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Reza Aslan claims anti-fascist Pope Pius XI was a fascist

Jun 19, 2014 11:01 am By Robert Spencer

AslanPiusXINowadays if you parrot the accepted establishment opinions, you can rise far and fast, and be hailed as a “respected scholar” even if you’re, well, dimwitted and arrogant. In particular, if you oppose America’s defense against the global jihad, hate Israel, love those who wish to destroy both the U.S. and Israel, claim that Muhammad was peaceful and Jesus was violent, and profess to debunk orthodox Christianity, you can become the next media star: hence Reza Aslan.

Why does it matter how vacuous Reza Aslan really is? Because he is a quintessential example of how those whom the mainstream media elevates as authorities are generally of the Emperor’s-New-Clothes variety, and the entire view of the domestic and international political situation that the major news outlets present is out of focus, misleading, and bringing this nation to catastrophe — as is becoming increasingly apparent.

Reza Aslan is, of course, the supercilious, foul-mouthed media darling who keeps revealing his abysmal ignorance in interview after interview, making howling errors of fact, including his recent ridiculous claim that the idea of resurrection “simply doesn’t exist in Judaism,” despite numerous passages to the contrary in the Hebrew Scriptures. He has also referred to “the reincarnation, which Christianity talks about” — although he later claimed that one was a “typo.” In yet another howler he later insisted was a “typo,” he claimed that the Biblical story of Noah was barely four verses long — which he then corrected to forty, but that was wrong again, as it is 89 verses long. Interviewed at the BBC about Obama’s meeting with Pope Francis, Aslan claimed that the “founding philosophy of the Jesuits” was “the preferential option for the poor.” But in reality, the Jesuits were founded in 1534, and according to the California Catholic Conference, “the popular term ‘preferential option for the poor’ is relatively new. Its first use in a Church document is in 1968 from a meeting of the Conference of Latin American Bishops held in Medellin, Columbia.” So Aslan was only 434 years off — recalling when he called Turkey the second most populous Muslim country, which was only about 100 million people off.

And now he has invoked Pope Pius XI as an example of how “historically, Fascist ideology did infect corners of the Catholic world.” In reality, Pope Pius XI concluded a Concordat with the Hitler regime in 1933, but after he saw how the Nazis were cheerfully violating its terms and persecuting Jews as well as Catholics, he issued the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge in 1937 — with the original pointedly issued in German instead of the usual Latin. In it, he excoriated the “so-called myth of race and blood,” and declared: “Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community – however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things – whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.” That statement is a direct rejection of the very heart of fascism.

Aslan has, of course, confused Pius XI with his successor Pius XII, who has been widely accused of fascist sympathies. Whether or not Pope Pius XII actually had fascist sympathies is not the point here, and it would be nice if the comments field weren’t devoted to that controversy, although it probably will be. The point is that such a “renowned religious scholar” such as Reza Aslan should not make such an elementary mistake. But this is, of course, the man who writes “than” for “then”; apparently thinks the Latin word “et” is an abbreviation; and writes “clown’s” for “clowns.” Aslan is less a “religious scholar” than he is a marginally literate, unevenly educated charlatan with a talent for telling the mainstream media what it wants to hear. His big secret is that he is really not all that bright, and is in way over his head, asked to comment all the time on matters that are way beyond his competence — and he knows it, which is why he lashes out so ferociously against anyone who dares to challenge him.

So it was in this case. When I called Aslan out on his error, he responded: AslanGoldberg“Moron Spencer doesn’t realize that tweet was meant in conversation with @JeffreyGoldberg.”

What? He was talking to Goldberg so it is all right for him to confuse two different and important historical figures with similar names? This response was typical of Aslan’s adolescent vacuity, but I was surprised he didn’t claim it was a “typo.”

Even worse, Aslan’s agenda is ultimately insidious: he is a Board member of a lobbying group for the bloodthirsty and genocidally antisemitic Iranian regime. Aslan tried to pass off Iran’s genocidally-minded former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a liberal reformer and has called on the U.S. Government to negotiate with Ahmadinejad himself, as well as with the jihad terror group Hamas. Aslan has even praised the jihad terror group Hizballah as “the most dynamic political and social organization in Lebanon,” and has also praised the anti-Semitic, misogynist, Islamic supremacist Muslim Brotherhood, which is dedicated in its own words, according to a captured internal document, to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.” Aslan wrote: “The Muslim Brotherhood will have a significant role to play in post-Mubarak Egypt. And that is good thing.” Millions of Egyptians obviously disagree. He has also applauded and called for the forcible shutdown of the free speech of those who hates — a quintessentially fascist impulse.

