Counter-Currents
What Christian Nationalism Looks Like in Current-Year America
Robert Hampton
1,150 words
“Christian nationalism” has gotten a lot of attention over the past two years. It’s one of those things we’re told is a serious problem in our country. Christian nationalists are accused of a whole lot of bad things, from racism to threatening democracy. Books and articles are regularly published to document this menace and warn Americans of these dangerous extremists.
“Christian nationalism” effectively replaced “Alt Right” as the scary label for the Right. It is funny how that came to be, since many of these same people bemoaned the “post-Christian” Right brought forth by Donald Trump. That menace went down the memory hole, and now Christian nationalism threatens our country.
But what exactly is Christian nationalism? Many of our allies, such as Andrew Torba, adopted the moniker and say it’s the future of America. While the media is pretty loose with what it claims is Christian nationalism, there is a distinct movement that qualifies as such — and it’s not something that would appeal to the Dissident Right.
That may shock identitarians. For them, Christian nationalism may evoke the Knights Templar, cathedral aesthetics, and healthy families protesting degeneracy. They think it’s an ideology that can easily be racialized and used to defend white people. They also may think it would be a natural enemy of non-Christian interlopers and would dismiss the silly term “Judeo-Christianity.”
These people would be mistaken, however. In reality, Christian nationalism is an evangelical, multiracial, philo-Semitic circus that repulses young middle-class people. Its core demographic is those over 40, and it’s not the future of American politics. It’s a strange revival of the Religious Right mixed with the worst aspects of Trumpism.
The poster boy for this is Pennsylvania state Senator Doug Mastriano, who just won the Republican Party’s gubernatorial primary in the state. Mastriano, despite his Italian surname, is a fire-and-brimstone evangelical who believes his enemies are demons. Here’s an example of the style of Christian nationalism he espouses:
The Shofar Army took the stage, nine white men and one woman draped in fringed Jewish prayer shawls, each clutching a ram’s horn — the instrument traditionally sounded on the Jewish high holidays.
“Blow the trumpet in Zion! Sound the alarm on the holy mountain!” bellowed the leader. “The day of the Lord is here!”
He blew his shofar three times, and the crowd responded as instructed with “Arise, oh Lord, let your enemies be scattered.” The rest of the Shofar Army blew theirs in unison.
So began a two-day, far-right Christian gathering last month called “Patriots Arise for God and Country.” The event, at a Gettysburg hotel, was organized by Francine and Allen Fosdick, self-described prophets who have promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory that falsely accuses Democrats of being pedophiles who control the country.
Mastriano was the keynote speaker at the event. Here are some other highlights from the Philadelphia Inquirer’s report on Mastriano’s brand of Christian nationalism:
Mastriano often invokes Esther, the biblical Jewish queen who saved her people from slaughter by Persians, casting himself and his followers as God’s chosen people who have arrived at a crossroads — and who must now defend their country, their very lives.
“It is the season of Purim,” he said at a March event in Lancaster, referring to the Jewish holiday celebrated in the Book of Esther. “And God has turned the tables on the Democrats and those who stand against what is good in America. It’s true.”
Mastriano has been featured at events with leaders of a charismatic strand of Christianity known as the New Apostolic Reformation, which places an emphasis on “spiritual warfare” and portrays its opponents as literal demons. They see the shofar as a spiritual weapon. . . .
Mastriano ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2018 and was elected to the state Senate the following year. During the state Senate campaign, his opponent highlighted Mastriano’s promotion of anti-Islam content on Facebook, such as an article titled “A Dangerous Trend: Muslims Running for Office” and a meme that said Islam “wants to kill” gay rights, Judaism, and Christianity.
Does this sound appealing to you? Does the idea of old boomers dressing up as Old Testament Hebrews and blowing a giant horn seem BASED and redpilled? Does the threat Islam poses to gay rights really make your blood boil?
You can buy Greg Johnson’s The Year America Died here.
