White Christian Nationalism in the United States: A Rising Tide Sinks All Boats 1666957135, 9781666957136

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
List of Captions
Preface
Chapter 1: Emerging from the Shadows
Chapter 2: Othering
Chapter 3: The Patriarchy
Chapter 4: Requiring Gender Conformity
Chapter 5: Voter Suppression Twenty-First-Century Style
Chapter 6: Social Media as Extremist Incubator
Chapter 7: Anti-government Extremism
Chapter 8: The Way Forward, or Maybe Backward
Afterword
References
Index
About the Author

Citation preview

White Christian Nationalism in the United States

White Christian Nationalism in the United States A Rising Tide Sinks All Boats

Angelyn Spaulding Flowers

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2025 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Flowers, Angelyn Spaulding, author. Title: White Christian nationalism in the United States : a rising tide sinks all boats / Angelyn Spaulding Flowers. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2024] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This book explores how white Christian nationalism has infused its agenda in social, cultural, legislative, and political aspects of life in an effort to move the United States toward becoming an authoritarian theocratic white ethnostate” —Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2024039709 (print) | LCCN 2024039710 (ebook) | ISBN 9781666957136 (cloth) | ISBN 9781666957143 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Christian conservatism—United States—History—21st century. | White nationalism--United States—History—21st century. | Christianity and politics—United States—History—21st century. Classification: LCC BR115.C66 F56 2024 (print) | LCC BR115.C66 (ebook) | DDC 320.55/30973—dc23/eng/20240904 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024039709 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024039710 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

This book is dedicated to all the victims of white christian nationalism, and to those who continue to resist its encroachment.

Contents

List of Captions

ix

Preface xi Acknowledgments xv 1 Emerging from the Shadows

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2 Othering 21 3 The Patriarchy

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4 Requiring Gender Conformity

69

5 Voter Suppression Twenty-First-Century Style

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6 Social Media as Extremist Incubator

107

7 Anti-government Extremism

121

8 The Way Forward, or Maybe Backward

139

Afterword 149 References 153 Index 169 About the Author

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List of Captions

FIGURES Figure 0.1 The Far-Right Extremist Enterprise xii Figure 1.1 Reported Hate Crimes 2003–2022 for Selected Groups 13 Figure 3.1 Domestic Terror Incidents by Anti-Abortion Extremists 1977–2020 50 Figure 4.1 Aggregated State Policy Mean Score Comparison: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity 71 TABLES Table 1.1 Table 1.2 Table 3.1 Table 5.1

Other Ideological Affiliations of Christian Identity Ideologues Group Memberships and Affiliations of Christian Identity Adherents U.S. Abortion Policies and Access Post-Roe by State Heritage Foundation Election Recommendation Categories

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11 12 63 95

Preface

We should fear for the world our children and their children will inherit. A silent coup has been underway for some time. Each day, white christian nationalists move closer to their goal of imposing a theocratic white ethnostate on the nation. This has been facilitated by the manner in which white christian nationalism has been able to infuse its agenda in every aspect of life, such as legislative policies, popular culture, institutional policies, and practices, while cloaking them in religious beliefs and practices. This book describes the manifestation of the intertwining threads of white christian nationalism in our daily lives. We see it in the increased blurring of the line between church and state. We see it in the increased targeting and disparaging of non-white people, non-cisgendered or non-heterosexual people, and nonmale people. We see it in the Christianizing of our public schools. We see it in the increased restrictions on the ability of some to vote. We see it in an increasingly authoritarian state with a chief executive to whom the law may no longer apply. Above all, we see it in the violence permeating our lives, with threats of more violence saturating social media​ White christian nationalism is part of the larger far-right enterprise. Its uniqueness is the manner in which it pulls the threads of divergent far-right ideologies under its umbrella. These are the threads of authoritarianism, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, male supremacy, anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments, nationalism, racism, sexism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia. The subversion of Christianity is the means used to pull these threads together and cloak them in a higher purpose. This synthesis of ideological thought creates a whole greater than the sum of its individual parts. It also makes white christian nationalism a useful schema for illustrating the patterns and practices by which the far-right is imposing itself on the nation today​(see figure 0.1). xi

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Figure 0.1  The Far-Right Extremist Enterprise. Source: Figure by author.

The challenge presented by white christian nationalism is that since it involves many different ideological strains, the individual strains can often go unrecognized as part of a larger whole. We do not always make the connection between attacks on reproductive rights and attacks on the LGBTQ+ community. We may not connect the dots between attacks on voting rights and the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. As long as we perceive these as unrelated incidents, we remain oblivious to the manner in which white christian nationalism is infusing our culture. The aim of this book is to enable readers to recognize the encroachment of white christian nationalism in our lives, our social arrangements, and our institutions. The book takes a snapshot of this century to date, looking at the increased terrorist attacks committed by the far right coupled with the changes in laws and policies designed to advance a white christian nationalist agenda. There is a demographic imperative at work that propels their efforts. The white population is in decline. A study of U.S. census data by William Frey with the Brookings Institute found that in the second decade of this century, the white population declined in each and every state. The decline was attributable to three major factors: an increase in white deaths, an older white demographic meaning there are fewer white women of child-bearing age, in conjunction with a decline in births by those white women who were of child-bearing age. With an aging white population, the decline is expected to

Preface

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continue. This decline in the white population is juxtaposed against increased numbers among racial and ethnic minority populations, particularly those under the age of 25. In 2019, more than half of those under the age of 16 identified as racial or ethnic minorities. As these young people age and have children, the decline of the white population is expected to accelerate. The bedrock foundation of white christian nationalism is that the United States of America was founded as a white Christian nation and is meant to remain that way in perpetuity. We can see in these demographic trends the drivers behind many of the actions of white christian nationalists. As the number of white people declines, it becomes critical to consolidate white political power, increase the number of white babies being born, decrease immigration of non-white people, and take similar actions. The social and policy agenda of white christian nationalists requires an authoritarian state in order to be fully implemented. As a result, it becomes necessary to dismantle our democratic traditions, erode civil rights and liberties, and replace them with a theocratic white ethnostate. The complexity of an advanced technological society can mask the interconnected forces that find white christian nationalism useful for their own agenda. This can include proponents of the supremacy of a particular nation-state, the military-industrial complex, predatory capitalism, political party control of state power, as well as others. That is why it is essential to recognize it when we see it. White christian nationalism utilizes a trifecta of law, culture, and violence to accomplish its agenda. This book looks at the manifestation of that trifecta as applied to this nation’s people and its institutions.

Acknowledgments

There are so many people to thank for the assistance they have provided in the development of this book. My former colleague Sylvia Hill, whose insightful comments forced me to consider and reconsider but always served to get me back on track. The reviewers, whose recommendations were invaluable in assessing the clarity of what I had written and in refining explanations. The editors I had at each stage of the process, whose support, suggestions, and assistance were immensely helpful. I want to thank the people in my life who were unfailingly supportive as this process unfolded. Brian, for always being there on this journey of life. Felicia and Adrian, for their technical advice and commentary. A. K. and D. L. for their patience. My friends, for their encouragement.

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Emerging from the Shadows

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. (Preamble, U.S. Constitution, 1787)

By the end of 2022, books had been banned in school districts in 32 states. The majority of book bans in the last six months of that year were attributable to school districts in five states: Florida, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah. These book bans primarily targeted history books or books by or about persons of color or LGBTQ+ individuals. By mid-2023, over 500 antiLGBTQ+ pieces of legislation were pending in the nation’s statehouses. The right to an abortion in 20 states was heavily restricted or eliminated within the first year following the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.1 The success of state legislatures in passing these actions can be traced in part to the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby v. Holder, which gutted protections in The Voting Rights Act of 1965, enabling massive voter suppression efforts and racially motivated gerrymandering.2 Historian Peniel E. Joseph referred to Shelby as marking the end of a 50-year national consensus on racial justice.3 But the details reveal much more. In the five years following Shelby, over 1,000 voting precincts across the country were closed. Regardless of the jurisdiction, the one commonality was that the closed precincts were primarily located in minority neighborhoods. Within three years of Shelby, Donald Trump had been elected president. Eight years after Shelby, armed insurgents attacked the U.S. Capitol seeking to overturn the 2020 Presidential election and to do bodily harm 1

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to members of Congress and the vice-president of the United States. The postShelby decade witnessed increased physical attacks on minorities, attacks on houses of worship, and plots against elected officials at the state, local, and national levels. The common thread among all these incidents was the growing imprimatur of white christian nationalism. White Christian Nationalism in the United States: A Rising Tide Sinks All Boats tells the story of a silent coup. It describes the systemic manner in which white christian nationalism has managed to marginalize, negate, or eliminate groups and institutions incompatible with its worldview. In short, this book describes how the democratic foundations of our nation are being demolished in plain sight, but also identifies strategies for rebuilding those foundations. There is an oft-repeated story that if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately jump out. But, if you place that same frog in tepid water and gradually heat the water, the frog will remain oblivious to the increasing temperature and die. The story is, of course, a metaphor. But it is a particularly appropriate description of the manner in which white christian nationalism has emerged from the shadowy fringe to seize de facto control of the nation. White christian nationalism is the greatest threat confronting an inclusive, democratic nation. It is aggressively punching holes in the ship of state that is a constitutional, democratic, multicultural America. No longer an emerging phenomenon, white christian nationalism is the major driving force on the contemporary social and political scene. Despite its name, this ideology is about neither Christianity nor patriotism. To avoid confusion, when the word “Christian” occurs in discussions of white christian nationalism or christian nationalism, it will use a lower-case “c.” As described by Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry in The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy, white christian nationalism is about whiteness and power.4 Embedded within the far-right extremist movement, white christian nationalism has played a long-term role in reversing decades of advances gained by historically marginalized and oppressed individuals and groups, as well as undermining the role of our democratic institutions. Gorski and Perry trace the beginnings of the merger of anti-government sentiment with white christian nationalism to the 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education declaring school segregation unconstitutional. Subsequent court decisions, as well as federal legislation such as The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and The Voting Rights Act of 1965, removed further vestiges of legal inequality due to race with the resultant dismantling of visible signs of white privilege. It was this governmental dismantling of state-sanctioned white privilege that was identified by Gorski and Perry as underlying the incorporation of anti-governmental sentiments into white christian nationalist ideology.

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Later Supreme Court cases shifted the nation closer to the pluralism inherent in we the people. These cases toppled barriers that had relegated some people to the margins of American society based solely on categorical distinctions. Religious pluralism was advanced in Abington School District v. Schempp (1963), which declared that school-sponsored Bible readings and mandatory recitation of The Lord’s Prayer were unconstitutional in public schools.5 The bodily autonomy inherent in Roe v. Wade’s (1973) recognition that abortion was a protected right was one of a set of cases which, taken together, enhanced women’s control over their reproductive lives.6 Thirty years later, Lawrence v. Texas (2003) struck down state sodomy laws as a violation of the right to privacy for consenting adults.7 In Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Court’s finding that marriage was a fundamental right opened the door for gay and lesbian couples to have state recognition of their unions on the same basis as heterosexual couples.8 After Obergefell, the pendulum began to reverse. New Supreme Court cases, one by one, retrenched on long-established rights. A corresponding encroachment at the state level by legislative bodies elected post-Shelby was, in turn, reinforced and supported by decisions from the federal judiciary. This occurred against a backdrop of increased violence and hate speech directed toward certain groups, sometimes coming from the highest levels of government. After first describing the ubiquitous manner in which Christianity is embedded in our public space and daily lives, this chapter introduces white christian nationalism within the framework of the larger far-right extremist enterprise and discusses the intersectionality between white christian nationalism and other far-right ideologies. Intersectionality is important in recognizing the impact of white christian nationalism on our social, political, and cultural environment, and on individuals and groups within that environment. The well-known phrase “death by a thousand cuts,” describes the manner in which the intersectional nature of white christian nationalism perpetuates its spread. When a significant negative change happens slowly and incrementally, if noticed, its impact may initially be viewed as negligible. The frightening reality of white christian nationalism is that it is achieved a small piece at a time; sometimes by those who are unaware that they are advancing its agenda. Regardless of purpose or intent, the end result is the same. This book looks at that result. Every person who uses social media to resend an erroneous news story about voter fraud is not necessarily an adherent of white christian nationalism. Every individual who has been persuaded of the danger in allowing teachers to call children by their desired pronoun is not necessarily an adherent of white christian nationalism. For that matter, neither is the white supremacist who may be an avowed atheist. But collectively, the actions resulting from acting on those beliefs advances the white christian nationalist worldview.

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The impact of white christian nationalism will be examined through two lenses. The first lens is the manner in which white christian nationalism has operated to deny the full blessings of liberty to those marginalized due to race or ethnicity, national origin or immigration status, religion, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation. The second lens encompasses the tools used by white christian nationalists to undermine American democracy. These tools include voter suppression, individual reliance on news sources of doubtful veracity, and attacks on the operation of government itself. The purpose of this book is to tell the present story of white christian nationalism as it impacts us. Not only the us who are its targets, but the nation as a whole. White christian nationalism can be envisioned as an insidious virus with the nation as its host. It will overwhelm and destroy us unless the symptoms are recognized in all their variations. This book does not address the causal factors for white christian nationalism. Instead, it focuses on the impact of white christian nationalism as manifested in laws, policies, and acts of violence. The book provides a snapshot of the “United States of America, one nation” under white christian nationalism, “with liberty and justice for” some, at the unfolding of the twenty-first century. EMBEDDING OF CHRISTIANITY Every schoolchild knows that their winter break will overlap with the December 25th celebration of Christmas. In fact, a generation ago this time was called Christmas vacation. Today, in many places, it is now known more generically as winter break, but the period encompassed is still the same. To provide context, it should be noted that in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the celebration of Christmas was outlawed by statute from 1659 to 1681. Businesses remained open and churches remained closed. The Puritan antipathy to Christmas was based on several factors, among them was that it was not mentioned in the Bible, and its origin from a pagan celebration co-opted by the fourth-century church.9 While outlawing the celebration of Christmas, the Puritans did have strict laws for observance of the Sabbath and avoidance of worldly activities on that day. These laws were found throughout the colonies and the later states prohibiting business operation, alcohol sales, or entertainment on the Christian Sabbath, which for most occurs on Sunday. Known as Blue Laws, these state laws continued in effect until they began to be challenged in the 1960s as unconstitutional. While they have largely been discontinued, some states or localities still ban the sale of alcohol on Sunday. This section provides an overview of the presence of Christian symbols, such as crosses and nativity scenes, in public spaces. It will look at the emergent re-embedding of Christianity in public life.

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Exploring the relationship between Christian symbolism and public spaces provides an illustrative example of the impact of the normalized establishment of religious practices. Prior to beginning this discussion, it is important to understand the distinction between public space and private space. Public spaces are those areas accessible to all members of the community. They include government buildings, schools, public parks, as well as streets and highways. We can think of a traditional town square. However, merely because something is visible to the public does not necessarily mean that it is located on public space. For instance, if a church places a large cross at the very edge of its property line so that it is publicly visible. That is permissible under traditional approaches to the establishment clause of the Constitution. However, what is typically not permissible would be to place the cross on the other side of the property line so that it is on the public sidewalk. Public space plays a role in civic engagement, which should also extend toward fostering diversity and inclusivity. At a minimum, public spaces should not promote exclusion by making some feel that they do not belong. Despite the prohibition in the Constitution against the establishment of religion, the reality is that Christian symbols such as the cross, nativity scenes, and religious artwork are commonly found in a variety of public spaces. They can be found in government buildings, on public property during religious holidays, and even in educational institutions. The current trend is toward increased displays of Christianity in public spaces. Texas Senate Bill 1515 was introduced in the 2023 legislative session. It would have required the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools. A procedural issue prevented its approval. Also, in Texas, during that same session, the Texas Senate passed SB 763 authorizing school districts to hire chaplains to perform the duties of school counselors even if they lacked the training or credentials. The state of Louisiana has the distinction of being the first state to have a law on the books that requires the posting of the Ten Commandments in all public classrooms. Oklahoma has taken it a step further, with the requirement by the State Superintendent Ryan Walters that all schools incorporate the Bible as instructional support for grades 5–12 beginning with the 2024–2025 school year. Increasingly, states are also seeking to funnel tax dollars to religious schools, although it is difficult to find any non-Christian schools receiving these funds. In 2022, Arizona became the first state to allow anyone, regardless of income, to use a state voucher to attend any private, secular, or religious school. The vouchers were even available to students already enrolled in private schools. When the legislation was approved, the program was expected to cost $65 million in 2024 and $125 million in 2025. Instead, current estimates place the cost at more than $940 million annually.10 Consider how that money could have enhanced the traditional public schools in the

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state. A study of the Arizona Educational Opportunity Scholarship Program by the Brookings Institute found that families in wealthy communities are receiving a disproportionate share of the funds, with families living in poorer communities the least likely to obtain voucher funding.11 Yet this was a program, like other school voucher programs across the country, whose original design was purportedly to provide a mechanism for families in disadvantaged communities to have an option to escape a failing (a.k.a. underfunded) public school. Amanda Tyler, Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, indicated that efforts of this type are just as dangerous as the more violent expressions seen on January 6th, because they perpetuate the false narrative that to be a true American one must be Christian—and often a certain type of Christian.12 In an interview with Guthrie GravesFitzsimmons and Maggie Siddiqi of the Center for American Progress, Tyler was unequivocal in declaring that “Christian nationalism is antithetical to the constitutional ideal that belonging in American society is not predicated on what faith one practices or whether someone is religious” at all and that christian nationalism itself supports a “number of threats to religious freedom, including anti-Muslim bigotry, anti-Semitism, and government-sponsored religion.”13 WHITE CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM: A CONTEXTUAL DEFINITION Nationalism, white nationalism, christian nationalism, and white christian nationalism are terms that frequently blur together and are often used interchangeably. Nationalism in the context of far-right extremism is an exclusionary concept. It speaks to a national identity based on a shared cultural or ethnic background, typically ethno-European. White nationalism is a form of racial extremism that promotes the preservation and dominance of white identity and power. Coupling white supremacist notions with nation-building efforts, white nationalism asserts a belief in the inherent superiority of the white race, advocating for the establishment of racially homogeneous societies, often at the expense of marginalized communities. White christian nationalism is white nationalism on steroids. It is the mixing of white supremacist/white nationalist ideology with the goals of christian nationalism. White christian nationalism intertwines religious justifications with nationalist ideals and a racial hierarchy. The heart of white christian nationalism lies in the belief that the United States was founded as a white Christian nation and should remain so in perpetuity. Its adherents are guided

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by an interpretation of Christianity which promotes a theocratic society based on selected biblical principles. Other than its appropriation of the word Christian, white christian nationalism has nothing to do with the Christianity of Jesus or with biblical tenets. It does have a lot to do with white supremacy. White christian nationalism also has nothing to do with facts. It thrives in our digital world where social media amplifies, distorts, and widely spreads misinformation to the extent that lies are presented and believed as truth. Similar to Gorsky and Perry supra, Katherine Stewart in The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism also debunks the notion that christian nationalism is a religious movement.14 The Power Worshippers identifies christian nationalism as a power-seeking political movement that wants to topple the existing pillars of American democracy. Stewart describes how a small cadre of extremely wealthy individuals successfully exploited racism and cultural issues to attract followers. The end goal is political power for this small cadre. The October 2020 Homeland Security Threat Assessment issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was clear and unequivocal in its declaration that white supremacists constitute the longest-lasting group of domestic violent extremists (DVE) in this country, and that since 2018 they have conducted more lethal attacks in the United States than any other group. This was reinforced in a 2021 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), finding that “enduring [domestic violent extremist] motivations pertaining to biases against minority populations and perceived government overreach will almost certainly continue to drive DVE radicalization and mobilization to violence.”15 White supremacist symbols were very visible at the January 6th insurrection. Confederate battle flags were openly and visibly displayed. A Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt was proudly worn. And the Christian cross was on display. Unlike the historical tactics of white supremacists whose attacks were directed against members of the minority groups which they hold in disdain, these attacks were directed against the seat of the U.S. government. In other words, these were white nationalists. White nationalism is a phenomenon found at the intersection of white supremacy and nationalist ideologies. Adding Christianity to the mix provides a Godinspired rationalization for the hate and violence perpetuated. White christian nationalism has been identified as a key ideological inspiration for the January 6th insurrection.16 This pattern has been seen in other countries. Ben Rhodes, former Obama speechwriter and author of After the Fall: The Rise of Authoritarianism in the World We’ve Made, described the Authoritarian Playbook as the same whether occurring in Hungary, Russia, China, or in the United States. Take an ethno-nationalistic appeal, create a historical mythology, cloak it

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in religion, and then add in a leader with authoritarian tendencies.17 In the United States, Hungary, and Russia, the religion was some form of Christianity, either evangelically inspired, or stemming from the Christian Orthodox Church. In officially atheist China, a nation where religion is regulated and churches require state approval, the government re-invented Confucianism to reinspire fealty to the Chinese Communist Party. As noted by Rhodes, in Hungary and Russia, the result was an end to burgeoning liberal democratic movements and a slide into authoritarianism. In China, which never had pretensions to democracy, it was the crushing of the hope of liberalization, whether at Tiananmen Square in Beijing or the demise of the remnants of democracy still existing in Hong Kong, years after its return to China from the United Kingdom. Characterized by a fusion of ethnonationalism, extreme religious fundamentalism, and extremist-conservative political ideology, white christian nationalism in the United States intersects with strains of farright extremism, such as white supremacy, anti-immigration sentiment, misogyny, and anti-government sentiment. This intersectionality is rooted in a shared set of grievances. These include perceived threats to cultural and religious identity, economic anxieties, a desire for social and political dominance, as well as the Great Replacement theory, which is the belief that the white race is being replaced or outnumbered by non-white people. In 1960, then-senator Lyndon B. Johnson, of Texas, gave the clearest enunciation of the manner in which white supremacy is used by elites to maintain power when he said that “[i]f you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”18 Within five years, as the 36th president of the United States, Johnson would sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and shepherd the Voting Rights Act of 1965 through a hostile Congress, also signing it into law. The symbiotic relationship between white christian nationalism and other far-right extremist ideologies leads to the reinforcement and amplification of beliefs and tactics, which contribute to a broader ecosystem of radicalization and extremist violence. It means that the range of attacks to be examined is broad. It also means that for the victims, it is easy to miss the interconnectedness; to fail to put the pieces of the puzzle together. To be a victim can be isolating. It can be deliberately so. It is the frog placed in tepid water or the thousand cuts. It is common for individual groups, in their isolation, to be so consumed with the threats they face that they can overlook or minimize the comparable struggles of others. This is by design. Individual groups are much less of a challenge than diverse groups of people working together to oppose those multiple threats.

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THE FAR RIGHT IN PERSPECTIVE To fully understand the impact of white christian nationalism, it is first necessary to look at far-right extremism as a collective enterprise. This is required because white christian nationalism as an ideology cannot be tracked by membership rosters. More importantly, it is an ideology that underlies other far-right ideologies in that the activities of those other groups advance the white christian nationalist cause. The twenty-first century dawned with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the post-9/11 concern with Islamic jihadists and fears about the radicalization of Muslims living in the United States, it was overlooked that collectively more terrorist and other criminal activity has been attributable to right-wing extremists than to any other extremist typology. While 9/11 claimed more lives than any other single terrorist action on U.S. soil, no groups have matched the far-right collectively for either longevity or body count. Violent extremism by the far right is very real. It is indeed a current and continuing threat. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) tracked over 1,225 active hate groups in 2022, of which 57% were also anti-government in nature and almost 10% were white nationalist groups.19 The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) housed at the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, College Park, is one of the world’s largest databases on terrorism.20 Containing incidents extending back to 1970, the GTD recorded 3,147 incidents occurring in the United States dating from January 1970 through mid-June 2021. Unless otherwise indicated, the GTD is the source for incident descriptions including numerical data utilized in this book.21 One out of five incidents included in the GTD was not able to be attributed. However, when examining those incidents where a group or generic identifier for a perpetrator was listed, 706 incidents or 28% (n = 2,525) were attributed to groups or motivations on the far right.22 It is telling that in the 51 years of GTD data from 1970 to 2021, 42% (n = 706) of all known right-wing extremist-inspired terrorist incidents occurred in the twenty-first century. Proportionately, this is more than occurred in the 30 years of data collection from the twentieth century. In the early 1970s, the prevailing typology for U.S. terror attacks was extremism on the far left. The Vietnam War was still underway, and anti-war efforts were the primary focal point for many of the violent incidents committed by the far left, whether bombing draft recruitment stations or blowing up U.S. government post-office buildings. That began to change in the mid1970s. When viewed within the context of all terror incidents, there are only nine times in the 40 years since 1983 when the percentage of terror attacks attributable to the far-right dipped below 30%. It reached as high as 80% in

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2011. While a percentage provides context in relation to a whole, the actual number of incidents is important, and those have continued to rise. When looking at the actual numbers of terrorist attacks per year, 2018, closely followed by 2020, contained the highest number of terror incidents by known far-right extremists since the GTD began keeping records with 41 and 40 terror incidents, respectively. With 38 domestic terror incidents, 2019 was a close third. Among the 300 domestic terror incidents in the twenty-first century attributable to the far right, the top three attack types were armed assault and facility/infrastructure attack, each at 36%, followed by bombing/ explosion at 17%.23 IMPLICATIONS OF IDEOLOGICAL INTERSECTIONALITY White christian nationalism does not operate in an ideological silo. It incorporates strands of other far-right ideologies, and adherents themselves often conflate disparate ideologies. For this reason, the overlapping ideological categories which include white supremacy, anti-government, xenophobia, and hate groups will also appear in this narrative. The Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) dataset is also housed at START along with the GTD. PIRUS contains profiles of 3,203 violent and non-violent radicalized individuals adhering to far-right, far-left, Islamist, or single-issue ideologies between 1948 and 2021. To be included in the PIRUS dataset, an individual was either: arrested for a crime, indicted for a crime, killed as a result of their ideological activities, a current or former member of a designated terrorist organization, or associated with an extremist organization whose leader/founder was indicted for an ideologically motivated violent offense. Additionally, the individual must have been radicalized in the United States, espoused ideological motives in the past or present, and shown evidence that their behavior is linked to the ideological motive they espoused.24 PIRUS captures four ideological categories: Islamist, far-right, far-left, and single-issue. Fifty-two percent (n = 3,203) of the individuals in PIRUS adhered to farright ideologies. Approximately 93% (n = 1,678) of those individuals are male. The top five ideological subcategories for these far-right adherents were: white supremacist/KKK/neo-Nazi, anti-government/Sovereign citizens, militia/gun rights, xenophobic/anti-immigrant, and pro-Trump extremist. PIRUS records up to three ideologies per person. As a result, ideological adherence and group membership will exceed the number of individuals. This is not a case of double counting, as much as it reflects the fact that individuals

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are not neatly placed in silos; even in their beliefs, people resemble Venn diagrams. This is illustrated by looking at an example of one far-right ideology, Christian Identity, and its known adherents. PIRUS contains 99 Christian Identity adherents. Christian Identity is an obscure belief that gained a lot of traction in far-right circles. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) notes that Christian Identity has influenced virtually all white supremacist and extreme anti-government movements.25 Christian Identity is not a denomination and does not have churches. Its adherents believe that European whites are the descendants of the Lost Tribe of Israel, that Jews are the descendants of Eve and Satan, and that non-whites are mud people who preceded Adam and Eve. The ADL and the SPLC both have defined Christian Identity as a racist, antiSemitic, white supremacist organization.26 The overlap with Christian Identity and other far-right ideologies is illustrated in table 1.1 which shows the additional ideological affiliations of these 99 Christian Identity adherents. If the percentages were to be added, they would total 118%. This is not a computational error; it reflects the manner in which a single individual can have multiple ideological affiliations.​ The overlap is even more evident when examining group or organizational membership and associations of those affiliated with Christian Identity. For this purpose, groups or organizations can be considered as sub-groupings of ideologies. Table 1.2 takes those same 99 Christian Identity adherents and shows which percentage also affiliate with a particular group or organization. Consistent with the labels in PIRUS, table 1.2 refers to groups or movements, but this does not imply that all of the listed groups are actual organizations. Some are belief systems which an individual expressly adopts.​ There are 13 groups with whom these 99 individuals radicalized into Christian Identity also affiliate. The top two organizations are Aryan Nation at 45% and the KKK at 13%. The organizations listed in table 1.2 reflect a mixture of white supremacist, neo-Nazi, anti-government, christian nationalism and single-issue anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ organizations. The intersectionality Table 1.1  Other Ideological Affiliations of Christian Identity Ideologues Ideology White supremacist/KKK/neo-Nazi Anti-government/Sovereign citizens Militia/Gun rights Anti-Abortion Xenophobic/Anti-Immigrant Male supremacist/Incel Anti-LGBTQ+

Percentage of Christian Identity Adherents Affiliating (%) 80 14 9 7 6 1 1

Data Source: Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States. Source: Table by author.

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Table 1.2  Group Memberships and Affiliations of Christian Identity Adherents Group or Movement Affiliation Aryan Nation Ku Klux Klan The Order (Silent Brotherhood) The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm Aryan Republican Army Army of God Posse Comitatus Oklahoma Constitutional Militia Phineas Priesthood National Alliance Montana Freeman Hammerskins American Nazi Party

Percentage of Christian Identity Adherents Affiliating (%) 45 13 6 4 4 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2

Data Source: Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States. Source: Table by author.

between ideological thought and group affiliation is reflected when assessing the impact on marginalized individuals and institutions. This means that harm caused by organizations in the penumbra of white christian nationalism, such as white supremacist, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, and others, must also be examined to fully incorporate the impact of that harm on the larger social, cultural, and political environment. WHITE CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM IN ACTION The forces of white christian nationalism have created a national environment where attacks on minorities, as well as threats or attacks on government officials, are routine. These can range from harassment to assault to murder. Whether it is called terrorism or extremism, these acts at their core are crimes. If the incidents of domestic terrorism are envisioned as peaks of waves rushing to the shore, hate crimes can be considered the ocean propelling the waves forward. Looking at hate crimes reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reveals the pervasive nature of the threat. The FBI defines a hate crime as a criminal offense motivated in whole or in part by bias against a person based on their race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity.27 There is an overlap in targets with hate crimes and the terrorist attacks to be discussed in this book. Unlike a terrorist attack, a hate crime does not involve a political, economic, religious, or social goal. And while the violence of a hate crime can spark fear or feelings of coercion or intimidation in the victim, it does not involve an intention to coerce, intimidate, or convey a message to a larger audience

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than the immediate victim. Despite these differences, we are taking a moment to look at hate crimes because their prevalence contributes to the spread of white christian nationalism. A crime is considered a hate crime, even if the perpetrator is mistaken regarding the victim’s membership in a targeted group, because the perpetrator was still motivated by bias. The bias categories utilized for this book are race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity. In 2022 there were 11,095 reported hate crimes targeting individuals for these reasons.28 Hate crimes can encompass the spectrum from vandalism and harassment to murder. The top four offense categories in 2022 in order of frequency of occurrence were: intimidation, vandalism/damage/destruction of property, simple assault, and aggravated assault. The trends are revealing. 2022 had the highest number of reported hate crimes in the past 20 years. The ebbs and flows of these incidents track the surrounding social and political environment within which they occurred (see figure 1.1.).​ Since 2020, there has been a steady escalation in reported hate crimes, with 2021 being the first year to exceed 2008 in reported hate crimes. The top five years for reported hate crimes in order were 2022, 2021, 2008, 2020, and 2017. The 2008 peak in reported hate crimes occurred in the year that Barack Obama became the first Black man elected as president of the United States.

Figure 1.1  Reported Hate Crimes 2003—2022 for Selected Groups. Data Source: Crime Explorer Data, Federal Bureau of Investigations. Source: Figure by author.

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This 2008 peak remained unsurpassed until 2021, the year an insurrection breached the U.S. Capitol. In 2020, a hotly contested presidential election occurred between Joseph Biden (D) and Donald Trump (R), with the associated dog whistles for which Donald Trump had become known. Rounding out the top five was 2017, the year that Donald Trump was inaugurated as the nation’s 45th president. 2017 was also when the Unite the Right Rally was held in Charlottesville, VA, on August 11–12. Organized by white nationalist activist Jason Kessler, the purpose of the rally was to protest the removal of the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who took part in an armed uprising against the United States, from Emancipation Park in Charlottesville. The night of August 11th white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other far-right extremists marched through the streets of Charlottesville carrying lighted torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us.” The next day, during the rally, James Alex Fields Jr., a white supremacist, drove his car into a group of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 other persons. Three days later, in response to a question about the rally, then-president Donald Trump famously declared “there are good people on all sides.” The white supremacist rally in Charlottesville was a significant event in the public rise of white nationalism in the United States. This president’s comment, widely considered a dog whistle, was viewed as emboldening white nationalists. Threats or attacks on government officials or their family members are no less significant. They are the linchpin of the Authoritarian Playbook and are consistent with efforts to advance white christian nationalism. As with hate crimes, threats or attacks on government officials or their family members increased significantly. The U.S. Capitol Police recorded 9,625 threats against members of Congress in 2021, which was a 39% increase over the previous year.29 On January 21, 2021, the day after Joseph Biden was sworn in as president, and less than three weeks after the January 6th insurrection, Kenelm Shirk III was arrested while on his way to Washington, D.C. from Pennsylvania, where he had threatened to kill Democrats in the U.S. Senate.30 In his trunk was an AR-15, two handguns, and ammunition. Between April and September of 2021, Jay Allen Johnson left a total of 17 voicemail messages threatening to murder U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, both of Alaska and both Republicans.31 He was sentenced to 32 months in prison and a $5,000 fine.32 In October 2022, the 82-year-old husband of then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was attacked with a hammer in their San Francisco home by David DePape.33 This does not begin to count the hundreds of threats levied against state and local officials, particularly election officials and school board members. These threats and attacks are having a chilling effect on democracy. That is their intent.

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CONCLUSION Despite the inclusive language, it has been well understood since the inception of the nation that the phrase “we the people” in the Constitution referred to white men. Even more specifically, it referred to cisgendered white Christian men, or at least those who either did not belong to another religious group or did not disclaim involvement with Christianity and were heterosexual. It took what historian Eric Foner referred to as the nation’s second founding, almost one hundred years (after the first founding) and a civil war later, along with the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution, before the nation as a whole began to address the disconnect between that restrictive understanding of we the people in the nation’s founding document, and its more aspirational meaning.34 It still took almost another hundred years of organizing, protests, repeated lawsuits, and deaths before those words on paper began to be reflected in people’s daily lives. It was in the twentieth century when America could be said to begin to live up to its promise. Starting in the second half of that century and continuing into the next, the U.S. Supreme Court, in case after case, affirmed the right of individuals to go to school, live, work, exercise bodily autonomy, be enfranchised, and love, unfettered by restrictions based simply on who they were or the status they occupied. It was in the twenty-first century when it all began to unravel. Following the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001, the United States entered what would turn out to be the nation’s longest war. But there were still signs of hope. In 2008, the nation elected its first Black president. Some saw it as a sign of progress. Some viewed it as a sign of a post-racial America. But lying beneath the surface, individuals and movements were continuing their work to reverse that progress. Key in the effort to roll back progress is white christian nationalism. The 2008 election of Barack Hussein Obama, the first Black man to be elected president of the United States, was followed in eight years by the election of Donald J. Trump, who became the surprising darling of the Christian right, and whose campaign slogan of “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) was an unsubtle appeal to those whose vision of America was steeped in white supremacy and patriarchy, evoking Lost Cause mythology. This book will look at the stealth takeover of the country through attacks on the nation’s people and institutions to fulfill a goal of creating a white christian nation. This can be seen in the emerging balkanization of the country as individuals feel compelled to flee jurisdictions that have become increasingly inhospitable and, in some cases threatening to those who have been categorically targeted. Is it a fortuitous coincidence or something more deliberate that the impact of this flight is to eliminate from those respective jurisdictions those

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individuals who would resist the transformation of that geographical space into a white christian nationalist redoubt? A trifecta of law, culture, and violence operates to impede the progress of minority groups in this country.35 This book will describe the operation of white christian nationalism as it manifests today through an integration of incident data, laws, and individual cases. The first half of this book focuses on selected targeted groups and how they are impacted by the actions of white christian nationalism. The focus on the victimization of diverse groups is intended to illustrate the pervasive nature of the attacks to advance this ideology. It is intended to chip away at the isolation of victimization both for awareness that I am not alone but also to recognize the importance of collective action in challenging this threat. In understanding the impact of white christian nationalism, it is important to keep in mind the interconnectedness of targeting. Targeting does not occur simply because you are Black, Latino, female, LGBTQ+, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, an immigrant, or Indigenous. Targeting occurs because you are not white, not their type of Christian, and therefore your existence is incompatible with the nation that they envision. Described will be incidents of targeted violence, as well as public policy changes in social and legal norms which have led to an erosion of protected rights and liberties. Chapter 2 looks at selected cases to illustrate the manner in which racial, ethnic, and religious minorities have been victimized by extremists. Chapter Three describes the weaponization of violence both to attack women and to limit their access to reproductive health care. Chapter 3 also begins the transition to looking at the weaponization of the law in targeting a particular group of people. Chapter 4 explores the legal changes that recognized the rights of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as the pushback against that advancement. While the first half of the book looks at the impact of white christian nationalism as it directly targets individuals, the second half of the book looks at the tools used by white christian nationalists to create their world. These tools center around the theme of suppression. This discussion begins with chapter 5, which looks at the modern era of voter suppression and the role of organizations in bringing it about. Chapter 6 centers on knowledge suppression, or more correctly, knowledge manipulation. It looks at the information landscape to provide an understanding of the manner in which social media facilitates self-radicalization. Chapter Six can actually be read as a companion chapter to chapter 7, which addresses the suppression of democracy to advance white christian nationalism. Chapter 7 returns to the use of individual cases to examine activities and methods, this time those committed by anti-government extremists. Unfortunately, the attacks by white christian nationalists on people, groups, and institutions are legion. The focus of each chapter could easily lend itself

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to an entire book. For this reason, it is possible to provide only the most cursory of overviews of some issues while omitting other issues altogether. This is a function of space and not an indication of importance. Instead, the overall purpose is to highlight the interconnectedness of the threat to advance viewing white christian nationalism as a danger to us all. The expansive nature of the threat confronting the nation warrants a multi-modal method of analysis. Due to the manner in which the meshing of ideologies by often self-radicalized individuals occurs, this book will also look at the impact of the intersectionality of white christian nationalism with supporting threads such as white supremacy, male supremacy, and anti-government ideologies. Described throughout the book is the manner in which white christian nationalist ideologies became normalized aspects of American social and political life. Some chapters will principally focus on legal and policy changes. Other chapters will incorporate discussions of individual cases. The final chapter of the book, chapter 8, looks at the path forward.

