DCP Compares Modern "Dislike" of Mormons to Jews Under Nazism

[Lem]

Personally, I think there’s something to be said for treating the Holocaust as its own Special case and not running the risk of diluting the Horror it represents. But given the proliferation of its use in the US political arena, I don’t think that’s an argument I’d win.

Maybe it is a regional situation, because it is absolutely, without question, an argument you would win in my Eastern seaboard, tri-state area. The kind of talk Peterson engages in is considered among the lowest type of faux pas one can commit in civilized conversation here. The way he talks is an embarrassment, which is probably why I have never heard any educated lds person here on the east coast refer to him.

[Res Ipsa]

Personally, I think there’s something to be said for treating the Holocaust as its own Special case and not running the risk of diluting the Horror it represents. But given the proliferation of its use in the US political arena, I don’t think that’s an argument I’d win.

Maybe it is a regional situation, because it is absolutely, without question, an argument you would win in my Eastern seaboard, tri-state area. The kind of talk Peterson engages in is considered among the lowest type of faux pas one can commit in civilized conversation here. The way he talks is an embarrassment, which is probably why I have never heard any educated lds person here on the east coast refer to him.

That could be, Lem. I don’t recall being around many Jews until I went to school on the east coast. And at that time, the hot button issues were the PLO and the Intifada. I just can’t recall much in the way of conversations about the Holocaust.

[Moksha]

By aligning Mormonism with the holocaust, Dr. Peterson runs the risk of ultra-conservative groups denying that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ever happened.

[DrW]

Maybe it is a regional situation, because it is absolutely, without question, an argument you would win in my Eastern seaboard, tri-state area. The kind of talk Peterson engages in is considered among the lowest type of faux pas one can commit in civilized conversation here. The way he talks is an embarrassment, which is probably why I have never heard any educated lds person here on the east coast refer to him.

Much of DCP's writing is indeed an embarrassment, from his tendency to plagiarize, to his Trumpian habit of expounding on subject areas in which he has little real knowledge or understanding, to his rank cultural deafness regarding racial or religious minorities. Here in South Florida, where Jewish seniors from the Tri-State area (especially NY and New Jersey) tend to congregate once they retire, Peterson's rhetoric would be seen as uncouth and uninformed - and by many, unfortunately, typical of Mormon arrogance overall.

[Dr LOD]

What DCP is doing is a continuation of the wholesale cultural appropriation that the Church, uses to maintain the story. The two favorite areas of cultural appropriation are the native inhabitants of the Americas, and "Israel."

DCP has been conditioned by years of this to now feel that it is OK to compare some mild dislike for a regional religion to the horrors of the Holocaust. When in actuality this is a huge moral blind spot, that his religion taught him.

[Symmachus]

I would thank you kindly for your gracious response, Reverend, but I prefer to thank you more particularly for the quality of your response, which is its own form of praise; I may not deserve it, but I'll accept it all the same.

Issues of identity and power are incredibly complex, and sometimes I think we do ourselves a real disservice when we think we have it all figured out. This is why you and others are more than justified in arguing with DCP, Mormon progressives, and each other about this. Just when we think we know what we are about, someone will overturn our comfortable assumptions about things. The questions to me are: what is comparable, in what way, and to what extent. Personally, I would stay away from publicly blogging about comparisons of Mormons to Jews or Black people for most of the reasons you raise. At the same time, I do believe in the existence of a cultural hierarchy in this country, and in my view it is the case that the most privileged position to occupy is still WASP. Pointing to one set of factors or another in order to claim Mormons are, in fact, mainstream is fundamentally wrongheaded, in my opinion. They simply are not WASPs because they do not, to this day, function with the goal of perpetuating White Anglo-Saxon Protestant ideals and group privilege.

I am not sure that I have claimed that Mormons are mainstream (postponing what that means for another time); I certainly didn't mean to. I think the issue for me is the extent to which their minority status is a function of white racism. I see no evidence that it is, despite a baby's-handful of examples of the rhetoric of race used against Mormons that I can find in Reeve.

Yes, as you note: Mormons were not enslaved. There was no Mormon Shoah. And yet, the Republican platform identified one of the central hallmarks of late-19th-century Mormon life as one of the "Twin Relics of Barbarism." The other was slavery, and, as you are no doubt better aware than I am, opposition to slavery did not always come from a place of inclusiveness; it often came out of a desire to banish Black people from North America altogether.

