Introduction

Jared Huffman is the Democratic representative for California’s 2nd congressional district and the only open non-believer in the US Congress. He is also at the forefront of the fight against Christian nationalism in America. He helped found the Congressional Freethought Caucus and the Stop Project 2025 Task Force. Andrew L. Seidel, constitutional attorney and author of The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American and American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom (and Freethinker contributor) had this to say about Huffman:

Rep. Jared Huffman is unafraid to publicly declare his belief in church-state separation and his lack of religion. That fearlessness is something we rarely see in American politicians, and it gives me hope for our future. There is no more stalwart defender of the separation of church and state than Rep. Huffman.

I recently spoke with Huffman over Zoom about his career and his opposition to the theocratic agenda of a future Donald Trump administration. Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.

Interview

Daniel James Sharp: You are the only open non-believer in Congress. Could you tell us about that, and your personal background regarding religion?

Representative Jared Huffman: I had no intention of being known as the only open non-believer in Congress when I got elected back in 2012. I have been without religion for most of my adult life and in recent years came to sort of loosely identify as a humanist. But that was something I largely kept to myself. I had never been asked about it in politics. I’d spent twelve years in local government and six years in the California State Assembly and I could not imagine that it would ever come to be something I was known for in Congress.

But what I learned pretty early on is that there are all of these publications that want to know about the religious identification of people when they get to Congress. The Pew Research Center does this ongoing study about religiosity in Congress and there are all of these Capitol Hill publications that do surveys and ask you to choose your religious label. For the first few years, I essentially declined to answer those questions. I thought it was none of anyone’s business.

That changed when Donald Trump won the 2016 election and brought into government a growing number of strident Christian nationalists and an agenda that troubled me quite a bit and which I saw as deeply theocratic. I decided that this was something I needed to push back on.

However, it was hard to do that when I was keeping a little secret about my own religious identity, so I came out publicly as a humanist, making me the only member out of 535 in the House of Representatives and the Senate who openly acknowledges not having a God belief.

Do you think there are many other nonbelievers in Congress?

I know there are many more, but I’m the only one dumb enough to say it publicly!

Has coming out affected you politically?

I think that’s been an interesting part of the story. Conventional wisdom holds that you should never do that. And even in some of our more recent polls, atheists tend to rank lower than just about every other category in terms of the type of person Americans would vote for. So there was a lot of nervousness among my staff and from a lot of my friends and supporters when I came out in the fall of 2017.

But the backlash never came, and, if anything, I think my constituents appreciated me just being honest about what my moral framework was. I think they see an awful lot of hypocrisy in politics, a lot of fakers and people pretending to be religious, including Donald Trump, and I found that being honest about these things is actually pretty beneficial politically, and it also just feels more authentic, personally speaking.

Since Trump was elected in 2016, you have become very involved in resisting theocratic tendencies in government. You helped to found the Congressional Freethought Caucus in 2018, for example. Could you tell us how that came about?

Yes, that came next, after the Washington Post wrote a story about me coming out as a humanist. I think it was the next day after that piece was published that my colleague, Jamie Raskin, came to me on the House floor and said, ‘Hey, I think that’s great what you did, and I share the same concerns you have about the encroachment of religion into our government and our policies, we should think about some sort of a coalition to work on these secular issues.’ Conversations like that led pretty quickly to the creation of this new Congressional Freethought Caucus that we launched a few months later.

And what does the caucus do?

We support public policy based on facts and reason and science. We fiercely defend the separation of Church and State. We defend the rights of religious minorities, including the non-religious, against discrimination and stigmatization in the United States and worldwide. And we try to provide a safe place for members of Congress who want to openly discuss these matters of religious freedom without the constraints our political system has traditionally imposed.

It seems important to note that the caucus is formed of people from all different religious backgrounds. It’s not an atheist caucus.

Yes, it’s a mix, and it’s a mix that looks like the American people, which is different from Congress itself as a whole. The American people are getting less religious all the time and they are getting more religiously diverse, but Congress is stuck in a religious profile from the 1950s.

Do you think these changing demographics are part of the reason why there is this renewed Christian nationalist push?

I do. Religious fundamentalists correctly sense that their power and privilege are waning and that has caused them to become more desperate and extreme in their politics.

What is Project 2025?