Besides Israelite LARPing and bad aesthetics, there’s also the lack of any racial awareness. Most of these events feature plenty of non-white faces. Mastriano campaigned alongside Kathy Barnette, the BASED black conservative whose chief campaign pitch for Senate was that she was the product of her mother being raped at 11 years old. This was a line used to attack demonic abortionists. Many of these Christian nationalist events are in fact more diverse than progressive events. Some figures associated with the movement will highlight the dangers of illegal immigration or Critical Race Theory, but it’s not their central focus. They’re in a spiritual struggle to make America Christian again.
This is not a euphemism for making America white again. The central identity they want for Americans is the Christian faith, not the racial identity of the men who built this country. What unites us is religion, not race. This identity can include all people, regardless of color. All that matters is that one professes a fundamentalist version of Christianity.
Some may argue that Mastriano’s version of Christian nationalism isn’t the right or true one. But then what is? Is there some super-BASED identitarian Christian nationalism out there that we don’t know about? Is this version drawing thousands to its events and being led by major party candidates?
This ideal version doesn’t exist. The guys blowing the shofar are what we have.
I’ve argued many times that it’s unwise for identitarians to become explicitly religious. Yes, we all know that the majority of our guys are always going to claim Christianity as their religion. Christianity is still the faith of the vast majority of white people, and it would be stupid to wage war against it. At the same time, it does not mean we need to declare ourselves “Christian” nationalists. Ours is a primarily secular struggle to preserve our people. A lot of what fundamentalist Christians believe doesn’t align with our struggle, as in for example their worship of the state of Israel and their strange fixation on adopting non-white kids.
It’s also extremely goofy. No reasonably intelligent person is going to be inspired by the bombastic events Christian nationalists hold. Most people will think you are a crazy person if you pinpoint demonic possession as a cause of all our political troubles. It’s just a way of making us look stupid.
We’re not yet in the business of creating a mass movement, so there’s no need to pretend we’re clowns to win over evangelical boomers. It’s much better to try to win over smart, disaffected young people — and they’re not going to be won over by an Old Testament LARP in a strip mall.
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25 comments
Slightly off topic, but something I am coming to realize is this silly theory of natural selection insofar as content producers finding ways to stay online despite deplatforming is not necessarily good for WN. All that effort put into maintaining break-even or profiteering (instead of having real jobs like the rest of us) comes at the price of complacency because it becomes an end in itself. The fruitful ideas before the (alleged) professionalization of these podcasts have ceased to exist because the new barrier-to-entry creates yet another caste system that the democratization of pre-2019 YouTube annihilated from radio. That’s why the dissident right exploded into a leaderless resistance, and has since fallen into stagnation with a bunch of unelected Gen-X (with fake grit worse than Boomers) alcoholics pontificating the worst takes on literally everything, with gross verbal tics, unlistenable cadences, fake laughter, esoteric memes and eating/slurping habits directly into the mic. It is so disgusting to hear these obese pigs sipping on a clinking glass of whiskey and then wincing with a heavy asthma breath on air that it helped solve my own brief drinking problem because I want nothing to do with it anymore so I don’t end up like these slobs who pretend to be the spokesmen for white people.
Cazart! That’s exactly how Bro. Stair, whom I written about several times on this very site, opens his radio broadcast, shofars and all! He has some Hassidic folk group singing it, though, for extra “Christianity”.
I think this happens because something I am coming to realize is this silly theory of natural selection insofar as content producers finding ways to stay online despite deplatforming is not necessarily good for this movement. All that effort put into maintaining break-even or profiteering (instead of having real jobs like the rest of us) comes at the price of complacency because it becomes an end in itself. The fruitful ideas before the (alleged) professionalization of these podcasts have ceased to exist because the new barrier-to-entry creates yet another caste system that the democratization of pre-2019 YouTube annihilated from radio. That’s why the dissident right exploded into a leaderless resistance, and has since fallen into stagnation with a bunch of unelected Gen-X (with fake grit worse than Boomers) alcoholics pontificating the worst takes on literally everything, with gross verbal tics, unlistenable cadences, fake laughter, esoteric memes and eating/slurping habits directly into the mic. It is so disgusting to hear these obese pigs sipping on a clinking glass of whiskey and then wincing with a heavy asthma breath on air that it helped solve my own brief drinking problem because I want nothing to do with it anymore so I don’t end up like these slobs.
