Chris Hedges has an exhausting list of things he is angry about. Sitting in a diner in downtown Toronto, while on two-day book tour in the city, he does not so much speak as attack his topics. He stares down at the tape recorder, ignoring his oatmeal, speaking at rapid speed with the urgency of someone who, if he takes a breath, might forget his point.

And his point is very bleak. In his last book, American Fascists, the former New York Times reporter and war correspondent attacked the religious right, calling it "the most frightening mass movement in American history."

His latest book, I Don't Believe in Atheists, finds a new target to revile: such popular atheistic writers as Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great), Sam Harris (The End of Faith), and Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), whom he equates with the same religious fundamentalists they are fighting.

"What they have done is posit themselves as the highest moral achievement. They've created, in theological terms, little stone idols that look and act and speak like them. Which is what the Christian fundamentalists do," he said.

He goes after the "new atheists" with an absolute vengeance, linking their "vapid" ideas to such sinister outcomes as concentration camps and mass murder. He believes the new atheists -- like the Christian Right -- deal in simplistic notions that offer a vision in which anyone who disagrees "needs to be eradicated to achieve a better world."

But the book goes a lot further than just belittling godless writers.

"What I'm really attacking are people who buy into utopian belief systems -- whether that's through religious fundamentalism or through this new atheism," he explained. "Both are forms of belief and faith and both are finally absurd. There is nothing in human history or nature that suggests that we're progressing anywhere."

Such a dark summation of the main theme of the book is evidence that the catchy title is misleading. Even though he is the son of a Presbyterian minister, and spent four years at Harvard Divinity School (though never ordained), I Don't Believe in Atheists is not a pro-Church tome.

"I take full responsibility for the title," he said. "I used to be a journalist ... and I know the value of a good headline."

His journalistic career has also taken him to some of the world's worst spots, including Sarajevo during the siege and Gaza. He concedes that his time in battle zones has coloured his view of the world and is responsible for his belief that the human race does not progress morally. But he said it has also given him valuable experience into what life is really like for people who deal with fanaticism at its most virile.

He says the new atheists do not have anywhere near the power of the Christian Right, but believes what they share is to "reinforce for those people outside of religious structures the same kind of intolerance and the same kind of lust for violence that the Christian Right does. If you read passages about what they write about the Muslim world, they could be lifted from the most rabid Christian fundamentalists."

He is particularly sensitive to the portrayal of Muslims. He speaks Arabic and spent seven years as The New York Times Middle East bureau chief. He said no one should attack a culture or its beliefs without serious study, which, he believes, both the new atheists and fundamentalists have failed to do.

His view of the consequences of all this goes beyond dire. He believes that a confluence of forces in the United States could combine to produce a nightmare. A fundamental economic breakdown, which will cause great despair among the population, will combine with latent anti-Muslim sentiment from the new atheists and the religious right, and result in "bloodletting against Muslims outside our borders but also against the six million who live in the U.S.

"I would argue the U.S. is one or two attacks from becoming a police state," Mr. Hedges said. "My country is going insane. If it's not halted, not only are we going to be in deep trouble but the damage we inflict will be tremendous."

He does, however, grant that religion has a serious role in society: "Religious thought is a guide to morality. It points humans toward inquiry. It seeks to unfetter the mind from prejudices that blunt reflection and self-criticism," he writes at the end of the book, a small light of hope at the end of a dark tunnel.

Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive