They might embrace their marginal status, but they don’t plan on staying marginal forever.
In September 2020, about 150 Christians gathered to stage an informal Psalm Sing in the parking lot of Moscow, Idaho’s city hall. They were there to protest the local mask mandate.
Five individuals were cited by police for violating the local order to wear masks, and two were arrested “for suspicion of resisting or obstructing an officer.” One of the event’s organizers was Douglas Wilson, pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, a 900-member congregation with historical connections to Christian Reconstructionism (also known as theonomy), a movement that hopes to see earthly society governed by biblical law. One month earlier on Twitter, Wilson had framed his concerns about the issue in revealing terms: “Too few see the masking orders for what they ultimately are. Our modern and very swollen state wants to get the largest possible number of people to get used to putting up with the most manifest lies.”
In Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest, historian Crawford Gribben recounts how in recent decades conservative evangelicals, inspired by assorted strands of theonomy and survivalism, came to settle in the Pacific Northwest. Gribben explores how this group of “born-again Protestants who embrace their marginal status” has thrived in the wilds of Idaho and adjoining states, proposing “strategies of survival, resistance, and reconstruction in evangelical America.” Read More
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US intel report warns of more violence by QAnon followers
Strange that the FBI waited so long to provide a report on QAnon. I will confess to being puzzled by the association with evangelical Christianity and I need to satisfy my growing astonishment over the fact that "white supremacists" have been named by the present administration as "the most dangerous enemy of American democracy since WWII."
ReplyDeleteIn all my years of ministry in various parts of the country I have never encountered a professing white supremacist, much less an avowed QAnon member. I have never read a piece of literature produced by the same. I cannot name a leader of the "white supremacist/QAnon" movement and I know of no headquarters - unofficial or otherwise - where I might obtain more information or even membership criteria. What are their numbers? Where are they most active? Who are their leaders? What are their goals? Do they have a social media presence?
I receive daily posts on Facebook regarding Black Lives Matter and Antifa but I have never received ONE regarding QAnon. Were it not for the now ubiquitous mention by federal sources I would never have known of their existence. It is said they were responsible for several crimes committed on Jan. 6th at the Capitol but so apparently were Capitol police and agents of the FBI as well.
I am mindful of how the Jews of German became the scapegoats of Nazi ire and, ultimately, of the German people. They were lampooned, cartooned, and blamed for most of Germany's postwar ills. Yes, many were members of the Communist party and some were confessed Zionists but such tiny minorities within a minority could never be a substantial threat to the Weimar establishment. Goebbels had to create a "bette noir" out of whole cloth to distract the already agitated population and to convince them that a people who had once formed the backbone of the German middle class and the Weimar economy were now a virulent and violent threat to decent folk.
Kristallnacht worked. Hitler and Goebbels succeeded and we all paid a price for their deception.
The fact you have never heard anything, Charles, does not mean Q-Anon does not exist. It simply means that you are not in the loop, aware of information about such matters, you do not recognize it for what it is, or you prefer to ignore it. The United States has become divided into informational bubbles in which people hear and read only what they want to hear and read.
ReplyDeleteMovements do not need to form organizations and have leaders in these days of social media. A group of people simply need to embrace an idea and promote it. The group does not have to be a large one, just enough people to get the ball rolling.
Having lived in the South as long as you have Charles, I am surprised that you can say that you have never met any white supremacists. They may have bombed my high school in the 1960s. It subsequently burned down under suspicious circumstances. They burned a trail of crosses down the state highway near where my family home was in Louisiana. One of them a professed Nazi and Grand Wizard ran for public office. They have in more recent times littered the streets with recruiting pamphlets in the town where I now live. One group of them attempted to establish a presence on the campus of the local state university.
Since that time I have heard one male student boasting to a female student that he was a Nazi. To my knowledge at one group of locals watch Neo-Nazi propaganda videos on YouTube. More recently in one of those “holy huddles” in which churchgoers gather before the beginning of church services, one member of the group remarked that he was a “white supremacist.” The other members of the group acknowledged that they were too.
You seem to have missed my point entirely, Mr. Jordan, and I assure you I am not "out of the loop" any more than you claim to be "in it" due to your extensive exposure to the propaganda of the very managed Internet. I am every bit as much aware as you are on these matters and it is presumptuous of you to think otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI never denied the existence of white supremacists or neo-Nazis in America. I will further acknowledge to have met many - especially here in the deep South - who hold racist views to one degree or another. But by your definition of "white supremacist" every citizen of the North of Ireland, Protestant or Catholic, would be considered a "white supremacist" because of their narrow sectarian religious views, disapproval of intermarriage, cohabitation of neighborhoods, etc. In my experience of rural Ireland as a youth, it was a given that all Protestants were devil worshippers and all Catholics ate unborn babies. This sort of dementia was certainly no threat to the government, then or now. I would put QAnon and the thousands of followers you seem to think they have on the same level.
I could easily make the accusation that it is you who has swallowed the Kool-aid of the Internet in promoting the notion that QAnon is anything more than a parcel of rogues whose Internet presence is the only viable proof of their existence.