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Comments

  1. John C. Barile says

    Jun 19, 2014 at 11:09 am

    Robert, you should refer readers to your friend’s book, Rabbi David G. Dalin’s The Myth of Hitler’s Pope, in which he exonerates Papa Eugenio Pacelli–and excoriates Hitler’s mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseni.

    • Charli Main says

      Jun 19, 2014 at 11:39 am

      Do you think its possible that Adolph Hitler was a secret convert to Islam and that al- Husseni was Hitler spiritual instructor.?? His mullah/ulamas

      • John C. Barile says

        Jun 19, 2014 at 11:53 am

        Hitler did admire Islam’s martial spirit; in that, he held it in greater esteem than he did Christianity.

    • Stanton Cordray says

      Jun 19, 2014 at 11:53 am

      You will find, when you cite Rabbi Dahlin’s book, that it is commonly dismissed as a paid hack job, more biased than the attacks it was meant to answer.

      Whether that is a fair view of it or not I don’t know, but I have certainly found that I didn’t get far with accusers of Pius XII when I referred to it.

      • John C. Barile says

        Jun 19, 2014 at 1:53 pm

        They obviously don’t care for the substance of a person’s book; they only care what “respectable opinion” says about the person. But then, their arguments are ad hominem anyway.

      • John C. Barile says

        Jun 19, 2014 at 2:13 pm

        Of course, we all know what a great humanitarian and lover of peace and his fellow man the Mufti was. /sarc

      • awake says

        Jun 19, 2014 at 7:29 pm

        @ Stanton,

        Well, Robert’s books and his analysis and commentary here at JW is routinely dismissed as a “hack job”, by Muslims, leftists and Islam apologists, so I fail to see a reason for your comment, especially since you provided no sources for your claim, and then state that you have not done any independent research to determine the validity of that claim.

    • voegelinian says

      Jun 19, 2014 at 3:14 pm

      Rabbi Dalin also co-edited with Joseph Bottum a symposium of different analysts weighing in on the issue, showing every which way but Sunday the mountain of evidence exonerating Pius XII, in The Pius war: responses to the critics of Pius XII (2004). [By the way, major typo in Spencer’s report — it’s Pius XII, not XI.]

      As I wrote on my blog over three years ago:

      Not only do the authors definitively refute that canard, they interestingly delve into the complex sociocultural phenomenon of the construction of the myth itself, which spanned quite a few years.

      Here’s a taste, of the solid evidence Rabbi Dalin brings to the table to refute that (all too commonly believed) canard:

      “Curiously, nearly everyone pressing this line today — from the ex-seminarians John Cornwell and Gary Wills — to the ex-priest James Carroll — is a lapsed or angry Catholic. For Jewish leaders of a previous generation, this campaign against Pius XII would have been a source of shock. During and after the war, many well-known Jews — Albert Einstein, Golda Meir, Moshe Sharrett, Isaac Herzog, and innumerable others — publicly expressed their gratitude to Pius. In his 1967 book Three Popes and the Jews, the diplomat Pinchas Lapide (who served as Israeli consul in Milan and interviewed Italian Holocaust survivors) declared the Church under Pius “was instrumental in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands.” (chapter 1, “Pius XII and the Jews”, p. 14).

      There’s much more, easily enough to destroy that silly (but, alas, all too fashionable) myth. And incidentally, the Introduction by Joseph Bottum to that book provides a helpful overview of the development of the revisionist myth itself over the past few decades.

      Note: Google Books provides free sampling of the Introduction and Chapter One in their entirety, and also a good deal of many of the other essays:

      http://books.google.com/books?id=T9yWKphWAewC&lpg=PP1&dq=Rabbi%20David%20G.%20Dalin&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q=Rabbi%20David%20G.%20Dalin&f=false

      • Robert Spencer says

        Jun 19, 2014 at 4:32 pm

        Uh, Voeg, the Pius XI/Pius XII typo in this post is Aslan’s, not mine. That’s the whole focus of the post. Maybe you should read it again.

