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Recognizing the dark side of White Christian Nationalism
As defined by Rob Boston in his 2021 article, “White Christian Nationalists: Who Are They? What Do They Want? Why Should You Care?” White Christian Nationalists are…
“… political movement that seeks to topple church-state separation and declare America a “Christian nation” — with “Christian” in this case being far to the right and supremely fundamentalist. While they’re sometimes openly aligned with racist movements, their ultimate goal is seen as a branch of white supremacy because it would result in a society governed by conservative white Christian men who would make decisions for everyone else.” — Rob Boston
They have set rules they believe in that are handed down from their Baptist organizations. Those organizations are a means of making money more than anything else. Also, they have always liked the status quo. That means they love white Christians to be in leadership. They prefer those white Christians to be men.
Anyone else — they find a reason in their interpretations of the Bible to look down on or not include. They will even make things up, but try to tie it into portions of the Bible to boost their credibility. It’s been an ongoing bunch of patterns in human behavior for me to study since I was a child.
There are five components that I have experienced that allow White Christian Nationalists to have an advantage. Those are the use of othering, ignorance, religion, and cognitive dissonance, as well as extremism.
Once a group of people or even a culture have these things in place, they can become unstable and willing to follow the charismatic leader of their choice to the very end.
I hope you don’t mind going on this chaotic ride with me as I explain to anyone reading the components that I recognize in White Christian Nationalism. It’s very important for us to distinguish the people who are White Christian Nationalists (WCNs).
It’s also important to recognize people who are being brainwashed by them. It helps to comprehend how they are being influenced. Maybe if you identify it, you can save your family members from falling into the echo chamber and becoming more extremist in their views and actions.
My Background
Coming from the background that I do, it prepared me to watch the drama unfold during the countdown to the 2016 election. You see, I have been around subtle racism all my life. I’ve also been around ignorant racism — a term I use to refer to people who absolutely, positively do not believe they are racist. Yet, their actions and their beliefs would suggest otherwise.
I grew up in the Bible Belt, in central Alabama. My family wasn’t very religious at first. As the years went by, religion became more and more important to my parents. I believe many people get like this when they look death in the eyes. They worry they need to get their bases covered. So they really dial into what the preacher has to say.
Unfortunately, a lot of the preachers in that area are biased. They are what you might call White Christian Nationalists. I did not know about that terminology when I was growing up, but now that I have the definition, I understand that most of them and the politicians that they elect are White Christian Nationalists.
So when Republicans and their leader began othering whole crowds of people, I saw what was happening and recognized it. When they began denying the truth that was right before their eyes, I started excitedly pointing it out to other people. Few believed me when I explained to them that denying the truth would work until it happened.
It’s still happening. Since 2016, the amount of White Christian Nationalists who no longer will share their power has grown. Thanks to state legislatures full of these people censuring and expelling their fellow legislators for any reason they can find, you can see it becoming national news. Even if the other legislators are supporting the practice of Freedom of Speech as described in the first amendment of the Constitution.
Othering
Othering is the act of labeling a group or individuals as not fitting in within the norms of a social group. It can influence how people perceive and treat those who are part of the in-group versus those who are part of the out-group — the “others.” In the United States, indigenous people and black people have suffered othering the most.
Othering people can allow other groups of people to feel superior or safer than the othered group. And if the top class of people other a group, the classes of people in between the othered group and the in-group often turn their backs on the othered group, easily ignoring the struggles of the othered group to focus on their own.
Recently, the groups that are being othered by the White Christian Nationalists include groups that are different based on religion, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, political affiliation, and yes, also skin color. And the othering has become more and more extreme.
Paul Marsh touched on the differences between racism in the Bible Belt of the Southern United States and other areas of the country in his article -
Where I grew up, the racism and sexism were subtle. People often used innocent ignorance as an excuse. Or, people refused to see either as anything but the proper way to view the world and continued on with them.
There are many people who will tell you to your face and absolutely swear that they are not racist or sexist or insert bigotry of choice here. Yet, when it comes down to it, they will talk about stereotypes and even specific people behind their backs. They will overlook unfair practices. They will not make any efforts at all to get to know someone who is “other” and yet talk about them.
