Kevin Swanson #fundie

Kevin Swanson #fundie rightwingwatch.org

(You'd think they'd cream their jeans at making Gilead a real place, but...

Radical anti-LGBTQ pastor and radio host Kevin Swanson warned last week that the Hulu series “The Handmaid’s Tale” is a propaganda effort designed to condition Americans to carry out a genocide against conservative Christians.

“It’s a shocking story and meant for the persecution of Christians,” Swanson said on his radio program. “They create a gigantic caricature of a biblical Christian and then they turn them into rapists, so this kind of thing is propaganda, pure and simple propaganda. This is the kind of thing that happened with the Jews in the 1930s.”

“That’s what happens as a result of this kind of propaganda,” he continued. “It’s not that difficult to get the mob moving in the right direction —. so I think what happens with this kind of series is that it’s going to turn the masses against Christians. It’s the Rwanda thing, it’s the German thing.”

“Remember, the Rwanda media increasingly turned one of the racial groups against the other racial group in the Rwanda genocide,” Swanson said. “That is the kind of thing that has happened throughout history; we saw it happen in Germany, we saw it happen in Rwanda. Now, I guess the question is, could it happen in the United States of America or are we completely immune from any of these particular things? I don’t think we are. I think the influences of Hollywood, the influences of these powerful producers can turn the masses more and more against biblical Christians.”

34 comments

old comment by Malingspann

"the Hulu series “The Handmaid’s Tale”"

It's been revealed that Serena Joy took part in setting up the revolution that spawned Gilead. Maybe there could be a scene where Offred/June finds that out and confronts her with it, only for Serena to VERY angrily telling her to shut the fuck up.

Serena (angry growl): "I've heard it BEFORE; my own fate told as a story with the moral Be Careful What You Wish For!! And it wasn't funny the FIRST time!!!" (lowers her voice almost to a whisper) "When I joined the movement, I imagined the new society we were gonna create as the world of old sitcoms like 'Leave It To Beaver' and 'Father Knows Best' brought to life! Instead, we got something a LOT closer to George Orwell's Oceania. And *I* NEVER wanted THAT!!"

old comment by Doubting Thomas

@The Crimson Ghost

who even listens to the radio anymore, unless it's Sirius XM?

I admit that I do as a hobby, both shortwave and medium wave AM band. But not to listen to idiots like this, mainly to see how distant I can hear stations from. If I'm really bored I might actually pay attention to a radio show, or if I'm lucky I might come across the program "When Radio Was" which plays old radio programs from the 30's & 40's.

But as far as who the main audience is of people like this, I have no idea. I live out here in flyover country and I can't even see the local yokels glued to the radio all day or in the evening listening to these right-wing blowhards when there's TV and the internet to keep people occupied. I think it takes a special kind of right-wing fundie to take the effort to sit and listen to them, kind of like the same people who actually sit and watch religious channels on cable. Of course, their audience could be the crazy right-wing antigovernment militia-type loons who are hunkered down in their bunkers listening to the AM band, because digital TV and the internet "is how they track you."

old comment by Vman

@Jason_the_Cripple

I'm pretty sure the German people already hated the Jews. Hitler picked them to be the scapegoat because everyone already hated them.

Not really. From what I've read so far (am a history student), here's the short story:

Hitler wasn't always an anti-Semite, though he certainly became one (he was a 'true believer', it wasn't just because it happened to be convenient).

While there is evidence that he despised at least some Slavs and certain other ethnic groups in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy even before WW1 while he was still in Vienna, it seems that he only properly extended that to Jews after the war. He was in Munich at the time, as were some Russian emigrants (from the White side, fled after the October Revolution and the civil war that followed).
These Russians had quite a few anti-Semites among them, and one had brought a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion with him from Russia. This was apparently still a pretty much unknown work in Germany at the time, but it was quickly translated and ended up being copied and sold in large numbers.
Hitler and his circle got a hold of it and bought into its claims hook, line and sinker.

As for Germany itself, anti-Semitism certainly was a thing long before Hitler's rise to power, but not nearly to the point where it got in the 1930s.
Metaphorically speaking: before the Nazis became the predominant force of German politics, you could smell that something was burning nearby. Once the Nazis took over, they went full arsonist and turned that into a massive conflagration.

old comment by Vman

Good thinking. That might be part of it, perhaps.

Also, regarding the political roots of Hitler's antisemitism: Hitler was inspired by the views of Austrian politician Georg von Schönerer. That guy was basically the granddaddy of Nazism, having already laid out much of their ideology in the late 19th century, which Hitler could then run with and expand upon. How much of Hitler's antisemitism came from this, I don't know. But it's one of the possible sources.

With people like Schönerer poisoning the Austrian political scene for decades, it's no wonder that by the time of Germany's annexation of Austria (AKA the Anschluss, in 1938), the Austrians were probably even greater antisemites than the Germans from Germany themselves (which can be seen e.g. from what a significant part of the population of Vienna did immediately after the Anschluss: they went on to cheerfully loot or destroy Jewish property and harass Jewish residents).