America is under attack from a religion that would see its freedoms taken away, see the clock of progress turned back and assure the institution of a theocracy. These religious fanatics are building their houses of worship in our backyards and, worse, being recognized by the highest levels of our political system. As it is often said, they hate America for its freedom.
Of course, we're speaking of the Mormonofascists.
Alarmists would have Americans believe that Muslims are looking to entrench themselves in American communities to, if not commit outright terrorism, infect the American culture with a theocratic system of worshiping the Koran. And for sure, Islam itself faces major questions about tolerance, best summed up by Christopher Hitchens in his statement that "We are wrong to talk as if the only subject was that of terrorism."
But make no mistake! There is a deeper, more sinister threat to American freedoms and our way of life: Mormon fanatics. From massive out-of-state financial support for anti-civil rights legislation to clandestine leveraging of media power for demagoguery, this specter has no greater current American practitioner than Glenn Beck. One of them, quietly downplaying his religious affiliation right now, sleeper style because it's politically convenient, even wants to be our next President.
Which is more dangerous: A bunch of guys kneeling on carpets a couple of times a day near your home, with maybe a tiny handful of them academically planning your death 12,000 miles away, or a church pumping millions of dollars to secretly influence elections in other states, with Glenn Beck using his considerable clout to promote the Wallbuilders organizations? This is an outfit that, in its own words, means to:
exert a direct and positive influence in government, education, and the family by (1) educating the nation concerning the Godly foundation of our country; (2) providing information to federal, state, and local officials as they develop public policies which reflect Biblical values; and (3) encouraging Christians to be involved in the civic arena.
This country is being transformed. It's way beyond prayer in school. It is way beyond the war on Christmas. It is into Mormon nationalism.
As for preposterous reaches of the scripture's fundamentalism, which is harder to believe? That however-many virgins are waiting for you in heaven or that an angel appeared before a 19th century ne'er-do-well to reveal to him golden plates containing an unknown American religious history which the man then translated using stones placed in a stovepipe hat, only to later lose the plates back to the angel before anyone else could ever see them? (A note to Americans: That both religions in their most fundamentalist form endorse and condone, as the pinnacle reward for piety, sexual access to numerous virgins suggests that they could eventually team up to rise against our liberty. Be vigilant.)
Which "training camp" is more dangerous? A sand lot equipped with monkey bars in some ditch half a world away, or a university with a $500 million endowment and an MBA program ranked in the nation's top 20?
Did you know Mormonism is the fastest growing religion in the United States? If just three percent of Mormons are Mormonofascists like Beck, that's an incredibly large number of them looking to turn back progress and reverse American freedoms. And, sure, the Islamists are building a few mosques here and there, but the Mormons are building many times more temples every day in our neighborhoods. Maybe you have not noticed them, since they usually draw no attention to themselves, often appearing to be just any other American church. That's not an accident.
This is a disease in America. It's not just spending, it's not just taxes, it's not just corruption. It is a Mormonofascist drive to a theocratic utopia. Every time Mormons achieve positions of power, we lose more of who we are. When you give up your right to struggle, you're giving more of your freedom away. We are destroying our children's future. There comes a point where you must stop and realize that we cannot do this. In fact, there is a cancer that is radicalized Mormonism, and it must be cut out or it's going to kill all of us (including the good Mormons).
And yes, there are those good Mormons. It's a small portion of Mormonism that is acting to destabilize and bring about the downfall of the American values of freedom we love. But where are the good Mormons speaking up? Why don't we hear from them? Why don't they denounce the evil Mormons?
Make no mistake, the flame of freedom is dwindling. The shining city on the hill, the sun is setting. If you don't want it to go out on our watch, then you must stand in the blaze. The fire of truth that does not burn those who stand in it, but consumes everything that is not! Point others to the truth!
I beg you, America, I beg you. Great and powerful evil is on our doorstep. Great and powerful evil is here. I beg you, read about the Mormons like Glenn Beck.
Abe Sauer begs you!
Amen!
<3
Between this and Chris Lehmann's essay today, I'm making TheAwl.com my homepage.
I realized that a Mormonofascist enclave had taken hold in my neighborhood when I saw a clothesline draped with enchanted underpants over the weekend. You know, when the weather was nice.
I'm not sure Americans need this warning -- most of them, even the conservative Christian ones, already dislike Mormons:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700054363/Mormons-need-to-work-to-increase-favor.html?pg=1
Yeah but how many of Beck's Mormonphobic fans realize he is a Mormon? And so on.
Wow, Joe Smith really looks like Alby Grant in that photo. Good casting, guys!
