Know More News - Adam Green - The Christian Zionist Religious Right Revealed - Expose the Enemy

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March 24, 2022 - Know More News - Adam Green

29:28

The Christian Zionist Religious Right Revealed - Expose the Enemy

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	I think you can say, well, Putin's out of his mind.
	Yes, maybe so.
	But at the same time, he's being compelled by God.
	He went into the Ukraine, but that wasn't his goal.
	His goal was to move against Israel ultimately.
	And God is getting ready to do something amazing.
	And that will be fulfilled.
	And what Putin is doing by moving as he is to set up Ukraine as a staging ground for one of the armies and then across is Erdogan, Turkey.
	And you've got between them that little Dardanelles area.
	And it's going to happen.
	So I just say that is what's coming up.
	Is Putin crazy?
	Is he mad?
	Well, perhaps.
	But God says, I'm going to put hooks in your jaws and I'm going to draw you into this battle, whether you like it or not.
	And he's being compelled after the move into the Ukraine.
	He's being compelled to move again to get a land bridge and then across the Dardanelles with Turkey and watch what's going to happen next.
	You read your Bible because it's coming to pass.
	It would be easy to make fun of Pat Robertson returning from Medad to share his wisdom on the 700 Club.
	I was wondering if it's called the 700 Club because Pat Robertson is 700 years old.
	But in all seriousness, as much as it is fun to laugh at these televangelist loons, it downplays the very real influence the likes of Pat Robinson have, the historical roles that they've played in shaping the political landscape, and how they are part of a very serious network led by powerful people.
	So with that being said, let's go back and take a look at these clips from a documentary I made, Jonathris History of the American Century, Part 6.
	In the 1950s, the richest man in the world, an oil billionaire in Texas, invented a new form of television journalism.
	It pretended to be objective and balanced, but in fact it was hardcore right-wing propaganda.
	It was way ahead of its time because, in its fake neutrality, it prefigured the rise of the ultra-conservative right-wing media of the 1990s, like Fox News, with its copyrighted slogan, fair and balanced.
	The billionaire was called H.L. Hunt, Haroldson Lafayette Hunt.
	He made his fortune in the early 1930s by getting hold of one of the biggest oil fields in America, in the pine forests of East Texas.
	He was a ruthless, driven man, and from early on he became absolutely convinced that he had superhuman qualities that made him different from other humans.
	Here is a picture of Mr. Hunt, which gives you a sense of his conviction about himself.
	From the 1920s onwards, Hunt was a bigamist.
	He married two women and raised two families that were oblivious of each other.
	Hunt was a part of a group of extreme right-wing oilmen in Texas who had enormous influence because of their wealth.
	There is a brilliant book written about this group, The Big Rich by Brian Burrow.
	Burrow describes how they had first risen up in the 1930s because they loathed President Roosevelt, quote, a nigger-loving communist, unquote, as one oilman called him.
	They were convinced that Roosevelt's New Deal was really run by Jews and communists, or quote, social vermin, unquote, as they politely put it.
	A Texas congressman called Sam Rayburn summed up this group of right-wing oilmen, quote, all they do is hate, unquote.
	And he also turned to the new medium of television to promote his ultra-conservative views.
	In 1950, he wrote a pamphlet putting forward the idea of what he called a quote, educational facts league, unquote.
	Its purpose, Hunt wrote, quote, will be to secure an impartial presentation of all the news through all the news channels concerning issues of public interest, unquote.
	It would, said Hunt, be an organization where ordinary Americans would be supplied with the true facts of political life.
	Hunt announced that the organization would be called Facts Forum, which produced radio and television programs of conservative, anti-communist political commentary approved of by Hunt.
	That included the distribution of books by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, whose Senate campaign was financed by Hunt.
	Hunt discovered Dan Smute to be Facts Forum's public face.
	Smute had been an FBI agent and he was smooth and reasonable.
	Starting on radio but then moving to television, Smute presented a show called Facts Forum, which every week would claim to present a balanced presentation of the facts behind the news.
