Newsletter Vol. 2 No. 4

Can a Christian be a Fascist?

Covid Fascism

Freedom Matters Today is devoted to a Christian understanding of freedom. One of the themes is ‘Freedom from fascism and tyranny.’ Fascism and tyranny take many forms and express themselves in many ways. In recent times, we in the West have lived during martial law, suspension of democratic and human rights, and draconian policies under Covid Hysteria such as vaccine passports, and vaccine mandates. This was tyranny in nations that claimed robust democratic traditions.

The jury is out on whether the West danced with fascism, or whether this was a temporary flirtation with a system of values anathema to democracy. I don’t believe we can be so naïve. Covid Hysteria was a turning point in the West’s democratic demise. The ruling class have tolerated all they can with the pretensions of representative democracy, the die is cast, and it is all downhill from here.

Traditional Fascism

Then we have traditional fascism. I have written a book on fascism called ‘Freedom from Fascism, A Christian Response to Mass Formation Psychosis.’ It is my first attempt to present a different understanding of the origins, nature, fruit, and forms of fascism from a Christian perspective.

It is my view that fascism has its origins deeply rooted in the church-states of Europe, the mixing of faith and flag, and the control of political power by religious power.

Whatever the origins, the Soviet Union, America, Britain and her allies and most of Western Europe went to war against fascism in the Second World War, a terrible, awful, bloody conflict. It brought all nations together to defeat a deep, abiding evil, the likes of which we have not seen for centuries.

Millions of innocent people died because of the evils of fascism and while the war against Axis Powers was deeply flawed, the destruction of Nazi Germany and her allies was one of the few righteous struggles in history.

Fascism was a war on humanity

Fascism was a war on humanity. It was the desire to extinguish the conscience of man. It was designed to build a future based not only on the blood of victims but the promotion of a blood-based future. It was not insanity, it was evil.

There was a Satanic wickedness to the regime we know now as the Nazi regime. It was dark, it was wicked, and not only was it popular within Germany, but the church, the Christian Church in Germany, was overall, on its side.

The church failure to confront evil the main reason for decline.

It is the moral ambiguity within the Church’s attitude to Nazi Germany, and its failure to consistently oppose evil that explains the rapid demise of institutional religion in the West.

The fascists love to blame women or homosexuals or modern values, but none of these movements is relevant. When the church needed to speak, it was silent, when it needed to fight, it surrendered, when it needed to defend, it capitulated.

May 8 and May 9, Days to Remember

Western Europe and America remembers Victory in Europe day on May 8 and Russia remembers it on May 9. In 2023, it passed barely without a mention in Australia, and around the world. The Germans despised the Jews, but they also held a deep hatred for Russia, and the war to destroy Russia was a war of unbelievable brutality and wickedness.

The common view today is that America won the war in Europe, but it was in fact the Soviet Union that played the critical role in stopping the advance of Hitler. Like Napoleon, Hitler failed to destroy Russia, or the spirit of the Russian people. There is not a family today was not affected by that terrible war, and apparently, we are supposed to forget it all, and remind ourselves that only a few Germans were killers. Really, talk to the Russians about what the German army did when they invaded the Soviet Union.

The horrors of the Holocaust

Let us remember some statistics. They come from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
6 million Jews.
7 million Russian civilians.
3 million Soviet Prisoners of War.
1.8 million non-Jewish Poles.
312,000 Serbian civilians
250,000 people with disabilities
500,000 Roma.
The list goes on. All these are conservative estimates.

Another estimate says that almost 30 million Russians died in WW2.

Fascism, not Communism was the greatest evil of the twentieth century.

The greatest evil to be produced in the world was not Communism, but Fascism. It began in Italy, flowered in Germany, and bore fruit in Japan, Austria, and many other European nations, and found devoted followers across the West.

The Germans set about reshaping the world in their twisted and sick Aryan nightmare, and this was less than a century ago. The Germans murdered millions of innocent people, mainly Jews, but also many Russians, and others. It was not just Hitler and the SS, they were truly evil, but the scale of this evil was not possible without the complicity, support, and advocacy of most of the population.

The fascists say that this is a lie, that no one knew about the Holocaust, that most were good Germans, and that only a minority committed atrocities. History tells a different story. Indoctrinated or not, responsibility cannot be swept away so easily. Indoctrination does not create robots. It manipulates existing prejudice, fears, and ideas, and channels them for a purpose. The purpose of the Aryan fiction, promoted by the fascists, was to make Germany great again. Sound familiar?

Fascism is becoming more fashionable in the West

There are many who try to make us remember this nightmare, but there are equally many who try to trivialize it, mock it, make fun of it, and insist that we forget. There is an effort underway in the West to rehabilitate Hitler and Mussolini and there are many Holocaust deniers in the ruling class.
Fascism is alive and well in the world today.

In NSW, the former Premier admitted to wearing a Nazi uniform for his twenty-first birthday. He retained his position but lost the next election. The media laughed about it.

In the NSW Customs House in Sydney there are Nazi swastika as part of the paving and the walls, put in in the pre-war years. Due to Australia’s long secret love affair with fascism, these horrific symbols have never been removed and destroyed. Yet, it is illegal to display them in public but still possible to display them in public buildings.

