Who Would God Vote For? (How the radical right used left wing tactics to transform politics)

[salvorhardin]

Another excellent post from Adam Curtis (The Power of Nightmares). I love Curtis' blog posts for the BBC because he thinks like a documentarian. The result is that his posts have a strong narrative, liberally sprinkled with clips of BBC archival footage. They wind up reading like mini-documentaries.

When you bring God into politics very strange things happen. You can see this now in both America and Iran - in their elections and also in the growing confrontation between them. But it wasn't always like this - in fact for most of the 20th century fundamentalist religion in both America and Iran had turned its back on the world of politics and power.

But in the 1970s everything changed. For that was the moment when religion was deliberately brought into politics in both countries with the aim of using it as a revolutionary force. And those who did this - Khomeini in Iran, and right-wing activists in America - were inspired by the revolutionary theories and organisations of the left and their ambition to transform society in a radical way.

I want to tell the forgotten story of how this happened - and how in the 1980s both the Americans and the Iranian idealists came together in a very odd way - with disastrous consequences.

...

One of the leaders of the New Right was a man called Paul Weyrich, and in the wake of the student revolts of 1968 he infiltrated the meetings of left-wing grassroots organisations. He was astonished by the amount of planning and tactics that he saw and he realised that the conservative movement in America was completely unaware of all this. The right, he said, were still trapped by the belief that people would simply vote for them because they were right.

So the New Right set out to organise a new grassroots movement that could counter the left's success. They had all sorts of discussions and during one of them Weyrich pointed out that there were millions of Americans who were socially and culturally very conservative but who never voted. They were the religious fundamentalists and the evangelicals - a vast segment of the population who believed that they should never get involved in politics.

Full post: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/03/who_would_god_vote_for.html

[longship]

1. An essential history

Even if you're aware of this it is a worthwhile read, well written and sourced.

[salvorhardin]

2. That's another neat thing about Curtis' posts

Even if you're well read about 20th C. history, he delves into these dusty little corners where no one else goes. For instance, this post from January where he looks at how Ted Arison and Knut Kloster created the modern cruise industry. Kloster in particular was a fascinating man who thought cruising could unite the first and third worlds.

Kloster believed that the aim of capitalism was not just to make money but to use its power to improve society. He saw the world as divided between the rich, industrial west - and the "third world" which was struggling to escape from the debilitating legacy of colonialism, and the still vastly unequal distribution of global power.

So his cruise ships were going to remedy that.

Kloster hated the idea that his liners were just going to take white middle class Americans on cheap holidays in other peoples' hell and misery. He supported the left-wing politicians in Jamaica who said "Tourism is Whorism".

Full post: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/01/were_all_in_the_same_boat_-_ar.html

[mysuzuki2]

3. God can't vote at all here in Wisconsin unless he shows a picture ID.

[salvorhardin]

4. Hah!

Tis the same here in Indiana too.

[Arugula Latte]

5. Don't you have to actually exist in order to vote?

[yodermon]

6. Don't forget this is Paul "I don't Want everyone to vote" Weyrich.

[salvorhardin]

7. Excellent point!

[Iggo]

8. God.

[salvorhardin]

9. Evening kick