        • awake says

          Jun 19, 2014 at 7:08 pm

          Ouch, that’s gonna leave a mark, especially on one who routinely criticizes other “allies” for not reading carefully, and inexplicably, continues to frequent this site, while dedicating an entire blog criticizing Robert and many other JW commenters as well.

        • mortimer says

          Jun 20, 2014 at 12:43 am

          The point of the post is that Aslan doesn’t check his facts.

          The point of the post is that when Muslims are butchering EACH OTHER in Iraq and Syria and kidnapping in Nigeria, ASLAN is SILENT about that and points a finger at Christians who SAVED Jews from the likes of the ARCH EVIL MUFTI of Jerusalem (and friend of Hitler and Himmler) Haj Mohammed Effendi Amin el-Husseini.

          Haj Mohammed Effendi Amin el-Husseini gave the Germans helpful advice about how to destroy the Jews faster and more efficiently and promised the support of MUSLIMS for FASCISM!

    • mortimer says

      Jun 20, 2014 at 12:36 am

      On April 28, 1935, four years before the War even started, Pacelli gave a speech that aroused the attention of the world press. Speaking to an audience of 250,000 pilgrims in Lourdes, France, the future Pius XII stated that the Nazis “…dress up old errors with new tinsel…they are possessed by the superstition of a race and blood cult.”

      Pope Pius XII led by example and was copied by priests, religious orders and the laity who massively risked their lives and hid Jews as much as they could. Those who were caught also perished and with them their stories.

      Throughout the German occupation of Italy, some 5,000 Jews in Rome. No less than 3,000 Jews found refuge at one time at the Pope’s summer residence at Castel Gandolfo; sixty lived for nine months at the Jesuit Gregorian University, and half a dozen slept in the cellar of the Pontifical Bible Institute.

      The Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Isaac Herzog, sent the Pope a personal message of thanks on February 28, 1944, in which he said: “The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion which form the very foundations of true civilization, are doing for us unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of divine Providence in this world.”

      Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, also made a statement of thanks: “What the Vatican did will be indelibly and eternally engraved in our hearts. . . . Priests and even high prelates did things that will forever be an honor to Catholicism.”

      Rabbi Barry Dov Schwartz wrote in Conservative Judaism (summer issue, 1964) : ‘Many Jews were persuaded to convert after the war, as a sign of gratitude, to that institution which had saved their lives.’

      At the time of the pope’s death, Golda Meir (later Israeli prime minister) said, “During the ten years of Nazi terror, when our people passed through the horrors of martyrdom, the Pope raised his voice to condemn the persecutors and to commiserate with their victims”.

    • BUTSeriously says

      Jun 20, 2014 at 3:32 am

      However, the world of God & truth seekers cannot be silent of a Roman Pope calling Muslims as Palestinians. None can be confused it is a covert genocidal aspiration, aside from being history’s greatest reigning hoax. The Vat is loading terrible baggage on otherwise good Christian folk.

    • shirklessbogan says

      Jun 21, 2014 at 6:41 am

      This has nothing to do with this article.
      But I would be interested in Mr Spencer
      writing something about the
      12er shia claiming the Qur’an most read
      has verses rearrange in a different order.
      Is this true.
      Reason it seems at the moment shia & sunni Lov each other to much.
      Thanks

  2. Robert Spencer says

    Jun 19, 2014 at 11:13 am

    That is a good book, but as I said above, not the point of this post.

    • John C. Barile says

      Jun 19, 2014 at 11:30 am

      Yes, your points above are well taken, and I do mean to focus on them–any other point I might make is preemptive.

      Thank you for all you do.

    • John C. Barile says

      Jun 19, 2014 at 1:43 pm

      You are right, Robert. Reza Aslan, however, certainly makes no distinction between this pope or his successor. If there’s a distinction to be made, it’s just a typo if he doesn’t. Honestly, though, I sure didn’t want to open a can of worms. You hold me to a higher standard–I may have already gotten the memo–than you would some other careless souls here.

  3. jihad3tracker says

    Jun 19, 2014 at 11:20 am

    HELLO REZA ! ! ! HOWZITGOIN’ ? ?

