The phrase "American Taliban" has been around for a while; but it has never gotten much traction because of the corporate media's unwillingness to recognize that non-Muslim religions can also have ideological agendas, which are almost always right-wing.
So, I propose a new metaphor for the bloodthirsty, cruel, and increasingly deranged right wing cadres, funded by the Koch Brothers, who are waging a civil war against the American government, the American worker, American women, and American minorities: the Amer Rouge. The Amer Rouge is the rightwing equivalent of the "fundamentalist communist" Khmer Rouge. 'Amer' for a nation reference; 'Rouge' since they live within the Red State boundaries of the GOP. (Another virtue: three syllables instead of seven for AT.) The Amer Rouge takes the inverted Marxism of the hard core financial fundamentalist to an extreme, and adds Christianist theocracy to the mix.
More on the resemblance to the Khmer Rouge below the orange napalm splash.
The Khmer Rouge described itself as "Maoist", not Marxist; but this did not mean it was a puppet of or even aligned with Communist China...The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) , better known as the Khmer Rouge, was driven by a "fundamentalist" communist ideology - Marxism as interpreted by Mao Zedong - rather than by allegiance to an established communist power...the Khmer Rouge put a fanatical adherence to ideology before any consideration of humanity.
- Alan Axelrod, The Real History of the Cold War: A New Look at the Past
Have we not seen the inhumanity of the Amer Rouge, as they refuse Federal payments and shutdown Medicare, Medicaid, and Planned Parenthood on the grounds that the poor are "able bodied", and hence not in need of medical care? Haven't people already died for their despicable policies?
Is not their absolute unwillingness to compromise, even in the face of losing the election, a mark of fanatics and fundamentalists? Are they not engaged in scorched earth tactics against taxes, unions and women wherever they win an election: Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Florida? Is not such fanaticism un-American? Just as the Khmer Rouge put their Maoist "stone age communism" of self-sufficient rice farming into practice where they gained control, the Amer Rouge have put their "stone age capitalism" of primitive accumulation into practice. The orthodox (i.e., somewhat less fanatical) capitalists allow them to do this because stone age capitalism destroys resistance to Wall St. domination.
These (leaders of the CPK) were perhaps the most educated leaders in the history of Asian communism. Two of them, Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon, earned doctorates from the University of Paris...In retrospect, it seems unlikely that these talented members of the elite...could launch the bloodiest and most radical revolution in modern Asian history. Most came from landowner or civil servant families.
Khmer Rouge
While most of the Amer Rouge cadre are bone-ignorant thugs and religiously-indoctrinated
zampolits with an overlay of brutal cleverness, the leadership of the Amer Rouge has a few highly-educated fanatics. Case in point, Harvard-educated Grover Norquist - an extremist of the first magnitude. Also, someone thought Tom Coburn was educated enough to become an M.D. Of course, no one ever accused fanatics of being rational about their own contradictory class origins.
The Khmer Rouge's ideology was based on an extreme version of Khmer nationalism and xenophobia...Their ideology was also influenced by colonial French education, which posited Khmers as "Aryans among Asians"...The Khmer Rouge explicitly targeted the Chinese, Vietnamese, and even their partially Khmer offspring for extinction; although the Cham Muslims were treated unfavorably, they were encouraged to "mix flesh and blood", to intermarry and assimilate. Some people with partial Chinese or Vietnamese ancestry were present in the Khmer Rouge leadership; as in the Soviet Union, they either were purged or participated in the ethnic cleansing campaigns.
- Wikipedia
The Amer Rouge have a nativist, xenophobic, and racist program similar to the Khmer Rouge. Their constant demonization of Moslems, minorities, and homosexuals would certainly escalate to execution if they came to power. Witness their funding and verbal support for kill-the-gays laws in Africa.
The Khmer Rouge government arrested, tortured and eventually executed anyone suspected of belonging to several categories of supposed "enemies":
Professionals and intellectuals – in practice this included almost everyone with an education, or even English-speaking people or people wearing glasses (which, according to the regime, meant that they were literate). Paradoxically, Pol Pot himself was a university-educated man (albeit a drop-out) with a taste for French literature and was also a fluent French speaker. Many artists, including musicians, writers and filmmakers were executed.
Ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese, ethnic Thai and other minorities in Eastern Highland, Cambodian Christians (most of whom were Catholic, and the Catholic Church in general), Muslims and the Buddhist monks. The Roman Catholic cathedral of Phnom Penh was razed. The Khmer Rouge forced Muslims to eat pork, which they regard as forbidden (ḥarām). Many of those who refused were killed. Christian clergy and Muslim imams were executed...
