Thread by @dogemperor

I. Literally. Warned. Just. *YESTERDAY*. This. Was. A. Goal.

And not just *Brown v Board of Education* but actually proposed *GOING BACK TO PLESSY V FERGUSON*, aka literally what instituted Jim Crow.

And they'll go back even MORE if allowed, kids.

A mini-thread:

1/x

https://twitter.com/santiagomayer_/status/1540738180051509248

So. One of the dirtier secrets is that the growth of Christian Nationalism is largely *very white, Anglo-Saxon* Christian Nationalism (with a few token African-Americans and token convertees of other races, as well as token convertees of Jewish and Arab origin).

2/x

And, well, a lot of this is historical (especially if you get into the history of the Southern Baptists and PCA on one end--formed from Confederate era splits on whether owning slaves was justified Biblically. Yes, this becomes VERY IMPORTANT later in this thread.)

3/x

At least one branch (the New Apostolic Reformation) does have more recent origins. "White" and "African-American" Pentecostalism split almost the moment the Asuza Revival ended in 1906, and the NAR is ultimately descended from Lanhamism in that movement,

4/x

with its *literal* sister movement being none other than Christian Identity.

The whole point being, there's tokens but oh lord Christian Nationalism has been lily white, by and large.

And so we move up to the 1950s...

5/x

Now. There have been Christian Nationalist groups that existed before even World War II (Aimee Semple McPherson was functionally a Christian Nationalist, and The Family nee The Fellowship has its origins in the 20s and 30s), but...well, when segregation was outlawed,

6/x

that's when...a lot of Southern states got *remarkably* creative in trying to do an end-run around *Brown v Board of Education*.

One particularly notable attempt was the Stanley Plan:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_P…

It was part of a strategy known as "Massive Resistance".

7/x

At the time that *Brown* got decided, you saw a sudden spike in private Christian schools--typically run by denominations that had a history of having split off in light of the Civil War over the "are African-Americans people or livestock in the Biblical sense",

8/x

and answering affirmedly in the "Livestock" category...so they started setting up a lot of schools that were explicitly White Students Only, Non Whites Need Not Apply. We call those now "segregation academies", and there was a lot of white flight to these schools.

9/x

So the Stanley Plan's cunning stunt took this further.

Basically--by edict of the VA legislature and the VA governor--schools were absolutely prohibited from desegregation, and if the courts ordered them to, or a public school system decided on its own to integrate...

10/x

well, what would happen is the state of Virginia would step in, and *legally disband and shut down the school system entirely*.

And what the state would subsequently do is hand out school vouchers...for "segregation academies"

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_r…

11/x

And what this meant in practice is that--in many cases, for close to 12 years--there were no public schools at ALL in multiple locations in Virginia, and white students got to go to "Private Christian" segregation academies

12/x

(where said students pretty much were given the early versions of Christian Nationalist curricula, including HEAVY Confederacy historical revisionism)...

...and African-Americans didn't get educated at *ALL*, for the most part.

13/x

Literally the only schools that would accept African-Americans were some run by the Society of Friends (who'd literally stepped in to fill the gap, and got a lot of official hostility from the state from it).

And yes, this is where school vouchers come from.

14/x

(And yes, the actual origins of "school vouchers" as a means to continue segregation via "massive resistance" are very well documented, including by the state of Virginia itself. But a brief primer: americanprogress.org/article/racist…)

15/x

So...after a good decade of this tomfoolery, the courts issued multiple rulings, not the least of which was (on fed level) *James v Almond* which ruled the school shutdowns violated the 14th Amendment.

(The state also tried to go after NAACP members who sued over this,

16/x

accusing them of barratry and trying to have the attorneys legally disbarred, and the US Supreme Court ruled in *Harrison v NAACP* in 1963 that Virginia had effectively attempted a SLAPP suit.)

And there were still multiple issues even after, up until the late 60s.

17/x

And right around the same time that the first court verdicts ruling that "Massive Resistance" violated the 14th Amendment came in, you also had Abington School District v Schlempp (which ruled that state-mandated Bible reading in public schools was unconstitutional),

18/x

And rulings that racist cohabitation laws were also illegal (McLaughlin v Florida), and the big one--*Griffin v County School Board of Prince Edward County* which ruled the shutdowns and funding by voucher...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffin_v…

19/x

of "segregation academies" was illegal, the next year in 1964.

(Even then, Virginia tried to do "school choice" assignments for public schools until the Feds had to step in again in a later court ruling that is the basis of busing.)

