Sunday, August 2, 2009

Religion of Hate

I just saw an AP article about the Idaho town near which the Aryan Nation had its headquarters. It sucks that the little upscale town of Hayden Lake is still stigmatized as the address of the neo-nazi group that was gone by '04 but for me it was more interesting to learn that the Aryan Nation compound included the leaders home and his church. Apparently the group is a religion and the leaders are referred to as pastors. A church with a pastor and crosses sure does sound like they at least thought of themselves as Xians.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised; they tried to emulate Hitler's regime where every Wehrmacht soldier wore a belt buckle embossed with a swastika and the words "Gott Mit Uns" (God is with us). This, however, is another example of how people can be motivated to hatred and bigotry by incorporating the message into the matrix of religious belief. If you change the message from Jews and blacks to gays and atheists, you pretty much have evangelical Xianity.

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