Also: It might be a trumped-up statistic, but Jon Krakauer wrote about the growing number of Mormons and made some supposition that if they keep growing as exponentially as they are, 40 years from now no major policy decision will be able to be made in this country without the consent of the Mormon church.
Feel like I still have an 'Under The Banner Of Heaven'-tinted nightmare every now and then.
Mormon growth rates have slowed down considerably:
http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon411.htm
Krakauer's book conflated mainstream Mormons and fundamentalist Mormons in pretty much the same infuriating way that so many people do with Muslims. I was not terribly fond of that book.
Ridiculous. Krakauer was meticulous about reminding the reader that he was talking about fundamentalist sects, and went through the entire history of Mormonism in painstaking detail. No one with enough literacy to read the book would think he was conflating the mainstream with the fringe.
Well, I read it after it first came out and don't have a copy anymore, so it's possible I'm being unfair. But I just re-read on Amazon the section referenced by LolCait (pp. 323-327). It definitely strikes me as alarmist. He notes the distinction between "mainline Mormons" and fundamentalists, but also suggests that as the Mormon church becomes more and more mainstream, "fundamentalists are bound to pull more and more converts from the Mormon Church's own swelling ranks," which strikes me as a highly dubious statement.
More generally, I don't buy his basic argument that violence and faith are intertwined. People and violence are intertwined, and religious people will find religious reasons for their violence, in my opinion.
Monolithic and increasingly mainstream faith systems give rise to extremist factions. See also: every religion ever. I fail to see what is illogical about that assumption, even if it sounds like hand-wringing-especially since it has already happened. Repeat: the schisms have already happened. And you're free to explain violence any way you like (obviously religious faith is not its only companion), but it's not really the lone radicals I'm worried about.
I just read that book last month. Scared the hell out of me. I know Abe was being mostly satirical, but there's more truth here than people might otherwise think.
Also, I agree with Miles that it was very clear from the book just how separate the fundamentalists and the mainline Mormons are, but also how scarily conservative even the mainline Mormons are. If there was any conflating going on there, it's due to the fact that even the mainstream Mormon church is pretty frightening. Sorry David H.
I haven't read the book in question, but I think David has a point. Yes, large churches have crazy radicals; but so do tiny new churches. Most religions or sects start when an extremist wing splits off from the mainstream moderates. The larger a religion (or other organization) becomes, the more moderates it adds to that core group of hardliners. Extremists will be added too, but much more slowly than moderates, and even slower as the group as a whole becomes less extreme over time.
David, this reminds me of the hajib situation in Turkey. Because more women have taken to voluntarily wearing headscarfs, more women are voluntarily wearing the naqib (a scarf and veil that covers everything except for the eyes) to show that they are truly devout Muslims. Once something becomes mainstream and acceptable there will always be people who look to show their sincerity through being more austere and authentic. For a secular example: hipsters and the stereotypical tendency to stop liking a band once it has become too popular.
Krakauer isn't showing that religion and violence are necessarily intertwined in Under the Banner of Heaven but that the teachings and narrative of the Mormon church can create the conditions for the kind of violence seen in the Lafferty murders.
haven't read Krakauer's book yet, i'm afraid, but i do have to say that my understanding of church growth rates is that most of it is taking place outside the US. i believe that the church is, if anything, shrinking in this country. so it seems unlikely that mormons would have the sort of policy influence about which he's concerned.
Name and address disclosure of all individual donors to private interest groups behind political ads. Now.
Also, gotta give it up for Big Love seasons 1 and 2.
EX++
What happened to that Mormon apologist guest-writer whose avatar was sexy legs? Where is she in all of this?
She was sent to the same FEMA re-education camp as the Awl's conservative correspondent and the newsletter.
Take it over to Newsmax, buddy.
sorry i'm late, guys. spent yesterday in that bastion of sin--no, not canada, NYC--and i appear to have missed all the good stuff while catching up :(
By the way, Reihan Salam is all over the "Glenn Beck is secretly trying to convert everyone to Mormonism" idea:
http://twitter.com/reihansalam/status/22441369169
And Awl favorite (kidding!) Ross Douthat is on the scent, too:
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/mormons-evangelicals-and-glenn-beck/
You'd better stop it with this obviously self-interested nonsense. Responding to an article about an organization's toxic and outsize influence on civil rights with statistics on conversion numbers and tangentially related speculation from Ross Douthat is textbook evasion.
Self-interested? In what way? I left the Mormon church a long time ago and I hate what it did during the Prop 8 campaign. I also realize that Abe's piece is meant (I think?) largely to highlight the idiocy of many Americans' attitudes about Islam. But some people are genuinely alarmist and paranoid about Mormons, and I think they should read up about the subject a bit more (and not stop with Krakauer's book, as many people I know and respect seem to have done).