I think of Evangelicalism as distinct from Christian nationalism: the former being that which is described above; the latter being Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, Orbán having used the term to describe his vision for the future of the right-wing in Europe. The difference between them is that one is Protestant and the other is Catholic. I do not intend to stoke sectarian conflict as I believe that all White people ought to focus on the survival of their race; it is an important difference regardless.
Orban is himself a Protestant (reform Calvinist, I believe) as are about a fifth of Hungarians, but his is specifically Hungarian nationalism. Atheist Hungarians are welcome, Catholic Mexicans or Calvinist Jamaicans not.
Actually Orbán has made it clear that Hungary is a haven for Christians of all nationalities, although they focus their efforts on aiding Christians in Africa and the Middle East as opposed to bringing them to Hungary (although there are some here, including at least one African bishop).
Ah, well, that is unfortunate. But it reinforces the point of the article – Christian nationalism isn’t the answer.
Sure, good point. Not exactly a demographic block with a future, maybe except for the Amish, who may breed a lot, but have very little influence on society.
White Christians are already a minority among Christians worldwide, and fewer and fewer Whites believe in such religion. I myself ceased to be a Christian after reading the Bible. I bet most Christians would be shocked if they bothered to know what’s in there.
Hardly Christianity can be a positive force in the liberation of the White world, when it is the same religion professed by the non-White invaders from the South in the United States.
It is not even useful here in the European continent, because, although there is much Islamic immigration from North Africa, most of Black Africans are Christians too (as well as many of the non-Whites who come from South America to Spain due to the linguistic convenience and who enrich us with their “maras” and gangs).
If we’re going to scrap entire millennia-old concepts based on the fact that the way boomers do it is lame, we’re in real trouble lol
Well I don’t think that’s quite what Torba represents or how all strands of a Christian Right, broadly speaking see themselves.
Clearly there’s long been this weird cult of Israel worship thing in America, perhaps it’s gone under different names, Christian Right being one of them. But that’s just another goofball American cult like Scientology or Christian Science. Sure that doesn’t have anything to do with us, but I’ve not sure it has anything to do with mainstream Christianity either.
If the media is trying to create an alarmist hysteria around that it’s being dishonest. It’s steering people towards its preferred ‘safe’ adversaries or seeking to reestablish limits of the debate by misrepresenting these people as dangerous extremists who could topple the system. Or Christian is a dog whistle for white.
Whatever, I don’t think we’re in any danger at all of being mistaken for, or absorbed by these people.
I’m not gonna dispute that the kind of Evangelical Christianity represented in that gathering with the Shofar army and the rams horn is not exactly the aesthetic we should strive for. Nonetheless, here’s my issue with the underlying theme of this article: Its not necessarily the case that recruiting smart, young Whites will make White Nationalism better and more effective.
Smart, young Whites, especially the upper middle class ones with professional class jobs (PMCs) are overwhelmingly attracted to Progressivism, and the destructive policies of the Democrat Party. They have values, visions, and dreams that are completely at odds with White Nationalism and Racial Preservation.
Some of them might find their way to White Nationalism out of pure reactive instinct, but I don’t think it would become a more effective political movement if it converted Whites who don’t like the anti-white rhetoric of the Left but are fine with everything else – even those things that fundamentally undermine the well-being of the White population and its continued existence.
Moreover, White Nationalism and its principles seem to appeal more to midwit Whites or lower. The 90-110 IQ range. Its true that any successful first world society needs smart Whites to maintain technology and such – America is apparently short on nuclear engineers, for example – but frankly, smart Whites need to know their place in society. Its the place of midwit Whites to keep the trains moving and do the blue collar work. Its the place of smart Whites to invent and maintain cool shit, and otherwise shut their mouths about social issues, which they are increasingly incapable of doing.
The kind of Christianity this Mastrioni guy represents may not have mass appeal, but it doesn’t follow that WN must attract smart, secular Whites. If WN does indeed end up attracting midwit Whites over smart Whites, then Andrew Torba might be onto something of trying to fuse right wing Christianity with White identity. Average Fox News viewers, of all ages, are more likely to become White Nationalists then average viewers of MSNBC.