I was guilty for too long in my silence. I learned by watching and understanding this for what it was. I’ll never be silent about it again.
Ignorance
Being able to other people takes ignorance. Ignorance is definitely not a good thing. But it’s understandable in a lot more cases than you might believe. Simply put, ignorance is the lack of knowledge, education, and/or awareness. We have all been ignorant at one point or another. We’ve all made mistakes because we were ignorant about something.
The shame isn’t in being ignorant. The shame is in not admitting you’re ignorant, not trying to learn and pull yourself out of the state of being ignorant, or worse, being willfully ignorant. There is a hierarchy among the people who are proponents of White Christian Nationalism.
And to preserve that separation of blue-collar from white-collar, they want to keep the general population ignorant. They also want to keep their ignorant population believing in them and trusting them to do what is proper.
This is about power.
“They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them.” — George Carlin
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Here’s the problem: They don’t care about anyone but themselves. As soon as people learn the truth about the world and realize that their “betters” are not in their offices to help them, those WCNs in power belittle them and push them over to other them, too.
Want examples? Sure. From recent history — RINOs — traditional Republicans who turned against the MAGA crowd are definitely still Republicans and definitely still Christian. And yet, leaders within the WCN politics censured, jeered, and gave them the label Republican In Name Only.
Anyone who comes out of ignorance and questions a White Christian Nationalist, especially a leader of the group, risks being ridiculed, ostracized, and left behind
“Ignorance is Bliss.” That’s the saying. However, it’s only bliss while experiencing the high of being self-righteous. However, real life will not hide the truth from them. All they have to do is open their eyes. They have to go back to their lower-class lifestyle, while their heroes fly around in luxury and use their donations for yet another money-making scheme.
What makes me shake my head the most? The ones who will deny facts that are shown to them. They are willfully ignorant. They prefer not to know anything that bothers them, therefore they’ll continue to make decisions that affect others based on their own ignorance.
Recently, FOX Newscasters got caught talking about lying to their audience about what they believed concerning the election denial for the 2020 election. They despised the people coming on their shows and didn’t believe them in the least.
They continued to give the deniers a platform to make more money. And yet, people don’t believe FOX lied to them. These people ignore all the signs that both the election deniers and the newscasters lied to them. They prefer to be ignorant than to admit they were gullible.
This is being willfully ignorant, and this is being too prideful. White Christian Nationalists can use all of this to keep their power in place.
Religion
Considering this article is about White Christian Nationalists, religion is important. It’s actually part of their adopted title. We cannot ignore religion. The role religion plays in the plans of taking as much power as possible by White Christian Nationalists is very important. Particularly the religions from which the WCN politicians get their votes and bread and butter.
Most denominations of Christianity in WCN strongholds provide populations full of people willing to do whatever their pastors and their leaders tell them to do. Many will believe whatever they are told to believe without question.
It’s part of what their religion has taught them since childhood. I’ve written about that indoctrination and my escape from it. So many people have had to do the same — sometimes putting a barrier between them and their families and old friends.
It’s how this group of denominations works. God the Father above all others. Men are closest to God. All others come after and are there to serve the man and, therefore, serve God. If you question the word of God or your preacher, they can shun you. This doesn’t even have to happen in an official capacity. I’ve experienced it.
I asked too many questions and was labeled a lost soul… someone tempted by the world. Religious people consider the world anti-Christian and evil. I was worldly because I had questions — questions that came from a more intense study of the Bible. Ironic, don’t you think?
Luckily, the spell over my head got broken and not my heart. I had people on the outside willing to help me with my internal upheaval over it all. Not everyone is that lucky. And not everyone questions what they are being fed in these churches.
Some are a pre-programmed bunch of servants that will be loyal to anyone who claims to be Christian and will lead. Look how many will step into that leadership role in politics.
If people predisposed to the rhetoric of both the church and the politicians who will use religion to get faithful servants are told that they are doing the will of God, there is no reason for them to back down. Their preachers have promised them a mansion in heaven and streets of gold.