Project 2025 is an extreme takeover plan for a second Trump presidency to quickly strip away many of the checks and balances in our democracy to amass unprecedented presidential power and use it to impose an extreme social order. It’s a plan to take total control over not just our government but also many of our individual freedoms. And the Christian nationalist agenda is at the heart of it.

Do you believe Trump’s statements distancing himself from Project 2025?

No, they are deeply unbelievable and implausible. Trump is inextricably intertwined with Project 2025 and until very recently both Trump’s inner circle and the Heritage Foundation, who published the plan, were openly boasting about the closeness of that connection. As Americans have come to learn more about Project 2025 and what it would do to their lives, it has become politically toxic to be associated with it, and that’s why you see these sudden attempts by Trump and his team to distance themselves from it.

How did people become more aware of it? It flew under the radar for quite a while.

Indeed, it flew under the radar for over a year. But our Freethought Caucus and others in Congress founded the Stop Project 2025 Task Force two months ago and, thanks to our efforts and the efforts of many others in the media and outside advocacy groups, more people have come to know about Project 2025 and the threat it poses to our democracy. Project 2025 went from being an obscure thing very few had heard about to, just a couple of weeks ago, surpassing Taylor Swift as the most talked about thing on the internet.

Quite an achievement! So, how exactly do you stop Project 2025?

It starts by understanding it, by reading the 920-page document that they arrogantly published and proclaimed as their presidential transition plan. That document lays out in great detail exactly what they intend to do. Our task force has been doing a deep dive into that, working with several dozen outside groups and leading experts to understand what some of these seemingly innocuous things they’re proposing actually mean in real life.

They hide beyond technical terms like ‘Schedule F civil service reform’ and we have been able to understand and help spotlight that what that really means is a mass purge of the entire federal workforce, rooting out anyone who has ever shown sympathy for Democratic politics, anyone who has ever been part of a diversity, equity, and inclusion programme, anyone who has worked on climate science—or anyone else who has offended the sensibilities of MAGA Republican extremists. They want to reclassify these employees and summarily fire them. This would affect well over 50,000 people throughout the federal workforce.

And then, as creepy as that already is, these people would be replaced by a cadre of trained and vetted Trump loyalists who are already maintained in a database housed by the Heritage Foundation. Essentially, they plan to repopulate the federal workforce with their own political operatives. This is not self-evident when you read the technical stuff in Project 2025, but that is exactly what their plan entails.

Can you give another example of their plans?

Yes. There are several ways in which they plan to impose their rigid social order. One of these is to dust off old morality codes from the 1870s using a dormant piece of legislation called the Comstock Act. The Comstock Act criminalises things that can be seen as obscene or profane and one of the things it criminalised back in the 1870s was anything that could terminate a pregnancy. Using this dormant legislation, which many believe is unconstitutional, Project 2025 are proposing what would amount to a nationwide ban on abortion, strict nationwide restrictions on contraception, and the criminalisation of in vitro fertilisation—very extreme and dystopic things.

It seems that the best way to stop Project 2025 is to stop Trump from being elected in November.

That’s the best way. That’s the most definitive way. But even if we beat Trump in this election, now that we have seen the Project 2025 playbook, we are going to have to build some policy firewalls against their plans in the future. The threat won’t go away. We need to build our defences against this kind of extreme takeover of government. But that is going to be much harder to do if Donald Trump is in the White House and his sworn loyalists are populating the entire federal workforce and they have broken down all of the checks and balances that stopped Trump’s worst impulses in his first presidency.

In essence, that’s what Project 2025 is: a plan to remove the obstacles that prevented Trump from doing many of the things he wanted to do or tried to do the first time around and to allow him to go even further.

Do you have a ‘doomsday scenario’ plan in the event of a Trump victory?

Yes, but it’s less than ideal. It relies on a lot of legal challenges in a legal system that has been well-populated by Trump loyalists. It relies on mobilising public opinion in a system where democracy and the democratic levers of power will not mean as much, because, frankly, Project 2025 is about accelerating the demise of a functioning democracy. Of course, there is no scenario under which we would just let all of this bad stuff happen without putting up a fight, but the tools that we would have to stop Project 2025 would be much less reliable if Trump wins.

How would the implementation of Project 2025 affect the rest of the world? What would be the consequences for America’s friends and allies?

