Republican election denialism should be condemned. But this person has nothing to say about Hillary Cinton and the Democratic Party's election denialism--watch Matt Taibbi's video to see how bad it was. Everyone remembers four years of the mainstream liberals calling Trump an "illegitimate president." To leave out all of that context is to completely shred your credibility on the subject, and expose yourself as a partisan hack. Just because Trump and some Republicans may have been even worse is no justification.
Who are these “Christian Nationalists”? I’m not aware of any. Are they worth discussing? Is there a prominent leader of this movement? What are their goals? Do they have any elected representatives?
What “political violence” is being referred to in Montana and Arizona? I am pretty up on the news but was not aware that there was any.
There is a phenomenon in contemporary discourse where people label each other and then argue against the label because it’s easier to argue against the label than whatever the underlying substance of the argument is. Generally, scary labels like “Hitler,” “Stalin,” “Fascist,” “Communist,” “Authoritarian,” or “KKK” are preferred, particularly on the interwebs. Hitler is best if you can get there, which is what gives rise to Godwin’s law (“as an online discussion grows longer regardless of topic or scope, the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1”).
It is ideal if you can get someone like Brookings to legitimize the stigmatizing of a set of beliefs with some sort of presentation like this. Then the methodology becomes that if you believe that Central High should have an Honors Math class, you’re not the parent of a 10th grader who is good at math, you’re in the KKK. Now that I know you’re in the KKK, I can argue about how bad you and the KKK are, not about teaching math. Or, in the case before us, if you believe that “US laws should be based on Christian values” (presumably because you hold and endorse those values), then now you’re not a Christian enthusiast, you’re a “Christian Nationalist,” which comes with a host of likely misleading implications.
I think in the 99% case this sort of labeling is inaccurate and unhelpful. It leads to a lot of straw man argumentation and is really just name calling.
The survey should have asked only one question -- “would you support making the US a Christian Theocracy?” And of course no one (or almost no one) would say yes to that. But then the whole exercise would have been a propaganda bust.
The most telling datapoint here is that the plurality of those labeled “Adherents” -- the ostensible hardcore shock troops of Christian Nationalism -- have literally never heard of “Christian Nationalism”! The only surveyed group who are mostly aware of the term (80% awareness) are the people who passionately oppose it. This indicates that the term is in use more as an epithet than as a real life political movement.
It seems that “Christian Enthusiasts” might fall short as a short-hand label for this cluster of beliefs.
You make a good point about the possible tyranny of labels, but on the other hand, the first step in addressing a challenge is to try to estimate it’s magnitude and if it’s sufficient, name it. The finding that these folks don’t explicitly identify as Christian Nationalists is interesting. This suggests that rather than a top-down, “branded” and structured political organization, it appears to be a bottom-up, grass roots movement latent in our culture these days. Overall, this was a very high quality piece of social science research with sound sampling, measurement, analysis and responsible reporting.
I think we need to have a high bar for embracing labels because the % of people who agree with the most concerning of these statements is small but then based on the study the label will in practice be applied to all Christians. The whole point of this exercise is to create a calumny to discredit American Christians.
If they wanted to identify real Christian Nationalists they should have asked “Do you think there should be a branch of government comprised of Christian clerics who could approve or veto laws based on their alignment with Christian principles?” Why not ask that? That’s a Christian Nationalist.
I know a lot of American Christians. Some of them might say in an online poll that “laws should be based on Christian values” or even that if the U.S. moves away from Christian ideals it will lose something critical. But they definitely aren’t what comes to mind when I say to you, “Christian Nationalist.”
People are investing money in this effort for a reason. Because they think it will influence the discourse in a way that benefits them. By taking a bit of credence away from their opponents by labeling them with a broad brush. In my view, one must be skeptical of that process.
You could use statistics easily to make the same claims about races, ethnicities or other religions. I think that’s a road we don’t need to travel right now.
Google "white Christian Nationalism" and, if objective, you cannot come to any conclusion other than the entire media is involved in a giant political propaganda project where the goal is to negative brand the opposition to the globalist Uniparty agenda.
What frosts me more than the globalist Uniparty power that pushes these fake narratives are my educated and intelligent friends that suck it up and repeat it. I think they still believe that their media feeds are facts and truth.
Yeah right. Brookings is a cesspool of WEF globalist corporatist propaganda... a known left-biased "think tank". I would not trust them as far as I could throw Mike Pompeo before he slimmed down.
Frankly, this Wall-Street Uniparty media and big tech propaganda project to denigrate and destroy the American working class after they have had a jackboot on their neck for decades of deleted economic opportunity, is the stuff that causes the type of societal explosion that you and others will regret for being on the wrong side of.
