Goose-Steppin' Steve

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, by Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent for the New York Times who has reported from more than 50 countries over the last 20 years.

From Jon Wiener's review:

[...] "Thus, Hedges concludes, the United States today faces an internal threat analogous to that posed by the Nazis in Weimar Germany." [...]

[...] "Nevertheless, Hedges concludes that the Christian right "should no longer be tolerated," because it "would destroy the tolerance that makes an open society possible." What does he think should be done? He endorses the view that "any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law," and therefore we should treat "incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal." Thus he rejects the 1st Amendment protections for freedom of speech and religion, and court rulings that permit prosecution for speech only if there is an imminent threat to particular individuals."

"Hedges advocates passage of federal hate-crimes legislation prohibiting intolerance, but he doesn't really explain how it would work. Many countries do prohibit "hate speech." Holocaust denial, for example, is a crime in Germany, Austria and several other European countries. But does this mean that Hedges favors prosecuting Christian fundamentalists for declaring, for example, that abortion providers are murderers or that secular humanists are agents of Satan? He doesn't say."

Sass me or diss my brown shirt and it's fatwa time, baby!