstone's Fools' Crusade; the extensive research and writings of Edward Herman, Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, law professor Michael Mandel; and the newest book out on the subject titled Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice by British journalist John Laughland. Edward Herman wrote a superb review of the book in the April, 2007 issue of Z Magazine now available in which he pointedly says "the rules of the (illegally constituted) ICTY (established by the US and UK) stood Nuremberg on its head" and Laughland states "instead of applying existing international law, the ICTY has effectively overturned it" to hide NATO's crimes and allow more of the same playing out now in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.

The Christian Right supports these type crimes and motives for them readers will understand from Hedges' new book. He's also written many articles and is the author of four books including his bestselling War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning drawing on his experiences in the conflicts he covered describing how people and nations behave in wartime. The book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. His newest book is American Fascists - The Christian Right and the War on America published in 2007 and subject of this review. It's an incisive examination of the huge threat extremist Christian fascists pose to a shaky free society most people in the US take for granted but no longer will after reading this important book.

Hedges was educated at Colgate University and received a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School. For a time he was a seminarian and is now a senior fellow at the Nation Institute as well as a writer and lecturer at Princeton University where he teaches in the Program for American Studies. He was also an early vocal critic of the Bush administration's plan to attack, invade and occupy Iraq characterizing war as "the most potent narcotic invented by humankind" while professing not to be a pacifist.

This review will cover the essence and flavor of American Fascists beginning with some background on the Christian right, its influence, and danger it poses that Hedges covers in detail. He said he wrote the book out of anger and fear of the fundamentalist Christian Right seeking to establish theocratic dominion over society in America in the name of God and is using the Republican party as their vehicle to do it. He compares the movement's messianic mission to Italian and German fascism of the last century cloaking itself in Christianity and patriotism as their way to gain political power under theocracy's literal meaning from the Greek words "Theos" meaning "God" and "cratein/crasy" meaning to rule.

They're not kidding and neither is the risk they'll gain control of government with some observers in Washington believing they already have it including journalist/commentator Bill Moyers saying "for the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington." Some call them "The Christian Mafia" noting they're well-funded by and allied with wealthy, powerful hard right businessmen like beer magnate Joseph Coors and Amway founder Richard DeVos, Sr. Hedges calls them American Fascists, and his powerful book leaves no doubt how great a threat they are to our cherished liberties in a free society now in great jeopardy. Below is an explanation of the Christian Right and fundamentalist movement overall before getting into the book.

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The Christian Right and Its Fundamentalist Movement

The Christian or Religious Right is broadly defined to include adherents of the radical or hard right embracing their kind of extremist political, economic, social and religious ideology falsely called conservative which is a relative term referring philosophically to favoring traditional values including libertarian ones centered on the right of everyone to be master of his or her own fate.

Earlier, sociologist scholar Sara Diamond wrote extensively on the rise of right wing groups in the country providing readers with a wealth of information based on her firsthand research. In her seminal 1995 book, Roads to Dominion, she traced the various movements over the past 50 years identifying four types she discovered:

1. The anti-communist conservative movement that in the 1970s included moral traditionalism of the emerging Christian Right.

2. The racist Right including the KKK and other segregationist groups and later the paramilitary white supremacist movement.

3. The Christian Right with its evangelical roots, and

4. Neoconservatives with roots in the Cold War and Democrat party later finding a new home in the Republican party under Ronald Reagan.

Diamond explained these movements involved scores of organizations, not monolithic in beliefs, who nonetheless share a common set of policy preferences that unite them listing three core areas - the economy, the "nation-state in global context (military and diplomatic)," and moral norms relating to race and gender. The movements are also unified in their advocacy of free-market capitalism, anticommunism (now anything left of center), US worldwide military hegemony, traditional morality, superiority of native-born white male Christian Americans, and the traditional nuclear family. In addition, Diamond lists what she calls the "three pillars of the US Right" calling them "tendencies, not absolutes" - libertarianism, anticommunist militarism (now all liberal/progressive/leftist non-extremist Christian ideology), and traditionalism.

In her book, Diamond included a detailed history of the Christian Right explaining how it came to be the largest, most influential movement on the far right dominating policy-making in Republican-led governments and especially the one not yet in power under George W. Bush. She explained it all in over 300 fact-crammed pages and another 100 pages of notes and references. It's important background information summarized here briefly to set the stage for Hedges important account of what the Christian Right is up to today, why it matters, and why this dominant movement threatens freedom and democracy in America and the values most here hold dear, including most of the 70 million evangelicals, a minority of whom are radical ideologues selling their dogma of hate and domination to convert the others and destroy non-believers.

Our Secular State Founding Principles

Christians founded America believing church and state should be separated, and Jefferson called for "a wall of separation" between them in 1802 after freedom of religion became part of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Today that bedrock founding principle is jeopardized by the extremist Christian Right. If they get their way, they'll tear down that wall with considerable public support from the 40% in the country polls say take the Bible literally, and nearly one-third believe in the "rapture" as Hedges explains in his book. The notion comes from conservative Protestant eschatology denoting the final happening when "good Christians" on earth are saved and "raptured" to heaven to be with Jesus in eternal immortality while non-believers are doomed to a more hellish, less "rapturous" fate Hedges characterizes as suffering "unspeakable torments below."

These believers and all others are entitled to their views, but the Constitution forbids them forcing them on others. Earlier Supreme Courts agreed in decisions requiring a "wall of separation" between church and state prohibiting the adoption of any state religion and requiring government to avoid undue involvement in religion, its trappings or expressions.

That status was put in jeopardy following the introduction in Congress of the "Constitution Restoration Act of 2004." It was then reintroduced in near-identical form in 2005, never passed, and now awaits its fate in the Democrat-led 110th Congress or a future one that may or may not let it die. If it's ever adopted in its present form, it will turn the country into a de facto theocracy despite its supporters' denial. Don't believe them as getting this passed is key to the Christian Right's mission to turn America into a fascist theocracy where constitutional law is abolished in favor of extremist Christian dogma Dominionists like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and others in the movement want to be the supreme law of the land.

In their world, under their law, practitioners of other faiths will be lawbreakers including about 75 million non-Christians and many others of the faith not willing to go along with their interpretation of it. The "Constitution Restoration Act of 2005" will also deny the Supreme Court's right to challenge anyone in or affiliated with federal, state or local government acknowledging the Christian "God (in their canon) as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government." Henceforth, any judge at any level interpreting the new law differently would be subject to impeachment and prosecution in the United (extremist Christian) States of (fascist) America ruled by people like Pat Robertson and others like him.

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Stephen Lendman [send him email] lives in Chicago, and maintains a blog at http://sjlendman.blogspot.com