You people are really playing with fire here ingesting these lies. They are just another in a stream that get to some psychological need for feeling smugly superior... to pit American against American while the looters loot the country to an empty shell. In this game you are either wise to it... do the work to understand the truth and not what these overlords are flooding your media feeds with to brainwash you to a false narrative.
I assume you live in your wealthy liberal gated community and never travel to these places where "white Christian nationalism is boiling like the new 3rd Reich". If you did, you would see how stupid the narrative is. How divisive the claim is. How much of an idiot you look like by spouting it and repeating it.
Thankfully minorities are jumping from the WEF-woke Democrat party in droves. Next up, claiming those minorities are actually white Christian nationalists.
As an outside observer, again. I find most of the issues that Ms Kleinfeld points at very real and concerning. But.
But I find the exclusive focus on the illiberal trends of Republicans and how to fix them quite a problem in itself, and destined to weaken whatever convincing arguments she poses. All right, she is a Democrat, this does not mean that she needs to be inherently blind to the damaging policies and ideologies that the Democrats have in the majority embraced, no matter if just as virtue signalling to a vocal and bullying minority in their base. The problem with Republicans is a mirror of that, they also embrace extreme positions upheld by a vocal and bullying minority of their base.
Unless the thinkers of both parties become capable of disentangling themselves from the frame of mind that makes them blind to the disastrous positions in their own camp, you will have increasing polarization, inability to debate constructively, and a society increasingly founded on those thin identities that are so damaging.
Politicians get elected on the interests of their voters, but once they are in power they govern over everybody and they need to take into account the good of everybody, and the country as a whole, not just of the side who elected them (a lesson best learned by reading old Gladstone). We are missing greatly on that attitude nowadays, unfortunately. And the peculiar structure of the Unites States as a union is probably an exacerbating factor in that.
I am not so sure about the optimism concerning civil war either. Although I am hopeful, mostly because of the strength and even mindedness of the US Military so far, I am not convinced that just the absence of a brutal and corrupt state is a safety trait. It matters what people believe, in this world where beliefs grow disconnected from facts thanks to us all getting so much of our knowledge from virtual environments that all appear equally real. And people on both sides of the polarisation believe that the government is both brutal and corrupt.
There are two kinds of civil wars: the ones that blow up because several factions struggle violently for power in a society without a strong, long established state (which have been almost all the civil wars in the last century, aside from revolutions against tyrannical governments); and the ones that blow up in strong, established states, out of two ideologies that become incompatible and reach for the power to annihilate the opponent: such was the British Civil War, and before it, all the civil wars that ravaged Europe in the larger context of the Wars of Religion of the 17th century, and after it the very Civil War in the United States.
We should not sit on the assumption that because the state and democratic institutions are strong and established we can rule out civil war. For it just takes enough people to hate enough the ways of their neighbours, to hate with a righteous and unbending mind, and to have weapons easily in reach. All conditions that could be easily fulfilled in today's USA.
The hope, again, it is boring and trite and I feel it makes me sound like a wet blanket: dismantle the hatred and unreason on both sides. And your side first, because you have more power on it.
This was good one! I love it when published papers are cited in the discussion. I often want to dig deeper and it would be great to get links or full citations in the program notes. Maybe even cross links to relevant prior episodes like with Richard Reeves episode in this case. Ok…firing up Google Scholar here.
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this episode. Thank you for pointing out the way Republicans have become more diverse while being more hardline in their social conservatism. That’s something my fellow Democrats really need to grapple with.
(It would also make sense for the left to rethink whether the terms “white” and “of color” even make sense. As this podcast shows, racial labels obscure a huge amount of diversity.)
We heard a lot about 'voter suppression' before the 2022 elections. It was always a lie and 2022 turnout proved it. Now Kleinfeld is repeating the already disproven lie. As for corporate director being Repubilcan, so what? Big corporations are ruled by the 'woke mind virus' (credit Elon Musk) which dictates DEI, not matter what the facts are.
Republican election denialism should be condemned. But this person has nothing to say about Hillary Cinton and the Democratic Party's election denialism--watch Matt Taibbi's video to see how bad it was. Everyone remembers four years of the mainstream liberals calling Trump an "illegitimate president." To leave out all of that context is to completely shred your credibility on the subject, and expose yourself as a partisan hack. Just because Trump and some Republicans may have been even worse is no justification.
Who are these “Christian Nationalists”? I’m not aware of any. Are they worth discussing? Is there a prominent leader of this movement? What are their goals? Do they have any elected representatives?
What “political violence” is being referred to in Montana and Arizona? I am pretty up on the news but was not aware that there was any.