	Very reminiscent of the later catchphrase on Fox News, we report, you decide.
	Again, Hunt was ahead of his time because the show fused right-wing anti-communism with fundamentalist religion.
	A fundamentalist religion.
	So that is some background on H.L. Hunt and his role in developing the right-wing Christian fundamentalist base and mobilizing it politically.
	Hunt's son, Nelson Bunker Hunt, also helped in this process and continued his father's legacy financing key groups and organizations that will come to be known as cornerstones of a religious right.
	Nelson had key relationships with three major evangelical figures, Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHea and Pat Robertson.
	All were early members of a Council for National Policy.
	Hunt provided the start-up money for the Council for National Policy.
	All the men, including Paul Weirick, were key members of the CNP.
	LaHea officially founded the group in 1981 after resigning his pastorship to devote himself full time to building the Christian right.
	1981 was a busy year for Hunt.
	He also contributed $1 million to the moral majority that same year.
	The group was founded by Jerry Falwell along with Paul Weirick who coined the term moral majority.
	Tim LeHeare was also on the board of directors.
	The Moral Majority was a prominent American political organization associated with the Christian Right and Republican Party.
	It was founded in 1979 and became one of the largest political lobby groups of evangelical Christians in the United States during the 1980s and was credited with delivering two-thirds of the white evangelical Christian vote to Ronald Reagan during the 1980 presidential election.
	Perhaps the most important function of a moral majority was a mass voter registration campaign which is believed to have successfully registered some 2 million voters for the 1980 election.
	The new organization gained substantial business support.
	According to one account, Falwa's high-flame profile with Republican leaders and a moral majority attracted a new kind of contributor, the super donor.
	Texas oil billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt had given millions to the moral majority.
	Other contributors included life insurance moguls Arthur Williams and Art de Moss, cotton magnate Bo Adams and a wealthy Pennsylvania poultry farmer Don Hershey.
	The Coors family also provided funds and the corporate-backed Heritage Foundation was instrumental in founding the organization with Paul Weirick playing an especially central role.
	Consistent with the New Right philosophy of fusionism, evangelical Protestants began forming alliances with diverse religious groups, including conservative Catholics and Orthodox Jews.
	Despite his segregationist past, Falwell's moral majority was open to all races and gained some limited support among socially conservative black people.
	A particularly striking feature of this period was the rise of Christian Zionism.
	The Christian Zionists were staunch supporters of the State of Israel, based on a biblical prophecy that the Jewish state anticipated the second coming of Jesus.
	Jewish groups responded with some trepidation to the evangelical support, but ultimately welcomed the prospect of forging new alliances for the pro-Israel project.
	And finally, the evangelicals established common cause with corporate lobbyists seeking an expansion of the US military.
	The president of the American Security Council, a trade group of weapon manufacturers, developed close ties to one of the moral majority's affiliated organizations, the Religious Roundtable.
	Accordingly, many Christian conservatives advocated for an aggressive US military stance and justified this advocacy in theological terms.
	During the 1980 election campaign, the evangelicals played prominent public roles overwhelmingly in favour of Republican candidate Reagan.
	The evangelical mobilization was not decisive in Reagan's election given the substantial 10-point margin of victory over Carter.
	While the moral majority brought new voters to the Republican Party, especially among the vast numbers that the organization registered, it also probably alienated a sizable number as well.
	Overall, the net electoral benefit of the evangelicals to the Republican Party in 1980 was actually less than it had been in the earlier 1972 election.
	One of the key tactics the moral majority used in the 1980 presidential campaign was dirty tricks, otherwise known as negative political campaigning.
	This was done in an effort to deter would-be voters from voting for their political opposition.
	According to Jimmy Carter, in the autumn of 1980, Fourwell's moral majority purchased $10 million in commercials on southern radio and TV to brand me as a traitor to the South and no longer a Christian.
	This has been a key tactic implemented by the religious rights political strategists.
	Conservative.
