Every autocracy has a central ideological mission. The current United States government wants to transform America from a multiracial democracy into a White Christian male-dominated ethnostate. This fanatical mission is increasingly influencing the administration’s policies, propaganda, and visuals produced by this United States government.
Their goal is to change who counts as an American, who can have leadership roles in government and society, who can vote, and who can walk the streets without fear of being imprisoned or deported.
This agenda of authoritarian transformation is the connective tissue binding the many news stories we see each day, whether it is the Trump administration deporting an estimated 17,500 immigrants to countries they have never visited, to White Christian Holy Warrior Pete Hegseth blocking promotions by female and Black Navy officers, to the wrecking of the Voting Rights Act.
Remember that Nazi salute given by Elon Musk at Trump’s Inauguration festivities, and that other Nazi salute given soon after by Steve Bannon at CPAC? They were not aberrations or provocations, but rather the opening shots of a race war now unfolding.
That war seeks to remove agency and mobility and rights and freedoms of non-Whites, while implementing schemes of population redesign, reducing the numbers of immigrants by disappearances, mass detentions, and deportations by government authorities.
MAGA is now a potent project of White race hegemony that feeds on several vectors: the long and tragic history of violence and legal and other effacements of Black people in America, the history of anti-immigrant xenophobia, and the example of authoritarian racial utopias that promoted some while cleansing society of others.
Foreign Policy, National Security Policy, and Elections
Transforming a multiracial and multifaith democracy into a White Christian ethnostate requires a holistic approach, and for months I have been tracking the attempts to achieve greater cohesion of government policy around this goal.
In a recent speech, Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended “Western civilization” as the shared identity of the United States and Europe and depicted mass migration as a threat to that civilization.
I have also examined how suppressing free and fair elections fits into this scheme.
Here I add the tool of population reengineering, which is embraced by White House policy advisor Stephen Miller, Musk, and many other MAGA luminaries. A throughline of the far-right from Benito Mussolini to Musk is Great Replacement Theory, the idea that Whites are being outperformed demographically by non-Whites, necessitating measures to save “civilization” from “erasure” and Whites from annihilation.
The Fascists provided the template. “Cradles are empty and cemeteries are expanding,” Mussolini declared in 1927. “The entire White race, the Western race, could be submerged by other races of color that multiply with a rhythm unknown to our own.” In a speech that year, Il Duce cast himself in the role of a “clinician” who undertook “necessary hygienic actions” to defend Italian people from criminals, leftists and other political dissidents. “We remove these individuals from circulation just like a doctor does with an infected person,” he concluded chillingly.
A vast network of penal colonies, confinement zones, and prisons appeared to “quarantine” the “abnormal.” This “therapeutic” approach to governance, as official Giuseppe Bottai called it, was later applied to Italian Jews, and in Italian Ethiopia the regime experimented with apartheid-style racial segregation to stop the wrong kinds of babies from being conceived.
This idea of state action to protect White Christian civilization and the “natural family” –one man, one woman, and both white–continues among the far right today, as does the attachment to Great Replacement theory.
“I think there is a deliberate plan to erase everything that identifies us: culture, Nation, family are under attack,” stated Giorgia Meloni, a neo-Fascist, in March 2019. As Prime Minister, Meloni champions White motherhood as an antidote to population changes caused by non-White immigration.
Having the right kinds of babies in the right numbers and keeping out undesirable races and births was a mainstay of the former Viktor Orban government. “Europe has become the continent of the empty crib,” said Hungarian Family Minister (and future President) Katalin Novak in 2019, echoing Mussolini. Novak had to resign from the presidency after she pardoned a pedophile, but she continues to advocate for “saving nations” from “a collapsing global birthrate,” this time through x-y, an organization she founded in 2024.
Musk, Meloni, and Novak at the launch of x-y.
X-y has been supported by Musk, who shares Novak’s preoccupation about Whites being replaced and civilization ending. A Washington Post investigation found that Musk posted 850 times in recent months on the topic of population and Whites being “a rapidly dying minority,” which triples his posting rate on these subjects in the previous 2 years.