NOTES 1. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. ___ (2022), 597 U.S., accessed July 10, 2023. 2. Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), accessed July 10, 2023. 3. Peniel E. Joseph, The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Basic Books, 2022). 4. Philip Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022). 5. Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963). 6. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). 7. Lawrence et. al. v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003). 8. Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015). 9. Christopher Klein, “When Massachusetts Banned Christmas,” HISTORY, May 17, 2023, accessed October 7, 2023, https://www​.history​.com​/news​/when​-massachusetts​-banned​-christmas. 10. Kiera Butler, “Christian Nationalists Are Opening Private Schools. Taxpayers Are Funding Them,” Mother Jones (blog), accessed June 21, 2024, https:// www​.motherjones​.com​/politics​/2024​/06​/christian​-nationalists​-are​-opening​-private​ -schools​-taxpayers​-are​-funding​-them/. 11. Jamie Klinenberg, Jon Valant, and Nicolas Zerbino, “Arizona’s ‘Universal’ Education Savings Account Program Has Become a Handout to the Wealthy,” Brookings, accessed June 21, 2024, https://www​.brookings​.edu​/articles​/arizonas​-universal​ -education​-savings​-account​-program​-has​-become​-a​-handout​-to​-the​-wealthy/. 12. Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons and Maggie Siddiqi, “Christian Nationalism Is ‘Single Biggest Threat’ to America’s Religious Freedom,” April 13, 2022, https://

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www​.americanprogress​.org​/article​/christian​-nationalism​-is​-single​-biggest​-threat​-to​ -americas​-religious​-freedom/. 13. Graves-Fitzsimmons and Siddiqi. 14. Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019). 15. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “(U) Domestic Violent Extremism Poses Heightened Threat in 2021” (ODNI, March 1, 2021). 16. See, Joe Wiinikka-Lydon, Emerson Hodges, and R.G. Cravens, “Old Bigotries Melded With New Conspiracies Burgeon White Christian Nationalism,” SPLC, n.d., accessed June 2, 2023, https://www​.splcenter​.org​/year​-hate​-extremism​-2022​/trends​ -and​-threats​#new​-conspiracies. 17. Ben Rhodes, After the Fall: The Rise of Authoritarianism in the World We’ve Made (New York: Random House, 2022). 18. Bill D. Moyers, “What A Real President Was Like,” Washington Post, November 13, 1988, https://www​.washingtonpost​.com​/archive​/opinions​/1988​/11​/13​ /what​-a​-real​-president​-was​-like​/d483c1be​-d0da​-43b7​-bde6​-04e10106ff6c/. 19. Southern Poverty Law Center, “Hate Map,” n.d., accessed October 22, 2023, https://www​.splcenter​.org​/hate​-map. 20. The GTD defines a terrorist attack “as the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a nonstate actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation.” To be included in the database: (1) the incident must be intentional, (2) the incident must entail some level of violence or immediate threat of violence, including property violence as well as violence against people, and (3) the perpetrator must be a sub-national actor (i.e.,—not acting on behalf of a country). Additionally, at least two of the following three criteria must be present: (1) the act is aimed at attaining a political, economic, religious, or social goal, (2) evidence of an intention to coerce, intimidate, or convey some other message to a larger audience (or audiences) than the immediate victims, and (3) the action must be outside the context of legitimate warfare activities. START (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism), “GTD Global Terrorism Database Codebook: Methodology, Inclusion, Criteria, and Variables” (University of Maryland, August 2021). 21. All mathematical or statistical computations have been made by the author. 22. The GTD identified a group name such as “Ku Klux Klan,” or a generic identifier such as “anti-government” for perpetrators in 80% (n= 3,147) of these U.S.-based incidents. It is recognized that some of the 20% of unidentified U.S.-based incidents contained in the GTD could be inferred to be attributed to far-right extremist ideologies by examining the victim or motive, but for consistency, unless otherwise indicated the population of GTD incidents analyzed for this book only includes those for which some type of perpetrator identifier was listed. 23. Incidents occurring between January 1, 2001, and June 6, 2021. 24. See, START (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism), “Profiles of Individualized Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) Codebook,” March 2023.

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25. Anti-Defamation League, “Christian Identity | ADL,” April 5, 2017, accessed May 4, 2023, https://www​.adl​.org​/resources​/backgrounder​/christian​-identity. 26. Anti-Defamation League; SPLC, “Christian Identity,” Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed September 22, 2023, https://www​.splcenter​.org​/fighting​-hate​/ extremist​-files​/ideology​/christian​-identity. 27. FBI, “2022 Hate Crime Statistics for the U.S.,” Crime Data Explorer, accessed January 13, 2024, https://cde​.ucr​.cjis​.gov​/LATEST​/webapp/#​/pages​/explorer​/crime​/ hate​-crime. 28. FBI. The Uniform Crimes Reports (UCR) also report hate crimes against persons with disabilities. Those were not included in this discussion. For the purposes of this book, only hate crimes targeting a single bias were included. Multiple-bias hate crimes were excluded. 29. “USCP Threat Assessment Cases for 2022,” United States Capitol Police, January 17, 2023, https://www​.uscp​.gov​/media​-center​/press​-releases​/uscp​-threat​-assessment​-cases​-2022. 30. Associated Press, “Pennsylvania Lawyer Arrested for Allegedly Threatening to Kill Senate Democrats—CBS Pittsburgh,” February 10, 2021, https://www​ .cbsnews​.com​/pittsburgh​/news​/pennsylvania​-lawyer​-arrested​-threatening​-to​-kill​-senate​-democrats/. 31. Christine Chung, “Alaska Man Who Threatened to Kill U.S. Senators Gets Nearly 3 Years in Prison,” The New York Times, April 12, 2022, sec. U.S., https:// www​.nytimes​.com​/2022​/04​/11​/us​/alaska​-senator​-death​-threats​.html. 32. Chung. 33. Kellen Browning et al., “Attack at Pelosi Home: Updates: Intruder Seeking Speaker Pelosi Attacked Her Husband With a Hammer,” The New York Times, October 28, 2022, sec. U.S., https://www​.nytimes​.com​/live​/2022​/10​/28​/us​/pelosi​-san​ -francisco​-home​-attack. 34. Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2019). 35. Michael Jackson, “The Return of Jim Crow,” Esquire, October 26, 2023, https://www​.esquire​.com​/news​-politics​/a45236211​/mass​-shootings​-racial​-violence​ -jim​-crow/.

Chapter 2

Othering

The U.S. Intelligence Community assessed that racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, along with militia violent extremists, currently present the most lethal threats by domestic violent extremists (DVE).1 Hate crimes and racially motivated violence against racial and ethnic minorities are an indelible component of the history of the United States. African Americans, Latinos, Indigenous peoples, and Asians have been targeted historically and continue to be targeted today. Crimes motivated by race, ethnicity, or ancestry are the most reported type of hate crime. In 2022, they accounted for 59% (n = 11,288) of all reported single-bias hate crimes. An additional 17% of all reported hate crimes targeted individuals on the basis of their religion.2 Together these two categories represent 76% of the hate crimes reported in 2022. Religion can be a proxy for ethnicity or national origin, particularly with regard to anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. For that reason, it is discussed in this chapter with race and ethnicity. When looking at the specific groups targeted by this type of violence, the top three categories were anti-Black at almost 30% (n = 11,288), anti-Jewish at almost 10% and anti-Hispanic or Latino at slightly over 6%. Anti-Asian hate crimes at slightly over 4%, rounded out the top 50% of all reported hate crimes that year. A bright line cannot always be drawn, and sometimes the perpetrator’s perception does not match the reality of their victim. For instance, when looking at overall hate crimes, 1.5% were anti-Sikh, 1.4% were anti-Islamic or anti-Muslim, and another 0.8% were anti-Arab. However, some of the anti-Sikh attacks occurred because the perpetrator mistook a Sikh for a Muslim or confused an Indian for an Arab. For that matter, how many of the anti-Arab hate crimes were really targeting the victim because they were believed to be Muslim? Regardless of the religion or ethnicity to 21

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which a victim may belong, it is clear what they were not, which is white or Christian. They were the other. Building solidarity among an in-group requires that there be an out-group. This out-group is the other. Rhetoric and propaganda blame the other for all manner of social ills or social turmoil. They are denigrated and despised. We witness this when we hear immigrants referred to as “disease-infested vermin” or when the default description for criminal is assumed to be a Black or brown person. This is othering. Viewed as less than human, these individuals are seen as legitimate targets of violence, both physical and legal. This not only serves to unify the in-group but also serves to deflect criticism away from those in power. This type of scapegoating has been seen throughout history. When corporations blamed affirmative action for the loss of jobs, it deflected the attention of the white worker away from the fact that those jobs were actually being exported overseas to take advantage of the ability to pay low wages and to disregard U.S. standards for safe working conditions. When coupled with ideological extremism, what would otherwise be labeled as an “ism” such as racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, or a phobia, as in Islamophobia, becomes infused with a call to violence. Consistent with hate crime reporting in the twenty-first century, race, ethnicity, and religion have also been the largest motivators for the domestic terror attacks contained in the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), representing 52% (n = 300) of far-right incidents.3 Armed assault at 43% (n = 156), facility/infrastructure attacks at 40%, and unarmed assault at 12% were the top three attack types by those motivated by racial, ethnic, or religious extremist ideologies. With its blending of far-right ideologies of white supremacy, Christian fundamentalism, and American nationalism, white christian nationalism is characterized by the belief that the United States is and should be a white Christian nation with white Christians holding cultural and political dominance. All others are viewed as threats. Initially used to justify the displacement of the Indigenous people who were the original inhabitants of the land as well as the enslavement of Black people, by the twentieth century, white christian nationalism was used to support segregation and oppose civil rights. Through examination of the characteristics of selected attacks, this chapter looks at the manner in which white christian nationalism manifests in the twenty-first century, through ongoing violence against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. An aggregate overview of the characteristics of individuals who target others based on race, ethnicity, or religion can be gleaned from a review of the Profiles of Individuals Radicalized in the U.S. (PIRUS) Database.4 A racial hierarchy with whites on top plays a prominent role in far-right extremism. Forty-two percent (n = 1,678) of the far-right offenders in PIRUS had a

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primary ideological category of white supremacist/KKK/neo-Nazi, xenophobic/anti-immigrant, or Christian Identity and had engaged in targeted activity anytime in the year 2001 or later. These perpetrators were overwhelmingly male at 95% (n = 706). Their ages ranged from 16 to 88, with an average age of 44. Two-thirds fell between the ages of 27 and 61. An age range where individuals tend to have settled into adult responsibilities such as jobs, marriage, and so forth is between 27 and 61. In contrast, this subset of individuals was predominantly single at the time of the attack or arrest. Furthermore, only one-third were known to be employed or self-employed at the time of the attack or at the time of their arrest. In addition to presenting the most lethal threat to the nation, the U.S. Intelligence Community determined that DVE motivated by race or ethnicity were also the most likely to conduct mass casualty attacks.5 For that reason, this chapter will begin with an examination of mass casualty events committed by those on the far-right that are attributable to racial, ethnic, or religious extremist ideologies. The chapter will look at selected facility/infrastructure attacks to provide a sense of these incidents as well. An overview of selected extremist organizations will conclude the chapter. Many of the incidents described in this chapter are attributable to individuals labeled as “unaffiliated,” meaning they do not belong to a specific organization. Like many of their generation, they have been radicalized by online content. That content, however, may have been posted by individuals affiliated with particular groups. It can be argued that the extra-judicial killings of Black and brown people by law enforcement personnel should also be included in this chapter. The reality is that their inclusion would turn what was meant to be part of a single chapter into a book of its own. Those incidents have not been overlooked. Their exclusion was deliberate. The ongoing ease with which Black and brown lives are terminated by law enforcement in many instances is an example of the manifestation of white supremacy under the color of law. However, that is better suited to a book of its own than a brief inclusion in a single chapter. Beyond the fact of police killings, it is important to recognize the manner in which avowed white supremacists are embedded in law enforcement. For example, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association is a far-right group advocating that sheriffs have the authority to determine the constitutionality of laws and to block the enforcement of those laws that they deem unconstitutional. Normally, this type of organization would be considered in a discussion of anti-government extremists. However, their new CEO is Sam Bushman, who is also the owner of Liberty News Radio. This is a right-wing radio and podcast network that provides a platform for white separatists. Tim Dickinson, senior politics writer at Rolling Stone Magazine,

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raises the relevant question: “Sam Bushman advocates for the ‘white race.’ Should he run a group that trains law enforcement?”6

ARMED ASSAULTS AND MASS CASUALTY EVENTS The top three target types for all armed attacks committed by those with a racial or ethnic extremist ideology were private citizens and property at 41% (n = 68), religious figures or institutions at 32%, and businesses at 21%. Attacks against individuals, the general public, or anyone in public areas are defined as attacks against private citizens and property. This category does not include civilian casualties occurring in businesses such as restaurants, cafes, or movie theaters. Those were placed in the business category, which includes any attack on a business or on private citizens patronizing that business. Religious figures or institutions include not only attacks on religious leaders, religious institutions, religious objects or places, but also attacks on organizations affiliated with religious entities. Religious schools are placed in the education category.7 In the mass casualty events to be described below, 50% (n = 6) occurred at businesses, and 50% at religious institutions. With two-thirds of these assailants aged between 17 and 21 years old, the perpetrators of this type of violence fall at the lower age range when compared to the far-right extremists contained in the PIRUS database. Sixty-two percent (n = 13) of the mass casualty attacks committed by those on the far-right in the twenty-first century were attributable to individuals adhering to white supremacist/nationalist, neo-Nazi, or other racial or ethnic extremist ideologies.8 This is consistent with the findings of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) noted supra. In the past 20 years, 265 people have been killed or wounded in 68 domestic terror incidents committed by perpetrators motivated by racial, ethnic, or religious extremist ideologies. More than one-half of these incidents involved no casualties. Eight incidents were responsible for 64% (n = 131) of those killed and 66% (n = 134) of those wounded in mass casualty events. These eight are considered mass casualty events because they involved the killing of four or more people other than the perpetrator. It should be noted that not all of the perpetrators with racial, ethnic, or religious extremist ideologies limit themselves to the target of their animus. In other words, you are not safe simply by being white. You can still be victimized. This is most vividly illustrated by three events: two school-based mass shootings occurring in 2018 and an attack at a food festival in 2019. Nikolas Cruz, a 19-year-old white male, killed 17 people and wounded another 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Cruz was a white supremacist/nationalist, possessing racist, homophobic, and

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anti-Semitic views. Dimitrios Pagourtzis, a 17-year-old white male, killed 10 people and wounded 13 others at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas. Pagourtzis, interested in Nazism and fascism, had posted Nazi symbols on social media. Both of these schools were majority white schools. There was no indication that non-white students or teachers were specifically targeted. Cruz and Pagourtzis appear to belong to a subset of adherents to extremist ideologies who kill regardless of victim affiliation. But they were just getting started. Both were under 21. If they had not been apprehended, their potential path as they aged and honed their ideological beliefs by linking them to target selection is unknown. The Gilroy Garlic Festival Shooting in California was a mass shooting rather than a mass casualty event. Nineteen-year-old Santino William Legan killed three and wounded 17 others using a WASR-10 semiautomatic rifle, a Romanian variant of the AK-47. The youngest victim was six years old. His rifle was equipped with a 75-round magazine. The day of the shooting, Legan posted on his social media, complaining about the Festival congesting the countryside with hordes of mestizos and Silicon Valley white twats. Also, on social media, he instructed people to read a proto-fascist manifesto in the form of a book that advocates that moral right can only be established by power and strength. In response to a question as to why he was doing it, Legan replied “because I’m really angry.”9 Law enforcement found evidence that he was exploring a variety of violent ideologies, including white nationalism. They also found a list of other targets, which included government buildings. Legan can be considered representative of a typology of angry young white male. Ideologically self-educated into extremism, they are difficult to place in a single extremist home. After being shot five times by police, Legan died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Despite these aberrations, for most of the perpetrators, there is a connection between their extremist beliefs and their targets. This section will look at those mass casualty events targeting victims based on their status as nonwhite or non-Christian. These incidents represent the remainder of the mass casualty events attributable to those with white supremacist/nationalist, neoNazi, or other racial/ethnic extremist ideologies. As will be seen, the majority of the perpetrators were unaffiliated individual actors or what used to be characterized as lone wolves. Attacks involving only one perpetrator are the most difficult to identify in advance: there is no group to infiltrate, or participants to get cold feet and go to the authorities. Using the official nomenclature and describing these as mass casualty events is accurate but dispassionate. These were massacres. They occurred as ordinary people were going about their daily activities, never once suspecting that it might be their last moment. This section will discuss six massacres occurring solely because of the victims’ racial, ethnic, or religious status. Half of these massacres occurred in

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places of worship: a Sikh Temple, a Black church, and a Jewish synagogue. The other half occurred in businesses catering to different populations. A largely Latino Walmart, an Asian massage parlor, and a grocery store in a Black community. All occurred in the ten-year period between 2012 and 2022. This second decade of the twenty-first century was a tumultuous time. It saw Barack Obama elected to a second presidential term, followed by the one-term presidency of Donald Trump, leading up to an unsuccessful insurrection intended to upend the peaceful transfer of presidential power at the conclusion of that term. It is difficult to avoid drawing a line between these massacres and the public rise of white christian nationalism as a mainstream phenomenon during this same period. Gurdwara (Sikh Temple), Oak Creek, Wisconsin Wade Michael Page, a 40-year-old white male, walked into the Sikh Temple, known as a Gurdwara, in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, on Sunday, August 5, 2012. Oak Creek is south of Milwaukee with a population of 35,000. Page carried a 9-mm handgun and multiple rounds of ammunition. He killed six people and wounded four others. The victims included one woman, as well as three Sikh priests. Victims ranged in age from 39 to 84 years old.10 Sikhs are an ethnoreligious group, originating in the Punjab region of India. It is believed they may have been killed because Page thought they were Muslim. Page was a white supremacist and neo-Nazi who appears to have been radicalized while stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina.11 He subsequently immersed himself into the white power music community, becoming a full member of the Northern Hammerskins, a chapter of Hammerskin Nation, in October 2011.12 Hammerskin Nation is considered one of the most violent and dominant skinhead groups in the United States. A white supremacist group founded in 1988, Hammerskin Nation uses the promotion and production of white power rock music to advance their ideas of white nationalism, neo-Nazism, white supremacy, and the formation of a white ethnostate. Page himself was a member of two racist skinhead bands, End Apathy and Definite Hate.13 His prior military experience was consistent with Hammerskin Nation’s encouragement for its members to join the military to gain combat skills in preparation for the coming race war. As noted by political scientist Naunihal Singh, Page so fits our stereotypes of white supremacists that, if he did not exist, it would have been necessary for Quentin Tarantino to invent him . . . [he] appears to have hated Blacks, Jews, Latinos, and probably everything else associated with modern multicultural America.14

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Page was killed by police on the scene and did not appear to have left a manifesto or explanatory message. However, it has been suggested that his descent into hate was detailed in body tattoos, online white supremacist website postings, and his music.15 Following this massacre, Marilyn Mace, Co-Director of the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Center on Extremism, described the meaning of Page’s body tattoos. The “W” and “P” tattooed on his hands stood for white power. The number 14 inscribed in a circle corresponds to the number of words in the white supremacist motto “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The ADL identifies this as the world’s most popular white supremacist slogan.16 Page’s tattoos also included a circle with the numbers 838 representing Hail the Crossed Hammers, referring to the logo of the Hammerskin Nation. Mace noted that only a member of Hammerskin Nation would have that tattoo. Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church (Mother Emanuel), Charleston, South Carolina The evening of June 17, 2015, nine people were killed and one wounded during a Bible study class at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Charleston, South Carolina. While this occurred in a religious house of worship, these people were not targeted because they were Christians. They were targeted because they were Black. Among the dead was the senior pastor, South Carolina state senator Clementa C. Pinckney. After being welcomed into the Bible study, 21-year-old Dylann Roof sat through the Bible study, then when the group held hands and began to pray he pulled out a .45 Glock and opened fire. One witness, Felicia Sanders recounted how her son, 26-year-old Tywanza Kibwe Diop Sanders, stood up and confronted Roof, questioning “Why are you doing this?” Roof responded with the ageold trope “I have to do this because y’all raping our women and taking over the world.”17 Tywanza was then shot five times. He died. Ranging in age from 26 to 87 years old, six of those massacred were female and three were male.18 The inconsistency between the demographics of the deceased and the stated reason for the attack should be noted. Emanuel AME Church, started in 1816, is one of the oldest Black churches in the South. Involved in a slave revolt in 1822, the building was burned by whites in retaliation. But the church, which was to become known as Mother Emanuel, survived. On June 11, 2017, Dylann Roof was sentenced to death after being found guilty of 33 federal crimes. He subsequently pled guilty to the charges brought by the state of South Carolina and was sentenced to life in prison without parole on the state charges. His social media postings indicating his desire to start a race war included a racist manifesto and pictures of himself posing with confederate flags. “I have no choice. I am not in the

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position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight.” So instead, he massacred people praying in the church. Roof selected Charleston to be the site of his attack for two reasons, “it is the most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of Blacks to Whites [sic] in the country.”19 In a five-page manifesto posted on The Last Rhodesian website, Roof attributes the beginning of his radicalization to the trial of George Zimmerman, who was charged with (and later acquitted of) second-degree murder in the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin as he walked back to his father’s house from a 7–11 in Sanford, Florida. Roof’s internet searches led him down the rabbit hole that was the website for the Council of Conservative Citizens. He credits his online research for his growing racial awareness. “From here I found out about the Jewish problem and other issues facing our race, and I can say today that I am completely racially aware.” Declaring Blacks to be the biggest problem for Americans, Roof goes on to spew a litany of racist tropes. “Niggers are stupid and violent. At the same time they have the capacity to be very slick.” They have “lower Iqs, [sic], lower impulse control, and higher testosterone levels in generals [sic].” The sense of othering is palpable in his statement. Specifying Blacks as a problem for Americans illustrates the association of American as synonymous with white. While the majority of this manifesto is devoted to the supposed inferiority of Black people, Roof does not overlook Jews, Hispanics, and East Asians. It would be understandable, while reading the majority of Roof’s manifesto, if you assumed that he was a white supremacist. That assumption would not have been correct. Roof self-identified as a white nationalist. “Unlike many White naitonalists [sic], I am of the opinion that the majority of American and European jews are White [sic].” However, Roof considered that their whiteness was rendered moot by their clinging to their Jewishness. Roof declared the problem with Jews is their identity, “I think that if we could somehow destroy the jewish [sic] identity, then they wouldnt [sic] cause much of a problem . . . most jews [sic] are always thinking about the fact that they are jewish [sic].” Roof never clarifies what he meant by Jewish identity, but it would be understandable to wonder if by identity he meant religion. And if he did mean religion, this highlights their non-Christian nature, bringing us back not just to his asserted white nationalist identity, but also to hints of white christian nationalism. According to Roof, Hispanics are also enemies. But he declares that “there are good hispanics [sic] and bad hispanics [sic].” The good ones are presumably those whom he identifies as the white elite of most “hispanic [sic] countries. There is good White blood worht [sic] saving in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and even Brasil [sic]. But they are still our enemies.” It should be noted that all of the identified countries are in South America. There is no mention of the Central American countries. They must contain more of the “bad

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hispanics [sic].” The only ethnic group evoking anything more than disdain in his manifesto were East Asians, whom Roof believed would be great allies because they are “. . . by nature very racist.” Hints of Roof’s white nationalist tendencies appear early in the manifesto when he identified the similar nature of the problems in western Europe, “the homeland of White people.” Identification with western Europe is found throughout white nationalism. “[S]omeone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.” The it to which Dylan Roof refers is made clear in the beginning of the manifesto. “It is far from being too late for America or Europe. I believe that even if we made up only 30 percent of the population we could take it back completely.” Tree of Life Synagogue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania During Shabbat morning services on October 27, 2018, Robert Gregory Bowers, a 46-year-old white male, entered the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA, armed with multiple firearms including three Glock .357 handguns and a Colt AR-15 rifle.20 Eleven worshipers were killed in what is the highest mass casualty attack on the Jewish community in the history of the United States. Those massacred ranged in age from 54 to 97; three of the 11 victims were female, and the remaining were male.21 In addition to those killed, two congregants and five police officers were injured.22 A believer in the Great Replacement theory, which posits that white people are being demographically and culturally replaced by non-whites, Bowers saw himself as a soldier in the war against white people.23 Following his arrest, he stated that he “wanted all Jews to die and also that they [Jews] were committing genocide to [sic] his people.”24 Prior to the deactivation of his Gab account following the massacre, Bowers was very active on that social media platform. Gab began in 2016 as a purported free speech alternative to Twitter and Facebook. Gab was favored by those who wished to engage in the type of hate speech no longer permitted on mainstream social media. In the 19 days before the attack, Bowers posted or reposted memes or comments at least 68 times.25 The postings which showed him to be violently anti-Semitic used language such as “Jews are the children of satan [sic] . . . filthy Evil jews [sic], . . . Stop the Kikes then worry about the Muslins.”26 The main photo on Bowers’ Gab account included the number 1488.27 The numeric symbolism was reminiscent of one of Wade Michael Page’s tattoos. Like Page, Bowers incorporated the number 14 to reference the white supremacist motto (supra). The 88 represents Heil Hitler since H is the eighth letter in the alphabet. An analysis of screen captures of Bowers’ Gab postings by Alex Amend of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), identified recurring themes of

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white genocide, nativism, and anti-globalism. The day of the attack, Bowers posted “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people.”28 HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, is a refugee protection organization based in Silver Spring, Maryland, which provides services and assistance worldwide.29 Pictures of HIAS assisting migrants at the U.S. southern border became repurposed as enabling violent invaders to enter the United States. The description of migrants as violent and as invaders is consistent with the anti-immigrant discourse of the far-right. More notably, he concluded that posting by declaring . . . “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered I’m going in.” The sense of imminent doom which he must confront is also reminiscent of Dylann Roof’s comment from his manifesto “[S]omeone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me (supra).” Similarity with Roof can also be seen in the manner in which whites are viewed as being victimized by violent others. For Roof, it is primarily Black people. In his manifesto, Roof is unequivocable that “[s]egregation was not a bad thing. It was a defensive measure. Segregation did not exist to hold back negroes. It existed to protect us from them.” For Bowers it was the southern border immigrants who were the threat to whites, both physically and culturally. For Roof, segregation not only protected whites from being physically harmed by Blacks but also “from being brought down to their level.” This can be compared to Bowers’ worldview that western culture was under attack primarily from Jewish globalists, who bring in the violent invaders from across the border. Bowers’ online postings indicated that the attack was meticulously planned. On August 2, 2023, he was sentenced to death for the attacks, which included not only members of the Tree of Life Synagogue, but also members of the New Light Congregation and the members of the Congregation Dor Hadash, which also worshiped in the Tree of Life Synagogue building. Charged with 63 federal crimes, Bowers offered to plead guilty if the death penalty was taken off the table. That offer was rejected by prosecutors. He was found guilty of all charges. Thirty-six charges were still pending against Bowers in Pennsylvania State Courts. Cielo Vista Walmart, El Paso, Texas On Saturday, August 3, 2019, Patrick Crusius, a 21-year-old white male, drove more than 600 miles from Dallas to El Paso, Texas, where he killed 23 people and wounded 22 at the Cielo Vista Walmart. This is one of the largest mass shootings in U.S. history and the deadliest attack on the Hispanic community. Crusius deliberately drove to El Paso to kill Hispanics. This occurred less than one week after the mass shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival. The

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same type of weapon was used in both shootings. Carrying a WASR-10, Crusius started shooting in the parking lot and continued shooting as he headed into the store. Twenty minutes before the attack, Crusius posted a manifesto describing himself as a white nationalist, saying that the shooting was “in response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”30 References to invasion were a frequent tactic of then-president Trump when referring to Central American immigrants entering at the U.S. Southern border. A supporter of the president’s hardline anti-immigrant stance, Crusius’ social media postings were adamantly anti-immigrant, including messages such as #BuildTheWall. His 2,300-word manifesto was titled The Inconvenient Truth and was a mixture of ideologies, with Crusius alternately warning of the dangers of environmental degradation, corporate influence in government, and interracial marriage.31 To some extent it reflects the jumble of ideologies of the selfradicalized. Like Dylann Roof, Crusius self-identifies as a white nationalist. In common with white ethnonationalists who identify with Europe, Crusius, as did Roof and Page, looked to Europe both as origin and as a warning. “Our European comrades don’t have the gun rights needed to repel the millions of invaders that plaque [sic] their country. They have no choice but to sit by and watch their countries burn.” Crusius had a solution. In his manifesto, he posited that “the Hispanic population is willing to return to their home countries if given the right incentive.” He believed that terrorist attacks would provide that incentive and thereby “remove the threat of the Hispanic voting bloc.”32 Crusius was also a proponent of the Great Replacement theory. My whole life I have been preparing for a future that doesn’t exist. The job of my dreams will likely be automated. Hispanics will take control of the local and state government of my beloved Texas, changing policy to better suit their needs.33

Crusius ultimately pled guilty to federal hate crime and weapons charges and was sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences. At the time of this writing, Crusius was awaiting trial on state charges in Texas, where he could face the death penalty if convicted. Young’s Asian Massage Parlor, Acworth, Georgia On March 16, 2021, Robert Aaron Long, a 21-year-old white male, killed four people and wounded another at Young’s Asian Massage Parlor in Acworth, Georgia, using a 9-mm semiautomatic pistol. The victims ranged in age from 30 to 54 and consisted of three women and two men. One of the men survived the attack. Long subsequently attacked two other Asian spas that same day. Even though six of the eight victims from these three attacks were

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Asian women, Long claimed the attacks were not directed against Asians. Instead, he claimed a sex addiction, arguing that the killings were to eliminate temptation. A witness report from the incident, however, states that during the attack Long said he was going to kill all Asians. This massacre occurred during a time of increased anti-Asian hate crimes and anti-Asian violence, which many attributed to the incendiary rhetoric of then-president Donald Trump blaming the Chinese for the COVID-19 pandemic. Long’s justification of murdering the victims to save others from temptation adheres to a very old strategy of blaming women for the sins of men. This can also be seen as consistent with the attitude of christian nationalists and their views on family and gender roles within the family structure. Even accounting for the practice of social media to remove profiles when incidents of this nature occur, Robert Aaron Long appears to have had the smallest social media footprint. An inactive Instagram account under the name of Aaron Long was removed by Facebook following these attacks. The caption for the bio section described his life as “[P]izza, guns, drums, music, family, and God. This pretty much sums up my life. It’s a pretty good life.” A fellow patient at a rehab facility in Roswell, Georgia, where Long spent six to seven months between August 2019 and January or February 2020, described Long as “a deeply religious person—[who] would often go on tangents about his interpretation of the Bible.”34 When arrested, Long told detectives that “he believed he was an addict and felt tremendous guilt when he viewed porn or engaged in sexual acts at massage businesses.” To address his addiction, Long claimed he initially planned “to kill himself that day and went to the massage businesses thinking that paying for sex—which he considered shameful—would push him to do it. But while sitting in his car outside the first spa, he decided to kill the people inside.”35 That way, they would not be able to tempt others to sin. It was believed that when apprehended, Long was on his way to Florida to perpetrate more attacks.36 Including the other two Asian massage parlors which Long attacked that day, he ended up facing charges in both Cherokee County and Fulton County, Georgia. He pled guilty to the charges in Cherokee County for killing four of the victims and was sentenced to four life sentences plus 35 years. Fulton County is seeking the death penalty on their charges, as well as hate crime sentencing enhancements.37 Top’s Friendly Markets Supermarket, Buffalo, New York Payton Gendron, an 18-year-old white male, killed ten and wounded three others at the Top’s Friendly Markets Supermarket in Buffalo, New York, on May 14, 2022. A self-identified fascist, white supremacist, and anti-Semite, Gendron began shooting in the parking lot and continued shooting in the

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store. He used a legally purchased Bushmaster XM-15 semiautomatic rifle, which he had illegally modified to hold a high-capacity magazine, and he carried a shotgun and a bolt-action rifle as backup weapons.38 While two of the three wounded were white, all ten of the fatalities were Black. Gendron planned his massacre. He chose his target because it was located in the zip code with the highest percentage of Black people closest to his home of Conklin, NY.39 In 2020, Conklin had a population of 4,458, of which 1% were Black, as compared to Buffalo, whose total population of 278,349 was second only to New York City, with a Black population of 37%.40 The 14208 zip code selected by Gendron had a population that was 72% Black.41 Gendron drove the approximately 200 miles each way between Conklin and Buffalo not only to carry out his planned massacre but also to make several advance planning visits. He attempted to livestream his attack on the social media platform Twitch but was shut down two minutes into the livestream. This modeled Brenton Tarrant, another far-right extremist who fatally shot 51 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019 while livestreaming his massacre on Facebook. Gendron appears to have posted a 180-page manifesto to Google Docs two days before the shooting.42 “The truth is my personal experiences are of no value. I am simply a White man seeking to protect and serve my community, my people, my culture, and my race.”43 As with many of those previously discussed in this chapter, Gendron flips the script, creating a picture of beleaguered, threatened whites with himself as the savior. His manifesto also touched on familiar topics such as the Great Replacement Ttheory. Abbas et al., in their analysis of Gendron’s manifesto, noted that the content was highly racialized, relying on classic racist theories “that people of sub-Saharan African heritage, in particular have lower IQs and that there is a Jewish community of elites effectively running the world.” Gendron pled guilty to 15 state charges, including the first-ever use of New York state’s domestic terrorism law. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. By the time Payton Gendron appeared for his sentencing hearing on the state charges, the admitted fascist, white supremacist, and anti-Semite found it difficult to believe that he shot and killed people because they were Black. Looking back now, I can’t believe I actually did it. . . . I believed what I read online and acted out of hate. I don’t want anyone to be inspired by me and what I did.44

These remarks stand in stark contrast to his efforts at livestreaming his attack and the plan stated in his manifesto of posting both the manifesto and the livestream links to 4chan and to a Discord server he frequented.45 Gendron

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is presently awaiting trial on the federal charges. Lawsuits were filed against social media companies, Meta, YouTube, and Google by family members and witnesses alleging that Gendron was radicalized online by white supremacists.46 FACILITY/INFRASTRUCTURE ATTACKS Facility/infrastructure attacks are a close second to armed assaults in regard to the number of incidents. Imagine the horror of a peaceful Friday prayer service shattered by the explosion of a homemade bomb at the Dar Al-Farooq Mosque. This was not just an attack on a building; it was an assault on a community’s heart. Of the 62 facility/infrastructure attacks committed by far-right extremists motivated by race, ethnicity, or religion since 2001, twothirds targeted religious institutions. Attacks on religious houses of worship can occur because of the significance of those institutions to particular communities. Eighteen percent of the facility/infrastructure attacks were against the property of private individuals, eight percent targeted businesses, and six percent targeted educational institutions. Picture the chilling sight of flames engulfing a Holocaust memorial. White supremacists, fueled by hate and historical amnesia, sought to rewrite history with fire. In schools, meant to be sanctuaries of learning, anti-Semitism rears its ugly head. Yeshivas, Jewish schools, become targets of arson, their walls marked with hateful graffiti. And beyond these public spaces, fear creeps into private lives. Homes of minorities, belonging to others, are attacked. The message is clear: you are not welcome here. These are not incidents from the 1950s or 60s. These are contemporary events. Incidents included a firebomb attack against a police station in Fairfield, California on April 28, 2017, committed by a white supremacist/nationalist, who also firebombed a car that same night because they wanted to make a statement. Typically, attacks on government installations, when committed by the far-right, are more likely to be committed by anti-government extremists. This is but another illustration of the ideological overlap of these perpetrators. Religious Institutions There is a long history of racially, ethnically, and religiously motivated violence targeting houses of worship. Among the attacks against religious institutions, 95% (n = 41) targeted houses of worship and involved some type of incendiary device. The first nationally public attack of this nature in the modern era was the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 15, 1963.47 This attack pre-dates the

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period encapsulated in the GTD. At the time, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church served as headquarters for the mass meetings and rallies in support of the civil rights movement occurring in Birmingham. Killed in the attack were Addie Mae Collins (age 14), Carol Denise McNair (age 14), Carole Robertson (age 14), and Cynthia Wesley (age 11). The bomb was planted by members of the Ku Klux Klan in an effort to terrorize the Black community and its leadership, to intimidate them into stopping their struggle for civil rights. Instead, it shocked a nation. As distinct from this attack and also distinct from the armed attacks that occur at houses of worship, contemporary facility/infrastructure attacks that target houses of worship did not involve fatalities. The majority of these attacks were carried out by anti-Muslim extremists, closely followed by white supremacists/nationalists, and then anti-Semitic and neoNazi extremists. On August 5, 2017, exactly five years later to the day of the attack on the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin, Michael Hari (age 47), Michael McWhorter (age 29), and Joe Morris (age 22), members of the White Rabbit Three Percent Illinois Freedom Fighters Militia, drove 500 miles to throw an explosive device into the Dar Al-Farooq Mosque in Bloomington, Minnesota.48 Similar to the Birmingham church bombing, this attack was committed by a group rather than an individual. The White Rabbit Three Percent Illinois Freedom Fighters Militia was founded by Hari in 2017 in Clarence, Illinois (Ford County), initially under the name Patriot Freedom Fighters, later adopting the White Rabbit nomenclature. They engaged in a series of criminal terrorist activities which included targeting women’s clinics, entering and searching the home of a Hispanic individual while pretending to be law enforcement officers, attempting to sabotage railroad tracks, extortion, armed robbery, as well as planting a pipe bomb on someone else’s property and then reporting them to the police for having the pipe bomb.49 In December 2020, Michael Hari, by then known as Emily Claire Hari, was convicted by a federal jury of hate crime and explosive charges. Hari was sentenced to 53 years in prison on federal charges. In 2022, Hari was sentenced to 14 years following a guilty plea related to an attack on an Illinois women’s health center and abortion clinic. He is expected to be 100 years old when finally released from prison.50 McWhorter was sentenced to a combined 15 years and 10 months, and Morris to a combined 14 years and two months for their roles in the mosque and the clinic attack.51 While the imprisonment of Hari, McWhorter, and Morris likely ends the operation of the White Rabbit Three Percent Illinois Freedom Fighters Militia, its ideological underpinnings are part of the larger anti-government militia movement and the three-percenter movement. The III% or 3%, as they are also known, are a sub-category of the anti-government militia movement. They cast themselves in the role of the American patriots who overthrew

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tyrannical British rule. Three percent refers to the unproven idea that only 3% of the colonial population actually fought against the British during the American Revolution.52 The White Rabbit Three Percent Illinois Freedom Fighters Militia is illustrative of the ideological smorgasbord presented by many of these groups. In their case, this organization not only engaged in the weapons stockpiling and paramilitary training emblematic of militia groups, but their religious, ethnic, and gender-based attack targets are characteristic of a mindset aligned with white christian nationalism. Other Facility/Infrastructure Attacks A finding that emerges when examining facility/infrastructure attacks that did not involve religious institutions is that while the identity of the assailants may have been unknown, an association between extremist ideology type and the nature of the facility targeted can be identified. The remaining targets were private property, businesses, and educational institutions. Private property was predominately targeted by white supremacists/ nationalists, representing 36% (n = 11) of perpetrators. Sixty percent (n = 5) of businesses were predominantly targeted by anti-Muslim or anti-Arab extremists. While 75% (n = 4) of educational institutions were attacked by anti-Semitic extremists. The weapon used in these instances was some type of incendiary device, either arson/fire, Molotov cocktail/petrol bomb, or gasoline/alcohol. Private Property as Target The majority of the attacks against the property of private individuals were carried out by white supremacists/nationalists at 34% (n = 11) and Klux Klan (KKK) extremists at 26%. Anti-Muslim extremists and anti-Semitic extremists were each responsible for 20% of these attacks. Two attacks were on vehicles, while the remaining were on residential premises. In many instances, perpetrators left a calling card: they spray-painted KKK, or left derogatory graffiti targeting Jews or Muslims. In Fairfield, California, a white supremacist/nationalist threw a firebomb at an unoccupied car because he wanted to make a statement. White supremacists/nationalists in Denver, Colorado, set fire to the home of an organizer on November 5, 2018, who was attempting to remove the mention of slavery from the Colorado Constitution. Nine months later, on August 7, 2019, white supremacists/nationalists were responsible for an explosion at the residence of an interracial couple in Sterling, Ohio. The attack included spray-painting racial slurs and a swastika on a garage and vehicles at the location. With the exception of the firebomb thrown at the car, the attacks directed against the property of private individuals were undertaken by multiple assailants.

