The Meloni Problem (II)

Whether Meloni is able to implement her policies or not is yet to be seen. Her coalition may very well implode as she is contending with some powerful personalities and egos that will certainly challenge and undermine her leadership at points. If they can actually work together they will be very powerful and given what's happening in France and Germany, (the only EU members more powerful and influential in Italy) – the prospects for the future are a cause for concern.

But I'm far more concerned that American Christianity has reached this point and now faced with indisputable evidence of the movement's flirtation with fascism (in fact it has largely succumbed to it) – the propaganda campaign has kicked into high gear. For me, this is but further confirmation of how spiritually, theologically, and morally bankrupt this movement is. Worldliness has many forms. Sometimes it is manifest in a type of libertinism. The Right has also succumbed to this at points but does not realize it. But in other respects worldliness can also be about pride, power, and mammon. And one thing is certain, the movement lives by the ethic of Lamech, promising violence and revenge many times over to anyone who would challenge them. This Satanic ethic which is at the heart of American gun culture has long been enshrined as an outgrowth of Christianity.

This acculturated Christianity needs to be called out for what it is – apostasy. This is not to say that every member of the movement is an actual apostate and (effectively) a child of Satan and bound for hell, but the movement is in fact on that trajectory and many are being swept away by it. I personally know of many who at one time were devotees of the Scripture but have been so warped in their thinking and distorted in their focus and energies, that they are now little more than ravenous political creatures calculating and angling for power and dreaming of violence for their enemies. They have lost their way and run the risk of not finishing the race – even though they think they do all of this in service of Christ.

What will it take? How far will they go? What would Trump have to do for them to turn against him? These are not easy questions to answer for at this point it's hard to imagine such a scenario. Many will protest that they don't like Trump but they hate the Democrats with such vitriol that they eagerly ally with evil forces simply to destroy their adversaries. Once again it's a clear case of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. The Evangelical movement, the larger Christian Right, and indeed the American Right in general is engaged in a process of self destruction.

I wish the media would quit referring to Liz Cheney as a moderate. She's not. She's actually far right, but the GOP has gone off a cliff. All past Republican presidents prior to Trump would be unelectable today. They would be reckoned as liberal. Paul Ryan was on the cutting edge of the Right just a decade ago and helped run out party moderates like John Boehner. But within a short time Ryan was reckoned too centrist – not right enough to contend with the party leadership anymore. Now the same is true for Cheney. McCarthy, Graham, and McConnell are all spineless and desperate to hold on to their power and office and so they play sycophant to Trump and his movement even while privately admitting he is both dangerous and even stupid. But they have no integrity and they fear their base which in fact is becoming more and more radicalised and extreme. Others like Ben Sasse are simply walking away.

And then we have Albert Mohler who can't see what has happened within the GOP and ignores its radical shift to the Right. Instead this mammon-corrupted blind guide focuses the attention of his audience on the Democrats and how they have shifted to the Left. While that faction has embraced identity politics to the extreme, when it comes to the US Empire, its military projects, financial system and the like, the DNC continues to move to the Right. But once again such nuanced thinking (let alone realities) is inconvenient and Right wing pundits either fail to grasp such concepts or find them inopportune to their cause and so choose to spin them. The reader can decide what motivates someone like Mohler.

What of the Left? In reality, I'm not so concerned as to what they are about. They too are evil but in their case they are making few inroads among Christians. The Right represents another type of evil and it is now deeply entrenched within the Church. This is cause for concern – a point further emphasized and amplified by the support for Meloni and the aggressive propaganda campaign that has been launched in her defense.

What of America? The sacralists have literally sanctified the country and enshrouded it with contrived heretical theology and myths. New Testament Christians are pilgrims and foreigners and we profess no allegiance to this evil empire – and yet we increasingly can find no place in the American Church.

In the end the 'god' the Evangelicals and Meloni speaks of is not the God of Scripture. Family? Once again, we see crypto-feminism at work and a great deal of hypocrisy. If she were a traditional and proper woman she would abandon her role and change her tone – which is anything but feminine or shame-faced. The old hausfrau ideal of another generation of fascists has been swapped for the new ethos of lipstick feminism.

And even today, Christian attitudes regarding these questions are confused as the Scripture promotes femininity and domesticity – and yet this is different from the hausfrau or even the Quiverfull ideal which are both rooted in a type of militarised domesticity – a home culture geared toward power and the production of military and cultural might.

And as far as nation? No Christian can get too excited about post-war Italy or for that matter Italian nationalism, let alone the confused nature of Italian identity with Roman Catholicism. Likewise if these values or slogans are transferred to the United States – there is no cause to celebrate or identify with them. They are just as problematic – all the more when wielded by the likes of Trump, Boebert, Cruz, Greene or their allies within Evangelical leadership and media.

But for Italians there's something more to God, country, and family – or more rightly God, Fatherland, and Family. It's the old fascist slogan and they know it. But American Evangelicals clearly do not and both ignorant and misled, they simply cannot wrap their heads around this reality – that the distance between many of their social and political views (including the way in which they use religion) is slight and almost indecipherable from the European fascism of Mussolini and Franco. But that doesn't fit the narrative – one that is further confused by throwing Hitlerism into the mix. The Nazis were also fascist but amplified certain aspects of the ideology and thus have created the common perception of fascism as always being race-based hyper-nationalism and anti-Semitism, which in some respects is a caricature. The Nazis represented the most extreme form of the ideology – combining it with some of Hitler's particular and peculiar views. But this doesn't mean that the fascism of Mussolini, Franco, and the other European and Latin American movements are somehow 'good' or exempt from criticism.

We can refer to Trumpism, LePen, and Meloni as fascistic – but that doesn't mean they are Nazis, for they are not. And yet because in the popular mind these notions and movements are inseparable, the terms become so polarized – beyond the point of rational discourse.

