immigrant preacher who in 1935 organized small group of businessmen sympathetic to European fascism

[seemslikeadream]

The Family is about the other half of American fundamentalist power—not its angry masses, but its sophisticated elites. Sharlet follows the story back to Abraham Vereide, an immigrant preacher who in 1935 organized a small group of businessmen sympathetic to European fascism, fusing the Far Right with his own polite but authoritarian faith. From that core, Vereide built an international network of fundamentalists who spoke the language of establishment power, a “family” that thrives to this day. In public, they host prayer breakfasts; in private they preach a gospel of “biblical capitalism,” military might, and American empire. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao, the Family's leader declares, "We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't."




Forget what you think you know about the Christian Right; Jeff Sharlet has uncovered a frightening strain of hidden fundamentalism that forces us to revise our understanding of religion and politics in modern America. A brilliant marriage of investigative journalism and history, an unsettling story of how this small but powerful group shaped the faith of the nation in the 20th century and drives the politics of empire in the 21st. Anyone interested in circles of power will love this book."
--Debby Applegate, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for biography for The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher



http://jeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2008/02/blog-post.html

[grannylib]

1. So when will the M$M give THESE people their minute or two of

teevee time?
Let's see....weeks of Rev. Wright coverage; a few mentions here and there of Rev. Hagee and Rev. Parsley; NADA about Senator Clinton's cult membership.

Will we hear anything about this?

[malaise]

2. All the criminals are being exposed these days

Maybe there will be a clean up.

[seemslikeadream]

3. former and not-so-former Nazis, and its fascination with that exemplary leader, Adolf Hitler

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/20/opinion/main3955108.shtml


The Family's most visible activity is its blandly innocuous National Prayer Breakfast, held every February in Washington. But almost all its real work goes on behind the scenes - knitting together international networks of right-wing leaders, most of them ostensibly Christian. In the 1940s, The Family reached out to former and not-so-former Nazis, and its fascination with that exemplary leader, Adolf Hitler, has continued, along with ties to a whole bestiary of murderous thugs. As Sharlet reported in Harper's in 2003:

During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa's postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand "Communists" killed marks him as one of the century's most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise.

At the heart of The Family's American branch is a collection of powerful right-wing politicos, who include, or have included, Sam Brownback, Ed Meese, John Ashcroft, James Inhofe and Rick Santorum. They get to use The Family's spacious estate on the Potomac, The Cedars, which is maintained by young men in Family group homes and where meals are served by The Family's young women's group. And, at The Family's frequent prayer gatherings, they get powerful jolts of spiritual refreshment, tailored to the already powerful.

[malaise]

4. Same thing here

The Prayer Breakfast started after Kissinger came here and virtually overthrew the Manley government. The residue is a regular trek of these Fundie con men holding conventions and of course 1500 murders a year.
They are a deadly virus. I'm so lucky that my folks taught us to think for ourselves. No one will change my mind - all religion is evil. It is about social and political control.

The good news is that they're being exposed by M$M now. They have assaulted reason and infected every institution. A purge is needed and urgently.

Add.

[pnorman]

5. That name, Abraham Vereide, had come up a while ago in a DU discussion.

But I had neglected to bookmark it, and was later unable to recall his name or his outfit. Thanks! I'll add it to my Google Bookmarks directly.

pnorman

[seemslikeadream]

6. Was it one of these, I missed them

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=2465613

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=3311130

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=2903461

[pnorman]

7. No, it wasn't any of those, but the first one about Hillary Clinton, took me quite by surprise.

DU is my starting point for so much of this sort of thing, but I may have caught that reference from somewhere else.

pnorman