	Many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome.
	Good government.
	They want everybody to vote.
	I don't want everybody to vote.
	Elections are not won by a majority of people.
	They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now.
	As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.
	The religious mobilization helped create a new and enduring force in US politics of a long term, whose strength grew over time.
	Polster George Gallup would later remark that religious affiliation remains one of the most accurate and least appreciated political indicators available.
	Christian conservatism has proven an enduring and essential permanent feature in the US political landscape.
	Hunt's relationship with Pat Robertson went back further.
	Over a decade earlier, In 1970, Hunt donated $10 million to Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network.
	Another connection of interest of Robertson's is to the Grace family.
	Prior to his career as a televangelist, Pat Robertson worked for two years as a financial analyst and management trainee at W.R. Grace Corps.
	Robertson was also godfather of the child of company president J. Peter Grace, another member of the Council for National Policy and president of the American Association of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
	Grace was a key figure in Operation Paperclip.
	PR Grace would go on to employ many Nazi émigrés via the operation after World War II.
	That brings us to this interesting connection.
	During his time as president of the U.S. Arm of the Knights of Malta, J. Peter Grace oversaw the operational assistance to El Salvador's military-led junta government.
	According to General Harry C. Adderault, Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network provided a U.S. arm of the Knights of Malta of $2 million for operational assistance to El Salvador's junta government.
	Pat Robertson's connections to U.S. covert operations do not end there.
	Pat Robertson was also involved with the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund and Iran-Contra.
	The main purpose of the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund was to divert attention from the covert channels which through real money flowed to the Contras in violation of the Boland Amendment.
	One of those channels was a specialized PR firm, International Business Communications, which pleaded guilty in 1987 to fraud by using a tax-exempt foundation to raise funds to arm the Contras.
	It had been a profitable business, according to the Iran-Contra Congressional Investigating Committee, which concluded that IBC had kept about $1.7 million of a $5 million each house of the Contras.
	Pat Robertson, Colorado Beer Baron, Joseph Coors, and Nelson Bunker Hunt were among the contributors at a $250 a-plate fundraiser dinner where Pat Robertson gave an invocation and led the Pledge of Allegiance.
	President Reagan also gave a speech.
	Hunt also financed the Contra effort by a National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty, which was a shell company used by Oliver North to provide funds and support for the Contras fighting the Sandinista government.
	Robertson avoided any scrutiny from investigations and went on to launch a run for the U.S. presidency in an effort to capitalize on the evangelical mobilization created by the Christian Right Network.
	Robertson decided to seek the Republican nomination of a 1988 presidential race.
	Good evening.
	This Christmas week begins with a series of disasters up to the point of when he ran a television ministry.
	He often referred to the miracles that he had performed with the help of the Lord.
	But since becoming a Republican presidential candidate, Robertson seldom refers to that part of his life.
	As NBC's Lisa Myers reports now, Robertson gave up his title as the reverend to run for president, and he has come up with a new billing.
	For God and country.
	Thank you.
	God bless you.
	And Robertson today for God and country.
	Marion Pat Robertson is an evangelical Christian who would be president.
	The storm, in a sense, broke off.
	He believes his prayers diverted a hurricane.
	That that was God's sign he should run for president.
	And it was a miracle.
	Praise God Almighty.
	Hallelujah.
	Robertson believes that God speaks through him on many matters, including miraculous healing.
	There's a woman here with cancer of the womb, and I don't think it's been diagnosed.
	You didn't know what it was.
	It's been excessive bleeding, and God has healed that right now tonight.
	It's healed.
	Thank you, Lord.
	But now, just three months after trading The title Reverend for Candidate, Robertson is trying to blur his religious past.
	He denies ever being an evangelist.
	I've never been an evangelist in my life.
	I'm the head of the fifth largest cable network in America.
	He emphasizes the secular in campaign commercials.
	Only one candidate running for president has built a small business into a major national corporation.
