The Christian Right’s Righteous Wrath
On the 6th January I succeeded in getting into conversation with another Trump supporting Christian conspiracy theorist, this time on the home page of a Facebook friend I shall call “Christine”. See here for my first conspiracy theorist encounter with someone I named “Steve Pastry”. Below I refer to my latest client as “Richard Sweet”. As I sought to get information out of them both Pastry and Sweet were very guarded in their replies; they usually ignored or refused to answer the questions I put to them. This in itself is at once both understandable and informative; in fact it is to be expected of people who have fallen for the paranoid fantasies of conspiracy theorism. I should imagine that unless I came out unconditionally on their side they would be naturally very suspicious of me and by default assign me one of the roles on the dark-side of their fantasy world of good vs. evil. Moreover, the tactic of only releasing information sparingly works in their favour: The information black-out means that an outsider has to try and interpolate their views with all the risks of getting it wrong; admitting as little as possible means that the insider stays in control of the management of their identity.
What is very notable
about the case in point is that before Sweet gave up on me he told me to “tap me on the shoulder” on the 20th
January (Biden’s inauguration day): Presumably he believed the prophecies of
those charismatic prophets who prophesied that Trump would get a second term. Therefore,
in order to preserve the integrity of these prophecies I guess that Christians
like Sweet were expecting that there would be a turn of events before January
20th which would reverse the election result and Trump would get his
second term after all. Perhaps Sweet believed in the QAnon theory that Trump’s
“Operation Storm” would be unleashed and those evil establishment figures, a
mix of socialists, lefties, liberals, Democrats, academics, heretics etc would be rounded
up and thrown in jail. (That would likely happen under a Trump dynastic dictatorship in any case!)
Well, on 21st
January I did tap Sweet on the shoulder and needless to say he ignored me. But I
don’t suppose the failure of the 20th to conform to his expectation
put a dent in his faith: To a hardened conspiracy theorist there’s plenty of
scope in their florid imaginings to multiply entities (contrary to Occam’s
razor) in order to fit the new data to
an adjusted narrative, thus preserving the general thrust of the conspiracy
theory – for example, I have heard rumour that some of them believe Trump is actually
still the legal president in an undercover sort of way.
But whether gripped by the
baroque fantasies of conspiracy theorism or not, the Christian right-wingers,
in their righteous indignation, are foaming at the mouth in anger & fear. True, many
of them may not accept full-blown conspiracy theorism but they all have a great
tendency to see things in the very the black & white terms of an “us vs
them” conflict. In spite of the fact that the Bible makes us all sinful shades
of grey they are likely to see the world through a very polarised filter which
places people into the “in group” of those for
God (and therefore for their culture &
Trump) or the many out-groups who are against
God (and therefore against their culture &
Trump); witness for example the Trump supporting Ken Ham’s character
assassination of those who disagree with him; even of evangelical Christians
(See here,
here
& here).
The Christian far right
envisage America to be in the grip of a dark left wing plot to pervert society
and persecute Christian fundamentalists. They make little distinction between true
Marxists and mildly socialist reformers; for in the polarised lens of their
worldview all those who don’t identify with their perspective are considered enemies
of liberty and God. And of course, one
can readily find examples of contrary-wise extremism on the left-wing
and these examples are used selectively as evidence to justify the extremism of
the Christian right-wing.
The Christian right’s
angry fears particularly revolve round sexuality and gender. For them the XY
chromosomes unambiguously entail a stereotypical “male” and XX chromosomes unambiguously
entail a stereotypical “female”; this is more or less the extent of their gender
pop-science. Among them there is little or no acknowledgment that XY and XX are
just markers which are the starting trigger points for a complex process of
biological and social development that in the majority of cases, but certainly
not all, leads respectively to typical male and female genders & sexuality.
But in some cases at least, biology and sociology may have other plans. For
example, sometimes the XY combination is at the beginning of a process that
fails to convert the default sex (female) into a typical male and the end result is a personality
and physique more typically female than male. This is just one example of
blended gender/sexuality. There are others.
Societal moves to try to
cater for the fact that there is a minority of human beings who don’t necessarily
have the typical binary gender/sexual traits are portrayed by
fundamentalists as proof of a dark plot to persecute Christians. These
fundamentalists will go so far as to call non-binary Christians like Vicky Beeching
wicked and it is quite likely they will not accept them as true Christians. If
legislation is put into place in an attempt to protect non-binaries from abuse
and prejudice the Christian far-right will exploit this legislation as evidence
of their own persecution. They are manoeuvring to engineer a confrontation with
government on this issue and turn it into an either/or shibboleth. Like
Islamic terrorists who try to stoke up conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims
using terrorist violence, the extreme fundamentalists are effectively doing the
same with their shibboleths; they are trying to shift society into the end-time
apocalyptic conflict in which they feel they will play out their destiny as the
children of light.
The polarised view of
good vs evil leads fundamentalist Christians to believe the whole world is
composed of “outgroups” who persecute them (perhaps the worst being heretic
Christians like myself!). I call this imagined sense of persecution “proto
conspiracy theorism”. It’s a feeling in the gut which can on occasion go
on to develop into the mental complex of full blown conspiracy theorism with its
fanciful byzantine narratives reminiscent of an Agatha Christie plot. A sufferer
of proto-conspiracy
theorism (as opposed to the full-blown version) is far-right Christian Ken Ham
who as we've seen is very prepared to assassinate the characters of Christian evangelicals who
don’t agree with him (As already linked to). He
has shown evidence of a subliminal interest in conspiracy theorism.
The schismatic situation we see in the US has played into the hands of the (sociopathic?) egotist Donald Trump who has exploited and fanned the flames of division & fear in order to position himself as the true saviour of the right-wing Christian worldview. And yet he is a corrupt liar who has made positive noises toward the QAnon conspiracy theorists and the professional conspiracy theorist Alex Jones; never mind that Alex Jones’ followers have persecuted the parents of the Sandy Hook massacre; Trump is after the conspiracy theorist’s votes. In the Facebook thread below we find more evidence of Trumpism’s inextricable connection with conspiracy theorism both in its proto and full blown forms.
c. Timothy V Reeves, March 2021
Foot
note
*1 In Genesis 5:2 we
read that God made them “male & female”. Through the polarising lens of the
fundamentalist mindset this verse appears to clinch their argument that blended
genders/sexuality doesn't or shouldn't exist. But of course “male & female” are natural
language categories and like so many natural language categories the edges are
fuzzy and not clearly defined.
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