United States | News & Politics

My point is that the Bible and Christianity isn't the source of the nationalism. I didn't want to get into the weeds but I've got more time now so fuck it.

Many people, especially religious people, believe that religion is a driver of values. They believe their religion gives them a moral compass that isn't affected by the whims of modern society. But I don't think that's true. I think a person's religion can be easily molded to fit their worldly values. Their changing interpretation of their religion is used to claim they've been following the same religion the whole time.

I think a person's entire worldview is far more maleable than they want to think. Your ethics, moral system, religion, views on your role in society, definitions on who is the in-group or not, all easily change in order to fit your incentives. I used to work as a manufacturing engineer in the auto industry. A lot of my job was indirectly automating other peoples' jobs. But nobody wants to feel like they're the bad guy, so I had an elaborate system of lies that I believed in order to make myself the good guy who was making the workers more productive, and setting the stage for them to get better pay. I had evidence all around me that wasn't true but I was able to create a system where making a bunch of money eliminating the jobs of poor people was a good thing. It was only after a year or so of being out of that work that I saw it for what it was.

Fascism rises because it sees the same problems caused by capitalism and interprets the cause as national conflict rather than class conflict. The "globalist" elites are causing the problems. They seek a rebirth of the nation's power under a visionary leader, unencumbered by the limits placed by the globalists (like checks on power).

I should point out that the nation isn't the same as the country. Nationalism has been such a successful political ideology since the French revolution that we use "nation" and "country" interchangeably but they're different. A country is defined by the state. It has borders and a government and institutions. A nation is more nebulous and mystical. It's a group of unified people who can express power through their unity. Malcolm X and the Black Panthers spread the idea of black nationalism which redefined American blacks as being a unified, powerful people who were colonized by the White population. Nationalist movements have to constantly redefine what it means to be part of that nation in order to eliminate dissenters. The Black Panthers published a "bootlicker" column in their newspaper that called out black civil rights leaders that were more peaceful or didn't like the Panthers. It didn't just point it why they were wrong. They got called agents of the white colonizers. The nation was redefined without them.

American fascists do the same thing with "real Americans". At first it means citizens, then it means people born here, then it means Christians. Soon it will mean Christians of (white) European decent. They need to constantly redefine who this nation expressing power is because if they don't, those that disagree with them internally will threaten the legitimacy of their nationalist movement. They're using a lot of the same mass politics and "power to the people" thinking of Marxists but they've defined their oppressors as those outside the nation. Once Christianity becomes tied to their national identity, the values of their Christianity change to fit the narrative.

Christianity didn't create these values. It didn't create any values. People shaped their values by their incentives and will redefine whatever's needed along the way. Attacking the religion is missing the root of the issue. It's accepting their nationalist framework and definitions. If these people were any other religion or completely secular, the results would be the same with different labels. Don't attack the nation and accept their nationalist definitions of that nation. Attack the capitalism that drives nationalism and the idea of nationalism itself.