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Shelley Ross's avatar

The more I learn about this time in Evangelical history, the more I understand my parents. They were raised by racist, white supremacist parents who were deep into fundamentalism. It’s taken me years to detox from and undo my indoctrination. But I’m still shocked when I read the truth about how awful it was.

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Pascale Chancey's avatar

“What happens to a family dynamic when domination, rather than understanding, is viewed as a godly and even patriotic act?” One answer, I suspect, is that the use of authoritarian strategies to control and dominate backfires on those in power, be they parents or, as we are witnessing this week with the protests at Columbia University, institutional leaders, elected officials, and the police.

I read your third installment right after reading Judd Legum’s latest in Popular Information, “Columbia University protests and the lessons of ‘Gym Crow.’” He draws parallels between the unwise and unjust decision of arresting 108 pro-Palestinian protesters and suspending many of them and the protests of April 1968, when the then Columbia University president called the NYPD on student protesting the school’s planned take over of an adjacent park majoritarily used by the local black community and the school’s involvement with an organization fueling the war machine. In 1968, the result of using brute force to punish and quiet young people asking better of their leaders backfired on the administrators and the conservatives putting pressure on them as the school moved to democratize its policy making process and value political activism in the following years. Legum surmises that the involvement of the NYPD and the draconian punishment of those saying no to the genocide will probably backfire in a similar fashion and only foment solidarity and further action. I sure damn hope it does.

The part that angered me the most in the article was the Christian supremacist audacity of congressman Rick Allen of Georgia who asked Shafik, Columbia’s president (who is Muslim) if she wants God to curse Columbia, because apparently it is clear in the Bible that those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed. There is no difference between representative Allen’s use of religion to instill fear or conformity and what parents sold RAP in white evangelicalism did (and still do) to ascertain that their kids would be obedient to God, authorities, and never rock the boat of the patriarchal, racist, exploitative capitalist status quo.

Neale’s article followed William F. Buckley Jr.’s (father of modern neo-conservatism) own New York Newsday opinion piece in which he criticizes both the students for getting out of line (don’t they know Harlem is about as safe as the DMZ?) and the university president for perhaps being too permissive, or in his words, “too calm.” The hatred of young people claiming agency and a stake in local and global politics is evident by both. As it is in many opinion pieces produced this week by those who tow the Zionist and pro-American empire line or are ignorantly afraid of anything remotely connectable with antisemitism.

I don’t really have anything major to add to what is being stated, other than pointing out the connection between your thesis and current events. We see in real time the impact of RAP (and of expanding the police state). And it is odious. Time to abolish both.

Link to Judd Legum’s piece: https://open.substack.com/pub/popularinformation/p/columbia-university-protests-and?r=870yh&utm_medium=ios

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