The Right is committed to an idea of America as a white Christian homeland. They are determined to purge the nation and radically redraw the boundaries of the body politic.
There is a special place in Hell--and I do mean special; Jews don't believe in Hell, but for him we'll make an exception--for Stephen Miller, a Jew who serves with the zeal of a central casting Nazi these vile white-Christian-supremacist people and their contemptible plans. How does he think he'll fare in the theocracy they dream of? For that matter, how does Vance's wife think she'll fare?
What we're seeing is the absurdity and irrationality of religion being dragooned into the service of greed and ambition via the demagogic pornography of hate. It remains to be seen how widespread this disease really is.
I am honestly of the opinion that all forms of nationalism are blood and soil nationalism. I have nothing but contempt for those practice and preach it, whether it is Germans in the 1930s, Americans in Charlottesville in 2017, or Israelis post-1948.
For a long time it was a given in the new right that hiding your power level(Nazi belief) was critical until achieving power. But democracy has slid so far along that hiding your power level is no longer necessary or needed. You can be an out and out Christian nationalist like JD Vance.
The mask has truly fallen. What scares me is the fact that too many people have let the freak flag fly to go back into the closet. If Trump loses, I don't think the white supremacist goes back. This is existential for them. Too much has been exposed and too many people have their dignities shackled onto Trump. If Trump loses he won't be healthy enough to run again and the GOP loses a massive amount of their cult following that Trump inspires.
The fig leaf of legitimacy that the GOP has with conservatism has been left in the dust all that's left is trumpism. What is the GOP without it? . Can another charismatic leader pick up the pieces? . I think not. My feeling is that the movement will react like a cornered animal. What that looks like is anybody's guess.
Additionally I'm worried about young men like me who have been radicalized with the propaganda that the new right has put out. Trump came out of the fester of conservatism after decades that the GOP tried to control into tax cuts and grievances. The next generation coming out believing that their sisters are the ones keeping them down will be a vile thing to witness. I'm worried about the next decade.
My young adult son has told me how he has been targeted online with anti-feminist, anti-woman propaganda frequently. He knows enough to not listen to those voices, but others don't and may have fathers who aren't the best role models for equality. "The next generation coming out believing that their sisters are the ones keeping them down will be a vile thing to witness." I'm worried about this, too. The thing that makes me sad for men is that relationships and marriages are much happier and satisfying to BOTH parties when there is equality in heterosexual marriages. There's a reason why women initiate the majority of divorces (I'm one of them) and it's not because we don't want relationships, marriage, and family with men. We do, but not by old, outdated, unequal rules. Young man, I wish you nothing but the best. We need good men like you to be an example of healthy masculinity.
Not falling into reactionary thought isn't easy. It would be so much easier to just have a black and white worldview with good and bad guys. But the truth is after decades of labor movement being disincentiviced and wages being stagnant everyone is feeling the pinch. The reality is that companies are looking for experience instead of training the next generation. Everytime I apply for a new position it's like shouting into the void. Most days I don't even get a rejection letter back. And the ones I do get is by done by some automated system that couldn't care less.
There are no more revolutionary technologies in the horizon all the low hanging fruits have been plucked. The economy will grow but gradual and mature. Nothing explosive. Irregardless of what my fellow AI bros would like me to believe. That's the thing about the truth of the reality I face, it's sobering. It's complex and offers little to no comfort easier to believe lies on the internet.
There's a certain dark thought that I harbor that a lot of my brethren think the same way and their solution is to throw the baby out with the bath water.
A certain sense thinking my life will never be better might as well claw everyone down with me.
I've been reading about of women living a little bit before me and how they couldn't have credit cards and how their world shrunk to just the four corners of their home. I wonder what it would be like to live like them and how dispiriting that would be. Add onto it my conversations with my own mother and how many doors her job opened up for her and how happy she is because of them. Suffice to say I'm pretty inclined against reactionary thought.
Finally the new generational split is not going away. There is going to be an epidemic of domestic violence because of these radicalized young men and them taking women into abusive relationships by hiding what they are at first. Or maybe I'm wrong (hope to god I'm wrong) and they grow up and leave the hate behind. Here's hoping.
I hope you are wrong about the generational split, too. Women having access to their own credit lines happened in my lifetime. I was still a kid, but women being financially trapped was a serious thing. We can't go back to that or any other kind of inequality (gays, POC, etc). I can't imagine all of us who gained rights are just going to go quietly into the night if the Christian Nationalists under the GOP banner manage to steal this election. Things will get ugly. I hope they won't, too, but I'm not sure. Somedays I think our side will come out on top this election. Other days, I'm not so sure. Best wishes in your employment situation and life in general.