I think that’s an important question for your readers. There’s no doubt that Project 2025 is hostile to the rules-based international order and our alliances that have kept Europe mostly free of war for the past half a century and more. It is hostile to globalism, as they refer to it, meaning free trade and the kind of trade relationships that we have with the European Union and many others around the world. It is hostile to confronting the climate crisis and even to acknowledging climate science. All of these are things that I’m sure folks in Scotland and the UK and throughout Europe would be deeply concerned by.

And there’s no doubt that Project 2025 is fundamentally sympathetic to strongman authoritarian regimes. In fact, it was inspired by Viktor Orbán in Hungary. The folks at the Heritage Foundation took a little trip to Hungary to learn about how Orbán had advanced all of these conservative, nationalist, authoritarian policies. Orbán has influenced the American right wing in a big way. He’s a bit of a rock star in Donald Trump’s world.

And so is Vladimir Putin, to an extent.

Indeed.

What are the chances of beating Trump in the election, now that Kamala Harris is the Democratic candidate?

A heck of a lot better than they were two or three weeks ago. My hope is that America is about to do what France did very recently. The French stared into the abyss of a right-wing authoritarian government and they realised what a scary and terrible prospect that was. In a matter of weeks, they united around a broad alliance to keep the far right out of power, and they succeeded. I think we are seeing a similar realisation and pivot from the American people. At least, I hope that is what’s happening. It certainly feels that way to me.

Looking in from the outside as an admirer of America, one thing I would like to see more of from the Democrats in particular is the patriotic case for secularism. The Christian nationalists and their ilk have claimed the mantle of patriotism, but their ideals are very far from the ideals America was founded on.

I think that’s a great point. And I know that you have worked with Andrew L. Seidel and others who are doing heroic work to recapture secular thought as part of what it means to be a patriotic American. I’m certainly all in for that. But the truth is that, though we did an incredible thing by separating Church and State in our Constitution, we have never done a great job of upholding that ideal. We have allowed Christian privilege and Christian power to influence our government for a long, long time, and in some ways what we’re struggling with now is a reckoning between the written law and the desperate attempts of Christian nationalists to hang on to their power and the founding premise of separating Church and State.

I suppose in some ways that’s the story of America. The battle between competing visions of America and trying to live up to those founding ideals.

Yes, that’s true. And the other thing that’s going on, I think, is that Christianity itself is in many respects changing around the world. I’ve spoken to secularists in Europe, in Scotland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, and it does seem that there is a strain of fundamentalist Christianity that has become more pronounced in recent years, a strain that is hyper-masculine, focused on power, and militaristic. The old ‘love thy neighbour’ Christianity is falling out of favour. People are fleeing traditional Christian denominations and identifying with these extreme, fundamentalist versions of Christianity. And they even mock what they see as soft Christianity. There’s a violence to these strains, which we saw with the January 6th insurrection in a big way.

So there is a lot happening, and it is more than just a fight between secularists and religionists. It’s also an internal struggle within Christianity itself over some pretty core values.

Going back to your point about the influence of Orbán, it seems to me that it also works the other way around. You have American fundamentalists pouring money into right-wing groups in Europe and funding fanatics in Israel and Uganda. So what can people outside of the US do to help in the fight against American fundamentalism?

It’s hard to compete with the mountains of dark money spread around the world by billionaire Christian nationalists, but we’re not powerless. The good news is that most people don’t really want to live in an authoritarian theocracy. I think lifting up education and science and civil society around the world is essential, as is promoting the idea of keeping religion out of government, of letting people make their own private religious choices without being able to impose their morality codes on everyone else. It’s a huge challenge, but I welcome the influence of secularists in Europe and elsewhere to try to counterbalance this wrong-headed phenomenon that, unfortunately, is emanating from my country.

That seems like a good place to finish. Good luck in the fight, and in November.

I appreciate that very much. I hope to talk to you again after we have saved our democracy.

Related reading

Donald Trump, political violence, and the future of America, by Daniel James Sharp

Donald Trump is an existential threat to American democracy, by Jonathan Church

Can the ‘New Theists’ save the West? by Matt Johnson

Against the ‘New Theism’, by Daniel James Sharp

A reading list against the ‘New Theism’ (and an offer to debate), by Daniel James Sharp

The post ‘Project 2025 is about accelerating the demise of a functioning democracy’: interview with US Representative Jared Huffman appeared first on The Freethinker.