    You obsessively read every post here at JW, so why not send my best regards to a failed wannabee — who dreams of getting the respect that Robert Spencer gets.

    It sure seems that your fellow sociopaths ( Allah’s Army, Sunni Section ) have become Useful Idiots for clueless Americans…

    The possibility for a new sovereign region in the Middle East is now topic #1 in the mainstream media, and even that dreaded word — “CALIPHATE” — has gotten off its leash.

    Running around biting privilege-guilt Westerners in the genitals is NO WAY to keep your secret agenda afloat. But, Muslims have never been much for subtlety and strategy, have they ?

    BTW, say howdy to your fave dimestore thug and buffoonish coward Nathan Lean… His life is not an easy one.

    Shilling for seditionary professor Esposito, ordering copy machine toner, taking out empty pizza cartons… But he is unemployable by any normal standard so at least those petro-pennies he gets at Georgetown U can pay the cable bill.

    • John C. Barile says

      Jun 19, 2014 at 11:33 am

      Laughing Out Loud.

  4. John C. Barile says

    Jun 19, 2014 at 11:20 am

    In “Mit Brennender Sorge,” Pope Pius XI recalls that it was Nazi Germany and its Foreign Ministry who sought and proposed a concordat with the Holy See; that it initiated by them, not he. It should be noted that the future Pope Pius XII, the then Cardinal Pacelli, was state secretary under Pius Xi, and shares authorship of the encyclical itself.

  5. Tradewinds says

    Jun 19, 2014 at 11:36 am

    Nathan Lean calling RS a “moron” is pretty funny as it’s Lean who is the moron. What is it with that dude? Is he a convert to the religion of Terrorism?

    As for Aslan – him again? Why can’t he retire to a cave in Afghanistan? Hey Reza – come and get me! You Jew/Christian-phobic f***. Just using your own sweet language!

  6. John C. Barile says

    Jun 19, 2014 at 11:38 am

    Reza Aslan would be riding high in this present state of affairs, given that his shilling for the mullahs resonates with the Obama crowd, who never met a mortal enemy of this country whom they didn’t appease.

    • John C. Barile says

      Jun 19, 2014 at 11:39 am

      Eagerly.

  7. John C. Barile says

    Jun 19, 2014 at 11:44 am

    Vacuous is the word. Reza the Media Darling is shallow, abysmally shallow. A lightweight. A sophomore. Or less.

    • Huck Folder says

      Jun 21, 2014 at 1:00 am

      Reza Sharp

      Not!

  8. Jay Boo says

    Jun 19, 2014 at 11:54 am

    When some anti-jihad commenters suggest that all Muslims are inherently evil, it allows people like Reza to play the ‘victim’.
    These commenters (they know who they are) unintentionally let Islam off the hook.
    Islam is nothing but an easily exposed sham once Islam’s defenders like Reza lose their favorite hiding place of ‘VICTIMHOOD’.
    Islam has no life, only emptiness.

    • awake says

      Jun 19, 2014 at 12:44 pm

      To focus on the disposition of any particular Muslim is erring itself. That said, Islam is inherently evil, and the inability to reasonably discern nominal Muslims from pious ones, makes any conclusion about any individual Muslim, essentially valueless.

      • voegelinian says

        Jun 19, 2014 at 3:35 pm

        That unavoidable lack of value cuts both ways. Since the safety of our societies depends upon knowing; and since we can’t adequately know, we must prejudicially assume all Muslims are equally deadly. Unless we want to play Muslim Roulette.

        I don’t mind anyone playing Muslim Roulette as a Christopher Walken lone wolf; but don’t roll up your shirtsleeves and enable the sociopolitical process of playing that deadly game with my life, the lives of my friends and family, and the lives of my fellow citizens.

    • John C. Barile says

      Jun 19, 2014 at 2:16 pm

      I don’t like it, either. We fall right into their snare when we do.

  9. jewdog says

    Jun 19, 2014 at 12:13 pm

    Let me see…Pius XI or Pius XII, can’t remember… Reza Aslan or is it Reza Asslan?
    If this guy is pals with the Mullahs, then maybe John Kerry should ring him up for advice on Iraq. That would be the meeting of the minds.

