6 reviews for Mobilizing Resentment

  1. Scott Riedy

    Mr. Berlet’s assessment of the mobilization of resentment is absolutely spot on. If you took offense to his reasoning, then that very likely means that he struck a nerve and you have identified with the groups and activities being called into question. It’s amazing how apropos a talk from nearly two decades ago is to today’s political goings on.

    One can only hope that the utter mess that’s being wrought by the current administration will help turn the tide in the next couple of election cycles – hope, that the voting citizens will make better and more informed choices.

  2. wishing to remain nameless

    With respect for flowerplough, evangelical Christians are “they” and “them” to people who are not evangelical Christians. I thought that Chip Berlet made a credible effort to describe apocalyptic Christian thinking accurately, and to say how adherents are being enrolled in particular political programs.
    I find Jon Allen’s review to be cryptic, but really appreciate learning of The Negro Motorist Green Book. Wow!!!

  3. daspol

    I caught nearly all of this on my drive home today and kept wanting to rewind to catch more details — 2003 speech even more true today than it was then. Those with power and media control have mobilized – and by 2017, weaponized – resentment and the anger nearly to the boiling point. Witness the Isis/Daesh-style white supremacist car attack two days ago that killed one and injured 19 more. I need to buy this so that I and others can gain the perspectives of the history that put these forces in motion in today’s world. Note, now, in the USA, supporting fascism and ultra-nationalism is just one more way of “managing democracy” as Putin puts it.

  4. Jon Allen

    …Oops, the allusion the last one made was supposed to be to the The Negro Motorist [!] Green Book. Here’s a link to the Wiki article.
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Motorist_Green_Book

  5. Jon Allen

    It’s an honor to second flowerplough’s assessment, below. After a day at the kind of job people with an undergraduate degree in the Humanities wind up with, I didn’t have the energy to say this myself. But, Yeah. It is Not Good Enough to resort to same, or, ahem, pungently similar rhetorical tactics that the other side does as a matter of course.
    The reader is referred to the rebroadcast of Chris Hedges. (And my and, especially, Laura Bryant’s reviews.) I’m not sure where Hedges is, theologically, but he’s that much more fluent in the language Mr. Berlet is. And correspondingly respectful. Within the tradition –that is to say, on an emphatically theological level– there are very good reasons for adherents to insist on such minor constitutional details as the separation of church and state. The Book of Acts (right after the Gospels) is, for one thing, a user’s guide (…sure, evoking, in places, the Blue Books) to how to function in a pluralistic society. Christians who prefer to influence the world by legislation rather than by example have abdicated their calling. Yeah, been watching that happen for a few decades now. But the critique Mr. Berlet attempted should have been undertaken by someone who was informed enough to see the nuances that are there, especially between the theology and the politics –which, frankly, lead me to empathize, profoundly if insufficiently, with Muslims who have been dealing with a very similar phenomenon for (…!) nearly as long.

  6. flowerplough

    Heard some of Chip’s 2003 bit on the radio last night – those gosh darn wedge driving apocalyptic evangelicals and their fundamentalist-revisionist tactical allies, they’re bad, just look what they’ve done. And look what they did here, and here. Of course, some of ’em really do believe abortion is murder, the poor, deluded, pitiable fools, and some are sincere, but look: They, they they they they they they. Them! Promise Keepers, Focus on the Family!! Look! Of course, we shouldn’t stereotype or slight the earnest, misguided, like the Amish, or like some nuns, but them!!! They hate and exploit and lie and abuse and they’re just THEM!

    Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m just one of THEM!, but it seemed Chip was doing a satire of an Orwellian Two Minute Hate, right?
    Or no?

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