webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

spiritual battle war

yikes promote

MERRI OK

primary 7 23 b/c newest

2ndary 8 22 mar a lago raid

SEE BANNON

see satan DEVIL 2 FOR NEWER}:}:

8 26 TERM RARE? IT WAS EUPHEMISM / DOG WHISTLE?

see demonization et al

see prophet/prosperity/white

see polariz

aha blends light and dark metaphor, god/good  light in conflict w/ satan dark end times armageddon

you act for god, and he will protect you from harm from evil one(s)

godless commies oppose trump who is god’s agent thus they are evil, demonic extremelist lunatic who are irrational thus cannpt be reasoned/compromised with so must be eliminated by violence holy cleansing fire

jan 6 trump called his troops to fight like hell for him ~dark dems who stole power

spiritual battle gets us that bit closer to real violence (tho starts as dog whistle then gets literal?

dog whistle for demon/satan? bannon is satan adjacent

“The answer to 1984 is 1776,” violence civial war?}:

rww tag: Spiritual Warfare

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Dominionist Lou Engle Calls for Spiritual Warfare Fast for Colorado Gov. Candidate Victor Marx

Victor Marx is calling out spiritual warfare reinforcements in his race to be governor of Colorado. Dominionist Lou Engle is trumpeting Marx's wife Eileen's call for 21 days of fasting to encourage God to work a "miracle" in the election.

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Hunter Walker @ Talking Points Memo: Colorado GOP Gov Nominee Claims to Have Battled ‘Demons’ With ‘Reptilian’ Eyes

Improbable stories are a foundational element of Marx’s career as a Christian Nationalist Evangelist preacher and podcaster. Marx, a Marine veteran, claims to hold multiple high-level black belts stemming from his stepfather’s creation of a martial arts system, “Keichu-Do” or “Cajun Karate.” At points, Marx has suggested that he’s used these deadly skills to rescue tens of thousands of women and children from hot zones around the world.

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The conspiracy theorist has launched a new website ahead of The Onion’s expected takeover of his company.

NO LNX

Obsessed

Alex Jones Signs Off From Infowars With Unhinged Tirade

BYE BYE

The conspiracy theorist has launched a new website ahead of The Onion’s expected takeover of his company.

Ewan Palmer

Reporter

:{Published May 1 2026

Alex Jones had an on-air meltdown during his final Infowars broadcast before the show was shut down ahead of a potential takeover by the satirical news site The Onion.

In a typically deranged rant, the conspiracy theorist veered into a number of tangents, from claiming his defamation court proceedings were scripted by the CIA to calling The Onion CEO Ben Collins a “confessed satanist.”

Alex Jones Loses It Over Fake Mugshot of New Infowars Boss

MISFIRE

Eboni Boykin-Patterson

Jones, Heidecker

“These show trials I went through showed me so much. Like, I knew there were show trials, just like The Truman Show,” Jones began in his final unhinged monologue on Infowars.

“When you realize they’re so corrupt, they have coordinated scripts run by the CIA in court hearings, and you’re just like, ‘Oh my God. I thought I knew how bad it was, and I was naive.’ And when that hits you, it’s like a horse kicking you. It is like being kicked in the balls by Godzilla.”

Infowars show toasting.

Other members of the Infowars team joined Alex Jones in toasting a goodbye to the company. Screengrab/Infowars

Jones continued for several minutes, insisting that he is not “putting a good face on this, this is the reality, our enemies are falling apart,” while also taking a swipe at President Donald Trump, whom he has grown increasingly critical of.

“They think they’re gonna have their big victory. They think it’s all funny. They think it’s all cool. No, this is the beginning of the end. We didn’t ride in on Trump, he rode in on our train. He was useful as far as he went.”

Jones’ company is facing liquidation as he owes nearly $1.5 billion in defamation damages to the families of victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting. Jones falsely claimed on his show that the 2012 massacre—which left 26 people dead, including 20 children—was a hoax and that the grieving parents were “crisis actors.”

Alex Jones Melts Down After Losing Infowars to The Onion

STRIPPED FOR PARTS

Owen Mason-Hill

Alex Jones on Infowars

The Onion is attempting to take over Infowars and turn it into a parody site mocking conspiracy theories pushed by far-right figures like Jones, while also generating revenue for the Sandy Hook families.

The Onion submitted a new takeover bid last month after its previous attempt was blocked by a judge in November 2024 over concerns about the bidding process and whether the satirical outlet should have been declared the winner.

InfoWars founder Alex Jones speaks to the media outside Waterbury Superior Court during his trial on September 21, 2022 in Waterbury, Connecticut. Jones is being sued by several victims' families for causing emotional and psychological harm after they lost their children in the Sandy Hook massacre. A Texas jury last month ordered Jones to pay $49.3 million to the parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, one of 26 students and teachers killed in the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. (Photo by Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images)

:{Alex Jones founded InfoWars in 1997.

Ownership of Infowars is currently in limbo after a Texas appeals court approved an emergency motion by Jones’ lawyers that temporarily blocked the transfer of assets.

In a statement, Collins, a former editor at the Daily Beast, lashed out at the “insane, unprecedented stalling” and said it does “nothing but delay our deal with the receiver to take control of Infowars.”

Jones, meanwhile, is already declaring Infowars finished while simultaneously announcing a new website, AlexJonesLive.

“The state court just blocked the little rat, confessed satanist, from coming in to wear our skin for months while we launch our operation,” Jones said.

“I will sit there and live in a modest house with a modest car, which I love, and they think, oh, we’ll take your money, Jones, shut up. I’m ready to die for this. You think taking money from me does something? It makes me want to strangle you spiritually.”

Jones told his audience at the end of his rant: “You are the Infowars, and it lives forever.”

Ewan Palmer

Reporter

ewan.palmer@thedailybeast.com

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With a prayer house across the street from the U.S. Supreme Court building, leaders of the Fort Worth–based Mercy Culture Church are taking their spiritual battle to Washington, D.C.

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Sen. Roger Marshall Says The Transgender Issue Is 'A Spiritual Battle For The Soul Of This Nation' | People For

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MMA

Calling their opponents “demonic,” some right-leaning online shows are embracing “spiritual warfare” rhetoric

Online figures and podcasters have warned of a “satanic world order” and called on their audiences to “fight these demons in culture if we're going to win politically”

Written by Payton Armstrong & Noah Dowe

Research contributions from Jack Winstanley

Published 10/15/25

Some right-wing and right-leaning podcasters have embraced the extreme rhetoric of “spiritual warfare” against their political opponents, accusing political and cultural figures they disagree with of harboring a “demonic” ideology.

Such rhetoric seems to stem from a once-fringe Christian nationalist movement, and is increasingly being used by evangelical supporters of President Donald Trump and his allies in right-wing media. During the 2024 election, Trump himself accused Democrats of being “demonic.”

Americans increasingly get their news from podcasts and online shows, an ecosystem dominated by overwhelmingly right-leaning shows. Since the 2024 election, some right-leaning online hosts and guests have used those platforms to suggest that the right must combat the “demonic activity” of their political and cultural opponents.

*

Right-wing streamer Stew Peters, who has repeatedly pushed rhetoric promoting violence against perceived enemies, said: “This is a battle of good and evil. We've talked about spiritual warfare on this program a lot.” He added, “We're going to continue to talk about it because the enemy is still waging war.” Rumble, *The Stew Peters Show*, [3/26/25; Media Matters, 11/7/23]

*Media Matters is maintaining a database of online shows with a right-leaning or left-leaning ideological bent, including those that self-categorize in nonpolitical categories such as comedy, sports, and culture but which we determined regularly cover news and politics. This report draws upon that ongoingresearchin categorizing the online shows mentioned.

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White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reportedly suggested that supernatural forces might have been responsible for the technical issues during President Donald Trump's recent call with faith leaders.

She commented, “There is spiritual warfare as we all know. It tried to break up our call today, as the president even alluded to.”

According to liberal group Meidas Touch, Leavitt made these comments during the same call.

READ MORE:What MAGA really means to Americans

Prior to that, White House Faith Director Jenny Korn had expressed frustration with the situation, saying they were “waiting for AT&T to get its act together,” pointing to the service provider as the cause.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

On Monday, Trump appeared to seek technical support in a social media post, stating that a conference call with American faith leaders had experienced difficulties, which he attributed to the telecommunications company AT&T.

He called on the company’s "boss, whoever that may be" to step in and address the issue. Trump also mentioned that his team might switch to a different carrier for future calls.

"I’m doing a major Conference Call with Faith Leaders from all over the Country, and AT&T is totally unable to make their equipment work properly. This is the second time it’s happened. If the Boss of AT&T, whoever that may be, could get involved — It would be good. There are tens of thousands of people on the line!" Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Monday afternoon.

READ MORE:'Betrayed': GOP rep torched after hospital closes in his district shuts down due to Medicaid cuts

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RWW

06/02/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Last month, Right Wing Watch reported that Christian nationalist activist Floyd Brown had been appointed to serve as a vice president at the Kennedy Center, which President Donald Trump took over shortly after returning to the White House earlier this year.

Last week, CNN's Andrew Kaczynski reported on Brown's position and his history of bigoted and controversial statements. Kaczynski's reporting, in turn, quickly led to Brown's dismissal from his position.

On Friday, Brown appeared on "The Lance Wallnau Show" to discuss his firing, which he blamed on Satan.

Brown began by complaining that his controversial statements had all been made before he was appointed to serve as the Kennedy Center and therefore his dismissal was unjustified and unfair.

"First of all, I made those comments about three years ago, long before President Trump was chairman of the Kennedy Center and long before I accepted the position at the Kennedy Center," Brown said. "So, it really didn't have to do with my Kennedy Center job; you know, what I said in the past at a Christian conference."

"I wasn't going to disavow any of my Christian beliefs around traditional marriage," he added. "This video triggered a lot of the people that work in the higher up levels of the Kennedy Center and so it led to me being dismissed because of my beliefs and I think that's wrong."

"I was doing the job and I was doing it well," Brown insisted. "Every day that I went to work there, I was praying for Ambassador [Richard] Grenell. I was praying for the staff of the Kennedy Center. I was praying circle prayers around the building. I was praying hedge of protection prayers.

"I knew from day one, because of the discernment given to me by the Holy Spirit as a believer, that I was contending in a spiritual battle and that I was near the top of the mountain, I was near the gates, and I was contending with those spiritual powers at that gate," Brown declared, using language reflective of the Seven Mountains Dominionism theology that he promotes.

"I think the closer that I got to the gate and the more Christians I brought in the door, the more Satan was pushing back against what I was doing," Brown said. "We were making real progress, not only in the natural but in the spiritual, and so Satan counterattacked and I really think that's the main reason that I was fired."

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AFP has debunked other claims about the Los Angeles fires.

Addressing the spread of conspiracies

By coincidence, on the day the wildfires started, Facebook announced it was ending its third party fact checking program and loosening its automated systems that police policy violations, instead relying more on users to report issues before they take action. The platform is adopting a crowdsourced "community notes" system, similar to Elon Musk's X.

Dancy said conspiracy theorists are "benefitting from the information revolution" we live in. "It's an attention economy, and conspiracy theories get attention," Dancy said.

He advocates for regulating social media algorithms that prioritize sensational content.

Richards, who wrote a thesis about climate conspiracy theories circulating on TikTok, agreed.

The Storm Is Coming: Climate Change and Conspiracy Theories on TikTok Written by Abbie Richards 1048585 MSc. Thesis Environmental Policy Group Supervisor: Dr. Mattijs Smits December 2022

590388

DL file:///C:/Users/patmc/OneDrive/Documents/BOOK/storm_is_coming_climate_change_and_conspiracy_the-groen_kennisnet_590388.pdf

"You're fighting against algorithms that are designed for profit and not for creating a well-informed and healthy society," she said.

We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty! -Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition and to Friends of the Earth for their support. Many thanks to the kind researchers at the Algorithmic Transparency Institute who allowed me to use their tool Junkipedia. Special thanks to Dr. Rhianna Rogers for her mentorship. To EcoTok, thank you for teaching me about the power of community.

Abstract

:{ :{Conspiracy theories are sense-making tools that frequently arise during periods of high anxiety and uncertainty. It is a reasonable assumption that they may proliferate in response to the increasing devastation caused by anthropogenic climate change. While previous research into climate change conspiracy theories has explored the relationship between conspiracy theories and climate change denialism, little is known about their broader relationship with climate change as an experience of the material and social worlds.}:

:{To examine this interaction, this thesis provides a qualitative analysis of 96 socio-ecological conspiracy theories on the social media platform TikTok. Collected via a user-centric, exploratory research methodology, these videos were found to contain:{ six dominant themes: anti-oil, weather manipulation, fear of a “green agenda,” supply control, science rejection, and apocalypse. }:

Further analysis found that conspiracy narratives related to climate change in either cause, significance, effect, or response. These conspiracy theories were found to provide a means of interpreting climate change outside of a climate science framework. }:

This conspiratorial framework of interpretation seemingly allowed users to experience climate change without attributing it to anthropogenic causes such as the dependence on fossil fuels. Using theoretical elements from political ecology as well as system justification theory from social psychology, these major themes were largely found to dismiss the need for urgent systemic climate action. While the consequences of climate change were recognized, users frequently attributed them to scapegoated groups or higher powers rather than to systems in which they are complicit.}:

... By applying system justification theory to the conspiracy themes

identified, I examined the conspiracy narratives’ relationship to support for climate action. I

:{:{found that these narratives provided users with a framework for experiencing and processing climate change outside of a climate science framework.}:

Furthermore, most of these conspiracy}:

narratives implicitly rejected the need for climate action and frequently offered alternative

solutions to climate change such as scapegoating or spiritual solutionism.

Using a political ecology framework to interpret this phenomenon within a socio-ecological

context, I identified the implementation of conspiracy frameworks as means of interpreting

:{:{climate change outside of the scope of climate science.}:

These frameworks allow for the lived}:

experience of anthropogenic climate change to coexist while still justifying a societal

dependence on fossil fuels. In this sense, these frameworks serve as extensions of traditional

climate denialism.

As climate change continues to impact society to increasingly devastating degrees, causing

feelings of existential threat, conspiracy frameworks of interpretation may become a means of

sense-making. These frameworks may provide mEANING AND CERTAINTY IN THE FACE OF

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existential threat while simultaneously relieving believers’ feelings of complicity and

responsibility. Furthermore, the tendency of the conspiracy narratives in the data set to blame

environmental problems on an out-group is extremely concerning, both for the implications for

support of climate action as well as for potential harm to vulnerable groups. Conspiratorial

scapegoating during moments of societal crisis has historically been a motivating factor for

violence committed by individuals as well as by state governments...

...

6.3.3 Spiritual Solutionism

One interesting theme which tied together seemingly unrelated conspiracy theories was

spiritual solutionism. Regardless of whether the narratives feature the Earth shifting into a new

universe, an Anunnaki alien princess warning of climate catastrophes (Figure 24), or language

about “awakenings” and “spiritual warfare,” their relationships to climate action are similar.

While these narratives may present climate change as real (though often not anthropogenic),

the solution they offer is one of internal contemplation and the spiritual unification of humanity.

While this sounds lovely, it alone does not address any causes of climate change. Presenting

spirituality as the solution to the climate crisis may address some of the anxiety of the climate

crisis, but it may also discourage participation in solutions.

Spiritual solutionism seemingly allows for believers to experience anthropogenic climate

change but attribute it to the actions of some higher power. This framework of interpretation

functions as a reinforcement to the fossil fuel status quo. If the effects of climate change are

attributed to an act of God, intergalactic energetic forces, or a shift into a higher dimension,

then they must also be interpreted as beyond humanity’s control. Not only do these conspiracy

57

theories appear to negate the role of fossil fuels in climate change, but they comprehensively

reject the possibility for mitigative action through legislation. No international environmental

policy, no matter how vast, could change the planet’s fate as determined by God (or aliens or

galactic rotations or lapses into parallel universes PIX OF UFO PRINCESS BABE...

SAMPLE SEARCH TERMS:

14

Climate change conspiracy theory: “climate change hoax” or “global warming hoax” or

“climate change fake” or “global warming fake” or “climate conspiracy” or “Great Reset”

or “green scam” or “chemtrails” or “direct energy weapon” or “DEW” or “flat Earth” or

“hollow Earth” or “NASA lies” or “unknown planet” or “ninth planet” or “Nibiru” or

“firmament” or “local sun”

OR

Conspiracy rhetoric: “conspiracy” or “conspiracy theory” or “conspiracy tiktok” or

“conspiracytok” or “spiritualitytok” or “woketok” or “conspiracies coming true” or “open

your eyes” or “awake” or “awakened” or “awakening” or “great awakening” or “wake up”

or “spiritual awakening” or “end times” or “media lies” or “matrix” or “redpill” or

“blackpill” or “truth seeker” or “deep state” or “illuminati” or “new world order” or “NWO”

AND

Socio-ecological component: “Climate” or “climate change” or “global warming” or

“weather” or “snow” or “rain” or “storm” or “hail” or “drought” or “flood” or “heat” or “heat

wave” or “high temperature” or “gas” or “gasoline” or “red meat” or “animal agriculture” or

“food shortage” or “water shortage” or “blackouts” or “power outage” or “ESG” or

“Agenda21” or “Agenda 2030” or “United Nations” or “HAARP” or “green agenda” or

“LED lights” or “electric vehicle” or “green energy” or “renewable energy” or “power” or

“electricity” or “renewable” or “recycle” or “plant-based” or “vegan” or “geoengineering”

or “weather modification” or “weather manipulation” or “cloud seeding” or “block out the

sUN...

...

2.2 System-justifying function of conspiracy theories

To understand the political ecology of conspiracy theories, I employ system justification

theory. System justification theory posits that our assessments of social systems and institutions

are influenced by epistemic, existential, and social needs (Feygina, Jost, & Goldsmith, 2009).

People are drawn to conspiracy theories when they promise to satisfy these needs (Douglas,

Sutton, & Cichocka, 2017; Douglas et al., 2019). Though intuition, popular belief, proponents,

and some scholars suggest that conspiracy theories challenge power and subvert social systems

(Sapountzis & Condor, 2013), research suggests that conspiracy theories may reinforce the

status quo (Jolley, Douglas, & Sutton, 2017). Conspiracy theories identify a small group of

wrongdoers, a tangible group who are responsible for the ills of society. These wrongdoers are

not representations of social issues; rather, they are perceived as what is wrong with society.

In this sense, conspiracy theories deflect blame for societal problems to small evil groups often

with nearly supernatural power. By attributing problems to malevolent individuals, conspiracy

theories appear to divert people away from questioning the inherent limitations of their society

and toward accepting the status quo (Jolley, Douglas, & Sutton, 2017). This acceptance of the

status quo also aligns with Douglas and Sutton’s (2014) findings that exposure to conspiracy

theories weakens political engagement. After all, what is the point in voting if the outcome is

already decided by reptilian overlords?

