Obama, his Inauguration prayer, and Rick Warrens fight for a kind of Hitler Youth for Jesus…
In wenigen Stunden wird Barack Obama zum 44. Präsidenten der USA vereidigt. Amerika ist eine Demokratie und Washington D.C. ist heute ein Tollhaus, Obama wird gefeiert wie eine Art König oder Heilsbringer. Insofern mag es passen, dass die Inaugurationspredigt von Rick Warren gehalten werden wird. Warren hat am 17. April 2005 vor 30.000 fanatisierten Christen in Kalifornien sich völlig positiv auf Adolf Hitler und die Hitler Jugend bezogen. Das seien noch Zeiten gewesen, als Zehntausende von Menschen mit ihren Körpern zu Slogans sich formten, um ihre unbedingte Ergebenheit für den Führer zu demonstrieren. Warren ist auf der Suche nach einer Art Hitlerjugend für Jesus. Während es von einigen wenigen Konservativen und Demokraten wie Bruce Wilson von der Huffington Post sehr wohl skandalisiert wird, dass Warren sich auf Hitler bezieht und seine evangelikale Mission in den Fußstapfen des imperialistischen und genozidalen Nationalsozialismus sehen möchte, ist es im Mainstream der USA völlig egal, dass Warrens Ideologie diese Art der antisemitischen Erinnerungsabwehr an die Shoah praktiziert. Es hätte schon „ausgereicht“, Warren niemals einzuladen zu diesem weltweit höchste Aufmerksamkeit erlangenden Moment an diesem Dienstag, da er ein homophober Evangelikaler ist, der sein Wort weltweit zu verbreiten weiß. Es hätte „ausgereicht“, wenn man weiß wie fürchterlich seine Kooperation mit Uganda ist, wo nicht nur Homophobie Alltag ist, sondern auch Abstinenz statt dem Gebrauch von Kondomen neue AIDS-Erkrankungen in großem Maße zur Folge hatte. Zudem werden in Uganda antisemitische Comics von der Regierung an Schulen verteilt. All das hätte schon „ausgereicht“, um einen Warren niemals ein staatliches Podium bei einer Inaugurationsfeier eines angeblich ach so demokratischen Präsidenten zu geben. Wer sich die Videos anschaut, in welchen Warren sich so begeistert zeigt von der Hitlerjugend, merkt wie ernst es diesem fanatischen Evangelikalen ist. Er ist geradezu neidisch, nicht schon 1939 oder 1944 (diese beiden Daten nennt er bei seinen pro-HJ-Auftritten) dabei gewesen zu sein, wie es scheint. Warren war schon unter den 100 wichtigsten Personen der Welt gelistet, als Obama noch ein no-name war. Insofern stellt sich die Frage, wer hier wen hofiert.
Sicher, es gibt eine ganze Reihe Antisemiten („Jews are Terroist“ (!), oder „Zionists love Obama „), darunter auch jüdische („Jewish Voice for Peace“), und schwule, lesbische, transgender oder bisexuelle (so bezeichnen sie sich selbst mit der Abkürzung LesbianGayBisexualTransgender), „Queer against Genocide“, die alle auch hinter Parolen wie „Gaza = Auschwitz“ hinter her liefen und somit auf einer anti-israelischen Demonstration in San Francisco am 10. Januar 2009 die antisemitischsten Parolen nach 1945 unterstützten.
Doch Obamas Schweigen zum Krieg gegen die Hamas lässt nichts gutes ahnen, von seinen Beziehungen zu Edward Said-Nachfolgern wie dem Antizonisten Rashid Khalidi nicht zu schweigen.
Der folgende knappe Text hat zumindest einige Anmerkungen zu den katholischen Wurzeln von Massenpredigten im Freien sowie weiteren Facetten der Ideologie Rick Warrens.
