For What It is Worth: Videos of John Hagee
There has been quite a stir about the relationship between John Hagee and John McCain. Part of it stems from the fact that McCain criticized Bush’s move towards Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell in 2000, and so it makes McCain look like a hypocrite. Certainly one cannot and should not engage “guilt by association” tactics with politicians and judge them by those who endorse them on their own. However, things are different if a politician specifically seeks it out — because then, in a way, the politician is also doing an endorsement.
Through McCains relationship with Hagee, Hagee (who already had a considerable following) has been given even more prominence. Now much of what he says should not be surprising. For example, he says Obama is not the Antichrist (in case anyone wondered).
But much of what he says, as in these videos of a “fiery” speech he gave in support for “Christian Zionism,” should really give one pause. Not only that, the kind of responses he gets in these videos should scare any American. For not only do you hear Hagee being jovial at the idea of war and the kinds of deaths which would happen if we got into a war with Iran, the crowd is passionately moved to follow and agree with him on these very sentiments. No wonder Hagee is so sympathetic with “bomb Iran” McCain.
Part I
Part II (with praises to the “great one”) in the background:
Part III (of the “gift from God”)
The third video had some powerful moments, i.e., when Hagee says:
By the way, care to explain this?
Hagee being jovial at the idea of war and the kinds of deaths which would happen if we got into a war with Iran
Can you transcribe the portion where Hagee is “jovial at” the “kinds of deaths” that would happen in a war with Iran? I heard him saying that we need to keep Iran from having nuclear capabilities, but that’s a long way from being “jovial” over “death.”
Stuart
It is more than that. He went through “past examples” of what happened to people who attacked Israel — like Pharoah becoming “fish food.” Obviously it was to be read in the whole context — don’t threaten America (which he said before his litany of death) — and so clearly a part of his whole response to Iran; and with it, a joviality over death.
Anyway, as I said, there were some powerful moments. Especially after hearing elsewhere that Hagee was supposed to be anti-Semitic, it was kind of cool to see him speaking to an audience of Jewish people and getting such an enthusiastic reception.
Stuart
More misrepresentation of the positions of others. To be anti-Arab is to be anti-semite. They are semites, too.
Here is, however, someone else’s take on Hagee: http://www.stopaipac.org/christianright.htm (with many interesting articles brought together, indicating some of the other side of Hagee).
Henry,
While Hebrew is not the only semitic language on the planet, antisemitism does refer specifically to hatred of the Jews.
Blackadder
And pro-life is only about abortion.
Such abuses of language are political tools to limit the reality and justify evil. Sorry. No. To be anti-Arab IS to be anti-semite. And no wonder the 19th century anti-semite ideology has been transfered to the Arabs with similar rhetoric to the Protocols. So, you can show me places like wikipedia which do the politically correct version of anti-semitism; I, on the other hand, will with others point out Arabs are semites, and the prejudices against them are just the transference of previous anti-semitism from one group of semites to another. It’s the same thing. Exactly the same thing.
Henry, are you really so self-centered that whenever I quote someone else, you think I’m really misquoting you?
I was thinking of this: http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=1736 (“anti-Semitic John Hagee”). Or this: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/180998.php (“anti-Semitic pastor”).
Also, FYI, the term “anti-Semitic” is used about 99% of the time in American English to mean “anti-Jewish.” This isn’t Humpty-Dumpty; you don’t have the power to redefine words and make other people obey.
It’s the politically correct view of anti-semitism which only makes the Jews the semites which is real anti-semitism. Redefining words indeed – to ignore semites under the term semite!
Like it or not, Henry, that’s how language works — words mean what other people use them to mean. In the English language, the word “anti-semitism” means anti-Jewish. Deal with it.
Anyway, this is a stupid debate — if you’d like me to rephrase, the point is that after other people have been calling Hagee anti-Jewish, it was nice to see him apologize to Jewish people and receive such an enthusiastic reception.
Stuart
Like it or not, not everyone agrees with the “anti-semitic” is only for disgraceful treatment of the Jews. Perhaps if you open yourself beyond your closed little world you would realize that. But I take it you won’t say abortion is killing a human person because of how we have defined things in the English language, and as it is actualized in law, the embryo is not a human person? Or would you say common usage there is — wrong?
By the way, Henry, when I want to quote you, I’ll mention that I’m doing so. If I say that “other people” have said something, or that someone “elsewhere” said something, I’m not being coy; instead, that’s a clue that I’m referring to SOMEONE ELSE. Not you.
