Waiting
For The Apocalypse
By George Monbiot
21 April, 2004
The Guardian
To
understand what is happening in the Middle East, you must first understand
what is happening in Texas. To understand what is happening there, you
should read the resolutions passed at the state's Republican party conventions
last month. Take a look, for example, at the decisions made in Harris
County, which covers much of Houston.1
The delegates began
by nodding through a few uncontroversial matters: homosexuality is contrary
to the truths ordained by God; "any mechanism to process, license,
record, register or monitor the ownership of guns" should be repealed;
income tax, inheritance tax, capital gains tax and corporation tax should
be abolished; and immigrants should be deterred by electric fences.2
Thus fortified, they turned to the real issue: the affairs of a small
state 7000 miles away. It was then, according to a participant, that
the "screaming and near fistfights" began.
I don't know what
the original motion said, but apparently it was "watered down significantly"
as a result of the shouting match. The motion they adopted stated that
Israel has an undivided claim to Jerusalem and the West Bank, that Arab
states should be pressured to absorb refugees from Palestine, and that
Israel should do whatever it wishes in seeking to eliminate terrorism.3
Good to see that the extremists didn't prevail then.
But why should all
this be of such pressing interest to the people of a state which is
seldom celebrated for its fascination with foreign affairs? The explanation
is slowly becoming familiar to us, but we still have some difficulty
in taking it seriously.
In the United States,
several million people have succumbed to an extraordinary delusion.
In the 19th century, two immigrant preachers cobbled together a series
of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to be a
consistent narrative: Jesus will return to earth when certain preconditions
have been met. The first of these was the establishment of a state of
Israel. The next involves Israel's occupation of the rest of its "Biblical
lands" (most of the Middle East), and the rebuilding of the Third
Temple on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa
mosques. The legions of the Antichrist will then be deployed against
Israel, and their war will lead to a final showdown in the valley of
Armageddon. The Jews will either burn or convert to Christianity, and
the Messiah will return to earth.
What makes the story
so appealing to Christian fundamentalists is that before the big battle
begins, all "true believers" (ie those who believe what THEY
believe) will be lifted out of their clothes and wafted up to heaven
during an event called the Rapture. Not only do the worthy get to sit
at the right hand of God, but they will be able to watch, from the best
seats, their political and religious opponents being devoured by boils,
sores, locusts and frogs, during the seven years of Tribulation which
follow.
The true believers
are now seeking to bring all this about. This means staging confrontations
at the old temple site (in 2000 three US Christians were deported for
trying to blow up the mosques there)4, sponsoring Jewish settlements
in the occupied territories, demanding ever more US support for Israel,
and seeking to provoke a final battle with the Muslim world/Axis of
Evil/United Nations/European Union/France or whoever the legions of
the Antichrist turn out to be.
The believers are
convinced that they will soon be rewarded for their efforts. The Antichrist
is apparently walking among us, in the guise of Kofi Annan, Javier Solana,
Yasser Arafat or, more plausibly, Silvio Berlusconi.5 The Walmart corporation
is also a candidate (in my view a very good one), because it wants to
radio-tag its stock, thereby exposing humankind to the Mark of the Beast.6
By clicking on www.raptureready.com, you can discover how close you
might be to flying out of your pyjamas. The infidels among us should
take note that the Rapture Index currently stands at 144, just one point
below the critical threshold, beyond which the sky will be filled with
floating nudists. Beast Government, Wild Weather and Israel are all
trading at the maximum five points (the EU is debating its constitution,
there was a freak hurricane in the South Atlantic, Hamas has sworn to
avenge the killing of its leaders), but the second coming is currently
being delayed by an unfortunate decline in drug abuse among teenagers
and a weak showing by the Antichrist (both of which score only two).
We can laugh at
these people, but we should not dismiss them. That their beliefs are
bonkers does not mean they are marginal. American pollsters believe
that between 15 and 18% of US voters belong to churches or movements
which subscribe to these teachings.7 A survey in 1999 suggested that
this figure included 33% of Republicans.8 The best-selling contemporary
books in the United States are the 12 volumes of the Left Behind series,
which provide what is usually described as a "fictionalised"
account of the Rapture (this, apparently, distinguishes it from the
other one), with plenty of dripping details about what will happen to
the rest of us. The people who believe all this don't believe it just
a little; for them it is a matter of life eternal and death.
And among them are
some of the most powerful men in America. John Ashcroft, the attorney-general,
is a true believer, so are several prominent senators and the House
majority leader, Tom DeLay. Mr DeLay (who is also the co-author of the
marvellously-named DeLay-Doolittle Amendment, postponing campaign finance
reforms) travelled to Israel last year to tell the Knesset that "there
is no middle ground, no moderate position worth taking."9
So here we have
a major political constituency - representing much of the current president's
core vote - in the most powerful nation on earth, which is actively
seeking to provoke a new world war. Its members see the invasion of
Iraq as a warm-up act, as Revelations (9:14-15) maintains that four
angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates" will
be released "to slay the third part of men." They batter down
the doors of the White House as soon as its support for Israel wavers:
when Bush asked Ariel Sharon to pull his tanks out of Jenin in 2002,
he received 100,000 angry emails from Christian fundamentalists, and
never mentioned the matter again.10
The electoral calculation,
crazy as it appears, works like this. Governments stand or fall on domestic
issues. For 85% of the US electorate, the Middle East is a foreign issue,
and therefore of secondary interest when they enter the polling booth.
For 15% of the electorate, the Middle East is not just a domestic matter,
it's a personal one: if the president fails to start a conflagration
there, his core voters don't get to sit at the right hand of God. Bush,
in other words, stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli aggression
than he stands to lose by restraining it. He would be mad to listen
to these people. He would also be mad not to.
George Monbiot's
book The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order is now published
in paperback. www.monbiot.com
References: 1. http://www.harriscountygop.com/sections/sdconv/sdconv.asp
2. eg. Committee
on Resolutions, Harris County Republican Party, 27th March 2004. Final
report of Senatorial District 17 Convention. http://www.harriscountygop.com/sections/sdconv/sdconv.asp
3. ibid.
4. Paul Vallely,
7th September 2003. The Eve of Destruction. The Independent on Sunday.
5. eg. http://www.raptureready.us
6. eg. http://www.raptureready.com/rap16.html
(note: 5 and 6 are rival sites)
7. Megan K. Stack,
31st July 2003. House's DeLay Bonds With Israeli Hawks, Los Angeles
Times; Matthew Engel, 28th October 2002. Meet the new Zionists. The
Guardian; Paul Vallely, ibid.
8. Donald E. Wagner,
28th June 2003. Marching to Zion: the evangelical-Jewish alliance. Christian
Century.
9. Leader, 1st August
2003. DeLay's Foreign Meddling. Los Angeles Times.
10. Jane Lampman,
18th February 2004. The End of the World. The Christian Science Monitor.