20/x

And by this time, you'd already had the Dixiecrats split off from the Democrats (again, over the "is Jim Crow a violation of human rights or God's ordained order", with the Dixiecrats going for the latter), and right around 1964 is when Nixon did his devil's bargain

21/x

which is to say, this is when the Southern Strategy happened--after a good decade of now young adults in much of the South being steeped in Christian Nationalist thought by "segregation academies".

(This is a thing the entire *country* would live to regret.)

22/x

(And that's pretty much the moment that the South "swung Republican"--really, in truth, it was neither Democratic nor Republican but in truth a pro-Confederacy rump that actually existed *prior* to the Civil War, and yes, the Dems pretty much split in 1860,

23/x

with the Southern rump taking over once Reconstruction was prematurely ended in the 1870s, and pretty much that entire rump acted as a de facto regional third party in the 40s-50s, and joined the GOP in the 60s.

But it always was the Confederacy Party.)

24/x

So a few years later, you had a few more notable court decisions, in that you had *Loving v Virginia*, and you had *Greene v County School Board of New Kent County* (ruling "school choice" programs that didn't ensure integration to be illegal under the 14th),

25/x

and a LOT of similar "don't make us come back down there with the federalized National Guard, goddamnit" cases (US v Montgomery County BOE, Swann v Charlotte-Mecklenburg BOE, Alexander v Holmes BOE, and a number of other cases that banned redlining)

26/x

And then pretty much the apocalypse happened, as far as state funding and even tax exemptions for segregation academies were concerned.

First, *Colt v Green* in 1971 happened...meaning segregation academies no longer got tax writeoffs

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coit_v._G…

27/x

And then BJU v Simon hit, which actually yanked the tax exempt of one of the three largest publishers of Christian Nationalist curricula in the US (at the time Bob Jones University was whites-only, and still maintained segregation well into the 80s)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Jones…

28/x

And *THEN* Runyon v McCrary hit, which actually outright ruled (under an interpretation of the Ku Klux Klan Act) that segregation academies on their face were outright illegal, private or not

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runyon_v.…

29/x

And honestly it was in the wake of segregation academies losing their tax-exempts left and right (and forced prosyletisation being banned, and pushes to pretty much negate *every* attempt ex-Confederacy states tried to get around *Brown v BoE*) that...

30/x

It was essentially in this environment that Christian Nationalism would take its form.

Eagle Forum, arguably one of the oldest Christian Nationalist groups, had its start in 1972--and actually did activism as far back as 1967 (under the Eagle Trust Fund).

31/x

And you had other players who would contribute, like the John Birch Society (who had their origins in the 40s and 50s and were *also* Christian Nationalist, but also very successfully sold Bircherism under Fear of a Communist Planet in the 50s onward),

32/x

and you had the NAR (under late "MSoG" and early "Latter Rain" branding) with their early efforts towards initially steeplejacking Catholic and SBC churches (and who formed an early alliance with Catholics re anti-reproductive-health initiatives),

dailykos.com/stories/2006/1…

33/x

which they later expanded this tactic (itself based on recruitment tactics of another cult, along with "people's revolutionary cells" *and* the growth tactics of MLMs which started around the same time the NAR did) with the GOP itself...

dailykos.com/stories/2006/1…

34/x

and *ALSO* literally at the SAME TIME you were not only having a lot of KKK activity, but also the beginnings of "militia" paramilitary groups that promoted "sovereign citizen" nonsense (like the Posse Comitatus, and even Birchers themselves to a degree).

35/x

(This is why I kinda keep pointing out that Christian Nationalism has been in a process of a slow but exponentially more extreme coup attempt; most folks don't realize this is literally something that's gone on since the mid-Civil Rights era.)

36/x

So yeah, the lovely bastards who just undid Roe, well...the original focus for Christian Nationalism wasn't "omfg babby murdarz"...it was literally Dead Sea levels of salt over segregation academies losing tax-exempt and with BJU losing their tax-exempt in particular

37/x

(Not just my assessment, either, it's actually a pretty common assessment among historians who've delved into the early origins of Christian Nationalism. politico.com/magazine/story…)

38/x

And so...over about, oh, 70 years or so, various elements of the US far-right and Christian Nationalism and neo-Confederate Lost Cause historical revisionism have...cross-pollinated, a *lot*, and at one point it started breeding a *particular* bit of sovcit nonsense...

39/x

(This is where all that stuff about "Biblical slavery" and the absolute seething *rage* a lot of these groups have for the entire concept of the Reconstruction Amendments becomes Very, Very Important.)