The reality of anthropogenic climate change is not only a threat to our safety and well-being

but also to our identities. It challenges the belief systems of those who have benefited the most

from the fossil fuel status quo and see the existing political and economic structures as fair.

Daggett (2018) and Nelson (2019), argue that it is therefore no coincidence that white,

politically conservative men, at all socioeconomic levels, have consistently been found to

endorse climate change denial more than members of any other demographic in the United

:{:{States.}:

Accepting the reality of a changing climate also requires accepting that the political,}:

social, and economic beliefs and norms that govern our world are imperfect and require change.

For those whom this fossil-fueled society most serves, it may be easier to accept conspiracy

theories than to change their political and economic worldview. In this sense, conspiracy

theories, like all discourse, are a means of enacting power upon socio-ecological systems.

These rhetorical devices tug on the political-ecological web of connections, shaping everything

from consumer habits to global climate policy....

Western Wildfires}:

More

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04/11/2025

by

Peter Montgomery

Intercessors for America, a group of ardently pro-Trump “prayer warriors” that is closely associated with White House aide Paula White, gathered a group of supporters in Washington, D.C. this week to “prayer walk the centers of power in our nation, pray with elected officials, and gather with other IFA intercessors.” It was the first of IFA’s new monthly “Insights and Intercession” events, designed to give supporters a chance to “strategically pray” in Washington, D.C.

The concept of “strategic” spiritual warfare is a key element of dominionist New Apostolic Reformation ideology. During the first Trump administration, White forged and maintained close relationships with Christian nationalist and dominionist leaders through her One Voice Prayer Movement and her alliance with groups like IFA. IFA President Dave Kubal has participated in national “prayer and repentance” gatherings attended by dozens of members of Congress.

Intercessors for America, like the National Faith Advisory Board White set up after Trump lost in 2020 and many Christian-right organizations and media outlets, functions as a virtual non-stop public relations operation for the Trump administration. Collectively, these activists relentlessly repeat assertions that Trump is anointed by God and that his opponents—whether Democrats or federal judges—are thwarting God’s will, thereby helping to maintain a cultish level of support among Trump’s base, which in turn empowers him to demand unquestioning loyalty from fellow Republicans.

IFA has celebrated Trump’s campaign of intimidation and retribution against law firms, laughably characterizing it as an effort to “bring an end to the politicization of justice once and for all.” It has produced a "special report" titled "Power Struggle: Trump vs. Activist Judges," which calls out judges who are "taking on the president." The subject line of a recent email read, “God is Protecting DOGE!”

On Thursday, IFA posted a photo of its prayer warriors praying through the halls of the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, IFA shared a picture of its members meeting with Rep. Nathaniel Moran, who IFA quoted saying, “We’re engaged in a spiritual battle here.” White also invited IFA’s intercessors to the White House for a private briefing.

IFA had been at the White House a week earlier as well, for an event sponsored by the White House Faith Office during IFA’s “supporters summit,” which bore the name of Dave Kubal’s forthcoming book, “Impacting Generations.” According to IFA’s Facebook page, Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Markwayne Mullin met with IFA supporters.

Among IFA’s activities are weekly prayer calls hosted by Kris Kubal, Dave’s wife and IFA’s Chief Program Office. For two weeks in a row in March, Kubal devoted her show to promoting the Trump administration’s claims that federal judges who are acting to slow or stop the administration’s lawbreaking are a “judicial oligarchy” exercising a form of “despotism.”

As Right Wing Watch reported in March, the guest speaker on March 20 was Phillip Jauregui, a longtime right-wing activist who heads the Judicial Action Group and promotes a wildly unconstitutional religious test for Supreme Court justices and other federal judges through the Center for Judicial Renewal, a project of the American Family Association’s political action affiliate. On the IFA call, Jauregui prayed that God would visit the Supreme Court justices in their dreams to bring them “into alignment with your will to preserve the proper powers of the presidency right now.”

Among the concrete steps Jauregui suggested was a little budgetary intimidation designed to force the Supreme Court to rein in lower courts judges. Jauregui asked, “What if Speaker Johnson put something out publicly and says, ‘Chief Justice Roberts, we’d like to talk with you about having Elon Musk and DOGE come look at judicial expenditures.’ Hello? You think that would spook Roberts a bit, and cause him to be concerned?”

The following week, Kris Kubal hosted right-wing activist Bill Federer, who floated conspiracy theories about John Roberts being compromised and blackmailed by some embarrassing information to explain why he hasn’t ruled in lockstep with Trump. Federer also suggested actions Congress could take to “uncreate” lower courts or strip them of jurisdiction. An IFA leader from Florida prayed that God would turn the hearts of judges or "remove" them, an echo of previousspiritual warriors' callsfor God to "remove" Supreme Court justices to give Trump more vacancies to fill.

Back in 2018, when Trump was close to choosing Brett Kavanaugh as his second Supreme Court nominee, Jauregui used an IFA prayer call to denounce Kavanaugh as a “usurper” and insist that Amy Coney Barrett was the one anointed by God. But a week later, after Trump had officially nominated Kavanaugh, IFA fell in line and mobilized support for his confirmation.

IFA is also active at the state level. The same IFA newsletter celebrating the group’s return to the White House also linked to an article about efforts by IFA leaders in South Carolina to decree a “divorce from Baal” and its “prayer and pronouncing separation from the roots of the Masonic for the State.”

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rww10/18/2024

by

Kyle Mantyla

On the Watchlist worst of the wk

11 mentions ### Lance Wallnau

11 mentions

Lance Wallnau

Mario Murillo during an episode of "Fire Power"

8 mentions

Mario Murillo

Shadowy figure

7 mentions

Joel Webbon

Nick Fuentes with bullhorn at a Stop The Steal rally

5 mentions

Nick Fuentes

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rww 10/18/2024

by

Kyle Mantyla

On October 12th one of the most remarkable political statements of any religious leader in this or any election season was broadcast live from an all-day rally of tens of thousands of people on the Washington Mall. The event, called A Million Women, was staged by some of the leading apos

Ziklag and the Courage Tour, the far-right groups that hosted the Republican vice-presidential nominee, are charities that can’t legally intervene in political campaigns.

Last week’s MAGA-inflected spectacle cast Kamala Harris as demonic, and Trump an avatar of biblical justice.

Bigoted Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon declared on an Oct. 16, 2024 livestream that the world rightfully belongs to Christians, such as himself, as they were promised “dominion” over it. Webbon also stated that Christians are “destined to colonize” not just the world, but also “the stars.”

In lawsuits filed across the country, attorneys who worked to overturn Trump’s 2020 defeat are alleging rampant voting fraud.

Elections are supposed to be decided at the ballot box. But this year, Donald Trump’s campaign appears to be trying to win on a different field of battle. With dozens of lawsuits already filed across the country, the Republicans are using state and federal courts as a key pillar of their strategy to retake the White House.

Last week, a lawyer who worked for the Florida Department of Health resigned, and a letter obtained Thursday by the Miami Herald indicates that he didn’t like the state agency’s decision to prosecute television stations for airing political ads.

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lance Wallnau Blames the Seduction of Witchcraft for Kamala Harris’ Success

By Kyle Mantyla | September 12, 2024 rww

Shorty after President Joe Biden announced in July that he would not be running for reelection and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, self-proclaimed Christian nationalist and unabashed Trump cultist Lance Wallnau immediately began posting videos in which he warned that Harris represents “the spirit of Jezebel” and declared that she is “the devil’s choice.”

When Harris bested former President Donald Trump in a debate earlier this week, Wallnau was quick to blame it on “witchcraft,” and then doubled down on that attack Wednesday when heappeared on the “FirePower” show, hosted by fellow Trump cultists Mario Murillo and Todd Coconato.

“What you’re seeing now is a real Jezebel,” Wallnau declared. “When you’ve got somebody operating in manipulation, intimidation and domination—especially when it’s in a female role trying to emasculate a man who is standing up for truth—you’re dealing with the Jezebel spirit. … So, with Kamala, you have a Jezebel spirit, a characteristic in the Bible that is the personification of intimidation, seduction, domination and manipulation.”

“She can look presidential,” he continued. “That’s the seduction of what I would say is witchcraft. That’s the manipulation of imagery that creates an impression contrary to the truth, but it seduces you into seeing it. So that spirit, that occult spirit, I believe is operating on her and through her.”

While Harris is supposedly operating under an occult Jezebel spirit, Wallnau claimed that Trump has “an Elijah mantle on him, probably from the intercession of a million Christians.”

“So, we have to double down in intercessory prayer in the warfare mode of Pentecostals,” Wallnau proclaimed. “We need to close ranks and actually begin to get in a superlative agreement over what we believe we’re hearing God say he wants to manifest, because this election is coming five days after Halloween—another high holy day for all the Satanist crazy people.”

“We’ve got to lean into this thing because the Elijah mantle can break the spell of witchcraft off America,” he concluded. “God can tear the veil and unless that veil is torn, we have a lot working against us.”

IFrame Content

Murillo and Wallnau are close spiritual and political allies who are currently leading a “Courage Tour” to swing states ahead of the 2024 election in order to break the “demonic strongholds” in swing states that have supposedly been preventing Republicans from winning elections. The Courage Tour consists of series of multi-day events during which attendees hear from religious-right activists who mobilize them politically during the daily sessions, while the evening sessions are dedicated to spiritual revival and miracle healing. The purpose of these events is, as Wallnau explained earlier this year, to prepare Christians to rule and reign when Jesus Christ returns by training them to “occupy territory now.” As that language suggests, Murillo and Wallnau are associated with the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation.

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What I saw at the Moms for Liberty summit: a diminished and desperate group

Written by Olivia Little

Research contributions from Madeline Peltz

Published 09/06/24 mma

Scandal, school board election failures, and a disastrous 60 Minutes interview appear to have diminished Moms for Liberty’s once powerful influence, and last weekend’s summit provided plenty of additional evidence that the group is currently flailing.

Nearly every Republican presidential hopeful and a number of right-wing giants spoke at Moms for Liberty’s lively summit last year. But this year’s gathering was comparatively small, with far fewer panels and a weaker speaker lineup. In fact, Glenn Beck and D-list comedian Rob Schneider were advertised as the star headliners until the exceptionally late addition of former President Donald Trump just days before the event.

This is the second year that my colleague Madeline Peltz and I attended Moms for Liberty’s summit. It was immediately apparent to us that the small crowd had seemingly been reduced to largely die-hard members who, unlike many, remained loyal to Moms for Liberty through its year of scandal and failure. Co-founder Tina Descovich acknowledged that the organization was losing some support while presenting an award, saying, “You have been a friend to Moms for Liberty when some have stepped away.”

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Much of the conference was spent attempting to terrify parents into believing that schools are secretly grooming, manipulating, and transitioning students. The bag handed to us at registration included an illustrated flyer laying out the ridiculous “school to clinic pipeline,” which, according to the flyer, begins at “pronouns” and ends in a hospital.

Almost every speaker we listened to incorporated transgender panic into their speech. One panel was even titled “Protecting Kids from Secret Gender Transitions in Schools.”

In a panel condemning Title IX’s protection of students from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, attorneys encouraged parents to file complaints with the Department of Education to put “sand in the regulatory gears for this administration” because each report has to be investigated and filing more will create a backlog.

Title IX, Moms for Liberty

August 30, 2024

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Each year, members of Moms for Liberty from across the country are nominated for the group’s Founders Awards. These awards, named after notable women, are presented at their annual summit. Ironically, one of this year’s awards was named after Deborah Sampson, a woman “so invested in the cause of liberty that she disguised herself as a man and fought in the Revolutionary War.”

“This is spiritual warfare,” said far-right political commentator Sebastian Gorka at Friday’s lunch session, “and they are on the side of the devil.”

Gorka, spiritual warfare

August 30, 2024

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Speakers repeated vague accusations of “spiritual warfare” throughout the weekend. Even comedian-turned-conservative-activist Rob Schneider accused the pharmaceutical industry of engaging in spiritual warfare.

Religious scholar Brad Onishi describes the concept of spiritual warfare as the idea that Christians are called to fight a “cosmic battle between good and evil.” It’s a belief that Christians face a constant war against Satan and his minions.

In recent years, right-wing figures have increasingly invoked the phrase to describe and condemn anyone or anything they disagree with. Trump’s indictment, Democrats, transgender identities, the Olympics opening ceremony — all “spiritual warfare.”

The summit’s itinerary included the March for Kids, an event promoting parental rights with coalition partners such as Gays Against Groomers and PragerU. (It’s worth noting that the March for Kids wasn’t actually a march, but a largely empty assembly at DAR Constitution Hall.)

March for Kids speaker Naomi Van Wyk used the rhetoric of spiritual warfare to describe homosexuality and encouraged intervention to alter same-sex attraction, promoting a form of conversion therapy.

Van Wyk testified that Jesus set her “free from same-sex attraction,” describing it as “a demonic spiritual attack.” Again and again, she described homosexuality as “demonic” and advocated for parents to convert their LGBTQ children.

Video

CitationFrom the March for Kids video livestream

The Heritage Foundation was one of the earliest supporters of Moms for Liberty and, in turn, the group fell in line with Heritage’s policy priorities and shepherded members toward the think tank’s “resources for parents.” In 2022, Moms for Liberty was the recipient of Heritage’s Salvatori Prize for American Citizenship and Heritage President Kevin Robertsspoke at the group’s 2023 summit. In a breakout session last year, anti-trans activist “Billboard Chris” Elston revealed that The Heritage Foundation had identified and brought together 40 people, including him, in March 2022 to “fight gender ideology.”

This year’s summit was saturated with an array of Heritage employees, alumni, and partners. Notably, Lindsey Burke, Director of the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation and author of Project 2025’s extreme right-wing education policy plan, led a panel advocating for the abolition of the Department of Education.

Project 2025 is a right-wing initiative organized by The Heritage Foundation to provide policy and personnel to the next Republican administration. Moms for Liberty is a partner with Project 2025, and The Heritage Foundation recruited members to participate in Project 2025 at last year’s summit.

CitationProject 2025 pamphlet received at Moms for Liberty's 2023 summit

Despite massive right-wing support, Moms for Liberty is clearly floundering. This year’s summit was disorganized, small, and weird.

Sebastian Gorka haunted the convention hall all weekend, occasionally appearing on stage to theorize about whether the assassination attempt on Trump was an inside job, yell about spiritual warfare, or lament about “political prisoner” Steve Bannon. Far-right author James Lindsay won “The Liberty Sword” and was introduced as “Moms for Liberty’s favorite lady killer” when presented with the award. Even Trump’s appearance was odd. Instead of a traditional speech, he sat down with Justice and spoke at length about varying topics, including The Apprentice and Scotland.

I was one of the first to write about Moms for Liberty when the group launched in 2021 and have spent the last several years documenting the group’s meteoric rise. But Moms for Liberty seems to be in danger of burning out just as quickly.

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RNC 7 24 projection olympics req Earth2

note they are irrrational thus compromise impossible, their fault // self-defense

strong manly will never surrender compromise principles, submit to X

we are normally the good compassionate forgiving xians

note trump is the calm man even when being shot at

agw religion // alarmist hysterical fem

TUCKER REDEMPTION PENSION?

7 24 rww

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson closed out the all-day Heritage Foundation policy fest on the first day of the Republican National Convention. He warned the crowd that they are in a “spiritual battle” against “anti-human” forces that want to “eliminate” Christians.

In a strange choice for talking to political activists, Carlson began by describing politics as a “repulsive” process and politicians in general as ruthless and power-hungry and miserable people. But he said he is “thrilled” by Trump picking Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate, because “every bad person I’ve ever met in a lifetime in Washington was aligned against J.D. Vance.” Carlson said that was because “they thought he would be harder to manipulate and slightly less enthusiastic about killing people…that he would be an impediment to their exercising power.”

Carlson veered into spiritual warfare rhetoric, saying that since he spoke at the Heritage Foundation’s 50th anniversary celebration 15 months ago, he has experienced “a total change in the way that I see the world,” explaining, “this is not ultimately political. This is much deeper…There is a spiritual battle underway.”

From Carlson’s remarks:

And I think what happened on Saturday, the assassination attempt against President Trump, reminded a lot of people this, or awakened a lot of people to this. There is a spiritual battle underway. There is no logical way to understand what we’re seeing now in temporal terms. You just can’t.

These are not political divides. There are forces, and they’re very obvious now. They’ve decided, for whatever reason, to take off the mask, whose only goal is chaos, violence, destruction. And there are the rest of us who, once again, are not always certain we’re right, but we know that that’s bad and we’re against that, sort of standing, watching, thinking, ‘Is someone going to explain to me why this is politics?’

This is not politics at all. This is much deeper and older and more recognizable than that. This has been going on since the beginning of time. And I do think, by the way, that the more literal among us, and I would count myself in that category, fail to see this because we’re so desperate to ascribe some kind of recognizable human motive to what we’re seeing.

So we call it leftism or neoliberalism or communism or anarchism. We come up with some phrase to describe it, but those phrases are inadequate. They do not describe what’s actually happening. So what you’re seeing now is really not at all different in substance from what you saw in 1789 in France, from what you saw in 1936 in Spain, from what you saw in 1917 in Russia, from what you saw in 1975 in Phnom Penh. It’s all the same. These are forces of chaos and destruction which are fundamentally anti-human, which are against people.

Carlson railed against a number of movements he described as “anti-people,” including what he called “the climate cult.” He told the activists to pay close attention to what makes “them” angriest.

What group do they dislike most? What group are they absolutely terrified of and hoping to eliminate? Well, it’s Christians. That’s who it is. It’s Christians. … The group that makes them angriest, triggers them most, I guess we would say now, is Christians. Christian nationalism. People pray outside abortion clinics. People celebrate Easter, not trans visibility day. These are their real enemies.

Carlson talked about religious persecution during the Cultural Revolution in China and the French Revolution. He said at the start of the Spanish Civil War, the “anti-Christian” side opened fire on a statue of Jesus. “If you find yourself firing bullets at a statue, what you’re really doing is revealing your deepest priority, and that’s to kill Christians,” he said.

“I don’t know if any Christians here or people who are interested in continuing to live in the country you grew up in, but these are the terms and these are the stakes,” Carlson said. “They are not the ones that we’ve been told they are–left versus right, Republican versus Democrat.”

Carlson also talked about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, saying that Trump’s show of strength—fist raised in defiance—had won him the election, because people want and need strong leaders.

After delivering his remarks, Carlson engaged in some Q&A with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts. In response to a question about what kind of conversations people could have to bring their friends and neighbors into the MAGA movement, Carlson said they should pray for people who are willing to accept the status quo. He then veered into a diatribe against “weak men,” saying that fathers should be willing to beat up school counselors who “indoctrinate kids and try and turn them into freaks, circus freaks.” Roberts agreed, saying that “what we’re all yearning for is just a return to normal. And it is normal for a strong man, for a man period, to respond the way you describe to the school counselor.”

