Below: a piece-in-the-works of mine, approx. 5 mins long, showcases some of the especially egregious anti-Jewish writings of Christians United For Israel founder John Hagee
Below: Max Blumenthal, at the 2007 Washignton DC CUFI Conference, confronts John Hagee with his written assertion that Jews themselves are to blame for the Holocaust:
Introduction: Christian Zionists United For Religious War
While Max Blumenthal was at the CUFI press conference confronting John Hagee with quotes from Hagee's own, recent book, I was nearby, at a CUFI panel presentation during which speaker Brigitte Gabriel, a common speaker at CUFI events, declared that Muslims and Arabs of the entire Middle East "have no soul !" Later on at the conference, at the concluding "Night To Honor Israel" gala CUFI Regional Director Billye Brim made, apparently, a pointed reference to destruction of the Islamic temples on Jerusalem's Temple Mount, "God has a PLAN for that hill !"
Along with CUFI members, Christian and Jewish fundamentalist terrorists have long sought the destruction of the Islamic temples on the Temple Mount - after which they hope to build a third Jewish temple. Gershom Gorenberg's The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount is, though somewhat dated, considered one of the best books on the subject :
"Gorenberg weaves a story that stretches from California churches to West Bank settlements. He explains why believers hope for the End, and why prominent American fundamentalists provide hard-line support for Israel, while looking forward to an apocalypse in which they expect Jews to die or else convert. He makes sense of the messianic fervor that has driven Israeli settlers to oppose peace, and describes the Islamic apocalyptic visions that cast Israel's actions in Jerusalem as diabolic plots. He examines, as well, what happens when secular politicians try to channel these religious passions for their own purposes. At the center of this story is the Temple Mount, where Solomon and Herod built their Temples, where the Dome of the Rock now stands -- and where both Jewish extremists and millions of Christian fundamentalists expect the Third Temple to be built soon. Holy to both Judaism and Islam, the Mount is where nationalism and faith join in a volatile mix. Any attempt to spark the End by clearing the ground for the Temple, therefore, could ignite holy war."
It's important to recognize that the sort of Christian Zionism CUFI and John Hagee represent tends to vilify and demonize both Muslims, Jews, Catholics and non-fundamentalist Christian and non-Christians generally. It merely demonizes those groups in different ways. Christian Zionist speakers have been very busy traveling the United States and Britain over the past several years, promoting the view that Islam is an inherently expansionist and violent religion which seeks world domination. But, Christian Zionism demonizes Jews as well, by promoting many of the most classic anti-Semitic smears of recorded history and Christian Zionist end-time eschatology confers upon Jews, alone out of any ethnic, cultural or religious group, the dubious honor of a fixed "death quota". Christian Zionism has expected a specific Jewish "death" quota in the "End Time" almost since the religious ideology gelled in the early 1820's
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US Senator John McCain Courts Anti-Semitic Holocaust Revisionist
Now that there's some long-overdue mainstream media attention on John McCain's courtship of John Hagee, I think there's an opening for some needed reframing:
Leading GOP presidential primary candidate John McCain has not just been courting one of those "agents of intolerance" he broadly decried back in 1999...
It is true that John Hagee's writing would seem to indicate that he hates both Muslims, Catholics, gays, liberals, supporters of a wide range of civil liberties groups and Jews who fail to conform to Hagee's narrow definition of what "good" or "acceptable" Jews should do and believe.
Beyond that however, I maintain that the facts support the following:
John Hagee espouses Holocaust revisionism. Thus, US Senator John McCain has been courting the political support of an anti-Semitic Holocaust revisionist.
I'm choosing my words, above, carefully and for reason :
On the basis of the evidence I've collected over the past year, I've decided that it is appropriate to identify John Hagee as a Holocaust Revisionist - for a simple and legally specific reason:
John Hagee, Holocaust Revisionist
John Hagee has established his very career through a noisy form of "pro-Israel" politics and, as part of that, has publicly decried anti-Semitism for decades. Another, radically different side of Hagee shows in his writings, which promote many of the most pernicious anti-Jewish slurs that trace all the way back to St. John Chrysostom. John Hagee is not a Holocaust Revisionist because he promotes anti-Jewish tropes however - Hagee is a Holocaust Revisionist on the basis that he places a heavy onus of the blame for the Holocaust on, as well as Jews themselves, the Catholic Church. The role The Catholic Church played in implicitly endorsing Hitler and the Nazis through the Concordat is well known and has been repudiated by the Vatican itself. But, John Hagee utterly neglects, in his recent (2006) book Jerusalem Countdown, the role played by the German Protestant Church in supporting the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, the rise of the fiercely pro Hitler "Deutsche Christen" and the work of German Protestant theologians such as Gerhard Kittel in helping construct a theological rational for what became the Nuremberg Laws, which helped pave the road to the Holocaust.