But just because they're not Nazis doesn't mean that we shouldn't be concerned or that their views are acceptable. And historically, such fascists though not actual Nazis were happy enough to work alongside them.

I suppose such nuances are too subtle for many today – especially many who have embraced false narratives about what America is, the nature, path, and conclusion of World War II, and the nature of American politics since industrialisation.

And in the American context the ideas are different but very much the same. For those within the American Far-Right, Jews are rarely demonised. On the contrary due to Dispensationalism's strong influence on Evangelical thought and US geopolitics, there tends to be favourable attitudes toward both Judaism and the Zionist State of Israel. But that doesn't mean American Right-wing ideology is off the hook. It's not specifically Hitlerian (with its Aryan anti-Semitic narratives) but it's still fascist. It has its scapegoats too and has long promoted an outrageous and deceitful narrative concerning Muslims and immigrants – especially those of Latin America. It's no accident or coincidence that some of the most extreme voices are regularly aired on Christian radio. The Great Replacement ideology is frequently evoked and even Todd Wilken's LPR regularly gives a platform to the likes of Robert Spencer who (along with Pam Geller) promote such lies and openly collaborate with fascist organisations. The support for Meloni is (when considered in the larger context of the past forty or fifty years) unsurprising and par for the course. But this time it's different. Try as they might (and they are trying) they cannot deny who she is. And if only some of them will begin to understand this, the greater picture might come together and it is my hope that some Evangelicals will begin to see the bankrupt, dangerous, and heretical nature of their movement.

Some have pointed out that Meloni even likes Tolkien. What could be more Christian than that? We all know about the friendship between CS Lewis and Tolkien and nowadays no one balks at Tolkien's Catholicism as they did a generation ago. The Lord of the Rings are viewed as explicitly Christian Fantasy – an epic that assumes the Christian worldview.

And yet once again, it's more complicated than that. If by Christian you mean Western Christendom – then yes, a case can be made. Christendom blended pagan thought, legends, and motifs with Christian ideology and symbolism, weaving them together into a seamless and yet thoroughly unbiblical garment. Tolkien was an adherent of Christendom to be sure and it overshadows his writings. Now, just how Christian that was – that has to be evaluated by the New Testament. And the result is once again something different.

I say this as one who has also appreciated his works over the course of my life but at the same time I also understand something of who Tolkien was and what motivated him and for my part I see them as emulating a Catholic mindset – and one that confuses the greater heritage of the West (including its paganism) with the Christianity of the New Testament. A fascinating, inspiring, and insightful man to be sure, it's actually at the point of Christianity that in many respects I break ranks with him. And there is an ugly side to his beliefs as expressed in his writings and while many quote his disdain for the Nazis and the way they corrupted the old Germanic culture he so loved – the same authors usually ignore his admiration for Franco and the kind of Catholic fascist regime he built. Once again, the nuance is too subtle, for in the popular mind fascism equals Nazism. Nazis were fascists to be sure but not all fascists are or were Nazis. But they're still fascists and Franco certainly garnered Tolkien's support and admiration. By some accounts this fact played a part in the eventual falling out between Lewis and Tolkien. Lewis rejected modernity to be sure but he was no friend to Roman Catholicism.

The terrible truth is that fascism has found a very comfortable home within the minds and hearts of the American Right and sadly it has found perhaps its most fertile ground within Right-wing American Christianity. It's been there for decades but it has flowered in the twenty-first century and under Trump it has started to bear serious fruit.

There is something terrible afoot – it's a very dark time and in so many ways. Some see darkness but find a reason for great optimism in the zeal, energy, and nascent power of the Christian Right and its political allies. For me, this baptising of evil is the darkest aspect of all. The world is a kingdom of darkness, the system of the present evil age. But within the Church all we seem to find at the moment is what must be described as functional apostasy, mammon worship, idolatry, deceit and violence – and the celebration and sanctification of these things. The ethic of the New Testament has been swapped for the end justifies the means and the Church seems to be dominated by those who think godliness is gain.

They have eyes and see not, ears and hear not.

²⁷ As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and waxen rich.

²⁸ They are waxen fat, they shine: yea, they overpass the deeds of the wicked: they judge not the cause, the cause of the fatherless, yet they prosper; and the right of the needy do they not judge.

²⁹ Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?

³⁰ A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land;

³¹ The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?

To apply this passage from Jeremiah to today's context, the nation would not be analogous to America but the Church, the Zion-people of God in the New Covenant. Sacralists err and apply such passages to the nation and society at large and thus find a way to use such Scriptures against their political and social enemies – and to justify their own Biblical defections and malevolent conduct. But the context of the Jeremiah passage is covenantal and in that light it can be applied to the present when read through the Christological eyes of the New Testament. When understood that way and when read in apostolic manner – transforming such readings and applying them as opposed to the oft (if inconsistently) employed hyper-literalism of fundamentalism, we can see that the gist of the passage, and its generalised criticism is fully applicable to the present, and the dire state of apostasy known in the time of Jeremiah which also marks our own day and characterizes much of Church history – just as Paul suggested it would in 1 Corinthians 10.

God's people in a state of disobedience strengthened the hands of evildoers and it is no different today. And like the faithful remnant and the prophets of those days were tasked to do, their lies need to be called out and their evil alliances exposed. And though it would pain them to hear it – they are in the eyes of God like Sodom and Gomorrah.

Meloni is a fascist and the Christian Right loves her because large sections of their movement have fallen into the same dangerous and evil patterns of thought. They think they are serving God and doing Him service but instead the reality is they are very far from Him, and hate the doctrines of His apostles. His Kingdom is foreign to them and in fact unattractive and repugnant, and many of them neither see this Kingdom nor know the God who rules it.