"We are currently getting a terrifying preview of what all this would look like in practice." Agreed. The fact that Trump and Vance continue to spread these lies about Haitians even though everyone except his most ardent, idiotic fans is horrified by these dangerous lies---that's them telling us there will be no holding back on "purifying" America. Knowing that so many Americans are on board for this has broken my heart every single day since 2016.
JDV is arguing a position that immediately gets his wife and children “purged,” and likely himself for being so ‘un-American’ as to marry outside his race.
Also, if he only traces his “American heritage” back to the mid-1800’s, he is not “Blue-blood stock” and won’t make ‘the final cut.’
Reading this brings into focus the possibility that all these years, decades, “conservative” has never meant fiscally. It has meant Antebellum.
And the possibility that all these decades, the NRA and Second Amendment argument has been about enabling the WCN aka GOP to amass large caches of military-grade weapons, in preparation for this overthrow. The possibility that this is a multi-decade-planned overthrow, payback or a continuation of the first Civil War - like it never ended. It just got underground and heavily strategized and monetized, through the churches.
And the possibility that all these decades of evangelicals and IFB’s and Mormons having their entire membership cache food, water and supplies to support their entire families for 3-10 years in preparation for the “Armageddon” has just been code for this planned atrocity.
Really, the last several months of reading bits of Project 2025 and reading articles like this have made me feel heartbroken and deeply terrified.
WWII ended with the fascists defeated, in large part because the United States joined the war effort on the side of the Allies. Otherwise, would the Nazi regime still be ruling the majority of Europe? Would the genocide of “undesirables” have been more complete than it already was?
And if it happens here, now, who will come and fight to stop them? If they G-d forbid win in November, they will control the military, the national guard, the police and all the militias. Who would come stop them? How long would it last?
I’m sorry, I am not feeling optimistic nor safe at the moment. This article is important, and also terrifying. The scale of what they have been preparing, and the communal megalomania of it are terrifying.
Onward.
Vote, people. Please. Even if you never vote, this one time, please do, and Vote Blue.
I'm terrified of America turning fascist. It is already one of the most powerful nation states bar none, able to meet out violence at the middle East at a moment's notice. There is a certain sense of dark humor that I sometimes get that the violence that was visited upon the periphery finally comes home to the core of the Empire. But it only takes a moment's thought that a real fascist America would be a terrifying figure to look at. There wouldn't even be need to have a fig leaf of legitimacy to violence towards undesirable whether inside America or outside.
Whenever I talk about this other people tell me that even if my worst fears come true fascist states inevitably collapse due to their intent contradictions but every rule has an exception and America could be one of them. Besides there are examples outside of America like Hungary that the new right are inspired by. They may figure that this type of madness democracy wood be preferable to just unending violence. That's an even more terrifying thought, a regime that may never fall.
I've followed your work for a while, and to see you go from having a highly nuanced take on the question of whether Trumpism is fascistic to explicitly referencing "Blut und Boden", "der Führer", and pogroms... it's an unsettling mark of how bleak and dangerous the times we live in are. I'm glad that somebody can so clearly see the political moment for what it is and describe it in the appropriately forceful terms.
Hi Dr. Zimmer, thanks for all you do. Is the podcast with Lily Mason on hiatus? Will the audio reads of the essays here be offered as a podcast feed that folks can subscribe to?
I have been sickened by these same old tropes, which I knew Trump and Vance were going to trot out, because that is what they do. Their entire campaign is about lies and hatred, and othering, which we know is part of the fascist playbook. I personally think Haitian immigrants should be suing them for slander. However, DT and JDV who is a Christian Nationalist, whom many believe is vying to be President, as he will invoke Article 25 and remove Trump if they win. What the goals of Christian Nationalists are is discussed by several people who have left Christian Nationalist Churches and the racist, sexist, homophobic indoctrination. One has to understand it in terms of what the Christian Nationalists believe is necessary for them to go to heaven. So, we learn that they are so desperate to have the world be the way they are indoctrinated to believe that they have been taught that it is religiously justified to ignore the laws of the land to fulfill what they think God wants from them. According to Bradley Oneshi the Christian Nationalists are so desparate to get the country back to what they believe is what God meant that they are preparing for a violent war, which we saw a taste of on January 6, 2021. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/01/27/apocalypse-coming-christian-nationalism-00079317
Logan M. Davis talks about the Christian Nationalists realizing that most of the Nation does not want what they are selling, so they look at what Putin is able to accomplish in his country in terms of implementing what he wants to and they support getting rid of democracy to have a strongman leader. He too talks about the willingness for violence to get their way. https://coloradotimesrecorder.com/2024/01/davis-christian-nationalism-is-turning-into-something-even-worse/59413/
Andra Watkins who has also read Project 2025, talks about what Christian Nationalists believe about the world that the rest of us might not know, like the difference between CN End of Days beliefs versus those CNs who are The New Apostolic Reformation's beliefs on this, and their racist Curse of Ham beliefs, or their interpretation of pornography that makes being gay pornographic and women's bodies pornographic as well. So just by existing one is pornography, which should be banned, and one should be jailed if one displays oneself.