After the War, Australia welcomed with open arms thousands of Nazi officers, and collaborators and even today, Jewish Australians suffer from many anti-Semitic attacks, slurs, and abuse. It is not surprising for thousands of Australian families are directly related to those who served Hitler in the war and have spread their vile ideology in the land Down Under.

Just following orders?

The classic defense is that they were just following orders. What? To murder children? To torture kids? To murder women and shove them in gas chambers, to shoot innocent people on the spot. Just following orders? How convenient.

Every time you hear a defense of the Holocaust, heaven hears the cries and screams of the children murdered by the men and women who say today that it never happened.

Eastern Europe and the dark, long love affair with Hitler.

In Ukraine, Stepan Bandera is regarded as a national hero. He was a Nazi collaborator and was complicit in the killing of Jews. March 16 in Latvia, has many celebrate a march in honour of Latvians who worked for the SS.

Throughout Eastern Europe, the story is the same. Controversial national heroes who also happened to hate Jews and support their death and participated in the Holocaust. The Western media silence over the Nazi-linked Azov Battalion and Right Sector in Ukraine is deafening but not surprising.

Three Responses to Fascism

The first is to rewrite the history of the Second World War to expunge the truth.

We in the West forget the war against fascism because we have been told that it was a war to protect democracy. This is a lie of course. In Asia, the war to protect democracy was in fact a war to restore colonial power to the European nations whose colonial assets were stolen by Imperial Japan. There was no celebration of democracy in Asia in 1945.

As for America, African American soldiers went home to the US only to be treated as less than human. Same in Australia. It would take more than two decades for full political enfranchisement.

The second is to see fascism everywhere, which confuses and dilutes fascism when it truly revives.

For some reason, Trump was seen as a fascist, but Biden a democrat. Their policies are so similar, and they each have their disciples and devotees, so what could be said of Trump could equally be said of Biden or Obama. The Left calls the Right fascists, and the Right calls the Left Fascist. It reminds me of the boy who cried wolf.

The third is to debate the character, origins, and consequences of neo-fascism, the current versions of fascism in the West.

Curiously, both libertarians and Marxists see the West as a collection of fascist states. Their belief is that fascism accurately describes the devolution of the West into a kind of corporate fascist state. Detractors say that the West is not fascist because there is no dictator, and this is essential for the functioning of fascism.

The reality is that this is not clear. The nature of fascism is still misunderstood, and like all political movements, it is capable of evolution. No one can agree on a definition of fascism.

My take on fascism is that it is a democratic and capitalist nation where power has been voluntarily conceded from the majority to the few.

These days there is a lot of talk about Bond villains, the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates and so on. These are sideshows, bread, and circuses for rich people with a lot of time. The UN gets its fair share of hatred as well. Few on the right talk about the Holocaust these days. Few on the left dare mention it.

We can never compromise with fascism.

Why is anti-Semitism on the rise again? We need to affirm the evil of fascism, be vigilant against it whenever it appears and refuse to compromise with it. This seems to be the only way forward. Fascism is evil, and it is the responsibility of the current generation to be vigilant against it. We cannot compromise against traditional fascism, nor can we whitewash history because it might offend our politics, or upset polite people at luncheons with stories of gas-chambers, Auschwitz, and Sobibor. Evil is evil, and it always is, and is always must be opposed. There can be no compromise with the evil of fascism.

Freedom Matters Today stands against religious and political fascism.

At Freedom Matters Today we stand against fascism, in both its religious and political forms. It is impossible to be a Christian and a fascist.
Christians believe in freedom, and they also believe that blood doesn’t matter. All people can have identity in Christ, for the only blood that matters is that blood of God shed on the cross for sin. His blood brings us together, and we all stand together because of Jesus.

A follower of Jesus cannot be a fascist.

There is nothing about fascism that can appeal to a follower of Jesus, for we stand because we could not stand before God, and we could not stand because we are but dust, and pass away like the leaves of autumn, and the morning dew, and yet it was God who stood in our place, in our stead, so we might live, as he died for us.

Fascism has no room for God, but God has room for all, for the love of God extends to all people everywhere, even those whom fascists hated and killed in one of the worst wars in history. Paul tells us that there is neither Jew or Greek, male or female slave or free, but all are one in Christ (Galatians 3: 28). In this one verse Paul, a Jewish believer in the one he calls Messiah or the anointed one of God, demolishes centuries of Christian fascism, the belief that God is on the side of our nation, that our national blood matters, that our tribe is more important than others, that our identity matters.

Our identity is in Jesus Christ, and we are all one.

Paul says the opposite, our identity is in Jesus Christ. He draws the world together, from all its threads and beauty, and weaves in himself one new humanity, where all stand before God as equal (Ephesians 2: 15). Fascists hate the gospel, and they hate the God who sent the Son so we might be free.

Remember that when the specter of fascism arises in conversation, in rhetoric and argument, or in society. We are one in Christ, and we are free.

Remember, freedom matters today, because you matter to God.

Michael J. Sutton