White Christian Nationalism Is a 'Threat to Democracy'

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/06/white-christian-nationalism-is-a-threat-to-democracy.html

No paywall
https://archive.ph/d6rEy

An ideology is on the march. Traces of it are detectable in a racist massacre in Buffalo; in Tucker Carlson’s monologues; in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s public comments. Find it again in the right’s anti-abortion rhetoric, which poorly disguises demographic anxiety, or in the right’s response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which shows it embracing God and guns with ever greater conviction. This ideology has a name, argue sociologists Samuel L. Perry of the University of Oklahoma and Philip S. Gorski of Yale University. Perry and Gorski call it white Christian nationalism, and in their view, it represents a pressing threat to democracy.

In The Flag and the Cross, their new book from Oxford University Press, white Christian nationalists undergo careful scrutiny. Combining research with data analysis, Gorski and Perry argue that white Christian nationalists share a set of common anti-democratic beliefs and principles. “These are beliefs that, we argue, reflect a desire to restore and privilege the myths, values, identity, and authority of a particular ethnocultural tribe,” they write. “These beliefs add up to a political vision that privileges the tribe. And they seek to put other tribes in their proper place.”

I recently spoke with Gorski and Perry about their findings and the threat white Christian nationalism poses to democracy.

Why do you think the term “white Christian nationalism” is so important to use?

Gorski: I think because it identifies one of the deepest and most powerful currents in American political culture, one that has been invisible to most folks outside of that culture and even, in a way, to a lot of people inside of that culture because it’s the water they swim in and the air they breathe. And of course it’s also important because it is right now evolving into a deeply anti-democratic ideology, one that really is driving some of the most radical fringe groups in the United States today, including many mainstream political candidates in the Republican Party.

*snip*

[roamer65]

1. It's three words that define one ideology.

FASCISM.

They are fascists.

[keithbvadu2]

2. Christian Sharia law

[Samrob]

3. Kick!

[NCLefty]

4. They do the same as Fox: "You're persecuted. You can't listen to anyone but US..." etc.

I guess all cults do that, really.