As of when John Hagee's book Jerusalem Countdown came out in 2006, the field of scholarship which has established and documented the role played by the German Protestant Church, and German church leaders and theologians, was well established - pioneering scholarship that opened up the field of inquiry had come out almost 2 decades prior to Hagee's book and the field is now fully accredited and widely recognized and taught worldwide.
So, John Hagee's wholesale neglect of the role played by German Protestantism in the Holocaust is, quite simply, revisionism : Holocaust Revisionism.
They Called Themselves "Storm Trooper of Christ"
"During the years of the Third Reich, every German carried with them a document that had to be on their person at all times. It was not a driver's license, not a passport, not even proof of citizenship but a record of their racial heritage as attested to by their pastors and their baptismal certificates. Baptism had once stood as a sign of equality. In the Third Reich, baptism became a dividing line - between heroes and heretics, between compassion and catastrophe." - Narrative introduction to Storm Troopers of Christ: Baptism and the Jews in the Third Reich
Below: trailer from documentarist Steve D. Martin's new 1-hour film "Storm Troopers Of Christ", a powerful new documentary that explores how a major, influential faction of German Christianity, the Protestant Church in Germany especially, helped support the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis, to relatively minor opposition from Christian clergy opposed to German fascism and the anti-Semitic policies of the Nazis.
For more, see my review of Steve Martin's documentary, Confronting The Storm Troopers Of Christ
More broadly, and substantiating that charge, John Hagee has a pattern of writing that suggests he's a committed anti-Semite. In the most expansive sense of the word too; Hagee appears to hate both Jews and Muslims and I've started a database of well-established anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim and anti-Catholic speech and writing from John Hagee, his CUFI board members and from leading Christian Zionists generally. I'll be adding to to every few days, as a resource for internet writers and journalists who want an authoritative collection of hate speech from leaders of the Christian right and especially from John Hagee and CUFI leaders.
"Christians United For Incineration ?"
San Antonio megachurch pastor John Hagee founded CUFI in 2006 : ostensibly as a "pro-Israel" non-profit group which would teach American Christian Zionists to lobby for Israel and coordinate their efforts. CUFI holds yearly summer lobbying conferences in Washington DC and also organizes numerous "A Night To Honor Israel" events around the United States on an ongoing basis, as part of CUFI's agenda of strengthening political alliances between American Christian Zionists and American Jews. But CUFI's politics, as compared to average political views of Jewish Americans, veer far to the right, lie along the extreme end of the theocratic spectrum and espouse an intransigent and radically bellicose approach to Mideast politics. CUFI is allied with the hard Israeli right and, most recently, has been organizing to block efforts by the current Olmert administration, writes journalist Bill Berkowitz, towards any Israeli-Palestinian peace deal that would divide Jerusalem. CUFI's extremity goes beyond the politics of its allies in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud Party - one of CUFI's key founding executive board members, Jerry Falwell, once preached that "millions of Jews will be slaughtered", called Jews "spiritually blind" and stated, in 1999, that the coming 'anti-Christ' Falwell expected would be a Jew. CUFI regional director George Morrison has predicted "another Holocaust" and another regional director, Dr. Chuck Missler, currently sells an audio lecture series entitled "The Next Holocaust" and has said that Auschwitz was "just a prelude". In his 2006 book "Jerusalem Countdown", Pastor John Hagee's seemed to blame Jews for the [last] Holocaust (for disobeying God) and identify Hitler, the Nazis and the Holocaust as God's way of driving Jews to settle in Palestine. He has also called liberal Jews "poisoned".
The section above is my introduction to a resource base (writing, speech and audio and video where possible) of hate speech from John Hagee, CUFI leaders and Christian Zionist leaders that I am compiling.
Here are the current section themes (with many more to come) :
Blaming The Holocaust On Jews
Hitler and The Nazis as Agents of "God's Boundless Love" ?
Orthodox Christian Zionist Eschatology: Most Jews Will Die In Another, Coming "Holocaust" and Judaism Will Vanish From The Earth
An 'Inevitable' Catastrophe, Centered Around Israel
John Hagee, "The Passion of The Christ", and the "New World Order"
Hagee Targets Jews For Conversion
John Hagee & the total War for a "Christian Nation"
Since the 2000 election, John McCain has done a 180-degree reversal, from his earlier stance that was controversial in the Republican Party and which angered many on the religious right, that Christian right leaders such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were "agents of intolerance". John McCain has appeared, over the last two years on 2007 on Firing Line and Meet the Press, to acknowledge his repudiation of his earlier, principled and accurate position.