	That business is the Christian Broadcasting Network, CBN, where for almost 20 years he hosted the 700 Club, preaching to millions of fundamentalist Christians about everything from saving souls to the end of the world.
	Pat Robertson takes an in-depth look at earth-shaking biblical prophecies being fulfilled right now and startling events foreshadowing the end of the world as we know it.
	This is Jerry Straub.
	He's from Gerard Straub, a former CBN executive, says that at a prayer meeting he taped in 1980, Robertson prophesied that those startling events could begin in 1982.
	And he came in and outlined what he believed God was telling him was in store for the world.
	The hour of his wrath has come.
	Now, if I'm hearing him right, things are starting to happen.
	All we know for sure is that the U.S. is going to stand against Russia and that Russia's going down.
	We don't know if it'll be nuclear.
	It could be.
	It doesn't have to be.
	It could be.
	But there could be some big boom-boom all around going on when this thing starts.
	There was a literal time that this was going to happen.
	In fact, at CBN, we were actively engaged in planning to televise the second coming of Jesus.
	Pat Robertson gives you insights to events.
	Robertson believes the second coming of Jesus will follow this ultimate Holocaust.
	Some, including the pastor of the church to which Robertson belongs, fear that his apocalyptic religious beliefs could affect President Robertson's foreign policy decisions.
	In practical terms, it might mean if the world is going to come to a catastrophic end anyway, what is to prevent me from pushing the button?
	Some also worry that Robertson's religious beliefs could affect civil rights.
	In his book called Answers, Robertson notes that in the Old Testament, homosexuals were executed.
	He says the New Testament tells us they shall receive in their own bodies the punishment for their actions.
	Robertson on women.
	The woman is supposed to be in subjection to her husband, the husband.
	And on non-believers.
	Individual Christians are the only ones really, and Jewish people are the only ones that are qualified.
	Obviously you're not saying that there are no other people qualified to be in government or whatever if they aren't Christians or Jews.
	What you're saying is...
	I just said it.
	I believe it.
	When questioned, Robertson says, despite such beliefs and statements, as president, he would seek peace and uphold the law.
	Still, for candidate Robertson, the past is likely to remain a dogged companion.
	Lisa Myers, NBC News, New York.
	NBC News repeatedly asked for an interview with Robertson in connection with the issues raised in this report.
	Campaign officials, however, declined to make him available.
	In an effort to capitalize on the evangelical mobilization created by the Christian Right Network, Robertson decided to seek the Republican nomination of a 1988 presidential race.
	However, the evangelical base was mobilized to get behind the then vice president, George H.W. Bush, as a natural continuation and successor to Reagan.
	The moral majority endorsed Bush in an effort to encourage evangelical support behind him.
	The decision caused some backlash, and Robertson created a Christian coalition, the Moral Majority 2.0.
	After his well-funded campaign for president, Robertson used the remainder of his campaign resources to jump-start the formation of the Christian coalition's voter mobilization effort.
	Americans for Robertson accumulated a mailing list of several million conservative Christians interested in politics.
	This mailing provided the basis of the new organization.
	So you can see just like the moral majority how important the mailing lists were in the successful mobilization of evangelicals.
	Their goals, I mean, and when we were researching Holy Terror, they were very much, when Ronald Reagan was elected, they were very much chest-pounding, a lot of them.
	And they were saying how they had, they told us what their goals were.
	The first one was to take over one of the major political parties.
	The second one was to take both houses of Congress, one at a time, or both, whatever.
	Then the White House, the Supreme Court.
	And it's like they have, this is what we heard 40 years ago.
	So this is, of course, what has now come to fruition.
	But it struck us in the beginning, in the 80s, it was a very outfront movement because they were, as Flo said, they were chest pounding about their great triumph with Ronald Reagan's election.
	And they laid all their cards on the table.
	But during that same period, the religious right, the Republicans, they all targeted the media with claims that they were persecuting Christians and that media people were secular humanists and atheists who were out to attack Christianity.
	And the intimidating force that had on our colleagues in the media was something we saw and we could feel.
	Oh, yes.