  10. Peter B says

    Jun 19, 2014 at 12:36 pm

    Based on extensive archival (including recently opened Vatican archives) research, David Kertzer’s book “The Pope and Mussolini” comes to a conclusion that partially supports Aslan and indicates that through most of the 1930s there was extensive collaboration with Mussolini. “Mit Brennender Sorge” is not the whole story by any means.

    From the Amazon blurb:

    “Kertzer shows how Pius XI played a crucial role in making Mussolini’s dictatorship possible and keeping him in power. In exchange for Vatican support, Mussolini restored many of the privileges the Church had lost and gave in to the pope’s demands that the police enforce Catholic morality. Yet in the last years of his life—as the Italian dictator grew ever closer to Hitler—the pontiff’s faith in this treacherous bargain started to waver. With his health failing, he began to lash out at the Duce and threatened to denounce Mussolini’s anti-Semitic racial laws before it was too late. Horrified by the threat to the Church-Fascist alliance, the Vatican’s inner circle, including the future Pope Pius XII, struggled to restrain the headstrong pope from destroying a partnership that had served both the Church and the dictator for many years.

    • John C. Barile says

      Jun 19, 2014 at 2:01 pm

      Mussolini Italy also made a concordat with the Holy See (in 1929–before the ascendance of Hitler and the Nazis); after all, that is in large measure how the Vatican City State came to be.

      • John C. Barile says

        Jun 19, 2014 at 2:03 pm

        Mussolini‘s Italy, that is.

        • Peter B says

          Jun 19, 2014 at 5:18 pm

          Yes. Mussolini supported the Church in that way, and the church sent clergy to fascist rallies and otherwise supported Mussolini. And the Church demanded that the fascist police enforce the Church’s moral code (bathing suits, necklines, etc.)

          When Mussolini began to institute anti-Jewish racial laws the Church supported the move, provided that the laws be no harsher than what the Church itself had imposed on Jews in the past. The Pope felt betrayed when the racial laws classified Jewish converts to Catholicism as Jewish rather than, as the Church felt, that the conversion had eliminated that defect.

          Pius XI did indeed, at the end of his life come to regret his dealings with Mussolini, and attempted to say so. His speech was suppressed for many years: “How exactly Pacelli and his undersecretary [Monsignor] Domenico Tardini, had ensured that the Vatican newspaper ignored the pope’s (Pius XI) explosive remarks remains a mystery,” writes Kertzer. “Most of the pages from Pacelli’s log of his meeting with the popes in these months are, curiously, missing from those open to researchers in the Vatican Secret Archives.”

    • awake says

      Jun 19, 2014 at 8:17 pm

      @ Peter B ,

      I’d love to read about Kertzer’s views about Islam, as taken from the words and deeds of Muslims, and the not so secret archives of the Islamic doctrine.

      Can you provide an Amazon blurb about that, or should Kertzer simply be dismissed as another idiotic, self-loathing, leftist, anti-Christian, Jewish academic, supported and funded by those still kept secret in another shadowy archive?

      Please let me know.

    • voegelinian says

      Jun 20, 2014 at 1:49 am

      Ah! Just what the doctor ordered for what the dubious “Peter B” brings up — a review by none other than the aforementioned Rabbi David Dalin of Kertzer’s book:

      http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Protected/Articles/000/000/000/413mmxmn.asp

      • Peter B says

        Jun 20, 2014 at 2:22 am

        That’s an earlier book, antedating the 2006 opening of the Pius XI archives (at long last) that, together with Fascist archives (i.e. both sides of the relationship documented) form the basis of Kertzer’s NEW book. He doesn’t dispute any good actions Pius XI took on behalf of Jews, just shows that he collaborated with Mussolini (who initially wasn’t so antisemitic either; there were Jews among the early Italian Fascists.)

        As was typical of Popes up until recently, Pius XI wasn’t too fond of democracy. No surprise. The Church itself is an autocratic and very hierarchical organization. Italy’s unification and democratization cost the Church a lot of power, land and money. Mussolini despite his anticlericalism, offered the return of some of it for a price, which he got. Priests offered mass as part of the warmup for Fascist rallies. Year after year.