Stuart
I didn’t say misrepresentation of my position. Read above. Stuart — here is a clue – READ.
Good day.
OK, who did you think I was misrepresenting?
Others. Somewhere else.
Well, then that was silly — why accuse me of “misrepresenting” unspecified people, when it is so well-known that other people really have been calling Hagee “anti-Semitic” in just that term?
By the way, I’ve noticed elsewhere on the web that a lot of people who are insist on redefining the term “anti-Semitic” actually do hate Jewish people. So you might not want to take such a keen interest in that whole debate. Why not just start using the term “anti-Arab” or “anti-Muslim”?
Sbuck, “American English” is not the only variant dialect of the English language. Not only that, but, in terms of international education, it’s not even the dominant version of the English language; “Thames Estuary English” is taught all over the Indian sub-continent and in most of Africa, and IT is the “received version” of the English language, almost world-wide. And, in “Thames Estuary English,” “anti-Semite” means “hatred of Semitic peoples, their cultures and religions”–which DOES include Arabs. You Americans are the most dangerously provincial people on earth: you know almost NOTHING of peoples in the Third World, and yet you presume to lord it over them, bringing them “democracy.”
Henry,
It’s true that the term “pro-life” doesn’t refer simply to views on abortion. There is also, for example, the issue of euthanasia. But it is true that the term “pro-life” doesn’t refer to ones views on just any issue conceivably related to life. As with the meaning of antisemitism, this is not an abuse of language; it is simply the way those terms are used. The meaning of words is not subject to the whim or veto of any particular individual. Just because you’d rather a given word or phrase didn’t have a certain meaning doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have that meaning, if you know what I mean.
Henry,think about this logically: I said that others have been calling Hagee “anti-Semitic.” You said that this is a “misrepresentation.” But the only conceivable way that your accusation could have been true is if NO ONE ON EARTH had ever called Hagee “anti-Semitic.” You were making an accusation of dishonesty that depended on being able to prove a universal negative.
Stop being so eager to smear other people.
Stuart
I know you are playing a game. That’s why I responded as I did. I have a good inclination of who and what you are implying, but if I bring it out, since YOU were the one playing in “I will talk directly to you and reference unnamed people” anyone I bring out and say “see, that isn’t exactly their position” you will say “Ah but I didn’t mean THEM.”
Stuart — you are really trying to play “gotcha” games and sometimes don’t get it — your game is over.
Blackadder
First, as Digbydolben rightfully points out, America is not the one who owns what English words means. And in the international use of English. anti-Arab is anti-semite (and why I pointed out that people need to look beyond their closed little world).
Secondly, pro-life can only mean — support of life at all stages and its inherent dignity, or else the term is a lie, and a wolf in sheeps clothing. Just because so many wolves are putting on the sheeps clothing of “I am anti-abortion” doesn’t make them pro-life. The true meaning of pro-life can only be support of life. Once people find excuses for different stages of life to dismiss “this life” then you have lost the picture, and your excuses will serve as the self-destruct mechanism for the whole “movement.”
It wasn’t a game for me just to point out that given past accusations of “anti-Semitism,” it was refreshing to see, etc., etc., etc. There was no need for me to name names; that wasn’t the point I was trying to make.
You’re the one playing games, just labeling other people dishonest based on absolutely nothing, and then forcing them to go through a laborious explanation as to how what they had said was accurate.
Well, you got caught with your pants down.
Stuart
Yes, you make a blanket statement without examples to prove your point. Come on, you want it all ways. Your game is over.
My “pants” were not down. One must ask, for example, how Hagee is “anti-semitic” and see if THAT will contradict what is done in these videos for it to be any indication that the charge is false. This is something you don’t get (or maybe you do). No, Stuart. Your game is over. You keep mischaracterizing. You are not interested in truth. You are interested in gotcha tactics.
Give it up.
I didn’t “misrepresent” anybody; I made the perfectly accurate claim that other prominent people have labeled Hagee as “anti-Semitic” (by which they meant “anti-Jewish” even if you don’t like that meaning of the word).
Your game of lying about other people’s words is over.
Hagee is not “anti-Semitic” in your narrow sense, but only insofar as he believes that the Jews will convert whenever the bombs drop.
If that’s consolation to you, well then.
Henry,
It’s possible that the term “antisemitism” has a different meaning in some parts of the world than it does here in the States. Somehow I doubt it. But if I’m ever overseas and I hear people using the term to describe prejudice against Maltese speakers, I won’t correct them. We are, however, at the moment in America and not in Africa or wherever it is that antisemitism is supposed to refer to anti-Maltese prejudice.