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In Medford, Oregon, on May 5, 2008, an incendiary explosive device (IED) was left on a yard, and the letters KKK and a cross were burned into the grass. KKK was spray-painted on the home of a local organizer before the home was set on fire in Jackson, Mississippi, on February 9, 2017. Two months later, on April 27, 2017, in Vacaville, California, KKK was spraypainted on a vehicle, and it was set on fire. This was three days before and 10 miles away from the car firebombing in Fairfield, California. These are not incidents from a bygone era. They are all products of the twenty-first century. The same anti-Muslim extremist threw a Molotov cocktail or petrol bomb at both a bodega and a home in Queens (NYC, NY) on January 1, 2012. Ultimately, they committed four attacks in different locations that day in Queens. Anti-Muslim extremists in Kansas City, Missouri, used charcoal lighter fluid to set fire to the home of a Muslim couple on April 24, 2018. That summer, on July 12, 2018, an anti-Semitic extremist attempted to burn down an entire complex to target Jewish people by pouring gasoline around his own condominium in Miami, Florida. He was apprehended before he could start the fire. Nazi memorabilia were found in his residence. Businesses as Targets A Holocaust memorial museum in Terre Haute, Indiana, was set on fire by white supremacists/nationalists on November 18, 2003. First, they threw a brick through the main glass door. A gasoline or alcohol-based incendiary device followed. Written on the wall on the side of the building was, “remember Timothy McVeigh.” Timothy McVeigh, a domestic terrorist ideologically aligned with the far-right, perpetrated the Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people, including 19 children, and injuring another 680. The Oklahoma City bombing remains the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in the United States McVeigh was executed at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 2001. This incident was an attack on a Jewish institution by a white supremacist/nationalist, committed in the name of Timothy McVeigh. Again, we see the ideological meshing within far-right extremism. Anti-Muslim or anti-Arab extremists attacked businesses in New York, North Dakota, and Florida. As noted supra, 2012 began with anti-Muslim extremists throwing a Molotov cocktail/petrol bomb at a bodega in the Queens neighborhood of New York City. This was one of a series of arson attacks in Queens occurring on this day. A restaurant owned by a SomaliMuslim in Grand Forks, North Dakota, was set on fire on December 8, 2015. An Indian-owned convenience store in St. Lucie, Florida, was set on fire on March 10, 2017. The perpetrator believed the store was owned by Muslims and claimed he “wanted to run the Arabs out of our country.” As we know,

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Indians are not Arabs; they are Asians. A month earlier, on February 6th, in Manchester, New Hampshire, “KKK” was spray-painted on the walls of the Rodriquez Market and Restaurant after it was set on fire. Educational Institutions as Targets Among the four educational institutions that were victimized, three were Jewish schools and one was a social justice center. All facilities sustained some property damage, but there were no injuries or fatalities. Less than a week after the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA, fires were set at two Yeshivas in Brooklyn, New York, on November 2, 2018. Two months later, a fire was set at a Yeshiva in White Sulfur Springs, New York, on January 1, 2019. Located over 100 miles from New York City, White Sulfur Springs is a rural part of New York state. All three Yeshiva attacks were carried out by anti-Semitic extremists. Fire was set to a social justice center in New Market, Tennessee, on March 29, 2019, by white supremacist/ nationalist extremists. Anti-Semitic graffiti was left at all the locations, along with white supremacist graffiti at the social justice center. ORGANIZATIONS Most of the domestic terrorists described in this chapter, despite their ideological inclinations, were considered as unaffiliated, meaning that they were not acting as part of a group. However, most were radicalized by online content and influenced by the range of far-right extremist groups online. The oldest domestic terrorist organization in the United States is the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), first started in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, immediately following the end of the Civil War. The purpose of this organization was to murder politically active Blacks. For the KKK, politically active included not just those exercising their constitutional right to participate in the political process, but also schoolteachers and business owners. The Klan has had multiple rebirths throughout history; in some iterations it has discarded its white robes for business suits. It still endures today. There is no symbol more intimately associated with Christianity than the cross. There is also no visual symbol more intimately associated with the Klan than that cross on fire. From its very beginnings, the Klan’s message of white supremacy has been tied to God and patriotism. In 2022, the SPLC identified almost 300 groups active in the United States that were anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, Christian Identity, KKK, Neo-Confederate, Neo-Nazi, Racist Skinhead, or White Nationalist. This is almost a third higher than the previous year. The SPLC also tracked 11 different KKK and 14 neo-confederate groups across the country. Among

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some neo-confederates, an increased interest in Christian Identity ideology was noted. This section takes a brief look at several emergent organizations which unfortunately are representative of a larger movement. They are Active Clubs, Patriot Front, and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). Among the newer organizations on the scene is Active Clubs, which originated in Europe. They currently have cells in 30 states consisting of white males united by racism and interested in mixed martial arts.53 Active Clubs endeavor to make their racism seem ordinary. A decentralized organization, Active Clubs promote a warrior spirit, envisioning themselves as training to combat a system they see as deliberately plotting against the white race.54 As of October 2023, their recruitment videos on TikTok had 4.5 million views.55 These videos juxtapose physically fit white men with white supremacist, anti-immigrant, or anti-government extremist symbols or activity.56 Some of these videos have been removed, but others are still online. The restoration of European-American culture by embracing white identity and traditional Christian values is the overarching goal of the Active Clubs network.57 Another relatively new organization is Patriot Front. The SPLC has tracked chapters of Patriot Front in 47 states, including the District of Columbia. Following the Unite the Right rally in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, Patriot Front broke off from Vanguard America. Vanguard America, a member of the Nationalist Front, is a white supremacist, anti-Semitic, neofascist organization. Despite the fact that James Alex Fields, Jr., who drove a car into anti-racist demonstrator Heather Heyer and was later convicted of her murder, was carrying a Vanguard America sign at the Unite the Right rally, the organization denied that he was a member. Patriot Front is known as a large distributor of white supremacist propaganda, promoting racism, anti-Semitism, and intolerance of anything allegedly deviating from the protection of their European ethnic and cultural origins.58 Their distribution level of racist propaganda is approximately ten times the rate of other groups, with 20,345 instances of Patriot Front distributing or posting flyers or banners in the five years between 2018 and 2023.59 Patriot Front is a white supremacist organization which, similar to Active Clubs, advocates for a European-American identity. Central to their ideology is the belief that their ancestors conquered America, bequeathing it to them.60 Flash demonstrations are their signature tactic.61 These demonstrations are small, privately organized, relatively short in duration, and are then turned into new online content. While many domestic terrorists act alone, fueled by online extremism, established organizations like the KKK and newer groups like Active Clubs and Patriot Front paint a chilling picture of organized hate. Complementing the overt radicalizing and action-oriented nature of these types of organizations are organizations that pretend to be research and policy organizations,

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instead provide fake information disguised as research. One organization of this type is the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). CIS was founded in 1985 by John Tanton and describes itself as an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization. Since 2016, CIS has been listed by the SLPC as an anti-immigrant hate group for its repeated circulation of white nationalist and anti-Semitic writers in its weekly newsletter. CIS continues to publish debunked pseudo-science and hate speech. Reputable research organizations such as the Immigration Policy Center and CATO have repeatedly criticized publications produced by CIS.62 We will encounter these types of organizations throughout the white christian nationalist space. They disguise their hate and bigotry behind a veneer of business suits, using pseudo-research to legitimize public policy positions intended to reinforce a worldview that marginalizes groups in order to relegate them to the fringes of American society.

CONCLUSION The rise of white christian nationalism is inextricably linked to the surge in violence against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. This ideology promotes the dangerous belief that America was founded as a white Christian nation and should remain that way. It views religious minorities, immigrants, and people of color as a threat to the nation’s identity and core values. It fuels a climate of hate and fear, which is then used to justify violence against those deemed as outsiders, different, or the other. From the earliest days of stolen land and broken treaties to the lynchings of the Jim Crow era, racial and ethnic violence has been a constant, grim refrain in our nation’s story. Today, this shadow continues to lengthen, fueled by the twisted ideologies of the far-right. Intelligence agencies warn that domestic terrorists, driven by racial and ethnic hatred, pose a greater threat than ever before. We see the threat in the numbers. Hate crimes motivated by race, ancestry, or religion continue to dominate. Non-white or non-Christian people are those most frequently targeted. Historically, these groups have always been victims of othering, making them particularly vulnerable to the violence associated with white christian nationalism. The Southern Poverty Law Center identified almost 300 hate groups active in the United States in 2022 alone, including those that are anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, Christian Identity, KKK, Neo-Confederate, Neo-Nazi, Racist Skinhead, or White Nationalist. These organizations continue to proliferate. Far-right extremists motivated by racial, ethnic, or religious animus are the most likely to carry out mass casualty events, being responsible for 62% of all mass casualty attacks perpetrated by the far-right. Six of these massacres were examined in this chapter. In two-thirds of these six cases, the perpetrator

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was 21 years old or younger. This is a deviation from the norm for far-right extremists, where two-thirds of perpetrators are aged between 27 and 61. Not only were these armed assaults committed by those at the lower end of the age range, but the armed assaults were also committed by individuals. Beyond mass shootings, extremists target people’s homes, businesses, religious houses of worship, and schools. In contrast to armed assaults, these attacks were more likely to be committed by a group of people. Though most of the attacks on facilities/infrastructure were by unknown perpetrators, in the cases where there was a known perpetrator, they were more likely to fall within the normative age range than did the armed assault mass casualty perpetrators. Historian and authority on white power movements Kathleen Belew predicts that “without a different response, today’s wave of white extremist violence will certainly crush beneath it the lives of more victims, their families, and their communities, and may indeed seep further into government.”63 One example of this seepage is illustrated in the increasing support among Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives to restore the confederate memorial to Arlington National Cemetery. The monument, which references Lost Cause mythology, had been removed in December 2023 with bipartisan support. Included among the images depicted on the memorial is an enslaved Black woman holding the baby of a white officer and an enslaved Black man wearing a confederate uniform following his enslaver, a white officer, off to war. In June 2024, six months after the monument was removed, the House of Representatives voted on a Republican-sponsored amendment to restore the monument to Arlington National Cemetery. The amendment was defeated, but 89% of the Republicans present and voting that day voted for restoration.64 In what has to take the prize for Orwellian doublethink, the monument commemorating treason and slavery was promoted by supporters of restoration as the Reconciliation Memorial.65 NOTES 1. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “(U) Domestic Violent Extremism Poses Heightened Threat in 2021.” 2. U.S. Department of Justice, “Hate Crimes: Facts and Statistics,” November 14, 2023, https://www​.justice​.gov​/hatecrimes​/hate​-crime​-statistics. 3. START (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism), “Global Terrorism Database (GTD),” [Dataset] (University of Maryland, 2022), https://www​.start​.umd​.edu​/gtd. Of 3,147 U.S.-based incidents in the GTD, 80% contained a group name such as “Ku Klux Klan,” “Earth First,” or a generic identifier such as “anti-government” for perpetrators. From that set, a subset containing all U.S.based incidents occurring in the twenty-first century where the group name or indicator

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was from the far-right was derived. This yielded 706 domestic terrorist incidents attributable to the far-right. It is recognized that some of the 20% of unidentified U.S.-based incidents contained in the GTD could be inferred to be attributed to far-right extremist ideologies by examining the victim or motive, but for consistency, unless otherwise indicated, the population of GTD incidents analyzed for this book only includes those for which some type of perpetrator identifier was listed. Of the 706 incidents attributable to the far-right occurring in the twenty-first century, 300 incidents included a group name or generic indicator for groups which were: anti-Arab extremists, anti-Asian extremists, anti-immigrant extremists, anti-Muslim extremists, anti-Sikh extremists, Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazi extremists, United Aryan Empire, White Rabbit Three Percent Illinois Patriot Militia, and White supremacists/nationalists. 4. START (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism), University of Maryland. (2023). “Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS)” [Data file]. Retrieved from http://www​.start​.umd​.edu​/data​-tools​ /profiles​-individual​-radicalization​-united​-states​-pirus. PIRUS is housed at START, a Department of Homeland Security Emeritus Center of Excellence. The PIRUS dataset includes a sample of persons espousing Islamist, far-right, far-left, or single-issue ideologies. These individuals have (1) radicalized within the U.S., (2) committed an ideologically motivated illegal act (violent or non-violent), and (3) joined a designated terrorist organization or associated with an extremist organization whose leader(s) have been indicted on an ideologically motivated violent offense. START (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism), “Profiles of IndividualizedIndividual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) Codebook.” 5. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “(U) Domestic Violent Extremism Poses Heightened Threat in 2021.” 6. Tim Dickinson, “Constitutional Sheriffs CEO Sam Bushman Has Ties to White Supremacists,” accessed October 23, 2023, https://www​.rollingstone​.com​/politics​/politics​-features​/constitutional​-sheriffs​-ceo​-sam​-bushman​-ties​-white​-supremacists​-1234855624/. 7. START (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism), “GTD Global Terrorism Database Codebook: Methodology, Inclusion, Criteria, and Variables.” 8. Unless otherwise indicated, the remainder of the incident data was derived from the Global Terrorism Database. Calculations made are based on the GTD dataset. START (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism). “Global Terrorism Database” [data file] (2022). https://www​.start​.umd​ .edu​/gtd. Note: mass shootings have been modified by three additions: Buffalo Top’s Market, Pulse Nightclub, and Club Q. 9. CBS News, “Gilroy Garlic Festival Shooting: Alleged Shooter Screamed Out ‘I’m Really Angry’—CBS San Francisco,” July 29, 2019, https://www​.cbsnews​.com​ /sanfrancisco​/news​/gilroy​-garlic​-festival​-mass​-shooting​-alleged​-shooter​-screamed​ -out​-im​-really​-angry/. 10. See, Associated Press, “Sikh Temple Gunman’s Online Activity Probed | CBC News,” CBC, August 6, 2012, https://www​.cbc​.ca​/news​/world​/sikh​-temple​-gunman​ -s​-online​-activity​-probed​-1​.1148690.

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11. Marilyn Elias, “Sikh Temple Killer Wade Michael Page Radicalized in Army,” Intelligence Report, November 11, 2012, https://www​.splcenter​.org​/fighting​-hate​/intelligence​-report​/2012​/sikh​-temple​-killer​-wade​-michael​-page​-radicalized​ -army. 12. Elias. 13. SPLC, “Alleged Sikh Temple Shooter Former Member of Skinhead Band,” Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed June 8, 2024, https://www​.splcenter​.org​/ news​/2012​/08​/06​/alleged​-sikh​-temple​-shooter​-former​-member​-skinhead​-band. 14. Naunihal Singh, “An American Tragedy,” The New Yorker, August 13, 2012, https://www​.newyorker​.com​/news​/news​-desk​/an​-american​-tragedy. 15. ABC News, “Cracking Wisconsin Gunman’s Secret Racist Tattoo Code,” ABC News, accessed June 8, 2024, https://abcnews​.go​.com​/Blotter​/wisconsin​-gunman​-wade​-michael​-pages​-tattoos​-racist​-beliefs​/story​?id​=16949676. 16. Anti-Defamation League, “Deadly Shooting at Pittsburgh Synagogue | ADL,” ADL, October 27, 2018, https://www​.adl​.org​/resources​/blog​/deadly​-shooting​-pittsburgh​-synagogue. 17. ABC News, “Key Moments in Charleston Church Shooting Case as Dylann Roof Pleads Guilty to State Charges,” ABC News, accessed January 15, 2024, https:// abcnews​.go​.com​/US​/key​-moments​-charleston​-church​-shooting​-case​-dylann​-roof​/ story​?id​=46701033. 18. See, Debbie Elliott, “5 Years After Charleston Church Massacre, What Have We Learned?,” NPR, June 17, 2020, sec. Code Switch, https://www​.npr​.org​/2020​/06​ /17​/878828088​/5​-years​-after​-charleston​-church​-massacre​-what​-have​-we​-learned. 19. Dylann Roof, “Dylann Roof Manifesto,” n.d. 20. Office of Public Affairs U.S. Department of Justice, “Jury Recommends Sentence of Death for Pennsylvania Man Convicted for Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting: Press Release,” August 2, 2023, https://www​.justice​.gov​/opa​/pr​/jury​-recommends​ -sentence​-death​-pennsylvania​-man​-convicted​-tree​-life​-synagogue​-shooting. 21. David Nakamura, “Gunman Who Killed 11 in Pittsburgh Synagogue Sentenced to Death,” Washington Post, August 2, 2023, https://www​.washingtonpost​ .com​/national​-security​/2023​/08​/02​/pittsburgh​-tree​-of​-life​-sentence​-bowers/. 22. Office of Public Affairs U.S. Department of Justice, “Jury Recommends Sentence of Death for Pennsylvania Man Convicted for Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting: Press Release.” 23. Associated Press, “Mental Illness Played No Role in Pittsburgh Synagogue Massacre, Prosecution Expert Testifies,” AP News, July 5, 2023, https://apnews​.com​/ article​/pittsburgh​-synagogue​-shooting​-death​-penalty​-trial​-1af​142f​aa6a​d621​49b8​7fc9​ 45930c04f. 24. Paula Reed Ward, “Authorities: Mass Shooting Suspect Said He Wanted ‘all Jews to Die’ | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 28, 2018, https://www​.post​-gazette​.com​/news​/crime​-courts​/2018​/10​/28​/Affidavit​-Suspect​ -robert​-bowers​-pittsburgh​-squirrel​-hill​-mass​-shooting​-tree​-of​-life​-synagogue​/stories​ /201810280173. 25. Alex Amend, “Analyzing a Terrorist’s Social Media Manifesto: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooter’s Posts on Gab,” Southern Poverty Law Center, October 28,

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2018, https://www​.splcenter​.org​/hatewatch​/2018​/10​/28​/analyzing​-terrorists​-social​ -media​-manifesto​-pittsburgh​-synagogue​-shooters​-posts​-gab. 26. Anti-Defamation League, “Deadly Shooting at Pittsburgh Synagogue | ADL.” 27. Anti-Defamation League. 28. Amend, “Analyzing a Terrorist’s Social Media Manifesto.” 29. Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, “Who We Are,” HIAS, accessed June 13, 2024, https://hias​.org​/who/. 30. Morgan Lee and Paul Weber, “The Texas Shooter in a Racist Walmart Attack Is Going to Prison. Here’s What to Know about the Case | AP News,” accessed January 16, 2024, https://apnews​.com​/article​/el​-paso​-walmart​-texas​-crusius​-bf7​d25f​ 3567​959e​e8b1​21de​abcf1d9a1. See also, Office of Public Affairs U.S. Department of Justice, “Texas Man Sentenced to 90 Consecutive Life Sentences for 2019 Mass Shooting at Walmart in El Paso, Texas, Killing 23 People and Injuring 22 Others,” July 7, 2023, https://www​.justice​.gov​/opa​/pr​/texas​-man​-sentenced​-90​-consecutive​ -life​-sentences​-2019​-mass​-shooting​-walmart​-el​-paso​-texas. 31. Yasmeen Abutaleb, “What’s inside the Hate-Filled Manifesto Linked to the Alleged El Paso Shooter,” Washington Post, August 4, 2019, https://www​.washingtonpost​.com​/politics​/2019​/08​/04​/whats​-inside​-hate​-filled​-manifesto​-linked​-el​-paso​ -shooter/. 32. Abutaleb. 33. Lee and Weber, “The Texas Shooter in a Racist Walmart Attack Is Going to Prison. Here’s What to Know about the Case | AP News.” 34. Elliott McLaughlin, Casey Tolan, and Amanda Watts, “What We Know about Robert Aaron Long, the Suspect in Atlanta Spa Shootings,” CNN, March 17, 2021, https://www​.cnn​.com​/2021​/03​/17​/us​/robert​-aaron​-long​-suspected​-shooter​/ index​.html. 35. Kate Brumback, “Man Pleads Guilty to 4 Asian Spa Killings, Sentenced to Life,” AP News, July 28, 2021, https://apnews​.com​/article​/shootings​-georgia​-massage​-business​-shootings​-4c9​d611​102b​25b4​9b8b​fee2​76278c472. 36. Brumback. 37. FOX 5 Atlanta, “Man Accused in Atlanta Spa Shooting Appears in Fulton County Court for Hearing,” FOX 5 Atlanta, September 28, 2023, https://www​.fox5atlanta​.com​/news​/robert​-aaron​-long​-fulton​-county​-atlanta​-spa​-shootings. 38. Craig Whitlock, David Willman, and Alex Horton, “Massacre Suspect Said He Modified Bushmaster Rifle to Hold More Ammunition,” Washington Post, May 16, 2022, https://www​.washingtonpost​.com​/investigations​/2022​/05​/15​/buffalo​-shooting​ -gun​-bought​-bushmaster/. 39. Mark Morales et al., “Buffalo Grocery Store Mass Shooter Apologizes for Racist Attack and Receives Sentence of Life in Prison | CNN,” accessed January 15, 2024, https://www​.cnn​.com​/2023​/02​/15​/us​/buffalo​-tops​-grocery​-shooting​-payton​ -gendron​-state​-sentencing​/index​.html. 40. US Census Bureau, “Census Bureau: Data,” Data: Try out our new way to explore data, accessed June 28, 2023, https://www​.census​.gov​/data​.html. 41. U.S. Census Bureau.

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42. Ben Collins, “The Buffalo Shooting Suspect Apparently Posted a Manifesto Citing ‘Great Replacement’ Theory,” NBC News, May 15, 2022, https://www​ .nbcnews​.com​/news​/us​-news​/buffalo​-supermarket​-shooting​-suspect​-posted​-apparent​ -manifesto​-repeate​-rcna28889. 43. Tahir Abbas et al., “The Buffalo Attack—An Analysis of the Manifesto,” International Centre for Counter-Terrorism—ICCT, accessed June 14, 2024, https:// www​.icct​.nl​/publication​/buffalo​-attack​-analysis​-manifesto. 44. Vikrant Singh (ed.), “Who Is Payton Gendron, the 19-Year-Old Buffalo Mass Shooter? Here’s What His Parents Said before the Hearing,” WION News, February 16, 2023, https://www​.wionews​.com​/world​/who​-is​-payton​-gendron​-the​ -19​-year​-old​-buffalo​-mass​-shooter​-heres​-what​-his​-parents​-said​-before​-the​-hearing​ -562637. 45. Collins, “The Buffalo Shooting Suspect Apparently Posted a Manifesto Citing ‘Great Replacement’ Theory.” 46. Death Penalty Information Center, “U.S. Department of Justice Authorizes First Federal Death Penalty Case for Payton Gendron, Teen Who Killed Ten Black People in 2022,” Death Penalty Information Center, accessed January 25, 2024, https://deathpenaltyinfo​.org​/news​/u​-s​-department​-of​-justice​-authorizes​-first​-federal​ -death​-penalty​-case​-for​-payton​-gendron​-teen​-who​-killed​-ten​-black​-people​-in​-2022. 47. This was by no means the first attack particularly on a Black house of worship. In prior events, awareness tended to be limited to the local community and readers of Black newspapers. Because of the expanded role of television and television news, which the activities of the ongoing civil rights movement had focused on the southern states, this attack on a Black house of worship had national exposure. 48. Mukhtar M. Ibrahim, “MN Mosque Bombing Suspect Leads Anti-Government Militia,” MPR News, March 15, 2018, accessed January 1, 2024, https://www​ .mprnews​.org​/story​/2018​/03​/15​/bloomington​-mosque​-bombing​-suspect​-leads​-anti​ -government​-militia. See also, “TEVUS Analyst Portal,” accessed January 1, 2024, https://tap​.cast​.uark​.edu/. 49. U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of Illinois, “Central District of Illinois | Former Ford County Resident Sentenced to 14 Years in Prison for Charges Related to Domestic Terrorism | United States Department of Justice,” July 13, 2022, https://www​.justice​.gov​/usao​-cdil​/pr​/former​-ford​-county​-resident​-sentenced​ -14​-years​-prison​-charges​-related​-domestic. 50. Chuck Goudie et al., “White Rabbit Militia Leader Pleads Guilty to Attack on Illinois Abortion Center,” ABC7 Chicago, February 9, 2022, https://abc7chicago​.com​ /white​-rabbit​-militia​-emily​-claire​-hari​-illinois​-abortion​-center​-bombing​/11550366/. 51. U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of Illinois, “Central District of Illinois | Former Ford County Resident Sentenced to 14 Years in Prison for Charges Related to Domestic Terrorism | United States Department of Justice.” 52. SPLC, “Three Percenters,” Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed January 2, 2024, https://www​.splcenter​.org​/fighting​-hate​/extremist​-files​/group​/three​-percenters. 53. Odette Yousef, “‘Active Club’ Hate Groups Are Growing in the U.S.—and Making Themselves Seen,” NPR, July 19, 2023, sec. National Security, https://www​ .npr​.org​/2023​/07​/19​/1188111769​/active​-club​-hate​-groups.

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54. Anti-Defamation League, “Active Club Network | ADL,” December 14, 2021, https://www​.adl​.org​/resources​/backgrounder​/active​-club​-network.[date accessed January 31, 2024] 55. Emily Baker-White, “On TikTok, White Supremacist ‘Active Club’ Recruitment Videos May Have Reached Millions,” Forbes, accessed January 31, 2024, https://www​.forbes​.com​/sites​/emilybaker​-white​/2023​/10​/17​/tiktok​-white​-supremacist​-active​-club​-recruitment​-videos/. 56. Baker-White. 57. Anti-Defamation League, “Active Club Network | ADL.” 58. Anti-Defamation League, “Patriot Front | Center on Extremism,” 2023, https://extremismterms​.adl​.org​/glossary​/patriot​-front. 59. SPLC, “Map of Hate Group Flyering in the U.S.,” Southern Poverty Law Center, December 31, 2023, https://www​.splcenter​.org​/flyering​-map. 60. Anti-Defamation League, “Patriot Front | ADL,” accessed January 31, 2024, https://www​.adl​.org​/resources​/backgrounder​/patriot​-front. 61. Holly Yan, “Police Say Men Linked to a White Supremacist Group Planned to Riot. Here’s What We Know about Patriot Front, Its Young Leader and How It’s Different,” CNN, June 13, 2022, https://www​.cnn​.com​/2022​/06​/13​/us​/patriot​-front​ -beliefs​-history​-explainer​/index​.html. 62. SPLC, “Center for Immigration Studies,” Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed January 31, 2024, https://www​.splcenter​.org​/fighting​-hate​/extremist​-files​/ group​/center​-immigration​-studies. 63. Kathleen Belew, “There are no Lone Wolves: The White Power Movement at War,” in A Field Guide to White Supremacy, ed. Kathleen Belew and Ramon a. Gutierrez (Oakland: University of California Press, 2021), 314. 64. Aaron Blake, “Analysis | Republicans Embrace a Confederate Symbol, after Years of Unease,” Washington Post, June 14, 2024, https://www​.washingtonpost​.com​ /politics​/2024​/06​/14​/republicans​-embrace​-confederate​-symbol​-after​-years​-unease/. 65. Blake.

Chapter 3

The Patriarchy

The right of women to make decisions on their own reproductive health, free of coercive state action, does not end or begin with abortion. In some respects, abortion is a proxy for all those rights related to an individual’s deepest sense of bodily integrity and autonomy. It is about the right of all people to make fundamental decisions about their own bodies. This includes the right to have children or not have children. If having children, it includes not only the right to choose to have them, but when to have them and how many to have. Ultimately, the issue is not about abortion or contraception. The issue is about who gets to decide. There is an old axiom that the power to tax is the power to destroy. In this context, it can be argued that the power to prohibit is the power to compel. If a state can overcome individual bodily autonomy and has the power to prohibit abortion, then it has the power not simply to force births, but also the power to mandate abortions. Those who are truly anti-abortion need to be on the side of removing government from the equation. The People’s Republic of China is typically used to illustrate governmentcoerced abortion. The reality is that it is not necessary to look that far for examples. This is not a reference to the decades-long sterilization of the mentally deficient. Reproductive control in the United States extends beyond that example. In Mississippi, the practice was so common it was referred to as the “Mississippi appendectomy.” Black women were routinely sterilized without their knowledge, not to mention without their consent. Many of these women never knew why they were unable to have children. Fannie Lou Hamer, the voting rights activist, was one of those women. In Puerto Rico, women were unknowingly sterilized in the furtherance of policies claiming to reduce poverty and to minimize population growth on the island. These are Black and 47

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brown people. This is not only a woman’s issue. The simplicity of the chant is also its truth: women’s rights are human rights. A portrait of the ideal family is the central focus of the white christian nationalist mindset. This includes a stereotypically authoritarian patriarch who heads the family, coupled with a submissive wife. A woman’s role is that of wife and mother. Talk of the ideal or traditional family is actually a euphemism for the male dominance that is entrenched in christian nationalism. Acceptance of a gender hierarchy in christian nationalism mirrors the acceptance of the racial hierarchy at the base of white supremacy/nationalism. For that matter, white supremacist organizations have traditionally also had a gender hierarchy. It is important to recognize the manner in which these traditional approaches, when they existed, have only been the norm for white middleclass or affluent households. Poor white women, as well as Black and brown women, have typically always been in the workforce. They were traditionally limited to service jobs like housecleaners or other service-type minimum wage jobs. Because a woman’s income was so important to their families, a difference between Black and white households emerged when it came to gender and education. White families who had the ability would educate their sons because, after all it was a man’s job to support his family. If a Black family could only educate one, it would be their daughter so she did not have to work in someone’s kitchen. But Black and brown families have always been excluded from the mythological portrait of America. Their experiences are therefore irrelevant. What is relevant is that an environment which promotes fear and restrictive social controls is the most likely to generate the female dependence and submission desired in the white christian nationalist nation. This chapter examines the weaponization of violence and the weaponization of the law used to redefine a woman’s place in society.

WEAPONIZING VIOLENCE In the twenty-first century, attacks targeting women represent 12% (n = 300) of extremist attacks by the far-right.1 The attacks involved two types of ideologically motivated perpetrators: anti-abortion extremists and incels. When it comes to domestic terrorism, anti-abortion extremism is different from being an ideologue or even being fervently anti-abortion. Anti-abortion extremists resort to crimes to advance their viewpoint. Their targets are usually facilities such as women’s health centers, abortion clinics, Planned Parenthood clinics, or similar venues. Anti-abortion extremists have also been known to target abortion providers or facilitators. Incels are a sub-category of male supremacists who refer to themselves as involuntarily celibate, hence the term “incel.”

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They blame women for the fact of their celibacy, which they believe in turn justifies their violent attacks on women. As will be discussed below, their attacks are not only violent, but they can be deadly. The gains made by women in the professional workforce in the later part of the 20th century were facilitated by their ability to control their own reproduction. In an environment where female autonomy is denigrated, it should not be surprising that 83% percent (n = 36) of the incidents targeting women involved anti-abortion extremists. However, the 17% of incidents attributable to incel extremists were responsible for 95% (n = 21) of the casualties committed by these anti-women extremists. However, these are not the only threat vectors targeting women. Operating under the radar for many people was the corresponding campaign to undermine Roe in the courts. This section examines the physical threats targeting women. It will begin with attacks targeting a woman’s ability to access reproductive health care, followed by attacks against women motivated by male supremacist ideology. Anti-Abortion Extremism Anti-abortion extremist activity occurs inversely to the trends of far-right extremism overall. Aggregate numbers for far-right extremism from 1970 through the first half of 2021 have an upward trajectory, with 42% of far-right activity in the 50 years of data reported in the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) occurring in this century. With anti-abortion extremism, that trend is reversed. For that reason, this examination of anti-abortion extremism will begin with a look at that aggregated trend from the beginning. The GTD contains a total of 234 domestic terrorist attacks attributable to anti-abortion extremists, representing 33% (n = 706) of the identifiable overall far-right activity in the GTD. This is indicative of how important limiting women’s bodily autonomy is to the far-right agenda. In the 43 years represented in figure 3.1, only 13% occurred from 2001 onward. Terrorist activity by antiabortion extremists had its peak in 1995 with 23 incidents. The first anti-abortion inspired domestic terrorist incident captured in the GTD occurred four years after Roe v. Wade (1973). On February 23rd, 1977, a fire was started on the floor above a Planned Parenthood Clinic in St. Paul, Minnesota. The purpose was to protest abortion and to sabotage abortion facilities operating in the state of Minnesota. For the next 43 years, women’s health care facilities were targeted by pipe bombs, letter bombs, gasoline, Molotov cocktails, dynamite, and other types of incendiary devices. This does not even address the doctors and clinic staff who were stalked or targeted for death, or the women who had to go through obstacle courses to access health care. These attacks sometimes occurred in clusters. On Christmas Day in 1984, the same four individuals bombed three different clinics in

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Figure 3.1  Domestic Terror Incidents by Anti-Abortion Extremists 1977–2020. Data Source: Global Terrorism Database. Source: Figure by author.