Asked about what kind of message the Trump team should be delivering, Carlson said the campaign was trying out a “unity message,” to which he responded:

And a lot of people hear “unity” and they think, well, unity implies some sort of compromise conversation. You can’t have a conversation with people who are unwilling to compromise. The left, which is a religious movement, is unwilling to compromise on any level at all. They won’t even admit men can’t become women. So you how can you have unity with people like that? And of course, you can’t.

Carlson recommended that Trump’s team ignore his critics and simply show through his actions that he is calm and in command. He urged activists to take Trump’s bravery as a model for their own political engagement.

Tags: Kevin RobertsTucker CarlsonChristian PersecutionElection 2024Republican National ConventionSpiritual WarfareHeritage FoundationRepublican Party

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violence dog whistle? “The answer to 1984 is 1776,” }:

charlie Kirk’s Turning Point connects far-right extremists with the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign

The Turning Point event this past weekend featured a number of extremists, with at least two speakers using the phrase “Christ is king” — an antisemitic dog whistle long favored by the white nationalist “groyper” movement

WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM MADELINE PELTZ, SOPHIE LAWTON & ALEX KAPLAN

PUBLISHED 06/18/24

Several right-wing extremist figures spoke at a weekend event organized by conservative radio host Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action, which is partnering with the Republican National Committee and former President Donald Trump's campaign. At least two speeches included the phrase “Christ is king,” an antisemitic dog whistle long favored by white nationalists.

Speakers at The People’s Convention included right-wing pundit Candace Owens, who has a history of making antisemitic remarks and appears to be associating herself with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes; neo-Nazi collaborator and Pizzagate conspiracy theory peddler Jack Posobiec; and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The presence of these figures is not surprising, given the significant ties Kirk and Turning Point have to right-wing extremists and white nationalists.

The three-day summit illustrated how Turning Point Action and its affiliate Turning Point USA have come to serve as a bridge between official Republican Party institutions and the more openly bigoted and extremist elements of Trump’s movement. Over the weekend, CNN reported that the Trump campaign is working with Turning Point Action. Politico wrote that Turning Point “has become a central player in the party apparatus,” as “part of recent collaborations between the [Trump] campaign, RNC and outside groups.” In May, The Washington Post reported that the RNC was adopting a “leaner” approach and was considering outsourcing much of its voter outreach to TPUSA and other right-wing organizations.

Speaking directly after Kirk on the event’s opening day, Owens opened and closed her speech with the phrase “Christ is king” — a slogan long used by Fuentes’ “groyper” movement that has gained antisemitic connotations through its use in far-right-wing contexts. Last November, Owens used the phrase to troll Ben Shapiro, her then-colleague at The Daily Wire — one flare-up in a monthslong feud between the two. The Daily Wire and Owens “ended their relationship” in March, according to CEO Jeremy Boreing.

“When you do come together and you do start a family, for the love of God, put Christ first,” Owens said, prompting an audience chant of: “Christ is king.”

“Correct, and we’re going to lead out on that chant,” Owens responded.

Owens then claimed that Democrats and liberals are bringing “the full weight of the government” against Trump, but that “Trump is just one step — they’ve always been after Jesus Christ.”

“Christ is king,” Owens said in closing.

Video

CitationFrom the June 14, 2024, Rumble livestream of Turning Point USA's The People's Convention

On the third day of the event, Posobiec echoed Owens.

“We understand this is a war against the demonic, this is a spiritual war!” Posobiec shouted, raising a rosary in his clenched fist. “We can only defeat a spiritual war with Christ as king because Christ is king.”

“Christ is king,” he repeated.

That phrase wasn’t the only example of the groypers’ influence on Turning Point. In 2021, Chet Hanks attempted to manufacture a viral moment for himself by calling for a “white boy summer,” but the phrase was quickly adopted by neo-Nazis and other extremists, including followers of Fuentes. On Sunday, Posobiec took the stage next to a banner reading “WHITE BOY SUMMER” and tossed hats branded with the slogan to the crowd.

Video

CitationFrom a June 16, 2024, Rumble livestream of Turning Point USA's The People's Conference

Posobiec then introduced Jones, appearing fresh off a court order to liquidate his assets in order to pay surviving members of the Sandy Hook massacre whom he’d repeatedly defamed by claiming the shooting was a false flag.

“The answer to 1984 is 1776,” Jones said before attempting to lead the crowd in a “1776” chant — a dog whistle that signifies opposition to the anti-racist 1619 Project.

“Just three or four days ago, the great folks at Turning Point Action invited me on here. I’m very blessed and honored to be here,” Jones said before pushing an election denialist conspiracy theory. “We are in the very center, the TCF Center, where almost four years ago, in the dead of night, they stole the election not just from our amazing president, but from us.”

Later in his speech, Jones repeated another conspiracy theory he’d helped spread in May when he falsely claimed President Joe Biden had hatched a scheme to kill Trump. “They are going to try to assassinate President Trump, make no mistake about that,” Jones said.

Video

CitationFrom a June 16, 2024, Rumble livestream of Turning Point USA's The People's Conference

Posobiec, standing next to Jones, praised his career. “Alex Jones has spent 30 years being the loudest voice for freedom, for liberty, and for anti-war that this world has seen,” Posobiec said.

Other notable speakers included anti-LGBTQ extremist James Lindsay and QAnon conspiracy theory peddler Scott Presler, who was present during the January 6 attempted insurrection and previously worked at anti-Muslim hate group Act for America. In March, RNC co-chair Lara Trump said she was interested in hiring Presler to be “part of the team” to help with “the largest legal ballot harvesting operation in the entire country,” which will be “started by the RNC.”

rww 6 24

Our D-Day is coming,” declared the ominous subject line of an email from former Rep. Allen West sent on behalf of the religious-right voter turnout operation My Faith Votes on June 6, the 80th anniversary of the Allied landing on the beaches of Normandy, France, during World War II.

My Faith Votes is one of the multimillion dollar political operations designed to get conservative Christians to embrace and vote according to the right-wing “biblical worldview” promoted by My Faith Votes and the Family Research Council. My Faith Votes CEO Jason Yates is connected with dominionist New Apostolic Reformation figures who have rallied around Trump in all three of his presidential election campaigns.

West, a retired lieutenant colonel, chaired the Texas Republican Party in 2020 and 2021 before launching an unsuccessful run for governor.The warfare rhetoric continued in West’s recent message:

Our cultural D-day is coming. It is time for us to hit the beaches and the drop zones. And to continue to fight for the principles and values that our faith is rooted in.

We cannot allow the evils that we see taking place in America to fundamentally change our nation’s Judeo-Christian faith heritage.

Today we must remember not just those men and women who served, but also remember that we have a call to service as well.

Our D-day is coming, and we need to be ready.

An email from West earlier this year used a similar military theme:

Here’s something you learn quickly in the military: when you’re retreating, you’re losing.

People of faith in America have been in retreat for far too long, and if we don’t take back the initiative now, it might be too late. …

If it wasn’t clear already, it should be now: we are not going to turn the tide in this spiritual battle by continuing to play defense and apologize for what we believe.

My Faith Votes has a comprehensive “2024 Battle Plan” to get Christians back on offense, starting with maximizing turnout at the ballot box this November.

Metaphorical and spiritual warfare rhetoric is not new for My Faith Votes or Yates, who took part in a “50 Day Fight” project leading up to the 2020 election. A video promoting that project portrayed the election as a “battle of good and evil” and “spiritual warfare at its highest.” It warned that “Satan has released his demons” and urged viewers to “go to war with us.” Among the “prayer points” suggested by the project were, “Grant our country a second miracle that President Trump would be re-elected.”

West also took part in 2020’s “50 Day Fight,” recording aninterview with New Apostolic Reformation figure Doug Stringer, in which West suggested that Trump had been chosen by God to defend Christians under attack in the U.S. “We’re called to be soldiers of God,” he said. “We’re called to be warriors of his word.”

This month, in the same week as West’s bombastic appeal, My Faith Votes launched “Think Biblically,” a new video series designed to bring “Biblical clarity” to Christian voters “ahead of the November election.”

Like most religious-right groups, when My Faith Votes talks about Christians, they aren’t really talking about all Christians, especially not the millions of Christians who don’t share their politics or interpretation of scripture. Evidence of how narrowly My Faith Votes and its allies interpret what makes up a correct “biblical worldview” comes from pollster George Barna, a fellow at Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview, who says that only 4 percent of Americans have a biblical worldview. That means most Christians, even most conservative white evangelical Christians, don’t make the grade. That’s what this series is designed to fix.

“Christians are in desperate need of Biblical clarity on issues that matter, now, before secularism fills the void Christians left in politics and culture,” says an announcement for the series, which is divided into six modules, purporting to explain how people should think and act “biblically” on the topics of worldview, justice, abortion, sexuality and gender, “socialism,” and politics. Opposing views on those topics, MFV asserts, are lies that come from Satan. “It’s time to let our faith guide our politics,” Yates repeats.

The module on justice contrasts “biblical justice” with “social justice”—aligning with a faction of right-wing evangelicals who have railed against churches that address social and racial justice issues. Social justice, says the module’s featured speaker Voddie Bauchum, requires redistributing wealth and resources for equitable outcomes, something he says is “actually the opposite of what God’s justice requires.”

The module on sanctity of life declares that abortion is always murder; My Faith Votes teaches that life begins at the moment of conception and that abortion is not justifiable in cases of rape or incest. It asks people to consider what “lies that Satan has used to change Christians’ minds about the issue of life in the womb?” MFV urges Christians to “vote for the candidate who will protect life at every stage.”

The module on sexuality is narrated by Christopher Yuan. Like many “ex-gay” spokespeople, Yuan describes his life as a gay man as an unhappy one, including drug-dealing that led him to jail. “Understanding human sexuality through the lens of theological anthropology is crucial in how we are to live biblically,” says MFV’s study guide, which also asserts, “Secular culture emphasizes sexuality as a defining characteristic of one’s identity, but the Bible emphasizes that our identity is found in Christ alone.” MFV argues that Christians must continue to resist marriage equality.

The module on socialism focuses on the idea that taxation that supports government social spending is coercive, incentivizes godless behavior, and subsidizes “laziness” and “irresponsible” living. Yates calls it a “lie of the enemy” that government is the answer to poverty. Without using the terminology, MFV promotes the Christian Reconstructionist ideology that has been embraced by much of the religious right that the Bible makes care for the poor the job of churches and individuals, not the government. The study guide refers people to Liberty University’s Standing for Freedom Center articles on “biblical economic principles.”

The final module on politics tells viewers that it is “disloyal” for a Christian not to act as if their vote is a religious decision. “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it,” says Yates quoting from the biblical book of Psalms. The module warns that if Christians aren’t involved in politics, decisions will be made by people who believe God doesn’t exist and disregard “God’s truth.”

Among the efforts MFV has backed in the name of promoting its biblical worldview was a democracy-limiting ballot initiative promoted by Ohio Republicans and anti-abortion activists last year—one that was soundly rejected by voters. MFV worked hard to elect Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin; they were less successful in their efforts to elect Republican senators in the 2021 Georgia runoff elections won by Democratic Sens. Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff.

In 2019, the Pentecostal media platform Charisma promoted an interview Yates did with Seven Mountains Dominionist Lance Wallnau, who called Trump “the perfect shepherd” for Christians who were worried about the “aggressive” and “belligerent” left. In 2018, Yates promoted an interview with “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson, who urged Christians to vote in the midterm elections because, he said, Democrats were evil and depraved “God-haters.”

More recently, a May 27 MFV email said that Christians should be comforted by Bible verses about the world and the rulers of this age passing away: “As our society falls further into depravity, these verses should bring comfort to all who belong to Jesus because they remind us that darkness, wickedness, evil rulers, and this broken world have a limit. Even Satan understands his time is short (see Revelation 12:12).”

But that’s not a license to avoid politics and wait for God to step in: MFV honorary chairman Mike Huckabee wrote in a May 30 fundraising email, “My Faith Votes is in the midst of an extremely aggressive campaign to identify and mobilize Christians, and it’s inspiring to see.”

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an 5 24

at Texas GOP convention, Republicans call for spiritual warfare]

(https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/28/texas-gop-convention-elections-religion-delegates-platform/)" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

SAN ANTONIO — From his booth in the exhibit hall of the Texas GOP’s 2024 convention, Steve Hotze saw an army of God assembled before him.

For four decades, Hotze, an indicted election fraud conspiracy theorist, has helmed hardline anti-abortion movements and virulently homophobic campaigns against LGTBQ+ rights, comparing gay people to Nazis and helping popularize the “groomer” slur that paints them as pedophiles. Once on the fringes, Hotze said Saturday that he was pleased by the party's growing embrace of his calls for spiritual warfare with “demonic, Satanic forces” on the left.

![](https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/JFkqsROPRlcFcL99azhBNmhW0bY=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/ee33b4da54577749111fe238d8b0bd90/0905%20Impeach%20Trial%20Day%201%20BD%20TT%2013.jpg)

From left: Conservative activists Steven Hotze and Jared Woodfill enter the Senate gallery during the afternoon session of Day 1 of the Ken Paxton impeachment trial in the Texas Senate on Sept. 5, 2023. Credit: Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune

“People that aren’t in Christ have wicked, evil hearts,” he said. “We are in a battle, and you have to take a side.”

Those beliefs were common at the party’s three-day biennial convention last week, at which delegates adopted a series of new policies that would give the party unprecedented control over the electoral process and further infuse Christianity into public life.

Delegates approved rules that ban Republican candidates — as well as judges — who are censured by the party from appearing on primary ballots for two years, a move that would give a small group of Republicans the ability to block people from running for office, should it survive expected legal challenges. The party’s proposed platform also included planks that would effectively lock Democrats out of statewide office by requiring candidates to win a majority of Texas’ 254 counties, many of which are dark-red but sparsely populated, and called for laws requiring the Bible to be taught in public schools.

Those moves, delegates and leaders agreed, were necessary amid what they say is an existential fight with a host of perceived enemies, be it liberals trying to indoctrinate their children through “gender ideology” and Critical Race Theory, or globalists waging a war on Christianity through migration.

![](https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/fzcMrsQQEKXRO3FPEF7YT6aOTHo=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/da9c4842dbc8e8cb35ddbcee11590f3b/0523%20GOP%20Convention%20EH%20TT%2031.jpg)

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick speaks during the Texas GOP Convention on Thursday, May 23, 2024 in San Antonio. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

Those fears were stoked by elected officials in almost every speech given over the week. “They want to take God out of the country, and they want the government to be God,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Thursday morning.

“Our battle is not against flesh and blood,” Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, said Friday. “It is against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

”Look at what the Democrats have done,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Saturday. “If you were actively trying to destroy America, what would you do differently?”

*[“The house is on fire”: Texas GOP plots its next chapter amid civil war, depleted staff, funding drops]

Controlling elections

The Texas GOP’s conventions have traditionally amplified the party’s most hardline activists and views. In 2022, for instance, delegates approved a platform that included calls for a referendum on Texas secession; resistance to the “Great Reset,” a conspiracy theory that claims global elites are using environmental and social policies to enslave the world’s population; proclamations that homosexuality is an “abnormal lifestyle choice”; and a declaration that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected.

The 2024 convention went a step further.

It was the first Texas GOP convention set against the backdrop of a civil war that was sparked by the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton and inflamed by scandals over white supremacists and antisemites working for the party’s top funders:{, West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. This year’s convention was also sparsely attended compared to past years, which some longtime party members said helped the Dunn and Wilks faction further consolidate their power and elect their candidate, Abraham George, for party chair.}:

“What we're seeing right now is a shift toward more populism,” said Summer Wise, a former member of the party’s executive committee who has attended most conventions since 2008, including last week’s. “And the [party’s] infrastructure, leadership, decision-making process, power and influence are being controlled by a small group of people.”

(https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/_X93OkVqWjKf0MF0YqIovXarXM4=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/37d777dfbb61f282f112bd04a575cbbc/0523%20GOP%20Convention%20EH%20TT%2055.jpg)

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, wave to attendees during the Republican Party of Texas convention in San Antonio on Thursday, May 23, 2024. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

That shift was most evident, she said, in a series of changes to the party’s rules that further empower its leaders to punish dissent. The party approved changes that would dramatically increase the consequences of censures — which were used most recently to punish House Speaker Dade Phelan for his role in impeaching Paxton, and against U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales for voting for gun safety legislation.

Under the changes, any person who is censured by the party would be banned for two years from appearing on GOP primary ballots — including judges, who are elected in partisan races but expected to be politically neutral once on the bench. The party also voted to unilaterally close its primaries, bypassing the Legislature, in a move intended to keep Democrats from voting in Republican primaries.

“It’s pretty hypocritical,” Wise said of the changes, which legal experts and some party members expect will face legal challenges. “Republicans have always opposed activist judges, and this seems to be obligating judges to observe and prioritize party over law — which is straight-up judicial activism.”

The convention came amid a broader embrace of Christian nationalism on the right, which falsely claims that the United States’ founding was God-ordained and that its institutions and laws should reflect their conservative, Christian views. Experts have found strong correlations between Christian nationalist beliefs and opposition to migration, religious pluralism and the democratic process.

*[Proposed Texas GOP platform calls for the Bible in schools, electoral changes that would lock Democrats out of statewide office]

Wise said she has seen parts of the party similarly shift toward dogmatic political and religious views that have been used “to justify or rationalize corrupting the institution and stripping away its integrity, traditions, fundamental and established principles" — as if “‘God wants it, so we can rewrite the rules.’”

“Being Republican and being Christian have become the same thing,” she said. “If you're accused of being a (Republican in Name Only), you're essentially not as Christian as someone else. … God help you if you're Jewish.”

The “rabbit hole”

Bob Harvey is a proud member of the “Grumpy Old Men’s Club,” a group in Montgomery County that he said pushes back against Fox News and other outlets that he claims have been infiltrated by RINOs.

“People trust Fox News, and they need to get outside of that and find alternative news and like-minded people,” Harvey, 71, said on Friday, as he waited in a long line to meet Kyle Rittenhouse, who has ramped up his engagement in Texas politics since he was acquitted of homicide after fatally shooting two Black Lives Matter protesters.

Rather, Harvey’s group recommends places such as the Gateway Pundit, Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News or the Epoch Times, a far-right website that also had a booth at this year’s convention and is directly linked to the Falun Gong, a hardline anti-communist group.

Such outlets, Harvey said, are crucial to getting people “further down the rabbit hole,” after which they can begin to connect the dots between the deep-state that has spent years attacking former President Donald Trump, and the agenda of the left to indoctrinate kids through the Boy Scouts of America, public schools and the Democratic Party.