Second, any argument that a certain word or phrase “can only mean” such and such is almost certainly false. Words get their meaning from their use.
Blackadder
This blog is international and many people here think beyond a purely American perspective and beyond the American abuse of the English language in its narrowing of definitions of words for political rhetoric. Thus, as Digbydolben showed, the proper use is the one which is used in the wide-world, not in the narrow American sense, yet Americans think it can dictate use of the world in the way it can choose which nations to invade. Doesn’t work that way.
What a nice, nominalist explanation for words. While there is some truth that a word gets meaning from use, it is only a part of it. How do they get their use in the first place? And while the connotations of words can change over time, or in place, does that justify using a word to signify the opposite of what the word would mean if it had not existed and was just brought into use today? Pro-life, in the wide world of its use, is for all life, and the dignity of all life, and its proper respect and treatment. Some wolves want to narrow it and think just because there are many wolves, that validates their claim to be sheep.
I mean, let’s be frank, much of the international discussion of anti-Semitism centers around the historical mis-treatment of the Jews in Europe culminating in the holocaust. While it’s obviously impossible for me to prove that people in Europe, India and Africa _don’t_ also use the term “anti-Semitism” to refer to anti-Arab sentiments, all of the pieces that I have read dealing with the problem of anti-Semitism by European authors have dealt specifically with anti-Jewish feeling.
The other reason I would be cautious about people wanting to broaden the term is that the _only_ times I’ve seen it deployed is in arguing, “Arabs can’t be anti-Semitic” as a response to Arab use of anti-Jewish rhetoric and sources which are sometimes directly borrowed from the European anti-Jewish materials of more 150 to 60 years ago. Arab and Persian sources fairly routinely dig up slurs such as Jewish practice involving the eating of babies, or republish conspiracy theories such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
While in a certain semantic sense, there’s truth to the argument that this is anti-Jewish rather than anti-Semitic feeling (though I wonder how many people in Palestine would argue that they are united to the Israelis in being Semites), that argument runs the risk of minimizing the potential evil involved. I appreciate dark irony, but I would rather be spared the spectacle of seeing the cultures who remained silent during the last attempt to wipe out the Jewish people now run interferance for a second attempt within one hundred years of the first. That would be a pretty tragic case of not learning from history.
From Terry Eagleton, “After Theory,” p.223-4.
This is a pity, unless the United States is able to do some hard thinking about the world, it is not at all certain that the world will be around that much longer. That would certainly save us from the necessity of hard thought, since there would then be nothing to think about; but there are probabably less drastic ways of making thinking less rebarbarative. It is true, of course, that some Americans have never quite grasped this esoteric concept of ‘the world’, believing as they do that it is somewhere just south-east of Texas. There are those Americans who have no idea of how others see them; those who have no idea but do not care anyway; and those who have yet to hear that there are other people out there in the first place.
Hagee is not “anti-Semitic” in your narrow sense, but only insofar as he believes that the Jews will convert whenever the bombs drop.
Mark D. — once again, can you come up with something in Hagee’s own words? As I’ve noted on another thread, Hagee is famous for arguing that Jews do NOT need to convert to Christianity. So I’m a bit skeptical that you’re giving an accurate description here.
Henry,
You are an American. I am an American. To my knowledge all the comments here so far have been by Americans. If someone from another part of the world joins the conversation and is confused by our use of “antisemitic” (because where he comes from it is used exclusively to refer to anti-Maltese prejudice), then we can try and clear up the confusion. As it stands, given that we are all Americans on an American blog with a largely American audience, it seems reasonable to assume that words are used here in there ordinary American sense unless otherwise noted.
Suppose that someone on this blog were to say “I hate fags.” No doubt you would conclude that the man was homophobic. But of course, in other parts of the world “fag” is a word for cigarette, and if the man was English, it’s quite possible that all he meant was that he didn’t like smoking. If I was in England and heard people talking this way, I wouldn’t dream of trying to correct them. If we were in the United States, on the other hand, I would advise the man that he probably shouldn’t refer to cigarettes as “fags” while in the States, as the word has a different meaning here and at the very least it would be confusing. And if the man insisted that his way of using the word “fag” was the only proper way of using the word and that Americans were wrong to use it differently, I would not find this terribly compelling (particularly if the man was himself an American and tried, strangely, to analogize the whole thing to the war in Iraq).