Pensacola, Florida. On December 30, 1985, John Brockhoeft set fires at two different centers in Cincinnati, Ohio. On Christmas Day in 1988, an unknown perpetrator set fire to three different clinics in Dallas, Texas. On September 8, 1998, fires were set at two clinics in Fayetteville, N.C. by unknown perpetrators. Less than a month later, on October 3rd, sticks of dynamite and a timer were found at two other clinics near Fayetteville. Attacks by anti-abortion extremists on women’s health care facilities declined over time due in part to their success in forcing the closure of some facilities. The impact of the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act2 played an important role in this decline as well. The FACE Act prohibited the use, or attempt to use, physical force, the threat of physical force, or physical obstruction to intentionally injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone obtaining an abortion, or exercising or trying to exercise their First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship; as well as prohibiting the intentional damage or destruction of a reproductive health care facility or religious place of worship. Overnight, the FACE Act turned activity that had been subject to the patchwork enforcement of multiple state and local jurisdictions into a federal crime. The impact of shifting legal dynamics contributing to a belief they were close to obtaining their goal of reversing Roe could also be considered a contributing factor to the decline in attacks on these facilities. Protests and the number of attacks on abortion clinics declined following the passage of the FACE Act. Those that did occur became more deadly. On January 18, 1995, armed with a shotgun and two pipe bombs, Paul James Priestley entered a middle school in Grants Pass, Oregon. He threatened school officials and demanded a ride to an abortion clinic so he could blow up

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the clinic and kill a couple of doctors. After a scuffle with a wrestling coach, Priestley was shot in the hip with his own gun and subsequently apprehended by law enforcement. Priestley was 58 years old and a retired U.S. Navy veteran.3 He needed a ride to the abortion clinic because before going to the school he had parked next to the gas pumps at the Murphy Store in Grants Pass and used a Molotov cocktail to blow up his truck because he believed, among other things, that pornography and drugs were sold at the store. The explosion destroyed the landmark store as well as his truck. After pleading guilty to a firearms charge, Priestley was sentenced to 13 years and 10 months in federal prison. He hung himself in his prison cell in 1996. As will be subsequently shown, this was not the first mention of Grants Pass, Oregon in the annals of anti-abortion extremists. In the morning of Sunday, May 31, 2009, in the foyer of the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas, Dr. George Tiller, one of the few remaining doctors in the United States who performed late-term abortions, was shot and killed.4 Scott Roeder was convicted of the premeditated first-degree murder of Dr. Tiller. Roeder was 52 years old at the time he assassinated Dr. Tiller. At his trial he was allowed to present a defense of justification. This is where a defendant admits to committing the crime but argues there was a legally permitted explanation for their actions. Roeder testified that in 1992, after watching the 700 Club, an evangelical television show, he was born again. “I knelt down and I did accept Christ as my saviour [sic].”5 Roeder traced his belief that Dr. Tiller needed to die back to 1993. This means that he spent 16 years thinking that a man needed to die and contemplating how to kill him. Roeder testified to his consideration of different methods of killing Dr. Tiller. These included shooting him at his clinic, using a sniper rifle from a nearby church, or chopping off his hands with a sword. He eventually decided Dr. Tiller had to be killed because even without his hands he could train other practitioners.6 Dr. George Tiller had long been a target. Around the time that Scott Roeder started thinking that Dr. Tiller needed to die, on August 19, 1993, Dr. Tiller was shot in both arms by Rachelle Ranae “Shelley” Shannon. Shannon was a 37-year-old housewife and mother of two children who traveled over 1,700 miles from her home to kill someone. Like Priestly, she was also from Grants Pass, Oregon. Shannon flew from Grants Pass to Oklahoma City, then rented a car and drove to Wichita, Kansas. After first joining a group of demonstrators outside Dr. Tiller’s clinic, Shannon shot him as he drove away. In a letter Shannon said “[I]m not denying that I shot Tiller. But I deny that it was wrong. It was the most holy, most righteous thing I’ve ever done.”7 Rachelle Shannon’s statements are very similar to those that would later be made almost two decades later by Scott Roeder, who acted on a religious imperative to murder Dr. Tiller. Lost in the discussion of who did what and why is

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consideration of what it must have been like for Dr. Tiller to spend all those years knowing that there was a target on his back. When examining Rochelle Shannon’s history, the attempted murder of Dr. Tiller was the culmination of a history of involvement in clinic attacks. After conviction and sentencing to 11 years for the attempted murder and aggravated assault of Dr. Tiller, she pled guilty to ten federal charges related to the 1992 fire-bombings of multiple abortion clinics. Shannon was sentenced to 20 years on those charges. Rochelle Shannon’s activity points to the importance of not dismissing facility attacks as merely attacks against property and therefore not as important. Shannon’s known activity preceded the 1992 attacks. She had prior arrests in other states as well as the imposition of a shared $12 million judgment for damages.8 This is a clear illustration of a trajectory of escalating attacks and violence. Eric Rudolph generated a multiyear reign of terror. His bombings across the southern United States, between 1996 and 1998, in opposition to abortion on demand and global socialism, included the 1996 bombing at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, where two people were killed and over 100 were wounded. In 2005, he pled guilty to four bombing incidents and was sentenced to four life sentences without parole.9 Armed with four semiautomatic rifles, five handguns, two other rifles, a shotgun, propane tanks, and 500 rounds of ammunition, Robert Lewis Dear, Jr., 57 years old, opened fire on a Planned Parenthood Clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on November 27, 2015.10 By the time the five-hour standoff was over, three people were dead and eight injured, including one dead and four wounded law enforcement officers.11 Subsequently found to be incompetent to stand trial, Dear was indefinitely committed to the state hospital.12 These fatalities among those attempting to provide or obtain medical care stand in stark juxtaposition to a simultaneous decline in overall attacks on women’s health care facilities. They were also a companion to the emergence of a new threat. Incels Incels accounted for 95% (n = 21) of the murders of women examined in this chapter. Not included in this chapter are the Asian spa killings, which were discussed in chapter two. With the majority of the casualties in the spa killings being female, that incident could have been argued to more appropriately belong in this chapter, except that the perpetrator, Robert Aaron Long, while fitting the typical age range found among incels, was not a self-described incel. Incels see themselves as involuntarily celibate due to being rejected by women. In Long’s case, he was having sex, although it was sex for which he paid. He claimed a sexual addiction which he blamed on women. This is

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similar to Tate’s toxic masculinity and misogyny, blaming sexual assault on the victim. In this case, Long blamed the murders on the female victims for allegedly forcing men to have sex with them. Misogyny is a characteristic of incels. Also characteristic is the simultaneous embrace of the label of an involuntary celibate while rejecting or resenting the fact of their involuntary celibacy. Incel attacks are not simply violent; they are deadly. Overall, approximately 11% (n = 111) of the armed attacks committed by far-right extremists are mass casualty events. This compares to 40% (n = 5) of the armed attacks committed by incel extremists.13 Another 40% of the armed attacks committed by incel extremists were mass shootings. What is more telling is that while 56% (n = 111) of the armed assaults committed by far-right domestic terrorists had no casualties, each and every domestic terror attack committed by an incel extremist had casualties. It should be noted that, as with all things pertaining to women, the collection of data on domestic terrorist attacks on women because they are women is a relatively new phenomenon. While the cases are few, they are nonetheless informative. Contextualizing Violence: Male Supremacy Nearly one in three women has reported experiencing severe physical violence at some point in their life by a current or former intimate partner.14 Eighty-one percent (n = 95) of the reported victims in gender-based hate crimes, in 2022, were women.15 Australian investigative journalist Jess Hill places domestic violence squarely upon a bedrock of a thousand years of patriarchy, “[m]en don’t abuse women because society tells them it’s OK . . . . Men abuse women because society tells them they are entitled to be in control.”16 The poster child for male dominance in the twenty-first century is Andrew Tate. Tate, a former kickboxer turned internet celebrity, has become a divisive force in the online world. His rise to fame was built on a self-proclaimed alpha-male status, a flashy lifestyle, and misogynistic commentary. His message is designed to appeal to a sense of aggrieved masculinity. He paints success as a zero-sum game, defined by luxury cars, dominance over women, and unbridled egotism. Tate preaches that “women belong in the home, cannot drive, and are a man’s property.”17 In addition to rhetoric which frequently disparages women, Tate also maintains that women bear responsibility for their own sexual assault and belong in subservient roles within relationships. Tate’s hyper-masculine posturing, known to critics as toxic masculinity, mixed with the promise of rapid wealth, has proven enticing to the many adolescent and young adult males for whom he is increasingly a role model. Tate was eventually banned from major social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. Unfortunately, it may have been the

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proverbial closing of the door to the chicken coop after the fox had entered. Prior to his removal from TikTok, Tate had amassed over 11.6 billion views for his rants about male dominance, female submissiveness, and wealth.18 He had 4.7 million followers on Instagram before Meta removed his account.19 Tate currently has 9 million followers on X, formerly known as Twitter. In late 2022, Tate and his brother Tristan were arrested on charges of human trafficking, rape, and forming an organized crime group. After 60 days on house arrest, they were released pending trial. Tate’s continuing impact lies in his ability to tap into feelings of male disenfranchisement. A study by Internet Matters found that 23% of adolescent boys between the ages 15 and 16 had a favorable view of Andrew Tate. This favorability more than doubled for young men, with 56% of young fathers up to the age of 35 having a positive view of Andrew Tate.20 Tate’s favorability among those raising children has profound implications for the continuing spread of his brand of misogyny and are indicative of the spread of male dominance and accompanying female subservience integral to white christian nationalism. It also demonstrates the ease with which the script can be expanded from women being responsible for their own violent victimization by sexual assault to women being deserving of violent victimization due to their responsibility for male celibacy. Incel Attacks The first domestic terrorist incident in the GTD attributable to an incel extremist was on August 4, 2009. This was less than three months after the murder of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita. That evening, it took 46-year-old George Sodini one minute to fire 36 times into a class at LA Fitness in Collier Township, Pennsylvania, about 10 miles outside Pittsburgh. He killed three people and wounded nine before killing himself. This was a mass shooting, not a mass casualty event. A mass shooting involves shooting at least four people other than the perpetrator. They can be killed or wounded. Mass casualty attacks involve the killing of at least four people other than the perpetrator. Sodini’s online diary indicated his resentment of the 30 million women who had rejected him. I actually look good. I dress good, am clean-shave, bathe, touch of cologne—yet 30 million women rejected me—over an 18 or 25-year period. . . . Thirty million is my rough guesstimate of how many desirable single women there are.

On December 24, 2008, eight months before the attack, he posted in his online blog “[m]oving into Christmas again. No girlfriend since 1984 .  .  . Who knows why. I am not ugly or too weird. No sex since July 1990 either”21 Sodini’s online musings also indicated his resentment of the Black men

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who, in his mind, had their choice of white women. This linkage of white supremacy to incel extremism would be seen in subsequent incel attacks. George Sodini’s mode of relaxation was to google for hours to relax.22 Once again we have an image of internet immersion. “I will be a god, punishing women and all of humanity for their depravity.”23 It was the attack five years later by Elliot Rodger that brought incel extremism fully into view. On May 23, 2014, Rodger killed six people and wounded 13 others in two coordinated incidents in Isla Vista, California. Beginning at his home where he killed his two roommates and a visitor with a knife, he then drove around the nearby Santa Barbara campus of the University of California, shooting and running into victims with his car before killing himself. Rodger was 22 years old. He left behind a 140-page manifesto detailing his motivations and plans for the attack titled “My Twisted Life.” Postings on an incel online forum revealed he had a misogynistic and white supremacist ideology. Rodger’s manifesto became very popular on incel sites. He declared “I cannot kill every single female on earth, but I can deliver a devasting blow that will shake all of them to the core of their wicked hearts.”24 On the day of the murders, Rodger also posted a YouTube video titled “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution.” In it he said [y]ou think I’m unworthy of you. That’s a crime I can never get over. If I can’t have you girls, I will destroy you. You denied me a happy life, and in return I will deny all of you life; its [sic] only fair. I hate all of you.25

Future murderers adhering to incel extremist ideologies would pay homage to Elliot Rodger. One of those was Christopher Harper-Mercer, aged 26, who, armed with six handguns, killed nine and injured seven others after holding them hostage in a classroom at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, on October 1, 2015. He killed himself after a shootout with the police. HarperMercer left a manifesto revealing a fascination with Elliot Rodger and school shooters. His manifesto also revealed a hatred of Black men, whom he blamed for corrupting (white) women.26 “The Black man is the most vile creature on the planet. He is a beast beyond measure.” There is a particular irony to this thread of Harper-Mercer’s thoughts, which is discussed at the end of this section. Like Rodger, his postings in incel message forums revealed misogynistic and white supremacist ideological leanings. In Tallahassee, Florida, Scott Paul Beirle killed two people and wounded five at Hot Yoga on November 2, 2018, before killing himself. He was 40 years old. Shortly before this attack, Beirle wrote a note stating that

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[i]f I can’t find one decent female to live with, I will find many indecent females to die with. If they are intent on denying me life, I will have no choice but to deny them life. . . . Their arrogance, indifference, and treachery will finally be exposed, and punished. If I can’t make a living, I will make a killing.27

Beirle self-identified as an involuntary celibate. Disturbingly, he had previously taught English and Social Studies in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C., for two years before resigning in 2007.28 He later taught briefly in Florida. Beirle is remembered from high school as openly admiring Adolph Hitler and Aryan Nation.29 This appears to be a continuing interest, since after finishing graduate school in Florida, people who met Beirle through a social media website in 2013 recounted his stated admiration of Hitler’s genocide. Seventeen YouTube video postings Beirle made in 2014, four years before the Florida massacre, not only focused on misogyny and involuntary celibacy, but were also anti-immigrant, anti-interracial couples, anti-racial diversity, anti-Obamacare, and possibly suggestive of anti-government ideations, anti-police. Like Harper-Mercer, Beirle also revered Elliot Rodger, making him the subject of one of his videos. The only identifiable shooting by an incel contained in the GTD that could not be classified as either a mass shooting or a mass casualty event occurred at the Westgate Entertainment District in Glendale, Arizona, on May 20, 2020. Armed with an AR-15, Armando Hernandez, Jr., 20 years old, wounded three people, two women and one man. A self-professed incel, Hernandez targeted couples “to make them feel the pain [he] feels daily.” Authorities believed two of the three people he shot were a couple.30 Identifying with Whiteness A criticism regarding the inclusion of incels within the white christian nationalist family is that not all incels are white. In a 2020 survey conducted by the moderators of a popular incel site, 55% of respondents identified as white or Caucasian.31 It would be easy to say that with almost half of the respondents not identifying as white, being a misogynist is an equal opportunity endeavor. But that would not be accurate. Along with the derogatory terms and violent imagery directed against women, incel social media sites are replete with white supremacist symbols, swastikas, racial slurs, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.32 Under these circumstances, the presence of non-whites on these sites does not signal the exclusion of incel ideology from the white christian nationalist family as much as it demonstrates the allure of whitetopped racial hierarchies, even for non-whites. Among the perpetrators of incel violence in this section, both Elliott Rodger and Christopher Harper-Mercer could be considered non-white. Both had

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white fathers. Rodger’s mother was Asian and Harper-Mercer’s mother was Black. Despite this, they both advocated for a white supremacist hierarchy. “How could an inferior, ugly Black boy be able to get a white girl and not me” Rodger once wrote, continuing, “I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves. I deserve it more.” For Rodger encountering “white women with a ‘full-blooded Asian’ or ‘an inferior Mexican guy’ while he ‘was still suffering as a lonely virgin’ was rage inducing.”33 This was despite the fact that he could be considered half-Asian. Nor did the simple fact of one parent’s blackness deter Christopher Harper-Mercer from expressing white supremacist sentiments. After expressing his contempt for Black men in the most derogatory of terms, he insisted that he was not racist. But don’t take these words to be racist. I don’t hate Blacks, just the men. Now of course some of you will be saying, wait, your [sic] 40% [sic] Black aren’t you? Ah yes dear reader. I am but thankfully my partial blackness didn’t come from a man.

What Harper-Mercer labeled the blackness effect only applied to Black men. He argued that “[i]t would be better if all Black women left the beast on the alter and dated a white man. Or lesbian exploration.” Most aptly described by Frantz Fanon more than 70 years ago in his seminal work Black Skin, White Masks, were the psychological effects of racism. Written in 1952, this book addressed the impact of European colonialism on its Black subjects. Unfortunately, Fanon’s conclusions are just as true today. He postulated that for Black children, the impact of racist cultural assumptions promoting white supremacy and Black inferiority produced a contempt for their own dark skin, their blackness. The tension this produced could only be ameliorated by these Black children internally seeing themselves as white. Hence the title of the book Black Skin, White Masks. Incels are included within the white christian nationalist family, not because they are all white, but because of their promotion of a racial hierarchy where whiteness is placed at the top. What does this mean for those individual non-white incels who spout comments supporting the demonization of non-white people? As the title of Fanon’s work suggested, we can only imagine that when they look in a mirror, a white face looks back.

WEAPONIZING THE LAW Voter suppression laws seek to undermine the ability of minority groups to exercise their fair share of political power as a way to keep them in their

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place. Similarly, laws that restrict a woman’s ability to exercise bodily autonomy have the effect of enforcing a female submissive role, which is a characteristic of the white christian nationalist worldview. The previous section discussed physical attacks targeting a woman’s ability to access reproductive health care. This section will discuss legal efforts to do the same. These efforts can be summarized in two sentences. In 1973, the Supreme Court identified a woman’s right to abortion as a fundamental constitutional right. Fifty years later, in 2022, the Supreme Court said it was not. In addition to those cases which bookended and defined the abortion rights struggle, the Supreme Court issued rulings on other aspects relating to abortion access, including the right to obtain a medicated abortion, the right to receive confidential abortion services, as well as the right of healthcare providers to refuse to participate in abortions on religious or moral grounds. In Roe v. Wade (1973), the Supreme Court ruled that a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion was protected by the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. The Court established a trimester framework that balanced a woman’s right to abortion against the state’s interest in protecting the fetus. Doe v. Bolton (1973) was handed down the same day as Roe and prohibited the state imposition of undue burdens on a woman’s right to abortion. States were prohibited from banning abortion outright but were permitted to regulate it. This led to laws such as those requiring parental consent for minors or a waiting period before a woman could obtain an abortion. It was 20 years before the Supreme Court made any changes to its decision in Roe. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), the Supreme Court reaffirmed the right to abortion but replaced the trimester framework with an undue burden standard. Under that test, a state’s regulation of abortion would be unconstitutional if it had the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before fetal viability. Casey recognized the intrinsic connection for women between equal citizenship and reproductive rights; that the ability to control their reproductive lives facilitated equal participation of women in the nation’s social, political, economic, and legal life. A Texas law imposing strict requirements on abortion clinics was struck down in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016), with the Court finding that the law placed an undue burden on women seeking abortions. However, laws requiring waiting periods between when a woman first went to the clinic and when an abortion could be obtained were upheld, despite the hardship on women who were then required to take multiple days off of work or find and pay for multiple days of childcare. Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt involved a Texas law passed in 2013. Texas House Bill 2 (HB2) required physicians who performed abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic and required that abortion clinics have facilities comparable to an ambulatory surgical center.

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Justice Breyer, in the opinion of the court, noted the substantial obstacle the statute placed in the path of women seeking an abortion constituted an undue burden on abortion access and violated the Constitution. In the three years between when the law was passed and when it reached the Supreme Court, the number of abortion clinics in Texas dropped by more than 50%, going from 42 to 19 in the entire state. As a result, the number of women of reproductive age who lived more than 200 miles from a clinic increased by 2,800%. This was a five-three decision in support of abortion access, which seems entirely inconsistent with Dobbs six years in the future. During that six-year interim, however, the dissenting Justices, Roberts, Alito, and Thomas, would be joined by three new additions to the Court, all of whom would join them in the vote to overturn Roe with Dobbs, Justices Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. The 50 years of Roe and its progeny were eviscerated in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) when the Court, in overturning Roe v. Wade, determined that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion and left it to the states to decide whether or not to allow abortion within their borders. The Mississippi restrictions at issue in Dobbs prohibited abortion beyond a gestational age of 15 weeks. In a six-three decision, expressly overturning Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania v. Casey (1993), the Supreme Court held in Dobbs that there is no constitutional right to an abortion. The result was to return the issue to the individual states. Justice Alito, writing the opinion of the Court, based the decision on the argument that since the people (a.k.a. men) who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment in 1868 did not consider termination of pregnancy to be a protected liberty interest under the 14th Amendment, then it was not protected. Actually, there were a lot of things that people (men) did not consider to be protected in 1868 that we do consider protected today. This decision put all of those protections in jeopardy. As noted by Justice Breyer in a dissent joined by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan: Because laws in 1868 deprived women of any control over their bodies, the majority approves the States doing so today. Because those laws prevented women from charting the course of their own lives, the majority says States can do the same again. Because in 1868, the government could tell a pregnant woman—even in the first days of her pregnancy—that she could do nothing but bear a child, it can once more impose that command. Today’s decision strips women of agency over what even the majority agrees is a contested and contestable moral issue. It forces her to carry out the State’s will, whatever the circumstances and whatever the harm it will wreak on her and her family.34

Despite the decision claiming to be limited solely to abortion, it is impossible to read it that way. In his concurring opinion in Dobbs, Justice Thomas

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was clear, “in future cases we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”35 In essence, he invited cases to reconsider the right to the access and use of contraceptives, as well as decisions on personal intimacy and marriage. During the 50 years in which Roe v. Wade (1973) operated to protect a woman’s constitutional rights, rather than wait for Roe to be repealed, some states passed trigger laws. These were anti-abortion laws which would go into effect if and when Roe was reversed. In anticipation of Roe’s demise, in 2018, voters in the state of Alabama overwhelmingly passed an amendment to the state constitution declaring that “human life is deemed to exist from fertilization, without regard to race, sex, age, health, defect, or condition of dependency.” Unlike other state bans which included an exception for rape or incest, Alabama’s did not. As long as Roe v. Wade recognized the existence of a woman’s fundamental right to choose to have an abortion, the Alabama constitutional amendment had no effect. Once Dobbs was decided four years later, Alabama was ready. Other states attempted to resurrect laws which had been on the books in the 19th century and had essentially been invalidated by Roe. Following the decision in Dobbs, Patrick Morrisey, the Attorney General for the state of West Virginia, issued a memorandum indicating his willingness to defend the state’s 1849 abortion ban in court. Simultaneously, the Attorney General in Wisconsin contested Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban.36 Both state bans made it a felony to perform an abortion. Some argued that the repeal of Roe would permit states to criminalize women who suffered miscarriages. They were accused of exaggeration. A 33-year-old woman living in Ohio would disagree. Two weeks after she miscarried in her bathroom and had to be hospitalized, she was charged with felony abuse of a corpse for how she handled the remains of a fetus that had been declared nonviable two days before her miscarriage.37 The charges carried a penalty of up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine. The grand jury declined to indict. However, she was subjected to the trauma and legal costs caused by this experience at a time when she was still grieving. She is also emblematic of the criminalization while pregnant phenomenon which disproportionately impacts poor women and women of color, especially Black women.38 When it was argued that state regulation of abortions would subject women to patchwork regulations that could put their lives at risk, the response was a version of “abortions will be allowed in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the mother is at risk.” Over and over, they attempted to silence voices of concern with accusations of being overly imaginative or hysterical. Hysterical. The pejorative word always thrown at women whose arguments, no matter how calmly presented, disrupt the dominant narrative. Clearly, we were not being imaginative enough.

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Never did we imagine a world where a ten-year-old rape victim would be expected to give birth to her rapist’s child. Six weeks and three days pregnant, the child victim was forced to flee the state of Ohio, which prohibited abortions after six weeks, for the neighboring state of Indiana where the procedure could be legally performed. Of course, then there were the gratuitous, ignorant, and outrageous comments by Jim Bopp, an attorney for the National Right to Life Committee and co-drafter of model abortion legislation for Indiana. In reference to this 10-year-old child, Bopp declared “[s]he would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child.”39 When the child, not a woman, had to flee the state to obtain an abortion, the doctor who performed that legally permitted abortion would be targeted. All child rape victims have not been fortunate enough to be able to travel to more hospitable states to obtain an abortion. As with adult women who are pregnant, the ability to flee to a more accommodating state is a function of personal or family resources. The history of attacks on women’s health care facilities and doctors is entrenched. But could anyone imagine an oxymoronic law which sets the time period within which an abortion is permitted before you typically are aware that you are pregnant? The launching of the third decade of the twenty-first century now feels like a combination of Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, George Orwell’s 1984 surveillance state, and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. One year before their decision in Dobbs, the Supreme Court declined to enjoin Texas Senate Bill 8 (SB8), which not only prohibits abortions after six weeks of pregnancy but authorized any private citizen to file a lawsuit against anyone who provides an abortion in violation of the act, or who aids or abets someone obtaining an abortion. Private citizens are entitled to be awarded $10,000 for each abortion performed or aided. Potential targets of this law include the friend or relative who drives someone to get an abortion, gives them money for the abortion, or helps them research abortions online, where they will then have left their digital footprint. As noted by Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent in Whole Woman’s Health et al, “[t]he Texas State Legislature has deputized the state’s citizens as bounty hunters, offering them cash prizes for civilly prosecuting their neighbors’ medical procedures.”40 Four counties in Texas have passed laws barring people from traveling through the county to obtain an abortion in another state. These laws are also civilly enforceable through a private right of action, which is designed to attempt to sidestep constitutional challenges by avoiding state action.41 These laws are of doubtful constitutionality, but being burdened by a lawsuit of this nature is a hostile and oppressive act. There is concern in some quarters over doctors and medical facilities being required to provide records on patients coming from states that restrict

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abortions. Do women need to be concerned that the next time they purchase an in-home pregnancy test, they will be entered into a state database and tracked to be sure they remain pregnant? Many feel that they do. According to the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project in Roadblock to Care: Barriers to Out-of-State Travel For Abortion and Gender Affirming Care, available surveillance tools used in abortion prosecutions include automated license plate readers, ride-share service data, street cameras, text messages, and internet search histories harvested from smartphones and recent-model cars with sophisticated GPS.42 In Texas, a man sued three female friends of his ex-wife for assisting her in obtaining medication for a self-medicated abortion, relying heavily on screenshots of group chats.43 This was a civil suit. In Nebraska, a woman and her daughter were criminally charged in connection with the daughter’s medication abortion past the 20-week limit in Nebraska. Facebook messages between the two were used to show them discussing how to obtain the medication. California, Illinois, and Washington were among the first states to pass laws intended in some way to restrict the ability of law enforcement to weaponize our digital footprints against us. These laws would be among the types of protective policies considered by the Guttmacher Institute in their analysis of state-level abortion policies. The Guttmacher Institute, a leading research and policy organization focused on the advancement of reproductive health and rights, evaluated states based on approximately 20 types of abortion restrictions and 10 protective policies, as well as the cumulative impact of those policies. Each state was then assigned to a category. Among the types of abortion restrictions considered were criteria such as gestational bans, waiting periods, bans on insurance coverage, and restrictions on medication abortions. Protective policies considered included criteria such as state constitutional protections, abortion funding, insurance coverage for abortions, and protections for patients and clinic staff. Table 3.1 presents the states on a continuum ranging from most restrictive to most protective. More than one-half of the states have policies and an associated impact that place them in the restrictive category or below on the continuum. This has very real implications for the people who live in those states. As some states have ramped up restrictions, others have ramped up protections even for individuals living in other states. For instance, in protective states bordering a restrictive state, clinics have opened near the border of the restrictive state. Increased numbers of people, however, lack geographic access to providers. This is supported by the work of economics professor Caitlin Myers. Myers found that in April 2022, less than 1% of the U.S. population was more than 200 miles from a provider, and the average person living 25 miles from a provider. One year later, by April 2023, the change was

Arizona Florida Georgia Nebraska N. Carolina Utah ​

Iowa Kansas Ohio Pennsylvania Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

Delaware Michigan Nevada New Hampshire Rhode Island ​ ​

Mixed (Some RestrictionsProtections) 10%

Most Protective 4% Oregon Vermont ​ ​

Very Protective 12% California Maryland Minnesota New Jersey New Mexico New York ​

Protective​ 20% Alaska Colorado Connecticut District of Columbia Hawaii Illinois Maine Massachusetts Montana Washington ​ ​ ​

Data Source: Guttmacher Institute. Interactive Map: U.S. Abortion Policies and Access After Roe. Source: Table by author.

Alabama Arkansas Idaho Indiana Kentucky Louisiana Mississippi Missouri North Dakota Oklahoma S. Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas West Virginia

Most Restrictive​ Very Restrictive​ Restrictive​ 29% 12% 13%

Table 3.1  U.S. Abortion Policies and Access Post-Roe by State

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dramatic, with 14% of the population more than 200 miles from a provider, and the average person living 86 miles from a provider.44 The intervening circumstance between April 2022 and April 2023 was that Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was officially handed down on June 24, 2022. In an unprecedented breach of Court confidentiality, a draft version had been made public on May 2nd. What is sometimes obscured is that contraceptive access is also at risk. Generations of young adults from millennials onward were born into and grew up in a post-Roe world. A world where they were not only used to abortion access but were oblivious to knowledge of a world where contraceptives were not accessible. In light of Dobbs, which threw women’s access to reproductive health services back to the capricious whim of often gerrymandered state legislatures, something as basic as contraceptive access also comes into question. In his concurring opinion in Dobbs, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that in light of Dobbs the Court “should reconsider” previous rulings codifying rights to contraceptive access and same-sex marriage. As will be described in chapter 4, this prospect was so clear and so worrisome that Congress finally passed the Respect for Marriage Act, requiring that states recognize same-sex marriages, as well as interracial marriages, validly created in other states. It is noteworthy that at the same time, Congress was not able to pass a law guaranteeing the right to contraceptive access. CONCLUSION As Rachel Fugardi with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) makes clear: Male supremacy is not an exotic ideology from which we can distance ourselves. It is not confined to ISIS propaganda, extremist manifestos or dark corners of the internet. It is pervasive, present in the daily experiences of women and girls across the country. Our continued ignorance of the threat of male supremacy leaves us all vulnerable to its violent manifestations. If we want to prevent this kind of violence in the coming decade, we must choose to collectively understand and name the threat posed by male supremacy.45

Fugardi captures the essence of the ongoing assault on women’s rights in the United States. However, this assault on women’s rights is not just a women’s issue. The right to bodily autonomy is a basic human right for all. The underlying aim of anti-abortion legislation is to control women’s bodies and dictate their reproductive destinies. This type of coerced control can also be considered a form of violence. The overturning of Roe has created a patchwork of state laws that jeopardize women’s lives, have the potential

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to criminalize miscarriages, and instill fear in healthcare providers. The situation is further exacerbated by the erosion of privacy rights. In states with restrictive abortion laws, doctors confront face pressure to surrender medical records. Digital data such as location tracking, search histories, and even text messages have been weaponized against those seeking reproductive care. The threat extends beyond abortion, with organizations such as the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) actively working to undermine access to contraception, further restricting women’s bodily autonomy. This is directly linked to the white christian nationalist narrative on family. It has been long recognized that a woman’s ability to advance professionally and economically is tied to her ability to control her own reproductive destiny. That is why a woman’s control of her own body is antithetical to white christian nationalism. The anti-abortion violence associated with white christian nationalist activity this century finds common cause with the rise of incel ideology. As direct anti-abortion violence decreased, incel violence emerged. Steeped in misogyny, incel activity directly translates into violence against women. Incel extremists are included within the white christian nationalist family because of their adherence to a white supremacist ethos that places whiteness at the top of the racial hierarchy, and because of their manifestation of a male supremacist ethos that consigns women to a subordinate role in the gender hierarchy. The anti-abortion violence, incel violence, and the rise of a legal framework to unravel reproductive autonomy operate in tandem to produce an environment designed to subordinate women. In opposition to the growing restrictions on bodily autonomy, some states are enacting protections not only for their residents and healthcare providers but also for women from abortion-restrictive states. Reproductive rights extend beyond access to abortion. They are about bodily autonomy. It is beyond irony that the same people who vehemently opposed something as simple as putting a mask over their mouth and nose during a global pandemic, arguing it was an infringement of their liberty, think nothing of interjecting the state into a woman’s uterus. This is the world to which white christian nationalists would have us return. NOTES 1. Unless otherwise indicated, data computations described in this chapter are based on the contents of the GTD. See, START (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism). “Global Terrorism Database 1970—2020” [data file] (2022). https://www​.start​.umd​.edu​/gtd. Of 3,147 U.S.-based incidents in the GTD, 80% contained a group name such as “Ku Klux Klan,” “Earth First,” or a generic identifier such as “anti-government” for perpetrators. From that

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set, a subset containing all U.S.-based incidents occurring in the twenty-first century where the group name or indicator was from the far-right was derived. This yielded 706 domestic terrorist incidents attributable to the far-right. It is recognized that some of the 20% of unidentified U.S.-based incidents contained in the GTD could be inferred to be attributed to far-right extremist ideologies by examining the victim or motive, but for consistency, unless otherwise indicated, the population of GTD incidents analyzed for this book only includes those for which some type of perpetrator identifier was listed. Of the 706 incidents attributable to the far-right occurring in the twenty-first century. 2. Pub.L. 103–259, 108 Stat. 694, 18 U.S.C. §248. 3. Edith Decker, “Religious Extremism in County Has Resulted in Violence, Murder,” The Daily Courier, Grants Pass, Oregon, April 1, 2010. 4. CBS News, “Scott Roeder, Who Killed Dr. George Tiller, Gets New, Lenient Sentence—CBS News,” November 23, 2016, https://www​.cbsnews​.com​/news​/scott​ -roeder​-man​-who​-killed​-george​-tiller​-late​-term​-abortion​-doctor​-gets​-new​-lenient​ -sentence/. 5. Ed Pilkington, “I Shot US Abortion Doctor to Protect Children, Scott Roeder Tells Court,” The Guardian, January 29, 2010, sec. World news, https://www​.theguardian​.com​/world​/2010​/jan​/28​/scott​-roeder​-abortion​-doctor​-killer. 6. Pilkington. 7. Decker, “Religious Extremism in County Has Resulted in Violence, Murder.” 8. Decker. 9. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, “Eric Rudolph | Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives,” September 22, 2016, https:// www​.atf​.gov​/our​-history​/eric​-rudolph. 10. Associated Press, “Judge Says Man Charged in Planned Parenthood Shooting Can Be Forcibly Medicated,” KOAA News 5, September 20, 2022, https://www​ .koaa​.com​/news​/covering​-colorado​/judge​-says​-man​-charged​-in​-planned​-parenthood​ -shooting​-can​-be​-forcibly​-medicated. 11. Office of Public Affairs U.S. Department of Justice, “Robert Dear Indicted by Federal Grand Jury for 2015 Planned Parenthood Clinic Shooting,” December 9, 2019, https://www​.justice​.gov​/opa​/pr​/robert​-dear​-indicted​-federal​-grand​-jury​-2015​ -planned​-parenthood​-clinic​-shooting. 12. Associated Press, “Judge Says Man Charged in Planned Parenthood Shooting Can Be Forcibly Medicated.” 13. There were six listings for attacks committed by perpetrators identified as Incel extremists. However, two of the attacks occurred on the same day and were committed by the same perpetrator, so, for this chapter, they are treated as one attack occurring across multiple locations. 14. Center for Disease Control, “Fast Facts: Preventing Intimate Partner Violence |Violence,” https://www​.cdc​.gov​/violenceprevention​/int​imat​epar​tner​violence​/fastfact​.html. 15. Federal Bureau of Investigation, “2022 Hate Crime Statistics for the U.S.,” Crime Data Explorer, accessed January 13, 2024, https://cde​.ucr​.cjis​.gov​/LATEST​/ webapp/#​/pages​/explorer​/crime​/hate​-crime.

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16. Eliza Anyangwe, “This Global Public Health Challenge Affects One in Four Women. Where’s the Outrage or the Plan?,” CNN, 2022, https://www​.cnn​.com​/2022​ /02​/17​/health​/intimate​-partner​-violence​-lancet​-as​-equals​-intl​-cmd​/index​.html. 17. Shanti Das, “Inside the Violent, Misogynistic World of TikTok’s New Star, Andrew Tate,” The Observer, August 6, 2022, sec. Technology, https://www​.theguardian​.com​/technology​/2022​/aug​/06​/andrew​-tate​-violent​-misogynistic​-world​-of​ -tiktok​-new​-star. 18. Catherine Nicholls, Teodora Preda, and Sana Noor Haq, “Controversial Influencer Andrew Tate Released from House Arrest in Romania,” CNN, August 4, 2023, https://www​.cnn​.com​/2023​/08​/04​/europe​/andrew​-tate​-released​-house​-arrest​ -intl​/index​.html. 19. Shauneen Miranda, “Andrew Tate Gets Banned from Facebook, Instagram, TikTok for Violating Their Policies,” NPR, August 20, 2022, sec. Culture, https:// www​.npr​.org​/2022​/08​/20​/1118624860​/andrew​-tate​-facebook​-instagram​-banned. 20. Internet Matters, “Teen Boys & Young Dads’ Positive Views towards Andrew Tate,” September 28, 2023, https://www​.internetmatters​.org​/hub​/press​_release​/new​ -research​-sees​-favourable​-views​-towards​-andrew​-tate​-from​-both​-teen​-boys​-and​ -young​-dads/. 21. George Sodini, “George Sodini’s Blog: Full Text By Alleged Gym Shooter,” ABC News, accessed June 15, 2024, https://abcnews​.go​.com​/US​/story​?id​=8258001​ &page​=1. 22. Sodini. 23. SPLC, “Misogynist Incels,” Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed June 15, 2024, https://www​.splcenter​.org​/fighting​-hate​/extremist​-files​/ideology​/misogynist​ -incels. 24. Rachel Fugardi, “Nine Years after Deadly ‘Incel’ Attack, Threat of Male Supremacism Is Growing,” Southern Poverty Law Center, May 23, 2023, https:// www​.splcenter​.org​/news​/2023​/05​/23​/after​-incel​-attack​-male​-supremacism​-growing. 25. SPLC, “Misogynist Incels.” 26. Christopher Harper-Mercer, “Manifesto,” accessed February 3, 2024, chromeextension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://schoolshooters​.info​/sites​/ default​/files​/Christopher​-Sean​-Harper​-Mercer​-My​-Manifesto​.pdf. 27. SPLC, “Misogynist Incels.” 28. Florida Yoga Studio Gunman Scott Beierle Was Formerly a Maryland Teacher, 2018, https://www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=hB​-H50RasLg. 29. United States Secret Service, “Hot Yoga Tallahassee: A Case Study of Misogynistic Extremism” (National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC), March 2022). 30. Joshua Bowling and Perry Vandell, “Westgate Shooting: Who Is Armando Hernandez Jr.?,” The Arizona Republic, accessed February 3, 2024, https:// www​.azcentral​.com​/story​/news​/local​/glendale​/2020​/05​/23​/westgate​-shooting​-who ​ -armando​-hernandez​-jr​/5237382002/. 31. Amto-Defamation League, “Online Poll Results Provide New Insights into Incel Community | ADL,” accessed June 16, 2024, https://www​.adl​.org​/resources​/ blog​/online​-poll​-results​-provide​-new​-insights​-incel​-community. 32. SPLC, “Misogynist Incels.”