I'm not sure I can go on board with the "and yet" clause: Mormons weren't enslaved or murdered en masse, and yet they were rhetorically attacked? I think the "twin relics" discourse is an example of what I mean about how we can over-read this rhetoric and make connections that might not have been there. I think it is important to separate the intentions behind the rhetoric from later perceptions of it by its targets, as you reminded me. I quote the fuller text of the resolution found in the the 1856 Republican platform where this phrase occurs:

That the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign powers over the Territories of the United States for their government; and that in the exercise of this power, it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism--Polygamy, and Slavery.

It seems plain to me that this isn't about othering Mormons as a group for their deviancy from the Protestantism of the white ruling class but about asserting federal sovereignty by targeting those practices around which the counter-sovereignties of the Utah Territory and the South were defined. I note also that the resolution before this one announces the party's rejection of new slave states (thus expanding southern political power) but does not call for the abolition of existing legal slavery. Moreover, the resolution after the "twin relics of barbarism" deals with Kansas, interpreting the situation there as one where federal sovereignty had been violated by aggressive sympathizers of slave holders. The over all sense from this document, in sum, is not one of otherizing groups for the purpose of excluding them from American life but rather a feeling that the south's political strategy was leading to a breakdown of the entire federal system, with concomitant lawlessness and violence. What the platform calls for is an aggressive response to what it perceives as lawlessness created by people for whom slave-holding as a concept had risen to the level of an ideology of its own. Mormons were connected with that because they appeared to be doing the something similar—Brigham Young was preaching blood atonement in 1856—and polygamy had always been at the level of ideology for them.

And besides, it's not like Mormons were the only group that had marriage and sexual practices at odds with the prevailing cultural ethos. Lots of groups deviated from the Protestantism of the time in ways not unlike the Mormons, but none of them attempted to control nearly a 1/4 of what was eventually to become the continental United States. Polygamy was in part a symbol of the lawlessness (as it was perceived) of the territory controlled by the Church (that's why it's put right up there with Kansas in the 1856 platform). And then I see another problem with interpreting the attack on the Church as a corrective punishment for deviation from the WASPish culture: it seems that once the Church submitted and gave up its grandiose claim—that is, once the sovereignty question was settled—Mormons were in no way excluded from that power structure, and I gave examples of that in my previous post. So, to read the rhetoric of "twin relics" as a way to otherize Mormons as a group in need of punishment for deviating from Protestant norms seems to misread what was happening and to mischaracterize what most non-Mormons would have thought.

So much for the intention behind the rhetoric, which I just don't see as attempting to deny "whiteness" to Mormons. If anything, it is actually making them more "white" but lumping them in with slaveholders. The Mormon perception, on the other hand...

The other tricky thing about identity is that much of it boils down to self-perception. To whatever degree one thinks of it as factually unjustified or justified, the Mormon narrative of persecution, extermination, and exile was very powerful in forging an identity outside of the mainstream of American society. We are not just talking about a few ugly cartoons someone else drew here; we are talking about the narratives Mormons imbibed from their mothers' wombs, so to speak. It is a narrative of difference, and it reinforces the internal Mormon sense that Mormons are different, do not belong, and can expect others to harass them.

Well, I can't help but agree with you here. Certainly nothing of the formative years of Mormonism has entered Mormon historical memory as a conflict over sovereignty! But this gets to my issue with the emerging attempt to link a conflict that really was over sovereignty in the intermountain west with Mormon folk/historical memory by emphasizing the rhetoric of racism found in some newspapers of the time. I grant that there were a few clumsy and unsuccessful attempts to do that from some non-Mormons, but I think there is something morally suspect or (at best) tone-deaf for any Mormon to see their group, such as it as, as a co-victim of WASP racism. I suspect you would agree at least in part. Yet it is not merely inaccurate about the past but is also opportunistic to instrumentalize a discourse that arose to conceptualize the genuine human catastrophe that was American slavery as a way of explaining Mormon peoplehood and even Mormon theology. From what I gather, Reeve's book does that, because for him, it was the response to this "racializing otherness" that led Mormons to "reclaim whiteness" by becoming more racist themselves. I think that is ludicrous, given that Mormon racism is written into their scriptures and in fact pre-exists any kind of Mormon people. And yes, while not theologically mainstream, Mormons were always part of white American society and accepted and promulgated the same racial hierarchy that other whites did (perhaps that's why it's in the scriptures in the first place). Mormons were already white in that sense, and already racist. From what I can gather in the preview pages and from reviews, Reeve is a great over-reader of evidence, but the greatest evidence ignored by his argument is plain to read in the Book of Mormon, where racism is at the narrative and theological heart—skin color as a curse or a blessing, a sign of god's favor or disfavor. The Book of Mormon existed before there were any "Mormons" at all, so it's hard to see how the as yet non-existent Mormons of the late 1820s were trying to reclaim a whiteness that hadn't yet been denied them.