Related reading

Donald Trump, political violence, and the future of America, by Daniel James Sharp

Donald Trump is an existential threat to American democracy, by Jonathan Church

The post Image of the week appeared first on The Freethinker.

Like the typical visitor to Japan, I initially regarded Shinto as the quaint if not simplistic faith of the Japanese people. However, when placed in its historical context, I realised that Shinto was one of the last remaining major expressions of a much older faith, namely animism (typically described in Western countries as ‘paganism’).¹ Further study led me to the realisation that animism, with its panoply of mostly nature-affiliated deities like a sun or a rain god(dess), was in fact the oldest form of religion about which, today, we have any trace. That is to say, animism is now widely acknowledged among scholars as the oldest form of religion, practised universally by our ancestors for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years.

Inasmuch as survival plus reproduction is generally recognised as the fundamental purpose of all life forms, the creation of sun god(s), rain god(s), fire god(s), etc. is unsurprising. For just as the creation of stone tools enhanced the evolutionary fitness of hunter-gatherers, the presence of nature-affiliated deities offered the possibility of controlling (and benefitting from) natural phenomena that were beyond any other method of control. In short, what we today identify as religion resulted from the fundamental human need to survive, though it should be noted that religion at this stage was centred on the needs of the entire tribe—to ensure plentiful water and animals to hunt and so on—rather than the spiritual needs of the individual tribal member. Today, we now have examples of tribal religious practices involving nature-affiliated deities dating back as far as 70,000 years ago.   

Yet, if tribal-oriented, animistic religions can be traced back tens of thousands of years, if not longer, how does one account for the personal faiths we have today? For this, we are indebted to the insight of a German-Swiss philosopher by the name of Karl Jaspers (1883–1969). Jaspers noticed the broad changes in religious and philosophical thought that occurred throughout the entire world from about the 8th to the 3rd century BCE, now known as the Axial Age. He noted that the present-day spiritual foundations of humanity were laid nearly simultaneously and independently in China, India, Persia, Judea, and Greece. Among the key thinkers of this period, he identified Confucius and Lao-Tse in China, the historical Buddha and Mahavira in India, Deutero-Isaiah in ancient Israel², and Socrates and Plato in Greece.

Though their teachings varied, all these thinkers shared three basic elements in common. First, ‘truth’ was universally valid, and its existence was no longer confined to one’s tribe. Second, morality/ethical conduct, too, was universal. While it had long been wrong, or taboo, to steal from or injure a fellow tribal member, the rule for members of other tribes was ‘anything goes’, especially when the latter posed a threat or possessed something coveted by one’s own tribe.  At least in principle, those outside one’s tribe were now recognised as fellow human beings. Finally, the myths that had explained natural events like the eclipse of the sun, or the creation of the world, were no longer accepted uncritically. Slowly, haltingly, the search for rational answers to natural phenomena and life’s questions took root, eventually leading to the birth of science.

One good example of this change in mentality is provided by the historical Buddha in regard to the doctrine of karma. In Sanskrit, the word ‘karma’ originally meant no more or less than an ‘action’ of some kind. Later, in the Vedas, which initially presented an Indian form of animism, ‘karma’ came to mean action associated with properly conducted ritual sacrifices to the gods. It was only later still, with the advent of the Buddha, that karma acquired an ethical connotation. The Buddha ethicised the meaning of karma by identifying it with intentional actions on the part of the actor. Thus, when actions were undertaken with wholesome intent, this was good and proper, reaping positive rewards. However, when actions were conducted with harmful intent, this was wrong, and those who did so would suffer the negative consequences of their actions.

Not only did the Axial period mark the beginning of religion for individuals, but it also prepared the way for the emergence of all the major, universal religions we have today, whether Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism. That is to say, while there are major doctrinal differences between these faiths, they all share the same three basic characteristics born during the Axial Age. Thus, if there is hope for mutual religious understanding, if not religious tolerance, it is to be found in the fundamental tenets underlying them all.