Not necessarily. The kind of ideology that Fox News and evangelicalism spread tends to attract people with a character tendency towards servility and lack of interest in issues beyond their immediate habitat. By contrast, white nationalism as preached and practiced at Counter-Currents is an ideology of the future elite (though it has a popular version) with at least continental visions if not a global vision.
The character profile of the Fox News watcher is not well-suited to such an ideology.
Something I’ve been giving some thought to after that “Fallen Castes” article about the fall of Nick Fuentes is the four different types of traditional castes: Priests/Philosophers, Warriors, Merchants, and Peasants
I conceptualize those four classes as less of a straight 1-2-3-4 hierarchy and more of a diamond shaped hierarchy, with the priests at the top, the peasants at the bottom, and the warriors and merchants on the two different sides.
I’m not saying that Fox News viewers will become the vanguard of a merging elite. I’m saying they will form the overwhelming majority of the peasant class in a future White Ethnostate. Suffice to say, any emerging elite must have a critical mass of peasants on their side.
The issue of how to attract warriors (military types) and merchants (business types) to White Nationalism is worthy of a longer comment that I was going to delve into before deciding it wasn’t pertinent to my main point. I think the first group of Pro-White thinkers (priests and philosophers) that figures out whichever combination of words and messages that creates a coalition of peasants, merchants, and warriors will be the ones to become the future elite of a White Ethnostate, and I’m quite confident that this unknown combination of words and messages is much more likely to sound like something Tucker Carlson would say then Chris Hayes would say.
I get that you’re a SWPL Nick, but…SWPL’s aren’t attracted to White Nationalism. Of any type. In your heart, you know that.
I can save them. I think…
Can we not talk about ordinary White people who have assimilated to the culture they were given as ‘peasants’ or ‘future peasants’?
Its just a conceptualization, not a statement of “this is how things should be.” I believe in class fluidity, which is to say, a White person born as a “peasant” should be allowed to climb to the merchant, warrior, or even priest class, based on his merit and predispositions. Castes should not be rigid, and I deplore class haughtiness and condescension, like the kind that Richard Spencer displays, and like Nick Fuentes apparently displayed with his “bacon” comment.
Evangelical Protestant Christianity, which is significantly coterminous with Americans of Northern European descent, is there, like the proverbial elephant in the room, whether you like it or not. They will not stop being Christian merely because they are instructed to; and their numbers are a sizable enough proportion of those that can realistically be expected to be converted to racialism that we cannot expect to win without them. What do I mean by win? I mean achieving the creation of a White ethnostate using Red State secession as the primary vehicle. In order to get the Trumptards mobilized for Red State secession you will need to appeal to their faith.
But, it may be objected, won’t they insist on bringing their precious non-Whites with them? To that I say so what? We can create a merely conservative, civic nationalist state first and then get rid of the non-Whites later. How do we do that? Well, obviously some kind of internal discipline would need to be applied to make sure that non-White departure would be acceptable to all. The Ulster Protestant Loyalist militias of Northern Ireland have no problem doing some very nasty things in terms of “community policing” in their own Scots community. I take it you get the picture. First we separate from ZOG, then comes the clean up.
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for Israel.”
Christian Conservatism
This article can be summed up as: “I don’t like evangelical Christians because they are stupid crackers. The End.” Well, I’m fundamentally inclined to agree. The solution is simple: just don’t hang out with them.
Yet the point stands that they are easily manipulated rubes who can be used as political cannon fodder – a herd to be stampeded in a direction we desire.
Ian Paisley captured lightning in a bottle with his evangelical Protestantism that operated as a respectable front for paramilitary political gangsterism. I see no reason why the same model can’t be implemented in America.
Also evangelical Protestantism is implicitly Nordicist, so that’s an added bonus. Anything that gets Ted Sallis twitching and foaming is in my opinion profoundly noble.