The elite political chattering class have invented the "extreme right threat to democracy" mythology for two reasons:
One - it props up their base insecurity for being miserable humans if they can successfully brand others as worse.
Two - there are so many of them that they created a market of money making opportunities by peddling the mythology to each other.
Brookings and PRRI just released some important empirical work on this. They estimate 9% of the US population are hard core adherents to Christian Nationalism with another 29% sympathetic. https://www.brookings.edu/events/understanding-the-threat-of-white-christian-nationalism-to-american-democracy-today/
Thanks for the link.
There is a phenomenon in contemporary discourse where people label each other and then argue against the label because it’s easier to argue against the label than whatever the underlying substance of the argument is. Generally, scary labels like “Hitler,” “Stalin,” “Fascist,” “Communist,” “Authoritarian,” or “KKK” are preferred, particularly on the interwebs. Hitler is best if you can get there, which is what gives rise to Godwin’s law (“as an online discussion grows longer regardless of topic or scope, the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1”).
It is ideal if you can get someone like Brookings to legitimize the stigmatizing of a set of beliefs with some sort of presentation like this. Then the methodology becomes that if you believe that Central High should have an Honors Math class, you’re not the parent of a 10th grader who is good at math, you’re in the KKK. Now that I know you’re in the KKK, I can argue about how bad you and the KKK are, not about teaching math. Or, in the case before us, if you believe that “US laws should be based on Christian values” (presumably because you hold and endorse those values), then now you’re not a Christian enthusiast, you’re a “Christian Nationalist,” which comes with a host of likely misleading implications.
I think in the 99% case this sort of labeling is inaccurate and unhelpful. It leads to a lot of straw man argumentation and is really just name calling.
The survey should have asked only one question -- “would you support making the US a Christian Theocracy?” And of course no one (or almost no one) would say yes to that. But then the whole exercise would have been a propaganda bust.
The most telling datapoint here is that the plurality of those labeled “Adherents” -- the ostensible hardcore shock troops of Christian Nationalism -- have literally never heard of “Christian Nationalism”! The only surveyed group who are mostly aware of the term (80% awareness) are the people who passionately oppose it. This indicates that the term is in use more as an epithet than as a real life political movement.
We should avoid stigmatizing, inaccurate labels.
What would you call a segment of people who agree with the following statements:
1. The US government should declare the US a Christian nation
2. US laws should be based on Christian values
3. If the US moves away from its Christian values, we will not have a country anymore
4. Being a Christian is an important part of what it means to truly be an American
5. God has called Christians to exercise dominion or all aspects of American society
See the data here: https://www.prri.org/research/a-christian-nation-understanding-the-threat-of-christian-nationalism-to-american-democracy-and-culture/
It seems that “Christian Enthusiasts” might fall short as a short-hand label for this cluster of beliefs.
You make a good point about the possible tyranny of labels, but on the other hand, the first step in addressing a challenge is to try to estimate it’s magnitude and if it’s sufficient, name it. The finding that these folks don’t explicitly identify as Christian Nationalists is interesting. This suggests that rather than a top-down, “branded” and structured political organization, it appears to be a bottom-up, grass roots movement latent in our culture these days. Overall, this was a very high quality piece of social science research with sound sampling, measurement, analysis and responsible reporting.
I think we need to have a high bar for embracing labels because the % of people who agree with the most concerning of these statements is small but then based on the study the label will in practice be applied to all Christians. The whole point of this exercise is to create a calumny to discredit American Christians.
If they wanted to identify real Christian Nationalists they should have asked “Do you think there should be a branch of government comprised of Christian clerics who could approve or veto laws based on their alignment with Christian principles?” Why not ask that? That’s a Christian Nationalist.
I know a lot of American Christians. Some of them might say in an online poll that “laws should be based on Christian values” or even that if the U.S. moves away from Christian ideals it will lose something critical. But they definitely aren’t what comes to mind when I say to you, “Christian Nationalist.”
People are investing money in this effort for a reason. Because they think it will influence the discourse in a way that benefits them. By taking a bit of credence away from their opponents by labeling them with a broad brush. In my view, one must be skeptical of that process.
You could use statistics easily to make the same claims about races, ethnicities or other religions. I think that’s a road we don’t need to travel right now.
BTW- If you don’t think Wokeism is a religion to itself, you aren’t paying attention.
Thanks for the thoughtful post. I agree.
However...
Google "white Christian Nationalism" and, if objective, you cannot come to any conclusion other than the entire media is involved in a giant political propaganda project where the goal is to negative brand the opposition to the globalist Uniparty agenda.