As for the business of what the term “pro-life” can or must mean, the logical implication of your argument would seem to be that it is not pro-life to cut down a tree to build a house for your family, since cutting down the tree involves taking life.
SBuck
How’s this, from Jerusalem Countdown.
“It was the disobedience and rebe?lion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day… Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come…. it rises from the judgment of God upon his rebellious chosen people.”
Is that the best you could find? He doesn’t say anything there about Jews converting to Christianity when the “bombs” start. Not even close.
I stand corrected. But he wants the physical existence of Israel to ensure the Coming that he’s been predicting for the past 25 years.
However, if you say about what I quoted “Is that all yoy Got?,” then you have not the slightest clue abot how antisemitism in your narrow sense operates.
Hagee is anti-semitic, anti-Arab, anti-Israel, anti-himself, anti-love, anti-truth, anti-good, anti-human, anti-Christ.
Therefore he is also anti-himself, insofar as there is any part of him that is not already dead.
Aside from the semantic battle, isn’t this precisely the conflation of support for the Jewish people and unquestioned support of the nation state of Israel? Does Hagee even have the resources to make that distinction? And why the obsessive focus on Israel? Why must we “love Israel” especially? Sure, we must denounce the certain Islamic movements to wipe Israel off the map, but isn’t it a huge leap from this to “financially supporting” the state of Israel? Does he even hold out the possibility that the Israelis are capable of being wrong?
I give him credit in that last one for renouncing Christian anti-antisemitism (anti-Judaism). But all of this good guys-bad guys language doesn’t seem to hold out the possibilities that the Israelis have ever fallen on the bad-guys side in their relations with Palestinians.
“America and Israel are at war with a common enemy…the culture of death”?
“If the line has to be drawn, draw it around Christians and Jews”?
He may not be anti-Jewish, but he sure sounds like he backs some form of Jewish exceptionalism. It seems clear that he believes the modern nation-state of Israel has a claim to the land that the Palestinians simply do not and never will. Tough for them. Bible says that Jerusalem is the Jews’ and the Jews’ alone, too bad the Palestinians never got the memo.
Bottom line: his lack of nuance is absolutely frightening. In advocating support of Israel as against psychos like Abedinejad, he simply lumps all Palestinians (who may have legitimate claims and may very well be legitimate victims of injustice) in with the “Pharaohs” and “Babylonians” who will become fish-food and mere footnotes in glorious history of the Jews. I’m sorry, but for an issue that is so deeply complex, painting Israel as the absolute good guy and anyone with a challenge to their claims as absolute bad guy, and then justifying that portrayal with biblical fundamentalism; that strikes me as dangerous ignorance.
Pax Christi,
Therefore he is also anti-himself, insofar as there is any part of him that is not already dead.
G. Alkon, take a LOOK at Hagee sometime: he actually APPEARS to be half-dead. Anybody can tell he has the kind of eating disorder that comes from LOATHING of the self: he probably LIVES on the adrenalin that flows from his hatred of “liberals” and Arabs and “queers.”
Sorry, I know it sounds ad hominem, but I couldn’t resist it: he’s a loathsome APPEARING creature, as well as a loathsome SOUNDING one.
I don’t think it’s ad hominem if the “person” in question has so repulsively mutilated his own “person” and made himself the embodiment of Satanic hatred.
There is no point in mincing words.
Hagee is a worshiper in the church of Satan.
Well, I take that you don’t like Hagee, but I still don’t see anyone who really takes issue with my point that it was powerful to see a Christian preacher apologizing for anti-Semitism.
And whether or not you like Hagee (there’s certainly a lot about him that I don’t like), you have to hand it to those fundamentalist preachers. They know how to do something that (in my experience) Catholic priests never, never, never know how to do: Give a rousing sermon, i.e., one that doesn’t have people yawning within a few minutes.
I’m not defending much of what Hagee says or does, by the way; I’m pointing to a couple of things that are worth praising just for the sake of fairness (not that many people seem to be interested in that).
HenryK,
Thanks for finding those videos. He certainly needs our prayers. I believe his sincerity though he’s just misguided on what he ‘believes’ to be his interpretation of scripture, specifically Revelation.
We as Catholics shouldn’t speculate that much on Revelation to the point of obsession (which Hagee has done).
Mystere Fidei is appropriate in this sense that some things we won’t know about if we’re fortunate enough to reach Heaven (unless the end is in our lifetime of course).