The unholy trinity of Trinity Church

(Note: See, below, quotes from Stanley Kurtz’s article showing Obama’s radical politics and his rejection of black assimilation in America.)

Tonight I watched for the first time Michael Pfleger’s infamous “sermon” at Trinity United Church last week, the part where, in full “acting out” mode designed to create maximum emotional response in his whooping-it-up black audience, he mocks Hillary Clinton over her supposed racial fury at Obama. More significantly, though it hasn’t been mentioned nearly as often, Pfleger in scorching tones of contempt tells white Americans what they have to do to clear themselves of the guilt of racism, namely give away the entire country and all its accumulated wealth. It is staggering. People like Pfleger, Jeremiah Wright, and Wright’s successor Otis Moss (described by Obama as a “wonderful young pastor”) live to destroy America. And Obama, the spiritual son of Wright, is a long-time friend of Pfleger’s. According to MSNBC, they have known each other since Obama’s days as a community activist, and Obama brought him to Iowa last year to lead an interfaith forum for the campaign.

Churchill wrote in The Gathering Storm:

Thereafter mighty forces were adrift, the void was open, and into that void after a pause there strode a maniac of ferocious genius, the repository and expression of the most virulent hatreds that have ever corroded the human breast—Corporal Hitler.

Wright, Moss, and Pfleger are hardly geniuses, they have no plans to conquer the world, and I doubt they have any intentions to exterminate anyone. But their breasts are certainly corroded with virulent hatreds, which, through their shouting, jumping, gyrating, screaming sermons, they are expert at conveying to their eager black audiences, who go collectively ecstatic at the attacks on the evil white man. And a void has opened in our society—the void of liberalism—that allows these spreaders of poison free rein.

The services at Trinity Church are the black American equivalent of a Nuremberg rally. And the presumptive Democratic nominee for president was a devout congregant there for 20 years.

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Kevin writes:

You said,

The services at Trinity Church are the black American equivalent of a Nuremberg rally. And the presumptive Democratic nominee for president was a devout congregant there for 20 years.

That really puts things into their clearest perspective. I can’t imagine anyone summing up the significance of this any better than you just did here.

The problem is that according to liberalism these people are permanent victims of bigotry and can’t possibly be seen as bigots themselves. But bigots they are, and the one good thing is that I think the realization of this fact is starting to sink in with the general public such as can be seen with many of the Hillary Clinton supporters.

LA replies:

But of course the Nazis also saw themselves as the victims of bigotry, the bigotry of international Jewry that was holding them down and humiliating them and blocking them from their national destiny. The underlying paradigm here is VFR commenter Matt’s idea of the oppressed Ubermenschen demanding its rights as against the oppressive Untermenschen. The oppressed are the supermen, being held down by sub-humans who have power over them. It’s the same with Islam. The non-Muslims, especially the Jews, are sub-humans who by rejecting Islam are subjecting the Muslims to unbearable insult and humiliation which can only end when the non-Muslims are brought under the power of the Muslims or killed.

Mark Jaws writes:

I loved your reference to the crazed congregation at Trinity Church as a black American Nurenburg rally. That was priceless, but while ranting blacks may exhibit Nazi like characteristics, let’s not go too far with our comparisons and insult the Nazis.

First, to the Nazi mindset there were indeed actual threats from International Jewry. In the Fatherland German right wing nationalists could point to the failed leftist, Jewish-led Sparticist uprisings of 1919, and more importantly, to the lurking Soviet threat, which counted among its top leaders a disproportionate amount of ethnic Jews. Whether we like it or not, most of us right wing Jews need to confront this unpleasant truth about the prominent role our kinsmen played in creating one of the most diabolical monstrosities the world has seen. This is not to soft pedal Nazism, but rather try to understand that to a traditionalist German after WW I, “international Jewry” in the form of bolshevism may have indeed posed a threat. Of course, how the Nazis dealt with all Jews once they worked out the final solution is another question.

On the other hand, to American blacks there is no threat from white America. It has been a good 40 to 50 years since whitey has done anything which could come even close to menacing more than a handful of blacks. In fact, white America has provided blacks with a standard of living which they could not even dream of achieving left to their own devices. Today, the white man has degenerated into spineless and supine Eloi, completely incapable of standing up against black and mestizo encroachment. Of course, we at VFR are working to change that, but the fact is blacks have no cause to fear whites. Of course, in their minds, or what passes for minds, whitey is forever lurking, and always responsible for any of their shortcomings.

LA replies:

There was a real Communist threat to Germany that the Nazis were opposing BEFORE the Nazis came to power, and their opposition to it was a key factor in enabling them to come to power. But AFTER the Nazis came to power, Communism posed no threat to Germany. Once the Nazis were in power, the focus of the Nazi demonization program became the Jews, international Jewry, Jewish capitalism, middle-class (not Communist) Jews, Jews as a race. When Hitler invaded Poland (which he had immediately preceded with a non-aggression pact with the USSR, meaning that Soviet Communism posed no threat to Germany at the time that Hitler invaded Poland), he said it was because international Jewry threatened Germany. So his anti-Jewish program (and indeed his initiating of the Second World War) was against an imaginary mortal enemy threatening Germany’s existence. That last statement is proved by the fact that if Germany had not launched the war, nothing would have threatened Germany’s existence.

