From Pine View Farm

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Trevor Hughes reports on the use of Christian symbols by right-wing extremists, whose credo is antithetical to a Gospel of love in any form (as their actions repeatedly prove), but which is entirely consistent with Leonard Hitchcock’s analysis of what he refers to as “Christian Nationalism.”

Here’s a bit from Hitchcock’s article; follow the link for the rest.

What lies underneath (Christian Nationalism–ed.)? Racism, for one thing. If asked to form a mental picture of a typical Christian nationalist, you’d be correct to call up an image of an older, minimally educated white male. And that white male, despite the fact that he shares many religious convictions with Black Americans, would not trust them any more than immigrants or Muslims. Surveys reveal, for example, that CNs do not believe that African Americans are regularly treated unfairly by police; they think Black people are inherently more violent and lawless than white people and hence must be dealt with more severely by those in authority.

A broader underlying motivation is a deep resentment of cultural change and the ongoing collapse of a hierarchical social order in which their ranking might not have been very high, but it was secure, and lots of people were below them. For CNs, Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” signaled an intention to return to a past with which they were comfortable, a past in which the class and racial barriers between people were still intact, where Black people and immigrants, gays, atheists and women “knew their place,” and where white Protestants knew that they were the “real Americans” and were in charge.

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