"Economic saboteurs" – many former urban dwellers were deemed guilty due to their lack of agricultural ability.
- Wikipedia
The brutality directed towards anyone with an ounce of intellect was the trademark of the Khmer Rouge. They killed people for the "sin" of having a pair of eyeglasses. They hated anyone with education. This is exactly the attitude of the Amer Rouge. Attempting to reason with them will get you marked as an enemy of their state.
But they are not only financial fanatics; they are also religious nutcases. They have been infiltrating the military - note the West Point cadet who quit over religious bullying this week and the many scandals at the Air Force Academy.
The Christianist ideology of the Amer Rouge is a sick hijacking of Christianity in worship of Wall St. greed. The mixture of religious nuttery backed by Wall St. money should scare the crap out of any small-d democrat in this country.
Although a radical movement, the Khmer Rouge also drew on the idioms of Cambodian Buddhist culture... Rather than maintaining a bureaucracy based on names and reputation, the Khmer Rouge also used charismatic leadership that is characteristic of Buddhist societies.
- Wikipedia
The Amer Rouge use Christian idioms to talk about their radical Christianist agenda. The Dominionist theocrats at the heart of their movement are also very big on charismatic leadership.
The Khmer Rouge's social policy focused on working towards a purely agrarian society. The evacuation of the cities disproportionately affected Chinese and Vietnamese, who were unused to agricultural work, segregated from Khmers in labor camps, and forbidden to speak their own language or practice non-Khmer religion.
- Wikipedia
The Amer Rouge has the same pathological hatred of education, urbanism, and modernity as the Khmer Rouge. The sneering at effete, Eastern liberals is but a publicly acceptable face over a seething, murderous hatred for anyone with an ounce of intellectual accomplishment or tolerance of diversity.
The Amer Rouge is a fanatical, fundamentalist capitalist cadre, funded by cynical bums like the Koch Brothers. The purpose of the Amer Rouge is to destabilize the American government and pave the way for a takeover by Wall St. capitalists. In today's world of multi-national corporations, Wall St. domination, and multi-billion dollar semiconductor fabs, their Norman Rockwell vision of a nation of self-sufficient small-businessmen is as idiotically unrealistic as Khmer Rouge rice farming.
But the intolerant fanaticism of the Amer Rouge is so un-American, one must ask how America has come to this low state.
Nixon...dropped more bombs on rural Cambodia than had been dropped on Japan in WW2, killling at least three-quarters of a million Cambodian peasants and helping legitimize the murderous Khmer Rouge movement under Pol Pot...without the US government's Vietnam-era savagery, he could never have come to power in a culture like Cambodia's, just as Mao's uneducated peasant radicals would never have gained legitimacy in a normal Chinese context without the disruption and depravity of the Japanese war.
- Chalmers Johnson, Blowback
IMHO, just as the American carpet bombing of Cambodia was the biggest recruiting tool for the Khmer Rouge, the de-industrialization/offshoring/destruction of American manufacturing and the middle class is the biggest recruiting tool for the anti-government Amer Rouge. That might sound contradictory until you understand that the rightwing media bubble has blamed all of the fundamentalist capitalist destruction on the government, on unions, or on minority "moochers", instead of on the fundamentalist capitalists.
A lot of Americans have been recruited to the Amer Rouge by the industrial devastation of the last thirty years. They have been so brainwashed they don't recognize that the China which received all the looted industry is the largest Communist government on the planet. They don't blame greedy bastards like Bain Capital. They blame the liberals who have been trying to do something about the situation.
I really have to hand it to the fundamentalist capitalist propaganda team. They have stood reality on its head for thirty years; and they have bled America like a Kosher steer. They have enabled the murderous fundamentalism of the Amer Rouge.
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I'm sure someone will find this diary over the top. Fine with me. I would rather be overwrought about a looming dystopia that doesn't come to pass than oblivious to one that does. These people are dangerous fanatics, and the underlying health of our democracy is so damaged that they could take power (can you say 47% of the vote for that transparent looter/loser Romney?).
History points to similar national suicides by fundamentalism, and the corporate wing of the Democratic Party is way too tolerant of the Amer Rouge ideology for confidence. The steady flow of statements by DINOs putting Medicare and Medicaid on the table despite their overwhelming electoral victory is a sign of the rot in our party. Make no mistake, we continue to be in an ideological civil war. The fact that the election is over has changed nothing. The GOP continue pretty much as before. The corporate media repeats the lie that the budget crisis was caused by the little guy, who deserves to pay for it. The Koch Brothers and Adelson continue to spend heavily, continue to rape states like Michigan.
I am done with being polite to the GOP. Its high time someone called them out as the fundamentalist fanatics that they are.