Harvey’s views were widely-held by his fellow delegates, many of whom were certain that broader transgender acceptance, Critical Race Theory or “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives were parts of a sinister plot to destroy the country and take over its churches.

The culprits behind the ploy differed — Democrats, socialists or “globalists,” to name a few. But their nefarious end goals loomed over the convention. Fearing a transgender takeover of the Republican Party of Texas, delegates pushed to explicitly stipulate that the party’s chair and vice chair must be “biological” men or women.

At events to recruit pastors and congregations to ramp up their political activism, elected leaders argued that churches were the only thing standing between evil and children. And the party’s proposed platform included planks that claim gender-transition care is child abuse, or urge new legislation in Texas that's "even more comprehensive" than Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits the teaching of sexual orientation or gender identity in public schools.

![](https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/ciJpskJjFVkA32MexM-6q3bGI6M=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/8fc7586ac950819feeeabb4760560fb8/0523%20GOP%20Convention%20EH%20TT%2072.jpg)

Kyle Rittenhouse shakes hands with conventioneers at a meet and greet during the Texas GOP convention on Thursday in San Antonio. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

“Our next generation is being co-opted and indoctrinated where they should have been educated,” Rep. Nate Schatzline, R-Fort Worth, said at a Friday luncheon for pastors and churches. “We are in a spiritual battle. This isn't a political one.”

For at least a half-century, conservative Christian movements have been fueled by notions of a shadowy and coordinated conspiracy to destroy America, said Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University who focuses on movements to put the Bible in public schools.

“It's like the boogeyman that won't go away, that gets summoned whenever a justification is needed for these types of agendas,” he said. “They say that somebody is threatening quintessential American freedoms, and that these threats are posed by some sort of global conspiracy — rather than just recognizing that we're a pluralistic democracy.”

In the 1950s, such claims were the driving force behind the emergence of groups such as the John Birch Society, a hardline anti-communist group whose early members included the fathers of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Trump. After decades of dwindling influence, the society has seen a revival since Trump's 2016 election. And in the exhibit hall last week, so-called Birchers passed out literature and pamphlets that detailed the New World Order's secret plans for "world domination."

Steve Oglesby, field director for the Birch Society's North Texas chapter, said interest and membership in the group has been on the rise in recent years — particularly, as COVID-19 lockdowns and international climate change initiatives have spurred right-wing fears of an international cabal working against the United States.

"COVID really helped," he said, adding that the pandemic proved the existence of a global elite that has merely shifted its tactics since the 1950s. “It’s not just communism — it’s the people pulling the strings.”

Throughout the week, prominent Republicans invoked similar claims of a coordinated conspiracy against the United States. On Friday, Patrick argued that a decadeslong decline in American religion was part of a broader, “Marxist socialist left” agenda to “create chaos,” including through migration — despite studies showing that migrants are overwhelmingly Christian. Attorney General Ken Paxton echoed those claims in his own speech minutes later, saying migration was part of a plan to "steal another election."

“The Biden Administration wants the illegals here to vote,” he said.

![](https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/XrT-lkapyY0opApzI2UV_yF-8JE=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/f65ff0a8564b0acdb321e69bd3b233c7/0523%20GOP%20Convention%20EH%20TT%2011.jpg)

Ella Maulding and Konner Earnest watch as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick speaks during the Republican Party of Texas convention in San Antonio on Thursday, the first day of the gathering. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

As Paxton continued, Ella Maulding and Konner Earnest held hands and nodded their approval from the convention hall’s front row. Last year, the two were spotted outside of a Tarrant County office building where Nick Fuentes, a prominent white nationalist and Adolf Hitler fan, was hosted for nearly seven hours by Jonathan Stickland, then the leader of Dunn and Wilks' most powerful political action committee. They eventually lost their jobs after The Texas Tribune reported on their ties to Fuentes or white nationalist groups.

Maulding has been particularly vocal about her support for Great Replacement Theory, a conspiracy theory that claims there is an intentional, often Jewish-driven, effort to replace white people through migration, LGBTQ+ acceptance or interracial marriage. Once a fringe, white nationalist worldview, experts say that Great Replacement Theory has been increasingly mainstreamed as Republican leaders, including some who spoke last week, continue to claim that migration is part of a coordinated effort to aid Democrats. The theory has also been cited by numerous mass shooters, including the gunman who murdered 22 Hispanic people at an El Paso WalMart in 2019.

Five hours after Paxton and Patrick spoke, Maulding took to social media, posting a cartoon of a rabbi with the following text: “I make porn using your children and then make money distributing it under the banner of women’s rights while flooding your nation with demented lunatics who then rape your children.”

David Barton

Kason Huddleston has spent the last few years helping elect Christians and push back against what he believes is indoctrination of children in Rowlett, near Dallas. Far too often, he said, churches and pastors have become complacent, or have been scared away from political engagement by federal rules that prohibit churches from overt political activity.

Through trainings from groups like Christians Engaged, which advocates for church political activity and had a booth at this year’s convention, he said he has been able show more local Christians that they can be “a part of the solution” to intractable societal ills such as fatherlessness, crime or teen drug use. And while he thinks that some of his peers’ existential rhetoric can be overwrought, he agreed that there is an ongoing effort to “tear down the family unit” and shroud America’s true, Christian roots.

“If you look at our government and our laws, all of it goes back to a Judeo-Christian basis,” he said. “Most people don’t know our true history because it’s slowly just been removed.”

He then asked: “Have you ever read David Barton?”

Since the late 1980s, Barton has barnstormed the state and country claiming that church-state separation is a “myth” meant to shroud America’s true founding as a Christian nation. Barton, a self-styled “amateur historian” who served as Texas GOP vice chair from 1997 to 2006, has been thoroughly debunked by an array of historians and scholars — many of them also conservative Christians.

![](https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/Pr4f05aMyQrJ6_1ubGg9az8vwjQ=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/7acf1f2412dd7df9c6f492e50a5f07ee/BD%20INC%20Barton%20David%20748%202012)

David Barton, left, of WallBuilders, at a Texas Eagle Forum reception at the Republican Party of Texas convention in Fort Worth on June 7, 2012. Credit: Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune

Despite that, Barton’s views have become widespread among Republicans, including Patrick, Texas Supreme Court Justice John Devine and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson. And his influence over the party was clear at last week’s convention, where his group, WallBuilders, maintained a booth and delegates frequently cited him.

This year’s platform, the votes for which are expected to be released later this week, included planks that urged lawmakers and the State Board of Education to “require instruction on the Bible, servant leadership and Christian self-governance,” and supports the use of religious chaplains in schools — which was made legal under a law passed by the state Legislature last year.

Warren Throckmorton, a former Grove City College professor and prominent conservative, Christian critic of Barton, told the Tribune that the platform emblematized Barton’s growing influence, and his movement’s conflicting calls to preserve “religious liberty” while attempting to elevate their faith over others. The platform, he noted, simultaneously demands that students’ religious rights be protected, and for schools to be forced to teach the Bible.

“What about the other students who aren’t Christians and who don't believe in the Bible?” he said. “This is not religious liberty — it’s Christian dominance.”

As Zach Maxwell watched his fellow Republicans debate and vote last week, he said he was struck by the frequency and intensity with which Christianity was invoked. Maxwell previously served as chief of staff for former Rep. Mike Lang, then the leader of the ultraconservative Texas House Freedom Caucus, and he later worked for Empower Texans, a political group that was funded primarily by Dunn and Wilks.

He eventually became disillusioned with the party’s right wing, which he said has increasingly been driven by purity tests and opposition to religious or political diversity. This year’s convention, he said, was the culmination of those trends.

“God was not only used as a tool at this convention, but if you didn’t mention God in some way, fake or genuine, I did feel it was seen as distasteful,” he said. “There is a growing group of people who want to turn this nation into a straight-up theocracy. I believe they are doing it on the backs of people who are easily manipulated.”

Nancy Leclerc poses for a photo in front of a GOP elephant statue during the Texas GOP convention in San Antonio on Thursday, May 23, 2024. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/28/texas-gop-convention-elections-religion-delegates-platf

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“I will not feed a demon,” Ruby Franke told her son. The former YouTube influencer starved, kicked and bound the 12-year-old, and twisted him into stress positions. When the boy’s restraints lacerated his flesh, Franke rubbed honey and cayenne pepper into the wounds and let them suppurate until the whole house stank.

Franke pled guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse. This week prosecutors released the underlying evidence in her case, including a diary in which she records the degradation of her children in meticulous detail and justifies it in the name of exorcism.

Franke believed that her children were possessed by demons that could only be cast out by horrific abuse and neglect. There are many similarities between Franke’s case and that of Lori Vallow, a cult leader who orchestrated the murder of her two children, her lover’s wife, (and probably her ex-husband,) and justified the slaughter by claiming her victims were possessed.

There’s no indication that Franke or Vallow had a partisan political agenda, but demonization is becoming a partisan political problem in its own right.

As Donald Trump seeks a second term, more and more high-profile Republicans are literally demonizing their political opponents. The candidate kicked off his reelection campaign in apocalyptic terms promising to be his voters retribution in the “final battle,” implicitly likening himself to a returned Christ in the final battle against the Antichrist.

Trump confidante Roger Stone claims to have seen a swirling demonic portal over Joe Biden’s White House. Trump strategist Steve Bannon has been railing about spiritual warfare and Democratic demons since at least 2021, according to an analysis by Media Matters.

Earlier this month, Republican senatorial hopeful and supreme Trump toady Kari Lake blamed demons for stealing the 2020 election. “We have to continue fighting. The devil is working. Evil is working. Those stolen [2020 and 2022] elections were meant to make us feel like we have been beat down and there's no hope,” Lake told a podcaster.

Trump lawyer Alina Habba tried to deflect criticism of her dismal courtroom performance by blaming Trump’s legal woes on demons.

You might think this is just the usual overheated sulfurous political rhetoric. After all, demons can be a potent metaphor for everything from the psychological problems of rock stars to the laws of thermodynamics. It’s hard for secular folks (or even worldly Christians) to relate to those who explain mundane events in terms of demons, but just because we can’t relate doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

Last week, Republican operative Charlie Kirk was babbling about Haiti being demonically possessed. “Haiti is legitimately infested with demonic voodoo” that allows practitioners to do “quasi-levitation stuff,” Kirk proclaimed. And furthermore, Kirk continued, he knows a guy who knows some guys who say Haitians turn into cats at night. Kirk also claims that witches made him sick in Albuquerque. When Fox News host Jesse Watters accused a Trump grand jury foreperson of witchcraft, Kirk amplified his charges.

Since the 1980s, growing numbers of Americans have embraced the idea of “spiritual warfare” against demons, which they believe to play active roles in politics and everyday life.

The fastest growing and most influential contingent of demon-believers is found in independent charismatic Christianity, including the radical movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). In NAR theology, demons command physical locations and worldly institutions such as journalism, academia and the government.

Anything a believer doesn’t like can be framed as demonic. Biden getting more votes than Trump is a "stolen" election in Lake's mind because it was the result of demonic influence. Anything that doesn't go their way is demons. Car breaks down? Demons. Depressed? Demons. Kid gay? Demons.

Thousands of protesters were enticed to Washington on January 6 by NAR leaders who promised to lead them in spiritual warfare against the demons that supposedly possessed the Capitol. The shofars honking around DC were NAR battle calls. For some, spiritual warfare spilled over into literal combat. This can easily happen when followers are steeped in violent rhetoric and their opposition is portrayed not as misguided or even malicious, but as demonic

An estimated 10 million Americans identify as independent charismatic Christians. However, a preoccupation with demons is not unique to the NAR. A Catholic priest from Nebraska told a videographer on January 6 that he had exorcized a tattooed demon named Baphomet from the Capitol. Trump’s circle of demon-pushers includes Baptists like Greg Locke and Robert Jeffress and Roman Catholics like Mike Flynn. Franke and Vallow identify as Mormon.

In the nineteen eighties, millions of Americans became convinced that satanists had infiltrated key sectors of society, including the C-suites of Fortune 500 companies, the recording industry, and the nation’s daycare centers. We laugh about the Satanic Panic, but we're living through something much worse.

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john Eastman, a right-wing attorney who is in serious legal trouble for his intensive efforts to help former President Donald Trump stay in power after losing the 2020 election, continues to raise funds for his legal defense fund from Trump’s religious-right supporters. Eastman was the featured speaker at an online event hosted Monday night by the Salt and Light Council, a group that promotes “biblical citizenship.”

Eastman portrayed himself as making a heroic stand for truth and against tyranny, as he did last fall while fighting efforts by the California Bar Association to have him disbarred. Eastman used that trial to make the case that his 2020 claims about election fraud and illegality were legitimate but had never been fully considered by the courts. The judge’s decision in the disbarment trial was expected by March 1.

During his Salt and Light presentation, Eastman promoted his page on the Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo, where people have contributed more than $630,000 to his legal defense fund so far. He said he’s “about a million in the hole beyond that right now,” adding that he thinks his total legal costs will run between $3 million and $3.5 million.

Eastman’s appearance made it clear that he remains as unrepentant about his work for Trump as he was last August, when he promoted debunked claims about the 2020 election and asserted that “the very existential threat that the country is under” justified his and Trump’s actions. On Monday’s Zoom call with Salt and Light activists, Eastman made similar claims. Citing the Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln, Eastman said, “And now, in this century, this is the fight comparable to those—the defense of freedom.” He went on:

And will this great shining city on a hill that has been a beacon to the rest of the world continue to be that beacon of light? Or will we go into an age of darkness? I can’t imagine anything more important than that fight. And so here we are on the front lines, and let’s just make sure we’re as well armed for it as we can.

Eastman portrayed himself as a defiant warrior for freedom and the future of the country:

Our country is on a precipice of losing our freedoms. And for whatever reason, I’ve been cast in the forefront of this battle. I’m on the battle lines, I’m on the ramparts. And I consider it one of the greatest honors of my life to be in the front of this fight for freedom, and fighting against tyranny. And I will do, I will engage in that fight with every fiber of my being as long as I’m able.

And he seems to have no doubt that he is up to the task:

I’ve been fighting for principled positions for my whole career. I’ve got one of the best law degrees and academic careers you can have. I clerked at the Supreme Court of the United States. I was a dean. I’ve got the skill set, God has given me the skill set to be in a position to fight this probably, at least as well as anybody else in the country. And so that’s what I do. And I’ll do it, you know, I’ll do it with a law degree as long as I have it. And I’ll do it without the law degree if they try and take that away from me, because this is an important fight to have.

Eastman had harsh words for his opponents, whether he was talking about the people trying to impose “a one world order,” public school teachers who undermine parents’ authority, members of the congressional Jan. 6 committee, or officials seeking to silence people who question the official line on vaccines, critical race theory, or transgender youth:

The folks we’re dealing with are evil. They don’t consider destroying our country as collateral damage for their overall mission, they consider that icing on the cake for their overall mission. I mean, we have to understand that we are dealing with pure evil, and the way you gotta, just you got to arm yourselves in truth and light, salt and light.

He urged the Salt and Light activists to get their churches politically engaged:

Your congregations, that’s a massive force, get them engaged, sign them up to vote, get the voter guides out in their hands and let them know who the decent people are, and who the folks that are mouthing platitudes are, whether in the primary elections or the general election. Get them engaged. Get them educated. This is an army that cannot be stopped if we would just launch it.

Salt and Light Council founder and President Dran Reese portrayed the ongoing legal prosecutions over the 2020 election in spiritual terms, praying that God would “overcome the devil in this case around John Eastman and President Trump.”

Video excerpts (full video linked above):

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Steve Bannon is using right-wing religious rhetoric about “spiritual warfare” against “demonic” Democrats | Media Matters for America

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FlashPoint guest suggests that the wildfires in Hawaii and across other parts of the globe are the result of “demonic entities” and God will show “it’s not climate”

Hank Kunneman said that on Sunday, “the spirit of the Lord … began to prophesy about Hawaii, and he began to prophesy about North America and the fire. … And he said that ‘the demonic entities have stretched their hands’”

WRITTEN BY MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

PUBLISHED 08/23/23

Video

CitationFrom the August 22, 2023, edition of the Victory Channel's FlashPoint

GENE BAILEY (HOST): I mean, climate change, I mean, it is summer. It must be climate change that's causing this problem.

HANK KUNNEMAN (GUEST): Sure, they've been saying climate change for a long time, but here is the real deal, you know, getting back to the original thing you said about Biden. You know, the real fire — again, the guy's a great actor and they're putting on a acting job — that's for sure. The fire that he needs to be concerned with — and the 46 that doesn't exist and the fake administration — they need to be concerned about the fire of God's justice that's going to burn brighter under their gluteus maximus, and also going to continue to bring alaptopto the forefront. That's not going away because God is absolutely exposing all of this.

Even in Hawaii, you know, the spirit of the Lord spoke something on Sunday.And it was very interesting because there was a sound that was coming, prophetically, and I could hear it in the spirit, and it was the sound. And the Lord said, “This is my feet. It's the feet of my justice.” And he began to prophesy about Hawaii, and he began to prophesy about North America and the fires that are happening, that we're seeing in the Earth. And he said that “the demonic entities have stretched their hands,” and there are — and I'm telling you that.

And we're going to see it, because Isaiah 42 even says that “God's going to declare his praise in the islands.” And I believe that's Hawaii, and I believe that the Lord is going to go forth as verse 13 of Isaiah 42 says, “like a mighty man, he's going to stir up his jealousy like a man or war, and he's going to cry and he's going to prevail,” and he's going to show it's not climate, you know, all of that. But there's something else that's going on that the truth will be revealed. And it needs to for the sake of the innocent who have suffered a lot. 

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https://www.mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/oan-host-there-are-definitely-forces-unseen-realm-attempting-orchestrate

ALISON STEINBERG (HOST): So you stated in your speech at theTPUSA conference that the Democratic Party used to have loving Americans, but has now been hijacked by Marxist lunatics. You also went on to say that what we have today is not a fight between Republicans and Democrats, but a fight between good and evil, dark and light, and the godly against the godless. And not long ago, you were also criticized for saying that our opponents were demonic, that our opponents were satanic, and then you doubled down in a recent speech and said, quote, "I only said it because they are." And I have to say, Roger, I completely agree. I too feel that we're in this intense spiritual battle and there are definitely forces in the unseen realm attempting to orchestrate the demolition of America and the world as a whole. Could you please expand on this battle against the forces of evil that you touched on in your speech? 