When a wealthy organization with a standing, obedient, grassroots army makes it its business to quietly affect a religious tincture in all U.S. policy, it's not paranoia and alarms are required. Just because some Evangelical Christians are bigoted against Mormons doesn't mean you can play the persecution card with me.
You're kidding, right?
It's TRUE!
Beck is our leader and absolutely not wrong about anything! All we Mormons love him! Everything you see on Big Love is accurate and totally verifiable!
Also, we are going to rise up, in the manner of all oppressed peoples with good hygiene and a world-wide presence, to crush all manner of infidel protestants, papists, and non-secular humanists! It is coming!
Rant, rant, Beck, rant, Beck!
The papists will be waiting.
And the Unitarians will be playing bongos or something.
Typical Mormon misinterpretation.
One cannot play along? Not even for fun? Come now...
I know this is a generalization. I know this is intolerant. I know this could be said about any "religion."
But if you're a Mormon, you're an idiot.
And even better? Willfully stupid.
I only resent your weirdness because your beliefs/delusions are a threat to my pursuit of happiness.
Carina, I hope you saw this Aasif Mandvi bit on the Daily Show.
"She knows about the training camps!!!"
Thanks, DD, I did. It was genius.
That's OK. Want to come over for pie?
BEER THROWN
Dodged.
The target being Mormonofacist, not Abe Sauer.
PAVLOVIAN REACTION!
My favorite piece of Mormon political intrigue is the White Horse Prophecy, which originates in a couple of journal accounts of Joseph Smith preaching. Apocrypha as far as it goes, but it's been wholly accepted and discussed openly by generations of church leaders as the real deal.
The basic plot is, when the Constitution is "hanging by a thread," a couple of the Elders of Israel ride in on White Horses to save the country.
Orrin Hatch discussed it on the radio in Utah when contemplating his presidential aspirations. Mitt Romney did, then promptly disavowed the whole thing, pretending it didn't exist, even though he's been soaking in it his whole life. Glenn Beck is probably crazy enough to make it the theme of his next Washington rally. Or at least a series of posters, instructional dvds and collectible merchandise.
Maybe you have not noticed them, since they usually draw no attention to themselves, often appearing to be just any other American church. That's not an accident.
ummm... have you seen the monstrosity up the street from my house?
http://oaklandmormontemple.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/mormon_temple.jpg
i look at it every time i have a smoke on my porch. if i don't think about what it stands for, it's kinda cool.
go to blingee.com and put a tinkerbell on it!
You can see that thing all the way from San Francisco.
I used to live just down the street from the DC (well, Maryland) temple ("Oz"). It was very large.
The one on the Beltway looks like it's going to impale some angels.
Drove past the one on the way to San Diego last week and thought the building looked like it was trying to poke God's eye out.
We used to call the DC one the Disney Castle, though Oz is even better.
The Boston temple (i.e. Mitt's church) had to go through a whole legal battle about the height of its steeple, which it eventually won. Not surprising there was a battle though - <a href="http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/boston/"that angel towers over Rte. 2 like it's going to blast the city to kingom come.
Argh, tag failure!
Here it is, the easy way:
http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/boston/
....and do you notice the smell? Every time I drive by it, I have to check to see if my car is overheating due to the acrid, smoky smell. 'What's he doing in there?'
Finally a thread custom made for Art Yucko and he's nowhere to be found.
You know--and this is applianced to anyligion--who the fuck wants to follow a sect that says you have to die to get laid?
Excellent way of looking at that fart hole of a religion. I'm gonna pass this around to the rest of my "officially excommunicated from the LDS" (nothing scandalous, grandpa probably just didn't give them enough money or something) family.
Pfft, Human Events or GTFO.
I can't comment worth shit today, this was a reply to Lawyergay.
Why-oh-why can't this piece get sponsored by gillette?
Also maybe notable. The religion advocates that people store up several months worth of food in preparation for the end times. It seems to me a reasonable supposition that people with such a mentality would also be stockpiling weapons. Especially when you consider that Utah has some of the loosest gun control regulations in the country.
http://crime.about.com/od/gunlawsbystate/f/gunlaw_ut.htm
Yes and no. Yes, Mormons generally support the right to bear arms, but the Mormon household I grew up in, which was seriously stockpiled with foodstuffs, did not have a gun. My step-father, and his entire family as far as I can tell, pretty much abhors weapons of any kind. So, based on my observations, in Utah and elsewhere in the country, you can't just assume that Mormons are stockpiling weapons. It's the "Oath Keepers" that we really have to worry about. Also, its a fundamental tenet of Mormonism that they respect the national government, so any kind of armed uprising from their numbers is unlikely.