An Optics of White Supremacy
We can expect X and other MAGA-friendly social media platforms to increase their messaging about a supposed race emergency, and we’ll likely see the Trump administration become more aggressive in its attempts to create an optics of White hegemony in government spaces.
This idea of an all-White governing class was tested in Trump’s first term, as I warned in a 2018 CNN essay on White House interns.
There will also be a ramping up of removals of non-White immigrants from the public sphere, as the massive Amazon-style warehouses ICE is repurposing for people would indicate.
Our Identities Cannot Be Erased
This administration will never succeed in wrecking our multiracial and multifaith society, no matter how much damage it does to our democratic political system. It is who we are. Our identities cannot be taken away from us. And the attempts at mass disenfranchisement will backfire; a new civil rights movement is already starting.
In trying to create a homogeneous society and ban talk of diversity, this government is merely drawing attention to what makes the United States special, and the power of our roots, identities, and traditions. These will serve us well in the coming years as we pursue peaceful resistance to restore our democracy.
As I have written about before this is simply a move by Christian nationalists in the military and government to force everyone to conform to their religious beliefs and desires. This is again to return to the 1950s when it was normal for Christianity to seem like the dominant religion of the majority of people in the country. The reasons stated make so sense for the purpose claimed as Belle points out. This is a minority fundamentalist / evangelical believers trying to force their rule and beliefs onto the majority. Hugs
As I have written about before I had to remove hate from my system. Because of what I experienced growing up and the toxic nature of those I was raised by / around I developed a deep anger building to intense hate. It was consuming me as I had no outlet for that poison it was ruining the being I was / could be. I saw Ron starting to pull away from me as he saw the effects of my inner struggle with hate even as he did not know why I had such deep emotions and intense reactions. I had a choice. I could go with the hate, give into it and make it all I was. That would make me like those I grew up with. Or I could excise it, leave it behind, look for and crave something far different that might be like cold water on blistered skin. A balm to help me heal and to build the person I wanted to be, not that they wanted me to be. I went from the “slave” name they called me to being Scottie. It was not easy, it still is not. I am not and never will be perfect. I struggle not to be easily angered, to look for the good in others, to not to imagine faults. But by making those first steps I was able to keep Ron and he guided me forward not even understanding he was doing it. Happy hugs. Scottie
I love this video. John Fugelsang is a wonderful person to elaborate on the bible and he does so as a follower of Jesus, not Paul or the Old Testament. His mother was a nun and his father was a monk and the way he describes his father wearing his robes is as the Christian jedi of Flatbush. He explains how those using the bible to attack or bash others including the LGBTQ+ are not following Jesus that they are following Paul. He explains clearly how Jesus brought a new covenant for the people doing away with the old one in Leviticus. He explained how those using the bible to bash others and not feed & clothe the stranger/ immigrant are totally against what Jesus preached. He also mentioned how those trying to force the Old Testament of the bible in schools never want the words of Jesus hung in classrooms in public schools, they never want the sermon on the mount posted on the walls. Those kind of people only want authoritarian laws or do and dont do pushed on kids. Enjoy the video, I listen to him on The Daily Beans (news with swearing) friday newscast and his Sirius talk show. Hugs
Just like maga a small very vocal group of people are demanding the entire country roll back all progress made since the 1950s by minorities. Any new discovery by science no matter the field because it clashes with their holy book which they misread to form their warped view of reality. They do not care to let other others live their lives as they get to live theirs in peace and freedom. No they demand that everyone follow and live by their church doctrines because that way their god will favor them, come back sooner to give them rewards while killing the rest of us. Think of it, these people are OK with creating a situation where the majority die horribly to please his god as long as they get rewarded. Seems selfish to me not Christian. Also another important point is the constant repeating of the Christian surge of republican voters despite it being a lie is to shore up the idea that there was voter fraud that stole the midterms from the republicans. Think of it tRump people used a normal occurrence of vote totals shift as mail in votes are counted as evidence of fraud leading to the Jan 6th insurrection. Below I will post a quote from the article that will be used by republicans to show the democrats stole the midterms. Hugs.