It's a ludicrous argument but convenient for certain kinds of Mormons. Traditional believers have little problem accepting or ignoring contradictions about race in Mormonism because it's incidental to their belief and practice, which isn't about reclaiming whiteness but about building up the kingdom of god under the leadership of the Church hierarchy in this world and thereby working out their own salvation in the next. Few if any tithing-paying Mormons know or care about this stuff or would agree with this formulation of their cultural situation. Among white Mormons—that is, most of them—it is only people who put little stock in the ultimate authority of the Church but put a great deal of stock in the institutions of this world (especially universities and media) who are "troubled" (the preferred word) by the Church's past and present racism (e.g. Jana Riess). Situating something like the priesthood ban, as Reeve does, in this kind of discourse and thus interpreting it as the Mormon attempt to garner establishment favor ("reclaiming whiteness") is to make Mormons responsive victims to racism rather than decision-making agents of it (I doubt very many non-Mormons were impressed one way or another by the priesthood ban anyway: the implication of Reeve's argument, as I can see it from reviews and preview pages, is that Brigham Young believed he increased his chances of having his Deseret dictatorship federally validated by displaying his "whiteness" in this fashion). The result is a very convenient way of laying ultimate blame for Mormon racism somewhere outside of Mormonism.

I think it is also part of the ongoing and still unsuccessful attempt to construct a Mormon ethnicity by nostalgic ex-, post-, and liberal Mormons, but that is probably for another discussion.

But is it just plain goofy or precious to notice how easily mainstream Christians, atheists, and liberals pounce on Mormons? Personally, I can't say it has made my life intolerable or anything, but I recall clearly being mocked and having my beliefs mocked from a pretty young age. I grew up in "the mission field," and people could be pretty nasty about Mormonism, in my experience. That continued on into my experience in graduate school, and on the job as well. The funny thing was that often the people who were belittling Mormonism to my face were my supposed friends and colleagues. When I quit attending the LDS Church, one of my colleagues told me he was relieved that I got out of "that cult." And he would regularly refer, in front of others, to my escape from a cult. The fact that this colleague was particularly powerful in the profession did not help a whole lot.

And "woke" folk actually don't have much love for Mormons, which makes the position of "woke" Mormons pretty interesting. As I reported here, when a woke posse decided it was going to make a political point about the backwardness of the Classics field, they chose to make that point by boycotting BYU first of all of the institutions they might have chosen. It was pretty galling to me to watch woke Catholics beat up on Mormon BYU when they can't do much to face down their own institutions. They pick the soft targets. Oh, and later the association met at Baylor, home of Phil Jenkins, and no one sent around a petition to boycott that institution either. Why? Their policies regarding homosexuality were equally public and regressive. I wonder why they were not boycotted.

I have had similar experiences, growing up partly in Utah but partly outside, as well as in my professional life in academia (but not outside of academia). I don't deny that there is a real prejudice against Mormons, especially by people that are by ordinary standards in this and any other country elite (professionals, academics, etc.). I just don't think that prejudice descends from white racism or is a species of it, and at the end of it all, it probably doesn't matter what it's genealogy is. I am sure you are aware that evangelical and orthodox Jews and seriously devout Muslims face similar prejudices in academia. I think there is a pattern here. In any case, what you say hardly surprises me

ETA: I think people underestimate the role religion plays in these identity wars. They forget the P in WASP and focus far too much on the W. W and P are mutually reinforcing aspects of the identity. There is a reason why Protestant congregations are divided very much along racial lines. Protestants engineered a lot of the disgusting racist doctrines that Mormons later clung to. They were the ones turning Native Americans into Hebrews and giving people of African descent the "curse of Cain." Just because these churches did not perpetuate or cling to those absurd positions up to the present does not mean that the underlying structures of identity and power within the group do not endure. The KKK was a predominantly Protestant organization for a reason.

