daniel goodwyn

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</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/inside-the-christian-nationalist-organizers/">https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/inside-the-christian-nationalist-organizers/</a></div><div>
</div><div>six months before the 2020 election, Tomi Collins, a Christian right

organizer from North Dakota, issued a demand on Twitter for the

execution of political enemies in the federal government bureaucracy —

citing an array of imagined offenses, including the QAnon hoax that

progressive elites are harvesting children’s blood.“#WeThe people demand incitements [sic] for #SpyGate #PizzaGate #UraniumOne #Adrenochrome,” she<a href="https://twitter.com/TomiLCollins1/status/1258975741380661249" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked"> wrote</a>. “#DeepState will be exposed and hung for treason. Even if we have to do it ourselves! #CoordinationMatters.”Collins closed her digital call to arms with two more hashtags: #PatriotsMobilize and #1LoudVoice.Collins

serves as executive director of a little-known Christian right outfit

called America Restored. Collins has described America Restored, which

is organized as a private corporation, as a vehicle for providing

strategic consulting and funding to grassroots organizers.As

early as January 2018, less than a year into the Trump administration,

Collins was warning followers on Facebook Live about “voter machine

fraud,” and foreign election interference, while specifically

referencing Dominion Voting Systems. Her description of a plan “to

cheat” in the upcoming 2018 midterm elections uncannily anticipated

public claims by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell that have prompted a

defamation lawsuit against the two attorneys who litigated President

Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Collins’ role as a

key, if overlooked, organizer in the sprawling network of operatives and

influencers highlights the role of Christian nationalism in a movement

that remains committed to overturning the 2020 election and vanquishing

political opposition. Many of the tenets of a hyper-partisan version of

Christianity — entwined with syncretic strains of the QAnon cult — were

voiced by the far-right organizers who galvanized defiance of the 2020

election results, including some who attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6,

2021.The mission statement for America Restored, prominently

displayed on its website’s landing page, clearly describes the work of

the organization led by Collins: “America Restored is ‘We The People’

building a powerful, action-driven infrastructure by organizing and

mobilizing existing, effective patriot groups and freedom-loving

Americans in all major areas of influence: Education, Family, Faith,

Business, Government, Entertainment and Media.”The mission

statement ends with a pledge that inaccurately conflates the

organization’s vision of a Christian theocracy with an originalist view

of the country: “We The People will see America restored to our founders’ original intent.”America

Restored’s mission statement explicitly references Seven Mountains

dominionism, a far-right Christian ideology that emerged in the

mid-1970s. It holds that Christians are called on by God to dominate all

realms of civil society, including government.Katherine Stewart, author of the 2020 book The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism,

described Seven Mountains dominionism in an email to Raw Story as “the

conviction that Christians of a certain hyper-conservative variety are

called by God to dominate the main peaks of modern civilization in the

United States and, ultimately, the world.”C. Peter Wagner, one of

the ideology’s key proponents, preached that Christians’ responsibility

for taking over “whatever molder of culture or subdivision God has

placed them in” is a matter of “taking dominion back from Satan,”

according to Stewart.America Restored’s grafting of Seven

Mountains dominionism ideology onto a claim of restoring the original

republic represents a fundamental misreading of the founders’ intent,

Stewart told Raw Story. Stewart cited appeals to reason and deistic or

atheistic philosophy as underpinning the thinking of founders such as

Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin. But even more

important than what the founders thought, she said, is the question of

what kind of government they established.“Was it a government

that derives its legitimacy from its appeal to Christian revelation, or

from its endorsement by Christian ecclesiastical authorities?” Stewart

wrote. “The answer to that is no. America’s founders established the

world’s first large-scale modern secular republic.”Four days

after the 2020 election, Collins spoke at a “Stand With Trump Rally” at

the North Dakota state capitol in Bismarck. Collins told the crowd she

had been contacted by the Trump campaign’s legal team and had attended

“meetings with intelligence folks.” Raw Story has not been able to

verify these claims independently.“It’s an amazing day when you

get to stand and go from a conspiracy theorist to getting called up by

the campaign and attorneys all over the country saying, ‘What about

those voting machines? What’s going on in them?’” Collins said. “Hey,

let’s go. We’ve got some lawsuits to do.”Collins went on to

describe a plan to “mobilize all 50 states” for rallies that would

augment the lawsuits with continuous public pressure to overturn the

election results.“We worked in conjunction with Stop the Steal to

get folks at capitols in every single state in the union so we the

people could be heard,” Collins later<a href="https://rumble.com/vi8n1x-tomi-collins-america-restored-and-recall-arizona-house-speaker-rusty-bowers.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked"> recalled</a> in an interview for a far-right podcast, referencing the coalition led by Ali Alexander.Felisa Blazek, a New Hampshire-based event planner, described a markedly similar effort.“I had started the 50-state rallies with — actually ahead of Ali,” Blazek<a href="https://youtu.be/J_sP3RVMxM8?t=1154" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked"> told</a>

an interviewer the following summer. “And Ali, having all of his width

and breadth of followers — although he’s gone into hiding — God used him

in that way, right? God used Cain and God used Abel. He sends out

someone who has a much bigger presence on social media than myself.

