Disturbing Imagery

[a_cubed]

A Reuters report has some interesting numbers about Pew surveys of US citizens’ attitudes to religion and politics. There's some encouraging stuff in there, with now a bare majority of respondents (even within the error margins) saying that they feel there is too much religiosity in elections. As with much American (and, as pointed out in the article, other industrialised countries') politics there is polarisation going on as well, with people like white evangelicals and white catholics increasingly paranoid in their views of those with different religious views and seeing themselves as a persecuted minority (that’s a dangerous place to have a significant portion of your population and leads to the potential for radicalisation amongst a small proportion of that group). What bothered me the most about the piece, though, was the image from a Mitt Romney (I think it’s a Romney) Rick Santorum rally showing him and his audience publicly praying. Look at the man on his right (left hand side of the photo) and at the back row of the audience visible behind him. That’s awfuly close to a nazi salute they’re giving, or is this just me and Godwin’s law comes into play?

Current Mood:  worried

Comments

[iadams.livejournal.com]

It's Rick Santorum, as the image alt-text states. Given the tones of their campaigns, it was always much more likely to be Rick than Mitt.

The image note describes Rick as receiving a blessing the man on his right, so his arm has most likely been captured in the middle of a more complex gesture, and I would draw no specific inference from it.

Your overall concerns about the polarisation of AMerican politics, and specifically about the religious alignments in that polarisation are good instincts. An interesting point is that is not just religion but a race/religion intersection that best categorises the splits. One can compare the basic religious views of white evangelicals with black born-again Christians: while they have similar views, the two groups use different subsets in driving their political leanings.

I agree with your point about the dangers of the silent majority feeling like a beleaguered minority.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the correction n the Romney/Santorum thing.
While I agree with you about the dangers of the majority feeling like a beleagured minority, that wasn't the point I was making. The discourse of victimhood coming out of the US Christian Right at the moment, talking up Obama as (at one and the same time, though usually but not always by different people) as part of a "secularist attack on Christianity" and a "closet muslim", attacking constitutional elements such as the separation of church and state etc. is driving them into the same sort of headspace that a substantial portion of muslims operate within. One of the problems with such headspaces is that it leaves some members of the group vulnerable to radicalisation, as happens with a small portion of muslims. As we've seen in the UK where the radical Islamist attacks in 2005 where by British citizens coming from moderate and moderately integrated family backgrounds, an apparently mainstream discourse of alienation and victim hood for a group provides a dangerous breeding ground for extremism.
I don't think the gesture is part of a broad sweep. Look at the people on the back row in the crowd behind. Unless they're sychnronously following such a broad gesture, they're basically making a Nazi salute gesture. I'm not saying they are intending per se to echo the Nazi salute. I just think it looks close enough to one to make me uncomfortable.