Living here is so difficult. Why should they care if they die overthrowing democracy or defending their beliefs from perceived enemies (People who are othered and their supporters), when they have so much to look forward to?
This could get dangerous. Sorry, let me walk that back. It has already become deadly.
Cognitive Dissonance
This phenomenon is so important that I wrote an entire article about it. In that article, I molded together a definition that worked.
“When you look up the phrase cognitive dissonance, you will find that it is a theory in social psychology that is defined as the mental conflict that occurs when a person’s beliefs conflict with their behavior or when that person holds beliefs that conflict with one another. I would go as far as to say it is also that uncomfortable feeling a person gets when their beliefs are challenged by either their behaviors or reality.”
Sometimes a belief is so strong that people will turn away from reality to keep that belief. This is where cognitive dissonance becomes dangerous. It also helps leadership in WCN to find and manipulate people. These people don’t want to see a change in the world. They are happy and feel safe in their perceived reality.
White Christian Nationalists feed into the fear that someone is there to change their reality or destroy their beliefs. They set themselves up as the defenders of the faith and the followers. They provoke these followers to defend their beliefs from those that would take them away — even if no one is actually trying to take them.
Usually, they will present the people they have othered as scapegoats. That’s where things get even more dangerous. Especially when some of these people who are experiencing cognitive dissonance believe these things so strongly that they actually become violent. They will do anything to protect themselves and their way of life. This leads to extremism.
Extremism
The four other topics in this article help strengthen this last component… extremism. What the White Christian Nationalist leadership and politicians have done is create a perfect storm.
They focus on people who are part of a religion that demands their absolute faith and loyalty. They focus on people who are ignorant of any other ways of life but their own. Then, they build the cognitive dissonance in their base. They provide scapegoats for their engaged followers — those that have been othered working on their fear of the unknown.
Once their base of religious, ignorant people falls into cognitive dissonance and comes to fear, resent, or suspect these othered people for wrongdoing, the leaders of the WCNs have the perfect formula for extremism.
Whether that fear is rational doesn’t matter. It is still working on these people. They become skeptical of anyone else — even the media. The truth doesn’t matter compared to what their leaders tell them. This is exactly how we get situations like the January 6th Insurrection and the many tragedies of people being killed or having their rights taken from them since.
Sure, some of these people who got turned into monsters are in that position because they fell into echo chambers, wherein their friends and family believe the same as them, they go to church where their preacher subscribes to this rhetoric, and then the leaders they trust give them someone else to blame for any negative situations they are in.
But you need to know that for a lot of these extremists, the propensity was there from the start. The flame of hatred was in their heads already. The leaders and politicians who are WCNs simply fanned those flames with fear and told them it was acceptable to do whatever they wanted to othered people.
What I really want you to understand…
Ignorance and religion make for easily influenced people. If you have an uncle or father and mother that normally would be very nice, but has drifted into this role, you could still save them. Talking to someone who fits in the role of a follower of the White Christian Nationalist belief, your goal might need to be trying to find out why they feel how they do. Perhaps they’re afraid of change and the fear-mongers in the media they digest make that worse.
Remind them that change does not mean a person must give up all of their beliefs. Perhaps they will need to adapt to change, but this is the natural course of life. Point out as many references that they would understand that help them empathize as possible. Othered people are just — people. They want to live their lives as well. Information is important to have — so that our children can make informed decisions about their futures — futures that will hopefully be brighter than our own.
If they tell a sketchy joke, act like you don’t get it. Ask them to explain it. Generally, this works (thanks Beau of the Fifth Column for this suggestion). If they repeat false or inflammatory rhetoric, ask them where they got that information. Offer to look things up for them, not to put them down, but because you care about them and want them to make informed decisions using the truth and not propaganda. Remember that a lot of these people have things in common that have been used to manipulate their ideas and actions.
Be wary of the true monsters. I’m not saying there are none. Recognize them and be cautious around them or get away from them. But be flexible with anyone who may be willing the break away from this toxic movement. The more people who finally see the light and change their point of view and possibly their vote, the more likely we are to rid our government of these White Christian Nationalists.
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