I certainly share your suspicion of Protestantism for some of its more dubious contributions. And I think you've tapped a rich vein here, though I might exploit it a bit differently. This is what I think is at the root of the prejudice against Mormons, today as in the past: an essentially theological dispute (which is no small deal). I know that's a traditional view that looks just too obvious on the surface, but it depends on who one thinks the inheritors of the "P" in WASP really are. I prefer to focus on who has inherited the WASPy institutions. In the 19th century, If we look at all the traditional WASP cultural institutions—higher education, mass media, the mainline Protestant churches—you find the same groups today are as hostile to Mormons as they ever were, even if the theological claims maintained in those institutions are different. For example, it is not uncommon to see a baptist church in New England with a pride flag, and you would certainly hear plenty of "anti-Mormonism" from parishioners at places like that—usually white and upper middle class people—back in 2012 because for these progressives, Mormons are homohobic, sexist, racist, etc. etc. It is therefore completely acceptable to bash Mormons, because they deviate from the acceptable "Protestantism" espoused by the institution (and I'm hardly the first person since Woodrow Wilson to see progressive politics as a form of civic Protestantism). Baptists in the south, split along those congregational lines for exactly the reason you mentioned, will bash Mormons for a different reason but one that is more obviously theological (the Mormon heresy from the trinity, and much else, for example). However, the Baptist in the south doesn't have a kid who is interning at the World Bank in DC or at NBC in New York, whereas the middle-aged upper-middle-class white lady in Glastonbury, Connecticut who underpays the Guatemalans mowing the lawn beneath her "Black Lives Matter" lawn sign, does have a kid or two in institutions like that or is connected to them herself or through her spouse (and by the way, my impression is that even a lot of the evangelical institutions and big churches are becoming more "woke" and are not as Trumpy as you suggest, but I await correction by the expertise of MS Jack on this). The dominant cultural agenda is still set by the same WASP-y institutions, but the agenda they envision for everyone is just different from what it used to be. And Mormons are outside of that agenda (partly for their views on marriage, again). Same old WASPs, just different surface Protestantism.

Of course there are Bible churches and all that, but not one of these is as threatening to Mormons as a piece in Bloomberg on the Church's finances (for example). People who have left the Church and are hostile to it might not see it as threatening, but to someone who is a believer, these are felt as "anti-Mormon" attacks launched at them by the dominant culture, which activates all that folk/historical memory (however inaccurate or colored by later events it might be). A lot of members of the Church actually take pride in the Church's wealth, and I don't think it's because they misunderstand their own religion. From what I recall growing up when, for example, Time magazine had a cover story in 1997 about "Mormon, Inc." traditional believers experience that not as an attack on their wealth—which they are proud of, because it shows the wisdom of the leadership and god's favor—but on their right to have such wealth in the first place. Questioning that right, which is implied in these kinds of stories, is thus a form of delegitimizing Mormonism and wrapping it in hostile suspicion. But why should Bloomberg or anyone else care that the Church has $100 billion? Because according to the Gospel of Mike, the good news of which has been embraced by the wider culture, churches shouldn't have a lot of money (yes, I'm aware there's an anti-wealth strain in Christianity, but I think that is often misused and misunderstood, often willfully by people trying to score political points). In any case, I'm sure we all enjoy hearing rich non-religious people extolling the virtues of poverty for the religious almost as much as we enjoy hearing rich Christians extol the blessings of wealth. In either case, there is an essentially theological disagreement that motivates things like that. The attempted classics attack on BYU you referenced is rooted in a metaphysical disagreement about human sexuality and gender—that is a theological dispute of a kind, too. I would suggest, also, that the most vigorous and wide-spread expressions of Calvinism are not to be found in the sermons of conservative Presbyterians but in the opinion pages of the New York Times and in certain kinds of seminars and professional development rituals that are now pervasive among the professional and managerial classes and the schools they send their children to (and increasingly informing the media they consume). Mormons do not comfortably participate in these, and Mormon beliefs, as they are perceived, are violative of the social norms set by these WASP-y institutions.

In short, I find myself agreeing with your general point, but I think the role traditionally played by Protestantism is now played by another kind of civic religion, which is quite is developing in its theology, but in its forms it enacts many of the rituals and goals of the old American Puritanism—as ever, tormented by a sense of in-born sin that can't be remitted but must endlessly be publicly acknowledged, insistent on the necessity of public shame as a symbol of expiation, devoted to the pursuit of political power and a monoculture from which only heretics deviate—and they should be subject to correction for doing so. It is only too natural to be suspicious of Mormons for their deviation from the social norms set by the old WASP-y institutions (no matter how diverse they try to be at the moment) and there are no social taboos, as a result, against treating Mormons in a prejudiced way. Mormons face none of the expiative situations of other minority groups; for in attempting to alleviate those situations, the secular Puritans in the WASP institutions attain a sense of having won redemptive grace. As a matter of fact, attacking groups like Mormons is a very useful way to show that you are (or should be) one of the elect.

