by John Ellis
Are you familiar with The Turner Diaries by William Luther Pierce? For those old enough to remember the Oklahoma City bombing, muted memory bells may be sounding in your head. The book was published in 1978 and quickly became the bible for the growing white nationalist movement, including serving as inspiration (and the blueprint) for Timothy McVeigh. The violently racist book tells the story of Earl Turner and his fellow insurgents as they overthrow the US government. A couple of years ago, the book was banned from Amazon, and for good reason. It’s a horrible book that has inspired much violence and chaos and continues to do so.
Two days after the insurgent’s attack on the U.S. Capital building on Jan. 6, 2021, the Los Angeles Times published an interview with historian Kathleen Belew who observed, and quoting her in full:
“It’s clear to anyone who studies this movement that some of the activists at Wednesday’s action were white power activists. What we’re looking at on [January 6] is sort of a broad coalition of Trump fans and QAnon believers and more extremist white power groups. But I think that “The Turner Diaries” really becomes a clear point of reference if you look at the photographs of the action. Activists erected a gallows outside the Capitol and hung up symbolic nooses. I saw another photograph of someone who had smashed a television camera and made the cord into a noose. That’s a reference to ‘The Day of the Rope,’ the systematic hanging of lawmakers and other people they consider enemies. The “Diaries” also features very prominently an attack on Congress that is significantly not a mass casualty attack. Although there are lots of mass casualty attacks in ‘The Turner Diaries,’ what happens at Congress is instead meant to be a show of force that a group of activists can impact even a highly secured target. So what we see there is a really clear alignment [with] the way it’s imagined in the movement.”
I encourage you to read the entire article, linked to above, (I had to stop myself from basically “pull-quoting” pretty much everything Belew said). I also encourage you to read her 2018 book Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America. While reading her eye-opening book, you will undoubtedly draw contemporary connections while seeing ever more clearly the through-line-of-action from the Vietnam War era malaise to the rise of Christian nationalism.
However, there is another influential book that those rightfully concerned about Christian nationalism should know about and read. Before getting to that, though, I should explain the inflammatory title of this article.
I used to believe that Ron DeSantis would defeat former president Donald Trump in the Republican primary (I’m not rooting for either one, to be clear). I no longer believe that. Over the last year, the part-time governor of the state I live in has proven to be politically clumsy, if not politically inept. For some, what I see as his political clumsiness is seen as evidence of his uncompromising strength and tenacity. For others, me included, it’s read as a desire for totalitarianism (Christian nationalism) that makes him inflexible in ways that will be impediments during a national campaign. It’s one thing for DeSantis to force his will on a state, especially when the state legislature allows him to do so because it’s made up of likeminded wannabe cultural warriors. It’s another thing to take that message into states that are increasingly wary of his political heavy-handedness.
Ironically, his political weakness within this country’s ostensibly democratic process is also what makes him attractive to Christian nationalists.[1] Moreover, running roughshod over political opposition while doggedly engaging on the frontlines of the cultural wars is what makes DeSantis the preferred candidate for the behind-the-scenes leaders of the paleoconservative movement. Out front, FOX News is fairly obvious in their preferment of DeSantis over Trump. Donald Trump was their useful idiot who has served his purpose and needs to go away. Unfortunately for them, and the rest of us, their useful idiot has proven to be charismatic in ways that thunderously resonates with a segment of the population. A segment that now compromises much of the GOP base. Trump is also the master of the political steamroller. But he’s not a true believer. The only thing Donald Trump cares about is Donald Trump. Paleoconservative leaders want a true believer at the helm. They need a true believer at the helm. Donald Trump can’t be trusted.