I also find Prof. Kathleen Belew's book Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America ties together Christian Nationalism and Violence as there was a gathering of the White Power groups internationally in the Pacific Northwest. After the Oklahoma City Bombing they decided to change their way of doing things. They were not going to be against the government, they were going to infiltrate it, and tone down their overtly racist rhetoric and become anti-immigrant instead. Once they took over the government they were going to overthrow the constitution to implement their own version, which is a White Nationalist constitution. One of the things the militia groups decided is to join with the Christian Nationalists who did not have the violence so that they could be more mainstream.
We see the effects of this in all White Supremacist Nations like in Europe, Oceania, and the US, as these groups are on the ascendency, because they use immigration as a wedge issue and spread lies about how it harms the economy, when in fact the opposite is true.
Honestly, I do think you may be right that there's a plan to remove Trump if he manages to win. He may help the CNs get over the line, but they don't need him after that. I've thought this for a while and I know other people are worried about that, too. There are people worse than Donald Trump---hard to believe, but true. I heard JD Vance described recently as someone who would be one of the Commanders in Gilead. So apt. So awful.
Great post. I don’t want Trump back in office. He, Miller and Vance know the Haitians in Springfield are here legally. I don’t want this hate and madness enlarged. I live about 45 minutes from Springfield, and these people ginning up hate and fear are not what we need.
There is a special place in Hell--and I do mean special; Jews don't believe in Hell, but for him we'll make an exception--for Stephen Miller, a Jew who serves with the zeal of a central casting Nazi these vile white-Christian-supremacist people and their contemptible plans. How does he think he'll fare in the theocracy they dream of? For that matter, how does Vance's wife think she'll fare?
What we're seeing is the absurdity and irrationality of religion being dragooned into the service of greed and ambition via the demagogic pornography of hate. It remains to be seen how widespread this disease really is.
How is this different than Bibi’s actions in Israel which are being funded by Democrats? Is fascism only bad when it’s stateside?
I am honestly of the opinion that all forms of nationalism are blood and soil nationalism. I have nothing but contempt for those practice and preach it, whether it is Germans in the 1930s, Americans in Charlottesville in 2017, or Israelis post-1948.
For a long time it was a given in the new right that hiding your power level(Nazi belief) was critical until achieving power. But democracy has slid so far along that hiding your power level is no longer necessary or needed. You can be an out and out Christian nationalist like JD Vance.
The mask has truly fallen. What scares me is the fact that too many people have let the freak flag fly to go back into the closet. If Trump loses, I don't think the white supremacist goes back. This is existential for them. Too much has been exposed and too many people have their dignities shackled onto Trump. If Trump loses he won't be healthy enough to run again and the GOP loses a massive amount of their cult following that Trump inspires.
The fig leaf of legitimacy that the GOP has with conservatism has been left in the dust all that's left is trumpism. What is the GOP without it? . Can another charismatic leader pick up the pieces? . I think not. My feeling is that the movement will react like a cornered animal. What that looks like is anybody's guess.
Additionally I'm worried about young men like me who have been radicalized with the propaganda that the new right has put out. Trump came out of the fester of conservatism after decades that the GOP tried to control into tax cuts and grievances. The next generation coming out believing that their sisters are the ones keeping them down will be a vile thing to witness. I'm worried about the next decade.
My young adult son has told me how he has been targeted online with anti-feminist, anti-woman propaganda frequently. He knows enough to not listen to those voices, but others don't and may have fathers who aren't the best role models for equality. "The next generation coming out believing that their sisters are the ones keeping them down will be a vile thing to witness." I'm worried about this, too. The thing that makes me sad for men is that relationships and marriages are much happier and satisfying to BOTH parties when there is equality in heterosexual marriages. There's a reason why women initiate the majority of divorces (I'm one of them) and it's not because we don't want relationships, marriage, and family with men. We do, but not by old, outdated, unequal rules. Young man, I wish you nothing but the best. We need good men like you to be an example of healthy masculinity.
