on american fundamentalist self-radicalisation

I mentioned that I’d left something out of Saturday’s article on Republicans vs. critical thinking; I actually left out a couple. So today, let’s talk about one of those parts left out: the mechanics of their self-radicalisation.

I should remind you of a few of their core tenets first, however:

1. There is God, and there is Satan. God is real, Satan is real, and there’s nothing else.
2. God is definitionally both the source of all good and of all truth. Whatever God Says is both. Anything else is … not. Or, at best, a reduced form of each.
3. If you are an opponent of what God Says – what they want, in real terms – then you are in opposition to God. That’s bad.

They absolutely mean all of these, on a deep level.

Hwaet. As the American fundamentalist movement moved from being supporters of the Republican party to being structural members of the Republican party – filling the rank and file of the organisation – they started focusing really heavily in their political discussions on one particular bible verse. This verse was Revelation 3:15-16:

Be either hot or cold in my mouth, for if you are lukewarm, I will spit you out.

They really went all-in on this in their political propaganda, particularly on the radio shows. These shows were very important for political organisation. Since they weren’t popular in any larger sense, and since they weren’t “Right-wing Talk Radio” but “Religious programming,” they were mostly ignored by the mainstream political media.

However, these stations were followed very closely by their base, their real core of followers, who would listen all or much of the day.

So they knew when on the air that they were talking pretty much exclusively to their own, and they felt they could speak freely. Mask off, as it were. They could say what they actually thought.

(For the most part, they were correct in that, too. But only for the most part. They didn’t know they were also being monitored by… me, and a couple of other people like me, who were collecting counter-intelligence. That mistake cost them.)

Regardless, they applied this verse heavily to politics and political action. However fervent you are, it’s not enough. If at any point you are merely lukeworm in your faith – or your politics – Jesus will spit you out and you will be condemned to Hell.

As you might expect, this goalpost kept moving. The longer they worked this – and it was over a period of several years – the more explicit and extreme it got.

At first, it was used largely to ask for more out of their followers. Later, it was used to profess the idea that there is no such thing as a legitimate middle-ground, that there was no such thing as neutrality at all. If you weren’t fervent enough in your politics, you were insufficiently infused with the holy spirit, which functionally meant you were with the opposition…

…which, as above, meant you were quite literally with literal Satan.

You can see how this is a problem in real world politics. You can also see from the results how little they care about that.

They got to this degree of extremism exactly as they were taking over the Republican Party from the inside. So if this attitude sounds strangely familiar to your experience with Republicans, well, it should. But now you know how it got there: this became evangelical political culture, they brought their political culture into the GOP with them, and it took over the entire party even if the religion itself did not. At least not right away.

Now, if you combine this with their definition of truth, which we talked about yesterday, something very interesting happens.

But it’s late, and I must to bed, so this will have to be all for now.

We’ll pick this up again soon.

71 days remain.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.