kara mckinney tip pt oann

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One America News is wading deeper into the authoritarian waters of :{white Christian nationalism:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, pushing nationalist, racist, homophobic, and sexist views that align with the idea of America as a white, Christian-led country. 

After months of pushing ideologically similar talking points, the network started explicitly backing white Christian nationalism in the :{summer of 2022:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: when host Addison Smith said he wears the label Christian nationalist “as a badge of honor.” As OAN was :{booted:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: from DirectTV, Frontier, and Verizon, OAN endorsed white Christian nationalism on-air to the small pool of viewers who remained and began to fearmonger about the supposed persecution of self-identified Christian nationalists.

What is white Christian nationalism? 

:{White Christian nationalism:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: is based on the false belief that America was intended to be a Christian nation led by white people. At times, defenders of that vision have used violence to advance their desire for an ethnostate, as seen recently in the :{January 6 insurrection:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, according to experts in white Christian nationalism such as journalist :{Katherine Stewart:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:. 

Today the trappings of white Christian nationalism can be seen in aspects of :{Trumpism:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:: The ideology’s framework of the “promised land” assured Christian colonizers that they had a right to the land they were taking because they were chosen by God to carry out this mission, which mirrors Trump’s “take back the country” slogan.

Not only is white Christian nationalism a bigoted and dangerous perspective, but it is also vastly unpopular. Only 15% of Americans:{ believe:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: that America should officially be declared a Christian nation. While OAN’s viewership continued to shrink over the course of 2022, the network exposed its most loyal viewers to a dangerous fringe ideology.

OAN hosts pushed components of white Christian nationalism

The network’s three prime-time hosts have all contributed to the introduction of white Christian nationalism. 

Host Dan Ball has a history of :{showing:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: his authoritarian :{leanings:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: on-air, along with using dehumanizing rhetoric toward :{immigrants:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, :{women:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, and :{LGBTQ people:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:. Ball believes strongly that God should be the center of society, calling for the country to “get back to the principles that God laid out.” One time he :{suggested:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Border Patrol “drag [immigrants] by their hair,” and he has a :{history :(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:of referring to trans people with the wrong pronouns or with :{slurs:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:. The ostracization and targeting of marginalized groups is key in :{white Christian nationalism:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, like as seen in the great replacement theory, an inspiration for the racist Buffalo, New York, massacre. 

Host Kara McKinney often talks about her religious beliefs, leading her to push the :{anti-abortion:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: agenda to new :{lengths:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, even going as far as :{supporting:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: the banning of IVF: “Here on this show we take the concept of protecting human life from conception to natural death very seriously.” :{Once:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, McKinney used a picture of a Nazi book burning to endorse banning LGBTQ books in public schools. In a :{segment :(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:attacking green card workers, McKinney agreed with a guest that “Americans worship God; they don’t worship GDP,” insinuating we should have fewer immigrant workers. [vid]

and Addison Smith, who :{declared:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: in 2021 that he was a proud Christian nationalist, was brought on as the host of In Focus in May, signifying a shift in the network’s tone on white Christian nationalism.

OAN endorsed Christian nationalism directly 

In July, Smith :{said:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: he wears being called a Christian nationalist as a “badge of honor,” saying it’s something that was widely more accepted “in the good old days.” He also defended Christian nationalist pastor :{Doug Wilson:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, downplaying his call to “make disciples of all the nations,” and  insinuated that there is nothing wrong with wanting to see “not only America” but “the world writ large turn and bend the knee to Christ.” 

Days later, Smith issued a :{call to action:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, claiming it was “high time we reclaim the culture and the political power and restore our country to what it once was, a Christian nation.” His reasoning was that “religion and politics have always been inseparably bound in America,” ignoring the separation of church and state. 

In September, Smith :{asked:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: William Wolfe, a former senior Trump administration official, why people think Christian nationalism is a “recipe for fascism,” arguing that it’s actually “a recipe for morality.” Wolfe responded by downplaying the :{Holocaust :(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:and saying the reason is because “they overreacted to things like World War II." [vid]

smith made clear to his radicalized audience that the goal was to seize power, :{stating:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, “To everyone saying Christian nationalists want to seize power and take back our government, yeah, you're absolutely right. Because the elitist hacks that are in our government right now don't own the government. God owns our government.”