God’s calling for me was to be a base cheerleader, not a main player.

So, we’re doing these 50-state rallies at all the capitols every

Saturday after the steal of the November election.”It is unclear

whether Collins and Blazek worked together on the effort to mobilize

Trump supporters for the rallies, and neither woman responded to

repeated requests for interviews. But language used by the two women in

interviews to promote their projects and on websites for their

respective organizations — including the #1LoudVoice hashtag and Seven

Mountains dominionism ideology — bear striking similarities.The

#1LoudVoice hashtag was used in Collins’ social media beginning in May

2020 and has also been prominently displayed on the America Restored

website. Meanwhile, a tab on the website ThePatriotParty.rocks, which

promotes events organized by Blazek, includes the heading “Our Mission:

#1LoudVoice.” The mission statement includes a “call to action,”

declaring it is “time to rise up in unity, go into the harvest and take

our country back.” The statement continues: “We are assembling to

organizing and mobilizing [sic] existing Patriots groups [sic] in all

major areas of influence by a national digital communication platform

and network influencing all seven (7) spheres of influence: Education,

Family, Faith, Business, Government, Entertainment, Media.”The

page includes a link to a separate site listing “coalition members,”

including Virginia Freedom Keepers and Latinos for Trump, two of the

groups that hosted a MAGA Freedom Rally one block from the US Capitol on

Jan. 6; and<a href="https://www.rawstory.com/1st-amendment-praetorian-2657145878/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked"> 1st Amendment Praetorian</a>,

a security group associated with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn that

provided personal security details for speakers at several rallies and

assisted attorney Sidney Powell with research on purported election

fraud.And although it is unclear what role, if any, Blazek had in

organizing the Dec. 12, 2020 Jericho March that helped build momentum

for Jan. 6, a photo gallery is displayed under the “Events” tab on the

ThePatriotParty.rocks website, with images of Flynn, InfoWars host Alex

Jones, and Oath Keepers founder<a href="https://www.rawstory.com/oath-keepers-leader-charged-with-seditious-conspiracy-for-jan-6-insurrection-report/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked"> Stewart Rhodes</a>.Using

Seven Mountains dominionism language in an interview to promote a

two-day Patriot Party event at the Scottsdale Plaza Resort in Arizona

two weeks before the 2020 election, Blazek avoided any mention of

Christianity while highlighting defiance of mask mandates during the

COVID pandemic.“The seven spheres of influence to me and what I

am trying to rally around are organizing people in education, family,

faith, business, government, entertainment and media,” she said.

“Underneath all of those are health and medical because health and

medical touch each one of those. It doesn’t get its own sphere; it’s

that magical bridge.”Blazek had hoped to secure a special appearance by Flynn and his family, whom she<a href="http://qcon.live/joe-stroh-aka-qanon-obiwan-interviews-brian-gamble-chris-jacobson-felisa-blazek/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked"> described</a> as “the tip of the spear in our movement,” for the gathering, but had to<a href="https://www.pscp.tv/w/1BdGYnwnmdAJX" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked"> settle</a>

for his sister, Barbara Redgate. Other guests included Cowboys for

Trump, led by Otero County, NM County Commissioner Couy Griffin.<a href="https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2020/10/16/qanon-conference-saturday-paradise-valley-8-kun-owner-speak/3681889001/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">Folded into</a> the Patriot Party, the Q Con Live! gathering organized by Chris Jacobson commandeered a conference room at the Arizona resort.Blazek

described her radicalization during a joint appearance with Jacobson on

a QAnon podcast in June 2020. She said the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on

the World Trade Center and Pentagon provided an initial jolt, but in

early 2020 she said a friend prodded her to look into a conspiracy

theory associated with the Sovereign Citizen movement that posits that

the British crown holds the originals of American birth certificates.

That led her to research the Federal Reserve, she said, prompting a

weekslong quest to sources that predate Christ, until, Blazek said, she

“worked my way back up to the heart of the issue, and landed with the

corruption of the Deep State and how everything’s really been a lie.”While

promoting QAnon, Jacobson expressed a more conventional view of

religious nationalism in response to a question about the role of

religious leaders in the United States’ civic life.“And we need

to get back to being one nation under God, so that He will continue to

bless us,” Jacobson said. “Our founding fathers all, whether they were

Christian or not, they understood and said that if we don’t have a

higher power — in other words, God — that this whole experiment, this

United States of America, would fail.”Blazek, in turn, affirmed a

“spiritual, but not religious” outlook, and expressed a QAnon slogan as

a central tenet of her faith.“I really feel like our statement,

‘Where we go one, we go all,’ represents the true God,” she said. “The

true and one God — our God.”During the Q Con Live! conference, Alan Hostetter, an anti-lockdown activist from southern California,<a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2021/02/05/inside-qanon-culture-meeting-donie-osullivan-pkg-ctn-vpx.cnn" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked"> told</a>

