Brownshirts in the Streets … and Where Are the Christians?

I have friends who say it’s a mistake to call attention to Trump. I reply: Would it have been a mistake for righteous Germans to call attention to the rise of Hitler and Hitlerism?

It’s not that hard to see where this is going. Tressie McMillan Cottom lays much of it out clearly in a recent Times column. There is, in fact, a method to this madness. The man is not merely posing as a strongman. He is acting as one. He is executing the plan.

Our Dear Leader will soon be sending federalized and armed National Guard troops into more Black-led American cities in order to curb a non-existent crime wave. And to show how much he actually cares about serious crime, he will continue to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists–duly convicted criminals–while criminalizing those who charged and tried and sentenced the rioters according to law. He will almost certainly grant horrific abuser Ghislane Maxwell some sort of reward for easing him off the Jeffrey Epstein hook. He is waging relentless war on scientific research, on renewable energy sources, and on all efforts to measure climate and public health variations, thus pretty much ensuring environmental catastrophe in partnership with fossil fuel interests while gutting vaccination and other proven public health interventions.

He is corrupting financial markets while advancing his own personal enrichment by way of the tariff wars. He is defunding all of the programs his minions can find that exist for the relief of extreme poverty, on grounds of promoting government “efficiency.” He is punishing women and endangering the health of queer people as a tip of the hat to his most reactionary supporters. He is re-drawing electoral maps while also eviscerating hard-won voting rights–all of it with the Supreme Court’s blessing–in a flagrant push to ensure forever right-wing rule as per the Project 2025 playbook. He is extracting tribute and forcing the abject surrender of intellectual freedom on the part of our once-proud research universities. He is canceling all traces of accurate history while propagating a wildly celebratory view of White America’s dubious achievements.

And that’s just the short list. Note that I did not mention the still-rising abductions and detentions. I did not mention the recruitment of young thugs who get a $50k bonus along with a high initial compensation level if they sign up to serve as masked brownshirts for the immigration crackdown. I did not mention the fast-rising domestic gulags, which also function as cash cows for private prison investors who are deeply committed to Dear Leader’s authoritarian project. I did not mention this man’s unwavering support for genocide in Gaza or his eagerness to hand his pal Putin a big victory in Ukraine. Speaking of which: What do you suppose Comrade Putin offered him by way of personal compensation during the private part of the Half-Baked Alaska summit meeting?

So here we are. I have friends who say it’s a mistake to call attention to Trump. I reply: Would it have been a mistake for righteous Germans to call attention to the rise of Hitler and Hitlerism? Some of these same friends also say we are merely “regressing toward the mean,” as this nation was not founded as an actual democracy and was in fact intended to be a white man’s country. I respect and share these friends’ historical perspective. But I also reply: Many brave people sacrificed and risked everything to rise up against that ugly racist mean. These same people actually carved out spaces of freedom and common decency. They defeated the Slave Power, not just once but twice. Will we, in contrast and with so much at stake, just sit this one out?

This takes me to a rude question for my fellow U.S. Christians. Is there any scenario at all that might prompt you to take collective action to stand against a made-in-America variant of the Hitler program? What would it take to get you to stand up? As a friend of mine asked recently, and not as a joke, might you crawl out of your safety zone (as if you actually have one) when they start dropping bodies out of airplanes, as was done by the Argentinian authoritarians of 50 years ago?

I realize that there are some instances of small clusters of faith leaders doing the right thing: making common cause with immigrants, decrying the attacks on queer people, etc. But I see nothing remotely like the effective public witness mounted by faith leaders in opposition to the Vietnam War, in resistance to Ronald Reagan’s dirty wars in Central America, and in support of freedom for the Black majority in South Africa.

And yes, it’s true: the mass media aren’t at all good at reporting on religion. But I can assure you that if there were a serious faith-based uprising against this unfolding daytime nightmare, it would be reported. It would be front-page news in the New York Times, Washington Post, etc.

Honestly, I wish I could explain what has happened–or what has failed to happen–but I cannot. The effective liquidation of what were once useful progressive convening bodies like the National Council of Churches and local ecumenical bodies is part of it. The effective capture of the U.S. section of the Roman Catholic Church by wealthy conservative Catholics is also part of it. The demoralizing impact of divisive pelvic politics within some of the leading Protestant denominations has taken its toll. The preoccupation of local clergy leaders with keeping their congregations together certainly plays a role. The rise of prosperity gospel preaching in the Black Church likewise plays a role. I can’t really speak to what’s going on among U.S. Muslims or U.S. Jews. But none of the factors I have mentioned, or even all of them combined, can really account for the deafening silence among the Christian leaders.

 

Nobody is asking for Christian leaders to sacrifice everything in the fashion of Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer standing against Hitler. But could we at least organize to link arms around the detention centers and challenge the gulag’s superintendents to arrest us too? How about we use our own skills and training to train young activists in the techniques of nonviolent civil disobedience? How about we try to follow Dr. King and resolve to break the widespread Christian deaf-mute act around the Gaza and West Bank atrocities?

In 1967 Dr. King warned us that “there is such a thing as being too late…life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity.” He was right then, and his words still ring true today. And twenty years before King voiced his solemn warning, Albert Camus had this to say about the mealy-mouthed Christians of his own era who did not speak out against authoritarianism and slaughter in Europe:

What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest man. That they should get away from abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today.

Will a critical mass of U.S. Christian leaders face the blood-stained face of history in our own time and act accordingly?

I wonder. I really do wonder.