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33. SPLC. 34. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. ___ (2022), 597 U.S., accessed July 10, 2023. No. 19-1392. J. Breyer, dissenting, pp. 29–30. 35. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. ___ (2022), 597 U.S.No 19-1392. Thomas, J., concurring., p. 3. 36. Gillian Brockell, “States May Revive Abortion Laws from a Time When Women Couldn’t Vote,” Washington Post, October 6, 2022, https://www​.washingtonpost​.com​/history​/2022​/07​/31​/abortion​-laws​-womens​-rights/. 37. Maham Javaid and Kim Bellware, “She Miscarried in Her Bathroom. Now She’s Charged with Abuse of a Corpse,” Washington Post, December 25, 2023, https://www​.washingtonpost​.com​/nation​/2023​/12​/15​/ohio​-woman​-miscarriage​-abuse​ -of​-corpse​-grand​-jury/. 38. Yvette Cabrera, “When Pregnancy Loss Becomes a Crime,” Center for Public Integrity, June 3, 2022, http://publicintegrity​.org​/inside​-publici​/newsletters​/watchdog​ -newsletter​/pregnancy​-loss​-crime​-reproductive​-rights/. 39. Cheryl Teh, “A Lawyer Who Proposed Strict Abortion Legislation for Indiana Said He Wished the 10-Year-Old Ohio Rape Victim Would Have Understood the ‘Benefit of Having the Child,’” Business Insider, accessed February 13, 2024, https:// www​.businessinsider​.com​/lawyer​-indiana​-abortion​-law​-rape​-victim​-should​-have​ -kept​-baby​-2022​-7. 40. Whole Woman’s Health et al. v. Jackson, Judge, District Court of Texas, 114th District, et al., No. 21–463 (U.S. Supreme Court December 10, 2021). Sotomayor, J., dissenting, p. 2. 41. Jayme Lozano Carver, “Lubbock County Becomes Latest to Approve ‘Abortion Travel Ban’ While Amarillo City Council Balks,” The Texas Tribune, October 23, 2023, https://www​.texastribune​.org​/2023​/10​/23​/abortion​-travel​-ban​-lubbock​ -county/. 42. Julie Lee et al., “Roadblock to Care: Barriers to Out-Of-State-Travel for Abortion and Gender Affirming Care” (New York: Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), July 18, 2023), https://www​.stopspying​.org​/roadblock​-to​-care. 43. Eleanor Klibanoff, “Three Texas Women Are Sued for Wrongful Death after Allegedly Helping Friend Obtain Abortion Medication,” The Texas Tribune, March 10, 2023, https://www​.texastribune​.org​/2023​/03​/10​/texas​-abortion​-lawsuit/. 44. Selena Simmons-Duffin and Shelly Cheng, “How Many Miles Do You Have to Travel to Get Abortion Care? One Professor Maps It,” NPR, June 21, 2023, sec. Reproductive Rights in America, https://www​.npr​.org​/sections​/health​-shots​/2023​/06​ /21​/1183248911​/abortion​-access​-distance​-to​-care​-travel​-miles. 45. Fugardi, “Nine Years after Deadly ‘Incel’ Attack, Threat of Male Supremacism Is Growing.”

Chapter 4

Requiring Gender Conformity

The majority of the geographic space of this nation is hostile territory for members of the LGBTQ community. This has been deliberate. On June 12, 2016, in what at the time was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, 49 people were killed and 53 injured at the Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.1 On June 17, 2019, a Pride Month display at a church in Renton, Washington, was set on fire. Two days later, an explosive device was detonated at that same display. Six years later in Colorado at Club Q, a gay bar, five people were killed and 25 injured over the night of November 19–20, 2022. On August 18, 2023, a female store owner was shot and killed for displaying a Pride flag in her store in Lake Arrowhead, California.2 For the three-year period between 2017 and 2020, persons over the age of 16 identifying as gay or lesbian had a victimization rate for aggravated violent victimizations such as simple assault, aggravated assault, robbery, rape, or sexual assault that was double the victimization rate for persons identifying as straight; while transgender persons had a violent victimization rate that was 2.5 times the rate among cisgender persons.3 Criminal victimization of the LGBTQ community occurs within both a social environment which facilitates this victimization and a political environment of sanctioned discrimination. Unlike the rest of the book, this chapter uses LGBTQ rather than LGBTQ+. That is because this chapter incorporates quotations from other sources, some of which used LGBTQ. For consistency within the chapter, LGBTQ has been used throughout. By mid-2023, more than 500 pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation were pending in statehouses across the country. This legislation impacted the full range of daily activities, education, health care, entertainment, to name a few. The number does not include actions taken at a local government level or by school districts in relation to book bans, bathroom restrictions, or athletic 69

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participation of transgender students. Examination of enacted laws and policies by states and territories presents a chilling picture of the status of protections that the LGBTQ community is able to enjoy. The Movement Advancement Project (MAP) tracked over 50 different LGBTQ-related laws and policies pertaining to: relationship and parental recognition, nondiscrimination, religious exemptions (for providing service), LGBTQ Youth, Health care, Criminal Justice and Identity Documents that exist in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the five populated U.S. territories for a total of 56 geographic subdivisions.4 These laws and policies were evaluated to generate a state tally score of the laws and policies shaping the lives, experiences, and equality of LGBTQ individuals. Three tally scores were generated for each jurisdiction in the categories of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, as well as an overall composite score representing the average of the first two scores. For the purpose of MAP’s categorization, laws or policies explicitly mentioning sexual orientation target, in either a positive or negative manner, persons who are lesbian, gay, and bisexual. Laws mentioning gender identity or expression target, for either protection or harm, those individuals who are transgender or those whose gender expression does not conform to gender stereotypes (gender nonconforming). When examining the overall composite score, MAP found that fewer than one-third, or 29% (n = 56), of the jurisdictions scored in the high range, indicating laws and policies that overall were positive or protective of LGBTQ individuals. Eleven percent of the jurisdictions scored in the medium range. Twenty-seven percent scored in the fair range, 8% scored in the low range, with 25% scoring in the negative range. To place this in perspective, to receive a negative score, a jurisdiction had to have a total score of less than zero. When disaggregating the overall tally score into its two component scores, one for sexual orientation and the other for gender identity, stark differences are visible. These differences can be seen in figure 4.1. Concealed by the overall score is the severe disparity between laws and policies impacting gender identity as compared to those laws and policies impacting sexual orientation. Forty-three percent (n = 56) of the jurisdictions scored negative on their laws and policies impacting gender identity. When compared to the 7% scoring negative on sexual orientation laws and policies, the impact of the war on transgender or gender nonconforming individuals becomes clear. These actions at state and local levels occurred against a national backdrop that has also become increasingly hostile. In the divinely ordained social order of white christian nationalism there is no place for same-sex marriage and transgender rights.5 There is no place for gender non-conformity or use of the they pronoun when applied to an individual. In our increasingly dystopian

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Figure 4.1  Aggregated State Policy Mean Score Comparison: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. Data Source: Movement Advancement Project, Movement Advancement Project | Snapshot: LGBTQ Equality by State. Source: Figure by author.

America, there also appears to be no place for songs about rainbows,6 or for books on the shelves of school libraries. What does appear to be accommodated in our society is increased physical and mental assaults directed toward members of the LGBTQ community, as well as the ability of businesses or professionals to use religious beliefs as a basis for denying services to LGBTQ individuals. Between decisions handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court and decisions taken by localities and states, the status of members of the LGBTQ community has become precarious. Unless otherwise indicated, this chapter will use the definitions as provided in the GLAAD Media Reference Guide.7 Sexual orientation is a person’s “enduring physical, romantic and/or emotional attraction to another person. Sexual orientations can include heterosexual (straight), lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, asexual, and other orientations.” Sexual experience is not required for an individual to know their own sexual orientation. Distinct from sexual orientation, gender identity is an individual’s internal, deeply held knowledge of their own gender. For transgender persons, their gender identity does not align with the gender they were assigned at birth. Gender identity is not visible to others. What is visible is an individual’s gender expression. Gender expression is manifested through name, pronouns, clothing, hair, voice, or behavior. Transgender individuals typically align their gender identity with

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their gender expression. Also at risk are those who are nonbinary or gender nonconforming. Persons who are nonbinary experience their gender identity or gender expression outside the binary expectations of masculine and feminine. Gender nonconforming individuals have a gender expression that differs from traditional stereotypical social or cultural expectations. There is a connection between crimes against LGBTQ individuals and increased attacks on their legal rights. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) 2022 hate crime statistics indicate that a total of 2,416 members of the LGBTQ community reported hate crime victimization that year.8 Eighty percent of the victims were targeted because of their perceived sexual orientation, and the other 20% because of their perceived gender identity. This only represents the number of incidents reported to law enforcement, and those that law enforcement agencies in turn report to the FBI. The actual number of victims is higher. Hate crimes targeting LGBTQ individuals are on the rise. In 2022, they reached their highest number for the twenty-first century to date, almost doubling over the previous five years. This increase in hate crimes against the LGBTQ community has not occurred in a vacuum. Violence is intrinsically linked to a legal status that implies you are somehow less than, and the other. It has been fueled by a political and social environment moving to erode recently recognized rights. Consistent with the other targets of white christian nationalists, the LGBTQ community is subject to a mixture of legal and extra-legal assaults. Despite some forward progress, LGBTQ individuals continue to be marginalized as a matter of law, based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. This is accomplished through intimidation, harassment, physical attacks, and the use of lawsuits to whittle away at LGBTQ rights and protections. This chapter will examine legal actions at the national level to see how we arrived at this point. Using selected examples, it will also illustrate the manner in which these judicial and legislative actions occur as part of a larger sociopolitical environment.

LEGAL EVOLUTION: ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK Few things are as important to the self-realized dignity and worth of an individual as the ability to create families of their choosing and the ability to work to support those families. A century that began with promise has, by the beginning of its third decade, become less so. At both ends of the spectrum, the Supreme Court played a pivotal role. In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the Supreme Court struck down a Texas law that criminalized same-sex intimacy as unconstitutional. That decision invalidated similar laws across the country,

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enabling people to move their relationships from the shadows into the light of day. It took just under 20 years for the Court to then use the First Amendment to the Constitution as a justification for a business owner to refuse to provide services to same-sex couples. This section will discuss the evolution of marriage equality, transgender equity, and employment access to describe the trajectory of LGBTQ rights and liberties across this period. It is a complex story, involving action by all three branches of government: judicial, legislative, and executive. It should be remembered that while a court decision may have been decided in a particular year, or a law passed in one year, the events leading to that point began several years previously. Thus, rather than considering these events in a linear perspective, it is more appropriate to view them as part of a series of overlapping forward and backward movements. The twenty-first century began as the century for LGBTQ rights, particularly marriage equality and the emergence of legal protections for transgender individuals. It involved an overlapping mix of constitutional interpretations by the U.S. Supreme Court, legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, as well as rulemaking promulgated by federal agencies. The differing origins of these actions have implications for their potential longevity. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. When the Supreme Court issues decisions involving constitutional interpretation, those decisions are typically binding unless and until the Court itself reverses them. Legislation is binding and effective unless a subsequent Congress changes it or the Court finds it to be unconstitutional.9 Finally, there are rules issued by federal agencies. These rules are binding on everything within the purview of that particular agency. For instance, the Department of Education can adopt rulemaking on things related to education but could not, for example, issue a rule setting the speed limit on interstate highways. Unless the rule only applied to buses transporting children to school, then it might be permissible. The challenge with rulemaking is that it is an administrative act, not a legislative act. As will be seen in this section, a new president with new agency heads can issue new rules, invalidating the prior rules. This section will look at the impact of this interplay beginning with marriage equality, followed by a description of regulatory action in this arena. Marriage Equality and Resistance Massachusetts was the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2004. As other states followed suit, same-sex couples faced barriers not confronted by their heterosexual married peers. Preeminent among them was the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Section two of DOMA provided that no state would be required to recognize same-sex marriages performed in another state. Section three defined marriage as between a man and a woman

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for purposes of all federal statutes, regulations, or directives.10 The impact of DOMA was that same-sex couples, as distinct from heterosexual couples, were geographically constrained in where they could live if they wanted their marriage to be recognized. Additionally, DOMA impacted over 1,000 federal statutes and regulations such as social security, housing, and veterans’ benefits, operating to exclude same-sex couples from the federal benefits accorded to married heterosexual couples. This was the situation confronting Edith Windsor in 2009. Married to Thea Spyer in Canada in 2007, their marriage had been recognized by New York state in 2008. Upon Spyer’s death, her entire estate had been left to Windsor, who was then denied the federal estate tax exemption for surviving spouses. Windsor filed suit to recover the $363,053 she paid in federal estate taxes. In U.S. v. Windsor (2013), the Supreme Court ruled that §3 of the DOMA was an unconstitutional deprivation of the liberty of the person, which was protected by the due process clause of the fifth amendment.11 Section 3 of DOMA prohibited the federal government from recognizing gay or lesbian marriages for the purpose of any federal laws or programs, even where the couples were validly married in their home state. Two years later, with Justice Kennedy again writing the opinion of the court, the Supreme Court invalidated §2 of DOMA in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). Obergefell was a consolidated case involving cases from Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan, and Kentucky. At the time Obergefell made its way through the courts, the states were divided with some states permitting same-sex marriage and other states not permitting it. Under §2 of DOMA, a state did not have to recognize a gay union created in another state. The result was that, unlike marriages between heterosexual couples, a validly created marriage could be recognized in one state but not in another. In Obergefell, 14 same-sex couples and two men whose same-sex partners were deceased brought suit challenging state statutes that banned same-sex marriage or refused to recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in other jurisdictions. Two issues were presented to the Supreme Court: first, whether the 14th Amendment requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex; and second, whether the 14th Amendment requires a state to recognize a same-sex marriage licensed and performed in another state. Obergefell found that the statute in question violated both the due process clause and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. In the Opinion of the Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy unequivocally declared that the right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person, and under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment couples of the same-sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty.12

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In reaching this decision, the Court expressly rejected an argument that the 14th Amendment “be defined in a more circumscribed manner, with central reference to specific historical practices.”13 Obergefell had the practical effect of invalidating the last remaining provision of the 1996 DOMA, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman. That rejected argument, however, is the exact approach utilized six years later when the Dobbs court overturned Roe v. Wade. The face of the resistance to Obergefell became a previously obscure County Clerk. In 2014, the year before the Obergefell decision was handed down, Kimberly Davis had been elected County Clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky. Rowan County is 279.9 square miles, with approximately 88.1 people per square mile. It is a rural county. In 2015, Rowan County had a population of 24,642. The largest racial/ethnic groups were white at 94.3% of the population, with Hispanic and Black each counting for 1.9% of the population.14 Following Obergefell, county clerks in Kentucky were ordered to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Citing God’s authority, County Clerk Davis argued that issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples went against her religious beliefs. Rather than comply, County Clerk Davis refused to issue a marriage license to anyone. Eventually jailed for contempt of court, she was released after five days when the Deputy Clerks agreed to issue marriage licenses without her signature. Subsequently, Davis changed the form so that her signature was not required. Portrayed in some circles as a martyr suffering for her religious beliefs, Ms. Davis was eventually found guilty of violating the constitutional rights of the two same-sex couples who sued her and was ordered to pay $100,000 in damages. Davis was also later ordered to pay $260,000 in fees to the plaintiffs’ attorneys. Obergefell did not end the legal controversy associated with same-sex marriage. It merely elevated religious liberty arguments as a means of resistance. In 2012, Charlie Craig and David Mullins were a same-sex couple in Colorado, which at the time prohibited same-sex marriage. They made plans to be married in Massachusetts, followed by a celebration in Colorado with friends and family. When visiting Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado to order a wedding cake for their celebration, Craig and Mullins were told by the owner, Jack Phillips that due to his religious beliefs, he did not create wedding cakes for same-sex couples, although they were welcome to purchase the other baked goods in the store. Craig and Mullins left without purchasing anything and without discussing any details of their wedding cake. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission found this to be a violation of Colorado’s public accommodations law, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Refusing to comply with the order, Phillips stopped making wedding cakes altogether. With the aid of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a legal organization which plays a recurring role not just in anti-LGBTQ cases

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and legislation, the bakery appealed with a two-pronged argument. Phillips argued that his free speech would be violated by being compelled to exercise his artistic talents to express a message with which he disagreed, and that it would also violate his right to the free exercise of religion. Masterpiece Cakeshop LTD., et al v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, et  al. (2018) was a 7–2 decision. It found that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had made disparaging remarks about Phillips’ religious beliefs and treated him differently from other bakers who had refused to create cakes with messages with which they disagreed. As a result, the Court held that the Commission had displayed hostility toward Phillips’ religious beliefs in violation of the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. Despite the outcome, this purported to be a limited decision. The Court was careful to note that while religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression . . . it is a general rule that such objections do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services.15

In his opinion for the Court, Justice Kennedy specifically indicated that the Court’s decision did not reach the larger question of whether businesses can be required to provide services that violate their religious beliefs. That question was addressed five years later in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (2023), also from Colorado. In the interim, the court handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), which overruled Roe v. Wade (1973) and 50 years of precedent, throwing the abortion issue back to the states. In what could be a worrisome foreshadowing, Justice Thomas, in his concurring opinion in Dobbs, while noting the limitation of the Dobbs case to abortion, stated that “in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”16 In essence he invited lawsuits which might provide an opportunity to revisit decisions on the right to contraceptive access, the right for consenting adults to engage in same-sex intimate relationships, and the right for samesex couples to marry. That worrisome language in Dobbs helped spur the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA) in 2022.17 The RFMA had been introduced in four different Congressional sessions prior to its eventual passage. The RFMA officially repealed DOMA and required the federal government to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages. Additionally, it required that all U.S. states and territories recognize the validity of same-sex and interracial marriages if they are performed in a jurisdiction where those marriages are legally

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permitted to be performed. In what may be a worrisome foreshadowing, a requirement that marriages be recognized if performed in a jurisdiction which permits them implies that a time might again come when some jurisdictions may be permitted to deny performance of these marriages. In contrast to the Defense of Marriage Act (1996) which expressly did not require recognition of same-sex marriages validly performed in another state, the Respect for Marriage Act (2022) expressly did require such recognition. The Court’s 2023 decision in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis returned to the issue of the extent to which religious beliefs take precedence over other constitutionally protected rights. In this case, the Court held in a 6–3 decision that the First Amendment prohibited the state of Colorado from forcing a website designer to create expressive designs with which the designer disagreed. In the opening of a dissent joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, Justice Sotomayor stated the unequivocal result of the Court’s decision in this case, “[t] oday the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.” Justice Sotomayer warned that by issuing a new license to discriminate, “the immediate, symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and lesbians for second-class status. . . . The opinion of the Court is, quite literally, a notice that reads: ‘Some services may be denied to same-sex couples’.”18 ADF also represented Lori Smith, the graphic designer and owner of 303 Creative LLC. Subsequent information revealed that this case involved a non-existent controversy. Lori Smith alleged she had been asked to make a cake for a samesex couple. However, the purported requestor for this service not only says he did not send the email, but that he was already married (to a woman), and any request alleged to be from him was false.19 Regulatory Push and Pull Unlike marriage equality, which was battled in state legislatures and ultimately in the federal courts, most protections from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity are largely regulatory. They are the result of federal agency rulemaking. The problem is that protections provided by rulemaking are precarious. They rest on one thing, and one thing only: the identity of the individual occupying the Oval Office. Many examples can be used to illustrate this regulatory push and pull. The ability to fully access healthcare, military service, employment, and education in a non-discriminatory manner is representative of this struggle. Healthcare In 2014, the Obama administration issued a guidance letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission clarifying that, under Title VII of

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the Civil Rights Act of 1964, sex-based discrimination included discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.20 Two years later, following the decision in Obergefell, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published administrative rulemaking to implement §1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) clarifying the phrase “on the basis of sex” to include gender identity and termination of pregnancy. This rule became effective on July 18, 2016. The barriers faced by transgender persons in accessing healthcare included refusal of care or denial of specific treatments related to gender transition. The rule prohibited healthcare providers and insurance companies from denying, canceling, limiting, or refusing to issue or renew a policy based on an individual’s gender identity. It was intended to protect transgender and nonbinary individuals from discrimination in healthcare settings by breaking down some of those barriers. Also known as Obamacare, the ACA was passed in 2010 and sought to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system. One of the Act’s primary goals was to increase access to health insurance for millions of uninsured Americans. Section 1557 of the Act built upon existing civil rights laws, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability. This provision applied to any health program or activity that either received federal funding or was conducted by an Executive Agency or any entity created under Title 1 of the ACA. It was intended to ensure that healthcare was accessible and equitable for everyone. In 2020, the Trump Administration issued new rules rolling back the Obama-era protections. Among other changes, these rules eliminated protections for gender identity and adopted a narrow definition of sex as either male or female, immutable and biologically determined. These changes were immediately challenged in court. Among the early actions of the Biden Administration in 2021, HHS restored the Obama-era protections prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Military Service The Department of Defense (DOD) ban on transgender individuals serving openly in the military was lifted in 2016. DOD changes permitted transgender individuals already serving in the military to continue serving, while effective July 1, 2017, transgender individuals would be permitted to enlist openly. However, a new president was sworn in on January 21, 2017. The Trump Administration then implemented a modified version of the original ban. First, they delayed the July 1st enlistment date for openly transgender enlistments. In late July of 2017, President Trump tweeted “that the government would not allow ‘Transgender’ individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.”21 In 2018, the Trump Administration announced a policy prohibiting transgender individuals from serving in the military unless they

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served in the sex assigned at birth and did not seek to transition. Exempted from the prohibition were individuals who had begun changing their gender in reliance on the rules issued during the Obama administration. As with the changes to the HHS regulations, these changes were also immediately challenged in court. In 2019, in another five-to-four split, the Supreme Court upheld the ability of the Trump Administration to implement its proposed restrictions while the challenges continued to work their way through the lower courts. This rule was also rolled back by the Biden Administration in 2021, and transgender individuals were allowed to serve openly in the U.S. Military. Employment Workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity was addressed by the Supreme Court in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia (2020) in a six-three decision. This is more significant in relation to Obergefell’s (2015) five-four decision than is reflected by the numbers alone. Of the five Justices who voted in the majority in Obergefell, only four were still on the Court by the time of the Bostock decision. Justice Gorsuch, who wrote the Opinion of the Court in Bostock, was a new addition, replacing Justice Scalia, who had written a dissent in Obergefell. Another Obergefell dissenter voting with the majority in Bostock was Chief Justice John Roberts. Bostock, from the 11th Circuit, was actually the lead case of three consolidated cases. The other cases were from the 2nd and 6th Circuits. While Bostock is a court decision, it is discussed in this section on rulemaking by regulatory agencies because of its contribution to subsequent rulemaking interpreting statutory language. Gerald Bostock had been a child welfare advocate with Clayton County, Georgia, for 10 years when he began participating in a gay recreational softball league. Following disparaging comments made by influential community members about his sexual orientation and league participation, Gerald Bostock was fired for “conduct ‘unbecoming’ in a county employee.” In New York, Donald Zarda had been a skydiving instructor at Altitude Express for several years. Days after mentioning that he was gay, Donald Zarda was fired. Aimee Stephens in Garden City, Michigan, presented as male when hired by R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes. Six years after her hiring and four years after being diagnosed with gender dysphoria, Aimee Stephens notified her employer of her intention to “live and work full-time as a woman” after returning from an upcoming vacation. After being told “this is not going to work out” she was fired before her planned vacation departure. Bostock held that termination solely because of homosexual or transgender status was included within the prohibition of sex-based workplace discrimination found in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Significantly, Justice

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Gorsuch, in the opinion of the Court, appears to mirror the Obergefell (2015) language on the nature of injustice supra, in its declaration that “[t]hose who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. . . . But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands.” 22 Education Following the Court's decision in Bostock, the Office of Civil Rights for the Department of Education, under President Biden, issued rulemaking titled Enforcement of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 with Respect to Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Light of Bostock v. Clayton County which made clear that Title IX’s prohibition on sexual discrimination also encompassed discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.23 In its rulemaking the Department of Education noted the findings of numerous courts on the harm done to gay, lesbian, or transgender students by policies that treat them differently from other students. Within a year after its issuance, this regulation was preliminarily enjoined and restrained from implementation in 20 states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, South Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia. It should not be a surprise that every one of these states had either a negative or low policy score as assessed by the MAP. A previous guidance letter had been issued by the Obama administration in 2014 relative to sexual orientation and gender identity in equal access to education opportunities and programs. However, as with other similar regulatory initiatives, it was reversed by the Trump Administration. The bathroom and sports boogeyman was the argument most frequently raised in opposition. The notion that enabling students to use the bathroom associated with their gender identity, which might differ from their gender at birth, would lead to pedophiles lurking in the girls’ bathroom at schools has no connection to reality. Nor does the equally specious idea that there were hordes of athletes assigned male at birth who would claim a gender identity of female to compete on girls’ sports teams where presumably they would have a competitive edge.

SOCIOPOLITICAL ENVIRONMENT: THE CULTURE WARS The legal landscape did not change in a vacuum. It changed as part of a socialpolitical environment directed by national as well as grassroots

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organizations seeking to reshape the nation into a reflection of their religious beliefs. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) tracked 63 anti-LGBTQ groups in the United States in 2022. The state with the largest number was California, with seven identified groups, followed by Florida with six groups. This section will take a look at two of these organizations and some of the state and local laws and policies they shaped. Preeminent among these organizations is ADF, which is attacking the rights of transgender persons using the incremental strategy adopted by the NAACP in undermining separate but equal in education, and which ADF also used in undermining Roe.24 At the other end of the organizational spectrum is Moms for Liberty, a purported grassroots organization. Alliance Defending Freedom Identified by both the SPLC and the ADL as an extremist organization, the ADF is a legal organization that has supported the right of business owners to deny service to LGBTQ individuals on religious grounds. They also oppose transgender rights, including bathroom access. Founded in 1993 by Alan Sears, James Dobson, D. James Kennedy, Bill Bright, and Larry Burkett, ADF defines itself as “one of the leading Christian law firms committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, marriage and family, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.”25 In actuality they are committed to inserting their personal religious beliefs into public education, government, and intensely personal behaviors such as reproductive decisions, sexual orientation, or questions of gender identity. Their position on marriage and family is clear. “We advocate for laws and precedents that promote human flourishing by recognizing the important differences between men and women and honoring God’s design for marriage between one man and one woman.” There is arguably an inconsistency between this pillar, and their religious freedom pillar which promotes “the freedom of every person to live out their religious convictions in the public square, just as in the home or a place of worship.” The inconsistency is this: if my religious convictions call for marriage to a life partner, and if that life partner happens to be of the same sex, then their insistence that marriage can only be between a man and a woman interferes with my ability to live consistent with my religious conviction. The ADF is a major player in lawsuits not only seeking to limit LGBTQ freedoms but also women’s reproductive decision-making. If white christian nationalism were a company, the ADF could be considered its corporate legal office. Tennessee state representative Gino Bulso said the quiet part out loud with his introduction of House Bill 1605 in December 2023, which would ban Pride flags on all Tennessee state property. “[P]arents want their children raised with the values ‘that were in existence at the time

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that our country was founded.’”26 One is forced to wonder if he forgot that in 1788 when the U.S. Constitution was ratified, the voting franchise was limited to white male property owners, Blacks were enslaved, public education existed in only a few northern states, women could not own property, and Indigenous people were being driven off their lands. Or maybe he didn’t forget. Moms for Liberty These are two words designed to attract maximum appeal: “mom” and “liberty.” The reality is different. Growing out of opposition to public health regulations for COVID-19, Moms for Liberty oppose LGBTQ and racially inclusive school curricula. One thing they do support is banning books in schools. On their webpage, they declare their dedication to “fighting for the survival of America by unifying, educating, and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.”27 Moms for Liberty started with two chapters in Florida. Three years later, their X (formerly known as Twitter) social media page claims 300 chapters in 48 states with more than 130,000 members. The SPLC designated Moms for Liberty an extremist group in June 2023, noting that they use “their multiple social media platforms to target teachers and school officials, advocate for the abolition of the Department of Education, advance a conspiracy of propaganda, and spread hateful imagery and rhetoric against the LGBTQ community.”28 Moms for Liberty was founded by Tiffany Justice, Tina Descovich, and Bridget Ziegler on January 1, 2021. All three were from Florida and served on school boards in Florida: Justice (School District of Indian River County), Descovich (Brevard County), and Ziegler (Sarasota County). Ziegler had been an outspoken advocate of anti-LGBTQ legislation, under the guise of parental rights laws, including Florida’s infamous Don’t Say Gay law. In urging the Sarasota County School Board to reject the Biden Administration’s changes to Title IX which provided protections against discrimination based on gender identity, she argued that it put “children and girls in danger.”29 Zeigler no longer is listed as a founder on the Moms for Liberty website.30 A main initiative by Moms for Liberty is to encourage members to run for their local school board. Within a year of their founding, Moms for Liberty announced their endorsement of 270 candidates running in school board races across the country who supported Moms for Liberty in their opposition to critical race theory and their efforts to get books with LGBTQ themes removed from school libraries.31 In the interest of accuracy, it is important to note that critical race theory is a jurisprudential theory typically taught in law schools. Despite claims to the contrary, it is not taught in K–12 schools. What groups such as Moms for Liberty object to teaching in schools is a historical

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reality that incorporates the many disparate strands of the American tapestry with all of their beauty and their blemishes. Moms for Liberty presents itself as a grassroots organization. But its network of political allies includes those with connections to anti-government groups, white nationalists, election deniers, as well as participants in January 6th events.32 What appears to set Moms for Liberty apart is their laser-focused effort to remake the public schools to their specifications. A member of the Moms for Liberty chapter in Miami-Dade County, FL, told a reporter that children who are gay should be in their own classroom. The kids that do have their, you know, they’re confused, or they are gay or whatnot, . . . like for example children with autism, Down Syndrome, . . . they have to be put into separate classrooms . . . so that they feel that they’re important enough that they’re being counseled.33

In Charleston County, South Carolina, a school board member affiliated with Moms for Liberty stated publicly that he “would bring a gun to the home of his child’s teacher if the teacher came out as trans.”34 A police report was filed against a librarian in Santa Rosa County, Florida, by a member of Moms for Liberty. It was claimed that the librarian had given pornography to students. The librarian’s crime? Lending a fantasy book to a 17-year-old student about humans and gargoyles fighting demons. Two years previously, that book, Storm and Fury, had been recommended on the Teen Reads list by the Florida Association of Media in Education.35 CONCLUSION The Court in Obergefell expressly rejected the argument that the 14th amendment had to be defined based solely on its historical context. Writing for the Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy declared that [t]he nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times. The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.

These words illuminate the long struggle for LGBTQ rights in the United States, a struggle that continues to be marked by both progress and setbacks. The twenty-first century initially held promise for rights for the LGBTQ community, such as marriage equality. As may be expected, this progress was met with resistance from those who see the individual liberty of others as a

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threat to themselves. Masterpiece Cakeshop and 303 Creative LLC reveal a Supreme Court increasingly willing to prioritize certain religious beliefs over the fundamental rights of LGBTQ individuals. Hard-won protections often remain vulnerable to erosion, especially when those protections were established through regulatory means rather than legislation. The tug-of-war between changing presidential administrations regarding healthcare access, transgender rights, and military service exemplifies this precarity. Bostock, affirming workplace protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, was a critical win, yet its scope leaves battles over education and equal rights ongoing. The rollback of Roe v. Wade in Dobbs and Justice Thomas’s concurrence hint at the potential dismantling of rights like those enshrined in Obergefell. While the Respect for Marriage Act (2022) provides some safeguards, its sufficiency in the face of a hostile Supreme Court remains uncertain. These legal battles reflect a broader social and political climate shaped by extremist organizations seeking to mainstream their extremist agenda. This is accomplished by using talking points designed to attract a broad base of support while camouflaging their real purpose. They put their issues out front, often concealing their purpose. In that way, they are able to attract allies from those you might not expect to be aligned with white christian nationalist thought. For example, racial or ethnic minorities who may be unsettled by issues of sexual orientation or gender identity and therefore can be enticed by calls to remove LGBTQ books from classroom shelves. Similarly, they are able to attract women who, believing that life begins at conception, can then be galvanized into supporting state control over women’s bodies. The problem is that once you go down the rabbit hole of governmental regulation of issues of self-determination and bodily autonomy, the floodgates have been opened. The individual who supported the removal of LGBTQ books from classroom, is surprised when all the books by Black or Latino authors are also removed. Or the woman who is opposed to abortion and pushed for laws to prohibit it discovers that she cannot have her desired IVF procedure because it is also banned by her state’s fetal personhood laws. The same organizations work diligently to undermine LGBTQ equality, racial equality, and women’s reproductive autonomy. Legal challenges to combat discriminatory legislation continue, while advocacy groups work to expose the very real dangers faced by these communities. It is a fight for more than legal equality; it is a fight for safety, bodily autonomy, and the dignity of living without persecution for who you are and who you love. “If rights are defined by who exercised them in the past, then received practices could serve as their own justification and new groups could not invoke rights once denied.”36

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The fight for LGBTQ rights reminds us of the interconnectedness of struggles against systems of power, whether rooted in racial supremacy, male supremacy, or religious control. In July 2024, Kim Davis, who following Obergefell refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Among other arguments, Davis relies on Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring language in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), which overturned Roe v. Wade (1973), in arguing that Obergefell was wrongly decided. NOTES 1. Unless otherwise indicated, descriptions of specific incidents were obtained from the Global Terrorism Database. START (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism). (2022). “Global Terrorism Database 1970— 2020” [data file], January 1, 2021—January 6, 2021 [Supplemental File]. https://www​ .start​.umd​.edu​.gtd. 2. Matt Lavietes and Andrew Blankstein, “Suspect Named in Fatal Shooting of California Store Owner over a Pride Flag,” NBC News, August 22, 2023, https:// www​.nbcnews​.com​/nbc​-out​/out​-news​/suspect​-named​-fatal​-shooting​-california​-store​ -owner​-pride​-flag​-rcna101085. 3. Jennifer Truman and Rachel E. Morgan, “Violent Victimization by Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, 2017–2020,” Statistical Brief (D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, June 2022). Cisgender refers to persons whose gender identity corresponds to the sex assigned at birth. 4. MAP, “Movement Advancement Project | Snapshot: LGBTQ Equality by State,” accessed September 4, 2023, https://www​.lgbtmap​.org​/equality​-maps. 5. Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2020). 6. Administrators at Heyer Elementary School in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, banned a first-grade class from performing the Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus song “Rainbowland” about a utopia where everyone gets along because some of its lyrics could be deemed controversial. When the teacher, Melissa Tempel tweeted her disappointment with the decision, she was fired for, among other things, bringing negative attention to the school district. Kory Grow, “Teacher Fired Over Wanting First Graders to Sing Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton’s ‘Rainbowland,’” Rolling Stone (blog), July 13, 2023, https://www​.rollingstone​.com​/music​/music​-news​/miley​-cyrus​-dolly​ -parton​-rainbowland​-teacher​-fired​-1234787672/. For those who remember Kermit the Frog from Sesame Street singing a song about rainbows intended to teach children their colors, you are left to wonder if that song would now be permitted in preschool classrooms. 7. GLAAD, “GLAAD Media Reference Guide 11th Ed.,” February 24, 2022, https://glaad​.org​/reference​/terms/. GLAAD, or Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, founded in 1985, is the world’s largest Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,

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Transgender, and Queer media advocacy organization. “About GLAAD | GLAAD,” January 27, 2023, https://glaad​.org​/about/. 8. Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Crime Data Explorer: Hate Crime Statistics,” accessed December 8, 2023, https://cde​.ucr​.cjis​.gov​/LATEST​/webapp/#​/pages​/ explorer​/crime​/hate​-crime. This only includes individuals who were victims of singlebias crimes. 9. Depending on the nature of the finding, in some instances, Congress can modify the legislation to be consistent with the Court’s decision. 10. Public Law 104–199 Defense of Marriage Act 11. The Court relied on the 5th Amendment due process clause rather than the due process clause in the 14th Amendment because the 14th Amendment is only applicable to actions by a state. The action complained of in the lawsuit was taken by the federal government. 12. Obergefell et al. v. Hodges, Director, Ohio Department of Health, et al., 576 U.S. 644 (2015). 13. Obergefell et al. v. Hodges. 14. U.S. Census Bureau, “U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Rowan County, Kentucky,” accessed December 9, 2023, https://www​.census​.gov​/quickfacts​/fact​/ table​/rowancountykentucky​/PST045222. Numbers do not add up to 100% due to rounding. 15. Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. et al., v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission et al, U.S. 584 U.S. ____ 2018). 16. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. ______ (2022). Thomas, J. Concurring. 17. Public Law 117–228. Act to Repeal the ‘Defense of Marriage Act’ and Ensure Respect for State Regulation of Marriage, and for Other Purposes. 18. 303 Creative LLC et al v. Elenis et al. No. 21-476 (U.S. Supreme Court June 30, 2023). Sotomayor, J., Dissent. 19. Sam Levine, “Key Document May Be Fake in LGBTQ+ Rights Case before US Supreme Court,” The Guardian, June 29, 2023, sec. Law, https://www​.theguardian​.com​/law​/2023​/jun​/29​/supreme​-court​-lgbtq​-document​-veracity​-colorado. 20. U.S. Department of Labor, “Directive (DIR) 2014-02,” DOL, accessed December 9, 2023, http://www​.dol​.gov​/agencies​/ofccp​/directives​/2014​-02. 21. Associated Press, “Supreme Court Revives Trump’s Transgender Military Ban,” POLITICO, January 22, 2019, https://www​.politico​.com​/story​/2019​/01​/22​/ supreme​-court​-transgender​-military​-service​-1116716. 22. Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S.______ (Supreme Court 2020). 23. Enforcement of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 With Respect to Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Light of Bostock v. Clayton County Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 117 / Tuesday, June 22, 2021 / Rules and Regulations 32637. Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program receiving funding from the federal government. Since all public school districts receive some type of federal funding, the reach of Title IX is large. Public Law No. 92-318, 86 Stat. 235 (June 23, 1972), codified at 20 U.S.C. §§ 1681–1688.

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24. David Kirkpatrick, “Alliance Defending Freedom’s Crusade Against Trans Rights | The New Yorker,” New Yorker, October 2, 2023, https://www​.newyorker​ .com​/magazine​/2023​/10​/09​/alliance​-defending​-freedoms​-legal​-crusade. 25. Alliance Defending Freedom. Accessed October 23, 2023, https://adflegal​.org​ /about. 26. Greg Owen, “Christian Lawmaker Wants to Ban the Pride Flag Because Americans Should Live by 18th-Century Values,” LGBTQ Nation, January 7, 2024, accessed January 8, 2024, https://www​.lgbtqnation​.com​/2024​/01​/christian​-lawmaker​-wants​-to​-ban​-the​-pride​-flag​-because​-americans​-should​-live​-by​-18th​-century​ -values/. 27. Moms for Liberty, “About,” Moms for Liberty, accessed June 28, 2024, https://www​.momsforliberty​.org​/about/. 28. GLAAD, “Moms for Liberty (M4L) | GLAAD,” July 1, 2022, https://glaad​ .org​/gap​/moms​-liberty/. 29. Steven Walker, “Sarasota School Board Rejects Title IX Protections against Gender Identity Discrimination,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune, accessed June 28, 2024, https://www​.heraldtribune​.com​/story​/news​/education​/2024​/05​/08​/sarasota​-school​ -board​-rejects​-title​-ix​-gender​-identity​-policy​/73589969007/. 30. Moms for Liberty, “About.” 31. Khaleda Rahman, “Moms for Liberty Banned Book List—The Novels They Want Taken out of Schools,” Newsweek, November 3, 2022, https://www​.newsweek​ .com​/moms​-liberty​-banned​-book​-list​-schools​-1756574. 32. SPLC, “Moms for Liberty,” Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed June 28, 2024, https://www​.splcenter​.org​/fighting​-hate​/extremist​-files​/group​/moms​-liberty. 33. Alex Bollinger, “Moms for Liberty Activist Wants LGBTQ Students Separated into Special Classes,” LGBTQ Nation, August 18, 2022, https://www​.lgbtqnation​ .com​/2022​/08​/moms​-liberty​-activist​-wants​-lgbtq​-students​-separated​-special​-classes/. 34. GLAAD, “Moms for Liberty (M4L) | GLAAD.” 35. GLAAD. 36. Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015).

