Trump nom’s 'radical' Christian nationalism includes gun obsession and 'violent rhetoric': report

02 December 2024

The Religious Right has faced numerous sex scandals over the years, going back to televangelists Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart (who admitted to cheating on his wife with prostitutes) during the 1980s. The late Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona), back then, repeatedly warned that the Religious Right was terrible for the Republican Party and terrible for the conservative movement, yet its stranglehold on the GOP only increased along the way.

Now, in 2024, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for the secretary of defense, Fox News star Pete Hegseth, is someone who holds far-right Christian nationalist views — despite allegations of sexual assault and severe alcohol abuse.

Thomas Lecaque, a history professor at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, examines Hegseth's Christian nationalist views in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on December 2 — and warns that he has a history of promoting violence.

"You don't have to look far to find evidence of Pete Hegseth’s interest in Christian nationalism," Lecaque warns. "Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of defense has it literally inked all over his body, and the books he has written are replete with violent Christian nationalist rhetoric."

Hegseth, Lecaque notes, has encouraged fellow Christian nationalists to be armed.

"Hegseth avidly promotes America's Ammo Company, a small business that sells only through its sister company Palmetto State Armory," according to Lecaque. "Both are owned by the investment firm JJE Capital Holdings…. The AR-15 and Christian nationalists have a long, troubling history together."

Lecaque stresses, however, that "singling out" individual Christian nationalists "risks blinding us to" the fact that "Christian nationalism is much more than a story of scattered individuals with radical beliefs or random weirdos who want to destroy democracy."

Lecaque explains, "It is a movement, one backed by think tanks and coffee companies and gun manufacturers, authors and educational projects, churches and media ventures…. There is growing evidence that a disturbingly large number of our fellow citizens have Christian nationalist inclinations."

The history professor adds, "The nomination to a position of immense government authority of Pete Hegseth — someone with deep links to this radical movement —must be an occasion for much more reporting and public debate about Christian nationalism, its tangled networks of churches and businesses and media, and the threat it poses."

Thomas Lecaque's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.

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