	When Holy Terror came out.
	We would go into radio stations and television studios and people would say, oh, we can't put you on the air, not in this community.
	And we saw, they said that we just make too much money from these televangelists or you're going to upset the housewives in our audience too much.
	But now what you've seen is this whole debate over abortion, we have not heard the word Christian or born-again evangelical Christian linked to it at all.
	It's just the so-called Republican base.
	It's always in quotes.
	And the base is the new code word that the media have all accepted and that everyone's doing so that they don't look like they're singling out the born-again Christian component.
	But what's happened is, just as you know from your time in evangelicalism, the degree to which born-agains have been surrendered and been drawn into these movements at the command of their preachers or at the command of these national organizations is still what's driving the Republican base.
	It's what put and keeps Donald Trump in office.
	And the Republican Party will do nothing but give them domestic policy successes so that they stay on board.
	Without them, there would be no Donald Trump.
	There wouldn't even be a Republican majority in this country.
	But now when you put those things together with the base as far as Christian fundamentalists or religious right fundamentalists, and you put it together with a real cult of personality, which is what we have, and maybe even a little bit of information disease,
	this combination of factors, all based on the same sets of control systems that we have found both in Holy Terror and in snapping.
	And in Holy Terror, we brought forward for the first time the whole issue of emotional control.
	In the cult phenomenon in snapping, we were not dealing with that very much in the cult.
	But when we were dealing with Holy Terror, that very much was one of the things that we found in relation to the fundamentalists, Bible-based Christian, was emotional control.
	One thing that struck me about reading Holy Terror, you're putting your finger on things back in the early 1980s.
	I came across a quote that said that back in 1982, when you wrote the book, their objectives were the following.
	They said, or you said they wanted to Christianize the nation.
	They wanted to fill all government positions with Bible-believing Christians.
	So you've got Dominion Reconstructionist theology to gain ascendancy over the national media.
	So you could put Fox News, televangelists, whoever, to have fundamentalist beliefs taught as science in public schools.
	And we're seeing a resurgence of that, fighting evolution, to dictate the meaning of human life, which is abortion.
	And finally, to convert every person on earth.
	And what really struck me about Holy Terror was like this issue of missions, worldwide missions, because you bring the point out that actually the missions movement is about, it's about converting every single person in the world.
	It's not just an American thing.
	It's a worldwide campaign to go against folk religions and other religions in other places and replace it with their version of Christianity.
	Exactly.
	And that's where, once again, Campus Crusade was so, was just so open about those goals.
	We went to their headquarters.
	We interviewed their leading officials.
	We looked at all of their documentation and all of their literature.
	And they stated it, come help change the world.
	And the goal was to convert every man, woman, and child on earth.
	And now you've seen this replicated in hundreds, maybe thousands of American-based and global evangelical groups that are really aiming to do that.
	We have in Holy Terror, we managed to get through a confidential source a copy of their international employment job offers.
	And so many of those jobs all around the world were for young missionaries and young campus crusaders try to convert or to bring into the fold people in the military, people in governments all over the world.
	And we just have it all printed there.
	That wasn't public knowledge.
	Literally black and white.
	The idea that they go in and with, I mean, they go in like an intelligence operation, a covert operations, you know, to put people in the right place in the head of a country, to put them in their office or to put them in the right place in the military or something like that.
	It's unbelievable.
	And that's the thing.
	I came across it when I was in Africa.
	I was over there when I was still a Christian in 2001.
	We went to Kenya in Nairobi.
	And what was really surprising, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but it was still surprising when we talked to the locals in Kenya, because we were part of a church group.
	Their theology was straight American Western fundamentalist Christianity.
	I'm thinking, what?
	Where is this coming from?
	And as we talked, it was clear that, well, of course, it made perfect sense because their theology was informed by Western missionaries in Kenya.
	So it's right all over the world.
	And those crusades were funded by very rich American evangelicals, many of whom were the heads of major corporations or tied into political organizations.
	Exactly.

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