[“Today, the United States finds itself at a crossroads. To the
left, lies multiracial democracy; to the right a white Christian
nation or Herrenvolk democracy.” It’s clear which path the
Republican party has chosen. ] [[link removed]]

WHITE NATIONALIST FRINGE MOVES CLOSER TO CENTER OF GOP  
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Annika Brockschmidt
March 31, 2022
Religion Dispatches
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_ “Today, the United States finds itself at a crossroads. To the
left, lies multiracial democracy; to the right a 'white Christian
nation' or Herrenvolk 'democracy.'” It’s clear which path the
Republican party has chosen.  _

,

 

“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how
did that language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching
me about the merits of our history and our civilization?” It was
this statement that finally got Steve King, the former Iowa
Republican,  stripped of his committee assignments in the House of
Representatives. This wasn’t the first time he’d signaled sympathy
for the far right—after all, he’d had a long history of racist,
bigoted remarks about immigrants and he’d even retweeted
Nazi-sympathizers
[[link removed]]. 

But while racism and the odd white supremacist retweet could be
overlooked by the GOP due to his strong following in the midwest, it
was King’s full-throated promotion of white supremacy and white
nationalism as a virtue that finally proved too much even for the GOP.
And so, in 2019, Republicans
[[link removed]] unanimously
voted to remove him from his committee assignments (though he
wasn’t removed
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the “G.O.P. House conference itself, so he [could] still attend its
party meetings”). 

Since then, the GOP has been radicalized even further, and at a pace
that’s left even some of the most critical political commentators
stunned. Three years later, in 2022, and another member of congress,
Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, stood proudly next to
a white supremacist and Nazi-sympathizer
[[link removed]],
Nick Fuentes, at his America First Political Action Conference
(AFPAC), where he later praised
[[link removed]] Putin
and Hitler. 

Greene, initially laughed off as part of the lunatic fringe of the
GOP, has become a part of its mainstream. Even Republicans admit that
her endorsement carries a great deal of weight. In fact, four
“Republican operatives” told _The Daily Beast_
[[link removed]] that
only one endorsement is better than hers. “If you can’t get Donald
Trump, you are going to want to have MTG in your back pocket,” said
one. 

Greene was stripped of her committee assignments as well—only this
time, just a couple of years later, the vote did not include the
majority of Republicans. Despite her remarks minimizing the Holocaust
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questioning 9/11 and school shootings
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and calling for violence
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Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats, only eleven House Republicans broke
ranks and voted with Democrats to relieve Greene of her committees.
For those keeping count, 199 Republicans voted against the resolution
[[link removed]].
Kevin McCarthy
[[link removed]],
minority leader of the House, blamed the Democrats, calling the vote a
“partisan power grab.”

THE GEN-Z VOICE OF RACISM

Before joining his colleague at this year’s AFPAC (via recorded
video message), Congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona posted an anime
video of himself
[[link removed]] killing
his Democratic colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and attacking Joe
Biden with two swords. That was in November 2021. No real consequences
from McCarthy and the GOP followed. Gosar was eventually censured
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stripped of his committee assignments, with only two Republicans
siding with the Democrats. 

This wasn’t Gosar’s first experience with AFPAC—he’d
participated in person in the past. In total, four elected Republican
officials participated in this year’s AFPAC, with Idaho Lt. Governor
Janice McGeachin 
[[link removed]]and
Arizona state senator Wendy Rogers joining Gosar and Greene. Also
speaking at this year’s AFPAC: Steve King.

And while the GOP’s radicalization process has sped up considerably
over the past few years, this year’s AFPAC, hosted by Fuentes as a
rival event to CPAC, marked another escalation of what—and who—is
tolerated in the Republican Party. In fact, as researcher Ben
Lorber’s* popular Twitter thread on AFPAC
[[link removed]] demonstrates,
this is a feedback loop: as Fuentes’ groyper movement hastens the
radicalization of the GOP, the GOP helps further normalize white
nationalism, which may well have a seat at the table going forward.

Video
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the conference shows Fuentes complaining that Putin was being compared
to Hitler—“as if that isn’t a good thing”—to laughter and
cheers from the audience. While many mainstream Republicans have
responded to the invasion of Ukraine
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deadly Russian attacks on civilians and press—by employing the
Tucker Carlson
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of “anti-anti-Putin”
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the attendees of AFPAC didn’t even bother to mask their admiration
for the Russian dictator. Shouts of “Putin, Putin, Putin!” could
be heard from the crowd during Fuentes’ speech, a sentiment he
affirmed. 

It’s important to note that he’s not just any right-wing
extremist—but the openly-racist, Gen Z voice of the
movement, stating, 
[[link removed]]“we
want children to be happy and not on drugs, and that’s why we
opposed mixed [race] marriages.” In addition, he openly called for
the killing of legislators before Jan 6: “What can you and I do to a
state legislator, besides kill them? … Although we should not do
that. I am not advising that, but I mean, what else can you do,
right?” 

