Are Christian Nationalists Shy White Nationalists?

Some who decide to put their name and face out there strategically identify as Christian nationalists (catholic or otherwise) because they are afraid of being called racist.

I get it. Telling the truth is always difficult. But doing nothing is better than half assing it.

— Littoria (@Littoria88) September 17, 2024

This is a response to Eric Striker.

No, those of us who prefer to identify as Christian nationalists or Southern nationalists are not afraid of being called racists. I have been called a “racist” for over 20 years on the internet. I have an “extremist file” on the SPLC website. I know pretty much all of the top racists in the country.

In the Christian nationalist world, accusations of “racism” are par for the course. Hardly a day goes by in which Christian nationalists are not accused of “racism” by other Christians. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, for example, publicly denounced the alt-right last year and excommunicated my friends Corey Mahler and Ryan Turnipseed. Southern Baptist elites were so determined to push James Edwards out of his church that they cut ties with his congregation. Pretty much every church in the United States – Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox – is divided between institutional elites who are committed to fighting the “sin of racism” and self-identifying Christian nationalists in the pews and on the internet.

If anything is true, most Christian nationalists relish being accused of “racism” by pearl-clutching Christian elites like Russell Moore, David French, Blake Callens and Owen Strachan and poking holes in the “post-war consensus” on X. Joel Webbon of Right Response Ministries loves the attention he gets from sites like Right Wing Watch. In the wake of the George Floyd riots, ridiculing “antiracism” has become a cash cow on the Right. Matt Walsh has a new movie out called  “Am I a Racist?” It has become a lot easier on the Right to laugh off accusations of “racism” in the Biden era. The taboo on “racism” has eroded to the point where it has become edgy and semi-mainstream to embrace race realism and White identity.

Since around 2020, the polls have consistently shown a big shift in White racial attitudes on the Right. Most conservatives now believe anti-Whiteism is a greater problem than anti-black racism. Most people on the Right now agree that the Great Replacement is happening. The term “anti-White” has gone mainstream among conservatives. Likewise, there has been a huge shift in favor of mass deportations and restricting immigration. White evangelical Protestants are the group that is most responsible for this shift. Christian nationalism has also been fueled by the backlash against transgenderism under Biden.

Striker, of course, is a secular White Nationalist and self-identifying National Socialist from Argentina who lives in the Northeast. He is less sensitive to the shift that is going on among Southern Protestants. Naturally, those of us who have always been focused on our own people – White Anglo-Protestant Southern conservative Republicans – see this as a more positive development. We don’t care that Southerners aren’t rushing to embrace National Socialism or White Nationalism.

Why is that?

Here are a few reasons:

1. First, the White Nationalist movement has always been a sort of ghetto for the 1% to 3% of far right atheists. Something like 97% of atheists and agnostics identify as either progressives, liberals or libertarians. Extreme outliers like Eric Striker, Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler gravitate toward White Nationalism and end up in this misaligned bubble where the Right is too Christian for them and the Left is too anti-White for them. It has always been an overwhelmingly secular space.

There has always been an extreme anti-Christian streak in White Nationalism. Every pro-White Christian who has ever gotten involved in the White Nationalist space has encountered this. I am reminded of this every time I check my P.O. Box. I always get some type of pamphlet about this or that new Aryan religion which boils down to the idea that “our race is our religion.” There are all sorts of anti-Christian activists like Adam Green who go down rabbit holes and who become so obsessed with Jews that they spiral to the point where they come to the conclusion that Christianity is a Jewish conspiracy.

Thus, it should come as a surprise to no one that when White Christians finally began to stir from their slumber under Biden that all of that energy completely bypassed the White Nationalist movement. In order to achieve anything and go anywhere in this country, the White Nationalist movement would have to have some appeal to the 80% of the Right that are White Christian conservatives. White Nationalists like Striker prefer to attack the Rightoids, Whiteoids and Christoids and remain marginal.

I don’t see this ever changing. Thus, I simply do not believe White Nationalism has the potential to expand beyond this extremely narrow secular demographic base.