I wholeheartedly refuse to believe Vai Sikahema is part of an elaborate fifth column determined to undermine our very existence.
Er, I'm as secular as Richard Dawkins' left nut, but I can't see very much daylight separating this article's "argument" from outright intolerance of an entire religious identity.
If someone wrote the same article about "Judeofascism" in place of "Mormonofascism," it would be easily recognizable as anti-Semitism of the most reactionary and unimaginative type -- and utterly beneath mention. ("The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" indeed.)
Perhaps there's a clear distinction here that I'm missing, but it seems like this line of argument relies on rhetorical maneuvers perfected by some really unsavory types.
It was supposed to be a parody of the david horowitz/pam gellar 'islamofascism' guys and gals. Of course you don't have many mormons running around exploding and chopping peoples heads off so it doesn't really work but it's not sincere.
"Anti-Semitism" usually refers to intolerance of the Jewish ethnicity, not the religion. There's nothing wrong with a healthy intolerance of religion.
Fair enough. I'm not sure how well the "parody" defense works with intolerance of religion, but I guess it's worthwhile to spend some effort figuring out where the line is, even if you wind up crossing it from time to time.
And I suspect that reporting completely objectively on certain folks' religious beliefs, without resorting to (fairly risky) ironic distance, is probably the most effective form of parody anyway. Can one distinguish the authors of the Protocols by citing their "sincerity"? Sounds tricky and misguided to me.
Islam > Mormonism its funny to see people become so unhinged however how its getting down to the point of "scary" and "creepy" dude. In this circle jerk, there are cries to denounce the evils of Mormonism while Islam keeps getting a free pass? Restoring the Honor was not a political rally however the Jockrideing of Glenn Beck is at such a all time high the poor guy might get fined of OSHA! Liberals heads are exploding however soon I fear the turn back into there "Weather Underground" phase. When you frame arguments with the likes of "Fascism, Nazis" or use the KKK as the antagonist you are only building the grounds for civil unrest that is G8/G20esk however unlike the targets being the Illuminati of Globalist, the enemy of the Welfare State has become the average American citizen. I see the gates of Hell are upon us...
Jibreel Riley who appeared in Glenn Beck's "Conservative Black America" farce and wasn't aware Detroit and New Jersey are in America? The nonesense-babbling Jabreel Riley at the 9 minute mark of this video?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqr8pP35qH0&
Yes Abe, Yes. As an American of African decent I have to say these "Black Conservative" show ponies they trot out on FOX news are usually intellectuals of a pretty low quality and I can never shake the feeling that it is intentional. In the audience for that clip I noticed "bishop" Harry Jackson... if you care to read about this clown I think you may appreciate some of the idiocy I would not dare call irony, vis a vis ,Gay marriage and States rights, of course D.C. is not a state so nuts to our Rights. If you hadn't seen any of this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/18/AR2009111803863.html
just because Beck says it wasn't a political rally doesn't mean it wasn't. he had it in one of the most historically politicized stretches of real estate in the country. he had political figures speak. he is known almost exclusively for his political views. it was political. furthermore, when Beck says something, you can probably go ahead and take the opposite as the truth.
that was meant for Jibreel, of course.
ugh descent wtf... I came back to see if Abe had anything to say and I am confronted with my inability to proof read my own comments.
That is me, whoot!
Does it bother you that you have a Muslim name?
The more I read ex-Mormon message boards, the more it makes sense to me that Glenn Beck is a Mormon.
True storiez: Growing up in Mormonistan Fort Osage, Missouri (just to the west of Independence), literally one third of my high school was Samoan children of Mormon missionaries who were all overweight and all dreamed of being the Rock.
Then in college, they tore down the house I was living in to expand the Latter Day Saints Learning Annix parking lot, but not without the Church buying out my lease first, forcing one long doozy of a year on the phone to Salt Lake City.
So, yeah, fuck 'em! That house was GREAT.
Is this supposed to be satire?
This reads like an 1850 rant against papists.
I think it's a 21st century rant against bullshit, a serious rant against serious bullshit. We need more of this.
Yeah! I mean fuck people with other religions! Sometimes I just think we need a final solution to end all our problems with these people.
USA USA USA USA USA USA
Which "training camp" is more dangerous? Um... how about the one that kills people?
What is wrong with some of you? You pick on Glenn because of his religion; because he is different from you? What are you, in junior high? He is a God fearing man who wants a stronger more spiritual government and he is one voice who is attempting to make that possible.
H. This is wrong and gross, thanks for playing. Try harder next time.
The numbers for LDS Church membership should be cut in half as half of them or more go inactive or have their membership withdrawn from the church after they find out what it is REALLY like.
-an ex member