Friends of Padre Steve’s World,
The day after the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and three weeks after the attack on the Capitol by conspiracy theory believing, Neo-Nazis, White Nationalists, QAnon believers and run of the mill racists, Christian theocrats and others determined to overthrow an election, usurp the Constitution and kill the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, and any member of the House or Senate who upheld the Constitution I have decided to continue my counter-attack against these who are guilty of the murder of a Capitol Police Officer and the wounding of two dozen officers by fighting back.
Robert Heinlein wrote:
“Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.”
Over the past year or so I have received emails from a well known Jewish friend who represents the religious rights of many, mostly Christians in the military Those emails have been some of the most despicable Anti-Semitic, racist, and Nazi-like screeds that I have read in a long time and every week he shares at least one for me to investigate, reply, and expose.
Unfortunately my friend gets many of these emails, usually from self-proclaimed Christians who are so cowardly that they use pseudonyms and fake email addresses, but some are foolish enough to use their real names and email addresses which makes them incredibly easy to track down. Many actually are real live Neo-Nazis who I actually find entertaining to expose. Sometimes the ones who use pseudonyms and false email addresses sometimes make mistakes that allow me to identify them, but I digress…
These emails often use the language of Joseph Goebbels and other Nazis referring to my friend’s “Jewish looks,” other blatantly racist and religious comments that might appear in Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer, nearly pornographic in their descriptions and attacks on him. On occasion they make some very disturbing theocratic Christian views and referred to my friend as a Christ Killer and member of the Tribe, both terms used widely among the German Nazis.
The historian Yehuda Bauer wrote:
“The horror of the Holocaust is not that it deviated from human norms; the horror is that it didn’t. What happened may happen again, to others not necessarily Jews, perpetrated by others, not necessarily Germans. We are all possible victims, possible perpetrators, possible bystanders.”
The sad thing is that many of the most active Anti-Semites are Christians, or people who label themselves as Christians. Before he was banned from social media platforms these people often echoe the words and Tweets of former President Trump and many of his conservative Christian supporters, including prominent preacher like Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Paula White, James Dobson, Kenneth Copeland and others too numerous to list.
These preachers beat their chest and loudly proclaim their support for the State of Israel, but such support is only to usher in Armageddon, the annihilation of two thirds of living Jews, and the conversion of the survivors to Christianity. Their theology is one of genocide. It is a theology that has allowed Christians since the time of Constantine to use the police power of the state, its courts, police and military organizations to exterminate Jews, or any heretical sect of Christians, Pagans, or other traditional Greek, Roman, or Persian religions.
Likewise, the late arriving but incredibly militarily successful and religiously persuasive Muslims who overran most of the Christian Middle East, North Africa, and Southern Europe were the enemy. This was only possible because the Byzantine Empire was corrupt to the core, and the Roman Church had become the de facto government in much of Western Europe because civil authority had collapsed. The Roman and the Orthodox Churches which grew apart in culture and doctrine finally split by mutually excommunicating each other in 1451. But both persecuted any sect that opposed them to great acts of systematic murder in the name of Jesus. To steal a quote from a very bad Baptist preacher, the Roman and Orthodox Christians blazed a “Trail of Blood.” across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.
It is no wonder to me that a man like my friend who actually stands for the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the actual beliefs of the Founders who did not create a “Christian nation,” is targeted by such people. The great Virginia Baptist, John Leland, who was in large part responsible for the Bill of Rights, the religious liberty clauses of the First Amendment and the Virginia Statute on Religious Liberty wrote:
“Is conformity of sentiments in matters of religion essential to the happiness of civil government? Not at all. Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men than it has with the principles of mathematics. Let every man speak freely without fear–maintain the principles that he believes–worship according to his own faith, either one God, three Gods, no God, or twenty Gods; and let government protect him in so doing, i.e., see that he meets with no personal abuse or loss of property for his religious opinions. Instead of discouraging him with proscriptions, fines, confiscation or death, let him be encouraged, as a free man, to bring forth his arguments and maintain his points with all boldness; then if his doctrine is false it will be confuted, and if it is true (though ever so novel) let others credit it. When every man has this liberty what can he wish for more? A liberal man asks for nothing more of government.”
