Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite asks a good question:
The choice between the biblical values of “good news for the poor” as announced by Jesus, and the “good news for the rich” of GOP fiscal proposals should be an easy one for Christians across the spectrum from liberal to conservative. But it’s not, as is clear from many polls. Why not?
That’s not a rhetorical question. It’s at the heart of American politics and of American Christianity in 2012.
I have a theory that suggests an answer — one I’ve talked about many times before here. I think it’s because of the Satanic baby-killers.
For many American Christians — particularly the sectarian voting bloc usually described as “evangelicals” — the war the rich are waging against the poor is at best a secondary consideration. Everything has to be a secondary consideration, because the No. 1 priority has to be stopping the monsters, the terrifying Satanic baby-killers. And the Hitler demons.
Because whatever one thinks about progressive taxation or keeping children safe from mercury poisoning or foreign policy or jobs, education, worker’s rights, civil rights or health care, none of that can possibly be as important as the pre-eminent existential and eternal threat posed by the Satanic baby-killers and the Hitler demons.
But don’t take my word for it, just listen to Matt Barber of the Liberty Counsel, who says, “Are we comparing the pro-choice movement to the Nazi movement? Absolutely.”
Let’s be very clear here. What we’re talking about here is, as we’ve long called it, an abortion holocaust. Are we comparing the pro-choice movement to the Nazi movement? Yes! Absolutely.
In recent weeks we talked about how the pro-life movement really embraces the mantle of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. … This is the modern-day anti-holocaust movement; the pro-life movement is.
Or listen to Pat Robertson explain that homosexuality is “somehow related to demonic possession.”
Or check out the trailers for Gates of Hell, from “Illuminati Pictures,” which depicts armed terrorists rebelling against the Satanazi threat of abortion. (Or something — it’s hard to say. “Molotov” Mitchell” explains his film here, while doing what seems to be an impression of Ed Norton in the first half-hour of American History X.)
If you prefer a film in which the condemnation of the Satanic baby-killers is presented in more pastel shades, try the upcoming October Baby, which Alison Wilmore describes for the AV Club:
Most egregious of all is the film’s suggestion that late-term, edge-of-viability procedures are the norm and that abortion clinics are a horror show of maimed, discarded infants. (“There were things that happened there, terrible things, things they had me do,” [Jasmine] Guy murmurs when telling her [character’s] story.) This isn’t a movie; this is propaganda for the already converted.
Or read about how “Aborted Babies Are Being Chopped Up and Sold to Researchers All Over America.” That’s from Alex Jones’ Prison Planet website — home to the wacky fringe lunacy of birthers, 9/11 “truthers” and moon-landing denialists. Nobody regards that site as a serious or credible source of information, even if it’s fantasies about abortion clinics are indistinguishable from those of the “mainstream” October Baby.
For another movie that shows this SB-K mentality, see the acclaimed documentary Jesus Camp, in which children are taught this view of the world, instructed to be constantly vigilant against the monstrous Other. (You can now watch Jesus Camp online for free at SnagFilms.com.)
Or look at the 1984 manual, “How to Start and Operate Your Own Pro-Life Outreach Crisis Pregnancy Center“:
Obviously, we’re fighting Satan. A killer, who in this case is the girl who wants to kill her baby, has no right to information that will help her kill her baby.
“Satan.” “A killer.” “The enemy.” “Terrible things.” “Demonic possession.” “Nazis.” A “holocaust.”
Stacked up against that, jobs, taxes, education, health care and the environment scarcely matter at all.
But do these folks really believe their own rhetoric about these Satanazis they claim to be battling?
I don’t think so. I think it’s more like what Steve M. describes in a post on the man who killed Trayvon Martin, “What you have to blend to get a George Zimmerman“:
The paranoia of George Zimmerman had a large, race-specific fear component, but I’d say it also had elements of pleasure. I see this in what gun fans say all the time — they like thinking of themselves as besieged, and as people who have the means to defend themselves if attacked. They really want their paranoid fantasies to come true, because it turns what’s largely a matter of personal enjoyment (they like guns) into a matter of being heroes of society. They hope they get to stop scary hordes of “urban” marauders from committing horrendous crimes of violence. They hope they have the chance to defeat a liberal/fascist/gun-grabbing government.
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