The Christian Nationalist Movement
A Note About In-Your-Face Fascism in American Politics
The Christian Nationalist Movement ... what a contradiction in terms ... and the scariest thing I've seen in my lifetime. Outlines of the major elements (14) of fascism include its marriage to a Radical Right religious tradition.
For Franco it was the Spanish Catholic Church.
For Hitler it was, first, the Lutheran Church, and when they stopped playing ball, he created a Reich's Church to take their place—though Hitler's Catholic mother's grave was a Catholic shrine during WWII. Pictures of Catholic priests doing the sieg heil salute abound in the war's histories.
For Mussolini, it was a quite willing Vatican.
Then there’s Radical Islam, which is wholly fascist with different expressions: Whether in Iran (Twelver Shia), Turkey (Sunni), Afghanistan (Deobandi), Indonesia in Aceh Province (Sunni), Malaysia (Sunni), and Saudi Arabia (Wahhabi Hanbali Sunni), it's a radicalization of Islam not seen before the 20th century.
Then, on the opposite side of things, is radical state secularism, which functions as a religion while being anti-religious—and that's in China, Russia, and North Korea.
Now we have Christofascism in the United States, and this is *not* the Christianity I grew up with, though the seeds were always there in the Southern racist screed preached from the pulpit in some places.
Archaeologist and retired British Museum curator Rupert Chapman calls what's happening now a CRISIS CULT, which is what develops when a culture is disintegrating, when a privilege culture of color or race or religion is crumbling, when demographic dominance is disappearing, when economic hegemony is going to hell.
See Rupert Chapman’s brilliant article—which I posted but didn’t write!—here:
The Roots of Trumpism: The Birth of a Crisis Cult and Rural Conservatism
For the people of the rural hinterlands, the expectation of life is continuity, while for the urban populations, the expectation is change. I. The Birth of a Crisis Cult Events of the last few years have persuaded me to think more and more anthropologically about what is happening in American culture. Economicall…
Crisis cults are incredibly dangerous. Ours is gaining strength—and it is armed and defending its right to have its own ARMY. And it is already advocating an internal state sponsorship of terrorism against women, the LBGTQ+ community, immigrants, all non-Whites, and all non-complying practitioners of other religions. And if it gets its hands on the wealth and power of America and can reserve the vote only for itself, it won't be satisfied there. And because its ideology is based on non-reality, it will be swamped by climate change and the starvation another blunder in this area will bring to billions.
Maybe Job No. 1 is protecting the vote. If the rest of us can't vote, and don't fight for that right, America's one brief shining moment of democracy will end. And the world may never see its like again. ...
Donald Trump didn't create this problem, but he gave permission for the ugliness in the American Dark Shadow to snarl its way out of its nasty little underworld and openly lust for the power it craves.
Hopefully, the courts will move forward with all deliberate speed to hold him accountable for the raft of crimes he's committed and help us end his charade—and discredit both this sleaze and his Congressional minions—before the next election comes around.
This is obvious to those who are paying attention, but the masses that matter are still oblivious. They think a Christian Nationalist cult, is as ridiculous as America having a White Supremacy problem. which are very true and real problems.
YES to every word. The belief cult existed BEFORE the orange creep, remember The Family, Tea Party, tele-evangelists... but he allowed them to come out from under the rocks. Combined with Dark Money and the demagogues who couldn't care less about the beliefs but manipulate those who do, this is a VERY serious threat to our democracy.