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Religio-Facism

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The opportunist preachers having mastered the media of television and the religious mother's milk of fear move in for the kill by doing the same thing that government does. It produces a villain; it feeds on the fear that we aren't good enough and presents a new product to fix it, salvation. The seductiveness is that it promises black and white in a world of gray. Don't worry about this world, trust Jesus, go after those abortionists, certainly you are better than them. Jesus wants a free market, have faith brother and be swept up in the rapture. Don't try and figure it out, I'll tell you what to do.

Born originally as a money making machine, it didn't take long for the political and corporate powers to figure out these puffy haired preachers could help them out. The manipulation and redirection of fear by business, political power seekers and churches has combined to create what I call religiofacism. Not only is it the union of the state and the corporation, it is the union of those two and religion. It is now Godly to kill Muslims and spend like there is no tomorrow and abandon your brother to his fate. The irony is that what they term Islamo-facism and many cases terrorism is an indigenous resistance movement to the corporate capitalism that destroys cultures for profit.

This combination is most effective where people are most desperate. Indeed, Red states have higher divorce rates, higher poverty rates, higher rates of teenage births, higher rates of sexually transmitted disease's, imprisonment, all of the measures they say their control will prevent. The right wing religions are also a perfect fit with the new police state. The belief that people must be prevented from being "sinful", that the state should control a woman's body is the same mind that thinks its ok to spy on your neighbor, invade their home, lock you up without charge, torture you if necessary for your own good.

The sad thing is the rich industrialists and media, the politicians and the preachers are all the biggest victims of this fantasy. They have bought the illusion they have created as the substitute for real life. They have the denial of the alcoholic lying in the gutter in filthy clothes, family, respect, self worth long gone clutching the bottle of self delusion tightly to his chest telling himself things aren't really that bad as long as he can have one more pull at the bottle. The difference is between them and us is they have an endless supply of bottles to maintain the self delusion the rest of us do not.

We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us

Does all this mean that we need to go back to living in caves as clans? Certainly not, but we do need to reorganize our families and communities around human rather than needs of the Religio-facist machine. We need to stop thinking somehow we have failed as individual human beings, what we have failed at is to stop the destruction of our family and community, we have to stop buying the kool aid that politicians, corporations and preachers are our salvation and start talking and listening to one another and finding our own solutions.

Look for the similarities and not the differences. Stop going to the salon and start going to the protest, park your car and ride your bike, buy local, talk to your neighbor and your kid and your parents. Go visit someone just to talk. Turn off the television and go to an activist meeting, turn off the hate radio and learn to play a ukulele. The only thing that holds the delusion together is our participation in its continued existence. By forming alternative communities to support ourselves independent of religio-facism we might just save ourselves.

The technology that brought about our imprisonment may have given us the means to break the invisible chains of religio-facism. It opened two way communications again, not subject to space or time. If the computer has multiplied the power of one brain, the internet is the new community council that has just peeked above the horizon to revive the interpretation and processing of outside information for truth and coordinated action, replacing the mind numbing one way propaganda of the tube. It has the power to communicate common concerns and values, to help us interpret and process outside information, harness mutual effort towards a common goal, to organize, to resist, to bring about non-violent change, it is building new communities and families. The community is becoming global, it is as important as Thomas Paine's printing press was to the first American Revolution.

While Howard Dean and Move On led the way, internet blogs serving as citizens' think tanks are challenging the dominance of the well funded Republican propaganda machines. Independent news and commentary outlets have turned the tide on hate radio propaganda and mainstream media cowardice. List serve discussion groups, chat rooms and websites have allowed alienated and isolated rational people to fight back and publicize books, films, art and discussions that otherwise would not be part of the public discussion. People can find each other instead of feeling alone and disconnected. Edwards Pickersgill is one of the fine forward thinking web thinkers who has created one growing example at www.mytown.ca .

These new communities are incubators for change and represent a powerful force that can over come time and distance to span countries and continents. It is the international network that can organize against global capitalism and bring about coordinated actions that can stop it in its tracks. It has the ability for people to smash the boundaries of nation states and supersede international treaties for the rich. It has the ability to kill superstition and mythology that substitute for reason. Some countries recognize this and are concerned, China actively works with service providers to censor content on the net. The U.S. government monitors traffic and is resisting giving power to the United Nations to control traffic. One must wonder why.

Little would be know about the populist indigenous and poor people's movement sweeping South America if it weren't for the internet. Knowledge of what is working there is spreading around the world and represents the biggest threat to global capitalism yet. And guess what; it revolves around the family, community, and the land working in solidarity to protect those environmental, social and cultural shelters for the quality of life.

These indigenous groups have much to offer us in organizing knowledge. They have formed alternative economies and governments basically ignoring the formal institutions to help themselves. Many have their roots in the liberation theology movement that Rome tried to stomp out but merely drove underground. It is one that says that religion, government and commerce must serve all of the people. Information and solidarity can overcome the fear that religio-facism uses to maintain control. We have the ability to use the internet to redistribute, our airwaves, our resources our land and our wealth to everyone.

Almost all of human social and psychological problems are a result of the non-supportive, judgmental, shame inducing, exploitive, manipulative values of corporate capitalism, nation state power struggles and institutional religions. If we rebuild around philosophies that promote democratic socialist families and communities, we can effectively cancel out the power of those corrupting influences. We must before they destroy themselves and us with them.

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John Kelley is the Managing Editor of a monthly progressive newsmagazine, "We the People News", in Corpus Christi, Texas
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