Confront Power Per Se, Not Just The Powers That Be

Sunday, 12 April 2026, 4:38 pm
Opinion: Martin LeFevre - Meditations

It's no coincidence of history that “the real strength of the Christian nationalist movement in the US now comes from its access to power.” Christian nationalists like Pete Hegseth, the secretary of the atavistic Department of War, fill leadership positions in the second Trump administration.

What is happening below that obvious level? What is power, and why do we take it as a given of social, economic and political organization?

Most people assume power is an immutable fact of human life. But when we talk about power, we’re really talking about coercion, and coercion means violence in one form or another.

Therefore to end violence, including the violence of oppression and war, power must be deconstructed and superseded by intelligence, not taken as an unchangeable aspect of human nature and socio-political organization.

Whereas violence is the inevitable postrequisite of power, psychological division is the essential prerequisite. Before power can accumulate in the hands of the ‘haves,’ there must be, in both rich and poor, powerful and powerless, an “us vs. them.” That primeval duality in the human condition derives from tribalistic identification and the fear of other groups, which has existed since the beginning of man.

Without the “us vs. them” mindset, conflict would remain an individual and local problem, as it was during humankind's long prehistory before the formation of classes after the appearance of cities.

Thus it's the ancient ‘us vs. them’ mindset that’s at the root of the Hobbesian society and world of today. It sustains the militarism and war of America externally, and the violence and gun culture of America internally.

What about the intractable conflict between the classes? Few believe the myth that America is a classless society anymore. But as accurate a critique of capitalism as Marxism was, it didn’t delve deeply enough, and foundered after being applied in the Soviet Union because Lenin accepted, and Stalin grotesquely magnified the use of the power of the state to reorder society. (To this day it still isn’t known how many millions Stalin slaughtered and starved.)

Rather than create a worker’s paradise, revolutionary Russia poured the foundation for what became the stagnant hell of the Soviet Union.

Invited to the USSR a year before it fell, I never saw so many angry people. Everywhere I went I encountered Russians that hated the system and welcomed its collapse. (Rather like Americans across the political spectrum today, except for the 1% of course.)

Having embraced capitalism since the fall of the Soviet Union, the stores and shops are now full, but the political system is even more oppressive than it was in 1990. And Russia’s spiritual and intellectual resources have been severely eroded.

In the west, Christianity went wrong from the beginning. First by his followers cunningly inverting Jesus’ death on the cross to mean sacrifice rather than the failure of his mission, then by fusing the new religion with the power and wealth of declining Rome in the 4th century. (It’s not called the Roman Catholic Church for nothing.)

Regarding Peter, allegedly the first pope, Jesus never said, "upon this rock I build my church." Rather Peter, who was so guilt-ridden by his betrayal in denying Jesus three times after his arrest that he insisted the Romans crucify him upside down, became the touchstone for the Catholic Church's masterful manipulation of the masses over the centuries.

The idea that the sacrificial symbolism of the cross is a matter of personal faith that doesn’t need to be overthrown is equivalent to saying the premise of Manifest Destiny doesn’t need to be overthrown because it built America.

Dismissing Christian theology as a matter of personal faith denied individual responsibility and strength, and permitted the institutions of church and state to underwrite slavery and colonialism.

Besides, personal beliefs aren’t personally derived; they are inevitably sourced in traditions and societal contexts, however distorted.

The resurgence of Christianity’s original sin of partnering with power has taken the form of Christian nationalists such as the latter-day Crusader Pete Hegseth.

Referring to Trump and Hegseth, Pope Leo XIV says, “No gain can be worth the life of the weakest, children, or families. No cause can justify the shedding of innocent blood.” True, but his moral authority is built on sand, since there’s a crooked line from the militaristic power of ancient Rome, to the medieval power of the Roman Catholic Church, to the militaristic throwback that America became.

One has to see the true within the false. Christianity had true elements, but its false foundation led inexorably to the power and corruption of Catholicism and Protestantism over the centuries, and to the vicious cruelty of Christian nationalism currently ruling America. False beginnings can only be transformed when they are fully acknowledged and ended.

In any case, it’s circular and contradictory to maintain that the institutions are the source of man’s domination, coercion and suffering, rather than humans and human nature.

Without enough people questioning and overthrowing within ourselves the premises and foundations on which our faltering and foundering institutions rest, humankind is doomed to repeat the same patterns of oppression and war.

As the Nuremberg trials attested to no avail, the end result of power is fascism, totalitarianism and mass murder – “the arrogance and cruelty of power.”

Purblind to the intensifying polycrisis, ‘thought leaders’ are now calling for “the slow and difficult work of learning once again to live with one another.” Humankind has run out of space however, both outwardly and inwardly, to revert to the comforting illusions of tolerance and gradualism.

Power is not a tool that can be used wisely or maliciously; it’s an inherently false and corrupting fact of the human condition and socio-political organization that must be psychologically overthrown.

The interconnected crises of our time are made worse by the demand to “choose sides.” That mentality just fosters conflict, promotes violence, and entrenches power and the powerful.

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Martin LeFevre - Meditations

Scoop Contributor

Martin LeFevre is a contemplative and philosopher.

His sui generis “Meditations” explore spiritual, philosophical and political questions relating to the polycrisis facing humanity.

lefevremartin77@gmail