However, given the copious amounts of blood that have been shed in conflicts between post-Axial faiths, it is readily understandable that readers may think I have a Pollyannaish view of religion. However, such is not the case, for I have long realised that the Axial Age did not bring an end to a tribal religious mentality. Instead, the Axial Age functioned to add something like an additional universal layer on top of limited tribal religion, the latter concerned first and foremost with the wellbeing of one’s ‘in-group’, whether defined by a common religious faith, ethnic and racial grouping, or simply membership in the new tribal grouping we call ‘nations’.

The ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza are classic examples of this religious ‘layer cake’. Prior to the war, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), while it enjoyed a degree of autonomy, was part of the Russian Orthodox Church. After the invasion in February 2022, the UOC declared its independence from Russia. (The Orthodox Church of Ukraine—a separate church—had already gained independence in 2018.) Since then, the independent UOC has attempted to cut all ties with Moscow, dismissing pro-Russian bishops and having its head, Metropolitan Onufriy, publicly condemn Russia. For its part, in April 2024, the Russian Orthodox Church proclaimed that Russia was engaged in a ‘holy war’ with Ukraine. Although they shared the same God, the same faith, the split between them clearly came about due to their allegiance to the contending warring tribal entities we today call ‘nations’.

As for the current war in Gaza, it is, if anything, an even clearer example of the conflict between universal and tribal religion. For example, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not hesitate to invoke the Biblical image of the Jewish tribal battle against the Amalekites.³ Last year, he said that Israelis ‘are committed to completely eliminating this evil [Hamas] from the world… You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.’

Netanyahu’s reference was to the first Book of Samuel in which God commands King Saul to kill all the Amalekites. God, says the prophet Samuel, has told the Israelites to ‘go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.’ (1 Samuel 15:3).

Likewise, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant claimed that ‘We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.’ While Gallant may have initially been referring to Hamas fighters, he went on to call for the collective punishment of all Palestinians in Gaza, stating, ‘We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed.’ The tribal nature of Netanyahu and Gallant’s comments, and their complete dismissal of the shared humanity of Israelis and Palestinians, could not be clearer.

That said, it is important to acknowledge that there are Jews, including in Israel, who do recognise their shared humanity with Palestinians. Organisations like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow share post-Axial universal values of caring for the poor and oppressed, pursuing justice, and treating others with compassion based on their shared humanity.  

If this analysis is correct, readers may be thinking that this tribal way of thinking is not unique to some adherents of Judaism, and they would be correct. One Christian example particularly relevant to the current situation in Israel/Palestine is the role played by ‘Manifest Destiny’ in American history. First coined in 1845, this term represented a collective mindset that viewed the expansion of the US as both necessary and ordained by God. As the US gained more territory, proponents of Manifest Destiny used it to justify the forced removal, enslavement, dehumanisation, and even elimination of Native American tribes, as well as the expansion of slavery into newly acquired territories.

Compare these actions with the words from Leviticus 19:33-34 that both Christians and Jews claim to believe in:

And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

These examples point to an unresolved split in all religions, i.e. between their tribal nature, based on tens of thousands of years of history, versus their post-Axial awakening occurring less than three thousand years ago. This awakening was of profound importance in that it led, at least in principle, to a recognition of the universal nature of their religious teachings based on their shared humanity. This in turn led, at least some of the time, to a feeling of mutual compassion in which people recognised others as extensions of themselves, extensions who had the same human needs and fears as they themselves had.

The struggle between a narrow tribal mentality versus a truly universal mentality accepting of others is one that transcends all ethnic, racial, national, and even religious boundaries. Nevertheless, in the US, for example, the slogan ‘America First’ is embraced by millions, demonstrating that for many the tribal mentality remains firmly in place.      

On the one hand, as brutal and destructive as religion-endorsed tribal warfare has been in the past, humanity as a whole was not endangered. Today, however, things are different. For the first time in the approximately 300,000-year history of Homo sapiens, we have the capacity to destroy each other not only in the tens of thousands, or even the millions, but totally, without exception. This is because of the very real possibility of ‘mutual assured destruction’ in the form of a nuclear-induced winter, not to mention the ever-increasing dangers resulting from phenomena like global warming. None of the deadly serious problems facing humankind as a whole can be solved by one or even a group of nations. They require the concerted efforts, and necessary sacrifices, of all the world’s nations and peoples.