40/x

So. In the 1980s onward, neo-Confederacy started getting particularly wedded with both "militia" type paramilitary groups like Posse Comitatus on one end, and Christian Nationalism on the other, in interesting ways

41/x

And one of the first bits showing how much cross-fertilization had happened is with the US Taxpayers Party, nee Constitution Party--founded by Howard Phillips III (also notable for #CNP) because he thought the GOP wasn't going full Christian Nationalist fast enough

42/x

There are a LOT of Christian Nationalist sorts that turn out to have Constitution Party linkages (Palin by her husband's links to ConP-linked Alaska Independence Party, Michael Farris with HSLDA, and so on).

And yes, they run a lot of state parties...

43/x

that push a lot of specifically secessionist party platforms on state levels, especially the ideas of founding a new Confederacy (in the Southeast) or founding Christian Nationalist states (in Idaho and the West and Alaska).

44/x

They also have a very, very long history (from their foundation, really) of promoting not only sovcit nonsense but actually promoting Christian Nationalist terrorists (like Matthew Trewhella's Missionaries to the Preborn) dailykos.com/stories/2006/1…

45/x

(Yeah, I've written about Trewhella before. He's actually had some linkages with (among others) others who've actively called for a Christian Nationalist coup-de-etat like J6 only More So: unrollthread.com/t/153526666836…)

46/x

And you actively had at least one Christian Nationalist group TRY to form a full-on secessionist movement in South Carolina, with the idea of having SC secede, form its own Christian Nationalist dictatorship, and be the core of a new Confederacy rationalwiki.org/wiki/Christian…

47/x

AND you also had a bunch of LOVELY /s chuds by the name of League of the South start up...who took over two admittedly already *very* Confederacy-historical-revisionist "memorial orgs" (SCV and United Daughters of the Confederacy) and then...

48/x

proceeded to take over the PCA, aka the "Southern Presbyterians", and there's been an effective fight in the church leadership ever since between neo-Confederates and people who are really less intent on Making The South Rise Again As Gilead

49/x

No, seriously, League of the South are not nice individuals at all. There is a very, very good reason why pretty much every single group that classifies hate groups CONSIDERS them a hate group: rationalwiki.org/wiki/League_of…

Namely, they say the quiet parts out loud.

50/x

And here, after 50 posts, we're going to go into exactly what those quiet parts actually *are*, and what sort of ungodly toxicity results therein.

TL;DR it probably won't go well for women, LGBTQIA people, or anyone who isn't lily white

51/x

So that history dump IS actually important in context for what I'm about to discuss.

Christian Nationalists would like to do far, far more than just merely undo *Brown v BOE* or *Loving v Virginia*.

FAR more than that.

Try: Everything after the 12th Amendment.

52/x

So pretty much the WHOLE frickin' civil rights movement for most people--women, African-Americans, immigrants, LGBTQIA people, etc--are based on the Reconstruction Amendments, and particularly the 14th Amendment

This has made the Confederacy very salty for a long time

53/x

And so a very, very popular strain of sovcit nonsense in neo-Confederate circles in particular involves "capital-C Citizens" versus "lower-c citizens" (oh yes, apparently they do love their Typological Thaumaturgy in thinking this is secret hax)

54/x

And basically the whole idea they push is that "capital-C Citizens" are the only actual United States *citizens* in terms of the Constitution, whereas "lower-c citizens" are apparently the equivalent of subjects, and *not really* citizens at all

55/x

(Note: There is literally only a single class of people for whom the whole concept of "national or subject, but not citizen of the US" applies, and that's literally American Samoa (due to being an unincorporated unorganized territory with no Organic Act).)

56/x

And so this is a nice *subtle* way of them trying to say that African-Americans REALLY don't have citizenship (and how they have justified, among themselves, actually doing away with *Brown* and going full *Plessy v Ferguson* and bringing back Jim Crow).

57/x

And there's a variation of THIS that's become even MORE popular among neo-Confederate-leaning sovcit types, that effectively claims (falsely) that *literally not a single Amendment after the 12th Amendment was ratified properly* (and that somehow,

58/x

an amendment that actually was proposed and failed ratification back in the early 1800s actually *did* pass according to their bunk claims).

Said claims usually rely on "butbutbut ex-Confederate states didn't get to VOOOOTE on it!"

59/x

Well, the appropriate answer to THAT is "Maybe you shouldn't have tried to fuck off for five years to have your own country with FIVE ETERNITY CLAUSES PERMANENTLY ENSHRINING CHATTEL SLAVERY because you REALLY wanted to own African-Americans as livestock, then"

60/x

(Because, you see, when you form your own country with your own laws, you actually *do not get to vote on constitutional amendments in other countries*, because you fucked off because you REALLY WANTED TO OWN PEOPLE AS WORK HORSES.)