I’m skipping a bunch, I know. I’m assuming that my intended audience understands the rough historical/political sketch. To serve as a primer, the paleoconservatism of Pat Buchanan and the Christian Right was no longer welcome in the GOP after 9/11. Big tent neoconservatism became the core ideology of the conservative movement. However, once public opinion, included many Republicans, turned against Bush and his neocon war(s) in the Middle East, combined with the Great Recession and the subsequent election of this nation’s first Black president, anger began to bubble over at the popular level. The Tea Party was the populist articulation of that anger. Paul Gottfried, Tucker Carlson, and others saw an opportunity with the Tea Party. The GOP didn’t help themselves by flirting with the movement, the most obvious example being the elevation of Sarah Palin. It became clear early on that Donald Trump was exactly the useful idiot the paleoconservatives needed to smuggle their brand of totalitarianism into the GOP under the guise of populism. In 2023, the Republican Party has almost completed the marriage of paleoconservatism and Christian nationalism. Ron DeSantis is just the man to consummate that marriage.
The wheels they put into motion going back to the Tea Party movement are close to full fruition as long as they can keep Trump from completely wresting control of the machine. He’s too much of a wildcard and his followers are flimsy reeds in the wind where he’s concerned. If Trump were to suddenly begin defending transgenderism, many (if not most) of his followers would follow suit and pretend like that was always his and their position. Donald Trump only engages in the cultural wars when it serves him. Ron DeSantis engages in the cultural wars because he’s a true believer. DeSantis is just the man to implement the Christian nationalist dream nationwide. And that dream has a blueprint in Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War by William S. Lind (using the pseudonym Thomas Hobbes).
While I doubt that DeSantis will lose control of Florida (for reasons that scare me), I don’t doubt that Trump will trounce him on the campaign trail and in debates. DeSantis’ brand of gaslighting and authoritarianism will be no match for the Republican master of the soft but hardening fascism the GOP has embraced. From a historical and political perspective, it will be interesting to see how the Republican primary plays out. No matter how it concludes, it won’t be a good thing for God’s people from an earthly standpoint. I also believe that the rise of Ron DeSantis, while not the only canary in the coal mine, so to speak, may be the most prominent warning that many professing Christians and churches view God and country as synonyms, even if they protest otherwise. Ron DeSantis represents the consummation of the marriage between the kissing cousins of paleoconservatism and Christian nationalism. And what that consummated marriage looks like and how to get there is explicitly spelled out in Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War.
With the announcement of Ron DeSantis’ bid for the Republican Party’s nomination for President, I want to encourage my pastor friends, as well as anyone who is concerned about the political trajectory of their conservative friends and family, to read Victoria. I encourage you to do so because it’s important to understand the movement that many people in our pews and families are gravitating towards. Some, no doubt, are already at the center and have embraced the movement’s Christian/white nationalist goals. Others are being drawn to cultural warriors like DeSantis because they’re fearful of the changes happening around them (which speaks to my problem with white evangelicalism at its core from its beginning).
As mentioned above, Victoria is written by the paleoconservative leader William S. Lind under the pseudonym Thomas Hobbes (as a side note: we are watching in real time the transformation of Christian libertarianism begun by the National Association of Manufacturers and Rev. James Fifield in the 1930s/40s into fascism – for the record, I’m not a fan, to put it lightly, of Christian libertarianism either). Similar to how The Turner Diaries by William Luther Pierce influenced the Christian/white nationalists of the 80s-90s (including most notably and tragically Timothy McVeigh who got the idea to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City from the book), Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War is the playbook for many of the 21st century thought leaders of the paleoconservative movement. I mean, William S. Lind is one of the thought leaders in paleoconservatism, even if the average Republican has never heard of him.
Published in 2014, one thing that the book didn’t foresee was the transformation of 4th generation warfare into the gameplan for much of the Republican Party in their effort to retain power and transform America into their version of the New Jerusalem. At the time, Lind envisioned the necessity for Christian nationalists to separate from the GOP. In his world, the Republican Party is far too compromised. He didn’t realize that Trump was going to come along and “drain the Swamp.” While Trump didn’t actually do that because he technically is part of the “Swamp,” DeSantis and other GOP politicians are doing what Trump promised to do. Hence the paleoconservative leaders’ love affair with DeSantis. Now, eight years after Victoria was first published, 4th generation warfare can be conducted both by insurgents – see Jan. 6 – and elected officials from within the halls of power.