Daniel Harper, an expert on neo-Nazi subcultures
[[link removed]] in
the US and co-host of the “I Don’t Speak German” podcast
describes the dangerous character of Fuentes’ brand like this: 

“Fuentes’s America First brand depends to a large
extent [on] avoiding direct linkage to specific neo-Nazi culture
(including that derived from the now-waning ‘alt-right’) while
nonetheless engaging in that sort of politics in practice. Fuentes
very rarely speaks openly about ‘The Jews’ as an ethnicity/race,
often coding his antisemitism within the more ‘respectable’
confines of a hard-right Christian religious bigotry.” 

TIMES ARE CHANGING, FAST

Arizona state senator Wendy Rogers
[[link removed]],
who spoke at AFPAC via pre-recorded video-message, has publicly
stated her admiration for Fuentes
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previous occasions. She’s also a member of the far-right “Oath
Keepers,” a militia present at the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
And just like Fuentes, Rogers has called for political violence—the
difference being that she’s an elected Republican official.
She’s stated that there were “more gallows needed
[[link removed]]” for the
Right’s political enemies and has called
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“more rope and less inflation” on the right-wing site Gab. 

And speaking of Gab—another escalation, even by AFPAC standards, was
the speech by Gab-founder Andrew Torba
[[link removed]].
His rant, filled with the language of “spiritual warfare” and
extreme religious rhetoric, managed to stand out due to his signaling
of “Christian Identity
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a white power theology with a Nazi Jesus who seeks a race war. Now,
the dog whistles Torba used might not even have registered for the
majority who have no familiarity with this hateful fringe sect—but
to those who’ve watched the scene for some time, it was clear
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The use of dog whistles fits into Fuentes’ brand of white
nationalism that serves as a bridge between right-wingers and even
more fringe factions. According to Harper:

“The phrases that Torba used in his speech are all biblical, of
course, but point much more explicitly to the fundamental problems
the _America First_ movement rails against being caused by ‘The
Jews.’ ‘Synagogue of Satan’ is a relatively obscure passage from
Revelation among most American Christians, but it has strong resonance
within the Christian Identity movement, as a marker of the origins of
the people who currently call themselves Jews as being the ‘spawn of
Satan.’” 

“It is a call to a specific species of theology that has little to
do with mainline or even hard-right traditional Christianity, one that
is explicitly racialized and with antisemitism at its core.” 

Torba’s rhetoric doesn’t necessarily signal a resurgence of
“Christian Identity,” which remains fringe even in these
hard-right circles. But its prominent display at AFPAC is, according
to Harper, cause for concern: 

“Christian Identity as a faith practice is fringe even within white
nationalist communities today, but the language and the ideas have
been adopted by several prominent thought leaders in the current
far-right, and the fact that these lines are being spoken openly to
wild applause speaks volumes about the real opinions of the America
First movement as a whole, regardless of their Young Republicans Club
aesthetic. That Torba was that open about this language is an
escalation in the sense of what they believe they can get away with in
public[…].”

Lorber agrees, noting
[[link removed]] that two
of the “leading grandfathers of the white nationalist movement”
were present, and that, “A year ago, GOP elected officials
wouldn’t dare be caught in the same room as folks like this, much
less headlining the conference. Times are changing, fast.”

THE FAR RIGHT: IT’S WHERE THE ACTION IS

While Rogers
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been censured by the Arizona GOP in response to the public outrage
over her appearance at AFPAC, no other consequences have followed. It
took Idaho GOP officials three days before they could muster even
vague criticism of McGeachin
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though they did so without actually naming her—and even then, rather
than worry about the harm caused by such toxic ideas, their concern
was any potential “guilt by association.” 

Thomas Zimmer, historian and visiting professor at Georgetown
University who specializes in the right-wing assault on American
democracy, explains that the Arizona GOP’s actions fit into a larger
pattern of public Republican responses to its most extreme members: 

“It is true that the most egregious assaults on democratic political
culture, the most blatant embrace of political violence, leads to some
measure of symbolic distancing—but the party never breaks with its
Christian nationalist extremist members. That’s because GOP
leadership is aware that most of the energy and activism is precisely
on the far-right wing—but also because this sort of radicalism is
widely seen as justified on the Right and within the Republican
Party.” 

Indeed, while a recent article in the _New York Times_
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that “neither Ms. Greene nor Mr. Gosar is a party leader,” this is
true only in the most technical sense of the term—as demonstrated by
the toothless response of major GOP figures. And while Rogers may
present herself differently than other Republicans, who go for a more
“respectable” brand, ideologically, the two are aligned, says
Zimmer: 

“Sure, the exact language Rogers uses might be slightly crasser than
what some conservatives are comfortable with, and some Republicans
might disagree with some aspects of the public image she projects. But
it’s obviously not enough for them to break with her. What Rogers is
saying, and the underlying worldview that manifests in her statements,
is well in line with the GOP’s central political project of
preventing multiracial pluralistic democracy. Rogers, the GOP, the
Right more broadly: They are united in the quest to entrench white
reactionary rule.”