Even as GOP leaders who can read a poll know that the upcoming elections are not looking good for their party, this fantasy of a Christianizing America is leading the everyday MAGA faithful to believe otherwise. A September poll from September shows that 89% of Republicans think their party will win the midterm elections, which is up seven points from April. In fact, the party is forecast to lose seats as its support continues to erode under Trump’s chaotic mismanagement.
A United States and Christian flag are sandwiched together (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Turning Point USA ended 2025 with AmericaFest, a blowout conference for the MAGA powerhouse organization started in 2012 by the now-deceased Charlie Kirk. As described by Teresa Wiltz at POLITICO, “the vibe felt less like a political panel than an evangelical revival.” Watching the speeches from this fireworks-laden shindig, Wiltz’s observation felt like an understatement. Many speeches from the event’s main stage were simply sermons extolling a fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity as the one true faith.
“We’re here for one name, and that’s Jesus,” declared Bryce Crawford, a 22-year-old who makes videos of himself accosting strangers, including mentally ill homeless people, under the guise of “winning souls” for Christ. He went on declare that “we’re in the last days” and that every person who doesn’t believe in his version of the gospels will soon “be cast into hell.”
“We’re all on our knees, shoulder to shoulder, under the blood of Christ,” proclaimed the British comedian Russell Brand, who is facing seven charges of sexual assault, including three rape charges, in the United Kingdom. He included Ben Shapiro, by name, in his list of believers, even though Shapiro is Jewish. He then proceeded to insist that Christianity is the key to resolving the conflict between Israel and Gaza, which have primarily Jewish and Muslim populations.
Even rapper Nicki Minaj, newly out as MAGA, understood the primary assignment was talking up Christianity, claiming that she has had “the kind of faith that you think a person is crazy” since she was a little girl.
AmericaFest, as its name implies, is supposed to be a political event, not a church service. By including speakers like Shapiro and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who is Hindu, TPUSA’s organizers were even nodding to the idea that the GOP is supposed to believe in religious freedom and diversity. Or, as Vice President JD Vance put it, “We’re all part of the same American family.” Yet he quickly undercut that message by proclaiming that “By the grace of God, we will always be a Christian nation.” While Vance may claim that you don’t have to be a Christian to be an American, implicit in his words is the idea that only Christians are truly Americans, and everyone else is, at best, second class.
The blunt reality is that AmericaFest wasn’t just overtly religious — it was steeped in Christian nationalism. They equated being an American with being a Christian. But being a Republican, as Crawford suggested in his speech, is synonymous with being an evangelical Christian whose main duty is to convert non-believers. The political message of the event was inseparable from a religious one: that the purpose of the GOP and the MAGA movement is to usher in a religious revival and turn a decadent, secular country into one devoted to a narrow, right-wing version of Christianity.
For decades now, the Christian right has been the most powerful and influential force in the GOP, and yet even by their standards, this marked a dramatic shift toward the theocratic impulse. From a purely rational perspective, this is bad politics. Only 23% of Americans identify as evangelicals. Trump was able to win in 2024 only by convincing large numbers of people outside of evangelical Christianity that he has a secular worldview. This was aided by the fact that he quite clearly doesn’t believe all the Christian language, both coded and overt, his aides coax him to say.
The hype at AmericaFest suggests they are pinning their hopes on this imaginary religious awakening to deliver big wins to the Republicans in November’s elections.
But none of that seems to register with MAGA leadership right now. They’ve convinced themselves — or at least are trying to persuade their donors and followers — that the U.S. is undergoing a massive religious revival. Right-wing media has been pushing the view that huge numbers of Americans, especially young Americans, are converting to fundamentalist Christianity. The hype at AmericaFest suggests they are pinning their hopes on this imaginary religious awakening to deliver big wins to the Republicans in November’s elections.
As my colleague Russell Payne and I reported on in November for Salon’s “Standing Room Only,” Fox News in particular has been running a number of stories claiming a “Charlie Kirk effect” — that the MAGA influencer’s killing in September led to a tidal wave of Americans, especially young Americans, discovering or returning to Christianity.