Claiming the oppressor is actually oppressed

In its defense of white Christian nationalism, OAN has also pushed the false narrative that it is the racist nationalists who are under attack while continuing to attack marginalized groups. In November, Smith flipped the script on oppression, saying, “We Christian nationalists are a heavily persecuted bunch these days.” This :{political :(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}::{tactic:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: helps to divert attention from the real oppression that white Christian nationalists are advocating while solidifying a group mentality around the ideology itself .[vid]

losing viewers as cable networks dropped the network in 2022 didn’t slow OAN’s radicalization. In 2023, carriers must :{reflect :(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:on whether this is the content they would like to platform in the new year. While OAN continues to produce racist and authoritarian content, the platforms that carry it are perpetuating the slow walk of white Christian nationalism into our political discourse. 

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After posting an anti-LGBTQ rant about pronouns and invoking QAnon-related rhetoric, Twitter CEO Elon Musk has now sought to weaponize a well-established QAnon smear tactic to brand Twitter’s former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth as a pedophile. Right-wing media personalities were quick to run with the baseless claims, and Roth was forced to flee his home amid threats.

After the rollout of the fifth installment of the so-called “Twitter Files,” which specifically brought Roth’s actions into question over the decision to ban then-President Donald Trump from the platform, Musk sent two tweets that endorsed baseless claims that Roth had advocated for children to be exposed to sexually explicit online material.

Responding to a resurfaced 2010 tweet from Roth sharing an article discussing whether or not a legal adult who was still in high school could consent to sex with a teacher, Musk wrote, “This explains a lot.” He then posted a one-paragraph excerpt from Roth’s 2016 PhD dissertation on the gay social media dating app Grindr, incorrectly claiming that Roth’s dissertation advocated for “children” being able to access the app.

Musk’s recent attack against Roth mirror tactics commonly used by QAnon adherents, and it comes after Musk posted a known QAnon phrase and has spent his short tenure as he company's self-styled “Chief Twit” openly embracing far-right personalities on the platform. Musk’s actions and tweets have resulted in a meteoric rise in hate speech and harassment toward LGBTQ individuals on the platform, often at the hands of extremists who had previously been banned for spreading hateful rhetoric but were given verified status through Musk’s Twitter Blue feature.

Much of what’s happening on Twitter has coincided with the existing right-wing campaign to smear LGBTQ people and political enemies as “groomers,” which has led to a level of threats and harassment against Roth that forced him to flee his home.

Several prominent right-wing pundits have taken to prime-time news and Twitter to amplify the baseless conspiracy theories against Roth, with others still lobbing anti-LGBTQ attacks that stop short of a full-blown conspiracy theory. A Media Matters’ analysis also found that fringe outlets, including the notorious 4chan board /pol/, saw a significant rise in mentions of Roth’s name and anti-LGBTQ slurs.

• Fox News host Laura Ingraham, citing Roth’s past research and tweets, mentioned “pup kink” content and suggested he “wouldn’t see much harm in kids checking it out." She also accused him of standing “with the deviancy” when “the trans fanatics” are “preying on our children.” Ingraham also complained that Roth is “now playing the victim.”
• On Twitter, conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec shared a screenshot of Roth’s 12-year-old tweet about “whether high school students can ever meaningfully consent to sex with their teachers” and said: “If only there had been some warning signs about Yoel Roth.”
• One America News host Kara McKinney read an excerpt from Roth’s dissertation, saying, “New information is coming to light about Roth and his disturbing proclivities.” McKinney baselessly smeared Roth as being responsible for “child exploitation” on the platform, saying moderation and “the accommodation approach that Roth pioneered may be responsible for the proliferation of unwanted sexual advances, child exploitation, and lewd comments about sexual relationships between adults and children.” McKinney asked her guest, “Do you think it’s part of the overall movement on the left of really pushing down the age of consent lower and lower?” Mckinney’s guest, anti-LGBTQ figure James Lindsay, suggested that pedophilia is “part in parcel" for gay relationships and claimed that “it's quite clear that characters like Roth don't know what a healthy boundary” between minors and adults “looks like.”
• Discussing Roth’s dissertation, OAN host Addison Smith claimed that “this so-called LGBTQ comprehensive sex education” is just “cryptic language for … ‘we’re coming for your children; we’ll convert your children.’” Smith later asked his guest, Standing for Freedom Executive Director Ryan Helfenbein, why companies like Twitter “all so explicitly target young kids.” Helfenbein responded calling it “sex Marxism” trying to “deconstruct a child in order to groom them.” Helfenbein called it “demonic” and “straight from the pit of Hell.”
• After reading an excerpt of Roth’s dissertation, The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro misrepresented it and said Roth “is recommending Grindr make itself available to 16-17 year old kids so they can hook-up with each other, quote unquote, ‘safely.’”
• Right-wing comedian and radio host Tim Young repliedto Roth’s 2010 tweet saying, “This tweet just clarified why the term 'groomer' was considered 'hate speech' on Twitter.”