“Ian Paisley captured lightning in a bottle with his evangelical Protestantism that operated as a respectable front for paramilitary political gangsterism. I see no reason why the same model can’t be implemented in America.”
Ian Paisley Sr. was regularly presented in British media as a ranting lunatic, and the modus operandi of loyalist paramilitary political gangsterism involved murdering random Catholics. Personally, I’d use The Troubles as a model of what not to do unless your apex notion of the American purity is heavily tattooed chav thugs murdering random Catholics. If that’s it, by all means go for it. I’d measure your remaining life in minutes though.
Tom Wolf in his Bonfire of Vanities has one of the Jewish lawyers talking about how all the different sects of protestant Christianity was so pagan and creepy. By Nordicist are you meaning that with evangelical Christianity originating from Northern Europe as in its an offshoot of it?
I always wondered what Tom Wolf meant by that by having that in his book.
While Christianity has no doubt had its role in shaping European culture it appears that it may be also contributing to its undoing. I may be also not being fair in that it appears that early Christian Europe was still very much racially and ethnically conscious to a certain extent. The founding fathers of course understood race and did not want nonwhites to be citizens. The problem was the ethical dilemma they caused by enslaving blacks which haunts us to this very day.
The situation in the Western world today is akin to the run-up to the Reformation, say in the early 15th century with the rise of Jan Zizka and the Hussites. There were many such dissident movements questioning the then-prevailing orthodoxy, but they did not become a real metapolitical force until a century later when a certain monk by the name of Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the doors of the church at Wittenberg in 1517.
Today, there is a lot of dissatisfaction with the prevailing globo-technocratic Regime, and this dissatisfaction is expressed via numerous movements. Many of them do not quite get it “right” (such as the Christian Nationalists) but there is an understanding, conscious or unconscious, that we are in a quasi-religious struggle.
Just consider how the anti-White Regime operates: “wokeness” as an overarching orthodoxy which can not be questioned; the iconoclasm and public rituals (“taking a knee”); the attacks on heretics (“racists!”); the forced conversions (“diversity” indoctrination); the lunatic holy wars to spread the word (from the schoolroom to the Hindu Kush).
Christian Nationalism and Q-Anon and even America First keep going because they can not be shaken by rational argument. They know they are right with a quasi-religious fervor. “Christ Is King” may sound trite, but the slogan does stake out a piece of territory and defends it with a wagon lager of spiritual cannon. What is critical is that they have broken with the Narrative. While not quite Red Pilled, they have imbibed the Purple Pill.
Where these movements fall apart is from an imperfect understanding of the threat (failing to appreciate the racial nature of the struggle), dismal tactics (waiting for someone from within the Regime to save their bacon), or personalities cracking up (as seen recently).
White Nationalism as currently constituted is a rational movement. It is based on empiricism, statistics and an objective understanding of history. All this provides a solid foundation for a dissident movement, but what is lacking is a certain passionate intensity.
One avenue to be explored is looking at movements such as Christian Nationalism as fellow travelers in shaking the Regime’s orthodoxy. Such movements may be in error but they have at least a vague understanding of what constitutes the enemy. White Nationalism can provide the overarching metapolitical guidance and that solid foundation in reality. While other dissident movements have fallen to the wayside, White Nationalism is still marching.
Thesis Number One: “It’s OK To Be White.”
Jonathan Bowden, our Sage of Berkshire, often (mis?)quoted Bernard Shaw: ‘One man with belief is worth fifty men without.’
‘Where these movements fall apart is from an imperfect understanding of the threat (failing to appreciate the racial nature of the struggle), dismal tactics (waiting for someone from within the Regime to save their bacon), or personalities cracking up (as seen recently).’
This has been the story of dissident – and in particular pro-White – movements for 70+ years during which not a single durable policy or political success has been tallied.
That’s a remarkable record of failure and one that ought to give all of us pause to see if our movement can do better.
As you say, it’s not enough to believe, you need to be believing things that at least model some aspects of reality.
“if you pinpoint demonic possession as a cause of all our political trouble”
So they think leftists are only possessed by demons and not actually merely demons in skinsuits with no human soul in there? Count me out. Plus shofars are goofy.
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