That’s the conclusion of Bob Smietana looking at Joel Webbon, Dale Partridge and other “Jim Crow theobros” who preach various forms of white male supremacy: pro-slavery, pro-Jim Crow, pro-all-white America (a couple of them debated whether Clarence Thomas deserved to stay). And insisting very firmly that there’s is absolutely 100 percent the only Biblical position on these matters (Mark Noll would like a word). As with Christian misogyny (most of them believe in that too) they’ve taken what they think is the rightful order of society — them on top — and convinced themselves that’s obviously what the Bible says.
Plus using their various platforms to pitch supplements, T-shirts and other lucrative sidelines (or the racism and misogyny are sidelines to milking the rubes) because right-wing rage invariably has grifting attached (side-note: here’s a scam that doesn’t preach hate but does use the gospel as a scamming tool). As Fred Clark says, it’s excellent reporting, not attempting to sanewash or decency-wash these people. As to their motives, it doesn’t matter if they’re merchandizing bigotry to sell their swag or sincere bigots with a side-hustle. Neither one is excusable. Neither one is redeemable — the people may be if they ever see the light, their beliefs never will be. Their twisted faith is a poisonous tree and it will bear no good fruit.
The fruit they bear is the demands we stop caring for people because compassion is a weakness. It makes people object to supposedly righteous things like ICE murders and deporting non-white people to nations they have no connection with. They advocate as cramped and limited a view of love your neighbors as possible. JD Vance says, for instance, “love your family and then you love your neighbor and then you love your community and then you love your fellow citizens and your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.” Worrying about immigrants and refugees when your own people are in trouble? That’s just wrong and un-Biblical!
Not that Vance is in danger of having compassion for people in this country — he is, after all, part of the Toddler’s fascist assault on human decency and American values. And a claim Jesus had a narrow view of who our neighbors are is just wrong. If nothing else, the Bible’s story of Pentecost makes clear all Christians — all races, genders, nationalities — are brothers and sisters in faith. The Toddler administration won’t even admit non-white Christian refugees any more. Only Afrikaaners, whose white supremacy has won Republican support for decades now. Obviously my view of the Bible is no more authoritative than theirs — but faced with two dueling interpretations of the Bible, I think it makes sense, as decent human beings, to choose the more compassionate one. Right-winger Megan Basham insists by telling us the story of the Good Samaritan Jesus was saying don’t help people. Bollocks: if you find someone assaulted by criminals, beaten by the side of the road, decent people don’t need to consult the Bible to know we should help them. Basham, however, has chosen not to be a decent person.
No question, this kind of bigotry has long been part of American (and other forms) Christianity. It’s still a bad thing when people say the quiet parts out loud. They embolden others. They make it seem normal — not in the sense of “there’s a lot of people like that” but “as there’s a lot of people like that we might as well accept this as a reasonable point of view.” No, we shouldn’t.
As the blogger Hilzoy once said, embracing these beliefs is addicting. Feeling rage and hate at some designated group is stimulating and often addictive to the point “you come to rely on it more and more, the fun fades, and it corrodes you from within. The more you nurse your hatred, the larger a part of your identity it becomes. But hatred is a poor substitute for a genuine self, and the more you come to depend on it, the hollower you become, and the harder it is to let it go. It eats away at your values: morality, which we ought to use to make ourselves better people and only secondarily to judge others, turns into a tool we use to excoriate those we hate, and to demonstrate, to ourselves and to others, how very, very different we are from them. Crusades are fought by the righteous, and if you need to believe that you are on a righteous crusade, you will of course need to conscript morality to the cause of maintaining your belief that you are on the side of the angels.
“At this point, as Lewis said, your view of your opponents is driven by your hatred, rather than the other way around. You need “to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black”, and your needs drive your beliefs. Your intellectual integrity is sacrificed to your psychological needs, your hatred loses any honesty it might once have had, and you surrender to fantasy. This can be hard to undo: once you give up your hold on reality, it’s hard to find your way back. And if you can’t, then you are surrounded by malevolent enemies of your own creation, enemies that can do you real damage even though they are purely imaginary. You are “fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred” which you created in your own image, and which has trapped you.
“This is dangerous. I have watched people get into real moral trouble this way. I have no wish to join them. And the only way I know to prevent it is to be absolutely scrupulous about thinking ill of people. If the facts warrant my dislike, so be it. But the moment I find myself wanting to see grey as black, then I know that I’m going wrong. And as C.S. Lewis said, whenever this impulse “bobs its head up, day after day, year after year, all our lives long, we must hit it on the head.” As I said, not just because it’s unjust to think ill of others when they don’t deserve it, or because it’s ignoble, but because it’s poison.”
I think that applies even if the theobros (and others of their ilk) are faking for the clicks and swag sales. Sell your wares and your podcast by angry outrageous takes on race or gender and you have a financial incentive to stay extreme or get worse. For example podcaster Candace Owens trying to grab attention by declaring she doesn’t believe in a round earth or a flat earth. And that’s assuming the hatemongers have the sense not to start drinking their own snake oil. The mask that people wear can easily become the face and, as Philip Agre put it, “few of us have the skill to hate with a clear mind.”