12 21 joe rogan pelosi head witch coming for you // war on xian, anti-gubmint take your guns

On One America News Network, three champions of right-wing media -- former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, and acquitted vigilante gunman Kyle Rittenhouse -- have become focal points ofOAN’s take on a traditional conservative victim complex.

Conservative media have inculcated deep fear of persecution in millions of people, claiming social media companies enforcing their policies against misinformation and calls for violence is like the Holocaust, an antisemitic mass shooting by a far-right conspiracy theorist is a generic attack on all “people of faith,” the FBI investigating threats against school board members is a sign that parents who oppose critical race theory will be treated as “domestic terrorists,” and (an annual favorite) there's a war on Christmas and those who celebrate.

Now, OAN wants the same audience to know that if the Democrats can politically persecute Bannon, O’Keefe, and Rittenhouse, they will get you next.

Bannon surrendered himself to an arrest warrant for contempt of Congress after refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House’s January 6 investigation. O’Keefe’s home was searched by the FBI as part of an investigation into a diary allegedly stolen from President Joe Biden’s daughter. And Rittenhouse was acquitted of multiple murder charges at trial after he shot three Black Lives Matter protesters, killing two and alleging self-defense.

On OAN, all three men are simply conservative patriots being politically persecuted by Democrats.

OAN’s attitude toward the legal predicaments of these three men mirrors a common refrain from right-wing media during the many investigations of the Trump administration: If they can do this to him, they can do this to you. And like with Donald Trump before them, there’s infinitesimally little to suggest that Bannon, O’Keefe, and Rittenhouse are simply being persecuted for their conservative politics, and even less to suggest that random conservatives should fear government persecution simply because of their beliefs.

The conservative media industry runs on grievance, fear, and victimhood, and OAN is using these three men to churn up even more resentment.

Steve Bannon

• On the November 16 edition of OAN’s The Real Story, host Natalie Harp accused the federal “Injustice Department” of prosecuting Bannon as part of “yet another witch hunt.” Harp’s guest, Bannon’s War Room co-host Raheem Kassam, warned Republican officials that “if you don’t think that after they’re done with somebody like Bannon that they’re coming after you, you’ve got another thing coming.”
• Bannon attorney David Schoen told Real America that “every American citizen ought to be scared to death by” his client’s prosecution, and OAN host Dan Ball claimed the former Trump strategist was the victim of “a politically motivated witch hunt.” According to Schoen, Bannon did not comply with the subpoena because he thought he had to follow Trump’s invocation of executive privilege. Schoen claimed that the Department of Justice chose to criminally prosecute Bannon “vindictively, out of revenge, to punish” him. Ball concurred that the Biden “regime” is using the Justice Department “to go after political enemies to get payback.”
• Tipping Point host Kara McKinney linked the murder conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd to other “prosecutorial attacks” on conservatives like Bannon. McKinney’s disorganized rant, which also touched on O’Keefe, Rittenhouse, and anti-critical race theory parents as victims, posited that these cases are “all related” as examples of “political persecution.” The relation appeared to be that two members of the House January 6 commission, Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Bobby Rush (D-IL), were formerly involved in Black radical politics. “So bring this up anytime someone tries to tell you that what's happening to Bannon, and to really the rest of us, is anything less than political persecution,” McKinney concluded.
• On Tipping Point, far-right podcaster Millie Weaver said the Bannon indictment “is the left-wing regime going after their political opponents and weaponizing the American justice system to do so.” Weaver also added O’Keefe to her list of victims, claiming both cases are actually about unnamed enemies seeking “the media hit pieces and the psyops that can result” from their arrests. After extensively lying that left-wing agitators were responsible for January 6, Weaver complained “only the political opponents of the Biden administration” are being subpoenaed for the attack on the Capitol. McKinney complained that the “January 6 political prisoners,” including “military veterans” and “MAGA grandmas,” are being held on “heinous charges” and “force-fed critical race theory,” asking if their plight was “just part of the re-education really that the left is using against you and I, the patriots of America?”

