[THS] Religious Freedom Versus State Religion, Ethics, Politics and Strategy

[Peter Webster]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19778.htm

Reverend Jeremiah Wright

Religious Freedom Versus State Religion, Ethics, Politics and Strategy
By James Petras

Introduction

 21/04/08 'ICH" -- -- The sustained vituperative attack and the feeble
apologetic defense of Reverend Wright’s brilliant, eloquent and
substantive sermon  in defense of human dignity speaks to the basic
ethical, political and strategic issues of our epoch.  For Reverend Wright
was not merely ‘commenting’ on an ethical omission of our day but
raising fundamental principles about the behavior of states, the role of
individual conscience in the face of crimes against humanity and the
need to give name and take action in the face of evil.  The entire
spectrum of politicians, the mass media and, in particular, the political
parties and two (and a half) of the presidential candidates raise, by
their hostile reaction and the substance of their criticism, vital issues of
the relation between the State and Religion.

            “They know what they say”, (to paraphrase and re-state Jesus
Christ’s comments on his persecutors) applies with a vengeance to the
barrage of mindless screeds which were intentionally launched against
the Reverend’s brilliant analysis and dissection of the immoral means in
pursuit of the great crimes of our epoch.  Of course, the verbal assault
of Reverend Wright was directed explicitly to discredit and disqualify
Democratic Presidential candidate, Senator Barak Obama, a long time
member of Wright’s United Church of Christ Chicago parish.  Many
were, and continue to be, vile accusations charging that his sermon was
‘incendiary’, ‘anti-American’, ‘racist’ and ‘politically extremist’.  Phrases
critical of US empire-building were dubbed the “God Damn America’
sermon.  Moral condemnations of  ‘war and money’ were
decontextualized to accuse Reverend Wright of being ‘a man of hate’, ‘a
hate monger’ and a ‘racist extremist’.  The insults and verbal assassins
came from both liberal and conservative politicians, writers, mass media
pundits and commentators.

            Barak Obama’s ‘defense’ of Wright was based on separating
the benign and respected avuncular ‘person’ (or personality) of the
Reverend from his brilliant, substantive, historical analysis, political
diagnosis and profoundly ethical moral judgment.  By defending the
messenger but condemning the profound message, Obama ultimately
sided with the political defenders and apologists of a brutal, militaristic,
imperial order, thus enabling him to continue his electoral campaign.

Key Theoretical and Analytical Insights

            Wright’s speech is informed by four profound theoretical and
conceptual insights:

First, Wright’s central idea is that repeated large-scale, long-term
offensive imperial wars and military actions lead to military reactions or
counter-attacks on US property and lives, military and civilian, outside
and inside the United States.  Given the authoritarian political
environment and the hostile mass media, Wright cites the utterances of
a former US Ambassador and long-time member of the State
Department Establishment, Edward Peck to corroborate his observation.
Contrary to the pro-empire political scientists who predominate in the
prestigious Ivy League universities, and ignore the historical framework
of critical readings of empire building, Wright’s theoretical argument is
grounded in a wealth of historical experiences, which he enumerates to
reinforce his central point.  His theoretical argument is woven around
the 9/11 Muslim-Arab attack on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon.  He cites the colonial and post-colonial savaging of the Middle
East, including the military attacks and economic boycott of Iraq, the
bombing of Sudan, the US support of state terrorist regimes and the
Israeli destruction of Palestinian and Lebanese lives.  Imperial action
and anti-imperial re-action – Wright algebraic formulation refutes the
Ivy League professors’ propagandistic arguments, which extrapolate the
violence of the anti-imperial reaction from its preceding bloody imperial
historical framework in order to present the subsequent imperialist
action as a defensive response.

Wright’s theoretical-historical correction of the false premises of
orthodox academics and mainstream politicians regarding the source of
violence in the international system lays the groundwork for a detailed
commentary and moral judgment of the principal conflicts of our time.

By bringing to the fore a succinct enumeration of the sequence of US
violent military actions from the violent seizure of Indian lands to the
nuclear destruction of Hiroshima, to the colonial wars in Africa to the
invasion of Panama and the bombing of Grenada, Wright establishes
the historical basis for his judgment that the driving force of US foreign
policy is ‘militarism and money’.  His critics, unable or unwilling to
challenge his historical narrative, resort to ad hominum attacks, relying
on labeling techniques, attributing to him a ‘strident’ style or ‘incendiary
language’.

Secondly, Wright provides a socio-psychological framework for
understanding contemporary elite-manipulated and motivated mass
violent sentiment in the aftermath of 9/11 and the initial general
embrace of a military response.

