Hate
White Nationalism, Christianity and Marxist Theory
Hatred is one of the strongest human emotions and is an emotion that we all feel from time to time, some loathe their circumstances, others themselves, and some hate above all else, others. This essay is about those who hate others, who blame others for their misfortune, and who direct their hatred toward control, power, and vengeance.
This last week, I have read several books in preparation for this essay, Talia Lavin’s Culture Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America, and select chapters from Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-right is Warping the American Imagination by Alexandra Minna Stern. The latter of these books is an academic dive into the Alt-right, which shares a great deal of overlap with the Christian nationalism discussed in Wild Faith. Each of these books brought an interesting perspective into the rising tide of white nationalism, and Christian nationalism, which often works hand in hand with the identities of its supporters. Each of the extreme right movements that have gained moment over the past few years seeks a different goal, but each one shares a great deal of overlap, with white nationalism’s desire to create a white ethnostate fitting comfortably into ideals of white supremacy, along with the connection between whiteness and Christianity and the perceived superiority of western thought. Though Christianity is not always the justification for this action and Minna Stern’s analysis reveals the way that Hindu perceptions of temporal cycles fit neatly into the supposed “golden age” that awaits us all when Christ returns. This essay will seek to draw these strands and ideas together in an attempt to understand the strategies and perspectives employed by the right-wing more broadly.
Reading Culture Warlords and Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate in 2025 was a fascinating experience, despite them releasing in 2020 and 2019 respectively, they still serve as important texts in understanding white supremacy today. White supremacy has once again made its way back into the Oval Office and this time, the president seeks vengeance, revenge for the attempts to combat his hatred and curtail his power. Both Lavin and Minna Stern would have done much of their research for these books in the backdrop of Trump’s tumultuous first term, creating a surreal experience given the results of the 2024 election. Hate won, hope and love lost, championed by a man who has built a career on taking advantage of others and who has developed a movement around hate. The “Alt-right” or alternative right is no more in America, what was once an extremist sect of the right as a whole has consumed the right and the republican party with it. What exists now, the “MAGA” party is now all that is left, and its policy, its strategy and its rhetoric alarmingly fall comfortably within the bounds of the “Alt-Right” that Minna Stern discusses and the white supremacist groups that Lavin infiltrated.
Hate requires a target, and the right-wing is united in their disgust of Jewish people, feminists, non-whites, immigrants, and communists. These villains are products of the white supremacists’ own mind, relying on conspiracy and misinformation to create the monsters that the right-wing needs to distract from their own barbarity. The evil of the supposed “globalists,” “deep state” or any other euphemism for “Jew” is banal, revealing a lack of imagination given the evil that white supremacists have perpetrated. The musings of Alex Jones, screaming about globalists vaccinating children while in a drunken stupor become all too ironic when compared to the evil of chattel slavery, of lynch mobs, and of concentration camps. The evil of Alex Jones’ “devil” pales in comparison to the evil of his “God.” A God that has been used to justify the killing of millions, if not billions at the hands of white supremacists over the centuries of white hegemony.
The white power movement is oblivious to this evil because of “selective amnesia” and the “battlefield of ideas” which derive from Gramscian thought.[1] This is fascinating given the strict anti-communist approach of the right-wing, which seems to draw so directly from the theory of a Marxist. Gramscian theory is responsible for contributions to metapolitics and the theory of hegemony. Metapolitics suggests that controlling the culture leads to political change later and is a strategy that the right wing has deployed to terrifying effect. Despite evangelicals making up some 24% of the population in the United States, they possess an outsized influence on American culture and on Republican politics. Evangelicals attempt to control the narrative of history through their assaults on public education, which Lavin outlines in great detail in Wild Faith. The curriculum taught in private schools and in homeschools is designed to create and perpetuate historical myths and perpetuate “selective amnesia” which often avoids discussion of the Civil Rights movement and misrepresents the Holocaust.[2] These misrepresentations are done to control the narrative and move away from the idea of linear history and toward cyclical history. Cyclical history was pioneered by Savitri Devi, a German and Hindu supporter of the Nazis during and after WWII. The cyclical approach sanitizes history, creating a strange cycle of “Golden Ages” of humanity that is decidedly focused on the Western world, and which works neatly with the evangelical beliefs of the rapture and Revelations that will herald a “golden age” of God’s kingdom on earth.