Chapter 5

Voter Suppression Twenty-First-Century Style

By the dawn of the twentieth century, an entrenched system of voter suppression had developed to offset the impact of the 15th Amendment, which prohibited the federal government or any state government from prohibiting or restricting the right of any citizen to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Since the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, was not added to the Constitution until 50 years later in 1920, the initial intended beneficiaries of the 15th Amendment were African-American men. Congress was granted enforcement powers by §2 of the 15th Amendment. Despite this new amendment, as the nineteenth century gave way to the 20th, an unchecked system of voter suppression with its attendant violence was widespread in the former confederate states. The removal of federal troops from those states as part of the Compromise of 1877 that put Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House and ended Reconstruction left the newly freed and enfranchised citizens on their own. While those who had led an armed rebellion against the nation to keep them enslaved had a path to resuming political power. This system of voter suppression included poll taxes, literacy tests, the grandfather clause, and all-white primaries. Underlying it all was violence or the threat of violence. An all-too-common example occurred in the city of Wilmington, N.C. in 1898 where the duly elected racially integrated government was overthrown with violence and intimidation by organized white terrorists. “White supremacists [will] win the upcoming election ‘by any means necessary,’ even if they ‘had to shoot every Negro in the City.’” These words were spoken by Alfred Waddell, leader of a white supremacist group, the Red Shirts, in advance of the November 1898, North Carolina state-wide elections. Just in case his meaning was not clear, the day before the election Waddell directed his followers to 89

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[g]o to the polls tomorrow, and if you find the Negro out voting, tell him to leave the polls and if he refuses, kill him, shoot him down in his tracks. We shall win tomorrow if we have to do it with guns.

Two days after the state-wide election, a reign of racist terror began in Wilmington, then the largest city in N. C. Waddell led a mob that grew to as many as 2,000 armed white men. After burning the Daily Record, the only Black-owned daily newspaper in the world, the mob spread throughout the city, setting fire to Black-owned homes and businesses while beating or killing every Black man, woman, and child they encountered. Municipal elections for the city of Wilmington were not scheduled to occur for another year, but that would not be permitted to be an impediment to the restoration of white power. The interracial government in Wilmington, elected by African-American and progressive white men, was anathema to Waddell and his followers. Wilmington city government officials were forced to resign and were replaced with white supremacists. Thousands of Black people fled Wilmington never to return. To this day, it is still not known how many Black people died as a result of the violence. Alfred Waddell, a former officer in the confederate army made himself mayor of Wilmington.1 Charles Aycock, another organizer, was elected governor of the state of North Carolina in 1901.2 The Wilmington, N.C. insurrection has the dubious distinction of being considered the first coup in the United States. The insurrectionist leaders took power immediately, quickly stripping voting power and civil rights from the state’s African-American population.3 In the early twentieth century, this pattern was repeated throughout the southern and western states: The Atlanta (Georgia) Race Massacre in 1906, The Springfield (Illinois) Race Massacre of 1908, The East St. Louis (Illinois) Race Massacre of 1917, The Tulsa (Oklahoma) Race Massacre of 1921, The Rosewood (Florida) Race Massacre of 1923, to name a few. The causes were similar: white resentment of black economic success, white objection to black political participation, and inflammatory calls to preserve the purity of white womanhood. The patterns were also similar. Large white mobs, frequently numbering in the thousands, burning, beating, and murdering Black men, women, and children. The historical nomenclature that labeled these incidents as riots is deliberately misleading. Meeting an armed attack with armed self-defense does not turn a massacre into a riot. The outcomes were similar as well. A disproportionate number of Black deaths, compared to minimal white casualties. The complete destruction of a community’s homes and businesses, and in some cases, the erasure of that community itself. Use violence to reshape the government, and then that new government can impose restrictions to ensure whites remain in power. In the 25-year

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period dating from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 to 1902, 10 of the 11 former confederate states imposed a poll tax: Georgia (1877), Florida (1885), Mississippi (1890), Arkansas (1891), South Carolina (1895), Louisiana (1898), North Carolina (1900), Alabama (1901), Texas (1902), and Virginia (1902). The 11th state, Tennessee, had imposed its poll tax in 1870, the same year the 15th Amendment was ratified. Two of the four Civil War border states imposed a poll tax during this period as well: Maryland (1896) and Delaware (1897). While slaveholding states, the border states had remained in the Union during the Civil War. Oklahoma imposed a poll tax in 1907, the same year it became a state. A poll tax required prospective voters to pay a tax in order to vote. This not only eliminated potential Black voters, but also theoretically eliminated poor white voters. However, in the Jim Crow era, whites managed to avoid the imposition of this tax.4 Add in literacy tests where the potential voter had to read and interpret what they read to the satisfaction of the examiner, grandfather clauses which allowed you to vote only if your grandfather had voted, all-white primaries, along with the ever-present threat of violence, and you have effectively eliminated minority political participation. Ninety-five years after the ratification of the 15th Amendment, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed. The Voting Rights Act was a response to state-sanctioned voter suppression. It was intended to prevent state and local governments from passing laws or adopting practices denying Americans the right to vote based on race. Subsequent extensions of the Voting Rights Act extended its protections not just to race or color, but also to speakers of four language minority groups: Spanish, Native American, Native Alaskan, and Asian languages. As part of the law’s protections, §5 of the Voting Rights Act required that jurisdictions with a history of discrimination were required to get advance permission, or preclearance, from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) or a federal district court in the District of Columbia before any changes to their voting procedures could go into effect. The jurisdictions covered by the preclearance requirement were the states of Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, as well as parts of North Carolina, Arizona, Idaho, and Hawaii. The most recent reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act was in 2006 for another 25-year period, which would expire in 2031. In 2013, however, the Supreme Court obliterated the Act’s protections. Shelby County, Alabama, in April 2010 filed suit challenging the constitutionality of §5 of the Voting Rights Act. Both the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found §5 to be constitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, disagreed. Chief Justice Roberts, in the opinion of the court, indicated that the coverage formula established in §4 of the Act was unconstitutional and therefore,

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§5, which relied on the §4 formula for identification of the jurisdictions to be covered by preclearance, was also unconstitutional. The removal of the preclearance requirement meant that jurisdictions with a history of voter disenfranchisement could make changes in their voting laws and procedures without federal review in advance of the enactment. The rationale for invalidating §4 was that the coverage formula was based on data from the 1960s when the Act was adopted. The court determined that the changed conditions of the intervening 50 years served to invalidate §4 and hence §5. Justice Ginsburg, in a dissent joined by Justice Kagan, prophetically noted that “[t] hrowing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”5 This chapter will focus on the post-Shelby world and the rise of what can be called Voter Suppression 2.0. If nothing else demonstrated to white christian nationalists the importance of controlling who could vote, the ascension of a Black man to the nation’s highest office did. The election of Barack Obama in 2008 was followed by a systemic campaign initiated to convince Americans that he had won the presidency through massive voter fraud and that new laws were needed to prevent more elections from being stolen.6 For white christian nationalists, control of the political franchise continues to be important. For instance, can you claim to be a white Christian nation with Black and brown people playing a role in the political process? More importantly, how can you impose your will if you do not have political power? For white christian nationalists this dilemma is particularly urgent in light of the demographic changes predicted to arrive in the next two decades whereby the United States is expected to become a majorityminority nation. If you believe that God intends the United States to be a white Christian nation, but there are more non-whites than whites in the United States, then it is imperative to retain political control so that social control implementing your supremacist-religious-nationalist worldview can also be maintained. Shelby v. Holder did not emerge from the ether in front of a Supreme Court serendipitously poised to dismantle the Voting Rights Act. National, wellfinanced organizations played a key role in lawsuits in the run-up to Shelby. More importantly, these organizations had an already-devised playbook to usher in Voter Suppression 2.0. In the decade since the Shelby decision, their tentacles have spread throughout the country to the detriment primarily of voters of color, but also to voters not in sync with their authoritarian theocratic worldview. This chapter begins by looking at a select few of these organizations and describing their contributions to the dismantling of the political franchise. It will conclude with an examination of the impact of their contributions in practice.

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THE PLAYBOOK The simultaneous emergence of similar strategies with the impact of targeting the same groups of people was neither accidental nor by coincidence. These tactics are the creation of far-right extremist-conservative organizations who view themselves as the keepers of the American Christian flame. This section will discuss the contributions of two of these organizations, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and The Heritage Foundation, to the new voter suppression. American Legislative Exchange Council Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, ALEC describes itself as “America’s largest nonpartisan, voluntary membership organization of state legislators dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism.”7 Claiming a membership of more than one-quarter of the nation’s state legislators and other policymakers, ALEC was founded in 1973 by conservative activists Lou Barnett and Paul Weyrich (co-founder of The Heritage Foundation) and Congressman Henry Hyde (R-Ill). Congressman Hyde is remembered in history as the legislative father of the Hyde Amendment, first passed in 1977, which with a few narrow exceptions precludes the use of federal funds to pay for abortions. By 2012, ALEC was receiving criticism for the extent to which corporations dominated its board and decision-making, as well as for the model legislation designed to impose strict voter ID laws it was providing to state legislatures.8 A decade later, in June 2021, the League of Women Voters, along with approximately 96 other national organizations as well as 225 state and local organizations, all widely disparate in nature and political viewpoint, issued a public letter to corporations calling on them to cease their support for and funding of ALEC due to its persistent support for Jim Crow-style voting laws, racist gerrymandering practices, and other barriers to voting. A sentence from the letter [w]e the undersigned organizations, work on a variety of issues and don’t always agree on every policy, but we all believe in a strong American democracy where every eligible American is able to exercise their freedom to vote in free, fair, and safe elections

stands in stark contrast and rebuttal to Paul Weyrich, an ALEC founder [I] .  .  . don’t want everyone to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are

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not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.9

The challenge is how to keep people from voting. An answer was provided by The Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation In 1973, Paul Weyrich also founded The Heritage Foundation, along with Edwin Feulner and Joseph Coors of the Coors Brewing family. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., The Heritage Foundation is a conservative action think tank which has been ranked as one of the most influential public policy organizations in the United States10 Its self-described aim is “to formulate and promote public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.”11 The Heritage Foundation cites as one of its notable achievements “recommending candidates for vacant seats that ultimately shaped the future of the Supreme Court that delivered the landmark decision overturning Roe v. Wade.”12 The Heritage Foundation can be considered the think tank complement to the legislative efforts of ALEC. In 2021, The Heritage Foundation’s advocacy arm, Heritage Action, spent in excess of $5 million lobbying to block federal voting rights legislation and to advance aggressive voter suppression methods in battleground states.13 As reported by Mother Jones Magazine, Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action, in a private meeting with donors in 2021 said in reference to Georgia’s new voter suppression law as well to bills pending in other states, “[I]n some cases, we actually draft them for them . . . or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe.”14 Despite the absence of evidence to support their claims since the 2020 election, The Heritage Foundation has continued to publish reports alleging widespread voter fraud. What these reports do accomplish is to serve as a justification for The Heritage Foundation’s best practices for elections. These are 52 recommendations spread across five categories and 12 subcategories. As is illustrated by table 5.1 these recommendations for voting restrictions cover the entire process from registering to vote, voting, and then counting the votes. To round out the process, recommendations are included on litigating elections, as well as election processes or procedures that should be specifically prohibited.​ The recommendations are a disturbing blueprint for reducing voting participation. They also provide a glimpse into the worldview of their proponents. To visualize the world they are promoting, a look at even a few of

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Table 5.1  Heritage Foundation Election Recommendation Categories Voter Registration Verify accuracy of voter registration lists Verify citizenship of voters In-Person and Absentee Voting Require voter identification (ID) Limit Absentee Ballots Prevent vote trafficking Allow election observers complete access to the election process Provide voting assistance

14 recommendations 5 recommendations 5 recommendations 15 recommendations 1 recommendation 5 recommendations 1 recommendation

Counting Votes Prohibit early vote counting

2 recommendations

Election Litigation Provide state legislatures with legal standing to sue

1 recommendation

What States Should Not Do No same-day registration No automatic voter registration No private funding of election officials and government agencies

1 recommendation 1 recommendation 1 recommendation

Data Source: Heritage Foundation, The Facts About Election Integrity and the Need for State to Fix Their Election Systems. Source: Table by author.

the recommendations is sufficiently chilling in their implication. A person’s status as a citizen or non-citizen will be prominently indicated by their driver’s license or state photo ID.15 The question that arises is, to what types of discriminatory treatment will listing a person’s citizenship status on their ID potentially lead? For example, on the Fourth of July, will businesses offer discounts to persons whose IDs indicate that they are a U.S. citizen? Will the next step be to list a person’s religious status as Christian or not on their driver’s license? If this seems familiar, it is. Religious affiliation was listed on government identification documents in Hitler’s Germany. The recommendations call for state election officials to verify the accuracy of an individual’s voter registration information through commercial data companies, with credit agencies as the favored source.16 There is a glaring inconsistency when the same organizations that called for limited government now argue for the government to have access to the purchases an individual makes, where they were made, and so forth. More importantly, anyone who considers it reasonable to condition a person’s ability to vote on the assumption that commercial companies have accurate records has never had to contend with a credit agency regarding misinformation in their credit report. The recommendations call for voting to be done in person, with absentee ballots limited to those who are too disabled to vote in person or those who

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will be out of town on election day and all of the Early Voting Days. However, absentee ballots must be notarized or be signed by a witness, complete with all of the witness’s contact information.17 If you are disabled and are unable to get to a notary or are unable to get someone to come and witness your absentee ballot, then you are out of luck. For those who are able to get an absentee ballot notarized or witnessed, good luck finding a drop box in which to place your ballot. To limit the use of drop boxes for early voting, the recommendations call for them to only be located in government buildings where they are to be under 24-hour security and video surveillance.18 In-person voting will be done under partisan surveillance as election observers, including partisan observers, will have complete access to the voting process as it occurs and will be allowed the use of cameras and recording devices in the voting precincts.19 The recommendations do specify that the observers cannot record an individual’s actual vote. But with partisan observers permitted to be stationed anywhere in the polling place with a camera, it is impossible for a voter to avoid feeling that their specific vote is being monitored and recorded. As a practical matter, how will overwhelmed election officials monitor what is actually being recorded by each observer? This is particularly true given the number of experienced election workers who have been driven out of the field by harassment from the far-right, leaving a less experienced force of election workers. The chilling effect of attempting to vote while partisan individuals are recording in the same room where you are trying to vote is enormous.

VOTER SUPPRESSION 2.0 IN PRACTICE These ideal voter suppression strategies have blossomed into practice postShelby. These new efforts are presented not under their intended guise of voter suppression but are disguised as efforts to prevent voter fraud. The only problem with this argument is that study after study has found voter fraud to be extremely rare in U.S. elections. Out of more than 1 billion votes cast between 2000 and 2014, only 31 credible allegations of voter fraud were found.20 But, in the decade since Shelby, 29 states have passed 94 restrictive voting laws.21 While a few of these restrictions were blocked or repealed by the courts, at least one restriction continues to operate in each of these 29 states. Among the restrictions imposed are strict voter ID laws, reductions in early voting and voting by mail, purges of voter rolls, restrictions on voter registration, consolidation of polling places, and increases in racial gerrymandering. As noted by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Georgia has the distinction of being the only state formerly under federal oversight to adopt all five of the most common voter suppression tactics: voter ID laws, proof of

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citizenship requirements, purging of voter rolls, cuts in early voting opportunities, as well as the closure of polling places.22 On their face, these may seem benign and racially neutral. However, these laws primarily disadvantage voters of color.23 This is the reason they have flourished in the post-Shelby environment. Before the decision in Shelby County v. Holder, most of these restrictions would not have survived the preclearance process. This section will examine selected examples of some of these restrictions: identification requirements, early voting and voting by mail, the purge of voter rolls, state takeovers of local government functions, and gerrymandering. This section will conclude with a description of the newest threat to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Strict Voter Identification Voter identification laws vary by state but usually require a governmentissued ID, although some states allow documentation such as a bank statement to suffice for ID. For those states requiring a government ID to vote, if a voter does not already have one, it can be difficult to produce the required documentation to obtain it. For instance, some older Americans do not have birth certificates because they were not born in hospitals, particularly those born in rural areas or on tribal lands. These are people who spent decades working and, in many cases, voting, but due to changes in the requirements for government-issued ID, their identification no longer suffices as a government-issued ID, and they have also lost the right to vote. Thirty-six states currently have laws either requesting or requiring some type of ID at the polls. Some require a photo, some do not. The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) identified 13 states as having strict voter ID laws: Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Of these 13 states, only Arizona, North Dakota, and Wyoming do not require a photo.24 The absence of a photo requirement does not necessarily make it easier to meet the requirements of these strict voter ID laws. For instance, just prior to the 2018 midterm elections, a new voter ID law went into effect in North Dakota, which expressly excluded the use of a Post Office (P.O.) Box as the residential address listed on an individual’s ID. In one stroke, 5,000 Native Americans were excluded from voting since the reservation did not have traditional residential addresses with a street name and number for housing units.25 The NCSL placed Alabama in the non-strict category because it provides an alternative for voters who do not show a photo ID. These potential voters can cast a provisional ballot and then have until the Friday following the election to bring their photo ID into the office. The alternative is that the

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photo ID requirement is waived if two election officials can sign statements saying they know the voter. Once again, this is an example of an apparently neutral standard with a potentially discriminatory impact. How many people of color are likely to have two election officials willing to sign statements that they know the individual, particularly in jurisdictions deliberately seeking to reduce voter participation? In practice, this can also present an opportunity for the type of fraud these jurisdictions claim they are attempting to prevent. People of color, poor people, the elderly, and young people are less likely to already possess the type of identification required by these new laws.26 These laws have an impact that extends beyond their existence. A study of North Carolina voters found that even after the repeal of the state’s photo ID law, voters without a photo ID were less likely to turn out to vote.27 Early Voting and Voting by Mail Early voting and voting by mail increase voter turnout by providing an opportunity for those who could not otherwise get to the polling place during the prescribed hours on the one day that in-person elections take place. Restrictions on early voting or voting by mail have a wide-ranging impact. In addition to those whose work schedule may preclude attendance or who may be traveling for work, persons with disabilities, transportation challenges or mobility issues, as well as those with a myriad of other reasons that would make it difficult or impossible to appear in person during the specific hours on election day, are impacted. Limiting the time available to vote has been an established mechanism for decreasing participation by voters of color. As jurisdiction after jurisdiction expanded the ability to vote by mail or vote early, voting increased. Universal-vote-by-mail, where every voter is automatically sent a ballot in the mail as well as no-excuse vote-by-mail, was found to increase voter participation.28 However, these are the very voter initiatives that these organizations and their acolytes seek to restrict or eliminate. Following the 2020 election, 21 states passed laws restricting voting by mail.29 A Brennan Center study of the impact of a 2021 Texas law imposing new requirements for mail voting found that in the March 2022 primary election, thousands of mail ballot applications and mail ballots cast by Latino, Asian, and Black voters were disproportionately rejected, with non-white voters at least 30% more likely than white voters to have an application or mail ballot rejected.30 Purge of Voter Rolls The removal of inactive voters from voting rolls, or voter purging, also tends to disproportionately disenfranchise minority voters. Another study from the

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Brennan Center for Justice found that in 2016, the states of Georgia, Ohio, and North Carolina disproportionately removed Black voters from the voting rolls. In Georgia, Black voters were twice as likely as white voters to be purged from the voting rolls. Black voters in Ohio were four times as likely as white voters to be purged from the voting rolls. In North Carolina, Black voters were six times as likely as white voters to be purged from the voting rolls.31 The Brennan Center found that the Shelby decision’s removal of the preclearance requirement impacted the number of voters removed from the rolls. Specifically, looking at the 2012 and 2016 election cycles, the Brennan Center found that purge rates were significantly higher in jurisdictions that, as a result of the Shelby decision, were no longer subject to preclearance compared to those jurisdictions where preclearance had never been a requirement. It was estimated that two million fewer voters would have been purged during that four-year period if the jurisdictions subject to preclearance before the Shelby decision had purged at the same rate as those jurisdictions not subject to preclearance under the Voting Rights Act.32 Georgia is a telling example. In 2017, the office of the Georgia secretary of state, Brian Kemp removed 560,000 Georgians from the voter rolls. The rationale was that since these individuals had missed a newly announced number of elections, they therefore must either be dead or have moved away. A study conducted by American Public Media found that 107,000 of the voters who were purged would have otherwise been able to vote in the gubernatorial election the following year. That 2018 election pitted white male Brian Kemp (R), the same secretary of state whose office purged the voter rolls, against African-American female Stacey Abrams (D), a longtime voting rights advocate. The purged voters were disproportionately from democratic precincts as opposed to republican precincts.33 Brian Kemp won that election to become governor of the state of Georgia. State Takeovers of Local Functions State takeovers are part of a larger playbook intended to return political power to the hands of the elite, who also happen to be privileged white males. Nancy MacLean in Democracy in Chains The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America describes an entrenched process envisioned by ultra-conservative think tanks whereby Republican-controlled state legislatures have increasingly taken over local government functions from the local governments in their states.34 It is not surprising that these localities, whose powers have been usurped, are often minority-controlled. Nor is it surprising that the results from state takeovers have been disastrous from the perspective of those local citizens. Whether it was the state takeover in Flint, Michigan, which led to years of lead-contaminated water for the city’s majority

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Black residents, or the Texas legislature’s invalidation of local ordinances mandating water breaks for outdoor workers in the midst of the state’s hottest summer, which impacted a largely Latino workforce, the result was the same: a usurpation of political power and authority. These takeovers largely occur where the locality is not just a majority-minority jurisdiction, but also where the elected officials are primarily minority. It is, in short, the deliberate siphoning away of political control from Black and brown communities. On a larger scale, there is Senate Bill 1750, passed by the Republicancontrolled Texas state legislature, which abolished the Harris County Elections Administrator position, returning election duties to the county clerk and tax assessor-collector. Harris County was the only Texas county affected by this law. The law was set to take effect on September 1, 2023, weeks before early voting was scheduled to begin for the county’s November municipal elections. Despite court challenges, the law eventually went into effect. Senate Bill 1933 allows the Texas secretary of state to take over Harris County elections if someone involved, such as a candidate or election official, files a complaint. However, the remedial action could extend not simply to reviewing and addressing the complaint, but to the entire range of election activity.35 Harris County was targeted by the Republican-controlled Texas state legislature in what has been viewed as a partisan attack on a blue wave in a sea of red. Of significance are the demographics of Harris County, whose three largest population groups are a Hispanic population at 45%, white non-Hispanic at 27%, and Black or African-American at 21%.36 With a nonwhite population of approximately 66%, Harris County and its largest city of Houston are majority-minority jurisdictions. These legislative changes have been criticized by voting rights advocates and election experts as unnecessary since there has been no evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities in elections in Harris County. It was also argued that this change would make it more difficult to vote in Harris County and could lead to voter suppression. Once again, that is the intent. In nearby Mississippi, the governor signed SB 2343, which expanded the boundaries of the state-controlled capital police district from solely encompassing state buildings to encompassing almost the entire city of Jackson. In addition, HB 1020 created a new judicial district in Jackson called the Capitol Complex Improvement District, which included the state Capitol Building, all of downtown, Jackson State University, as well as nearby neighborhoods and buildings. This had the effect of replacing locally elected officials with a judge appointed by the state chief justice and prosecuting attorneys appointed by the state attorney general.37 Jackson is the capital of Mississippi and is now almost 80% Black. The impact of imposing unelected white judicial control over a city that is 80% Black is a return to a southern tradition of the policing of Black and brown bodies by those answerable to people not elected by

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those policed. The state of Mississippi has removed the ability of the majority Black residents of the city of Jackson to live under a justice system in which the officials are answerable to the residents. During my participation in January 2024 on a podcast discussing schoolbased mass shootings, a caller asked whether I thought that the 74 minutes law enforcement spent on the scene before breaching the classroom to engage the shooter as children were dying at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on May 24, 2022, was due to the fact that the children were Hispanic instead of white. Uvalde has a population of approximately 15,000 people, mostly Hispanic. Nineteen students and two teachers were killed while another 17 were injured. School District Police, the Uvalde Police, the County Sheriff’s office, and ultimately the U.S. Border Police were all on the scene. The U.S. DOJ issued a scathing report on the failures that day, including a failure of leadership. The question I considered important was, what percentage of the law enforcement responders lived in the community? It is impossible to believe that the same delay would have occurred in a situation where the law enforcement leadership felt answerable to the community; where they know they will encounter those parents in the supermarket, at religious services, or simply at the park. This is a larger example of what can happen when the oversight connection of local residents is severed from those responsible for providing services to those residents, as in Jackson, Mississippi, Flint, Michigan, and Harris County, Texas. Gerrymandering The U.S. Constitution requires that every ten years states are to redraw their congressional district boundaries based on data from the most recent census. Other than the mandate to draw the boundaries, the Constitution does not specify how it was to be done. The term “gerrymandering” originated in the early nineteenth century when the governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, signed a bill creating a congressional district in the Boston area that was so oddly shaped it resembled a salamander. Hence the name. Gerrymandering has typically been the act of drawing electoral district boundaries to favor one political party over another party. Depending on the scope, gerrymandering can be used to pack voters of one party into a single district, making it easier for that party to win an election in that district. On a larger scale, it can be used to spread voters of one party across multiple districts, making it harder for that party to win any of those districts. Or, gerrymandering can be done in a way that ensures the re-election of incumbents. In Voter Suppression 2.0 efforts, gerrymandering continues to be used extensively in efforts to dilute the ability of people of color to be successful in electing their preferred representatives. Examples include Texas drawing districts

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that diluted Hispanic voting power in some areas and Black voting power in others. Or South Dakota’s effort to dilute Native American voting power by including non-reservation areas into their districts, which had the impact of diluting the Native American vote and making it difficult for them to elect their preferred candidates. In Alabama, more than one in every four voters is Black. Yet, the state only has one majority Black congressional district out of seven. On June 8, 2023, in a 5–4 decision in Allen v. Milligan (2023), the Supreme Court ruled that the map drawn by the Alabama state legislature as part of its decennial redistricting used racially discriminatory gerrymandering in an effort to reduce Black voting power in violation of §2 of the Voting Rights Act.38 The state was ordered to redraw their congressional districts so that there was a second Black opportunity district for the 2024 elections. The new plan approved by the Alabama state legislature did not meet that standard. A federal court was forced to appoint a special master to draw congressional boundaries. The case that threw out Alabama’s voting maps was brought by a coalition of civil rights groups. In the future, the ability to bring these types of cases is likely to be eradicated. Demise of the Voting Rights Act? In his dissent in Allen v. Milligan, Justice Clarence Thomas again threw out breadcrumbs. This time, he expressed his opinion that, in its consideration of the case, the majority had not addressed the issue of whether §2 of the Voting Rights Act even authorized cases to be brought by private parties. It took less than six months for the Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit39 to pick up those breadcrumbs and, on appeal issue a ruling that only the federal government, not private individuals or organizations, is authorized to bring suit under §2 of the Voting Rights Act. The lawsuit brought by the Arkansas State Conference of the NAACP involved a racial gerrymandering case alleging that the state’s legislative districts diluted the voting power of Black voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The District Court said that it could not rule on the case because the NAACP did not have standing to bring the lawsuit, as §2 did not authorize a private right of action. The 8th Circuit upheld this decision.40 This is contrary to every other circuit that has addressed this issue. In the opinion of the court in Shelby, which tossed out §4 and §5 of the Voting Rights Act, Chief Justice Roberts specifically noted that despite the ruling they were issuing in Shelby, §2 was still available as a means to challenge alleged violations of the Voting Rights Act. There are key differences in the application of these two sections. Section 5 required advance approval in order for proposed changes to be implemented. When utilizing §2, a plaintiff is reduced to an after-the-fact challenge to something that is already implemented or is in the

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process of being implemented. This issue is one on which the Supreme Court is likely to eventually make a determination in order to resolve the dispute among the circuits. Unfortunately, the present court has systematically been eliminating the protection of the Voting Rights Act. This threatens to derail the remaining utility of the Act. As a practical matter, challenges to voting practices such as redistricting, ID, and others are primarily brought by individuals or organizations, not by the federal government. A study by the University of Michigan Law School found that over the past 40 years, out of 182 successful cases brought under §2 of the Voting Rights Act, only 15, less than 10%, were brought exclusively by the U.S. DOJ.41 Eliminating a private right of action, coupled with the prior elimination of preclearance, will leave a gutted act with no means of enforcement.

CONCLUSION To impose a theocratic white ethnostate, an authoritarian government is required. To seize power in a democratic system, there must be a methodology for reducing electoral participation by those you are attempting to exclude from power. In the twenty-first century, that method can be considered as Voter Suppression 2.0. Original voter suppression initiatives imposed post-Reconstruction were designed to maintain white supremacy. Openly racist, they coupled violence with restrictive laws that made no pretense about their purpose. Voter Suppression 2.0 emerged in a different world. It was a world, thanks in part to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, where non-white people were active political participants and office holders. The goal of Voter Suppression 2.0 is not to maintain an existing system of white supremacy. It is to regain and re-establish white political control. Systematic attacks on the Voting Rights Act from its inception reached their apex in 2013 with Shelby v. Holder’s removal of the preclearance requirement. The floodgates opened to a wave of voting restrictions. Organizations such as ALEC and The Heritage Foundation have been actively involved in assisting those who seek to reduce the political franchise. This time, instead of open calls to restrict voting to whites, we hear of a desire to prevent voter fraud. The problem is that the repeated claims from the far-right about voter fraud are simply false. The insidious nature of this theme is that it has a generic appeal even to those who are its ultimate intended targets. After all, everyone is against voter fraud. However, the schema developed and implemented, the strict voter identification requirements, early voting restrictions, voting by mail restrictions, purging of voter rolls, and gerrymandering, all target voters of color. State takeovers of local government functions primarily occur

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where those local functions are exercised by majority-minority government officials. To lock in the ability to impose these restrictions, the one remaining protection of the Voting Rights Act is also under attack. Namely the ability of individuals and organizations to challenge these restrictions. The elimination of a private right of action to sue, for all intents and purposes, reduces the Voting Rights Act to a mere piece of paper. When it comes to the expectation that the states will sustain and protect voting rights for people of color, that expectation may be as realistic as the expectation that states would protect women’s reproductive rights, as well as their lives when they started regulating abortion access. It has never been about protecting elections from fraudulent voting. It has always been about preventing certain people from voting.

NOTES 1. DeNeen L. Brown, “Majority-Black Wilmington, N.C., Fell to White Mob’s Coup 125 Years Ago,” Washington Post, November 10, 2023, https://www​.washingtonpost​.com​/history​/2023​/11​/10​/wilmington​-massacre​-150​-anniversary/. 2. Toby Luckhurst, “Wilmington 1898: When White Supremacists Overthrew a US Government,” January 16, 2021, https://www​.bbc​.com​/news​/world​-us​-canada​ -55648011. 3. Luckhurst. 4. The 24th amendment to the Constitution eliminated the poll tax for national elections. National elections include the offices of: President/Vice-President, Senators, and Congressional Representatives. After passing the House and Senate with the required two-thirds majority, the amendment was presented to the states for ratification in 1962. Ratification was completed with the 38th state in 1964. By the time the 24th amendment was ratified, only five states still retained the poll tax: Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia. When it came time for states to vote to ratify the 24th amendment, Mississippi has the distinction of being the only state to outright reject the amendment. Virginia ratified the 24th amendment in 1977, North Carolina in 1989, Alabama in 2002, and Texas in 2009, 45 years after the adoption of the amendment. 5. Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529, 590 (2013). 6. Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (New York: Viking, 2017). 7. ALEC, “Home,” American Legislative Exchange Council, 2023, https://alec​ .org/. 8. Rachel Weiner, “How ALEC Became a Political Liability,” Washington Post (blog), April 24, 2012, https://www​.washingtonpost​.com​/blogs​/the​-fix​/post​/how​-alec​ -became​-a​-political​-liability​/2012​/04​/24​/gIQA3QnyeT​_blog​.html.

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9. League of Women Voters, “The League Condemns the American Legislative Exchange Council | League of Women Voters,” June 14, 2021, https://www​.lwv​.org​ /expanding​-voter​-access​/league​-condemns​-american​-legislative​-exchange​-council. 10. Joe Holub, “Guides: Public Policy Research Think Tanks 2019: Top Think Tanks - US,” accessed November 26, 2023, https://guides​.library​.upenn​.edu​/c​.php​?g​ =1035991​&p​=7509974. 11. The Heritage Foundation, “The Heritage Foundation,” The Heritage Foundation, 2023, https://www​.heritage​.org​/about​-heritage​/mission. 12. The Heritage Foundation. 13. Ed Pilkington and Brendan Fischer, “Rightwing Group Pours Millions in ‘Dark Money’ into US Voter Suppression Bid,” The Guardian, January 13, 2023, sec. US news, https://www​.theguardian​.com​/us​-news​/2023​/jan​/13​/heritage​-foundation​ -voter​-suppression​-lobbying​-election​-action​-plan. 14. Ari Berman & Nick Surgey, 2021. “Leaked Video: Dark Money Group Brags about Writing GOP Voter Suppression Bills across the Country,” Mother Jones Magazine, accessed November 26, 2023, https://www​.motherjones​.com​/politics​/2021​ /05​/heritage​-foundation​-dark​-money​-voter​-suppression​-laws/. 15. The Heritage Foundation, “The Facts About Election Integrity and the Need for States to Fix Their Election Systems,” The Heritage Foundation, accessed November 26, 2023, https://www​.heritage​.org​/election​-integrity​-facts. Voter Registration, Verify Citizenship of Voters, Recommendation #1. 16. The Heritage Foundation, Voter Registration, Verify Accuracy of Voter Registration Lists, Recommendation #8. 17. The Heritage Foundation, In-Person and Absentee Voting, Limit absentee ballots, Recommendation #1. 18. The Heritage Foundation, In-Person and Absentee Voting, Limit absentee ballots, Recommendation #11. 19. The Heritage Foundation, In-Person and Absentee Voting, Allow election observers complete access to the election process, Recommendation #1. 20. FindLaw Staff, “What Are Voter ID Laws? States with the Strictest Rules,” September 16, 2022, https://www​.findlaw​.com​/voting​/how​-do​-i​-protect​-my​-right​-to​ -vote-​/voter​-suppression​-and​-voter​-id​-laws​.html. 21. Jasleen Singh and Sara Carter, “States Have Added Nearly 100 Restrictive Laws Since SCOTUS Gutted the Voting Rights Act 10 Years Ago | Brennan Center for Justice,” June 23, 2023, https://www​.brennancenter​.org​/our​-work​/analysis​-opinion​/states​-have​-added​-nearly​-100​-restrictive​-laws​-scotus​-gutted​-voting​-rights. 22. Angela Caputo, Geoff Hing, and Johnny Kauffman, “How a Massive Voter Purge in Georgia Affected the 2018 Election,” October 29, 2019, accesed November 25, 2023, https://www​.apmreports​.org​/story​/2019​/10​/29​/georgia​-voting​-registration​ -records​-removed. 23. Brennan Center for Justice, “The Impact of Voter Suppression on Communities of Color | Brennan Center for Justice,” January 10, 2022, https://www​ .brennancenter​.org​/our​-work​/research​-reports​/impact​-voter​-suppression​-communities​-color.

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24. National Conference of State Legislatures, “Voter ID Laws,” November 9, 2023, https://www​.ncsl​.org​/elections​-and​-campaigns​/voter​-id. 25. Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, “How the Native American Vote Continues to Be Suppressed,” American Bar Association, February 9, 2020, https://www​.americanbar​ .org​/groups​/crsj​/publications​/human​_rights​_magazine​_home​/voting​-rights​/how​-the​ -native​-american​-vote​-continues​-to​-be​-suppressed/. 26. FindLaw Staff, “What Are Voter ID Laws? States with the Strictest Rules.” 27. Justin Grimmer and Jesse Yoder, “The Durable Differential Deterrent Effects of Strict Photo Identification Laws,” Political Science Research and Methods 10, no. 3 (July 2022): 453–69, https://doi​.org​/10​.1017​/psrm​.2020​.57. 28. Eric McGhee, Jennifer Paluch, and Mindy Romero, “Vote-by-Mail Policy and the 2020 Presidential Election,” Research & Politics 9, no. 2 (April 1, 2022): 20531680221089197, https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​/20531680221089197. 29. Singh and Carter, “States Have Added Nearly 100 Restrictive Laws Since SCOTUS Gutted the Voting Rights Act 10 Years Ago | Brennan Center for Justice.” 30. Singh and Carter. 31. Kevin Morris and Myra Perez, “Purges: A Growing Threat to the Right to Vote | Brennan Center for Justice,” July 20, 2018, https://www​.brennancenter​.org​/ our​-work​/research​-reports​/purges​-growing​-threat​-right​-vote. 32. Morris and Perez. 33. Caputo, Hing, and Kauffman, “How a Massive Voter Purge in Georgia Affected the 2018 Election.” 34. MacLean, Democracy in Chains. 35. Mac Brower, “Texas Republicans Want To Take Houston’s Power Away,” Democracy Docket, June 1, 2023, https://www​.democracydocket​.com​/analysis​/texas​ -republicans​-want​-to​-take​-houstons​-power​-away/. 36. U.S. Census Bureau “U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Houston City, Texas; Harris County, Texas,” accessed November 17, 2023, https://www​.census​.gov​/quickfacts​/fact​/table​/houstoncitytexas​,harriscountytexas​/PST045222. 37. Omar Jimenez and Devon M. Sayers, “Mississippi Governor Signs Bill Expanding State Control over Jackson’s Judicial System and Policing,” CNN, April 21, 2023, https://www​.cnn​.com​/2023​/04​/21​/us​/jackson​-mississippi​-judicial​-system​/ index​.html. 38. Allen v. Milligan (2023). 599 U.S. 1 39. The 8th Circuit includes Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri, and Arkansas. 40. 8th Circuit, RE: 22-1395 AR State Conference NAACP, et  al. v. AR Board of Apportionment, et al., No. Appellate Case: 22-1395 (8th Circuit Court of Appeals November 20, 2023). 41. Brandon Tensley, “The Case That Could Destroy the Voting Rights Act,” Capital B News, November 30, 2023, https://capitalbnews​.org​/voting​-rights​-section​ -2​-explainer/.