        Yes, Pius XI was upset by antisemitism. But he also collaborated with Mussolini until he couldn’t stomach it any more. He also agreed to Mussolini’s antisemitic race laws – that didn’t go as far as the Nazis wanted – provided that they adhered to the traditional Church limits on oppression of Jews. Kertzer states, “The trail of documents I unearthed shows the pope’s shadowy, but fascinating, Jesuit personal envoy to Mussolini, Pietro Tacchi Venturi, spending the days before the agreement going back and forth between the pope and the dictator to work out an accord. Shockingly, it states the Vatican’s agreement to make no objection to the racial laws as long as they were no more repressive than the popes’ own restrictions on the Jews in the days of the Papal States. And in fact the laws that were soon announced—expelling all Jewish students from the schools, firing all Jewish teachers, forbidding Jews from holding other positions of influence—were similar to those that had been in effect in Rome as long as the popes held power there.”

        No doubt Pius X agreed mit brennender sorge. People are complicated.

        • voegelinian says

          Jun 21, 2014 at 5:39 pm

          Dalin’s review demonstrates overwhelmingly that Kertzer in his 2001 book was either supremely sloppy or ideologically motivated to be mendacious. It seems unlikely that Kertzer changed so profoundly and radically in a few years (especially given that he, of course, still features that book on his own website).

        • Peter B says

          Jun 22, 2014 at 12:30 am

          First, Pius XII and Pius XI (I missed the “I” and referred to Ratti as “X” in my comment of …..) were very different men. Dalin is right: Pius XII did a LOT for Jews in WWII. But both Dalin and Kertzer tend to fall in love with their theories, and to greater or lesser degrees ignore what doesn’t fit. For example, as odious as the Mufti was, Dalin’s portrayal of his historical importance seems overblown.

          Dalin is also correct that the Popes have historically opposed blood libels (though with varying degrees of efficacy) but there were other less savory aspects of the historical relationship between the Church and the Jews. (Perhaps non-Catholics underestimate the tendency for Catholics, including bishops and cardinals, to ignore the Pope when they feel strongly about something.) In any case, it wasn’t until after the Vatican was stripped of its rule over Rome in 1798 that Roman Jews were freed from the Ghetto… and when the Papal States were reestablished a year or so later, so was the ghetto and the Popes forced the Jews back in.

          Under the restored Papal states, the restrictions against Jews owning property, engaging in various professions, etc. were back in force. Those only ended when the Papal States were abolished. Once the unification of Italy and the growth of more liberal ideas was under way – costing the Vatican its rule over Rome and a lot of property, among other things – the Church AND the Popes began to see their enemies in ways that anticipated the worst of modernity (such as the linkage of Freemasonry and “International Jewry”) while keeping the Church’s medieval antisemitic laws on the books …. and seeing to their reinstatement under Mussolini. I suppose it could be argued that the Church’s vigorous advocacy for these rules prevented harsher restrictions, but whatever Pius XI felt about Jews or did to help Jews:

          • His long-time intermediary with Mussolini was a vicious antisemite
          • His Accords with Mussolini got his authority over the Vatican back, got Church property back, and eventually got the Church’s restrictions on Jews back
          • He also had much praise for one Msgr. Jouin, who was his attack dog against the Masons. Remember “International Jewry?” Jouin seems to have coined the term “Judeo-Masonry.” He also believed in and promulgated the Protocols of the Elders of Zion



          That is all open source information. As to Kertzer, while he tends to suppress inconvenient facts, when he directly cites documentary evidence, he seems pretty accurate… provided that evidence speaks clearly and without requiring too much context. In this case, Kertzer seems to have found both ends of the communications between the Vatican and the Fascists, and is probably right about the Vatican’s collusion with Mussolini. Both sides got their backs scratched pretty well.


          • So, yes: Pius XI probably helped Fascism’s rise.

          I admit that there’s some hindsight here: Mussolini didn’t become a figure of international odium until much later than “Progressive” bien-pensants like to admit. For example, in 1932, H. G. Wells (one of the most influential progressive public intellectuals of the 20th century) said that Progressives must become “liberal fascists” and “enlightened Nazis.” He called for a “Phoenix Rebirth” of Liberalism” as “Liberal Fascism.” (Adapted from Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism)

          But given the Church’s theological opposition to much of the Progressive program (such as, much to its credit, to Progressive eugenics and related ideas) I doubt Progressive admiration of Mussolini cut much ice with the Vatican.