The right-wing relies on strong, dumb, and obedient men to serve as God’s soldiers on earth, but these men also seek out obedient and submissive women to control. In many evangelical households, there is a strict hierarchy with God on top, followed by the man of the house, then the woman or mother, and then the children at the bottom. Evangelicals are expected to follow this order which places men as the absolute word of God, demanding obedience from all the members of the family, no matter how abusive, horrifying, or violent the man may be. A strong populace of obedient followers can feel no shame and the selective amnesia helps to alleviate that shame. Elon Musk’s comments at the AFD (Alternative für Deutschland) rally on January 27th fit this mold perfectly stating, “Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their parents, their great-grandparents.”[3] But guilt is an important motivator in self-betterment and the removal of guilt, of shame, and of empathy insulates converts and members from feeling bad for the victims. The Alt-right and white supremacists have also moved away from using Nazi symbols because they often backfire, putting off potential converts and generating sympathy for the victims. This is evident by the retreat of the Alt-right after the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally in 2017, which saw a great deal of backlash against the movement, forcing it to lay low until the insurrection of January 6th, 2021.
The image of the far right is important for them to be taken seriously, as they fabricate an image of intelligence while denying science, construct an image of piety while committing sin, and concoct a veneer of truth while lying to their base. The image is maintained by conspiracies that distract and distort reality, leading to a point where reality is often hard to parse from the overwhelming onslaught of lies. The right-wing was quick to adapt, picking up on the fast-paced nature of an always-online world, and have led the way in the creation of artificial intelligence, using it as a tool to further mislead their supporters. All the while the left has failed to change its strategies, they continue to pretend that speaking about policy and economic success matters to a country that is willing to believe whatever lies are concocted by the right wing. Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter has allowed for the right wing’s most fringe positions to seep into the mainstream and allows Musk to control the conversation. The failure of Charlottesville was that Americans saw the alt-right for who they are, hate-filled Nazis, clinging hellbent on returning this world to a Golden Age of white imperialism. That image shocked America, and now, that image is expertly controlled as we are told to ignore reality and turn a blind eye to the wealthiest man in the world performing a Nazi salute in front of a frenzied crowd of sycophantic supporters. The right-wing has won the culture war, they won because they have been fighting a war that the democrats and establishment republicans had no idea was happening. This war was fought, not in the public forum, but in private homes where corporal punishment, strict hierarchies, and a wild faith poisoned the image of America, it was fought on fringe message boards where conspiracies festered and bubbled.
This week’s readings were particularly interesting for me. The white power movement was the topic of my graduate study along with its connection to Classics, and so Culture Warlords and Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate were books that I had already read sections of. I have not yet finished Proud Boys but will likely finish it over the next week. This is a topic that I am very passionate about and one that feels all too relevant given current events.
As I write and revise this essay, it comes with several thoughts that fill my mind, several fears of an uncertain future. But, of all those thoughts, racing through my head, I cannot help but think of tonight, where I am looking forward to spending a romantic evening with my partner, a reminder of the importance of love in the face of hate. Hate’s greatest weapon is its contagion, as it spreads from host to host and its greatest counter is love, a love that sees the common humanity within each of us and demands that we do better for those we care for and for the strangers that fill our daily lives. Many of these forces that seek to destroy American democracy seek to replace it with a monarchy, believing that our culture of immediate gratification is a result of democracy and that only a king can plan for generations at a time and secure their legacy and dynasty. But to me, it is clear that the cycle of instant gratification is perpetuated, not by democracy, but by capitalism and the presupposition that a monarch would not fall to the temptation of gratification falls apart when understanding the human being that would be placed in that role. America does not need a king, it needs good people who want to create a better world, not because a god told them to, but because they see in others their own selves and understand that a better future for everyone is possible through love.
Next, I will discuss The Quiet Damage: Qanon and the Destruction of the American Family by Jesselyn Cook, which I feel deserves a week all to its own. Additionally, you can look forward to my Bright Spot series which will be published biweekly and on Tuesdays. I have no clue what I will write about but am sure I will find something.
References
Lavin, Talia Culture Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy, New York, NY: Hachette Book Group, 2020.
Lavin, Talia Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America, New York, NY: Hachette Book Group, 2024.
Minna Stern, Alexandra, Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right is Warping the American Imagination, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2019.
Treisman, Rachel “Elon Musk Faces Criticism for encouraging Germans to move ‘past guilt’” NPR, January 27, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/01/27/nx-s1-5276084/elon-musk-german-far-right-afd-holocaust
[1] Antonio Gramsci was an Italian Marxist in the early 20th century and died shortly after being imprisoned by Mussolini. He is responsible for theories about Hegemony and Metapolitics. Antonio Gramsci, 1891-1937. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. (New York: International Publishers), 1971.
[2] Many of the writings surrounding the Holocaust will refer to it with a lowercase “h” in an attempt to downplay the horrors of the event and perpetuate this selective amnesia.
[3] Rachel Treisman “Elon Musk Faces Criticism for encouraging Germans to move ‘past guilt’” NPR, January 27, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/01/27/nx-s1-5276084/elon-musk-german-far-right-afd-holocaust