Chapter 6

Social Media as Extremist Incubator

How do we know what we know? This is not an esoteric discussion on epistemology, the theory of knowledge. Rather, it is a more basic question. How do we know what is happening in the world? Once upon a time, before the internet, there were three national television networks: ABC, NBC, and CBS. Television signed off each night around midnight or 1:00 am with the playing of the National Anthem and did not resume until the next morning. For the overnight hours, if you turned on the television, you were treated to a screen of noisy black and white static. There was radio, and there were newspapers. The advent of 24-hour cable news networks represented the beginning of a non-stop information flow. Today, the line between news and commentary, or between facts versus opinion/belief, has not become blurred; it has been erased. Social media platforms, originally intended for connection and information sharing, now significantly contribute to the warping of individual and collective perceptions of reality and, for some, the process of radicalization. Radicalization no longer occurs within in-person groups where new individuals are educated into a group’s core tenets and beliefs. Today, individuals are largely self-radicalized. This radicalization occurs online. We saw this with the individual violent extremists discussed in previous chapters. The rise of the internet and proliferation of social media have enabled the rapid spread of white christian nationalist ideologies. This ideology, rooted in notions of white supremacy, with its warped interpretation of Christianity, advocates for a nation explicitly shaped by a narrow view of Christian values and white identity. Social media facilitates the ability of individuals and groups to spread propaganda, coordinate attacks on opponents, and sow division within society. Platforms like Gab and Telegram channels allow white supremacist and christian nationalist communities to flourish away from the scrutiny of 107

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mainstream platforms. Discord, a social media site originally used by video gamers, has become a home for many white supremacist groups1 Algorithms amplify these movements. Users searching for conservative news might be suggested increasingly extreme content related to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. These echo chambers normalize extremist viewpoints, drawing individuals further into a web of white nationalist narratives. Users in these spaces are targeted with propaganda about an idealized, historically false Christian nation, besieged by perceived enemies such as immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and advocates for racial and social justice. This exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic. As people spent more time online, in the isolation of their homes, radicalization increased. For instance, if you are searching for information on COVID-19 and come across an article saying COVID is a hoax, you will be curious. You will look at the article. Next, you will start receiving articles about how requirements to wear a mask are the government suppressing individual freedoms. You are in lockdown; you are not going out into the world where you might encounter divergent viewpoints. This is how it begins. Social media and niche forums connected to white christian nationalist ideologies can also become tools for harassment. Journalists covering extremist movements and activists working to counter white supremacy risk being doxxed, swatted, or worse. Doxxing is when personally identifiable information is provided about someone on the internet, usually for a malicious purpose. In swatting, bogus calls are placed to law enforcement to elicit an armed response at the victim’s residence. A journalist working on an investigative report about a multi-state campaign of racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic violence by the group 2119, a neo-Nazi group, ended up being a target. He was stalked and harassed, culminating with six masked white supremacists standing outside his home with their arms up in Nazi salutes.2 Campaigns orchestrated on platforms such as 4chan, Telegram, or Parler can expose private contact information and home addresses, inciting real-world threats. Women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ activists who challenge white christian nationalist rhetoric are bombarded with abusive messages and violent threats intended to intimidate and silence them. Following the decision of her office to prosecute former president Trump for interference with the 2020 election results in Fulton County, Georgia, the Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was driven from the new home she had just built by aggressive terror campaigns and vandalism. This psychological warfare is designed to terrorize the victims into the desired conduct. Experienced state and local election officials exposed to this behavior have been leaving the job in record numbers. In the lead-up to the 2024 election, many election boards are now left understaffed or lacking any experienced election officials. The Brennan Center for Justice found that one in five election workers knew someone

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who left the profession due to safety concerns.3 Nationwide more than a dozen people have been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) with threatening election workers. The problem is growing so pervasive that a DOJ unit works to combat the tide of violent and graphic threats against those who count the vote.4 Consider the impact of the loss of experienced election workers in conjunction with new election rules designed to suppress turnover and potentially intimidate those who do appear. Harassment has even extended to on-air meteorologists who have been targeted for talking about climate change as they give the weather report.5 In the movement created by white christian nationalists, science is also the enemy, because truth is the enemy. Movements that rely on disinformation, the demonization of marginalized groups, and targeted attacks corrode the foundations of a democratic society. This, of course, is the purpose. Social media and the accompanying information landscape will be explored in this chapter. The transformation of social media from a communications platform to its weaponization as a tool for disruption and chaos will be examined. Social media is no longer simply a mechanism for connecting with friends and family; it is a tool that provides us with information. This chapter will first explore the impact of social media as a news source and then explore what happens when that tool becomes weaponized. SOCIAL MEDIA AS NEWS The chapter began by asking, “How do we know what we think we know?” This section begins with the question, “What is it that we know?” To address that question, this section explores the implications of social media as it is now; the predominant source of news content in the nation, if not the world. An examination of the demographics of social media news consumption is followed by a discussion of the accompanying erosion of trust in traditional sources of information. The section concludes with the role of social media in the creation of alternate realities. Demographic Variations Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, presently aged 28 to 43 years old, are now the largest demographic age group, having surpassed boomers. A 2022 study by Statista found that 45% of millennials get their daily news from social media.6 Their lowest source of news consumption is local and national newspapers at 7% and 6% respectively. Network news and cable news had a daily consumption rate of 13% and 14% respectively. For baby

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boomers, born between 1946—1964 and presently aged 59 to 77 years old, when it comes to political news, nearly 60% rely on television news shows.7 As part of their ongoing studies of information habits, the Pew Research Center in 2023, in their exploration of adult usage of mainstream social media sites, found that more than half of U.S. adults get at least some of their news from social media rather than directly from news organizations, although demographic variations in the specific social media source were noticed.8 Women made up a larger portion of regular news consumers on Facebook (62%), Instagram (59%), TikTok (58%), and Nextdoor (66%). Men on the other hand, were the larger portion of regular news consumers on YouTube (58%), X/Twitter (62%), Reddit (67%), and LinkedIn (53%). In addition to gender variations in affinity for particular social media sites, this study also found age group differences. Eighteen to 29-year-olds were the predominant users of Reddit (48%), TikTok (44%), and Instagram (42%) for news. In comparison, 30 to 49-year-olds were the predominant users of Facebook (40%), YouTube (38%), X/Twitter (38%), Nextdoor (31%), and LinkedIn (38%). Individuals aged 65 or older used social media platforms for news the least of all age groups, with the exception of the Nextdoor platform (30%), where they came in just ahead of the 50 to 64-year-old age group (29%). Almost one-half of the users of TikTok for news had a high school diploma or less, while almost two-thirds of the users of LinkedIn had at least a college degree. Adolescents are spending an increasing amount of their lives online, with almost half reporting that they use the internet almost constantly. This amount has doubled since 2014–2015. A 2023 social media survey of adolescents ages 13–17 by Pew Research Center found that their top four social media platforms were YouTube (90% usage), TikTok (63% usage), Snapchat (60% usage), and Instagram (59% usage).9 As with adults, this survey found gender distinctions or preferences in social media use. Adolescent girls were more likely than boys to use Instagram, BeReal, TikTok, Snapchat, and Facebook. Adolescent boys, on the other hand, were more likely than girls to use Discord, Twitch, Reddit, and YouTube. The implication of these demographic variations is that we now have at least three generations who obtain their news from unverified and sometimes deliberately manipulated sources. Gen-Alpha, those who were born in or after 2010, the oldest of whom turned 14 in 2024, has always known Snapchat filters, TikTok reels, and YouTube influencers. They are the first generation to grow up in a completely digital streaming environment. Then came COVID-19, and they also spent a significant portion of their lives in lockdown with online learning. If you are 35, 2 years is 5% of your life. If you are 8, on the other hand, 2 years is 25% of your life; if 5, it is almost half of your life. Gen-Alpha is used to digital textbooks and digital school

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assignments. They are completely acculturated to viewing digital as the only information source. The problem is that the news consumed from these sites often consists of unverified information, fragmented clips, and out-of-context posts which circulate unchecked. This information gains equal footing with rigorously reported news stories. Or for example, an actual digital news article is liked or disliked and then shared. It is later found to contain inaccuracies and is corrected by the news organization. The corrected article does not supplant the already circulated version, which continues to be circulated ad infinitum. The absence of editorial standards and journalistic gatekeepers makes it difficult to assess the source and reliability of information found on social media. The end result is a mindset where news is simply what people are sharing, true or not, eroding trust in established news sources. The Erosion of Trust in Traditional Information Sources The absence of fact-checking or other verification methods fosters the rapid spread of misinformation and disinformation, leading to a blurring of lines between reliable sources and fabricated content. Vosoughi et​.a​l. looked at 11 years of Twitter (now known as X) data. They found that fake news spread faster than true news. That is primarily because its novel nature or emotive content caused people to engage with the fake news more often and then spread that news more often.10 This aligns neatly with a far-right that wants to dominate the information space. The far-right’s deep antipathy to mainstream media results in their outright rejection of it. This manifests in actively fostering distrust of traditional news outlets by labeling them as fake news. Websites like Breitbart and Infowars promote hyper-partisan content intended to discredit established media as biased. In addition to the fake news label, the rise of hyper-partisan outlets, acceptance of social media as a news source, and the widespread acceptance of conspiracy theories all contribute to the erosion of trust in traditional information sources. Everyone has encountered something in the news they did not like or with which they did not agree. Where the first reaction may be “I don’t like that or I disagree,” or even a horrified “I don’t believe it.” Erosion of trust means that instead of “I don’t believe it” being an astonished acceptance, it becomes a declarative statement. “I don’t believe it,” translates to, “I don’t believe it, therefore it’s not true.” No matter how true it may be. The far-right weaponized the term “fake news” against mainstream media outlets that reported information critical of them, their ideology, or with which they disagreed. Media reports contradicting the number of spectators that Donald Trump claimed to have at his 2016 Presidential inauguration were not labeled as erroneous or incorrect; but as fake. Early

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warnings about COVID-19 were dismissed as fake news. Alex Jones of Infowars claimed the 2012 school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where Adam Lanza, 20 years old, killed 26 people, including 20 who were children, had not happened. Started in 1999, Infowars is a far-right conspiracy theory and fake news website owned by Jones. Alex Jones repeatedly and publicly claimed that the families of the victims were crisis actors, not actual victims. This was repeated by his followers, who harassed the families, telling them the child victims were made up.11 Jones was ultimately ordered to pay $1.5 billion in damages. His recent attempt to eradicate the judgment by filing for bankruptcy was denied by the judge. The past decade has witnessed the explosive growth of outlets explicitly designed to cater to specific political views. The digitization of media means that it is no longer necessary to sort through the entire newspaper, skimming through the full spectrum of news, as well as commentary, to find the section that you want to read. Digital media is much more narrowly drawn. Instead of having to wade through sections of a newspaper in which you have no interest, digital media can show you only those subjects in which it thinks you are interested. More critically, since these digital outlets do not always distinguish commentary and opinion from objective reporting, biases are reinforced, and broad understanding is reduced. Consumers are able to selfselect sources that reinforce their existing views without having to at least peruse through opposing viewpoints. Compounding the self-selection and reinforcement process is the role played by social media algorithms, which will be more fully discussed below. However, constant exposure to uncontradicted information leads to increased distrust when confronted with information outside one’s ideological comfort zone. It also leads to a fragmented understanding of reality, where COVID-19 was a plot either by the Chinese government or a plot by the U.S. government, and where the January 6th insurrectionists were simply peaceful protesters. Echo Chambers and the Creation of Alternate Realities Social media facilitates the formation of echo chambers where individuals primarily encounter information that reinforces existing biases, hardens preconceived notions, and makes them more resistant to information from traditional sources that may challenge their worldview. Online communities are powerful. They serve as incubators for fringe conspiracy theorists such as anti-vaxxers, deep-state conspiracists, and others. These closed online communities provide validation for these beliefs and make the theories seem plausible. Once individuals are exposed to and reinforced with false narratives, acceptance and belief in trusted official

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information sources decline significantly. Even consensus among expert scientific researchers is quickly dismissed as part of the alleged conspiracy. Parler and Truth Social are among the platforms providing safe havens for far-right groups deplatformed from mainstream social media sites. Parler started in 2018, marketing itself as a free speech focused and unbiased alternative to Twitter (now known as X) or Facebook. Parler was pulled from the Google Play store two days after the January 6th insurrection because its lack of moderation policies and enforcement was deemed a threat to public safety. Later shut down, the platform was sold and expects to re-launch in 2024. Truth Social was created by a media company started in 2021 for former president Donald Trump after his eviction from mainstream social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Truth Social markets itself as “America’s ‘Big Tent’ social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating on the basis of political ideology.” In the absence of counterbalancing voices, these spaces further intensify extremists’ beliefs. One example is the role of sites such as 8chan in radicalizing mass shooters via exposure to white supremacist and violent manifestos. Atari, et al., looked at the relationship between morally homogeneous networks and radicalism. They found that individuals develop a sense of oneness with their group when they perceive that they share moral views. This, in turn can radicalize those individuals into a willingness to commit out-group derogatory acts as a way to protect and preserve their group.12 This relates to Finkel, et al., who identified othering, aversion, and moralization as the three core ingredients of political sectarianism.13 The lifeblood of many far-right recruitment campaigns is conspiracy theory. Narratives like the Great Replacement theory, which first targeted Jews and now immigrants, articulate a plot to replace the nation’s white population and are intended to exploit existing anxieties, creating a sense of urgency. When individuals are made to feel that their way of life is under threat, some become prime targets for radicalization. These coordinated and manipulative campaigns play on emotions, creating fear and distrust. They are effective at pushing individuals who might already hold some extreme views further down a dangerous path. Far-right groups are not merely in the business of spreading fear and hatred. They paint seductive pictures of promised utopias and offer roles as heroes within their twisted narratives. Social media is the canvas on which they paint. For individuals feeling lost, powerless, or longing for a grand purpose, the idea of belonging to a movement that will restore some imagined golden age holds appeal. Their utopia is a theocratic white ethnostate. It promises a return to traditional values and the exclusion of those deemed a threat. Potential recruits are not simply joining a group; they see themselves as freedom fighters battling to save civilization itself. Their actions are driven

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by an extreme belief about who has the right to shape American culture and control narratives about history and society. SOCIAL MEDIA WEAPONIZED Social media serves as the perfect breeding ground for far-right extremist individuals and groups to sow seeds of resentment, discontent, and hatred. Barbara Walter, who studies civil conflict, noted “[s]ocial media doesn’t just drive countries down the democratic ladder. It also heightens the ethnic, social, religious, and geographic divisions.”14 Walter argues that after social media organizes and radicalizes people, it then provides the match to light the powder keg it created. The social media algorithms operate to produce a sense of continual crisis. The algorithms have become masters at identifying individuals with real or perceived grievances such as the worker frustrated by job loss, the white suburbanite anxious about demographic shifts, the person who feels unheard and powerless, and the individual who feels at the bottom and is happy to have someone on whom they can look down. This is followed by the relentless flood of propaganda deliberately stoking flames and amplifying those anxieties. Immigrants become invaders stealing opportunities. Schoolchildren are being groomed by teachers who use they/ them pronouns. Social progress is painted as a zero-sum game; any perceived gain by minorities means a loss for the real Americans. Carefully crafted inflammatory narratives distort complex issues into a simplistic but frightening story: the enemy is at the gates, and they are ready to destroy your way of life. This section will discuss how that process occurs. Beginning with algorithms, the section will then distinguish misinformation, disinformation, and manipulation and describe their role in the digital information space. Social Media Algorithms Social media algorithms are a complex set of mathematical rules and calculations dictating how content is organized and presented to users on social media platforms. They function as personalized filters, analyzing a person’s past activity, who the person follows, and the content with which they engage. The primary goal is to keep that person hooked on the platform by presenting content the algorithm believes they will find interesting, shareable, or likely to spark strong reactions. This includes everything from posts by friends and family to paid advertisements, and suggested accounts to follow. Anyone who has perhaps looked at a pair of shoes online and then, every subsequent time they are online, sees ads for shoes appear in their feed has seen this in operation. Or one time you randomly click on a story about hockey,

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and after that, every possible article about or link to hockey appears in your feed. You share a reel on Instagram involving a cute dog, and after that, dog reels appear in your feed more and more. This is the algorithm at work. In the larger world, algorithms can reinforce societal disparities. Cathy O’Neil, author of Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, while focused on the use of big data, describes how algorithms disadvantage minorities whether they are applying for a bank loan, an apartment, or a mortgage.15 This is attributable to disparate factors built into the construction of the algorithms. Social media algorithms in the abstract do not set out to radicalize anyone. Their goal is to keep you engaged with the platform, thereby generating advertising revenue. But the design of social media algorithms creates fertile ground for far-right ideologies to take root and flourish. It begins with a simple premise: these algorithms are built to keep you engaged. They learn what makes you click, comment, and share, then relentlessly feed you more of the same. Far-right content often excels at triggering a strong emotional response. It can be outrage, fear, or the sense of an ever-looming threat. The more an individual interacts with even mildly far-right content, the more their social media feeds transform into what is known as a filter bubble. The algorithm creates a closed ecosystem where extreme positions seem normal, where criticism is silenced, and from which alternative viewpoints gradually disappear. As this feedback loop intensifies, a subtle form of radicalization takes place. An individual scrolling through their feed might initially encounter memes or videos subtly attacking mainstream ideas. These serve as gateway content, creating a comfortable entry point. Fueled by the constant reinforcement of the filter bubble, users are unknowingly led down a path toward more overtly toxic material. Misinformation, Disinformation, or Manipulation Misinformation and disinformation are often used interchangeably. The information dissemination process may end up being the same, but there are key differences. Misinformation, which involves the spread of inaccurate or false information, occurs unwittingly. The individual sharing the article is not aware that it is false. Particularly likely to be caught up in the spread of misinformation are news articles with sensationalized headlines designed to attract a reader’s interest. In contrast, disinformation involves a malicious intention to deceive or inflict harm through the calculated construction and dissemination of false information. Disinformation campaigns deliberately flood social media with fake news, conspiracy theories, and altered media (such as deepfakes) to sow confusion, promote distrust, and polarize populations. Nations or extremist groups often use disinformation campaigns to

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undermine elections, destabilize governments, or incite violence. Bots can be used to generate likes and dislikes to intensify the message. A bot is essentially a robot that does what it is programmed to do. Bot-run social media accounts operate without human intervention. They can like or dislike posts, making them seem more popular than they actually are and further spread disinformation. The impact of conspiracy theories generated and perpetrated in this manner is discussed in the next chapter. Dominion voting machines, used in many jurisdictions to collect and tabulate the vote, were the subject of this type of attack. They became a target of those perpetrating the stolen election myth. It was claimed that the company was controlled by the Venezuelan government, who allegedly were connected to the Clintons. It was also claimed the Chinese government had inserted small pieces of bamboo inside the machines which somehow, perhaps magically, would inflate Joseph Biden’s vote totals. These types of allegations, coupled with the stop the steal rhetoric amplified in social media echo chambers, led supporters of Trump to appear armed at polling and vote counting centers. Repeated exposure to disinformation campaigns erodes trust in traditional sources of information like established news outlets and scientific institutions. Fox News eventually settled with Dominion for $787.5 million for defamation for their role in spreading the lies. Despite this, there are people who continue to believe. The goal of manipulation is to shape the audience’s perception and response to information, regardless of its veracity. Consider the wealth of personal data collected by social media companies. This enables the creation of highly targeted messaging. It can be exploited for political gain using microtargeting to spread tailored disinformation or inflammatory content to specific demographic groups to influence their opinion or behavior. Cambridge Analytica illegally harvested 50 million data profiles from Facebook and used that data to build a system able to profile individual voters so that they could be targeted with personalized political ads.16 Jenna Abrams had 70,000 followers on her account where she posted xenophobic and far-right opinions. She was even quoted by mainstream media outlets in the belief that she actually existed. But she was not real. Jenna Abrams was invented and controlled by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian government-funded troll farm.17 An internet troll is a person who deliberately posts mean, hateful comments to get a reaction. They want to create dissension. The Mueller report detailed how during the 2016 election campaign, the Russian government’s Internet Research Agency not only had fake accounts but fake group pages on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, as well as other social media platforms.18 The fake Facebook groups even organized rallies in the name of their fake organizations. During the 2016 election campaign, the Russian-directed pages were

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intended to steer Black voters away from Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party nominee. Black voters were encouraged to either stay home or vote for the Green Party candidate, thus splitting the Democratic vote by siphoning off voters.19 Jenna Matthews, professor of computer science and social media researcher, was unequivocal that “trolls want to encourage a belief that truth no longer exists.”20 The ecosystem of the far-right operates differently.21 Far-right groups weaponize social unrest, launching coordinated disinformation campaigns designed to ignite further division and chaos. Their targets are the vulnerable, the other, or political figures opposing their ideology. They go after immigrants, minority groups, and political figures. Their campaigns do not necessarily deal with outright lies, but rather twist narratives to paint targets as existential threats. For example, during protests focused on racial justice, far-right groups might spread baseless rumors about looting and destruction of property by protesters. In the ongoing chaos at the southern border, far-right groups will talk about immigrants bringing in diseases, supported by comments from former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump, that undocumented migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”22 A survey box on the Infowars main page posed the question “Who is Ruining America The Most?” After submitting my own response, I could see the results to date; they were white liberals at 62% (n = 47,062), followed by illegal immigrants at 24%, Black thugs had 8% of the votes, and my choice white supremacists, was at the bottom with 7% of the votes.23 What is important about this survey question was the use of language to create specific images. Immigrants were illegal. Black people were thugs. To further undermine trust in institutions, far-right extremists will create and fuel conspiracies around false flag narratives aiming to destabilize processes meant to uphold order. This has been illustrated with the stolen election propaganda. These campaigns cast doubt on legitimate democratic outcomes. They incite anger and even violence toward the officials upholding these processes. Thirteen people were arrested in 2020 in regard to a conspiracy to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer over her COVID-19 policies. Most were suspected members of various militia groups. After the kidnapping, the plan was to try Governor Whitmer for treason and execute her. An informant led to the uncovering of the plot. Governor Whitmer had been the recipient of numerous verbal assaults from then-president Donald Trump, all of which were repeated on social media. One insidious tool in the toolkit, although still less common, is the use of deepfakes. Imagine seeing a video of a prominent political figure appearing to say things they never did. It could involve racial slurs, incitements to violence, or any number of inflammatory statements. When such a manipulated

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video goes viral, it fuels division and can turn peaceful protests violent. As Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology becomes more developed and accessible, this becomes increasingly more likely. The future has already arrived. During the 2024 New Hampshire Presidential primary election, a robocall purporting to be from President Joseph Biden went to between 5,000 and 25,000 people the weekend before the primary. The fake AI-generated voice, which sounded just like the actual Biden, was intended to minimize democratic turnout, by telling democrats to save their vote for November, implying they could only vote once. The New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office immediately launched an investigation, and the Federal Communications Commission has now criminalized election-related robocalls generated by AI.24 This will not stop the threat.

CONCLUSION Social media makes it easy for like-minded extremists to find each other. Private groups and echo chambers form virtual breeding grounds free from outside scrutiny. It is within those spaces that conspiracy theories fester, hatred gets normalized, and dangerous ideas receive constant validation. It is not that the algorithms cause radicalization. They exploit social flaws and play on individual vulnerabilities. Understanding how algorithms accelerate the spread of extremist content is essential in recognizing how seemingly harmless platforms can have far-reaching and insidious effects when manipulated by malicious actors. The violent attackers described in this book, whether motivated by white supremacist/nationalist ideology, male supremacist ideology, anti-LGBTQ+ ideology, or anti-government ideologies, share one commonality: they were radicalized online. In turn, some of them, through their own manifestos or videos, have influenced others online. It is a vicious, never-ending cycle. The flow of misinformation alleging insecurities in our voting system was designed to create a national mindset in support of voter suppression strategies. This is because the first step in the imposition of authoritarianism is to limit the vote. White christian nationalism does not flourish in a democracy. It requires authoritarian governments to bring about their goals. Timothy Snyder in On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, identified important take-aways from his analysis of the rise of authoritarian regimes. Lesson Ten is to Believe in Truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.25

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White christian nationalism thrives in our digital world where social media can amplify, distract, and spread disinformation. As Synder made clear, when we abandon facts, we abandon freedom.

NOTES 1. See, A.C. Thompson, Ali Winston, and Jake Hanrahan, “Inside Atomwaffen As It Celebrates a Member for Allegedly Killing a Gay Jewish College Student,” ProPublica, February 23, 2018, https://www​.propublica​.org​/article​/atomwaffen​-division​ -inside​-white​-hate​-group. 2. Jordan Green, “Stalked by Nazis: How Extremists Tried to Stop Me from Reporting on Their Violence—Raw Story,” February 20, 2024, https://www​ .rawstory​.com​/hunted​-by​-nazis​-how​-extremists​-stalked​-me​-while​-i​-reported​-on​-their​ -violence/. 3. Lindsay Whitehurst and Christina Cassidy, “Election Workers Are Being Bombarded with Death Threats, the U.S. Government Says,” PBS NewsHour, August 31, 2023, https://www​.pbs​.org​/newshour​/politics​/election​-workers​-are​-being​-bombarded​-with​-death​-threats​-the​-u​-s​-government​-says. 4. Whitehurst and Cassidy. 5. Hannah Fingerhut, Heather Hollingsworth, and Summer Ballentine, “An Iowa Meteorologist Started Talking about Climate Change on Newscasts. Then Came the Harassment,” AP News, July 8, 2023, https://apnews​ .com​ /article​ / meteorologist​-harassment​-threats​-climate​-change​-iowa​-bf9​1adb​d26c​a5e9​7507​4069​ 47b47d684. 6. Amy Watson, “Millennials News Consumption U.S. 2022,” Statista, January 4, 2024, https://www​.statista​.com​/statistics​/1010456​/united​-states​-millennials​-news​ -consumption/. 7. Amy Mitchell, Jeffrey Gottfried, and Katerina Eva Matsa, “Millennials and Political News,” Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project (blog), June 1, 2015, https://www​.pewresearch​.org​/journalism​/2015​/06​/01​/millennials​-political​-news/. 8. Pew Research Center, “Social Media and News Fact Sheet,” November 15, 2023, https://www​.pewresearch​.org​/journalism​/fact​-sheet​/social​-media​-and​-news​ -fact​-sheet/. 9. Monica Anderson, Michelle Faverio, and Jeffrey Gottfried, “Teens, Social Media and Technology 2023,” Pew Research Organization, December 11, 2023, https://www​.pewresearch​.org​/internet​/2023​/12​/11​/teens​-social​-media​-and​-technology​-2023/. 10. Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral, “The Spread of True and False News Online,” Science 359, no. 6380 (March 9, 2018): 1146–51, https://doi​.org​/10​ .1126​/science​.aap9559. 11. Associated Press, “Judge Rules Alex Jones Can’t Use Bankruptcy Protection to Avoid Paying Sandy Hook Families,” PBS NewsHour, October 20, 2023, https:// www​.pbs​.org​/newshour​/nation​/judge​-rules​-alex​-jones​-cant​-use​-bankruptcy​-protection​-to​-avoid​-paying​-sandy​-hook​-families.

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12. Mohammad Atari et al., “Morally Homogeneous Networks and Radicalism,” Social Psychological and Personality Science 13, no. 6 (August 1, 2022): 999–1009, https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​/19485506211059329. 13. Eli J. Finkel et al., “Political Sectarianism in America,” Science 370, no. 6516 (October 30, 2020): 533–36, https://doi​.org​/10​.1126​/science​.abe1715. 14. Barbara Walter, How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them (New York: Crown, 2022), 119. 15. Cathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (New York: Crown, 2017). 16. Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison, “Revealed: 50 Million Facebook Profiles Harvested for Cambridge Analytica in Major Data Breach,” The Guardian, March 17, 2018, sec. News, https://www​.theguardian​.com​/news​/2018​/mar​ /17​/cambridge​-analytica​-facebook​-influence​-us​-election. 17. Jeanna Matthews, “Bots and Trolls Control a Shocking Amount of Online Conversation,” Fast Company, June 29, 2020, https://www​.fastcompany​.com​/90521340​/ bots​-and​-trolls​-control​-a​-shocking​-amount​-of​-online​-conversation. 18. Ryan Broderick, “Here’s What The Mueller Report Says About Russian Trolls Using Social Media To Tamper With The 2016 Election,” BuzzFeed News, April 18, 2019, https://www​.buzzfeednews​.com​/article​/ryanhatesthis​/mueller​-report​-internet​ -research​-agency​-detailed​-2016. 19. Theresa Payton, Manipulated: Inside the Cyberwar to Hijack Elections and Distort the Truth (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020). 20. Broderick, “Here’s What The Mueller Report Says About Russian Trolls Using Social Media To Tamper With The 2016 Election.” 21. Yochi Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts, Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 22. Jacob Rosen, Kathryn Watson, and Olivia Rinaldi, “Trump Blasted for Saying Immigrants Are ‘Poisoning the Blood of Our Country’ - CBS News,” December 18, 2023, https://www​.cbsnews​.com​/news​/trump​-immigrants​-poisoning​-the​-blood​-of​ -our​-country​-reaction/. 23. Infowars, “Infowars: There’s a War on for Your Mind!,” Infowars, accessed February 29, 2024, https://www​.infowars​.com/. 24. Alex Seitz-Wald, “N.H. Attorney General Says He Found Source of Fake Biden Robocalls,” NBC News, February 6, 2024, https://www​ .nbcnews​ .com​ / politics​/2024​-election​/nh​-attorney​-general​-says​-found​-source​-fake​-biden​-robocalls​ -rcna137499. 25. Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017), 65.

Chapter 7

Anti-government Extremism

The ultimate goal of white christian nationalism is to usher in a theocratic white ethnostate. To accomplish this, it is first necessary to dismantle our pluralistic democratic society as well as negate the Constitution on which it is based. This chapter looks at some of the overt ways in which our democracy itself is under threat. In How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them, Barbara Walter describes the United States as presently in a state of anocracy, that space between democracy and autocracy. For a democratic nation, it represents the slide away from democracy and toward autocracy. It is in the anocracy stage that nations are the most unstable and the most vulnerable.1 This is an advantage for some as it provides an opportunity to create sufficient chaos to cause the collapse of the government so a new white world order can be established. The term used for this is “acceleration.” Accelerationism is a key strategy of the Atomwaffen Division (AWD), whose leaders later established the larger National Socialist Order. Established in 2016, the AWD is an accelerationist neo-Nazi, white supremacist organization. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes Atomwaffen as being “organized as a series of terror cells that work toward civilizational collapse. Its members believe that violence, depravity and degeneracy are the only sure way to establish order in their dystopian and apocalyptic vision of the world.” They were not content with merely waiting for the apocalypse to arrive. In July 2018, Samuel Woodward, an AWD member, was arrested and charged with fatally stabbing a gay Jewish University of Pennsylvania student and burying his body in a park. Jury selection in Woodward’s trial began in February 2024. Within a matter of months after the murder by Samuel Woodward, several members of the AWD were charged with five murders, and authorities discovered a possible plot to blow up a nuclear 121

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facility in Miami.2 Who makes plans to bomb a nuclear power plant? While the location was unusual, the intended method was not. This can be viewed as part of a larger trend by white supremacists to attack the nation’s energy supply, creating chaos and the collapse of the nation from within.3 It shows a further meshing of white supremacy with anti-government extremism. As distinct from examining the AWD as a single individual organization or as the apex of accelerationist organizations, Newhouse viewed the AWD as a node in a larger network of neofascist accelerationists. For Newhouse, the evolution of a neofascist accelerationist network is much more of a threat than an individual organization.4 Networks accommodate the fluidity among organizations and their memberships. If these organizations are viewed as a single node in a larger network, then if an organization is eliminated, the remaining members are absorbed by the network. A node is eliminated, but the network still exists. As does the problem. Eighty-seven incidents in the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) were attributable to anti-government extremists, representing 29% (n = 300) of far-right activity this century.5 Bombings/explosions constituted the top method of attack by anti-government extremists, accounting for 46% (n = 87) of incidents. Armed assaults at 24% and facility/infrastructure attacks at 20% were the next highest. The remaining 10% of attacks were hijackings, hostage-taking, unarmed assault, and one assassination. The large number of bombings is attributable to several coordinated multi-bombing campaigns carried out by the same individuals. For instance, there were 18 attacks reported in 2002, all using pipe bombs. Over a five-day period in early May, primarily in the Midwest, 18 pipe bombs were found in mailboxes, resulting in seven injuries. On May 3rd pipe bombs were discovered in four mailboxes in Iowa, three in Illinois, and one in Indiana. On May 4th, a pipe bomb was discovered in seven different cities in Nebraska. Two pipe bombs were found on May 6th in Colorado, and one on May 7th in Texas. These incidents caused widespread panic. Most of the bombs were accompanied by a typewritten note complaining about governmental power and promising more attacks. Lucas John Helder, a 21-year-old college student from Minnesota enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, was arrested and charged with 18 bombings. In his travels to plant the bombs, he was stopped twice for speeding on the highway.6 At the time of his arrest, six additional pipe bombs were found in the trunk of his car.7 The typewritten letters accompanying the bombs contained anti-government messages. The United States strives to provide freedom for their people. Do we really have personal freedom? I’ve lived here for many years, and I see much limitation . . . . Do you people enjoy this trend of limitation? If not, change it!8

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Helder was found incompetent to stand trial and sentenced to the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota. His most recent status check was August 23, 2019. He continues to be found incompetent to stand trial. The 87 anti-government extremist attacks were responsible for a total of 69 fatalities and 1,065 wounded. The majority of the casualties, however, came from an extremely small number of incidents. Approximately 80% of the anti-government attacks did not result in a single casualty. Total casualties were attributed to 18 incidents representing 20% of total incidents. One incident was responsible for 59 people killed and 850 wounded. It took 64-yearold Stephen Paddock ten minutes to kill and wound that many people before killing himself at the Harvest Festival concert in Las Vegas, Nevada, over the night of October 1–2, 2017. Armed with multiple AR-15 semiautomatic rifles, 12 of which were equipped with bump stocks, he opened fire into the crowd of over 22,000 concertgoers from his 32nd floor room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel. A bump stock enables a weapon to fire at nearly twice the rate of a machine gun.9 The FBI never identified a motive in the attacks.10 But witnesses reported that in the weeks before the massacre, Paddock had been heard expressing anger over the 1990s standoffs in Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho; as well as concern that the government was confiscating guns. The references to Waco and Ruby Ridge would tend to align Paddock with the far-right anti-government extremists, particularly when coupled with his concern about gun confiscation. Attacks by anti-government extremists are not necessarily directed against government institutions. Some are, but these attacks have also been directed against individuals, the private sector, or other non-governmental organizations. The unifying thread among attackers is the ideological affinity for and willingness to engage in criminal activity directed toward the replacement of the government structure. Anti-government extremism also includes a more subtle component beyond violence. While violence and fear generation are integral, a significant aspect of anti-government extremism is directed toward changing the narrative. It is directed toward the proverbial “winning of hearts and minds” for a false narrative of governmental overreach. This is to convince ordinary people of the justness, or even righteousness, of their cause. The approach is two-pronged. It utilizes the coupling of disinformation with violence. First, trust in governmental institutions is undermined. Secondly, the government itself is physically undermined. The previous chapter discussed how social media can contribute to undermining trust in government. This chapter looks at activity by specific types of anti-government extremists. The SPLC tracked 702 active anti-government hate groups in the United States in 2022, including militias, sovereign citizens, constitutional sheriffs, and conspiracy propagandist groups, as well as other general anti-government groups. Part of the far-right extremist movement, these groups believe that a

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tyrannical federal government exists that tramples on the rights of its citizens. They promote conspiracy theories about illegitimate government forces of leftist elites who seek a New World Order.11 In addition to familiar names such as the Oath Keepers, Patriot Groups, or Moms for Liberty, these groups also include ordinary and innocuous-sounding organizations such as Faith Education Commerce (FEC) United. As with other categories of far-right extremism much of the incidents are committed by individuals who, while ideologically committed, are unaffiliated with a specific organization, such as Lucas Helder, the 2002 pipe bomber. Insurrections rely on thousands of foot soldiers. But the organizational and theoretical underpinnings are essential. This chapter will look at cases of militias and conspiracy extremists as anti-government actors. It will conclude with the seed of the biggest conspiracy of all—the Big Lie, the belief that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. MILITIAS Militia groups share a common ideology grounded in the fear of gun confiscation, fear of globalization, and an affinity for anti-government conspiracy theories. They are typically paramilitary in nature. The modern militia movement traces its origins to armed standoffs at Ruby Ridge, Idaho (1992), and Waco, Texas (1993). Following the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on April 19, 1995, by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, which killed 168 people and wounded another 680, militia membership declined. The election of the nation’s first Black president ushered in a new wave of organization and re-branding. The past two decades have witnessed an increase in militia groups embracing Islamophobia and antiimmigrant narratives under the guise of a commitment to national security.12 Following the January 6th insurrection, among those militia groups whose leadership was not imprisoned in connection with the insurrection, many appeared initially to have gone underground to avoid identification. They still maintained an active social media presence, albeit on less visible sites. As noted in chapter 2, supra, the U.S. Intelligence Community determined that along with racially or ethnically motivated violent offenders, militia violent extremists present the most lethal threat by domestic violent extremists (DVE). To gain a sense of the militia movement, this section will present three common types of militia activity: individual, organizational, and armed wing. The Bundy Family Saga The militia movement first came to the attention of the mainstream American public as a subject for concern in April 2014 when 68-year-old Nevada

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rancher Cliven Bundy and supporters engaged in a multi-day standoff with federal and local law enforcement officials near Bunkerville, Nevada. Cliven Bundy illustrates militia involvement by an individual who is ideologically committed but may be unaffiliated. Bundy had engaged in a 21-year dispute with the Bureau of Land Management over grazing rights on federal land. By 2014, the overdue grazing fees, dating back to 1993, amounted to over $1 million. After repeated court rulings directing Bundy to remove his cattle from the public land, in April 2014, with authorization from a court order, the Bureau of Land Management began to round up Bundy’s cattle. Militia members from various groups from around the country, as well as other demonstrators, came and pointed their AR-15 and AK-47 rifles at the government officials overseeing the cattle seizure. Fearing escalation and the creation of another Ruby Ridge or Waco-type scenario, the Bureau of Land Management released the impounded cattle. Following a mistrial in December 2017, charges against the Bundys were ultimately dropped, and they continue to graze their cattle on public lands rent-free. In January 2016, almost two years after the Bundy standoff with the Bureau of Land Management, Cliven Bundy’s sons Ammon and Ryan participated with a group of armed assailants in the seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters in Princeton, Oregon. Responsibility was claimed by Citizens for Constitutional Freedom. The seizure of the Wildlife Refuge was allegedly sparked by the 2012 conviction of father and son Oregon cattle ranchers, Dwight and Steven Hammond, for arson on public lands. In July 2018, the Hammonds received a Presidential pardon from Donald Trump. In an illustration of the evolution of the militia movement, by the end of 2020, Ammon Bundy had launched the People’s Rights network, which linked militia members with COVID anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, and doomsday preppers into a massive nationwide membership of over 20,000 people.13 A special report by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and the Montana Human Rights Network noted that the People’s Rights network had broadened beyond the traditional anti-government militia message to incorporate “a desire for governmental power to be used to protect the ‘righteous’ against ‘wicked’ liberals, antifa, Black Lives Matter activists, and others.” Disturbingly, as would later be seen with many election deniers, the leadership of the People’s Rights network has begun to run for elected office. In the interim, until they can assume governmental control, the leadership of the People’s Rights network advocates for “a type of armed enclave-style ‘neighborhood’ nationalism where ‘righteous’ neighbors stand against the ‘wicked.’” It is not surprising that the People’s Rights leadership defines “‘wicked’ using far-right conspiracism, racism, antisemitism, antiIndigenous, and anti-transgender sentiment.”14 It is vital to pay attention to

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the use of words such as righteous and wicked. This is biblical imagery. It is typical of language used by white christian nationalists. .