What frosts me more than the globalist Uniparty power that pushes these fake narratives are my educated and intelligent friends that suck it up and repeat it. I think they still believe that their media feeds are facts and truth.
Yeah right. Brookings is a cesspool of WEF globalist corporatist propaganda... a known left-biased "think tank". I would not trust them as far as I could throw Mike Pompeo before he slimmed down.
Frankly, this Wall-Street Uniparty media and big tech propaganda project to denigrate and destroy the American working class after they have had a jackboot on their neck for decades of deleted economic opportunity, is the stuff that causes the type of societal explosion that you and others will regret for being on the wrong side of.
You people are really playing with fire here ingesting these lies. They are just another in a stream that get to some psychological need for feeling smugly superior... to pit American against American while the looters loot the country to an empty shell. In this game you are either wise to it... do the work to understand the truth and not what these overlords are flooding your media feeds with to brainwash you to a false narrative.
I assume you live in your wealthy liberal gated community and never travel to these places where "white Christian nationalism is boiling like the new 3rd Reich". If you did, you would see how stupid the narrative is. How divisive the claim is. How much of an idiot you look like by spouting it and repeating it.
Thankfully minorities are jumping from the WEF-woke Democrat party in droves. Next up, claiming those minorities are actually white Christian nationalists.
As an outside observer, again. I find most of the issues that Ms Kleinfeld points at very real and concerning. But.
But I find the exclusive focus on the illiberal trends of Republicans and how to fix them quite a problem in itself, and destined to weaken whatever convincing arguments she poses. All right, she is a Democrat, this does not mean that she needs to be inherently blind to the damaging policies and ideologies that the Democrats have in the majority embraced, no matter if just as virtue signalling to a vocal and bullying minority in their base. The problem with Republicans is a mirror of that, they also embrace extreme positions upheld by a vocal and bullying minority of their base.
Unless the thinkers of both parties become capable of disentangling themselves from the frame of mind that makes them blind to the disastrous positions in their own camp, you will have increasing polarization, inability to debate constructively, and a society increasingly founded on those thin identities that are so damaging.
Politicians get elected on the interests of their voters, but once they are in power they govern over everybody and they need to take into account the good of everybody, and the country as a whole, not just of the side who elected them (a lesson best learned by reading old Gladstone). We are missing greatly on that attitude nowadays, unfortunately. And the peculiar structure of the Unites States as a union is probably an exacerbating factor in that.
I am not so sure about the optimism concerning civil war either. Although I am hopeful, mostly because of the strength and even mindedness of the US Military so far, I am not convinced that just the absence of a brutal and corrupt state is a safety trait. It matters what people believe, in this world where beliefs grow disconnected from facts thanks to us all getting so much of our knowledge from virtual environments that all appear equally real. And people on both sides of the polarisation believe that the government is both brutal and corrupt.
There are two kinds of civil wars: the ones that blow up because several factions struggle violently for power in a society without a strong, long established state (which have been almost all the civil wars in the last century, aside from revolutions against tyrannical governments); and the ones that blow up in strong, established states, out of two ideologies that become incompatible and reach for the power to annihilate the opponent: such was the British Civil War, and before it, all the civil wars that ravaged Europe in the larger context of the Wars of Religion of the 17th century, and after it the very Civil War in the United States.
We should not sit on the assumption that because the state and democratic institutions are strong and established we can rule out civil war. For it just takes enough people to hate enough the ways of their neighbours, to hate with a righteous and unbending mind, and to have weapons easily in reach. All conditions that could be easily fulfilled in today's USA.
The hope, again, it is boring and trite and I feel it makes me sound like a wet blanket: dismantle the hatred and unreason on both sides. And your side first, because you have more power on it.
This was good one! I love it when published papers are cited in the discussion. I often want to dig deeper and it would be great to get links or full citations in the program notes. Maybe even cross links to relevant prior episodes like with Richard Reeves episode in this case. Ok…firing up Google Scholar here.
Oh...now I see it’s in the transcript. Nice. Maybe make a note in the podcast notes about that?
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this episode. Thank you for pointing out the way Republicans have become more diverse while being more hardline in their social conservatism. That’s something my fellow Democrats really need to grapple with.
(It would also make sense for the left to rethink whether the terms “white” and “of color” even make sense. As this podcast shows, racial labels obscure a huge amount of diversity.)
We heard a lot about 'voter suppression' before the 2022 elections. It was always a lie and 2022 turnout proved it. Now Kleinfeld is repeating the already disproven lie. As for corporate director being Repubilcan, so what? Big corporations are ruled by the 'woke mind virus' (credit Elon Musk) which dictates DEI, not matter what the facts are.