James O’Keefe

• In Focus host Stephanie Hamill: “It might be James O’Keefe today, but it could easily be me or somebody else tomorrow.” Hamill was speaking to far-right commentator Dinesh D’Souza, a staunch Trump ally who pleaded guilty to campaign finance fraud in 2014 but was pardoned by Trump in 2020. D’Souza dishonestly added that “Republicans would never dream of doing [this] to their critics. It would be unthinkable for example of Trump, or earlier Reagan or Bush, to go after left-wing journalists in this manner,” an obvious omission of Trump’s extensive war on the press.
• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told OAN the O’Keefe raid “shows the FBI has been weaponized by the Biden administration, and this gives every American reason to fear the government” and signals the rise of communism in the U.S. Greene said the investigation was evidence that “the Democrat Party is the Communist Party of America” because “this is what communists do in many other countries. They want to silence their enemies, anyone that’s going to reveal the truth,” such as O’Keefe. The GOP representative warned viewers that they will “see these tactics over and over and this is why Americans, you need to get ready. You need to be able to stand up firm against these fear tactics from the Democrat Communist Party, and not allow them to rear this head of communism.”
• Real America’s Dan Ball on O’Keefe investigation: “If we don’t stand up to the tyrants currently running this administration, it could be you or me they target next.” Ball concluded the segment by telling viewers to “remember what 45 always said. ‘They’re not coming for me, they’re coming for you.’ [O’Keefe] was just in the way.”
• Ball: “This is an example of what’s to come. … Like Trump used to say, they’re not coming after him, they’re coming after you.” Ball continued, “Don’t think they won’t come for other journalists, and you, next. They’re willing to literally tear down everything our institutions stand for and use the DOJ and the FBI as a political weapon.” Guest Harmeet Dhillon, who is an attorney for Project Veritas, claimed that “this is an existential threat to the First Amendment and to our liberties and to our future, and every American … should recognize that. It’s loud and clear.”

Kyle Rittenhouse

• OAN guest: “Today it's Kyle Rittenhouse. Tomorrow it’s you." Defense witness and Real America’s Voice employee Drew Hernandez warned OAN viewers that “what they're clearly doing, especially in the mainstream media, is not only are they trying to paint responsible gun owners as the villains, but they're probably even trying to discourage future gun owners from even attempting to buy a firearm to defend themselves, because, hey, we did this to Kyle. We can do this to you.” OAN’s Stephanie Hamill agreed, adding that Americans were watching the trial’s outcome to see if they “have the right to defend themselves” from “Black Lives Matter rioters and looters.”
• Larry Klayman: The “reverse racism” against Rittenhouse was “maybe a lesson for the American people at large too.” Klayman, a right-wing conspiracy theorist, explained that the apparent lesson was “if somebody shoves a gun in your face, don’t take it lightly. Kyle [Rittenhouse] did not.” Klayman suggested that the Biden administration and the mainstream media would only make society more hostile to gun owners, advising people “to exercise their Second Amendment rights, their right to bear arms, because it’s only going to get worse” under the Biden administration.
• Tipping Point’s Kara McKinney: The Rittenhouse trial shows that “the left can set your city on fire” and “have convicted pedos chase you down,” but “if you try to defend yourself against it, you’re still somehow the bad guy.” McKinney continued, complaining to Dinesh D’Souza that “the idea that they can destroy your life and everything with it and you have to sit there and take it and you’re not allowed to have self-defense” is “almost setting the stage” for Black Lives Matter to “destroy our cities and you and I, we’re not allowed to fight back.”
• Revolver News’ Darren Beattie asked OAN viewers to “consider the larger context” of a “vindictive and politically motivated” prosecution and “how fragile this justice system is in the United States and how weaponized it is politically,” despite Rittenhouse’s acquittal. Beattie, a former Trump White House aide fired (and later rehired) for his ties to white supremacist groups, claimed that a conviction would have “destroyed” Rittenhouse’s “entire life over nothing for doing something that, frankly, any upstanding citizen would do, and that is protect his community from rioters and looters,” suggesting that any viewer who would do the same could also face a murder trial.
• OAN host Stephanie Hamill: According to the media, “if you’re happy about Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal, you’re apparently a white supremacist too.”