Since it was first introduced into the military lexicon in 1989 via an article in the Marine Corps Gazette (one of the article’s authors is William S. Lind), the boundaries/definition of 4th generation warfare have become a little less defined. Christian/white nationalists, encouraged by Lind who helped develop the theory, have embraced the belief that in the future (which is now, for them), the enemy isn’t necessarily nation-states (although the enemy can have control of the polis) but ideologies that threaten genocide of “our” way of life. The enemy isn’t outside the gates, in this thinking; they’re already here and it’s going to take a new kind of war to defeat them. With a win-at-all cost and “the ends justify the means” mentality, disruption and chaos are the first steps, and total victory isn’t necessarily the goal. The endgame is to carve out spaces that “we” can control completely. Think about what’s happening in Idaho, for example. The stated goal of the theonomists/Christian nationalists moving to Idaho is the transformation of Idaho into a Christian state.
4th generation warfare explains some of the actions of the worst actors in the Republican Party: the so-called Freedom Caucus, for example. Matt Gaetz is open in his desire to use the debt-ceiling to destroy the system so that the GOP can rebuild it. Marjorie Taylor Greene fragrantly lied about the border crisis and used those lies to justify wanting to introduce articles of impeachment against President Biden. She also wants to introduce articles of impeachment against D.C. District Attorney Matthew Graves. His crime? Prosecuting Jan. 6th insurgents. Tennessee House Speaker Clarence Sexton recently appointed a conspiracy theorist who is an avowed Christian nationalist to serve on the Tennessee Standards Recommendation Committee. Laurie Cardoza-Moore will oversee social studies curriculum to be used in the classroom. She’ll have the ability to influence what’s taught in TN classrooms as well as how it’s taught. Reading Victoria reveals that much of what DeSantis is doing in Florida (his anti-Woke Act, treatment of immigrants, rejection of scientific consensus, etc.), as well as his GOP counterparts mentioned and not mentioned, has a roadmap/blueprint.
Seriously, read it. It will only take a couple of pages before you’ll “hear” the parallels between the book and the people in your pews who are fans of DeSantis (and Trump). On page 9, Jim Sampsonoff tells the book’s protagonist Capt. John Rumford, “You’re a casualty in the culture war. … The next real war is going to be here, on our own soil. … It’s the most important war we’ll ever fight, because if we lose our culture, we’ll lose everything else, too.”
You can probably guess this, but the book goes to great lengths to whitewash the history of the West, going so far as to conflate Christianity with the West. Peppered throughout the book are also denunciations of cultural Marxism. Frighteningly, three pages into the book, Lind accuses 21st century America of being the Wiemer Republic. While fictional, Victoria‘s story sounds awfully familiar because it is.
Not long into the story, Rumford is introduced to an ideology called retroculture by the Kraft family (here’s a link to an article written by William S. Lind about retroculture). As expressed on page 62, the ideology venerates “any time before 1965” with the openly patriarchal Mr. Kraft adding, “The specific time period does not matter, so long as it is a time when traditional American culture was strong.” No doubt, you’ve heard people in your church and family members wistfully long for a return to some halcyon days, usually between WWII and the 60s, that ideologically places them in the same stream as the fictional Kraft family and their nonfictional retroculture. Adding to the veneration of pre-1960s America, Mr. Kraft explains to Rumford, “the black community was an asset as late as the 1950s. But we cannot allow it to remain what it is now: a burden the rest of us have to carry.”
“Any time before 1965” is an obvious allusion to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And describing Black communities as “an asset as late as the 1950s” is a reminder of how Jim Crow was an effective tool of control. Lind’s characters do not shy away from blaming the Civil Rights movement and the subsequent legislation of the early-mid 60s for the ills of the Black community and the nation as a whole. This is an argument that is central to the GOP as they desire to repeal the Voting Rights Act, although they do their best to hide their racism. Likewise, while Victoria is an incredibly racist book, Lind also attempts to paint his desired society as not racist. He writes Black characters that give voice to the worst stereotypes about Black people and Black communities. The most prominent Black character, Gunny Matthews, says on page 238, “I’m thankful for the slave ship that brought my ancestors over here, cause otherwise I’d be livin’ in Africa, and I don’t think there’s a worse place on earth.”