2. Second, White Nationalism is a rebrand of National Socialism. The Alt-Right was a rebrand of White Nationalism. The America First movement is a rebrand of the Alt-Right. The Dissident Right is a rebrand of the Alt-Right. Why does this scene keep having to rebrand itself every few years?

It is because White Nationalism (or whatever it is calling itself these days) keeps attracting people who are antisocial, who are dysfunctional, who have mental health problems, who are perennial misfits. It appeals to people who are contrarians because it is fringe. These antisocial people act out and do things that torch the brand and embarrass everyone who is involved in the scene. The movement sobers up, rebrands itself, promises to be more optical and it invariably ends up right back in the same place.

If you trace the history of White Nationalism back to its source in George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party (Rockwell was assassinated by one of his own followers), you will find that it really hasn’t changed much over 60 years. As with the Christian Question, White Nationalism would have to find some way to appeal to people who are not single antisocial contrarians – to stable, normal, family-oriented White people – to get anywhere and expand outside of the box that it has always been in.

3. Third, White Nationalism is focused on race and agnostic on morality, which is a fatal flaw. Character is destiny. Nietzschean supermen destroyed the Alt-Right. White Nationalism keeps generating mass shooters who pop up in the news cycle and gross out normies. It is not only inhospitable to Christian normies, but it produces antinomian leaders and followers who are self-sabotaging.

If you have been in the movement long enough, you ask yourself … why on earth do these people act this way? What were they thinking? The shocking answer is that godless people do godless things. They behave in ways that godly people consider immoral. Various people who value their racial identity have different ideas about morality. As we saw in Charlottesville and its aftermath, this lack of moral agreement in the big tent of White Nationalism constantly torpedoes and brings down the movement.

4. Fourth, White Nationalism is focused on people and its prescription is a White ethnostate. Subtract Jews and non-Whites from America and all our problems will magically go away. While it is true that an exodus of blacks to Africa would reduce crime rates, I doubt that America would change much. Instead, I think Americans politics would be as bitterly polarized as ever between Whites along basically the same class, cultural and religious lines, but without non-Whites who are supporting characters.

If every Jew in the United States moved to Israel tomorrow, the millions of secular, educated White libtards (the Boomer parents of some White Nationalists) who share all the same progressive values and political beliefs would still be here. The American Left would be weakened, but it would still exist. The same people would be trying to guilt trip and replace Whites and open the borders in a White ethnostate as they have done in Ireland, Scandinavia, Poland, Australia and other European countries.

White Nationalists see a racial crisis. Christian Nationalists see a cultural and spiritual crisis. Racial homogeneity is nice, but it is not a solution to the underlying issue. Rather, racial and cultural decline is a symptom of the current mental state of secular Western educated elites.

5. Fifth, I was personally attracted to White Nationalism in the 2000s when I was younger and I was interested in things like New Atheism and Friedrich Nietzsche, but today I am a lot older and experienced. I am Southern, Protestant, married, middle class, a parent, a homeowner, a pet owner. The vast majority of people in my demographic are MAGA conservatives or Christian nationalists. I’m far more optimistic about Southern Protestants becoming more pro-White than secular White Nationalism becoming a massive movement especially when those people are quite clearly trending Left.

6. Finally, I do not believe that racial conflict is as intense as White Nationalists make it out to be. I am excited that race realism is being vindicated. I am pleased that the taboo on racism is crumbling and that White people, especially conservatives, are finally becoming more assertive. Even in Alabama, I do not see intense animosity between Whites and blacks or Whites and Hispanics or Whites and Asians. The race war seems much less likely than some kind of civil conflict between Whites over values. White people seem to hate each other more than either side hates racial minorities.

In sum, I am skeptical of secular White Nationalism, which I think is held back by activists who have all sorts of limiting beliefs. Call me crazy, but I am not surprised that activists who focus on attacking Rightoids, Whiteoids and Christoids, and who mentally seem to live in another country in another time period and whose message seems to be designed to appeal to leftwing atheists on issues like Christianity, Iran, Palestinian human rights, socialism and so forth, has failed to gain traction with a rightwing audience. In contrast, I do not believe Christian nationalism has these hang ups.

Source: https://occidentaldissent.com/2024/09/17/are-christian-nationalists-shy-white-nationalists/