          Perhaps one might sum it up by saying that Pius XI was the last medieval Pope and Pius XII was a modern Pope.

  11. Angemon says

    Jun 19, 2014 at 1:26 pm

    “ When I called Aslan out on his error, he responded: AslanGoldberg“Moron Spencer doesn’t realize that tweet was meant in conversation with @JeffreyGoldberg.”

    What? He was talking to Goldberg so it is all right for him to confuse two different and important historical figures with similar names? This response was typical of Aslan’s adolescent vacuity, but I was surprised he didn’t claim it was a “typo.””

    Reza Aslan, a (self-proclaimed) respected scholar, humbly admitting to Robert Spencer that he, Reza Aslan, a (self-proclaimed) respected scholar, was wrong? Let’s just say that it’s more likely for a real-life sharknado to happen than Reza Aslan, a (self-proclaimed) respected scholar, acknowledging his error(s) to mr. Spencer.

  12. awake says

    Jun 19, 2014 at 2:10 pm

    @ Reza Aslan

    A. Muslims are fascists!
    B. Historically, and currently, fascist ideology did and does infect every corner of the Muslim world (Bin Laden, etc.)

    There, that’s more accurate a statement.

    • umbra says

      Jun 19, 2014 at 3:51 pm

      Fascism is the offspring of islam, not the other way around. It was merely reinvented in the 19th century and repackaged as something new for unsuspecting audiences. Those who knew islam then knew what fascism was. r.a. is simply and foolishly holding up a mirror to himself without knowing it. It being what he is actually talking about. But then again, that is what fools do. In his case, this behaviour is simply passed on as creative writing/imagination. Some colleges are truly scraping the bottom for associate professors.

      • Angemon says

        Jun 19, 2014 at 4:05 pm

        umbra posted:

        “Fascism is the offspring of islam, not the other way around.”

        I, for one, believe their similarities are the result of convergent evolution.

        • umbra says

          Jun 20, 2014 at 1:22 am

          islam already possesses all the major traits (perhaps all other peripheral traits too) of fascism. Islam also precedes fascism. Fascism is a construct that originated in the revolutionary period of mid 19th century Europe. It can be easy to assume that revolutionary ideas are solely the product of European enlightenment. This however, may not necessarily be true. As the earlier enlightenment period of European Renaissance was brought about by Greek influence from the crumbling Byzantium empire, European revolutionary ideas may have burrowed elements from other sources. Note that the 19th century was a European imperial age. Many islamic lands were under the control/protection of various competing European powers. As such, their civilisation practices (culture, politics, religion, etc) would have been studies and analysed by European minds, including revolutionaries (or those who theorised such ideas).

          The hallmarks of islam are present in various implementation of fascism (in Germany, Italy, Spain, etc). The most notable of these would have to be nazism. Interestingly, nazism is also the closest to islam in behaviour – superiority complex (racial in this instance), Jew hatred, global conquest, conversion(nazification)/ subjugation/extermination of individuals, etc. nazism is truly the favourite child of islam, but it died leaving 50 million corpses and without achieving any of its major aim – global conquest and especially the extermination of Jews.

          Where nazism was the favourite child, communism (especially stalinist variety) is the bastard child of islam. But that is another story.

  13. mariam rove says

    Jun 19, 2014 at 2:18 pm

    He is such an…..m

  14. Theo Prinse says

    Jun 19, 2014 at 2:43 pm

    Bernard Lewis like former Dutch cardinal Bernard Alfrink and the current Pope Bergoglio believe in the mercy of the Islamic Supreme Being.
    Apart that since 1945 geo-politics is dominated by the CIA and MI6, and that U.S. governmental institutions like the Supreme Court and U.S. Senate is strongly determined by the elderly – it is the American leftist and re-distributive (quasi) intellectual community – divides into 3 groups – that is fundamentally influencing the current success of the Islamic jihad.
    1. Leftist American Christians since the Cold War, have themselves insinuated a greater fear for atheism associated with the communist ideology in the former S-U than towards Islamic fundamentalism.
    The U.S. Christian fear for atheism being greater than towards Islam is a substantial part of the Jimmy Carter Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, Former CIA director and later U.S. Ambassador tp Persia Richard Helms, Pakistani dictator Zia ul Haq etc. doctrine to diminish the Russian sphere of influence in the Islamic world in betraying and subject secular, Christian and western oriented communities in Muslim countries such as Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan etc. to fundamentalist Islam.