[Lem]

Among white Mormons—that is, most of them—it is only people who put little stock in the ultimate authority of the Church but put a great deal of stock in the institutions of this world (especially universities and media) who are "troubled" (the preferred word) by the Church's past and present racism (e.g. Jana Riess).

that's quite an indictment of Mormons.

[Symmachus]

Among white Mormons—that is, most of them—it is only people who put little stock in the ultimate authority of the Church but put a great deal of stock in the institutions of this world (especially universities and media) who are "troubled" (the preferred word) by the Church's past and present racism (e.g. Jana Riess).

that's quite an indictment of Mormons.

It could be, although I'm not the indicting type. My point is just that, if you are faithful Mormon who believes the Church is personally directed by Jesus Christ ("He is the head of this Church..."), the Church's past isn't all that problematic. That's not a moral indictment, to my mind; that's just a consistent position. That is what I have observed, anyway, but I'm sure it varies at the margins, and I haven't been around Mormons regularly for a long time, so maybe things have changed Sundays are filled with deep navel gazing about the situation of Jane Manning James (I instinctively doubt it).

In any case, in general I have very deep skepticism about the sincerity, and thus mixed feelings about, the value of publicly performed moral positions, so I don't consider the lack of that performance by Mormons individually or as a group to be meaningful one way or the other.

[Lem]

Among white Mormons—that is, most of them—it is only people who put little stock in the ultimate authority of the Church but put a great deal of stock in the institutions of this world (especially universities and media) who are "troubled" (the preferred word) by the Church's past and present racism (e.g. Jana Riess).

that's quite an indictment of Mormons.

It could be, although I'm not the indicting type. My point is just that, if you are faithful Mormon who believes the Church is personally directed by Jesus Christ ("He is the head of this Church..."), the Church's past isn't all that problematic. That's not a moral indictment, to my mind; that's just a consistent position.

LOL. No argument there.

That is what I have observed, anyway, but I'm sure it varies at the margins, and I haven't been around Mormons regularly for a long time, so maybe things have changed Sundays are filled with deep navel gazing about the situation of Jane Manning James (I instinctively doubt it).

In any case, in general I have very deep skepticism about the sincerity, and thus mixed feelings about, the value of publicly performed moral positions, so I don't consider the lack of that performance by Mormons individually or as a group to be meaningful one way or the other.

True but my point was only that stating that only jack Mormons chasing an allegiance to non-religious institutions are bothered by racism seemed extreme. If we are talking about the people publicly performing these moral positions, then yes, I would agree that Pharisees throwing open their windows to pray should be taken with a grain of salt. Your recent channeling of Peterson is an excellent example; he has the humble brag honed to a white hot diamond point.

Maybe it is just wishful thinking, but I would hope that some Mormons, even those not chasing institutional alliance, would be abhorred by such casual racism. I don't have much experience anymore either with groups of Mormons, so maybe not. My grandmother did express concern when I was in high school that a non-white friend of mine had held my hand during a slow dance (i.e. a brown boy touched me, as she put it), which I have always found a bit odd, given that she was born in Mexico to polygamous parents running from the law.

In any case, my current experience with Mormons is pretty limited, racist or otherwise, but one would hope the average Mormon position has moved at least a little beyond that.

[Symmachus]

my point was only that stating that only jack Mormons chasing an allegiance to non-religious institutions are bothered by racism seemed extreme. If we are talking about the people publicly performing these moral positions, then yes, I would agree that Pharisees throwing open their windows to pray should be taken with a grain of salt. Your recent channeling of Peterson is an excellent example; he has the humble brag honed to a white hot diamond point.

Maybe it is just wishful thinking, but I would hope that some Mormons, even those not chasing institutional alliance, would be abhorred by such casual racism.

If we are limiting ourselves to individual acts like the one you describe, it's probably a safe assumption that most white Mormons would find it abhorrent. My original point is about the instances of institutional racism in the Church, like the priesthood ban. Whether or not liberal Mormons who profess to be troubled by it are sincere (I'll just assume they are), the fact that they say they are troubled already suggests they are operating in a different thought-world. In light of my time in the Church, I just don't think most faithful members, in their tithe-paying and temple-going thought-world, could conceive of the Church as having been racist, even if they could accept that some individual was. They treat the Church and its leaders as morally infallible, but even if it wrong, you shouldn't acknowledge it or dwell on it—shouldn't find it "troubling"—because the Lord will never lead the Church astray, to this line of thinking.