61/x

And yes, they did vote to approve them, when they were formally readmitted to the Union (which they promptly ignored said amendments for the next, oh, 80 fucking years until the courts were reminded of their existence, but the failure of Reconstruction is another rant)

62/x

And this brings us to the lovely proposals that an *awful lot* of J6 seditionists would have liked to seen put in place, and an awful lot of Christian Nationalists too, though usually it's only groups like LotS that have been open about it until now

63/x

Which basically boils down to: Either by bloody revolt, legal hijinks (including death by a thousand cuts), the South actually seceding anew, or a full-on Constitutional Convention...they *REALLY* want to get rid of those pesky Reconstruction Amendments,

64/x

and also those pesky amendments that let women *vote* or have a job outside the home, or let anyone who is not a white male landowner who pays a poll tax or property taxes vote, or let you vote for Senators at all, or make you pay taxes to have nice things like roads...

65/x

...oh, and they'd *really* like to bring back that whole "owning people as livestock" concept.

Like, as in, literally, the full-on re-establishment of chattel slavery.

This is a subject I wish to hell was just my PTSD flaring up, but...they're open to their own about it

66/x

Christian Nationalist textbooks are really open about Confederacy Revisionism, including dismissing slavery as "Black Migration" if not outright claiming it was part of a *missionary effort* (yes, seriously)

theguardian.com/education/2021…

67/x

This is...not exactly just something that happened yesterday:

From 2017: huffpost.com/entry/school-v…

From 2018: orlandosentinel.com/news/education…

From 2020 (and another good history of Christian Nationalist schooling): washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/0…

68/x

A full memoir (from 2020) from someone who was raised using Christian Nationalist curricula, who goes into the...half-praise, half-denialism of the horrors of chattel slavery: alicegreczyn.com/blog/christian…

69/x

Hell, I touched on this back a decade and a half ago noting the many reasons WHY University of California's system now considers most Christian Nationalist curricula educationally insufficient, including how they go full Lost Cause-ism: dailykos.com/stories/2006/9…

70/x

Now. That's basically what folks like Lauren Boebert and Madison Cawthorn and MTG and your least favourite local Christian Nationalist candidate running for school board or alderman or in your General Assembly was taught with

71/x

But yeah, there's just a really consistent effort to portray slavery as a Good Thing, and a narrative of "the slave knew his place, Massa knew *his* place, and it's *all* gone to hell because of those Damn Yankees wreckin' the *natural order* of things"

72/x

(Yes, this is also why they have a *special* venom for the concept of CRT--which all that is, is "yes, systemic racism does exist, it's had longterm effects, and we should be mindful of this and work towards mitigating those effects".

73/x

(It's also why there's an especially venomous response to BLM--with it, and really *most* civil rights groups being decried as frankly Satanic--when BLM's whole point is "we'd like the police to not instantly un-alive us if we're pulled over, please and thank you".)

74/x

And now we get to the really nasty stuff, which really only Christian Exodus and League of the South dare to say out in the *open*, but trust me, a LOT of neo-Confederates will admit this to people they see as "friendlies" privately.

Namely, "Biblical slavery"

75/x

So, one of the *actual* arguments that has historically been used to justify both chattel slavery AND Jim Crow is...a uniquely Western, and British really, interpretation of "Ham, Shem, and Japeth" (Noah's 3 descendants in the Bible).

76/x

And basically the viewpoint that's been taught in a *LOT* of Christian Nationalist groups (and ancestors) for like 150-200 years is that supposedly each of the "three races of man" are supposedly descended from Shem, Ham, and Japeth,

77/x

with supposedly white people being descended from Japeth, and "Easterners" (including not only Asian people but a lot of people in the Middle East) being Shem's descendants, and Ham's...being basically all the Biblical Baddies, and also linked with Africans

78/x

And supposedly Ham's entire line was and is meant to have been cursed for ALL ETERNITY because Noah went on a bender, got naked and passed out, and Ham pointed out "dude look Dad's naked and drunk" in the Bronze Age equivalent of a shitpost

79/x

(meanwhile Shem and Japeth are like "dude, let's at least put a blanket over our old man") and when Noah woke up from his bender he supposedly cursed Ham's *entire line* starting with his son Canaan to be servants and slaves for ALL ETERNITY

80/x

And yes, it's basically THIS SHIT that actually forced an honest-to-god split in *MULTIPLE* churches in the 1850s, where people were literally arguing over whether it was Biblical to keep African-Americans as chattel slaves, with...the likes of the SBC and PCA...