Ben W. writes:

Stanley Kurtz’s articles at NRO on Obama’s past have been very good. The latest has a quote from Obama that is quite revealing as to the extent to which Obama himself actually did buy into TUUC’s black anti-bourgeois separationist\liberation theology. Kurtz writes:

By providing us with an in-depth picture of Obama’s political worldview on the eve of his elective career, Hank De Zutter’s, “What Makes Obama Run?” lives up to its title. The first thing to note here is that Obama presents his political hopes for the black community as a third way between two inadequate alternatives. First, Obama rejects, “the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation—which helps a few upwardly mobile blacks to ‘move up, get rich, and move out…. ’ “ This statement might surprise many Obama supporters, who seem to think of him as the epitome of integrationism. Yet Obama’s repudiation of integrationist upward mobility is fully consistent with his career as a community organizer, his general sympathy for leftist critics of the American “system,” and of course his membership at Trinity. Obama, we are told, “quickly learned that integration was a one-way street, with blacks expected to assimilate into a white world that never gave ground.” Compare these statements by Obama with some of the remarks in Jeremiah Wright’s Trumpet, and the resemblance is clear. [Emphasis added.]

Having disposed of assimilation, Obama goes on to criticize “the politics of black rage and black nationalism”—although less on substance than on tactics. Obama upbraids the politics of black power for lacking a practical strategy. Instead of diffusing black rage by diverting it to the traditional American path of assimilation and middle-class achievement, Obama wants to capture the intensity of black anger and use it to power an effective political organization. Obama says, “he’s tired of seeing the moral fervor of black folks whipped up—at the speaker’s rostrum and from the pulpit—and then allowed to dissipate because there’s no agenda, no concrete program for change.” The problem is not fiery rhetoric from the pulpit, but merely the wasted anger it so usefully stirs.

Ben continues:

And now Kurtz’s excellent conclusion:

So it would appear that Obama’s own writings solve the mystery of why he stayed at Trinity for 20 years. Obama’s long-held and decidedly audacious hope has been to spread Wright’s radical spirit by linking it to a viable, left-leaning political program, with Obama himself at the center. The revolutionizing power of a politically awakened black church is not some side issue, or merely a personal matter, but has been the signature theme of Obama’s grand political strategy.

Kurtz has been tracing Obama’s ideological and religious roots through three detail-laden articles, and I think he hits the nail on the head with respect to Obama’s relationship to TUUC. The relationship was not accidental.

And here’s another revealing quote from Obama:

Nowhere is the promise of organizing more apparent than in the traditional black churches. Possessing tremendous financial resources, membership and—most importantly—values and biblical traditions that call for empowerment and liberation, the black church is clearly a slumbering giant in the political and economic landscape of cities like Chicago.

Notice the use of these three words by Obama (Obama’s triangulation)—empowerment, liberation, and church. I’m quite sure Obama was very familiar with black liberation theology as these are its key words.

Here’s an interesting essay written by Obama regarding “community organization.”

Ben continues:

Obama’s own writing is an eye-opener regarding his concept of and program for the amalgamation of the church body and the body politic:

Over the past few years, however, more and more young and forward-thinking pastors have begun to look at community organizations such as the Developing Communities Project in the far south side and GREAT in the Grand Boulevard area as a powerful tool for living the social gospel, one which can educate and empower entire congregations and not just serve as a platform for a few prophetic leaders. Should a mere 50 prominent black churches, out of the thousands that exist in cities like Chicago, decide to collaborate with a trained organizing staff, enormous positive changes could be wrought in the education, housing, employment and spirit of inner-city black communities, changes that would send powerful ripples throughout the city.

The church is no incidental organization in Obama’s vision of political action!

Ben W. continues:

Last year I read Hillary’s senior college thesis on Saul Alinsky (available as a PDF on the Internet). Today I came across Obama’s essay “Beyond Alinsky.” Hillary was offered a position with the Alinsky organization but instead chose to go to graduate school. Obama spent three years in the Alinsky organization. Two Alinsky inspired candidates. And both of them got their ideological bearings in Chicago. Amazing.

Paul Gottfried writes:

My problem with this interpretation is one of context. The black nationalists are every bit as loathsome but usually far less intelligent than Hitler. But even more important, the majority in this country is not black but braindead white. It is highly doubtful that blacks will ever be in a position to do to American whites what the Nazis did to European Jewry.

LA replies:

I was not, of course. suggesting that blacks would ever get into such a position. The comparison between Trinity Church and Nuremberg involves a speaker’s provoking collective ecstatic hate in his audience.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 02, 2008 01:55 AM | Send