ROGER STONE:  Sure. I think we're in a spiritual battle. Republican and Democrat -- that's a Hegelian device. That's Kabuki theater. The truth is that there is a ruling global elite. They dominate the leadership of both parties.They despise Donald Trump because his nomination in 2016 was essentially a hostile takeover of the party of Lincoln, restoring it to be the party of Goldwater, the party of Reagan, and now the party of Trump, the party of working people. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party, which was once under John F. Kennedy and Harry Truman, a bulwark of anti-communism, that's been taken over by a bunch of radical leftist, Marxist, socialist, lunatics. And the game they play is right out of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. So when they say that the probe into the Bidens is a distraction from the problems of Donald Trump, it's the exact other way around.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-media-figures-prepare-spiritual-war-2024-claiming-their-opponents-are-demonic

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right-wing media figures prepare for “spiritual war” in 2024 by claiming their opponents are demonic entities

Figures have invoked “demonic portals” and the occult to dehumanize LGBTQ people, perceived political enemies, and others

WRITTEN BY PAYTON ARMSTRONG & NOAH DOWE

PUBLISHED 07/05/23

Right-wing media figures are ramping up apocalyptic political rhetoric that literally demonizes LGBTQ people, perceived political enemies, and progressive causes, with some absurdly suggesting that demons are using portals to enter Earth and wage “spiritual war” against humanity.

Rhetoric about “demonic” influence and an existential, “spiritual” war has become a hallmark of right-wing punditry and Republican politics ​​ahead of the 2024 elections, as Christian nationalism grows in popularity among Republican voters.Language that demonizes and dehumanizes political opponents has been a staple of right-wing commentary for years, but these recent accusations are not simple rhetorical flourishes; a number of media figures have begun to warn their audiences about occult rituals from the left and supposed portals to hell from which demons would enter the Earth. Last year, Trump ally and provocateur Roger Stone even claimed that a “Satanic portal” had opened over the White House after President Joe Biden took office. 

This sort of framing, which posits that political enemies are literal “demons” waging a “spiritual war,” stems largely from a right-wing Christian movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation. For years, the NAR movement has reportedly sought “to take dominion over politics, business and culture in preparation for the end times and the return of Jesus.” Rolling Stone described the core NAR belief in spiritual war in a profile of one of the movement’s leading figures, commentator and self-proclaimed prophet Lance Wallnau:

NAR followers like Wallnau believe that America is specially anointed by God to project Christianity across the globe. And the NAR movement’s followers view foes of their quest as satanic. This is not metaphorical. They hold that the physical world is enveloped by a supernatural dimension, featuring warring angels and demons, and are convinced that demons afflict their enemies on behalf of the devil. The movement holds that these spiritual battles are reflected in earthly politics. As the late NAR founder C. Peter Wagner explained in a striking NPR interview in 2011: “I believe there’s a lot of demonic control over Congress … that needs to be dispersed.”

Fiery rhetoric of a spiritual war coupled with demonization of opponents has created an atmosphere in which violence appears permissible and justifiable to followers. For instance, the violence at the Capitol on January 6 was largely undergirded and inspired by boisterous cries of spiritual warfare from prominent figures on the religious right — including Wallnau — who have conditioned their audiences to consider political violence a legitimate tactic.

Over the last two years, right-wing media figures have increasingly adopted the scorched-earth rhetoric of movements like the NAR, setting the stage for a potentially dangerous political atmosphere in 2024. Here are a number of examples:

Right-wing media figures have suggested that demons are entering Earth, with some claiming they are using actual “portals” to hell

On several occasions, prominent right-wing media figures have claimed that demons are using “portals” to attack conservative causes or even fearmongered that Satan created a “woke mind virus.”

Right-wing media gadfly Roger Stone — who observers have noted has increasingly adopted rhetoric around “spiritual war” — claimed on Eric Metaxas’ Salem radio show that “a demonic portal” had been visible above the White House since Biden’s inauguration. Stone suggested that through the “portal,”demons began to “populate the Biden administration,” arguing “you can’t tell whether they are men or women.”

Video

Citation From a December 11, 2022, video posted to Eric Metaxas' Rumble page:

Salem media host Charlie Kirk said that “we’re in the midst of the most consequential spiritual war” in millennia because “there is no other way to explain the campaign of arson and destruction against our country other than diabolical, spiritually dark influences that are fighting for dominion over this nation.” He also argued that “witchcraft and the occult is a real thing, and there are portals to darkness and you have to be vigilant about this.”Kirk also alleged that Satan had created “the woke mind virus” to destroy America and called on religious leaders to “excommunicate … the demons of the woke.”

Video  an episode of Real Life with Jack Hibbs, aired on Fox Business Network on May 6, 2023

Conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones warned that the European Council for Nuclear Research had used the Large Hadron Collider for “satanic rituals” which he claimed “definitely has opened up a gate” to hell and let demons into the Earth “like paratroopers.” Jones has also claimed that an “alien offworld force” with demons as its agents is “working against us around the clock because they know we are about to go from our embryonic level to birthing into the next level.” What’s more, in his trial for defamation of the families of the Sandy Hook massacre, Jones attacked the judge and plaintiffs’ lawyers as “committed to occult ideology of the new world order” and implied they were “demonically possessed.”

Video

CitationFrom the April 11, 2022, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show

Daily Wire host Michael Knowles said of reports of interactions with aliens: “Aliens are just demons for liberals who don't want to admit metaphysical reality."

Right-wing media figures have labeled LGBTQ people, gender-affirming care, and abortion “demonic”

Conservative media figures have also revved up their attacks on trans people, LGBTQ Pride month, and abortion by claiming they are inspired by “demons in our society.”

Knowles — who demanded this year that so-called “transgenderism” be “eradicated from public life entirely” — claimed that trans people are “demonic” and that demons are “always trans.”

Video

CitationFrom the March 14, 2023, edition of The Daily Wire's The Michael Knowles Show

On her prime-time Fox News show, Laura Ingraham referred to gender-affirming care as “a demonic campaign to destroy the natural biological order.”

Daily Wire host Candace Owens called trans people “demons in our society” and smeared “any actor, actress, individual that supports this” as “demonic.” Owens has also argued that surrogacy is “deeply demonic.”

Video

CitationFrom the February 7, 2023, edition of The Daily Wire's Candace Owens

On Fox, now-former host Tucker Carlson used the Covenant School shooting in Tennessee to falsely claim that “the trans movement is targeting Christians, including with violence,” and denounced the trans community as part of “a deranged and demonic ideology.”

On YouTube, BlazeTV’s Liz Wheeler said that “if you took the three most disgusting, demonic ideologies that you could possibly think of and put them all in one flag you would get the trans flag.”

Doomsday prophet and repeat Trinity Broadcast Network guest Jonathan Cahn recently declared that Biden had put the United States under “demonic possession” at the hands of an ancient goddess of “sexual immorality” by lighting up the White House in the colors of the rainbow for LGBTQ Pride.

Two days after a shooter killed five people in a Colorado Springs LGBTQ club,Infowars host Owen Shroyer ran footage of drag queens and questioned whether “these people are even human,” ranting: “Demon possession is real. Satanic agendas are real. I don’t know how else to describe any of this.”

Video

CitationFrom the November 22, 2022, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show

BlazeTV host Steve Deace partnered with far-right Christian filmmakers Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon to produce a right-wing movie that argued humanity is engaged in a spiritual war against demonic forces such as abortion and LGBTQ equality. On his podcast, in an episode titled “Hot Take: Demonic or Democrats?” Deace said that people who advertise drag story hours are “literally inhabited by a demon” and are “a manifestation of a demonic presence.” 

Salem Radio host Eric Metaxas and his guest John Zmirak proclaimed that Satan himself was behind the LGBTQ rights movement, with Zmirak decrying “blasphemous drag queen rituals, in your church, mocking Christ” and comparing the Pride flag to an inverted pentagram, claiming Satan “wants you to use the pronoun they.” Metaxas then warned his audience that if they did not boycott companies that celebrate Pride Month, they would be comparable to Germans who failed to stop the Holocaust, saying, “The death camps were the result of good people saying, ‘I don’t want to deal with this. Just let me live my life.’”

Christian nationalist pastor Jack Hibbs, whose sermons air on Fox Business Network, declared that transgender people are “satanic,” saying that in “the last days there’s going to be doctrines of demons and deceiving spirits. Wonder what that’s going to be like? You’re in it.” Per Right Wing Watch, Hibbs has also claimed that "demonism” has caused public support for trans rights. 

Christian nationalist influencer and repeat Fox guest Sean Feucht has described abortion and the movement for trans rights as demonic, ascribing public support to “demons” and “the demonic spirit.” Feucht is closely associated with prominent NAR movement leaders and “apostles.” 

Right-wing radio host Jesse Kelly said that “we have a society so full of demons that baby murder is now popular” and also referred to the LGBTQ community as “the LGTBQ demon mob.”

Lance Wallnau, a contributor for The Victory Channel’s Christian nationalist show FlashPoint, has repeatedly invoked demons while discussing LGBTQ people. In an April show, Wallnau said that transgender people represent “a fundamental deception” and that accepting them has made society “sympathetic with evil.” Wallnau said that demons target people to make them trans, saying, “I believe a demon comes along that enters into that confusion that affirms that they are the opposite gender.” Per Right Wing Watch, Wallnau also claimed that people become trans because "Satan has taken 'em over with crazy talk about them being in the wrong bodies.”

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CitationFrom the April 13, 2023, edition of The Victory Channel's Flashpoint

Right-wing media personalities have also warned that Democrats and other perceived enemies are “demonic” and “satanic”

Far-right Christian media figures and prominent right-wing commentators have told their audiences that the left is engaged with “satanic worship” and “demonic forces,” rationalizing ideological opposition as a product of the “demon-possessed.”

Fox prime-time host Jesse Watters claimed that viewers should be afraid of “demonic teachers” interested in “turning their classroom into a drag show.”

Carlson warned on Glenn Beck’s show that there are “spiritual forces surrounding” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), calling him “a force of darkness.” 

On a FlashPoint broadcast, contributor and pastor Hank Kunneman told viewers that “we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but principalities, powers, spiritual wickedness in high places — you know, demonic entities.” Earlier in the episode, Wallnau said that tragedies in society such as mass shootings should be understood through a lens where “you don’t deal with current events, you deal with a demonic spin cycle.”

BlazeTV founder and longtime conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck proclaimed that the 2020 election was not contested against Democrats, but against “Satan himself,” which he claimed was prophesied to him in a dream. Beck has an extensive history of linking progressives to “the devil” and warning of “demonic” influence.

Disgraced Trump ally-turned-podcast-host Steve Bannon suggested that Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is “satanic” because he “exudes … pure evil” and “hangs with Satanic Groomers.”

During his Christian nationalist ReAwaken America Tour, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn has frequently asserted that there is a “spiritual war” in America. He has also called former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) a “demon.”

Right-wing podcast host Benny Johnson attacked the grand jury forewoman investigating Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference in Georgia, calling her “borderline demonic” and “demon-possessed.” He has also claimed that “you can see demonic forces at work" in Schiff's district, claiming that the congressman is “on the side of the demons.” Johnson has previously embraced the rhetoric of spiritual warfare, saying, “This rabbit hole goes down so far into the occult … This is a spiritual battle. This is a battle of possession, and there are stages of demonic possession, and we are in the oppression stage right now.”

Far-right pundit Stew Peters fearmongered about “SatanCon,” an event that is hosted by “a progressive church that doesn't worship the devil but instead uses the word to get attention,” claiming it was evidence of “full-blown satanic worship” in America. His guest, Sean Feucht, insisted that we are witnessing “the total unveiling of this demonic realm, this demonic spirit.” Feucht then warned that these alleged forces of Satan were “agitated and upset and trying everything they can do to intimidate Christians.” 

On his BlazeTV podcast, Deace called the Democratic Party “a demonic construct, a satanically influenced entity, and a death cult.”

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former President Donald Trump received a rapturous hero’s welcome Saturday night as he delivered the closing keynote address to a room packed with religious-right activists in Washington, D.C. for the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual Road to Majority conference.

Trump knew his audience. “We are warriors in a righteous crusade to stop the arsonists, atheists, globalists, and the Marxists,and we will restore our republic as one nation under God with liberty and justice for all,” Trump said. As part of his typically long and rambling speech, he denounced his recent indictments, bragged about his administration’s accomplishments–including his Supreme Court justices cementing the right-wing majority to overturn Roe v. Wade—and declared that Democrats have become “monsters.”

Trump thrilled the crowd with promises about what he would do as the 47th president, saying, “When I get back in the Oval Office,I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”And he vowed to push “school choice” plans—which divert public education dollars into private and religious schools and homeschooling—and, oddly, called for public school principals to be chosen by direct election by parents.

Trump’s speech and others at the conference signaled the issues and strategies around which the MAGA movement is mobilizing to try to take power in the 2024 elections: waging war on “wokeness,” demeaning transgender people and calling for institutionalized discrimination against them, mocking corporate support for diversity, equity, and environmental protection, and, in the name of parents’ rights,purging schools and libraries of materials that do not align with MAGA activists’ political and religious worldviews.

Trump’s speech was preceded byawards given to right-wing movement fundraising godfather Richard Viguerie and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Viguerie declared that the nation is in“a spiritual civil war” that “the left has launched against Western civilization, America, our Constitution, Judeo-Christian moral values, and much else we value at home.” Viguerie encouraged activists to get more involved in any way they can, signing off with, “Good night, ladies and gentlemen. See you on the battlefield of the spiritual civil war, and don’t be late!”

Viguerie was not the only speaker equating American politics with spiritual warfare. Huckabee said that “the battle that we’re facing in this country is not a political battle. And it’s not an economic fight. And it’s not a sociological fight. It is a spiritual battle between the forces of evil and good.” Huckabee concluded with, “Let’s not give up, because the battle is not over, folks. It’s just getting started.”

Earlier in the conference, Christian nationalist and anti-LGBTQ North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson drew cheers when he declared, “This nation is at war, and we need a warrior at the helm,” and endorsed Trump’s bid to return to the White House. Robinson noted his own campaign for governor, and compared himself to the Union soldiers at Gettysburg, the Marines on Iwo Jima, and civil rights marchers, and insisted that he only looks “crazy” to people who are “insane.”

Before Saturday night’s gala, activists heard from nearly all the Republican presidential candidates, hard-right Republican elected officials, and MAGA movement activists likeKari Lake, the defeated-but-still-refusing-to-admit-it candidate for Arizona governor in 2022.

Trump’s major contender for the Republican nomination, Florida’s authoritarian Gov. Ron DeSantis, was greeted enthusiastically on Friday—giving a stump speech attacking “the woke mind virus” and declaring “We did not start this fire, but as president of the United States, I will lead the effort to extinguish the fire of cultural Marxism once and for all.”DeSantis pledged to “discipline” the federal bureaucracy, “impose our will on it,” and turn the Justice Department “inside out.”

At the beginning of Road to Majority, Reed urged participants to treat all speakers respectfully, which most did until former New JerseyGov. Chris Christie had the audacity to question Trump’s character and tell activists that Trump had let them down—eliciting a chorus of boos.

The conference kicked off at a Thursday afternoon “town hall” on Capitol Hill, where Faith and Freedom founder Ralph Reed told the audience that God told him to create the organization because Christians who love this country and love God “should be the head and not the tail, and at the top and not the bottom of our political system.” Among the members of Congress who spoke were Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty and Reps. Jim Banks, Patrick McHenry, Burgess Owens, Alex Mooney, and Tom Emmer—who spent much of his speech attacking the government of his own state of Minnesota.

Other speakers sounded Christian nationalist themes, including former Trump faith advisor Paula White, who declared, “We were established as a nation under God,” and Lake, who said, “With God on our side, nothing can stop us from taking back this government.”

At a panel featuring African American speakers representing the seven “mountains” in Seven Mountains Dominionism, Florida congressional candidate Carla Spalding declared that public officials must “write laws that are going to be according to the Bible” and if they don’t, “one by one we get them out.” Other speakers on the panel include anti-abortion activist Alveda King and failed congressional candidates Kim Klacik and Mark Burns. Burns is a Trump-promoting Christian nationalist pastor fond of warfare rhetoric; he spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally on the eve of the Capitol insurrection, where he declared that the attempt to deny Trump a second term was “a demonic attack from the gates of Hell”and insisted that Joe Biden would “never” become president.

In addition to the relentless invocations of “wokeness” and its variants—Indiana representative and Senate candidate Jim Banks bragged about creating an “Anti-Woke Caucus” among House Republicans—speakers frequently denounced transgender people and their supporters, the “deep state,” and corporations that consider diversity and environmental consequences in their investment decision-making.

Another theme running through the conference—which fell on the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade—was the need for Republican candidates to deflect focus from their unpopular abortion ban laws by portraying pro-choice Democrats as the “real extremists”—complete with lies from Trump and others that Democrats support killing babies after they are born.

Feminism itself—now “woke feminism”—continues to be a target of the religious-right movement. Nick Adams, a right-wing activist who immigrated to the U.S. from Australia, claimed that men are the most persecuted and maligned demographic in the world. “Every single problem in America today can be traced back to the absence of strength, strength that can come only from real men, genuine masculinity, and an alpha male mindset,” he said.

Also on display was the right-wing political strategy of “parents’ rights” as a rallying cry and voter mobilization tool. Moms for Liberty, a group founded to resist mask requirements that moved quickly into promoting book bans, school board takeovers, anti-LGBTQ smears, and authoritarian politics in general, had a significant presence at Road to Majority, which was held just a week before their own national summit in Philadelphia. During Q&A at a panel on school choice, M4L’s national director Catalina Stubbe calledteachers unions “enemies” and claimed that public schools are “abusing” and “indoctrinating” children.From the main stage, M4L cofounder Tiffany Justice claimed that “our parental rights are being obliterated by our government every single day.”  She said that the group’s 135,000 members in close to 300 chapters spread out over 45 states are “unifying” their communities, a laughable assertion given the anger and chaos they have created at school board meetings and after they take over school boards.

In its speakers and panels, the Faith and Freedom Coalition made an effort to highlight its outreach to conservative Black and Hispanic Christians, a group that the Republican Party hopes to win over in greater numbers in 2024 and beyond. The 2024 elections were a major focus of conference speakers, and not just the presidential candidates. Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Adam Pipkin described the organization’s turnout strategies, including its use of postal change of address data to track targeted voters and make sure they update their registrations, and evangelical church-based ballot harvesting operations in Californiaand other states where permitted by law.

While Reed and the Faith and Freedom Coalition gave a platform to major, minor and relatively unheard of Republican presidential candidates,Road to Majority made it utterly clear that it is Donald Trump who has won the hearts of these activists, and that they will do everything they can to once again put him in the White House so that he can wage merciless war against the Americans they view as their common enemies.

 Tags: Alex Mooney Bill Hagerty Burgess Owens Carla Spalding Catalina Stubbe Donald Trump Jim Banks Kari Lake Kimberly Klacik Mark Burns Mark Robinson Marsha Blackburn Mike Huckabee Patrick McHenry Paula White Ralph Reed Richard Viguerie Ron DeSantis Tiffany Justice Tom Emmer Anti-Abortion Anti-Choice Anti-LGBTQ Christian Nationalist Civil War Election 2024 Road to Majority Conference Spiritual Warfare Faith and Freedom Coalition Moms for Liberty Republican Party

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https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-deace/nefarious-steve-deaces-self-proclaimed-christo-fascist-propaganda-horror-movie-has-been

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right-wing media have promoted the Christian film Nefarious as one of the latest battlegrounds in so-called “spiritual warfare.” Through strategically cut trailers, influencer promotion, and a Coachella event, the film's creators have worked to “subversively” market it as a generic thriller to a mainstream audience in the hopes that it would “show them the light.”

