The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 126
Can’t anything just be normal and organic? It doesn’t appear so. Unfortunately, in addition to having to deal with a Communist Cultural Revolution in America, we also have to deal with the rising reaction it deliberately provokes. That forces us to have to fight a two-front war if our desire is to preserve liberty and defend and maintain the United States of America. Not everyone, even on the “conservative” side of things, wants to do that, though, and this brings us back to the growing movement branding itself “Christian Nationalism.” What is it? Well, that’s a question with some legs, apparently. To see why, enter eccentric shampoo magnate Charles Haywood, who offers us “the politics of future past,” and who calls himself “Maximum Leader” of something called The Worthy House, as discussed with Tucker Carlson, and who is the originator of the secret society called The Society for American Civic Renewal (don’t miss “The Mark“). In this unhappy episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay reads Haywood’s “Foundationalist” manifesto and starts asking some uncomfortable questions about what’s really going on behind the “Christian Nationalism” movement and its apparent considerable reservoir of financing. Join him to wonder WTF alongside him.
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14 comments
The dangerous aspect of classical liberalism is that it fools its adherents into believing that they aren’t ruled by authoritarian elites. They are. They just don’t know exactly theses authoritarians are who are ruling over them and believe that they are “free.” That’s America. Read more about liberalisms basic incoherence here: https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/?s=Liberalism&submit=Search
First of all James, you’re not fat. They use ridicule as a weapon/Politically Correct and Racial nonsense!!! “Ridicule is man’s most powerful weapon.” – Saul Alinsky. You are correct regarding Saul Alinsky, the old community organizer. The Clinton’s and Obama used Alinsky’s playbook/Rules for Radicals. It’s a control and occupy ideology for everything radical. Not familiar with Charles Haywood from Indiana but he sounds like a clown. Reminds me of Jim Jones the radical from Indiana that took his entire congregation to Jonestown, Guyana to brainwash them getting them to drink the crazy kill joy kool-aide. Christian Nationalism is man made religion. The Bible isn’t political. Both political parties have drank the crazy kool-aide just a different flavor. The left is promoting communism and the right is advocating Fascism.
Will continue listening later because I’m cooking. Thanks ✝️
These attacks seem a bit confused, diffuse and definitely verbose. James sounds like his feelings got hurt.
He may have a point here, but it this really that important? This is the first I have heard of “Christian Nationalism.” And I must say that in that name, it would be the last thing I would support. The other verbiage (rhetoric?) used by Haywood seems rather confusing if not off-putting.
On Tucker Haywood seemed like a rational person with some odd ideas. Yes, self-effacing.
I am interested that Moscow and Coeur D’alene are involved in this movement. The latter is associated with the Aryan Nations white supremacist movement, who has been operating a center in a northern suburb. The former is a “college town” that I have visited many times. It is only a few miles away from Pullman WA, another college town. These areas are interesting in that they seem to bring liberal academics together with religious conservatives in a way that creates tension but not (to my knowledge) violence.
The land grant schools in Pullman and Moscow are fairly good schools that are known by parents as places to send their kids if they are concerned about the more urban (and Left-leaning) environments of many other major universities.
If Haywood is off his rocker, then he could well be something like a psychopath, although such persons are usually not willing to go public the way Haywood did on Tucker. And if Haywood is part of a new insurgency into right wing politics, he does not seem to be doing a very good job of it so far, as this is the first time I have heard of him.
The reading of Haywood’s writing does not start until about an hour into this talk. And by this time James is almost blabbering. I am not saying that James does not make some good points. But it is painful (at least for me) to wade through them. Yes, Haywood shows has academic weaknesses in not knowing that his term is already taken. On Tucker he did indeed say a few startling things, such as his suggestion that our governmental system needs to be totally reworked. In this sense he comes across as sort of a conservative revolutionary.
James should not throw out Gnosticism totally as he seems to be doing. There is truth hiding there. It’s not clear that all that truth is relevant to our current situation, but we should certainly be aware of it. Clearly the reactive thinkers on both the Left and the Right are unaware of these truths (or if they are never mention them). In that sense, they are fighting each other in a synthetic play field, as if in a video game. I’m not sure why James is so concerned about all this verbal game play, except for the fact that he is an academic, and this seems to be their sphere of interest. Some of us need to actually get some stuff done, and that only begins with understanding the situation well enough to know what we need to do.
Christian Nationalism is, in essence, a promotion of theocracy, a faith-based expression of Statism superficially “opposed” to the secular expressions of Statism: socialism, communism, and fascism, and just as thoroughly pernicious.
Hence the “trap” aspect Lindsay’s talking about…(1) a vision of America pleasing to many religious conservatives, but which is to be implemented by (2) an all-powerful state with a social credit system. So, CN becomes a handy way to link (1) to (2), whether or not by design.