81/x

literally saying "oh yes it's COMPLETELY justified because the 146-greats-grandfather of EVERY person of African descent basically made fun of his dad passed out drunk, we don't make the rules (now give us our human livestock kthx)".

82/x

And those lovely bastards at League of the South, a full-on Christian Nationalist neo-Confederate group that has close links with the Family Research Council?

Yeah, they absolutely believe that Ham shit splcenter.org/fighting-hate/…

83/x

Their leader is unusually open about how he wants some human livestock: splcenter.org/fighting-hate/…

And they're not alone.

Hell, you had people actively (who were supposed Ph.D's, even!) trying to excuse Jim Crow and paint chattel slavery in 1988 splcenter.org/fighting-hate/…

84/x

And LotS, and Christian Exodus, and other groups that propose pretty much having the South secede and forming a proper theocracy actually claim "yes we'll institute slavery, but we'll do it *humanely*, under *Levitican law*..."

And it's not just neo-Confederates.

85/x

You pretty much had Christian Reconstructionists (the other branch of "hardcore" Christian Nationalism, along with the NAR) pushing the idea of "Biblical slavery", aka by Levitican rules, really since Rushdoony founded the movement,

86/x

and as early as 2004 (when Douglas Wilson started trying to get alt-right, racist-right, and Christian Nationalist types to Moscow, Idaho to basically do a hostile takeover of the town for a white secessionist theocracy),

87/x

you had open apologias of chattel slavery, and a whole lot of talk about how "it'd be great if we could have human livestock but under Christian rules" splcenter.org/fighting-hate/…

Wilson's quite an admirer of Rushdoony and other types.

88/x

In fact, Rushdoony *himself* promoted reinstituting slavery (and banning interracial marriage) along other fun stuff like stoning to death of gays, sex workers, "uppity women", "incorrigible children", and pretty much anyone not a Christian Nationalist

89/x

(If anyone really wants a good summary, here's a list on what they would LOVE to see come to pass: salon.com/2015/07/31/sec…)

And it's not just chuds in Neo-Nazi Central in Idaho, either.

90/x

David Barton is...very well known in #exvangelical and Christian-Nationalism-researcher circles as effectively a Christian Nationalist Historical Revisionist--he promotes a whole "alt-history" of the US that all but portrays it like Columbia in "Bioshock: Infinite"

91/x

And David Barton actually gets a whole LOT of funding from Christian Nationalist groups, including Christian Nationalist funding front Hobby Lobby (which always does ads for his org Wallbuilders--organized as a church and using the "form 990 loophole" to hide finances)

92/x

And his...fractally *wrong* ideas re American history have been the subject of quite a lot of debunkings (I recommend @ChrisRodda1 's "Liars for Jesus" in this regard).

Oh, David Barton ALSO promotes the idea of "Biblical slavery" too web.archive.org/web/2017032518…

93/x

tw: hate speech, historical revisionism

Or you can see it from the horse's mouth (done via Internet Archive because no way am I giving Barton's site direct clickthroughs): web.archive.org/web/2016111204…

Will tl;dr for those who may find the content in full there triggering.

94/x

So basically Christian Nationalist "biblical slavery" (as noted in that link) involves...a) "voluntary servitude" (basically indentured servitude/workfare), b) "voluntary permanent slaves" (which *literally* compares people needing social welfare to those),

95/x

c) "thiefs or criminals making restitution" (hello Black Codes! Also the *one* form of slavery that is STILL legal under the 13th Amendment)...and d) "oh yes, we can pretty much permanently enslave in chattel slavery anyone we deem to be a filthy *pagan*".

96/x

Note: There is at least one person (Matt Shea) who is a rep in Washington state's General Assembly, who has been accused of actual domestic terrorism, who wrote a manifesto in 2018 calling for LITERALLY this as a tactic within a violent Christian Nationalist coup attempt,

97/x

one which was effectively marching orders for a J6-style coup-de-etat: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Shea

Right now, as of today, 25 June 2022...he's encouraging authorities to attack protesters of the *Dobbs* decision, falsely claiming they're domestic terrorists.

98/x

And that last one--"legally literally reclassify everyone we don't like as a literal *pagan*--is why narratives like this, and the increasing equation of BLM and LGBTQIA people and protesters of *Dobbs* as LITERALLY demonic and Satanic matters: libertywritersglobal.com/numerous-priva…

99/x

So, yeah. They really, truly, deeply do want to put you and yours back into chains, and keep them in chains forever, and bring every horror of the so-called "Antebellum" brought back to life, only this time they're explicitly mixing it with Atwood's Republic of Gilead.

100/end

@UnrollThread

@threadreaderapp unroll