Hello, thank you for your kind words.
Not falling into reactionary thought isn't easy. It would be so much easier to just have a black and white worldview with good and bad guys. But the truth is after decades of labor movement being disincentiviced and wages being stagnant everyone is feeling the pinch. The reality is that companies are looking for experience instead of training the next generation. Everytime I apply for a new position it's like shouting into the void. Most days I don't even get a rejection letter back. And the ones I do get is by done by some automated system that couldn't care less.
There are no more revolutionary technologies in the horizon all the low hanging fruits have been plucked. The economy will grow but gradual and mature. Nothing explosive. Irregardless of what my fellow AI bros would like me to believe. That's the thing about the truth of the reality I face, it's sobering. It's complex and offers little to no comfort easier to believe lies on the internet.
There's a certain dark thought that I harbor that a lot of my brethren think the same way and their solution is to throw the baby out with the bath water.
A certain sense thinking my life will never be better might as well claw everyone down with me.
I've been reading about of women living a little bit before me and how they couldn't have credit cards and how their world shrunk to just the four corners of their home. I wonder what it would be like to live like them and how dispiriting that would be. Add onto it my conversations with my own mother and how many doors her job opened up for her and how happy she is because of them. Suffice to say I'm pretty inclined against reactionary thought.
Finally the new generational split is not going away. There is going to be an epidemic of domestic violence because of these radicalized young men and them taking women into abusive relationships by hiding what they are at first. Or maybe I'm wrong (hope to god I'm wrong) and they grow up and leave the hate behind. Here's hoping.
I hope you are wrong about the generational split, too. Women having access to their own credit lines happened in my lifetime. I was still a kid, but women being financially trapped was a serious thing. We can't go back to that or any other kind of inequality (gays, POC, etc). I can't imagine all of us who gained rights are just going to go quietly into the night if the Christian Nationalists under the GOP banner manage to steal this election. Things will get ugly. I hope they won't, too, but I'm not sure. Somedays I think our side will come out on top this election. Other days, I'm not so sure. Best wishes in your employment situation and life in general.
Superb essay on the growing threats of ethno-nationalism
What these people elide from history is the European genocide against native peoples. Whitewashing American history.
"We are currently getting a terrifying preview of what all this would look like in practice." Agreed. The fact that Trump and Vance continue to spread these lies about Haitians even though everyone except his most ardent, idiotic fans is horrified by these dangerous lies---that's them telling us there will be no holding back on "purifying" America. Knowing that so many Americans are on board for this has broken my heart every single day since 2016.
JDV is arguing a position that immediately gets his wife and children “purged,” and likely himself for being so ‘un-American’ as to marry outside his race.
Also, if he only traces his “American heritage” back to the mid-1800’s, he is not “Blue-blood stock” and won’t make ‘the final cut.’
Reading this brings into focus the possibility that all these years, decades, “conservative” has never meant fiscally. It has meant Antebellum.
And the possibility that all these decades, the NRA and Second Amendment argument has been about enabling the WCN aka GOP to amass large caches of military-grade weapons, in preparation for this overthrow. The possibility that this is a multi-decade-planned overthrow, payback or a continuation of the first Civil War - like it never ended. It just got underground and heavily strategized and monetized, through the churches.
And the possibility that all these decades of evangelicals and IFB’s and Mormons having their entire membership cache food, water and supplies to support their entire families for 3-10 years in preparation for the “Armageddon” has just been code for this planned atrocity.
Really, the last several months of reading bits of Project 2025 and reading articles like this have made me feel heartbroken and deeply terrified.
WWII ended with the fascists defeated, in large part because the United States joined the war effort on the side of the Allies. Otherwise, would the Nazi regime still be ruling the majority of Europe? Would the genocide of “undesirables” have been more complete than it already was?
And if it happens here, now, who will come and fight to stop them? If they G-d forbid win in November, they will control the military, the national guard, the police and all the militias. Who would come stop them? How long would it last?
I’m sorry, I am not feeling optimistic nor safe at the moment. This article is important, and also terrifying. The scale of what they have been preparing, and the communal megalomania of it are terrifying.
Onward.
Vote, people. Please. Even if you never vote, this one time, please do, and Vote Blue.
VOTE BLUE.
I'm terrified of America turning fascist. It is already one of the most powerful nation states bar none, able to meet out violence at the middle East at a moment's notice. There is a certain sense of dark humor that I sometimes get that the violence that was visited upon the periphery finally comes home to the core of the Empire. But it only takes a moment's thought that a real fascist America would be a terrifying figure to look at. There wouldn't even be need to have a fig leaf of legitimacy to violence towards undesirable whether inside America or outside.