Not only whitewashing the shocking awfulness of the Middle Passage, that quote was echoed in Trump’s 2018 description of “shithole countries.”
I can only surmise that Lind thinks the reader will believe it’s not racism because it’s been given voice by an imaginary Black person. In Lind’s desired world, a Black person acts like a white person, so it makes sense that he believes that he, as a white person, can speak for the Black community via fictional Black characters. Ultimately, the book preaches Kinism. The good Black communities filled with Black people who act like white people are separated from white communities. In Victoria, no matter how “white” a Black person acts, he or she is still expected to remain separated from white communities. Jim Crow, anyone?
The book is so didactic that I could practically open to any page and see a direct line from the book to the current Republican Party and the MAGA movement. The plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 has a counterpart in the book. Many of the various anti-science conspiracies that swirl around the COVID-19 pandemic are found in Victoria. In a word, the call of Victoria can be summed up by “Christendom.” Lind’s objective with his book is to inspire his readers to fully replace the US government with Christendom, and he does so by employing methods, tropes, and conspiracies that dominate the stage at CPAC, Trump rallies, and DeSantis’ speeches.
Christendom is a hell of a drug. As the ultimate Babylon, Christendom feeds our lust for pleasure, power, and prestige while stoking our ego by telling us that the New Jerusalem is an attainable birthright if we build it – the eschaton ushered in via the workings of a capitalist meritocracy. For many white evangelicals in this country, Christendom is known by another name: American exceptionalism that has been deemed sullied since the mid-1960s. Make America Great Again is a call to arms to retrieve a lost paradise in order for American exceptionalism to once again shine brightly.
What do they want? A New Jerusalem modeled after a rose-colored nostalgia of apple pie America that excludes those who don’t look or think like them. God “back” in the schools. The nuclear family as articulated by patriarchal Victorian ideals at the center of society. An economic system of pure meritocracy. A community where the “natural” order of things allows society to flourish – kinism is one aspect of this. All of that and how to get it via 4th generation warfare is described in Victoria. I encourage you to read it (don’t buy a new copy because doing so likely means that you’re helping finance a white/Christian nationalism organization). Pastors especially, confront yourself with the full-orbed expression in the book of what many in your congregation desire and that many others are moving towards.
True prophets and priests speak into their community. It’s time to speak truth into our communities, especially our churches, by denouncing Christian nationalism. It’s time to warn professing Christians that Ron DeSantis is not a more ethical option to Trump. The Republican Party is on a path to a totalitarianism that coopts our Savior and King as a pretended moral shield for their immoral building of a faux New Jerusalem in the here and now. Our King has not called us to join DeSantis (or any Republican) in his cultural wars. We’re called to make disciples by introducing people to Jesus. Fighting cultural wars takes us off that mission.
A final warning: if current events haven’t already made it obvious, reading Victoria will confront you with the reality that there is no place for followers of King Jesus in the faux New Jerusalem of Christian nationalism. The time is coming when we’re going to have to decide if we’re going to be Gerhard Kittle or remain faithful to our King. Christian nationalists believe their cause is righteous. For them, this is a holy war. And like all so-called holy wars, this is all going to end very, very badly.
Soli Deo Gloria
[1] There’s an important point in play here. Nationally, the Republican Party does not hold the hearts and is out of step with the minds of most of the population. Fascism is their only real option to retain power – click here to read more about that. Whoever wins the GOP nomination will continue to sow seeds of suspicion about the voting process and put pressure on GOP state politicians to put thumbs where needed on the presidential election. 2020 was the dress rehearsal.
Practically Known Theology 