War correspondent Chris Hedges has the latest entry in the impending Christo-fascism sweepstakes with his new book, cleverly titled American Fascists. Read the Salon interview here. LA Times review here.

The MO of a lot of these books seems to consist of cherry-picking the few people who actually adhere to a “dominionist” ideology and then imputing that ideology to the mass of evangelical Christians. Or, alternatively, supposing that the masses are so dumb or easily led that all that’s required is some catastrophic event to get them marching in lockstep. So all evangelicals become “dominionists” in embryo.

Interestingly, Hedges offers a Rumsfeldian “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence” type argument against the objection that we don’t, in fact, seem to be on the brink of fascism. In fact, there seems to be a curious symmetry between the arguments of the Christian right alarmists and some of the more feverish arguments on the right about the impending takeover of Islamism. Both see a minority with a dangerous ideology, but then fail to note the disparaty between the ideology and the ability to actually carry out their schemes. They also both imply that the co-religionists of the radical minority are potential recruits to the fringe movement (whethere they’re evangelicals or Muslims). But what is the plausible chain of events whereby the “dominionists” or the radical Islamists actually succeed in establishing control of America?

This isn’t to say that both groups couldn’t cause a lot of trouble, though it has to be pointed out that Islamists have actually succeeded in killing thousands of people, whereas it’s hard to point to any significant political victories for hardline Christian dominonists. Fear-mongering about “Christianists” also seems to overlook what seem to be far more plausible explanations for things like US foreign policy. The fact that the policies of the Bush administration, for instance, don’t depart in any radical way from what has been the bipartisan doctrine of “full spectrum dominance” ought to tell against imputing excessive influence to the Christian right. As should the fact that very little traction has been made in the areas supposedly most important to the Christian right on Bush’s watch (e.g. abortion, school prayer, gay marriage, etc.).

What frequently seems to happen is that positions which, in themselves, would seem to be legitimate matters for debate in a democratic society, such as how far abortion rights should extend or what the proper relationship between religion and the state is, are taken to be part of a sinister “totalitarian” ideology by secular liberals. Thus, anyone who presses those positions in the public square becomes not just a political adversary, but an enemy of the open society as such.