Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Reflection: The Great Turning

Joy Morgenstern
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Palo Alto, CA

I worry about fascism sometimes. Could those right-wing extremists, those so-called “Christian” fundamentalists take over our country? Could they put me in jail because of my left-wing politics? Could they take away my daughter because of my sexual orientation? Could they blacklist me so that I couldn’t get a job because I’ve protested against the government? Could they force me to marry someone I don’t want to marry? All those things have happened to people in this country in my lifetime.

I think of fascism as a society based on arbitrary, bigoted, unjust rules. Some people are allowed certain freedoms, but others aren’t. We’ve all experienced this. I’ve met people who experienced the worst kind — the people with the serial numbers tattooed on their arms. And I’ve also met the child who can’t walk to school down a certain street because it’s controlled by the neighborhood bully and the woman with the abusive husband who threatens to take their children to away if she tries to leave and the man imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. In these situations, when you’re lucky a higher or another authority — the U.N., an invading army, a teacher, the police, a lawyer — intercedes and the dictator’s power is taken away. But how do we, as individuals, or groups, or nations, get into these situations? Why do we allow these unsavory individuals to be in charge of anything?

Sometimes these dictators take over a block, a jailhouse, a condominium board, a church, a neighborhood, a country, by lying, cheating and stealing. Sometimes they take over when we busy, good-hearted people just aren’t looking. But more often, they gain power because other people are afraid. Afraid of terrorism, afraid of crime, afraid of punishment, afraid for your life, your family, your children.

In Harry Potter’s 3^rd year at Hogwarts, Remus Lupin, the new Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, teaches the 3^rd year students to deal with their fears by making each in turn face a boggart — a creature which, as Hermione Granger tells us, takes the shape of whatever it thinks will frighten us most.

Harry’s classmates’ boggarts mostly turn into things like mummies and spiders and rattlesnakes — childish anxieties. But Lupin doesn’t allow Harry to face the boggart, later telling him it’s because he assumed Harry’s boggart would take the form of Lord Voldemort — the evil wizard who is the bad guy of the Harry Potter books — and that would have panicked the other students. But Harry tells him that it is not Voldemort that is his worst fear.

Harry Potter tells Lupin that he is most afraid of Dementors, creatures which embody fear and unhappiness and depression. “Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them.” Lupin’s reaction to this is “That suggests that what you fear most of all is — fear. Very wise, Harry.”

Just like a wise American who once said “let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

If we want to keep dictators from taking over — the tin pot kind or the neighborhood bully kind or the Hitler kind — we have to have Constant Vigilance, as Professor Moody, another of Harry’s teachers, likes to say, and we have to be educated enough not to believe lies, but most of all we have to face our fears. We have to speak up when something is wrong, and not be afraid of ridicule, ostracism, arrest. I think that this is the way in which fascism is fought and democracy and justice flourish.

 

Sermon: Democracy, Fascism, and Magic by Rev. Amy Zucker Morgenstern