My friend is constantly threatened by supposed Christians, who are no doubt more nationalist and members of the Trump Cult than they are Christians, as were the German Christians, the official Christianity of Naziism. They are not oppressed but use their political power, especially at State and local level to deprive anyone they disapprove, of the civil, political, religious, and basic human rights.
But the Nazis weren’t the only ones to have such visions of religious superiority aided by the police power of the state.
Gary North, one of the most eloquent expositors of the Christian Dominionist movement and a long time adviser to Ron and the now infamous inciter of sedition, violence, and rebellion, Senator Rand Paul who believes that it is okay for a President to incite sedition and an attack on the Capitol that came within seconds of claiming the life of his Vice President and others Senators and Congressmen and women in the act of doing their Constitutional duty to approve the results of the Electoral College wrote:
“The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church’s public marks of the covenant–baptism and holy communion–must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel.
That is not a criticism of the former President, for he was and remains an opportunist who understands the insatiable needs of his supporters better than they do. The former President really doesn’t believe a word of Christian doctrine, or exhibit one iota of Christian morality or ethics. As a businessman he just realizes an easy mark, a gullible customer, willing to believe whatever he says because he tickles their ears with what they want to hear. He found that in theocratic Christians, Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists is being what he is, while they are denying their faith and God, while at the same time aiding and abetting the persecution of American Jews.
This occurred in spite of the fact that his son-in-law Jarod Kusher and most racist of advisors Stephen Miller are Jews, who advocated Nazi like policies against American minorities, immigrants and Muslims. One cannot say that either stood for the rights of Jews except Kushner working to build political and military alliances with Sunni Muslims and Israel to fight Shia Iran and its Proxies in a Muslim civil war. The involvement of Christians and Jews in in such a religious civil war that could kill millions of people is simply stupid. If the Iranians were to succeed in hitting Israel with more than one nuclear weapon it would be another Holocaust brought on by American Christians and the complicated political and theological web they have wove across the Middle East.
It is late, I am tired, but believe me, the Anti-Semitism of the Holocaust was not abnormal, but an ever present reality, even and maybe especially in the United States and Europe because we so easily forget the truth and believe the lies of Holocaust deniers.
Oh, I forget to mention, as Yehuda Bauer did so well, that these people not only despise Jews, they are equal opportunity haters, willing to exterminate anyone who does not agree with them, including Christians.
Former President Trump has enough of his own crimes to be tried and convicted of not to be blamed for a more than a millennium of Anti-Semitism and the hatred and persecution of supposed heretics by Christians who wield the sword of the state in one hand and their particular versions of the Bible in the other. Trump was just shrewd enough of a con-man to scam the religious con-men. If the stakes weren’t freedom and life itself I would think it amusing.
But hopefully they will turn on each other before they can destroy the ever expanding idea of liberty that our flawed founders believed in. Unfortunately we have have drifted so far that 90% of Senate Republicans voted to attempt to table the impeachment trial of former President Trump. The fact that Trump as President endanger their lives, those of the staff, colleagues, and others is extraordinary in the banality of evil they practice. But obviously what they claim as Christian faith and ethics forgives insurrection, murder, the attempted overthrow of the Constitution and our Republic for a dictatorship. I am sorry, those are crimes that are not forgivable on this earth. If God in his or her mercy decides to give it to them, that’s on God.
But as for me I will be God-damned if I let these people escape justice for their crimes especially when the claim innocence or deny any responsibility at all. I cannot judge what God does with them, but I can shout out loud that by any measure of the imagination these people are guilty of such crimes against our Constitution and Republic that they are guilty and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in our land.
If others chose to follow their path of violent sedition, treason and rebellion over the next few weeks they should be met with the strongest police and military force needed to end it once and for all.
As for me until they confess and repent there can be no forgiveness and I will not let Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, and other racist antisemites willing to overthrow our democracy have the final say. The best thing about being retired from the military is that I can speak the truth even more boldly than I could ever do while on active duty, not that I ever did not tell the truth.
So, until tomorrow, I wish you the best,
Peace,
Padre Steve+
The Inglorius Padre Steve's World 