The gulf between McCain's earlier position and his noisy courtship of John Hagee, Rod Parsely and other rising Christian Zionist and Christian right leaders can hardly be overemphasized and a voice from the early Cold War put a fine edge on that point:
Today I'll be interviewing George E. Lowe, a man who served in the US Navy and two US presidential administrations, whose 1962 book on nuclear deterrence is still well regarded and who won an award for an article on the subject in the early 1970s. George E. Lowe also says that he worked, for several years in the US Navy, in an unofficial and secret US Navy intelligence clique that was working to fight the influence of what Lowe terms as "religious and secular utopians" who thought the US should US fight the Cold War, and foreign military engagements generally, with strategic nuclear weapons. More specifically, Lowe says he worked, with Admiral John "Goddamm!" McCain Sr. and others in the Navy intelligence group, to counter the influence of apocalyptic Christian fundamentalists in the US military. Based on what Lowe has told me about the opinions of US Senator John McCain's father, it's likely Senator McCain's courtship of bigoted, hatred religious extremists such as John Hagee is making Admiral John MCain Sr. thrash about, in consternation at his boy's perfidy, in the grave.
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FURTHER READING
TTA contributor Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst for Political Research Associates, provides some background on the recent history of "New World Order" conspiricism among John Hagee's fellow Christian Zionists such as Tim LaHaye and Pat Robertson in The Age Old Conspiracy
Previous installments in an ongoing series, by several authors, on John Hagee and Christian Zionism:
"Pro Israel" Christian Leader Blames Jews For The Holocaust
Donohue Softpeddles Hagee's Catholic Bashing
"Be Jewish In Five Easy Days", The Twelve Tribes Of Hagee
AIPAC Event Helps Mainstream Allegations Of "Satanic Liberal Jewish Conspiracy"
Holocaust For Zion : CUFI's Christian Zionism Made Simple
GOP House Minority Whip Roy Blunt To Help Nuclear War Advocate
What Secret "Other Matters" Did McCain Discuss With "Apocalypse Now" Hagee ?
Dick Armey Denies Bush Administration Trying To Provoke "End Times"
recent stories from other authors:
Max Blumenthal : AIPAC Cheers an Anti-Semitic Holocaust Revisionist (and Abe Foxman Approves)
Sarah Posner: The Goy Who Cried Wolf: The Israel lobby gives America's leading Christian right warmonger a warm welcome
Max Blumenthal : Israel, the US, and the Christian Right: The Menage a Trois From Hell
Bill Berkowitz : Holy Warriors Set Sights
on Iran
Esther Kaplan : Christian Zionism all juiced up
Richard Bartholomew : Armey: Bush Believes in Tribulation, but not Trying to Make it Happen
Sarah Posner: Lobbying For Armageddon
"As Bush's War Strategy Shifts to Iran, Christian Zionists Gear Up for the Apocalypse"
"Apocalyptic preacher John Hagee says McCain is 'on target'"
"Can Giuliani Be the Armageddon Candidate?"
More on Apocalyptic Christian Zionism :
Pastor John Hagee's beliefs are closely aligned with other Apocalyptic Christian Zionists such as Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, authors of the "Left Behind" book series. Writes author and senior analyst at Political Research Associates, Chip Berlet:
When White supremacists post websites demonizing Jews and gay people, they are condemned for the hatemongers they are.
When leaders of the armed citizens militias and their allies in the Patriot Movement in the 1990s urged their followers to form anti-government underground cells and battle global cooperation and the United Nations, they were condemned as dangerous guerrillas spreading divisive conspiracy theories.
When Timothy LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins write the Left Behind series of novels containing the same type of bigotry, they sell 70 million books and are interviewed by clueless journalists who use a double standard by not confronting LaHaye and Jenkins for spreading hate and conspiracism as well as promoting religious violence as a heroic duty....
This is the demonizing theology, ideology, and action plan being taught to millions of Americans by the LaHaye and Jenkins Left Behind series. We ignore this phenomenon at our own risk.
Chip Berlet, on the underlying ideology of the "Left Behind" Books:
"Left Behind Video Reflects Bigoted Apocalyptic Violence of Original Fiction Series,"(6/12/2006)
"LaHaye and Jenkins: Why is the Criticism Left Behind? "
The World According to Tim LaHaye: A Series
Part One: Hunting Down the Enemies
Part Two: Pre-Trib Perspectives
Part Three: Satanic Secular Humanism
Part Four: Secular Humanism as False Religion
Part Five: The Secular Humanist Web
Part Six: The Council for National Policy
Part Seven: Humanists Attack the Family
Part Eight: The Age Old Conspiracy