    Richard Helms has – after the dismantling of his CIA Nazi project MKULTRA Paperclip by the Frank Church committee in 1974 and where these Nazis after 1950 had connected themselves with the nazi’s in Nasser’s Egypt, Syria, Argentina, Gehlen organization, operation Odessa etc. coordinated these Nazi’s the 1956, 1967 and 1973 wars against Israel – the U.S. anti-semite and anti-Israel secret strategy renewed with Brzezinski’s policy in facilitating Islam fundamentalism.
    Hussein Obama with the Clinton Muslim Brotherhood Outreach policy and his June 4th 2009 Cairo apology speech before the MB constitutes a renewed third phase of the US anti semite elite.

    B. The Second Vatican Council 1959-1965 to which Bernhard Alfrink contributed legitimized Islam as Abrahamic religion instead of Islam being a murderous supremacist doctrine disguised as a religion.

    C. The strategy of the catholic Brzezinski (William F Buckley, Ronald Reagan) strongly depended on the emergence of the European Union because the CIA support of the Mujahideen / Taliban in Afghanistan causing a huge defeat for the Red Army and thus the demise of the Soviet Union and thus have the S-U Eastern European sphere of influence as cheap labor and trade markets fall in the hands of the leader of the EU, Western Germany (Gerhard Schröder)

    1-B Today the American ant-Israel anti-Semite Christians involved in BDSmovement (boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel)are:

    a. Presbyterians,
    b. mainline protestant churches
    c. growing numbers of evangelicals.

    2. U.S. democrat and republican and partly Jewish atheist liberals are obsessed with the American amoral philosophy of Pragmatism.

    3. U.S. Communists perceives violence as natural, inevitable and necessary.

    • Foolster says

      Jun 19, 2014 at 5:37 pm

      The key word in all of this is “leftist”, not Christian. I’m hoping, you’re not seriously trying to imply, as folks here do (I won’t say their name for fear of attracting them) that Christianity as a whole is to blame for enabling Christianity/Anti-semetism, because of the feeble enabling leftist branch of Christianity.

  15. Mirren10 says

    Jun 19, 2014 at 3:22 pm

    Reza Aslan ( I do wish he had another name; Rabadash, perhaps), is a quintissential example of the vacuity, moral imbecility, and leftist driven agenda of much of 21st century ‘education’.

    These people were not taught to think, let alone encouraged to understand what objectivity means, less still taught that refuting one’s opponents with facts and logic is proper argument, rather than the barrage of petty and adolescent insults they all use in lieu of rational debate.

    But, as Robert devastatingly points out, this sort of thing is what passes for academic rigour in the world of leftist ‘academe’. The Emperor’s New Clothes, indeed. But I do enjoy seeing Robert prick this nasty little blowhard’s bubble.

    In the end, **truth will out**, and in the light of ISIS, and it’s evil and vicious behaviour, Aslan’s meretricious and specious attempts to put a gloss on islam and sharia are put into perspective, for all who “have eyes to see, and ears to hear”.

    Robert, ( if I may call you that), I would like to see you write a devastating indictment of that meretricious little twat’s rubbish about sharia, and the ‘Caliphate’ in the light of what ISIS is doing, right now.

    On the other hand, as darling Jane Austen said, he doesn’t deserve “the compliment of rational opposition”.

    He is Rabadash, to the life.

    And I’d just like to add, thank you for all you do.

  16. Champ says

    Jun 19, 2014 at 4:43 pm

    Robert sure has your number, reza! Hey you need to be exposed for the lying evil sack that you are …

    http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/11/reza-aslan-board-member-of-islamic-republic-lobbying-group-niac-cheers-iran-nuke-capitulation

    • Champ says

      Jun 19, 2014 at 4:48 pm

      “Reza Aslan claims anti-fascist Pope Pius XI was a fascist”

      islam is the most authoritarian and intolerant “religion” known to man, oh-so-blind-reza!

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