Thus, adherents of all the world’s religions, and even those who identify with no faith, share a common challenge. Can we Homo sapiens collectively awake to, and transcend, the tribal religious mentality of our past or are we bound to continue to fool ourselves into oblivion, believing that we are pursuing universal truths even as we betray such truths in practice? In Ukraine, Gaza, and beyond, we live in a world characterised by the ongoing threat of thermonuclear warfare, global warming, and many other deadly challenges.

Can religion save the human race?

As an adherent of religion, I sincerely wish I could answer this question in the affirmative. However, in light of the above examples, and many others like them, I cannot. What I can say with confidence is that postaxial religion has the largely unrealised potential to prevent humanity from destroying itself. Yet, all too regrettably, this potential is far, far from being realised even though pockets of universal good will do exist.  A positive outcome for humanity, let alone all life forms, requires that we undertake concrete actions based on the realisation that the continued existence of our species is, in fact, dependent on the success of a truly universal struggle, by the religious and nonreligious alike, for human equality, dignity, and justice.

Will we be successful? Among many others, the answer lies with each reader of this article.

1. As a foundational aspect of various ancient and indigenous religions, animism is based on the belief that all things, animate and inanimate, possess a spiritual or animating force. ‘Paganism’ describes the same phenomena but the word as used to describe this belief system has pejorative overtones and is therefore no longer widely used. ︎
2. Deutero-Isaiah is the name given to the anonymous author of chapters 40–55 of the Book of Isaiah. He (it was most likely a ‘he’) is believed to have lived with the Jewish exiles during their Babylonian captivity (c. 597 BCE – c. 538). Because this prophet’s real name is unknown and his work has been preserved in the collection of writings that include the prophecies of the earlier, or first, Isaiah, he is usually designated as Deutero-Isaiah—the second Isaiah. Deutero-Isaiah was a pure monotheist who rejected the idea of Yahweh as the exclusive god of the Jews. Instead, he proclaimed that Yahweh was the universal, true God of the entire universe. ︎
3. The Amalekites were a people of the Negev and adjoining desert who were regarded as a hereditary enemy of Israel from wilderness times to the early monarchy. Amalek, a son of Esau’s son Eliphaz, was presumably the eponymous ancestor of the Amalekites. ︎

Read Part Two here.

Related reading

The rise and fall of god(s) in Indian politics: Modi’s setback, Indic philosophy, and the freethought paradox, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Religion and the decline of freethought in South Asia, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Can sentientism save the world? Interview with Jamie Woodhouse, by Emma Park

The Highbrow Caveman: Why ‘high’ culture is atavistic, by Charles Foster

‘The Greek mind was something special’: interview with Charles Freeman, by Daniel James Sharp

Image of the week: Anaxagoras, by Emma Park

‘The real beauty comes from contemplating the universe’: humanism with Sarah Bakewell, by Emma Park

Reading list against nuclear war, by Emma Park

Atheism, secularism, humanism, by Anthony Grayling

Morality without religion: the story of humanism, by Madeleine Goodall

The need for a new Enlightenment, by Christopher Hitchens

Can the ‘New Theists’ save the West? by Matt Johnson

Against the ‘New Theism’, by Daniel James Sharp

What has Christianity to do with Western values? by Nick Cohen

Religion and the Arab-Israeli conflict, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Israel’s war on Gaza is a war on the Palestinian people, by Zwan Mahmod

Is the Israel-Palestine conflict fundamentally a nationalist, not a religious, war? by Ralph Leonard

Young, radical and morally confused, by Gerfried Ambrosch

Britain’s liberal imam: Interview with Taj Hargey, by Emma Park

White Christian Nationalism is rising in America. Separation of church and state is the antidote. By Rachel Laser

The post Can Religion Save Humanity? Part One appeared first on The Freethinker.

Donald Trump was nearly killed a couple of days ago, and the consequences of this failed assassination attempt will reverberate for a long time, and in ways that nobody can now predict. Have the photos of a bloodied but unbowed Trump defiantly raising his fist as he was ushered off-stage won him the presidential election? Quite possibly. Such iconic images appear only very rarely, and even the staunchest of Trump’s critics (of which I am one) cannot but admire the man’s vigour in this instance.