The movie Nefarious is a prequel to A Nefarious Plot, a book by right-wing commentator and BlazeTV host Steve Deace, who partnered with directors Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon — the duo behind other right-wing faith-based movies such as Unplanned and God’s Not Dead1 and 2. Deace has an extensive history of using virulently anti-LGBTQ, misogynistic, anti-abortion, and other bigoted rhetoric such as saying lessons for kids about Pride Month are “right out of the pit of hell.” He claimed that he and his company “invested millions of dollars that [he] frankly didn’t have to make this movie” because “storytelling” is the “last place left where real persuasion can occur.”

Though marketed to a mainstream audience as a standard horror movie, Nefarious serves as a “Christian allegory, and it is conveyed with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer,” as the Washington Examiner put it, with the two main characters — an atheist psychiatrist and a death-row inmate who claims to be possessed by a demon — debating the existence of the devil and God. The movie also suggests humanity is engaged in a spiritual war against demonic forces, with the demoncelebrating and mocking progressive political and social stances that have taken root in American society, like abortion rights and LGBTQ equality.

The movie’s theme is captured in a scene featuring bigoted conspiracy theorist and BlazeTV founder Glenn Beck, playing himself. Beck asks the psychiatrist, “What happens to an atheist that is confronted by demonic evil?” Later the psychiatrist notes, “There’s a great battle going on, whether we realize it or not — a battle between good and evil — and we’re all participants, willing or not.”

The film’s promotion of a right-wing Christian worldview on viewers is clear: On his BlazeTV podcast, Deace agreed with an online reviewer who described it as “Christo-facist propaganda.” Yet Deace, Solomon, and Konzelman repeatedly admitted that Nefarious was marketed as a standard horror film to reach viewers who might not choose to see a faith-based movie. The film started streaming on June 2 and it has been playing in hundreds of theaters nationwide for at least seven weeks, grossing over $5 million.

Nefarious’ creators marketed it as a standard horror film to attract “nonbelievers” 

In April, Deace boasted to right-wing groupThe Family Leaderthat the film’s trailer was crafted “subversively” to portray Nefarious as a horror movie and hide from potential moviegoers that it was faith-based and contained right-wing ideological themes. Apparently, the trailer played ahead of the nonfaith-based movie Cocaine Bear in at least some theaters. In the same interview, Deace went on to call the Motion Picture Association “demonic” for the R rating that Nefarious received, claiming that it was given this rating only because the group was afraid “unbelieving” kids “would be impacted by it.”

Deace, as well as directors Solomon and Konzelman, repeatedly admitted to trying to attract a mainstream audience.

The movie was seemingly also promoted through aninfluencer campaign— a growing tactic within the right-wing ecosystem that can create a false impression of organic public support.

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at least two dozen influencer and meme accounts, including accounts affiliated with right-wing influencer group Today is America, across Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok promoted Nefarious, particularly in late April after it received a 33% review on Rotten Tomatoes. The content of the various posts was very similar, if not exactly the same, generally using the hashtag #WokenTomatoes, and encouraging followers to see the movie. 

It also appears that there was a red carpet event in Palm Springs, California, for the film prior to the Coachella music festival, seemingly hosted by actor Paul Butcher and attended by celebrities including Victoria Justice. Like much of the film’s official marketing, the event seems to have presented Nefarious primarily as a paranormal thriller, not a faith-based movie. From photos shared of the event — which was attended by mainstream social media influencers with hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers — it appears that guests were entertained with a tattoo booth and a vodka company was a sponsor.

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right-wing media figures are promoting Nefarious using rhetoric from the religious right that warns of an ongoing“spiritual war”

The larger political context surrounding the release of Nefarious is growing Christian nationalism and apocalyptic political rhetoric on the right, which frames the country as engaged in existential “spiritual warfare” against satanic forces.

Some right-wing media figures are alsolabeling trans people and abortion as “demonic,” and Konzelman and Soloman made similar claims in various interviews while promoting Nefarious. In one, they cited the existence of trans people as evidence ofsatanic influence: “There will come a time when good is considered bad, and bad is considered good, when women will be as men, when all these things that are happening in our world today. … You can see the devil’s machinations.”

Numerous right-wing media figures — and even members of Congress — have endorsed or promoted Nefarious, including Glenn Beck, right-wing influencer and neo-Nazi collaborator Jack Posobiec, BlazeTV hostAllie Beth Stuckey, The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, Salem Radio hostEric Metaxas, conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza, right-wing podcast host Elijah Schaffer, former Trump administration official Ben Carson, former Newsmax host Grant Stinchfield, and disgraced former Trump attorney Sidney Powell

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several right-wing and Christian media outlets also covered the movie’s message positively, including Fox News, Church Militant, Breitbart, The Christian Post, Western Journal, Christian Broadcasting Network, The Federalist, and The Daily Wire.

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In today’s Republican Party it is no longer enough to deny that Donald Trump lost in 2020. The true Republican diehards demand that their leaders deny that Republicans ever lose any election.

That played out at the Michigan GOP convention over the weekend, with Trump’s pick for state party chair being defeated by a candidate who is even more extreme an election denier. It took three rounds of voting—counted by hand because Republicans have also made it an article of faith not to accept voting technology, even at their own convention—but Kristina Karamo prevailed over second-place finisher and Trump endorsee Matt DePerno.

Karamo ran for secretary of state in 2022, losing by 14 points. DePerno ran for attorney general, losing by 8.6 points. But DePerno conceded that he had lost, while Karamo refused to concede. At the state party convention, she made that part of her campaign message, saying, “Conceding to a fraudulent person is agreeing with the fraud, which I will not do.”

When it comes to 2020, DePerno has been an election denier in good standing, having made his name as a Republican and earned Trump’s endorsement on the basis of his quest to prove fraud in that election. He’s even faced a criminal investigation for tampering with voting machines in 2021. That is the kind of stuff that gets you Donald Trump’s endorsement to lead a state Republican Party. But apparently it is not enough for Michigan Republicans. “Matt ran out on us; he didn’t fight for us,” one delegate told The Washington Post.

Election denial isn’t Karamo’s only angle, though. At the convention, she said, “My goal number one as a Christian is to bring people to Christ, and secondarily to save our country.” A few nights earlier, in a speech to a far-right “patriot” group, she went into a little more detail.

“When we start talking about the spiritual reality of the demonic forces, it’s like, ‘Oh, my God, this is crazy, we can’t go there,’” Karamo said. “No. It’s like, did you read the Bible? Didn’t Jesus perform exorcisms? … Scriptures are clear. And so if we’re not operating as though the spirit realities of the world exist, we’re going to fail every time.”

The convention that elected Karamo to lead the state party was attended by 2,000 delegates—but not one of the outgoing party co-chairs or any member of the state congressional delegation. But Karamo claimed the party would move forward unified. “We cannot wait to get work done as one Michigan Republican Party,” she said. “And we are going to beat the Democrats.”

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When right-wing Christians, especially evangelicals, start talking about "demons" and "the devil" attacking Donald Trump and that they need to use "spiritual warfare" against Trump's "enemies," what do they mean?

Evangelicals have always talked about demonic forces in the world andspiritual warfare.In their minds, God and Satan are still battling with each other, and then one day at the great battle of Armageddon or something akin to it, Satan will be defeated and we'll move into a new heaven. For evangelicals, the world is always enchanted. There are always angels and forces of evil and devils and demons and so forth. That's how they see the world around them. What's fascinating about these discussions of spiritual warfare, though, is that they normally take place behind the closed doors of churches. Now evangelicals are bringing this type of talk and logic to American public life in defense of Donald Trump.

Evangelical leaders such as Franklin Graham and others have recently been saying, "There are forces out there that are trying to undermine this president." If someone who is not a Christian evangelical were to hear the word "forces," they would think that means the Democrats or the deep state. But any evangelical who hears someone like Franklin Graham say that knows exactly what those forces are. These are demonic forces.

After the impeachment, evangelicals upped their game. "Demonic" and "spiritual battle" and "the devil" did not come into the public discourse in the way they are at present until Donald Trump was impeached. When the impeachment inquiry started, you had all these people saying that this is the devil at work trying to undermine God's anointed. Devils are trying to undermine a nation and its president who is trying to bring that nation back to its godly roots.

If right-wing Christian leaders are saying that the Democrats are demonic forces, is that an encouragement to violence?

Perhaps I am naïve, but I guess I have enough faith in my fellow evangelicals to prevent this from moving towards violence. But to affirm what you're saying, I think you're right. The logical implications of this certainly could be, at this point, very harsh, un-Christian like attacks on people who do not support Trump.

What do right-wing evangelicals and other Christians want? What is the Christian right's dream for America?

There's a theological concept in the New Testament known as the "Kingdom of God." Many non-evangelicals and non-Christians become very concerned when they hear Trump cabinet member Betsy DeVos or someone else with power saying, "We want to bring about the Kingdom of God." Outsiders see that as a kind of dominionist, reconstructionist, theocratic kind of statement. But when evangelicals theologically talk about the Kingdom of God, they're normally talking about what the world would be like if Jesus was King and if you put Jesus on the throne of the so-called Kingdom of God. We're all citizens of this kingdom as believers. I think they've confused this idea of a Kingdom of God" with some form of American exceptionalism or the idea that America is a "City on a Hill" and that God has specially blessed us.

When they talk about the nation becoming more Christian, again, it's all filtered through this recent history of the last 40 years. So how do we create a Christian nation? Well, we fight against abortion. We fight for religious liberty for our views only. We try to privilege Christianity, our version of Christianity, above everything else. If you push many of these Christian right leaders, it is hard to find an answer as far as what they actually want this vision to look like in practice.

For example, they are against abortion. What does that look like in practice? Do you want to take every woman who had an abortion and put her in prison? Put abortion doctors in prison? What is the logical outcome of these kinds of policies? And they would immediately back off and say, "Oh, no, no, no. We don't want to create a theocratic state, or a state governed by the teachings of the Bible." But in some ways, they do.

Most evangelicals, because they've committed to this notion of reclaiming America as a "Christian nation," have no model for pluralism. They cannot grasp any idea of a pluralistic society in which there are people who differ from them and question what American evangelicals believe. How do white evangelicals live together in a society with people who have deep differences on a variety of issues?...

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/donald-trump-right-wing-rage/

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/ron-desantis-2658611577/

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is overtly courting Christian nationalist voters, and Donald Trump lashed out at his most likely GOP challenger.

The Florida governor released a new video presenting him as a savior anointed by God to save the country, which the former president perceived as a direct threat to his grip over right-wing evangelical voters -- and historian Sarah Posner told the Washington Post that Trump was right to be concerned.

"Trump knows that his base believes God anointed him to lead America at a critical juncture, and that many of them believe him to be a messianic figure who alone can rescue America from what they call demonic forces (liberalism, civil rights, 'deep state,' and more)," Posner told the Post columnist Greg Sargent. "None of Trump’s potential rivals have so blatantly tried to claim that divine blessing."

"It’s a very dangerous sign that DeSantis is reading the base — which has been bombarded with ever more radical claims of anointings, prophecy and spiritual warfare against the left — as receptive to savior alternatives to Trump," she added.

DeSantis was explicitly sending a message to voters who believe America was founded as a Christian nation, using their language, and signaling that he shares their vision of taking the country back from the forces of evil, Posner said.

"The video is a prime example," said Posner, a historical scholar of the religious right. "DeSantis has also used a revealing misquote from the Bible, calling on supporters to 'put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the left’s schemes.'"

"The 'armor of God” quote actually reads, 'take your stand against the devil’sschemes,'" Posner added. "He substitutes 'the left' for 'the devil,' demonstrating to his base that he, like them, will treat politics as a battleground for spiritual warfare to vanquish the left."

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/report/conspiracy-theorists-with-badges-and-guns-pro-trump-sheriffs-vow-to-police-elections/

An Unholy Alliance of Election Deniers, ‘Constitutional Sheriffs,’ and Profiteering Propagandists Threatens Elections

Two years after former President Donald Trump began aggressively attacking the integrity of the 2020 election to justify his efforts to stay in power, an unholy alliance threatens the fair conduct of elections this fall and again in 2024. A national network of conspiracy theorists and right-wing political operatives have been joined by far-right sheriffs, whose determination has been fortified by lies about election fraud and fueled by a belief that they are waging a holy war against the forces of evil.

Richard Mack, a former Arizona county sheriff and former board member of the anti-government extremist organization Oath Keepers, summoned members and supporters of his Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association to a July gathering in Las Vegas, where he delivered an urgent message:  The country’s county sheriffs, Mack said, must launch investigations into voting fraud in the 2020 election—investigations that he thought could put Trump back in power.

“I would love for the investigations to prove that he indeed won the election, and I think at the time the Supreme Court would have to rule that he gets put back in because it was based on criminal activity,” Mack said. Though he wasn’t sure enough sheriffs would step up and “do their duty” to make investigations into the 2020 election happen, Mack urged sheriffs to take an active role in policing this year’s elections.

Mack is the founder and leader of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which teaches local sheriffs that they are the supreme law enforcement officer in their counties, and that it is their duty to resist state and federal “tyranny.”

Mack and other MAGA-minded sheriffs like Mark Lamb turned their focus to policing elections after seeing “2000 Mules,” a film produced by right-wing propagandist Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote leaders Catherine Englebrecht and Gregg Phillips, longtime promoters of election fraud conspiracy theories. Experts from across the political spectrum debunked the movie’s claims about voter fraud, but Trump and many of his supporters have embraced and promoted its inflammatory claims.

The Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol and evidence gathered by the House select committee investigating the insurrection have provided clear evidence that lies about election fraud can drive people to violence. In the weeks before Election Day, the embrace of “2000 Mules” and its inflammatory claims by public officials and far-right activists has already led to multiple reports of armed voter intimidation by vigilantes at ballot drop boxes. It could also increase the potential for violence at the polls.

“The involvement of ‘people with guns and badges’ to intimidate voters, and attempts to access voting equipment, could become ‘go-to-tactics,’” Bulwark editor Charlie Sykes told Reuters. “It doesn’t feel hyperbolic to say this is extremely dangerous.”

Armed Enforcers for the Anti-Democracy Coalition?

Mack founded CSPOA in 2009, a period of far-right ferment after the election of former President Barack Obama. As a leader of the self-described “constitutional sheriffs” movement, he has painted the federal government as authoritarian, referring to federal agencies as “the gestapo” and suggesting there were “some startling and irrefutable comparisons between Barack Obama and Adolph Hitler.”

Mack became a right-wing folk hero when he successfully challenged a Clinton-era federal gun law in the mid-90s. In 2014, Mack was back in the spotlight when he joined Cliven Bundy’s armed standoff with federal officials promoted a public relations strategy of putting women up front if shooting started.

Political scientists Emily Farris and Mirya Hollman recently conducted a survey of sheriffs’ attitudes and concluded that “Mack’s group has successfully radicalized a generation of sheriffs to believe that the office has seemingly unlimited power and autonomy.” That attitude is particularly dangerous among sheriffs, who compared to other law enforcement officials often have little structural oversight and accountability.

“We can and must take America back county by county and state by state,” Mack wrote in his 2014 book, “Are You a David?” That message is central to his current organizing efforts and one that he delivers to sheriffs and other law enforcement officials, often in state-sanctioned training sessions.

After the release of “2000 Mules” in May, Mack began shifting CSPOA’s focus from training sheriffs about his view of their constitutional superpowers to urging them to mobilize against “voter fraud.” He has described the movie’s oft-debunked claims as “overwhelming” and “compelling” evidence and said that “every sheriff and every chief of police in this country should be following up with a criminal investigation on the claims made in ‘2000 Mules.’”

Richard Mack speaks at CSPOA press conference on election fraud.

While Mack claims that his “2000 Mules”-inspired “election integrity” efforts are nonpartisan— he declared in a July press release that he simply wanted to know whether the claims made in “2000 Mules” are true and called for “honest, professional, and independent investigations”—it’s clear where his support lies when speaking to right-wing audiences. On a right-wing radio show in July, he called Trump’s defeat “a horrible, heinous crime” and “one of if not the worst crime committed against the American people in the last 100 years.”

“This is a coup against the American people,” Mack declared during a September appearance on another radio show. He recently told listeners of the right-wing Liberty Monks podcast that they “must vote for any Republican that we possibly can” to “punish the Democratic Party” and “stand against the destruction of America.”

Other sheriffs have taken up Mack’s call to investigate the 2020 presidential election and police future elections. One of Mack’s allies, Sheriff Calvin Hayden of Johnson County, Kansas, has “promoted unsubstantiated suspicions of election fraud,” according to the Kansas City Star. Hayden also offered to have his staff collect ballots from drop boxes, a move rejected by local officials as an attempt to interfere with the election.

Mack has also backed Dar Leaf, a sheriff in Berry County, Michigan, who is under investigation by the state’s attorney general over the conduct of his investigation of election equipment. Leaf has been represented by an attorney who was sanctioned by a federal judge for her role in Sidney Powell’s legal efforts to overturn the election results. Turning the system of governance on its head, Mack has said Leaf has the right to arrest state officials who interfered with his investigation.

From Insurrection to Elections: Sheriff Mark Lamb and Protect America Now

Mack isn’t the only far-right law enforcement official who was fired up by “2000 Mules.” Mark Lamb, sheriff of Arizona’s Pima County, was also drawn in by True the Vote’s conspiracy fraud claims. After viewing an interview that right-wing activist Charlie Kirk did with Engelbrecht—an interview that has been viewed more than 2 million times—Lamb contacted Englebrecht and brought his Protect America Now organization into a formal partnership with True the Vote. In October, Mack met with the Arizona Oathkeepers to talk about “election integrity” and the partnership being between Lamb and True the Vote, the Arizona Mirror reported.

An admirer of Mack and the CSPOA, Lamb built a national following through reality TV shows before turning energy toward Trumpian politics and the promotion of false voter fraud claims with the launch of his own organization in 2021.

Lamb founded Protect America Now in the month following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The insurrection, Lamb said, was not Trump’s fault, adding, “I don’t know how loud we have to get before they have to listen to us and know we will no longer tolerate them stripping our freedoms away.”

Describing Lamb as “charismatic and ambitious” in a 2021 profile, Politico reported that at ananti-vaccine rally that year, Lamb told supporters, “We’re going to find out what kind of patriots you are. We’re going to find out who is willing to die for freedom.”

Protect America Now’s website declares, “We support Sheriffs and law enforcement members that believe inGod, Family and Freedom.” The group asks for a monthly donation of $17.76 to “help us win this battle for the soul of America.” It promotes a hard-right line on immigration and other issues. In videos on Protect America Now’s YouTube channel, Lambwarns that crime is running rampant and “liberals want to take our guns.” In another, Lambsays, “together, we are fighting back against the liberal takeover.”

In June, True the Vote and Protect America Now announced ProtectAmerica.Vote, a partnership that it said would “empower sheriffs” to “support election integrity” and would bridge the gap between voters and law enforcement to “ensure we have secure elections in this country.”

Engelbrecht has said she embraced the sheriffs after the FBI dismissed True the Vote’s allegations of voter fraud. “It’s like the lights went on,” she saidat a CSPOA event this July. “It’s the sheriffs. That’s who can do these investigations; that’s who we can trust; that’s who we can turn over information to.” True the Vote says its partnership with the constitutional sheriffs will include raising grant money and providing equipment to sheriffs to expand ballot drop box surveillance and investigate fraud claims.

Lamb claims his partnership with True the Vote is a nonpartisan effort, but he makes no secret of his support for Trump and Trump’s stolen election claims. Trump “loves the rule of law,” Lamb said at a Trump rally in Arizona this July. “We’re gonna make sure that we have election integrity this year,” Lamb pledged. “We will not let happen what happened in 2020.”

Local critics say Lamb has politicized law enforcement. Pinal County, where Lamb is sheriff, experienced ballot shortages during the August primary, and Lamb, true to character,suggested on right-wing media that there might be something more at play than incompetence by election officials and vowed to investigate.

Inspired by Lies: ‘2000 Mules’ as Political Warfare

Right-wing filmmaker and author D’Souza describes his propaganda movies as weapons of political and spiritual warfare. By that measure, the “2000 Mules” movie has proven itself effective in mobilizing Trump’s troops.

Far-right wing media have boosted Dinesh D’Souza’s “2000 Mules” even though its claims have been widely debunked.

In “2000 Mules,” D’Souza dramatized claims made by Engelbrecht and Phillips that liberal nonprofits had mobilized “ballot harvesting” operations to stuff drop boxes with illegal votes. But for all the wild hype about their use of mobile device geolocation data and security camera footage from ballot drop boxes, election experts have repeatedly said that there’s essentially no there there. Even former Trump administration Attorney General William Barr dismissed the movie’s claims as laughable in testimony before the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The movie’s claims have also been declared bogus by experts in cell phone tracking technology and by election officials. As critics have pointed out, despite all the data, footage, and money available to the producers, the film does not show a single documented instance of the kind of fraud it claims to expose. Georgia election officials tracked down one person the movie accused of being a “mule” and determined that the person was depositing his own ballot and his family members’ ballots, as permitted by law. On Oct. 26, a Georgia voter sued D’Souza, Englebrecht, Phillips, and True the Vote for wrongly accusing him of casting illegal votes.

Among the other demonstrably false claims in the movie was that True the Vote’s geolocation data was so accurate that it helped solve a murder case.

But MAGA world activists primed to believe Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories ate it up. Trump himself hosted a premiere for the film at Mar-a Lago in May. Many Republican officials and proponents of election conspiracies like MyPillow founder Mike Lindell have joined Trump in promoting the film and its claims.

As the film took MAGA world by storm, it came to the attention of far-right militias, too. It was cited by Lions of Liberty, an Arizona “preparedness” group connected to the far-right Oath Keepers that is organizing armed surveillance of ballot boxes, and by Matt Shea, a far-right former state legislator known for his handbook on “biblical warfare,” who is organizing similar efforts in his state.

The release of the book version of “2000 Mules” was delayed at the last minute by the publisher after it had been printed and sent to bookstores containing potentially libelous accusations against several nonprofit groups it accused of mobilizing voter fraud. Before a toned-down version was released, Engelbrecht and Phillips distanced themselves from the book, saying they were looking ahead to future elections and their work with sheriffs.

Before ‘2000 Mules’: True the Vote’s History of Election Fraud Conspiracies

True the Vote is well known among voting rights experts for its long history of promoting voter fraud conspiracy theories and supporting actions to restrict voting.

“True the Vote and groups like it are well-documented voter intimidation scams,” former Harris County Clerk and current Houston mayoral candidate Chris Hollins told Texas Monthly this summer. “They’re created to amplify conspiracy theories, funded by wealthy right-wing activists, to tie the hands of election administrators and embolden partisan poll watchers.”

Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center points to True the Vote’s “long history of anti-voter conduct, including orchestrating mass challenges to voters,” some as recent as the 2021 Georgia runoff elections.

True the Vote leaders Engelbrecht and Phillips—business and reportedly romantic partners—have profited from unproven claims of voter fraud. The organization has been the subject of multiple investigations and exposés revealing their repeated failure to make good on outlandish claims while funneling money raised by their nonprofit group into their own pockets via loans and payments to for-profit companies they run.

True the Vote was founded after the 2008 election and grew out of a local Tea Party organization in Houston, Texas, called the King Street Patriots, which was accused of conducting “1960s style” voter intimidation during the 2010 election cycle.

For the past decade, True the Vote has promoted alarmism about voter fraud and resisted voting rights protections. It falsely claimed, for example, that the Obama administration was intentionally registering noncitizens to vote and charged that renewing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would encourage “race-based segregation.” As “voter fraud” and “election integrity” became right-wing justifications for voter suppression, True the Vote pulled in money from right-wing funders and activist groups, including the Bradley Foundation, Donors Trust, the Judicial Confirmation Network, and State Policy Network.

True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht railed against a bill she said would “blow up our elections” in a March 2020 YouTube video.

When Trump was elected in 2016 while losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, Phillips stroked Trump’s ego by claiming that Phillips could verify that 3 million noncitizens cast votes in the election. While Trump touted the baselessand repeatedly debunked claim that he was the actual popular vote winner, True the Vote never released any evidence to back him up.

Though True the Vote claims that its so-called “election integrity” work is nonpartisan, the group aggressively promotes the interests of right-wing Republican candidates. In 2018, a New Jersey judge decided not to renew a 1981 ban on the Republican Party recruiting soldiers and cops as poll watchers to intimidate Black voters. True the Vote saw this as an opportunity. At a 2020 gathering of the Council for National Policy, a secretive network of influential right-wing and far-right leaders, Englebrecht touted True the Vote’s “Continue to Serve” initiative, which she said would recruit retired military and law enforcement as poll watchers. One participant suggested it would be especially useful in “inner city” and Native American precincts.

True the Vote’s credibility has been challenged by some on the right, even by other Big Lie and voter suppression advocates. After Trump’s defeat in 2020, True the Vote officials took $2.5 million from Fred Eshelman, a Trump-supporting billionaire who believed that the group was going to use state-level election data to prove Trump’s fraud claims in court. When they seemingly did little more to overturn the election than pay piles of cash to their companies and their lawyer, right-wing movement consigliere James Bopp, for a few short-lived lawsuits, Eshelman sued in an unsuccessful effort to get his money back.

Conspiracy Theories as Spiritual Warfare

Just as Christian nationalist ideology and the belief that keeping Trump in office was a sacred cause energized the Jan. 6 insurrection and suffused much of the MAGA movement, True the Vote’s leaders and their far-right sheriff allies rely on spiritual warfare rhetoric to justify their actions and motivate their followers.

Before the 2020 election, True the Vote partnered with Intercessors for America, a group of pro-Trump “prayer warriors,” to spread right-wing talking points about the threat of voter fraud. On an online prayer call in May 2020, Englebrecht called the struggle over expanded voting by mail a “spiritual battle” for “control of the free world.”

After the release of “2000 Mules,” Intercessors for America claimed that the movie documented “an indisputable and alarming gravy train for fraudulent votes.” Intercessors for America defended Engelbrecht and Phillips from critics, portraying them as victims of persecution.

This August, True the Vote held a gathering focused on voter fraud that it called “The Pit,” a name taken from a biblical passage that says God will grant his disciples relief from days of trouble “until a pit is dug for the wicked.” On a “prayer call” promoting the event,Intercessors for America’s Kris Kubalsaid that election fraud is “demonic” and an “evil from Satan.”  True the Vote, she declared, was involved in a “supernatural battle.” Phillips agreed that “there is so much evil around all of this right now.”

“God wants us to expose that pitand shut it down, and that’s what we’re going to do,” Engelbrecht said. True the Vote leaders did not release compelling new evidence of voter fraud at “The Pit,” but they did announce the creation of a “fusion center” that would gather “actionable intelligence” for local sheriffs to act on.

Like Engelbrecht and Phillips, Mack portrays his “constitutional sheriff” movement and its involvement in election issues in spiritual terms. In his 2014 book, “Are You a David?” Mack argued that “modern-day Davids”—by which he meant sheriffs and other local public servants—are “the only viable solution for the restoration of our God-given rights, in conjunction with our willingness to repent and return to God’s law as a people.” At a July press conference Mack organized during the right-wing “Freedom Fest” held in Las Vegas, he urged sheriffs to “join us in this holy cause.”

Sheriffs: The Law or a Threat to the Law?

There is a long history in this country of corrupt local sheriffs abusing their power, from Jim Clark leading attacks on civil rights marchers in Alabama in the 1960s to Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva overseeing a department notorious for violent deputy gangs threatening public safety today.

In 2020, the research group Political Research Associates identified 136 sheriffs aligned with the far-right “patriot” and militia movement in which Political Research Associates situates Mack’s CSPOA. The research group noted that at the time, 90 percent of the 3,081 county sheriffs in the United States were white men, and that “there has been a concerted effort in the last decade to mobilize sheriffs toward further supporting and expanding systems of racialized social control and expulsion.” The Reflective Democracy Campaign, a project of the Women’s Donor Network, noted that “The alarmingly skewed demographics of sheriffs suggest a system hard-wired for abuse, and their track record of mistreating women and people of color confirms it.”

Some sheriff’s offices have connections to, or have been infiltrated by, other far-right extremist groups. The Brennan Center found that sheriff’s deputies in Washington state and Louisiana had publicly supported and joined the Proud Boys—whose leaders have been charged with seditious conspiracy in the attack on the Capitol—and noted that a sheriff’s deputy in Orange County, California, was photographed wearing a patch that included the word “Oath Keeper” and the logo of the Three Percenters on his bulletproof vest. The Washington state and Louisiana deputies were fired; the California deputy was not.

Added to this already toxic mix are messages from the likes of Mack and Lamb that sheriffs must investigate electoral fraud. Such declarations are a “significant overreach of authority,” David Mahoney, a former president of the National Sheriffs Association, told The Guardian.

So what role, if any, should sheriffs play in our elections?

“There is a critical role for law enforcement to play in protecting our election: they should be offering protection to election officials and election workers that have come under attack as a result of lies being spread by groups like True the Vote,” the Brennan Center’s Sean Morales-Doyletold The Guardian in August.

It is not difficult to imagine the chilling effect of being accused of voter fraud by a person with a badge and gun, what Jessica Pishko called “part of an escalating campaign to police the vote” in a recent story for Bolts magazine. “The prospect of increased involvement of armed officers recalls the days of voter intimidation in the Jim Crow South (and beyond), and could also help encourage extremist vigilante violence by perpetuating baseless rumors of fraud, often against Black and Latinx communities,” Pishko wrote.

Recent reports of armed bands gathering at ballot drop boxes and challenging voters suggests that Pishko was right. (This week a federal court ordered a group in Arizona to stop intimidating voters with their armed and body-armored presence at ballot drop boxes.) [check]

The multi-faceted campaign to corrupt elections by convincing millions of Americans that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump by Black and Brown voters is a threat to democracy. It has created and inflamed a large group of enraged Trump supporters and sparked harassment and threats against election officials. It has led to a wave of state laws designed to restrict registration and voting. It has led to Trumpist partisans and conspiracy theorists becoming poll workers and running for political offices where they will have the power to interfere with the administration of elections. And it has led some armed vigilantes to set up intimidating “security” operations at voting locations.

Added to this volatile mix are groups of sheriffs riled up by falsehoods and propaganda, pumped up an ideology of virtually unchecked power, and spurred on by the belief that they are engaged in a holy war to save America from destruction. Voters and other public officials must be alert to the abuses that could flow from these new partnerships and be prepared to hold individuals accountable for any actions to intimidate or interfere with people exercising their right to vote.

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https://www.salon.com/2022/07/04/hes-on-a-mission-from-god-pennsylvania-candidate-doug-mastrianos-with-the-world/

no lnx

INVESTIGATION

He's on a mission from God: Pennsylvania GOP candidate Doug Mastriano's war with the world

Exclusive: Pa. GOP candidate closely linked to Christian extremists who want "spiritual warfare" against America

By FREDERICK CLARKSON

PUBLISHEDJULY 4, 2022

An animating element of politics in the age of Trump is that some people are increasingly living out religious metaphors. These metaphors are derived from contemporary understandings of the Old Testament by new elements within Christianity. This has been central to the campaign of Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who recently won the Republican nomination for governor. (He will face Democrat Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania's current attorney general, in November.) These metaphors are also integral to a movement of the post-insurrection religious and political right that is still in its formative stages.

As reporting by the New Yorker, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Word & Way and Paul Rosenberg at Salon has shown, there is something going on in Pennsylvania that is transforming politics in the state, and maybe on a larger scale as well.

Mastriano, a retired Army strategist and intelligence officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, appears to have a disturbing understanding of the relationship between metaphor and reality when it comes to biblical narratives. He suggested to an interviewer that today's Christians should emulate the warriors of Old Testament Israel.

[RELATED: Trump's army of God: Doug Mastriano and the Christian nationalist attack on democracy

"God can intervene in history," he said, adding that such interventions are carried out by "a man or a woman," such as the biblical Queen Esther (who got authorization from the King of Persia for the Jews to kill all their enemies); and the prophet Gideon (who led 300 soldiers against a far greater force).

Mainstream media generally describe Mastriano as an "election denialist" and a "Christian nationalist." He unconvincingly denies the latter, but he and his supporters are also more complicated than the label usually suggests. He is well known for having spoken at the Jericho March in December 2020 that unsuccessfully called for the Electoral College to switch its votes to Donald Trump. He was also slated to speak at the "wild protest" on Jan. 6, 2021, organized by "Stop the Steal" activist Ali Alexander, along with the likes of Roger Stone, theocratic activist Lance Wallnau and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz. And of course, promoting the Big Lie has been central to his politics since Trump's election defeat.

But there's more.

Some religious leaders who back Mastriano's campaign say they are in direct communication with God, see themselves as God's army, and see Mastriano as a general in their war for the world.

Mastriano's core support is a fusion of QAnon, the far-right Patriot movement and the revivalist New Apostolic Reformation — which views him as a military and political leader in advancing the biblically prophesied end times. We see this in his role in the Jericho March during the run-up to Jan. 6, and more recently when he joined members of the "Shofar Army'' in a ceremony of "spiritual warfare" on the Gettysburg battlefield, and as the headliner at a conference, Patriots Arise.

May the metaphors be with you

The Jericho March was derived from the biblical story of the battle of Jericho, which took place during the journey of the Israelites, led by Joshua, to the Promised Land. God had instructed them to march seven times around the city blowing shofars. The walls of the city collapsed, and the army rushed in, carrying the Ark of the Covenant, and killing everyone in the city. The Ark of the Covenant, as fans of the "Raiders of the Lost Ark" film (among others) will recall, is a chest containing the two stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses.

Religious extremists who back Mastriano's campaign say they have direct messages from God, and see him as a general in God's army of conquest.

The story of the 2020 Jericho Marchpurportedly began with God giving two different individuals the same vision, calling them to set up a march in Washington as well as in the capitals of the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the days before the presidential electors were to cast their votes. (They were ultimately held in other states and Canada as well.)

Supposedly God wanted the marchers to oppose alleged corruption and restore election integrity — as well as Donald Trump's presidency. In Washington, crowds marched around the Capitol, the Department of Justice and the Supreme Court. 

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"God commanded this to happen like he did to Joshua," Apostle Abby Abildness explained on a religious talk show. "We believe God is gonna move'' and "that there will be that victory," she continued. There was "great hope" that Pennsylvania's electoral votes, which Joe Biden had won convincingly, would "go to the president." Of course that did not happen. 

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In instances like this, believers see a difference between a foretelling of events and a prophecy that reveals God's intentions. If an event doesn't turn out as expected, they believe, it is necessary to keep on trying, to ensure that somehow, someday, God's will will be done.

Her immanence

Apostle Abby Abildness is a quietly powerful national and international religious leader, as well as a legislative lobbyist at the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg. She says she meets with legislators at least once a week, praying and "bringing forth a religious freedom agenda." She also led Jericho marches in Harrisburg.

Her manner is more that of a soft-spoken college professor (which she used to be) than a political preacher. She is nevertheless an important leader in the contemporary religious movement called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a dynamic theological and organizational revamping of much of pentecostal and charismatic Christianity. For decades, NAR has led the abandonment of traditional mainline Protestant and evangelical denominations in favor of prayer networks.

These prayer networks are led by what is known as the "fivefold ministry" as mentioned in the biblical book of Ephesians: Apostle, prophet, teacher, pastor and evangelist. The networks comprise both physical churches and prayer groups of various sizes.

Abildness is a leader in several such networks, which aim to take control of what they call the "Seven Mountains" of society in order to achieve Christian dominion. These metaphorical mountains are religion, family, government, business, education, arts & entertainment and media. Abildness, whose chosen mountain is government, is working with her allies to increase electoral engagement in apostolic networks, and to involve them in pushing for legislation. She heads the Pennsylvania Apostolic Prayer Network and plays leading roles in other important international networks, including the Oklahoma-based Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network headed by Apostle John Benefiel and the Texas-headquartered Reformation Prayer Network, led by Apostle Cindy Jacobs.

The NAR has generally abandoned written doctrines along with denominations, in favor of its own notions of Old Testament biblical law. Its movement is further informed by revelations from those understood to be apostles and prophets revealing what God wants. They believe God wants Doug Mastriano.

Dancing with the ones who brung him

Last year, Mastriano denied to Eliza Griswold of the New Yorker that he was a Christian nationalist. "Is this a term you fabricated?" he asked. "What does it mean and where have I indicated that I am a Christian Nationalist?" Of course Griswold did not invent the term, which has been used by scholars and journalists for decades.

Mastriano doth protest too much. He has sponsored several bills based on models found in the Christian nationalist legislative playbook formerly called "Project Blitz." These bills would have mandated teaching the Bible in public schools and made it legal for adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples. In the face of organized opposition and intensive media coverage by the New York Times, the Guardian and Salon, among others, the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, which published the Project Blitz legislative playbook, scrubbed all mention of Project Blitz from its website in 2019. But the affiliated Pennsylvania State Legislative Prayer Caucus remains. Its state director, then as now, is Abby Abildness.