I have also encountered as many Black Supremacists in my forty-five years as a pastor of black, white and integrated congregations. The sin of racism cuts both ways, as the Asian and Latino communities can likewise attest. Racism is indeed a problem in this country and Christians are especially called to address the problem. But I will also tell you that I have never lived in any country, nor do I know of any culture in which racism was not to be found. To put this country on a par with Zimbabwe or Sri Lanka or any other country wherein racial identity defines the nation, is an utter absurdity.
When I lived in Germany I encountered many former Nazis and Nazi sympathizers but never did the German government consider these to be a threat. Anti-semitism, however, is a form of racism that seems to jump all political fences and may never be eradicated before the Lord comes.
I have seen the actions of Antifa and BLM and I can judge their movements accordingly. It is criminal that the media and the present regime have ignored the violent activities of these organizations and have focused instead on the nebulous web presence of QAnon. But the attempt of the present regime to attribute the events of Jan. 6th in D.C. to QAnon are without warrant and must be discounted by any reasonable standard of proof.
Unless, of course, you are privvy to some source of "information" to which the rest of us uninformed deplorables do not have access.
Judging from your response it is all the more obvious to me that Kristallnacht was indeed a great success.
Charles, do you know what a straw man is? One definition is—
ReplyDelete“A straw man (sometimes written as strawman) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy of having the impression of refuting an argument, whereas the real subject of the argument was not addressed or refuted, but instead replaced with a false one. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be ‘attacking a straw man.’
The typical straw man argument creates the illusion of having completely refuted or defeated an opponent's proposition through the covert replacement of it with a different proposition (i.e., ‘stand up a straw man’) and the subsequent refutation of that false argument (‘knock down a straw man’) instead of the opponent's proposition. Straw man arguments have been used throughout history in polemic debate, particularly regarding highly charged emotional subjects.”
Simply put, it is a form of argument in which one puts their own words in someone else’s mouth and then attack their own words rather than what the other party actually said. Not only does your argument, Charles, fall into that category but it contains logical inconsistencies, debatable assumptions, and an attempt to portray the other party in a negative light and to appeal to the biases of the reader. You also make several attempts at redefining the issues. All of which you are free to do in expressing your opinion on a matter albeit it does weaken your credibility except with those who may share your opinion.
Your own experiences in Germany, it must be pointed out, do not necessarily reflect the experiences of everybody at the end of World War II. A factor that must also be considered is the historical context of the time, namely the Cold War. In more recent times the crimes of former Nazis which may have escaped attention at the end of the war have led to the arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of these war criminals. My grandparents endured air raids during two wars—German zeppelins in the First World War and German bombers during the Second World War. Friends and family marched away to both wars and did not return. I do not believe that they would share your view.
My family has Irish relatives on both sides. My paternal grandfather emigrated from Ireland, from the South. My grandmother’s brother was stationed in Ireland at the time of the establishment of the Irish Free State and their family had cousins in Ireland and Scotland. But the attitudes of various groups in Northern Ireland, Unionist and Republican, has little bearing on the issues that you raised. Some want to closer ties with the South; others with England. A few want to carry on a pointless struggle, in part because they have nothing better to do with their time than hang onto old enmities.
What got missed in this lopsided discussion was that I actually agree with your observation that some groups that identify themselves as evangelical are not really evangelical.
God bless and keep you always, Charles, and may he fill your life to overflowing with a rich abundance of his grace all of your days.
Ah, the ad hominem attack - so typical.
ReplyDeleteYou did not respond to a single point I made yet claim that I am the one putting forward a strawman argument. Your Irish heritage and your bizarre reference to post-war Germany have nothing whatsoever to do with the topic at hand. I sincerely hope you do not find any neo-Nazi, white supremacist fascists under your bed.
I do appreciate your final comment and hyperbolic blessing. And, as so many of our evangelical brethren say with similar passive aggressive intent, "I shall be praying for you, too."
Taking issue with your method of argument, Charles, is not ad hominem attack which would entail an attack on your character. I took issue with the way you were arguing, not your character. There was no point of addressing the points you made for the very reasons that I stated that the arguments you were making were flawed arguments--standing up a strawman, logical inconsistencies, debatable assumptions, and an attempt to portray the other party in a negative light and to appeal to the biases of the reader. And Charles, you were the first to mention Ireland and post-war Germany. As for neo-Nazism, it has been around since the 1950s. Does George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party ring a bell? As for white supremacy it goes back to the nineteenth century if not earlier. A perusal of the lterature on race from that period on Internet Archive website supports that. Frank Baum who wrote the Wizard of Oz books proposed the extermination of the American Indian on the grounds that they were racially inferior to the white man. Other authors wrote books and pamphlets on the inferiority of the "American Negro," the Chinese, and other racial-ethnic groups. Isn't your final comment, "as so many of our evangelical brethren say with SIMILAR passive aggressive intent...." an ad hominem attack? I feel no animosity toward you, Charles. You and I disagree on some issues and agree on others. It is as simple as as that--nothing for either of us to get bent out of shape over. That may be the temper of the times but I prefer the generosity and civility of an earlier age.
ReplyDelete