attendees: “We are at war right now…. Nobody wants violence. We are

conditioned from the time we are children to always think violence is a

horrible, horrible thing, until we go back and reflect on the

Revolutionary War. They picked up guns at some point, and said,

‘Enough!’”Hostetter would later recall in a court filing that

when he sat down after his speech, he noticed a man dressed in headgear

and horns carrying a sign that read “Q sent me” enter the back of the

conference room and stand in the back. It was Jacob Chansley, who would

later gain infamy as the “QAnon Shaman” when he stormed the Capitol on

Jan. 6. Hostetter faces charges of his own, including conspiracy to

obstruct an official proceeding, due to his role in the events at the

Capitol on Jan. 6. Griffin was<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/17/couy-griffin-sentenced/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked"> found guilty</a> of entering restricted grounds and sentenced to time served.Griffin

told Raw Story that he met Chansley “at the event in Scottsdale,” and

that after their arrests the two men were housed in adjacent jail cells.Reflecting on the awkward commingling of Christianity and QAnon, Griffin t<a href="https://rumble.com/vlyu5l-discussion-island-episode-22-couy-griffin-09012021.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">old</a>

an interviewer last fall: “I spent all my time witnessing to [Chansley]

about Christ and about how he needs to put his faith in Jesus because

he’s, in my opinion, and by scripture, he’s lost in that account.”Griffin

told Raw Story that he first met Blazek at the Patriot Party event in

Scottsdale, and that since then he has come to know her “as a great

patriot.”“Felisa’s a good person; she’s an organizer,” Griffin

said. “To make it look like she’s organizing a violent uprising — that’s

what the American people are sick of. People are getting tired of the

fake news.”Many of Trump’s supporters involved in the effort to

overturn the election — both before and after Nov. 3, 2020 — used

language of “good” and “evil,” and even “war,” as a call to action.“It’s not left and right, it’s not red and blue,”<a href="https://www.pscp.tv/w/1BdGYnwnmdAJX" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked"> said</a>

David Sumrall, an organizer with the pro-Trump group Stop Hate during

an interview with Redgate to promote her appearance at the October 2020

event in Scottsdale. “It’s good and evil…. It’s just real deal. And I’ve

told people this a hundred times if I’ve said it once: Until we put the

cross next to the flag again, this is a holy war we can’t win.”A

week before the election, Stop Hate posted a video of Daniel Goodwyn

speaking at a rally in San Francisco on the group’s Instagram page.“They’re Satanists and pedophiles,”<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CGzndLiAGQx/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked"> said</a>

Goodwyn. “They’re disgusting. And we have God on our side. And Trump’s

gonna win. The only thing standing in our way is the corruption, because

they’re gonna try to steal the election via fraud.” Goodwyn, who shared

a social media post promoting the Proud Boys and President Trump’s

instruction to “stand back, stand by,” live-streamed his participation

in the storming of the Capitol, and faces charges of violent entry and

disorderly conduct, among other offenses.A month after the

election, white supremacist Nick Fuentes addressed Trump supporters at a

“Stop the Steal” rally outside the Hyatt Regency hotel in Phoenix.“This

is not simply a political struggle, as I’m sure all of you know,”

Fuentes said. “The real struggle is not between Republicans and

Democrats. The real struggle is between good and evil. This is a

spiritual war. It is a spiritual war between the devil and the children

of Jesus Christ.” Video of Fuentes’ speech was amplified on social media

by Goodwyn and Stop Hate.Stewart, the author of the Power Worshipers,

said extremism that rejects the idea that people can disagree without

dehumanizing their opponents isn’t compatible with democracy.“A

large-scale political movement that believes that any deviation is

illegitimate, and that political opponents are literally controlled by

demons puts democracy in peril,” she said.As Jan. 6, 2021

approached, #1LoudVoice became a mobilizing call for Trump supporters to

pressure Congress to block the certification of Joe Biden as the next

president.Felisa Blazek hosted a conference call on Dec. 30,

The guest, a social media strategist named Jason Sullivan who had

worked with Trump confidant Roger Stone during the 2016 election,<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/12/us/politics/jan-6-capitol-riot-sullivan-trump.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked"> urged</a> listeners to “descend on the Capitol.”During the call, one of the listeners asked Sullivan what group he was with.“I am not with a group,” Sullivan said. Blazek interjected and Sullivan amended his statement.“Well,

yes,” he said. “Thank you for correcting me. I just joined with

#1LoudVoice. Yes, Felisa’s fantastic and I greatly admire her.”</div>===