“January 6 helped argue the case for fascist tendencies in Christian Nationalism,” Annika Brockschmidt tells me. As someone who spends his time on the front lines battling Christian Nationalism and writing about it, including a new epilogue on the January 6th insurrection, I of course agree. But I want to know why Brockschmidt in particular thinks so. I’m eager to hear her unique, international perspective. Is America slouching towards Christian fascism?
This “militant masculinity” strain of Christianity, recently described by Kristin Kobes Du Mez in Jesus and John Wayne and earlier by Jeff Sharlet and others, “is steeped in Christian Nationalism. … The title is supposed to convey the aggression that is behind this movement,” says Brockschmidt. That rhetoric was particularly virulent in the lead up to, and on, January 6th. On their march to the Capitol that day, the crowd hailed the Proud Boys as “God’s Warriors.”
Brockschmidt is careful about drawing comparisons between the US now and the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s. It’s such a severe and somber charge, “Germans are hypervigilant when it comes to fascist movements, but also protective of when the term is used,” she explains. In the end, Brockschmidt is willing to go there precisely because the comparisons are apt. When I ask, “Do you think that analogies to 1930s Germany are overblown?” She pauses thoughtfully then answers, “I don’t think they’re overblown.” She brought the receipts to our interview.
Brockschmidt lists several signals, structures and characteristics of American Christian Nationalism that overlap in worrying ways with fascism. The “myth of a golden past,” is a big one. “[Calling for a return to] how the country used to be when in fact it’s a version that never was. It’s used to divide the country into us and them.” I found this particularly interesting because it goes to the heart of Christian Nationalism—attempting to return America to a Christian nation that never existed. As I’ve written elsewhere, America can never be a Christian nation because the moment it becomes a Christian nation it will cease to be America.
Alongside this myth is the tendency to paint outgroups as “not real Americans.” A third marker is the veneration of “law and order, which really just means being tough on a certain portion of the population, not on crime.” Brockschmidt also mentions other “dog whistles used to stoke fear, resentment, and anger against outgroups [in order] to strengthen the feeling of togetherness of [the] ingroup.” Another marker of incipient fascism is “anti-intellectualism,” which can be seen in the “crusade in universities against wokeness and against critical race theory,” and, more broadly, against science, vaccines, and the pandemic itself.