[RELATED: A grassroots Christian movement joins the fight against Christian nationalism

Mastriano has denied that he works directly with NAR, but has clearly had a close relationship with Abildness and the wider NAR movement. She has, for example, interviewed him on her podcast and worked with him in the legislature. She calls him "a military strategist" who leads a group of about 30 conservative state legislators (although he's only been in the legislature since 2019). She also introduced him at a regional NAR conference of several hundred people in October 2020, in Gettysburg, which is in Mastriano's senatorial district.

On the Fourth of July in 2019, Mastriano joined Apostle Abby Abildness on the Gettysburg battlefield, where they prayed to "preserve the monuments" from antifa. They were victims of an internet hoax.

There, Abildness told the story about walking the Gettysburg battlefield with Mastriano, his wife and a "prayer team" on the previous Fourth of July. The senator and the apostle went to "pray to preserve the monuments" from antifa, which she believed might be coming to destroy them. She had trepidations, she said, but explained, "When the people pray, God is with us. We're not to fear, we have God. We need to stand up. Speak out. And move forward in this battle. Amen!" (Hundreds of armed militia members, bikers and others who had also heard the rumors showed up to defend the monuments and prevent the burning of the American flag. It turned out the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by a troll on social media and then hyped by right-wing media.)

The conference's headline speaker, Apostle Chuck Pierce from Texas, was preceded by the sounding of the shofar by the Shofar Army, which then led the crowd in shouting, "Arise, oh God, and let your enemies be scattered!" This refrain is from Psalm 68, one of many Old Testament imprecatory prayers in which the faithful ask God to smite his enemies.

A new Joshua

Reported here for the first time are two videos featuring Mastriano before his run for governor. Filmed on the Gettysburg battlefield on July 18, 2020, just days after his prayers against antifa with Abildness, the videos reveal his involvement with a group called the Shofar Army. In the videos, Mastriano performs a ritual act of spiritual warfare — blowing shofars with the Shofar Army and Prophet Bill Yount of Blowing the Shofar Ministries. But as later became clear, they understood the warfare as physical, not just spiritual.

Some of these Christians wore the Jewish prayer shawl or tallit, and wielded the three-foot-long hollowed-out ram's horn called a shofar, which was used by ancient Israelite armies to sound battle commands and community alerts, and is used today in religious services for the Jewish High Holidays.

In one video, the leader, Earl Hixon, prays, "Thank you, Father. We tread upon the enemy." Pointing to Mastriano, he continues, "Father God, I am looking to our new general here, that you have appointed, this Joshua. In Jesus' name!" Mastriano raises his outstretched arm in apparent acknowledgment. A year later, Warren Baker, a member of the group,sounded the shofar at the launch event for Mastriano's campaign for governor. (Former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis also attended the launch.)

In the second video, Hixon follows the Army's shofar blasts by declaring he wants to "mark this day in the history of eternity." He then leads the Army in shouts of the imprecation, "Arise, oh God, and let your enemies be scattered!"

Salon asked André Gagné, professor of theological studies at Concordia University in Montreal, and author of a study of Trump's evangelical followers, to help interpret the videos.

Hixon recognizes "the 'angelic hosts, the warring hosts that have gathered here on this journey,'" Gagné explained. "This is a reference to the assistance of angelic beings in the battle to be waged. Hixon thanks God for this 'Joshua,' pointing to Mastriano, believing that from this moment there will be new 'anointing' on him."

Joshua, of course, led the Jews to the Promised Land, fighting the Canaanites along the way, including the genocide at Jericho.

Gagné continued, "Hixon also says that Mastriano now has 'got new eyes, the new eyes of a seer' and connects it to the idea that we're on the physical ground, yes, there's the grassroots, but there is a double-edged sword as well in Jesus' name."

This, Gagné says, refers to the "opening of Mastriano's 'spiritual eyes' and the presence of the 'angelic and warring hosts.'" It may also refer to the need to wage war on two fronts, both the physical and the spiritual.

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"This entire ritual," says theology professor André Gagné, builds a bridge between the language of 'spiritual warfare'and possible physical violence."

"This entire ritual," Gagné continued, "potentially builds a bridge between the language of 'spiritual warfare' and the physical realm, where possible physical violence could eventually be enacted to push back against the forces of darkness and establish the Kingdom of God."

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"Now, the blowing of trumpets," he concluded, "is found in different contexts in the biblical record, and the ritual means different things for Christians. But in this specific 'spiritual warfare' ceremony, the most likely meaning is associated with the expectation and possible eruption of physical warfare."

Rising and shining

Mastriano was the star of a two-day Patriots Arise conference at a hotel near the Gettysburg battlefield the following year, in April 2021. The small stage was festooned with flag bunting and "Mastriano for Governor" signs. The event announcement declared,

It is TIME (sic) for the Patriots to Arise for God & Country! Just as they did in the first American Revolution during 1776.

The conference opened with a sounding of the shofar by 10 members of the Shofar Army. The call, blown three times, was what leader Don Kretzer called "an alarm sound that has been around for almost 4,000 years."

"Blow the trumpet in Zion! Sound the alarm on holy mountain! The day of the Lord is here!" Kretzer declared. Paraphrasing (and embellishing) God speaking to Moses in the Old Testament book of Numbers, he continued:

When you go into a land against an enemy who appears to be stronger than you, that tries to oppress you;when I hear the sound of alarm, I will remember the covenant I've made with you, and I am coming to rescue you, America!

The Shofar Army and NAR leaders envision themselves as waging "spiritual warfare" against a host of enemies, whom they understand to be possessed or controlled by demons. So when they repeatedly ask God to smite his enemies in this way,some people, as Gagné suggests, may feel compelled to act out the metaphors in more literal fashion. (It's probably fair to wonder whether that informed what happened on Jan. 6.)

The conference hosts, "apostolic and prophetic" leaders Allen and Francine Fosdick, auctioned items as a fundraiser for Mastriano ("our dear brother in Christ warrior") but not for any of the other far-right Christian GOP primary candidates from Pennsylvania and Maryland who were also present.

Prophet Julia Green of Iowa preceded Mastriano at the podium. She said Mastriano had heard about a prophecy God had given her, and that was why he had invited her to appear at his events. She read the prophecy from her laptop while Mastriano waited to speak at a nearby banquet table:

Doug Mastriano, I have you here for such a time as this, saith the Lord. It is now time to move forward with the plan that you have been given. Yes, Doug, I am here for you and I have not forsaken you. The time has come for their great fall; for the great steal to be overturned. So keep your faith in me.

Green further prophesied that current Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, would be "removed by my hand" in the wake of a scandal, and that "Treason will be written on him for all eternity." The crowd cheered. Wolf's allegedly treasonous acts were not identified (and have not surfaced to this point). Mastriano said nothing.

The conference began with a dramatic QAnon video comparing conspiracy-theory adherents to American soldiers. It was followed by anti-vax, anti-mask and anti-tax speakers, as well as Bobby Summers, an advocate for the idea of "sovereign citizenship."

Making the demons tremble

The event was similar (albeit much smaller) in terms of theme, tone and content to the ReAwaken America tour, led by Michael Flynn. There have been 15 such conferences since April of last year, drawing thousands of people to each event.

These events are headlined by such figures as Roger Stone, Jenna Ellis and Eric Trump, along with anti-vax and anti-mask presentations and, of course, endless propaganda about alleged election fraud. There is also a strong revivalist Christian component, including opening the event with the blowing of shofars, and speeches by pastoral provocateurs such as noted book-burner Greg Locke.

At a ReAwaken event last year, Prophet Amanda Grace explained the meaning of blowing the shofar, saying it had driven some of God's greatest biblical victories:

When the shofar was blown the walls of Jericho fell. When the shofar was blown, Gideon and an army of 300 men defeated over 147,000 Midianities. It's an announcement to the enemy that his stronghold is about to fall. Demons tremble at the sound of the shofar.

She calls the shofar "a weapon of our warfare. And when we blow it, the power of God comes full force into that situation."

One aspect of the tour is the evident cross-fertilization of the factions of the religious and political right that is reshaping American conservative politics and public life, from the MAGA movement to Jan. 6 to the Mastriano campaign.

Controversial right-wing activist and publisher Floyd G. Brownexplained a bit about how this works in his introduction of tour regular Pastor Dave Scarlett at an April 2022 ReAwaken event in Salem, Oregon. Many people who watch Scarlett's "His Glory" show are Christians, Brown said, "but many of them aren't."

"They are Patriots," he continued. "And I've heard him say many, many times, if you watch 'His Glory' and you're a Patriot, you often become a Christian. And if you watch 'His Glory' and you're a Christian, and if you don't know what's going on, you slowly become a Patriot."

Brown announced that "His Glory" would air on his new commercial streaming service, Liftable TV, which seeks to promote a "biblical worldview" and "truth-centric news." It's like a Reader's Digest of Christian-right streaming, rebroadcasting shows from the likes of anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, 7 Mountains Dominionist Lance Walnau and, of course, Dave Scarlett, who often hosts Julie Green as a guest.

Green's May 25, 2022, interview with Scarlett illuminates much about the Mastriano campaign and the wider movement. Green says that Mastriano campaign functions "are not a normal, everyday political event. … They are all focused on the Lord. They are powerful! They are anointed!" She calls Mastriano "a very powerful man of God."

Scarlett replies that he has talked with a "certain general" (without naming him) who said, about candidates he supports, "that these rallies in the 2024 cycle will start out with [evangelical Christian] praise music, then the candidate, who is a Patriot Christian, will come forward, give whatever their message is, then it will end with revival. It's going to end with altar calls."

Green replied that this was "already happening" at Mastriano's events.

Throughout Mastriano's rise, those around him have been open about their intentions. In a December 2020 broadcast of "The Damascus Road," host Earl Hixon explains their common purpose, to murmurs of agreement from his panelists: Abby Abildness, shofarists Don Kretzer and Bill Yount, and Pastor Brett McKoy, whose Maryland church hosts the broadcast.

Mastriano was supposed to be present, but was under COVID quarantine at the time. Hixon says that in light of that, they wanted the group to serve as Mastriano's "surrogate":

What we have here is the introduction of an army. This is what our King is endeavoring to do — especially on this battlefield we call the United States. This is what we are here for. ... We are all on the front lines. We are aware of what's happening in this country ... that's why we're here, talking about the Mountains of Dominion.

A time to "break the bonds"

Those around Mastriano and his campaign — from Abildness to the Patriots Arise conferees, the Shofar Army and Prophet Julie Green — see themselves as entering a future where the temporal meets the supernatural.

When God is ready, they believe, the heavens will open and angelic forces allied with Christians of the right sort will battle the demonic forces of Satan to the end. This apocalyptic vision drives their support for Mastriano.

Those around Mastriano believe that when God is ready, angelic forces allied with Christians of the right sort will battle demonic forces to the end.

There is always some tension, in this domain of Christianity, between what people believe may be imminent and what may turn out to be a long way off. Regardless of the timing, they have no doubt about God's intentions, and about their commitment to carry them out.

Abildness made this clear in her keynote on the second day of Patriots Arise, when she revealed an experience she had on the Gettysburg battlefield. God had called her there, she said, because he was ready to answer a general's 150-year-old prayer. She and members of her apostolic network found themselves "in a portal where the general had prayed."

"We realized heaven is watching," she said, and that "we are joining heaven. We are joining the people of the ages in this prayer." The time was coming, she said, to "break the bonds" with "a government that is not leading the way they should."

"We realized that heaven is with us."

Mastriano himself declared, later that day, "We will win in November, and my God will make it so."

Read more on the rising force of Christian nationalism:

From the Pilgrims to QAnon: Christian nationalism is the "asteroid coming for democracy"

Christian nationalism drove Jan. 6: Now it's embraced the Big Lie, and wants to conquer America

How Christian nationalism drove the insurrection: A religious history of Jan. 6

By FREDERICK CLARKSON

Frederick Clarkson is a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, a progressive think tank in Somerville, Massachusetts.

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note lack of spiritual hedge here:

cpac once has legit policy presented?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/cpac-speakers/

According to a report from Rolling Stone, the speeches thus far at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas have been larded with "dark" threats of coming violence as the speakers brushed aside any discussion about the Jan 6 Capitol riot.

With Donald Trump --who instigated the Capitol insurrection -- taking the stage on Saturday, Tim Dickinson wrote that in many cases the speeches, "...menaced America with what seemed to be thinly veiled calls for violence."

Case in point, he notes, was a speech given by recently convicted former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon who proclaimed to the crowd, "We are at war."

"Repeating the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump,Bannon insisted that Joe Biden is an 'illegitimate imposter.' Calling on Republicans to send 'shock troops' to Washington, Bannon promised the crowd they had an opportunity to 'shatter the Democratic party as a national political institution'." he wrote. "He alleged that the party has been overrun by 'radical, cultural Marxists' and 'groomers' who 'want to destroy the Republic.'Bannon insisted the GOP must pursue absolute victory over 'power-mad and lawless' Democrats, asserting: 'There can be no half measures anymore'."

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) doubled down on Bannon's heated rhetoric, exhorting the crowd with the claim, "It’s like the old Roman Colosseum where you slam on a breastplate and you grab a battle axe and you go fight the barbarians. As they say in the military world, it is a target-rich environment.”

"The rhetoric of revolution and frontline confrontation went hand-in-hand with other speakers and presenters who cast the American left as demonic, evil, and destructive — in other words the kind of enemies who deserve to be dealt with harshly," the report states before adding, "CPAC has long been a political circus, a relatively harmless sideshow. But its latest incarnation has become manifestly dangerous — more fascist than farce. It is holding up alleged perpetrators of political violence as martyrs. It is demonizing its domestic political opponents as diabolical 'enemies within.' And it is giving MAGA supporters a militaristic frame for their charge to the 'front lines' of America’s culture wars."

"In short it is playing with fire. But it’s the rest of us who may get burned." Rolling Stones' Dickinson concluded.

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an 8 22

House Republicans, including Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), the chair of far-right Republican Study Committee, traveled to Donald Trump‘s Bedminster, New Jersey golf resort one day after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago home to urge him to announce his 2024 run for president.

Congressman Banks is a far-right Republican who spread Trump’s “Big Lie,” the false claims about the 2020 election, objected to the certification of the election results, and falsely claimed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was to blame for the January 6 insurrection.

Tuesday night Rep. Banks posted a photo of himself and other members of the House Republican Study Committee at Bedminster,  “House conservatives are united in standing with President Trump. We will Make America Great Again!”[twt pix rsc]

CBS News chief election and campaign correspondent Robert Costa&...">writes, “Conservative House Republicans have publicly and privately rallied behind Trump in the past 24 hours, including the visit below to Bedminster, where several GOP lawmakers encouraged him to jump into the 2024 race.”

READ MORE: [Experts Call on Trump to Release Search Warrant and Inventory List as His Supporters Talk of ‘Civil War’

Trump “told the group he ‘has made up his mind’ about his long-teased run, and ‘enjoyed encouragement’ from them to ‘get the decision out sooner rather than later,'” the New York Post adds Wednesday morning. Banks also told Fox News that Trump “said we are going to like his decision and it is only a matter of time before he will make that decision known.”

READ MORE: ‘He Was Going to Sacrifice You’: Pence Mocked for Rushing to Support Trump After FBI Mar-a-Lago Raid

Rep. Banks has falsely claimed he is the ranking member of the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack in a letter to the U.S. Dept. of the Interior in an effort to obtain information about the investigation.

Far right Republicans and Trump supporters have been passionately defending Trump after the FBI executed its search warrant and confiscated reportedly ten cartons believed to include classified documents from Mar-a-Lago that were required to be sent to the National Archives.

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an 822

Veteran journalist Sarah Posner, who has spent years writing about religion and the Christian right, has an explanation for the outraged response from some Trump supporters over the FBI executing a legal search warrant on Mar-a-Lago.

Hours after the news broke, Florida Republican state representative Anthony Sabatini called for “an emergency legislative session” to “Sever all ties with DOJ immediately” over the FBI executing a legal search warrant of Trump’s home. “Any FBI agent conducting law enforcement functions outside the purview of our State should be arrested upon sight,” he wrote, apparently unaware of the U.S. Constitution.

Tuesday night Trump supporters formed a small convoy driving outside Mar-a-Lago, some with Trump banners, Trump flags, or the American flag, – even one vehicle painted with the American flag – to show their support for the former president who might be facing legal consequences, as video from NBC 6 reporter Cristian Benavides shows.

READ MORE: [‘This Is a National Security Issue’: Former FBI Agents Note Key Details About ‘Raid’ on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago

[twt]

"the GOP position is that Trump is above the law,” writes The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent. “That’s what the GOP position on Trump was throughout his presidency, and that’s what it is now. Say it that way. Don’t let Republicans get away with using fake outrage to obscure this fundamental reality.”

Posner has written two books on the Christian Right including “UNHOLY: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, And the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind.”

In response to Sargent’s remarks she advises: “Remember too that much of Trump’s base believes that God anointed him, that it’s God’s will that he be back in the White House. And that they need to engage in ‘spiritual warfare’ with ‘demonic’ enemies of Trump — keep this in mind as right-wing influencers call for civil war.”

READ MORE: [IRS Under Trump Allowed a Decades-Old Influential Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group to Change Its Tax Status and Become a Church

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Monday night tweeted, “The FBI is raiding President Trump’s home in Maralago! This is therogue behavior of communist countries, NOT the United States of America!!! These are the type of things that happen in countries during civil war. The political persecution MUST STOP!!!”

Tuesday morning CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan posted a:{ graph and noted the “big spike in tweets referencing ‘civil war’ right after the news of the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago broke last night.”}:

Dr. Caroline Orr Bueno posted an image of a large number of tweets that mention civil war and other related calls, including: “I already bought my ammo,” “Civil war! Pick up arms, people!” “Civil War 2.0 just kicked off,” “Let’s do the war,” and “One step closer to a kinetic civil war.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/gird-your-loins-for-battle-put-on-the-full-armor-of-god-desantis-running-as-a-biblical-anti-lgbtq-warrior/

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis appears to be using the “Don’t Say Gay“ legislation he signed into law with barely any notice Monday as the new flag of his bible-based anti-LGBTQ re-election campaign.

“Gird your loins for battle. We are going to fight. You put on the full armor of God,” the Florida Republican running for re-election says in a video posted to social media this week, with the state flag behind him and a poster reading, “Keep FloridaFree.”

“You take a stand against the Left’s schemes. Yeah, you’re gonna face flaming arrows, but if you stand for truth, you and we will prevail.”

Former federal prosecutor Ron Filipkowski weighed in, saying: “Desantis gets sexual and biblical on the campaign trail.”

The full biblical reference makes DeSantis’ remarks even more disturbing. They come from Ephesians 6:11-18, which mentions the devil and the spiritual forces of evil, It reads in part:

“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. … In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

Watch:

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