It’s therefore not surprising that Greene hasn’t suffered any
meaningful consequences for her appearance at the conference of a
neo-Nazi sympathizer, apart from a stern talking-to by McCarthy (or at
least the appearance of it). Instead, she used the criticism leveled
against her as an opportunity 
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present herself as a defender of freedom of speech—in line with her
greeting of Fuentes’ AFPAC crowd as “canceled Americans.” 

In a statement
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she not only defended her appearance at AFPAC, claiming not to know
about Fuentes’ extremist beliefs, but she also lashed out at the
party secure in the understanding that as long as she has the support
of the base she isn’t likely to face any serious repercussions:
“The Pharisees
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the Republican Party may attack me for being willing to break barriers
and speak to a lost generation of young people who are desperate for
love and leadership. I won’t cancel others in the conservative
movement,” Greene added, “even if I find some of their statements
tasteless, misguided or even repulsive at times.” 

WHITE SUPREMACISTS CAN ALSO WEAR KHAKIS

The “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville was seen by many
experts as an important milestone in the radicalization of the white
nationalist movement. During the rally, which Fuentes attended, a
right-wing extremist killed counter-protester Heather Heyer with his
car. Beforehand, neo-Nazis and white nationalists had marched through
the streets of Charlottesville carrying the now-infamous Tiki torches
while chanting “Jews will not replace us.” 

And while many commentators condemned the violence and images of the
rally, most missed what the marchers meant by “Jews will not replace
us.” It was a direct nod to the conspiracy theory of “White
Genocide,”
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which shadowy Jewish elites plan to “replace” the country’s
white population with immigrants of color to destabilize and
eventually take control. Just like in Charlottesville, many of the dog
whistles at AFPAC, like those used by Torba, have flown under the
radar of most political commentators.  

It’s not the first time that blatant mainstreaming of white
supremacism has been connected to Christian nationalism in US history.
While the first Klan of the Reconstruction-era was mainly conducting
terror attacks on Black people, the second Klan of the 1920s combined
Protestantism and racism so effectively that it reached an all-time
peak in membership. The strong emphasis on religion, while fusing it
with a white, national identity, helped the Klan to reach the white
middle class: teachers and pastors, as well as housewives. 

Historian Kelly J. Baker
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who specializes in the Klan, points out a common misconception about
white supremacists: That people often imagine them all to have
swastika tattoos or other visible markers. Instead, the opposite is
often the case: “White Supremacists can also wear khakis,” she
told me during the research for my latest book
[[link removed]].   

Baker has been warning about the mainstreaming of white supremacy and
white Christian nationalism for years
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“I’ve been telling people for years that we live in the Klan’s
America. It’s not because the order is still influential, because it
isn’t. But rather, their ideas about white supremacy, Christian
nationalism, and how to tell the story of America are mainstream.” 

The data are clear in the relation between racism and white Christian
nationalism as well, as sociologists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry
have shown
[[link removed]]: 

“[…] Christian nationalism influences white Americans’ defense
of racial boundaries, and in this case their discomfort with
interracial marriage, above and beyond the effects of political
conservatism and religious exclusivity separately.”

Yale sociology professor Philip Gorski
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roots of white Christian nationalism in American history going back to
the Puritans, while emphasizing the role that narratives of blood,
blood sacrifice, and conquest have played within it. As soon as themes
of blood, purity, and soil are mixed, the appeal of these narratives
to white supremacists like Fuentes and his supporters are obvious. 

The long and racist history of slavery-affirming theology, and
especially white evangelical racism (see 
[[link removed]]Anthea
Butler’s
[[link removed]] work
[[link removed]]),
also makes it clear that this isn’t something that “outsiders”
brought to the movement. It was a feature, not a bug of white
Christian nationalism.

The consequences for the future of American democracy are potentially
devastating. Zimmer warns: “Every ‘Western’ society harbors
far-right extremists like Rogers who dream of committing acts of
fascistic violence. But it’s the fact that the Republican Party
embraces and elevates her, and others like her, that constitutes an
acute danger to democracy.”

Gorski
[[link removed]] puts
it like this: “Today, the United States finds itself at a
crossroads. To the left, lies multiracial democracy; to the right a
“white Christian nation” or Herrenvolk “democracy.” It’s
clear which path the Republican party has chosen. 

_Annika Brockschmidt is a freelance journalist, author, a
podcast-producer who currently writes for the Tagesspiegel, ZEIT
Online and elsewhere. Her second non-fiction book America's Holy
Warriors: How the Religious Right endangers Democracy
[[link removed]] was
published in German in October 2021 and was an immediate bestseller.
She co-hosts the podcast "Kreuz und Flagge" ("Cross and Flag") with
visiting professor at Georgetown University, Thomas Zimmer, which
explores the history of the Religious Right._

_Ben Lorber is a research 
[[link removed]]analyst for RD’s
parent organization, Political Research Associates
[[link removed]]._

_RELIGION DISPATCHES [[link removed]]: YOUR SECULAR,
INDEPENDENT, AWARD-WINNING SOURCE FOR THE BEST WRITING ON CRITICAL AND
TIMELY ISSUES AT THE INTERSECTION OF RELIGION, POLITICS AND CULTURE._

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