“Whatever it takes” – Obama’s inauguration Reverend Rick Warren
or
the Saddleback Church and its reference to the Hitler Youth
By Dr. Clemens Heni, YALE
If someone would say publicly “I want you to become followers of my religion as the Hitler Youth had become followers of Adolf Hitler” that person would rather have a chance to get invited by chancellor Merkel for a major event. As we have anti-Semitism in Germany as well, this might be possible (as 25% of Germans, according to a poll, say they see “good sides in National Socialism“), but it would become rather a scandal, because at least some critical journalists, activists, politicians, or scholars would not tolerate such an event. What about the US? Barack Obama will celebrate his inauguration as “start, not end, of change in America”. It was Obama’s will to choose Reverend Rick Warren, an outstanding evangelical American personality, even elected as one of the leading 100 personalities in the world, to hold the inauguration prayer on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. Warren is the founder and head of the evangelical megachurch Saddleback Church in southern California. He most often is criticized because he is against abortion, not really a fan of Judaism, has problematic contacts to the government in Uganda, which spreads anti-Jewish comics in public schools throughout the country, and is also against same sex marriage.
Even worse than the homophobia of Warren seems to be the following. Huffington Post’s Bruce Wilson reports that on April 17, 2005, Rick Warren held a worship with 30.000 followers in the Anaheim Angels Sports Stadium in southern California, comparing the necessity of admiration of Jesus Christ with that of the Hitler Youth in 1939, where they said to Hitler in a Munich Stadium: “We are yours”. Now Warren wants the people to follow his church (and/or him?). Therefore he prepared thousands of posters with the slogan “whatever it takes”, and 30.000 people in that stadium had to hold this same poster. Blind obedience is the impact and consequence of a prayer where Hitler is seen as kind of forerunner of the Saddleback Church. You can watch these videos on Internet.
To refer positively to Hitler is a kind of anti-Semitism because it does not say that everything what happened in Germany from 1933 to 1945 was part of an anti-Jewish society, even before the Holocaust. For Jews and Holocaust survivors, but also for others, it is impossible to refer positively of any aspect of National Socialism 1933 until 1945. The veiling of history, ignoring the fact that in the Hitler Youth no Jews were allowed is in research on anti-Semitism called “secondary anti-Semitism”, a term Peter Schönbach, co-worker of Theodor W. Adorno created.
Furthermore: As a scholar Warren’s way of praying reminds me to the German catholic youth movement of the early 1920s. At that time groups like “Quickborn”, later also “Bund Neudeutschland” did invent open air mass ceremonies to pray for Jesus Christ as their “leader”. The catholic invention of mass prayer in the 1920s in Germany is part of their anti-individualistic, and also – referring to their journals like “Leuchtturm” or “Werkblätter” and other writing, which I studied extensively – anti-humanistic, and anti-Jewish ideology. They did invent blind obedience for their kind of (catholic) Christianity, praying with thousands of followers in public. A lot of the same Catholics of “Bund Neudeutschland” became Nazi party members or active agitators for National Socialism at least since 1933 and the early period of Nazi Germany.
Eigth decades later, in another world, we now witness a similar kind of worship as it seems, as Warren is referring to Hitler and passionate Nazi Germans. He also refers to Lenin, and Mao, but most important is his reference to Hitler, because Germany committed the unprecedented crimes of the Holocaust. Even though he says Hitler is “the incarnation of evil”, this is nothing but lip service. In fact it is the free choice of Warren to positively refer to Hitler and the masses of National Socialism. The blindness of the Hitler Youth and the willing executioners adult Germans became, are most important to understand Nazi anti-Semitism. To deny personality and subjectivity, and to plea for an “organic nation body”, in German “Volksgemeinschaft”, are part of the mass policies of Hitler and Nazi Germans.
Warren calls for “Radicals” in his 2005 prayer, because “moderate people get moderately nothing done….”. There is no doubt about the evangelical impact of every paragraph in Warren’s prayers. This is well known from the history of evangelical prayers like Billy Graham. Worse, Warren strengthens the “argument”, that only masses and radicals like Hitler and the Germans, did change the world. Essential part of Hitler is the Shoah. So it is a kind of anti-Semitism, if Warren refers to Hitler in a positive way, because 1) Hitler was radical, and only “radicals change the world”, 2) the Hitler Youth created words of total obedience with their own bodies, and this is a paradigm for Warren, and 3) the Californian prayer uses masses for his kind of Christianity, like saying “whatever it takes”, and 30.000 followers had to show the same time the same poster. This is how blind obedience does work.
It is a scandal that Obama did invite Warren for the inauguration prayer, as Warren wants his Christian followers to be like a Hitler Youth for Jesus. This seems not to be a taboo in America. And it is a shame that it is not a shame, actually. So I am still curious about the political culture of this country.