Whenever I talk about this other people tell me that even if my worst fears come true fascist states inevitably collapse due to their intent contradictions but every rule has an exception and America could be one of them. Besides there are examples outside of America like Hungary that the new right are inspired by. They may figure that this type of madness democracy wood be preferable to just unending violence. That's an even more terrifying thought, a regime that may never fall.
I've followed your work for a while, and to see you go from having a highly nuanced take on the question of whether Trumpism is fascistic to explicitly referencing "Blut und Boden", "der Führer", and pogroms... it's an unsettling mark of how bleak and dangerous the times we live in are. I'm glad that somebody can so clearly see the political moment for what it is and describe it in the appropriately forceful terms.
Hi Dr. Zimmer, thanks for all you do. Is the podcast with Lily Mason on hiatus? Will the audio reads of the essays here be offered as a podcast feed that folks can subscribe to?
I have been sickened by these same old tropes, which I knew Trump and Vance were going to trot out, because that is what they do. Their entire campaign is about lies and hatred, and othering, which we know is part of the fascist playbook. I personally think Haitian immigrants should be suing them for slander. However, DT and JDV who is a Christian Nationalist, whom many believe is vying to be President, as he will invoke Article 25 and remove Trump if they win. What the goals of Christian Nationalists are is discussed by several people who have left Christian Nationalist Churches and the racist, sexist, homophobic indoctrination. One has to understand it in terms of what the Christian Nationalists believe is necessary for them to go to heaven. So, we learn that they are so desperate to have the world be the way they are indoctrinated to believe that they have been taught that it is religiously justified to ignore the laws of the land to fulfill what they think God wants from them. According to Bradley Oneshi the Christian Nationalists are so desparate to get the country back to what they believe is what God meant that they are preparing for a violent war, which we saw a taste of on January 6, 2021. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/01/27/apocalypse-coming-christian-nationalism-00079317
Logan M. Davis talks about the Christian Nationalists realizing that most of the Nation does not want what they are selling, so they look at what Putin is able to accomplish in his country in terms of implementing what he wants to and they support getting rid of democracy to have a strongman leader. He too talks about the willingness for violence to get their way. https://coloradotimesrecorder.com/2024/01/davis-christian-nationalism-is-turning-into-something-even-worse/59413/
Andra Watkins who has also read Project 2025, talks about what Christian Nationalists believe about the world that the rest of us might not know, like the difference between CN End of Days beliefs versus those CNs who are The New Apostolic Reformation's beliefs on this, and their racist Curse of Ham beliefs, or their interpretation of pornography that makes being gay pornographic and women's bodies pornographic as well. So just by existing one is pornography, which should be banned, and one should be jailed if one displays oneself.
https://project2025istheocracy.substack.com/p/what-is-a-christian-nationalist
https://project2025istheocracy.substack.com/p/what-is-the-new-apostolic-reformation
https://project2025istheocracy.substack.com/p/how-project-2025-authors-define-pornography?utm_source=publication-search
I also find Prof. Kathleen Belew's book Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America ties together Christian Nationalism and Violence as there was a gathering of the White Power groups internationally in the Pacific Northwest. After the Oklahoma City Bombing they decided to change their way of doing things. They were not going to be against the government, they were going to infiltrate it, and tone down their overtly racist rhetoric and become anti-immigrant instead. Once they took over the government they were going to overthrow the constitution to implement their own version, which is a White Nationalist constitution. One of the things the militia groups decided is to join with the Christian Nationalists who did not have the violence so that they could be more mainstream.
https://www.kathleenbelew.com/bringthewarhome
We see the effects of this in all White Supremacist Nations like in Europe, Oceania, and the US, as these groups are on the ascendency, because they use immigration as a wedge issue and spread lies about how it harms the economy, when in fact the opposite is true.
Honestly, I do think you may be right that there's a plan to remove Trump if he manages to win. He may help the CNs get over the line, but they don't need him after that. I've thought this for a while and I know other people are worried about that, too. There are people worse than Donald Trump---hard to believe, but true. I heard JD Vance described recently as someone who would be one of the Commanders in Gilead. So apt. So awful.
Great post. I don’t want Trump back in office. He, Miller and Vance know the Haitians in Springfield are here legally. I don’t want this hate and madness enlarged. I live about 45 minutes from Springfield, and these people ginning up hate and fear are not what we need.