(The document he reads doesn’t specify what kind of revolution will be needed to put this unelected, mono-ideological state into power, but I’m guessing they’re not relying on the power of prayer.)
Hey James just listened to the episode. There was a point where you kind of puzzled over Haywood’s carve out for paganism/polytheism. There’s a pretty simple explanation for this. Given his stance of no enemies to the right and some of the people he aligns himself with, volkish Germanic and Slavic paganism are quite popular amongst certain sections of fascist/NS and white power circles.
It is ironic that Haywood calls himself a Christian Nationalist. He doesn’t seem to be Christian nor American. Democracy, Christianity and capitalism are the bedrock ideologies of our nation. They empower the individual to rise up against the would be tyrants that want to hold him down. In their best expression, they promote the best and brightest to rise up and to serve the rest. The Enlightenment brought these great ideas together to create a liberal and virtuous society that was able to flourish for nearly 200 years. The Postmodernists of the left and right sadly want to undo this society. They want to nulify the founding documents (democracy) and to transform Christianity (a religion that takes down the elites) into their plaything. In the end, they want dictatorship which is neither Christian nor American. Postmodernism and Marxism have weakened the culture and allowed this power grab to occur. Thanks for speaking up for the rest of us James. We appreciate it.
I just read a term that was new to me: “hopium” as in “conservatives/the Right are smoking hopium” each time they cheer and cling to what appears to be some small advance against the Left/Woke/etc.
A commenter on Christopher Rufo’s substack perfectly summed up the reality of 2023: “A ‘Hopium Addiction Epidemic’ means that conservatives… do not understand what a cultural revolution is… [The Left] do not care that we see through their lies… They only care about winning. And they are kicking our asses so completely. Start from this position.
We’ve lost against a cultural revolution that has already subverted the majority of Americans, including many Republicans and independents. There is no ‘silent majority’ — we are a minority… The idea that there is some ‘majority’… just waiting for it to get bad enough is what kept conservatives on the sidelines while the Left ran the table. The time for such wishful mythology is long over…The Right is too disorganized and conflicted and fractured to mount any effective defense or offense.”
And now we have this new phenomenon of “Worthy House” and “The Mark”. This is Insanity. Suicide actually. “Christian Nationalism” is the equivalent of the Right taking a revolver and blowing their own face off. Leftists are giddy at this deranged retrograde anti-counter-revolutionary conservative car crash. It’s a death knell that even a hopium overdose can’t fix.
Perhaps the Left deserves to take over because their “opposition” simply is incapable of understanding political reality in the 21st century! Family members my age (old people!) keep smoking their hopium of magical thinking: “Don’t worry — the pendulum will swing back to normal eventually”. I tell them the truth: the Right-Centre-Left pendulum has been replaced with a Leftist guillotine and it only swings one way – downward towards our necks. Woke IS the new “normal”. Escape plans are the only source of hope.
If you are truly *that* blackpilled, then sit down, shut up, and drive off a bridge, because there is no place to escape to in the world you describe. The idea of an escape plan, in your world, relies on just as much hopium as anyone.
Things aren’t necessarily as stark or simplistic as you paint them, in which case, you should probably calm down, get ahold of yourself, and focus. Panic isn’t productive. Neither is hardcore doomerism.
Clinical observation: Note the textbook example of the Hopium Addict violently lashing out with raging rabid fury and default suicide projections when their Hopium supply is perceived as being threatened even within the context of abstract written comments. Fascinating.
I can sympathize with many of these sentiments.
There is nothing of substance Haywood would criticize in Gilead, the post-America country from The Handmaid’s Tale. Haywood would give a more central role to technology, art, and architecture, perhaps, and maybe not forcibly enslave fertile women for his natalist agenda. But the militant and properly Fascist character of Gilead is what Haywood is looking to create.
I hear a lot of parallels with Mussolini’s “The Doctrine of Fascism” — which is easy enough to find online.
In particular I recognize the parts about being specifically designed for one country or society; of being anti-individualist and anti-liberal; of being practical rather than ideological (“Fascism was not the nursling of a doctrine previously drafted at a desk; it was born of the need of action, and was action; it was not a party but, in the first two years, an anti-party and a movement. The name I gave the organization fixed its character.”) When he talks about “social pressure,” I’m thinking castor oil…
If this is a trap designed by people who like to think of their opponents as “fascist,” it would make sense for them to draw their elements from the real thing.
I receive emails from the founder/CEO of Twitter like social media site “Gab” who endlessly promotes Christian Nationalism.
His company has been vilified as ‘far right’ due to its free speech position that allows anyone to post there. This, with his belief that “Jesus is King,” brings him to the idea that Christianity is under attack while being the great truth & saviour of society. Therefore, he believes in the need for Christian Nationalism.