Plus, Joe Biden’s cognitive state is no longer the centre of attention, which might mean that the pressure among Democrats for him to stand down and allow a more able candidate to contest the election will dissipate. I was sceptical that Biden would step down anyway, but now I think it a certainty that he will face Trump in November. Both these things—the sympathy, outrage, and defiance and the retaining of Biden as the Democratic candidate—mean almost certain victory for Trump.

This would be a disaster. I need not enumerate all the reasons why—or not at length, anyway. That Trump is a fascistic, racist, criminal lunatic; that he is openly antagonistic to democracy and the peaceful transition of power; that he is contemptuous of the American Constitution; that he is the darling of the Christian theocrats; that a Trump win would likely mean defeat for Ukraine and NATO, and perhaps even the liberal democratic world as a whole—all these things are known to everybody. And still, I fear, he will triumph.

Worse, the Supreme Court recently granted him, and all other presidents, some immunity for actions taken in office—so whatever restraints there may once have been are now gone, and Trump, if he wins, will be able to act as ‘a king above the law’, in the words of dissenting Justice Sonia Sotomayor. (Contrast this sorry state of affairs with the declaration of Thomas Paine in 1776 that in America, ‘so far as we approve of monarchy…the law is King.’)

Concern over a Trump victory being one of the consequences of the assassination attempt might seem cold. It is not. Political violence in a liberal democracy is to be deplored, no matter the target, and I am glad that Trump is okay. Conspiracy theories from Trump opponents, and the glee evinced by some at the attempt (all the while regretting only that the would-be assassin missed), are foolish and disgusting. I also feel for the man who was killed saving his family and the two people injured by the shooter. The former, Corey Comperatore, was a hero, and I have no compunction about saying that.

But the view of many Trump supporters that the shooting happened as a direct result of the rhetoric about Trump being a threat to democracy is misplaced, if not outright absurd. The only person responsible for the shooting is the shooter, not the words of others. It is possible—and necessary—to name and oppose anti-democratic politicians without calling for violence. Trump really is a threat to American democracy, and shooting him is not the answer. People like Trump are best beaten by arguments and ballots. If the Democrats and other opponents of Trump now shy away from telling the truth about him, they will do their country, and the world, a disservice.

Besides, Trump and other Republicans’ long history of promoting violence and using genuinely extreme rhetoric (which is still, I hasten to add, legitimate free speech) against Democrats shows this claim to be the shameless piece of hypocritical opportunism that it is. Contrast, for example, Trump’s vile public mockery of Nancy and Paul Pelosi after the latter’s skull was nearly caved in by a far-right fantasist in 2022 with Biden’s humane response to the Trump shooting (not to mention the decency of the Pelosis themselves). Accurately describing Trump and the threat he represents to America and the world is free speech, not inciting violence.

On the other hand, January 6 2021 was the climax of a months-long campaign conducted by Trump to cling to power and overturn the result of a free and fair election. The shoddy gunmanship of a lone attacker, whatever his motives, should not obscure the far more dangerous actions of Trump in 2020/21. A sitting president, using all the state, party, and personal resources at hand, attempted to destroy American democracy—and when this failed, he sat by for hours before calling his supporters, busy ravaging the Capitol, to heel. The attempted assassination of Trump was awful. Trump’s anti-democratic campaign and his supporters’ assault on the Capitol was awful. But one was much worse than the other: the two things are simply not comparable. Donald Trump and the Republican Party are the proponents and champions of political violence in America today.

This article is not an editorial, but it strikes me that the ideals of the Freethinker are more important than ever. Reason and argument, not political violence. Democracy, free speech, and secularism, not tyranny. As for those, like Tomi Lahren, who are praising ‘divine intervention’ for the delivery of Donald Trump and who were spouting conspiracy theories within minutes of the shooting, it can never be said enough: they really are irredeemably stupid—and, precisely for that reason, extremely dangerous. And they are the people who will cheer in November as Trump takes the White House. (I am no fan of Biden and the Democrats, either, by the way, but I recognise a genuine threat when I see one.)

I hope the people of the United States, the world’s first secular democratic republic, take these words of warning in the spirit of friendship with which they are offered. And I hope I am being overly pessimistic about Trump’s chances. Only time will tell, and perhaps there is still time for the American experiment to save itself.

The author republished this piece and added some additional reflections on new developments on his Substack on 1 August 2024. See here.

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