J. Edgar Hoover’s Real Fetish
I’m back to reviewing books to jumpstart my writing. My first review for the New York Journal of Books, The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism, by Lerone A. Martin, came out earlier this month. I can’t recommend it highly enough ( unless your outrage meter is in the red).
I avoided questions about Hoover’s sexuality in the review for two reasons. First, I couldn’t squeeze it into the allotted words and also tease it out. Second, I wanted to write about it here.
In an American political history filled with deplorable acts perpetrated by soulless monsters, both elected and appointed, Hoover stands out as among the most awful. Both for his tireless work supporting institutional racism and general equality and the fact that he could abuse his office without consequence for the better part of the 20th century.
Every time a white supremacist law enforcement official is outed, know that they’re an echo of the standards set by the FBI under Hoover. He built an overtly racist, misogynist template for law enforcement and bolstered it with religion in a way that made it unassailable.
There’s just so much to tell (I guess that’s why there’s a book), but I want to share with you two revelations, one from the book and one about it.
The Warrior Monks
Hoover modeled the FBI Special Agent on the Jesuit priest. “Modeled” is probably too soft a term. For the first years of his directorship, FBI agents trained like Jesuits regardless of their Christian denomination. It should go without saying that if you weren’t a Christian, you weren’t in the FBI. In fact, if you weren’t an enthusiastic, practicing Christian, you couldn’t be a Special Agent.
Hoover was a Presbyterian, but he found the Catholic hierarchy, pageantry, and the Jesuit life in particular, attractive. Besides the expectation of physical prowess and intellectual superiority, the Church groomed Jesuits to be independent thinkers. “Independent” is a bit of a stretch, but since they were missionaries, flung far afield often with little to no contact with the Church, they learned to trust their faith in God above even the rules of the Church. It empowered them to do right regardless of any man’s law.
For the first 1700 years of Christianity, the prevailing understanding about missions was that God wanted recalcitrant unbelievers dead. Killing Jews, Muslims and heretics, including Christians who weren’t in lockstep, was a duty. The right must prevail at any and all costs.
Hoover thought this was just a swell way to run a national police force. And I’ll tell you what, many of us agree with him a little whether or not we want to admit it.
Think of a movie where the cop has to bend the rules to get the bad guy. True, in movies when they catch bad guys this way the filmmakers have ensured the entire audience (and any human being with a shred of morality and sense of justice) is rooting for an extra-judicial death.
Hoover empowered, encouraged, and at times ordered Special Agents to consider their immortal souls and their responsibility to their redeemer above their oath to uphold the law. In the book, Martin lays out such damning evidence about this (much of it in Hoover’s own hand) that if there were no other evidence about its white Christian nationalist mission, the FBI still would be disgraced.
That he did it openly and with impunity only underscores that no one in public office cares a wit for justice or equity. Hoover was keeping the Blacks and Communists (a word that describes all non-white supremacists) in check, arbitrarily ruining thousands of lives, and every national elected official was happy to let him do it, too cowardly to stop him or some combination of the two.
In case you’re wondering, to this day, fewer than five percent of Special Agents are either Black or women.
The Gay Problem
I don’t care enough to know, but for some reason there seems to be almost an apologetics for Hoover’s sexuality. A quick Google search claimed he was a bi-sexual and a failed heterosexual. Failed heterosexual? Is that seriously an academic euphemism for repressed homosexual?
I had wanted Martin to lay Hoover’s traitorous career at the feet of his repression, maybe to even make the case that Christian homophobic mania drove the Director to undermine the notion of religious liberty in America. Early in my reading, though, I came to understand that Hoover’s crusade had nothing to do with his sexuality and everything to do with his Christianity.
The history of Western civilization is the story of Christianity subsuming public life, being weaponized by the power-mad to justify violating the laws of man or rewriting the laws of man to conform with their very narrow understanding of what makes their god happy.
Hoover’s sexuality may have informed his strict body-shaming regimen for his Special Agents, but his crusade against Blacks, women and liberals was a function of his Christianity. In fact, it’s unclear that his repression (if there were any) in any way that mattered.
FBI higher-ups and most of his ecumenical allies understood Hoover’s Sundays with Special Agent Tolson were sacrosanct, and that the pair vacationed together regularly. Starting with Catholics, moving through mainline protestants and into the evangelical world, every holy roller ignored questions about Hoover’s private life. Their reward was the immense political power that they still wield today.
As a regular contributor to (and likely savior of) Christianity Today, Hoover could spread his White Christian Nationalist agenda across denominational lines in a way few have succeeded in doing since. Religious leaders across the spectrum quoted Hoover’s Christianity Today editorials every Sunday as evidence the government required Christians to work unceasingly toward a nation that their god wanted, indeed that god felt was his due and their responsibility.
The convenient fact that not one of them considered which Christianity God wanted in the end was secondary. They all agreed that God wanted white men who weren’t afraid to follow their hearts in charge. After all, as long as they unite against a common enemy, with God on their side, who could stand against them?
Keep the Faith,
Tony
Postscript
Although I’ll post this on social media, I’m still not what anyone could call “active” on it. I’ve been arbitrarily accepting friend requests on Facebook, which I’ll be writing about in the next few weeks. All that is to say that if you know someone who would get a kick out of this story (or any stories) consider forwarding them this email.
Thanks so much to those of you who have subscribed to the Day Drinking on Delmarva podcast I do with Todd DeHart. We’ve been adding a history element wherein we end the show by reading from an old newspaper focusing on Delmarva.
Most recently, we’ve discussed the 1930s battle over whether Lewes, Del. should be a fishing village or tourist destination and a cute story about a man who punished his 8-year-old by auctioning him off on the streets of Berlin. There’s a ton more and a new show pretty much every Thursday.
TR