Since then, there’s been a constant drumbeat of similar claims from right-wing media. “Gen Z embracing faith as more young people return to religion,” Fox News declared again on Dec. 21. NewsNation ran a new year segment that reported a “religious revival” was taking place among the young. This follows many similar segments from both channels dating back months, all swearing to their largely elderly audience that the Zoomers are flooding church services, despite what they may be seeing at their own local congregation. Conservative ministers keep insisting on social media that waves of young people are converting, even as no such numbers show up in surveys with more rigorous research methods.
Much of AmericaFest was also devoted to propping up the narrative that young adults are giving up sex and secularism for Christian nationalism in record numbers. Anti-trans activist Riley Gaines, 25, spoke about how Christianity calls on women to “Get married, have babies, have as many as you can and as early in your married life as you can.” Pastor Keenan Clark, 30, preached, “If you have not submitted to the lordship of Jesus Christ, though you were a conservative, you will find yourself in the bowels of a devil’s hell.” Angela Halili, 29, and Arielle Reitsma, 36, hosts of the “Girls Gone Bible” podcast, preached about saving sex for marriage because “sexual immorality is the only sin that you commit against your own body.”
The presence of Halili and Reitsma is a big clue that this Christian hype may be rooted in something other than an outpouring of faith. As I reported last year, there’s overwhelming evidence that the two podcast hosts were working as poker girls — women who make money at underground poker games by offering flirting and often much more to male players — while launching a Christian channel devoted to preaching the virtues of chastity to young women. Whatever they personally believe, their entire endeavor is rooted in dishonesty, a sin the Bible tends to have more to say about than sexual “immorality.”
There is no evidence-based reason to believe there’s a religious revival among the young that is about to create massive election windfalls for Republicans. On the contrary, a December report from Pew Research found that, “On average, young adults remain much less religious than older Americans. Today’s young adults also are less religious than young people were a decade ago.”
But there’s little doubt that the kind of people who write massive checks to organizations like TPUSA — wealthy, older Republicans — are very interested in hearing that there’s a religious revival in the U.S. It’s worth remembering that TPUSA began as a secular organization, but in 2020, Kirk started to shift to the Christian nationalist cause, arguing there should be no separation between church and state. With this newly religious agenda, money started to pour into TPUSA. Better yet, Kirk nabbed the support of extremely rich Republicans, with half of TPUSA’s $55 million haul in 2020 coming from 10 anonymous donors. In contrast, the organization raised only $8 million in 2016.
TPUSA and right-wing media aren’t the only groups that have a strong interest in creating the illusion of a mass revival swelling among America’s young. Conservative Christian audiences are notoriously gullible, so there’s a big market out there for attention-seekers and outright grifters to cash in using social media. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook and TikTok are awash in young people claiming they have access to Biblical prophecy or know how to perform exorcisms, or who, like the hosts of “Girls Gone Bible,” pair glamorous packaging with claims that young people are embracing an especially sex-free and fundamentalist Christian faith.
There are various degrees of sincerity in these influencers, yet one thing is undeniable: They are exploiting huge audiences of conservative Christians who want desperately to believe in a religious revival and would rather give their time and money to people who are telling them it’s real than to look at the statistics that show that it’s not.
Between groups like TPUSA, right-wing media outlets and social media influencers, there’s now an entire machinery propping up this false narrative that young people are stampeding into the pews. Even as GOP leaders who can read a poll know that the upcoming elections are not looking good for their party, this fantasy of a Christianizing America is leading the everyday MAGA faithful to believe otherwise. A September poll from September shows that 89% of Republicans think their party will win the midterm elections, which is up seven points from April. In fact, the party is forecast to lose seats as its support continues to erode under Trump’s chaotic mismanagement. But none of that matters: TPUSA is here to take Republicans’ money and sell them a story about how all the kids are coming to Jesus — and to the GOP.
Following Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military, Jordan Klepper met with a panel of esteemed service members to discuss the president’s rejection of their qualifications, which stand in stark contrast to Trump’s own bone spur excuses
Scottie's Playtime 