Wright sets out a three-stage sequence of socio-psychological ‘feelings’:
(1) reverence for the sites attacked and sorrow for the victims, (2)
revenge against a general ‘other’ (to be designated by the imperial
rulers), (3) hatred and war against enemies and unarmed innocents
alike.  Drawing on historical analogies with the biblical account (Psalm
137, all nine verses) of the Israelite reverence of the Temple (of
Jerusalem), its destruction (by Chaldeans) and their subsequent return
and revenge (slaughter and eviction of all non-Israelite inhabitants),
Wright draws a parallel with the US reverence for ‘money’, symbolized
by the World Trade Center, and ‘military’ (the Pentagon); their thirst for
‘revenge’ rooted in the ‘feelings’ of pain, sorrow, anger, outrage,
destruction and senseless carnage’  this leads, he reasons, to hatred
and demands to attack and punish ‘someone’ (‘pay back’).  In our time
this means killing armed adversaries and unarmed civilians –
Afghanistan and Iraq, soldiers and civilians.  Wright brilliantly elucidates
the emotional and political link between ‘worship’ (over losses) and
‘war’, presumably to restore the ‘revered sites’ of money (financial
credibility) and military power (imperial credibility).

Wright’s socio-psychological framework allows us to understand the way
in which the Bush Administration blended mass objects of veneration
(loss of human lives) with the sacred sites of the elite (Wall Street and
the Pentagon) into a powerful engine of war.  Interestingly, Wright’s
citation of the biblical account of Israeli indiscriminate revenge (‘happy
is he who dashes their infants against the rocks’ Psalm 137) parallels the
policies and practices pursued by the contemporary American Israelite
policy makers in the Pentagon who pursued policies of total destruction
and dismemberment of Iraq.  Though Wright does not specifically refer
to this parallelism, it springs to mind when he refers to the current
injustices, and his specific mention of Israeli oppression of the
Palestinians as part of the global injustices.

Thirdly, Reverend Wright links his ‘practical’ historical and theoretical
analysis to a set of moral judgments and policy prescriptions.  The wars
of the last 500 years have economic and racial dimensions (‘riches and
color’) pitting rich white elites against poor people of color.  Imperial
violence begets oppressed violence; state terror based on superior arms
begets individuals willing to sacrifice their lives in terrorist responses.
Confronted with these historical and social conditions, he counsels the
American people (not just his black parishioners) to engage in ‘self-
reflection’.  By emphasizing and giving priority to ‘self’ reflection he
wants to undermine the effort of the political elites to focus mass
attention on the asserted faults of ‘other people’, the target of military
assaults.  Wright emphasizes the need to create primary (family) and
secondary (community) solidarity and affection (love) as opposed to
bonding with the war-making elite.  By emphasizing reflection, Wright is
openly rejecting blind adhesion to the elite and belief in their lies for
war.

            From the Socratic logic of critical self-reflection (‘know yourself’)
and solidarity, Wright envisions a time for ‘social transformation’.  Armed
with a social awareness of the historical and present record of elite-
driven imperial wars, Wright postulates the need for fundamental
structural changes, “
in the way we have been doing things as a
society, a country, as an arrogant superpower.  We cannot keep
messing other countries”.  In other words Wright links changes in inner
individual spiritual and social consciousness with collective social and
political action directed at a fundamental transformation of the social
structure and economic and political system, which make us an
‘arrogant superpower’.

            In his own words, Wright wants to convince the American
people to transform imperial military wars into internal political wars
against racist and class injustices.  He proposes a fundamental
redistribution of wealth through reallocation of the public budget.
Citing the “$1.3 trillion dollar tax gift to the rich”, he counters with a
policy proposal to fund universal health care and the reconstruction of
the educational system to serve the poor.

            Reverend Wright, in speaking to the American people, not only
condemns human catastrophes inflicted on working people at home and
abroad by the ‘arrogant superpower’ empire-builders, but points to the
great historical opportunities for changes.  His is not a message of other
worldly spiritual salvation; it is a call to action here and now.  His is not
a superficial critique of individual misbehavior or ‘failed policies’ (as his
former parishioner, Obama would have it) but a deep structural analysis
of systemic failure which demands a ‘social transformation, which goes
to the root of the present day policies of imperial wars and state and
individual terrorism.
Conclusion

            The reason for the repeated vicious personal attacks on
Reverend Wright by the mass media and the political leaders and
academic apologists for empire building is abundantly clear – to prevent
a powerful, reasonable, logical and relevant analysis from influencing
the American public or even exercising any influence on the Presidential
campaign.

            Equally important the political and media attacks on Reverend
Wright are meant to destroy freedom of conscience, the separation of
Church and State.  What the critics want, is a religion and religious
figures at the service of the state, which blesses war planners, honors
war criminals, arouses mass hatred of state-designated target peoples.
The ‘arrogant superpower’ honors the ministers, priests and rabbis who
follow state policy spewing hatred against Arabs and Muslims.  Nothing
more and nothing less, Reverend Wright is standing in word and deed
for the freedom and autonomy of individuals and institutions against the
voracious spread of totalitarian state power.

            Clearly the irrational vituperative, sustained attack on Reverend
Wright is more than a reactionary political electoral ploy in a racist
electoral campaign; it is a fundamental attack on our democratic
freedoms and the autonomy of our religious institutions.