Minutemen Minutemen groups are among the more prominent militia groups operating at the U.S. southern border. These groups can also be considered border vigilantes. Adopting a mission to stop undocumented migration, these groups of armed far-right volunteers have operated at the southern border since the 1980s. It has been argued they provided years of beta testing for the later behavior of armed far-right groups during the Trump presidency, including supporting harassment of minorities, purposeful recruitment of military veterans, cultivation of allies from law enforcement and among politicians, as well as efforts to influence elections by far-right extremists.15 Minutemen American Defense was a self-described border protection group founded by Shawna Forde and Jason Eugene Bush in 2007. Forde had previously been kicked out of Minutemen Civil Defense.16 On Saturday, May 30, 2009, Forde, Bush, and Albert Robert Gaxiola broke into the home of the family of Raul Flores in Arivaca, Arizona. After breaking into his home, they shot and killed Flores and his nine-year-old daughter, wounding his wife. Arivaca is located 11 miles north of the Mexican border and 35 miles northwest of the Nogales port of entry. According to the 2010 census, it had a population of approximately 1,145, of which 71% were Hispanic or Latino and 100% of the population were U.S. citizens.17 The motivation for the attack was to commit a robbery to fund their anti-immigrant vigilante group. Forde and Bush were sentenced to death, and Gaxiola was sentenced to two life terms without parole. This particular Minutemen group collapsed after the arrests and convictions of its organizers. Other similar armed groups are still active on the U.S. southern border. Faith Education Commerce United FEC United was founded in 2020 in Colorado by Joseph T. Oltmann, a digital marketer and used-car dealer. Faith, Education, and Commerce are the three pillars comprising FEC United. The Faith pillar is supported by a vision of “[a] state where people can serve and worship freely, a right provided to us by God, unrestrained, without fear of government restriction or overshadowing.”18 Inevitably, these words usher in a vision of a theocratic state where the right to worship freely is limited to those adhering to the favored religion. The Education pillar advocates giving power back to parents and advocates for the right of children to an education “free from bias and indoctrination.”19 These of course are code words. They mean a return to curricula circa 1950, which

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ignored the contributions of the nation’s non-white residents and presented women primarily engaged in the domestic sphere. In its Business pillar, FEC United points to the blatant government overreach that is costing the citizens of our states and nation their livelihoods and legacies. We are here to unite business owners in an unprecedented way to restore the liberties provided by God and outlined in the United States Constitution.20

This is a direct attack on the regulatory efforts of the U.S. government to protect the food, water, and medications that we consume and the air that we breathe. It is also consistent with the efforts of supporters of minimalist government to roll back all regulatory efforts. Running across each pillar is the argument of government overreach. This is a favored talking point of anti-government extremists. FEC United has its own armed militia wing called the United American Defense Force (UADF), headed by Marine veteran John “Tig” Tiegen, who previously provided annex security to the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, during the attack on the U.S. Embassy in 2012.21 FEC United promotes violence against public officials, conspiracy theories, and disinformation. Their rhetoric also includes anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda. Oltmann is credited with originating Donald Trump’s Big Lie of a stolen 2020 election.22 The Patriot Muster on October 10, 2020, in Denver, Colorado’s Civic Center Park was organized by FEC United with its armed wing UADF having a very visible presence. Immediately following the conclusion of the rally, an attendee pepper-sprayed a private security guard hired by 9News to protect its reporters. The assailant was then shot and killed by the security guard.23 There are two salient issues here. First, it is deeply disturbing that in the United States of America, journalists feel the need for armed protection to do their job. In this instance, with this group of rally participants, clearly, they did. This leads to the second issue; pepper-spraying an armed security guard who is simply protecting journalists speaks to a high level of contempt for the accurate conveyance of information. For anti-government extremists, truth is the first value to go, which makes journalists the enemy. FEC United illustrates an example of militias as the armed wing of purported advocacy organizations. This is redolent of authoritarian nations where political organizations have armed wings. CONSPIRACY SUPPORTED EXTREMISM Conspiracy plays a central role in anti-government extremism. Approximately 40% of attacks are attributable either to conspiracy theorists as a

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generic category, or to pro-Trump extremists whose violent extremism rests on conspiratorial beliefs. This section looks at the influence of QAnon theory on the unfolding of anti-government attacks. QAnon theory is believed to have originated in 2017 when posts first appeared on the 4chan social media site by someone or a group of people identified as Q. They claimed to be a high-level government official with a Q-level security clearance. Adherents believed that there was a deep-state composed of satanic, cannibalistic child molesters operating a global child sex trafficking ring who were embedded throughout the federal government and were determined to undermine thenpresident Trump. Later migrating to the social media site 8chan, QAnon attracted legions of followers through its spread on social media platforms. Flags and banners bearing their motto of “where we go one, we go all” began appearing at Second Amendment rallies and pro-Trump rallies across the country. QAnon theories not only fueled many of the anti-government domestic terror incidents seen so far this century but would also be a primary driver contributing to the January 6th insurrection. This section will look at samples of incidents committed by QAnon devotees and the later emergence of COVID-19 conspiracy theories as a basis for domestic terrorist activity. It will conclude with the impact of the most dangerous conspiracy theory of all, that the 2020 election was stolen. QAnon Conspiracy Theory Extremism Before QAnon, there was PizzaGate. On December 4, 2016, Edgar M. Welch, 28 years old, arrived at the Comet Ping Pong Restaurant, a neighborhood family-oriented pizzeria in Washington, D.C. He had driven approximately 350 miles from his home in Salisbury, N. C., believing he was there to rescue victims of a child-trafficking ring run by Democratic Party insiders out of the pizzeria’s non-existent basement. While driving, he recorded a video message for his daughters. I can’t let you grow up in a world that’s so corrupted by evil. I have to at least stand up for you and for other children just like you. . . . Like I always told you we have a duty to protect people who can’t protect themselves.24

It was the middle of the afternoon and children and their parents were inside when Welch, armed with an AR-15 assault rifle and a Colt .38-caliber revolver, entered the pizzeria and fired three shots. After a guilty plea, he was sentenced to four years in prison. PizzaGate is considered by many to be the precursor to the QAnon theory.

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Eighteen months later, on June 15, 2018, 30-year-old Matthew Wright drove an armored truck onto a bridge near the Hoover Dam, blocking traffic for approximately 90 minutes. While fleeing in his vehicle, he drove over tire deflation devices placed by law enforcement, and despite three flat tires, continued his flight.25 Two assault rifles, a handgun, and 900 rounds of ammunition were found in the truck. While on the bridge, he held up a sign calling for President Trump to “release the OIG [Office of Inspector General] report.” This was a major QAnon demand for the release of a non-existent report on a non-existent investigation of Democrats and other government officials, which purported to support the existence of deep-state action against President Trump. In an illustration of the alignment of pro-Trump conspiracy theories with QAnon, later that year coordinated mail bombing attacks occurred around the country, targeting critics of then-president Donald Trump between October 22 and November 1, 2018. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Democratic donor Tom Steyer, and (at-the-time) former vice-president Joseph Biden each had two mail bombs addressed to them. Additional targeted recipients were former president Barack Obama, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, former CIA director John Brennan, former attorney general Eric H. Holder, actor Robert De Niro, former National Intelligence director James Clapper, Senator Cory Booker, then-senator Kamala Harris, CNN, and billionaire philanthropist George Soros. QAnon’s diatribes against George Soros provided an opportunity to rehash anti-Semitic tropes. Cesar Altieri Sayoc, of Florida, pled guilty to 65 felonies in connection with mailing the 16 devices and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.26 At the time of the attacks, Sayoc was 56-years-old. There were no deaths or injuries resulting from these attacks. All of the devices were successfully defused. Most were intercepted at mail handling facilities. On March 13, 2019, QAnon beliefs appeared to trigger an assassination in New York City when 24-year-old Anthony Comello drove his truck into the vehicle of Francesco Franky Boy Cali. When Cali came outside to investigate, Comello shot him ten times under the mistaken belief that Cali was a prominent member of the deep state and that his action in killing Cali was supported by then-president Trump.27 In actuality, Cali was a reputed Gambino family crime boss. Comello claimed he was attempting to make a citizen’s arrest of Cali, as he had previously attempted to do with Representative Maxine Waters and Adam Schiff, both from California, as well as Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York. While in court, Comello wrote “MAGA Forever, Q, United We Stand, and Patriots in Charge” on his hand. In 2020, the court found Comello unfit to stand trial, so he was transferred to a psychiatric facility for treatment.

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COVID-19 Conspiracy Theory Extremism The challenge with conspiracy theory extremists is that there is always one more rabbit hole down which to go. And each time you go down one, it makes it easier to go down the next one. COVID-19 generated a surge in antigovernment conspiracy theories. It ranged from those who initially believed it was either a hoax or a government plot to undermine individual liberties to those who later believed that the COVID-19 vaccination was a government plot to inject a tracking device in every American’s arm. It is impossible to argue with conspiracy theorists. But you sometimes wonder if they realize that their smartphone is, in essence, a tracking device? If they realize that when you post to social media, your smartphone provides the locale from which you posted? You wonder if they realize that using the location tracker not only enables you to locate nearby friends but also enables other people to locate you? More annoyingly, every time you get in your car, the smartphone not only knows you are in your car, but it tells you, without being asked, how long it will take to get to the destination to which it assumes you want to go. With all of that, why would the government need to develop an injectable tracking device for your arm? COVID-19 brought new words into use, such as anti-maskers. It expanded anti-vaxxers from relatively small numbers to large numbers. It is worth noting that the larger numbers, or at least more vocal anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers, were in the parts of the country that had higher levels of militia activity. Between December 5, 2019, and February 17, 2020, four different cell towers in Memphis, Tennessee, were set on fire. No group claimed responsibility, but it was believed that the motivation was a conspiracy theory suggesting a link between 5G radio waves and the COVID19 pandemic. A cell tower in Portland, Oregon, was set on fire in April 2020, then a return to Memphis in May 2020 for an attack on another cell tower. The COVID lockdowns in the United States began in March 2020, sparking an entirely new wave of conspiracy theories and anti-government extremism. During the first month of lockdowns, Eduardo Moreno, a 44-year-old train engineer in Los Angeles, California, deliberately ran a locomotive off the railroad tracks at a high rate of speed. He wanted to crash the train into the U.S. Navy Hospital Ship Mercy at the Port of Los Angeles. There were no injuries, but over 2,000 gallons of diesel oil was spilled. Moreno, who was sentenced to three years in prison, said he did it because “he was suspicious of the Mercy and believed it had an alternate purpose related to COVID-19 or a government takeover.”28 Less than two months later, Jesse T. McFadden attempted to steal a Coast Guard helicopter on May 17, 2020, to attack both a police station and a hospital in Michigan so he could release COVID-19 quarantine patients. McFadden was 70 years old. He was sentenced to twoyears’ probation.29 Michigan, in the meantime, would become an epicenter

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for anti-masking demonstrations, including armed demonstrations at the state capitol as well as a plot to kidnap the governor and try her for treason. The Road to January 6th and Beyond “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” With these words, it was alleged that Donald Trump propelled a crowd down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The George Washington University Program on Extremism maintains a database of everyone arrested in connection with the events of that day. As of October 20, 2023, almost three years after the January 6th insurrection, 1,153 individuals had been arrested in connection with the insurrection. Forty-eight percent were charged with felonies and 52% with misdemeanors. Among those arrested, 559 pled guilty, 118 were convicted, and 467 cases were still pending.30 The convictions decimated the leadership of some anti-government groups. The leadership of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys is among those serving prison sentences. As new participants are identified, arrests continue to be made. January 6th did not happen in a vacuum. It has been estimated that approximately 20% of those arrested were current or former military or law enforcement personnel. This points to the success of the anti-government extremist movement in either recruiting those with military or paramilitary training, infiltrating those organizations, or encouraging their members to enlist in the military for the training. No one suddenly woke up on January 6th and decided that they were going to participate in an insurrection against the United States. The road to January 6th began months, if not years, in advance. This section will look at selected cases of anti-government extremist incidents during the 2020 election cycle, as a potential preview for the next election. The focus is the impact of the Big Lie on the operation of elections. As a result, it does not address the January 6th insurrection directly. The organization Liberty Center for God and Country paid Mark Anthony Aguirre, a former Houston (Texas) Police Department captain, in excess of $260,000 to investigate alleged voter fraud in Harris County, Texas. Liberty Center for God and Country was founded on September 6, 2020. According to their Facebook page, their goal is: to provide the bold and courageous leadership necessary to restore our nation to its Godly heritage by following the strategy that our pilgrim forefathers gave us, which is to love God, and to place our hope and faith in the God of the Bible.31

Aguirre, surveilled David Lopez-Zuniga, an air conditioning repair worker, for four days after receiving an unsubstantiated allegation that Lopez-Zuniga

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had 750,000 fraudulent ballots for the 2020 Presidential election in his truck. Two weeks before the election, on October 19, 2020, Aguirre rammed his SUV into Lopez-Zuniga’s truck and briefly held him at gunpoint while he searched his truck. No ballots were found. This was part of a larger effort by conservative activist Steven Hotze and the Liberty Center to push baseless voter fraud allegations in Harris County, Texas. This aligns with the voter suppression efforts currently underway in Harris County previously described in chapter 5. Two days after the 2020 Presidential election, 42-year-old Joshua Macias and 61-year-old Antonio LaMotta, armed with a homemade AR-15-style assault rifle, a .40-caliber Beretta pistol, and a 9-mm Beretta pistol, arrived at the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Convention Center after driving from Virginia. Text messages exchanged between Macias and LaMotta described a plan to raid a truckload of fake ballots and to straighten things out at the Philadelphia Convention Center, where the votes were still being counted. It was reported that, in addition to ammunition, they also had a lock-picking tool in their vehicle. The vehicle displayed a QAnon sticker. LaMotta’s social media posts were reported to contain anti-Semitic cartoons and QAnon conspiracy theories. They were sentenced to 11.5 to 23 months in prison on firearms charges, to be followed by four years’ probation.32 Philadelphia was not alone. For days after the 2020 Presidential election, multiple armed protesters gathered daily outside vote-tabulation centers in Arizona, Nevada, and Michigan. Inside, election officials worked to complete the vote tabulations. Outside, protesters carried weapons ranging from handguns and shotguns to semiautomatic weapons. In some places, they demanded the arrest of the poll workers. In other places, they carried signs saying “Stop the Steal.” Unlike in Pennsylvania, however, Arizona, Nevada, and Michigan have open carry laws, permitting the visible display of firearms in public. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Professor and Founding Director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University, warns that the more this type of behavior is seen as a normal reaction, the more it normalizes the potential for violence.33 In advance of the 2020 general election, the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law disseminated fact sheets to inform voters, as well as state and local officials that “groups of armed individuals have no legal authority under federal or state law to show up at voting locations claiming to protect or patrol the polls.”34 In the instance of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, and Michigan, the armed individuals arguably showed up after the voting was done, but while the counting was taking place. In light of voter suppression changes occurring across the country, it may be possible that armed individuals will appear inside the polling places for the 2024 presidential election. Against this backdrop, rhetoric by Candidate

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Trump on the 2024 campaign trail in Iowa calling on his supporters to monitor the voting in Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Detroit is both ominous and menacing. These are largely democratic-voting, minority-dominated cities in states which are viewed as critical for the 2024 presidential election. This could shift the normalization of the potential for violence to the likelihood of violence. Newly formed organizations have been emerging around conspiracy theories associated with the Big Lie of a stolen election. Alice Herman, contributing reporter for The Guardian, estimates that there are now more than 30 Patriot-type groups in Wisconsin, all claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and openly embracing christian nationalist rhetoric. One such organization is Patriots of Ozaukee County, created in March 2021.35 Their website speaks to their opposition to “attempts to eliminate our right to keep and bears [sic] arms, implementation of mask and vaccine mandates, disregard of voting laws, racists [sic] ‘woke’ doctrines, increased taxed [sic] burdens and the censorship of narratives that do not support larger government agendas.”36 These organizations are expressly political in nature. It is very easy to picture organizations such as this dispersing armed individuals under the guise of observing the next vote, but with the actual intent to intimidate minority voters. On December 12, 2020, two days before presidential electors were scheduled to meet in their respective state capitols to perform their constitutional duty of voting for the winner in their state, a rally in support of Donald Trump and his stolen election claims was organized by Women for America First in Washington, D.C. Women for America First was organized in 2019 by Amy Kremer and her daughter Kylie in opposition to Donald Trump’s impeachment hearing. By 2020, they were organizing anti-masking demonstrations across the country. The organization’s Instagram page currently has almost 17,000 followers. Their Facebook page, Stop the Steal, was removed by Facebook after death threats and calls for a civil war were posted by members.37 The Proud Boys were also were in Washington, D.C., on that day in support of Trump. That evening, the Proud Boys spread out through the city. Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, participated in stealing and burning Black Lives Matter banners that had been displayed at two historical Black churches, Asbury United Methodist Church and Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. After suing the Proud Boys organization and its leadership, Metropolitan AME Church was awarded more than $1 million in damages.38 The most often used weapon of anti-government domestic terrorists is improvised explosive devices (IEDs), usually pipe bombs or letter bombs. These were used again on the night of January 5, 2021. One pipe bomb was placed at the Democratic National Committee office and another one

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at the Republican National Committee office in Washington, D.C., It has been speculated that the pipe bombs were intended to be diversions for the next day’s insurrection. Law enforcement received reports about the bombs shortly before 1:00 pm on January 6th, just about the time a Capitol Police inspector ordered a lockdown at the Capitol, and the Joint Session for the purpose of tabulating the electoral college votes began. A reward in the amount of $500,000 was posted, but to this day that terrorist remains unknown.39 CONCLUSION Theocratic ethnostates are anathema to democracies. It is logical then that the creation of the theocratic ethnostate desired by white christian nationalists would require an autocratic government to be in place. This chapter looked at the suppression of democracy within the context of selected types of antigovernment extremist activity. Because of the nature of the threat they present to the nation, the chapter began with militia violent extremists. A more recent arrival to the militia family has been the development of a militia model where the militia is an armed component of an advocacy or political group. It is very reminiscent of takeover strategies used in authoritarian fascist regimes. Conspiracy strategies continue to drive anti-government activity both by unaffiliated individuals and by groups, accounting for 40% of all antigovernment extremist activity. Fueling this dangerous fire are the conspiracy theories of stolen elections, QAnon, and the twisted distortions surrounding COVID-19. These false narratives spread like wildfire in a world of social media, driving a wedge between reality and the distorted worldview of anti-government extremists. There is a straight line from those theories to the incidents of January 6th. The biggest danger of conspiracy theories may be the manner in which they can drive individuals into collective behavior toward criminal or violent activity. The end goal of which is an unraveling of our democracy. These activities of anti-government extremists align with Barbera Walter’s description of how civil wars start, and particularly, how the next civil war might begin in our nation. If America has a second civil war, the combatants will not gather in fields, nor will they wear uniforms. . . . They will slip in and out of the shadows, communicating on message boards and encrypted networks . . . they will meet in small groups. . . where they will train to fight. They go online to plan their resistance, strategizing how to undermine the government at every level and gain control of parts of America. They will create chaos and fear.40

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NOTES 1. Barbara Walter, How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them (New York: Crown, 2022). 2. A.C. Thompson, Ali Winston, and Jake Hanrahan, “Inside Atomwaffen As It Celebrates a Member for Allegedly Killing a Gay Jewish College Student.” ProPublica, February 23, 2018,https://www​.propublica​.org​/article​/atomwaffen​-division​ -inside​-white​-hate​-group. 3. llana Krill and Bennett Clifford, “Mayhem, Murder, and Misdirection: Violent Extremist Attacks Plots Against Critical Infrastructure in the United States, 2016– 2022” (Washington, DC: Program on Extremism at George Washington University, September 2022). 4. Alex Newhouse, “The Threat Is the Network: The Multi-Node Structure of Neo-Fascist Accelerationism,” Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, June 2021, https://ctc​.westpoint​.edu​/the​-threat​-is​-the​-network​-the​-multi​-node​-structure​-of​ -neo​-fascist​-accelerationism/. 5. Unless otherwise indicated, incident data was derived from the Global Terrorism Database. Calculations made are based on the GTD dataset. START (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism). (2022). “Global Terrorism Database 1970–2020” [data file]. January 1, 2021–June 6, 2021 [Supplemental File]. https://www​.start​.umd​.edu​/gtd. 6. Tom Gorman, “Student Admits to Bombings,” Los Angeles Times, May 9, 2002, https://www​.latimes​.com​/archives​/la​-xpm​-2002​-may​-09​-na​-bombs9​-story​ .html. 7. KnightLab CDN, “Timeline of Luke Helder,” accessed February 28, 2024, https://cdn​.knightlab​.com​/libs​/timeline3​/latest​/embed​/index​.html​?source​ =1rEkYriVE4hR2ldRh6m​-3Dl​QWBU​nao6​tkTR​SvFZuohjs​&font​=Default​&lang​=en​ &initial​_zoom​=2​&height​=650. 8. PBS News, “Suspect in Mailbox Bombings Surrenders,” PBS News, May 8, 2002, https://www​.pbs​.org​/newshour​/world​/terrorism​-jan​-june02​-pipe​-bombing​ _05​-08. 9. Larry Buchanan et al., “What Is a Bump Stock and How Does It Work?,” The New York Times, October 4, 2017, sec. U.S., https://www​.nytimes​.com​/interactive​ /2017​/10​/04​/us​/bump​-stock​-las​-vegas​-gun​.html, https://www​.nytimes​.com​/interactive​/2017​/10​/04​/us​/bump​-stock​-las​-vegas​-gun​.html. 10. The GTD coded this attack as meeting two of the three criterion for inclusion: “there was evidence of an intention to coerce, intimidate, or convey some other message to a larger audience (or audiences) than the immediate victims, and the action was . . . outside the context of legitimate warfare activities. What the GTD found to be lacking was the aim . . . at attaining a political, economic, religious, or social goal.” While the GTD requires that two of the three criteria be met, despite its inclusion, this event was coded as terrorism doubtful. 11. SPLC, “Antigovernment General,” Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed March 2, 2024, https://www​.splcenter​.org​/fighting​-hate​/extremist​-files​/ideology​/antigovernment​-general.

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12. SPLC, Southern Poverty Law Center, “Militia Movement,” Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed March 2, 2024, https://www​.splcenter​.org​/fighting​-hate​/ extremist​-files​/ideology​/militia​-movement. 13. Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and Montana Human Rights Network, “Ammon’s Army: Inside the Far-Right People’s Rights Network ⋆ A Special Report by The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and The Montana Human Rights Network,” 2020, https://www​.irehr​.org​/reports​/peoples​ -rights​-report/. 14. Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and Montana Human Rights Network. 15. Vanda Felbab-Brown and Elisa Norio, “What Border Vigilantes Taught U.S. Right-Wing Armed Groups,” Brookings, March 12, 2021, https://www​.brookings​.edu​ /articles​/what​-border​-vigilantes​-taught​-us​-right​-wing​-armed​-groups/. 16. Scott North and Harold Writer, “No Boundaries: Shawna Forde and the Minutemen Movement,” HeraldNet​.co​m, October 25, 2009, https://www​.heraldnet​.com​/ news​/no​-boundaries​-shawna​-forde​-minutemen​-movement/. 17. U.S. Census Bureau, “P1: RACE—Census Bureau Table: Arivaca Arizona,” 2010, https://data​ . census​ . gov​ / table​ / DECENNIALPL2010​ . P1​ ? g​ =160XX00US0403380. 18. Faith Education Commerce United, “Faith Pillar,” FEC United (blog), accessed June 28, 2024, https://fecunited​.com​/faith/. 19. Faith Education Commerce United, “Education Pillar,” FEC United (blog), accessed June 28, 2024, https://fecunited​.com​/education/. 20. Faith Education Commerce United, “Commerce Pillar,” FEC United (blog), accessed June 28, 2024, https://fecunited​.com​/commerce/. 21. SPLC, “Faith Education Commerce,” Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed March 2, 2024, https://www​.splcenter​.org​/fighting​-hate​/extremist​-files​/group​/faith​ -education​-commerce. 22. John Frank, “Colorado Activist Played Big Role in Donald Trump’s ‘Big Lie,’” Axios, October 15, 2021, https://www​.axios​.com​/local​/denver​/2021​/10​/15​/ colorado​-joe​-oltmann​-trump​-big​-lie​-2020​-election. 23. Erik Maulbetsch, “Conservative Group Behind Deadly ‘Patriot Muster’ Rally Working Closely With Colorado GOP,” Colorado Times Recorder, October 12, 2020, https://col​orad​otim​esre​corder​.com​/2020​/10​/conservative​-group​-behind​-deadly​ -patriot​-muster​-rally​-working​-closely​-with​-colorado​-gop​/31445/. 24. ABC News, “‘Pizzagate’ Gunman Recorded ‘Goodbye’ Video Message to His Family,” ABC News, accessed June 28, 2024, https://abcnews​.go​.com​/US​/pizzagate​ -gunman​-recorded​-goodbye​-video​-message​-family​/story​?id​=48235100. 25. William Mansell, “Man Pleads Guilty to Terrorism Charge after Blocking Hoover Dam Bridge with Armored Truck,” ABC News, February 13, 2020, https:// abcnews​.go​.com​/US​/man​-pleads​-guilty​-terrorism​-charge​-blocking​-bridge​-armored​/ story​?id​=68955385. 26. U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, “Florida Man Sentenced In Manhattan Federal Court To 20 Years In Prison For Mailing 16 Improvised Explosive Devices In Connection With October 2018 Domestic Terrorist

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Attack,” U.S. Department of Justice, August 5, 2019, https://www​.justice​.gov​/usao​ -sdny​/pr​/florida​-man​-sentenced​-manhattan​-federal​-court​-20​-years​-prison​-mailing​-16​ -improvised. 27. David Li, “Man Suspected of Gunning down Reputed Mob Boss Mistook Him as ‘Deep State’ Figure,” NBC News, July 22, 2019, https://www​.nbcnews​.com​ /news​/us​-news​/man​-suspected​-gunning​-down​-reputed​-mob​-boss​-mistook​-him​-deep​ -n1032331. 28. U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of California, “Fomer San Pedro Train Engineer Sentenced to 3 Years in Prison for Intentionally Derailing Locomotive Near U.S. Navy Hospital Ship,” April 13, 2022, https://www​.justice​.gov​/usao​-cdca​/pr​/ former​-san​-pedro​-train​-engineer​-sentenced​-3​-years​-prison​-intentionally​-derailing. 29. Cole Waterman, “Omer Man Threatened to Shoot up Hospital, Ram Coast Guard Gate to Steal Helicopter, Police Say,” mlive, May 19, 2020, https://www​ .mlive​.com​/news​/saginaw​-bay​-city​/2020​/05​/omer​-man​-threatened​-to​-shoot​-up​-hospital​-ram​-coast​-guard​-gate​-to​-steal​-helicopter​-police​-say​.html. 30. The George Washington University, Program on Extremism, “Capitol Hill Siege” Program on Extremism, February 4, 2022, accessed March 3, 2024, https:// extremism​.gwu​.edu​/Capitol​-Hill​-Siege. 31. Liberty Center for God and Country, “Facebook: Liberty Center for God and Country,” accessed March 2, 2024, https://www​.facebook​.com​/libertycgc/. 32. 6abc Digital Staff, “Men Who Brought Guns to Pennsylvania Convention Center Sentenced to Prison,” 6abc Philadelphia, March 1, 2023, https://6abc​.com​/antonio​ -lamotta​-joshua​-macias​-sentenced​-2020​-presidential​-election​-vote​-count​/12900310/. 33. Tim Sullivan and Adam Geller, “Increasingly Normal: Guns Seen Outside Vote-Counting Centers | AP News,” accessed March 3, 2024, https://apnews​.com​ /article​/protests​-vote​-count​-safety​-concerns​-653​dc8f​0787​c925​8524​0785​48d518992. quoting Cynthia Miller-Idriss. 34. Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, “Fact Sheets on Unlawful Militias for All 50 States Now Available from Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection,” accessed March 3, 2024, https://www​.law​ .georgetown​.edu​/icap​/our​-press​-releases​/fact​-sheets​-on​-unlawful​-militias​-for​-all​-50​ -states​-now​-available​-from​-georgetown​-laws​-institute​-for​-constitutional​-advocacy​ -and​-protection/, quoting Mary McCord, Legal Director of ICAP and a former Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the Department of Justice. 35. Alice Herman, “‘You Better Pray’: Christian Nationalist Groups Are Mobilizing before the 2024 Elections,” The Guardian, December 24, 2023, sec. World news, https://www​.theguardian​.com​/world​/2023​/dec​/24​/christian​-nationalist​-patriot​-groups​ -2024​-presidential​-election. 36. Patriots of Ozaukee County, “Patriots of Ozaukee County,” Patriots of Ozaukee County, accessed February 27, 2024, https://patriotsofoz​.us/. 37. Julia Carrie Wong, “Facebook Removes Pro-Trump Stop the Steal Group over ‘Calls for Violence,’” The Guardian, November 5, 2020, sec. U.S. news, https:// www​.theguardian​.com​/us​-news​/2020​/nov​/05​/facebook​-trump​-stop​-the​-steal​-group​ -removed.

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38. Associated Press, “Judge Awards Black Church $1 Million after BLM Banner Burned by Proud Boys during Protest,” AP News, July 1, 2023, https://apnews​.com​ /article​/proud​-boys​-black​-church​-banner​-burning​-lawsuit​-13d​cfbd​1a7f​f8e5​dd04​86cd​ de0f911fb. 39. Robert Legare, “FBI Offers $500,000 Reward to Solve Jan. 5, 2021 Capitol Hill Pipe Bomber Case—CBS News,” January 4, 2023, https://www​.cbsnews​.com​/ news​/january​-5​-2021​-pipe​-bomb​-suspect​-dnc​-rnc​-fbi​-reward/. 40. Walter, How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them, 168–169.

Chapter 8

The Way Forward, or Maybe Backward

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

(George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905) The promise of inclusivity implied in the opening phrase of the U.S. Constitution, “[w]e the people of the United States,” is a promise, still not fully redeemed. This book describes the trifecta of law, culture, and violence employed by white christian nationalists to make sure this promise remains unredeemed. From the nation’s inception, this phrase “we the people” held a restrictive meaning, understood to refer primarily to white, cisgender, heterosexual Christian men. The second founding of the nation occurred with the Civil War, followed by the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution. That second founding began to address this deficiency. Even then, almost another century of activism and legal struggle was required before the Constitution’s promise began to be more fully realized in daily life. The twentieth century, particularly its second half, saw America move closer toward fulfilling its promise. The twenty-first century, despite a hopeful start, has witnessed a dangerous unraveling of this progress. Following the 9/11 attacks and the nation’s longest war, the movement fueled by white christian nationalism intensified its efforts to undermine American pluralism. The 2008 election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first Black president spurred a resurgence of the white supremacy and patriarchy that had always lain under the surface, coupled with thinly veiled allusions to a mythical, racially pure past. This culminated in the election of Donald Trump and the rise of the MAGA movement. To be clear, the white supremacy that is an integral part of white christian nationalism has always been present in the nation’s history. But for a time, it went undercover. 139

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What could once be considered a stealth takeover is now a strategic assault taking place in public as white christian nationalists systematically target laws and social norms, while employing violence to achieve their goal of creating a society with their particular brand of white Christian dominance enshrined. This public resurgence of the rise of white christian nationalism is intrinsically tied to increasing violence against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, as well as attacks on reproductive rights. Hate crime statistics and a chilling rise in mass casualty events perpetrated by far-right extremists underscore the gravity of this threat. Through an analysis of incidents of targeted violence and policy changes that eroded individual rights, the first half of this book explored the pervasive impact of white christian nationalism on diverse communities, illustrating how it targets anyone deemed “not white,” “not Christian,” and not sufficiently aligned with the patriarchy. It focused on the targeting of individuals and groups. The second half of this book examined the targeting of our system of government itself. White christian nationalism is a dominant member of the far-right extremist enterprise. It is inextricably entangled with white supremacy and anti-government extremist ideologies. The normalization of these ideologies poses a danger to the nation as a whole. This chapter begins with a summary of the current impact of white christian nationalism, followed by a look at where white christian nationalists want to take the nation. The chapter concludes with a speculative preview of what the future may hold.

WHERE WE ARE A theocratic white ethnostate cannot come into existence without an authoritarian government, both for establishment and maintenance of that state. White christian nationalism centers on the core belief that the United States was founded as, and should remain, a nation for white Christians. To accomplish this, one must begin by making people afraid. You make them afraid of those who are different. The process of othering and dehumanization labels anyone outside the white Christian identity, including religious minorities, immigrants, Indigenous, people of color, and those who do not conform to gendered expectations, as fundamental threats to the “true” America, the white ethnostate. This is not a new phenomenon. It is a continuation of deep-rooted historical patterns of behavior and systemic violence ranging from stolen land, to broken treaties, to lynchings, to the present-day threat from far-right extremists. The current patterns are so severe that U.S. intelligence agencies have warned that domestic terrorism fueled by racial and ethnic hatred, as well as far-right militias, is the most significant domestic threat. The hate crimes targeting individuals because of their race, ethnicity,

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religion, perceived immigration status, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation provide a backdrop for the narrower domestic terrorist incidents. The accompanying increase in hate groups and other extremist groups across the country highlights the ongoing danger posed by organized movements fueled by white christian nationalist beliefs and their affiliated strands of thought. You make them afraid that their way of life is under attack. White christian nationalism rests on a patriarchal foundation. The underlying cause of attacks on women’s reproductive rights is male supremacy. Reproductive justice is about combating the notion that women should not control their own bodies. Laws regulating abortion and contraceptives seek to control women’s bodies and dictate their destinies to bring them more into alignment with the gendered expectations of behavior inherent in white christian nationalism. These rigid gender roles directly contribute to the rise of extremist groups like incels, and violence against women and the erosion of their fundamental right to bodily autonomy. The end of Roe v. Wade has led to life-threatening consequences for many women. The targeting of women and healthcare providers, as well as potential criminalization, has created a climate of fear. This fear is particularly acute as the loss of privacy rights raises the specter for women of their personal medical information being tracked and used against them. The struggle for reproductive rights transcends abortion. It is a fight for the fundamental right of all people to control their own bodies and their lives. The contradiction of those who fiercely defend their individual liberty to do things that jeopardize the public, such as refusing to wear masks in a global pandemic or carry assault weapons in public, while simultaneously attempting to control women’s bodies, highlights the hypocrisy. This same hypocrisy is seen when it comes to the LGBTQ+ struggle. LGBTQ+ legal victories show both the potential for progress under the Constitution and that the meaning of liberty is not static. Those who work to restrict the liberties of others continually adapt and seek new ways to curtail those rights. Changing presidential administrations and what now appears to be a hostile Supreme Court leave hard-won protections vulnerable. Victories like Obergefell are landmark decisions, for as long as they are not weakened or reversed. The battle continues in emerging areas of workplace discrimination, transgender rights, and especially laws targeting LGBTQ+ youth in school settings. Advances at the federal legislative level continue to be circumvented at the state and local levels. As with women and reproductive rights, a key strategy against LGBTQ+ rights has been the utilization of individual religious beliefs as a weapon. Attempts to prioritize certain religious viewpoints over LGBTQ+ rights drives legislation, legal challenges, and social discrimination. Increasingly emerging is the successful ability of individuals to use their personal religious beliefs as a rationale to limit someone else’s freedom in the public arena.

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It is important to see that the struggle against these efforts is interconnected. Restricting reproductive rights and attacking LGBTQ+ rights both stem from ideologies of control, making them fundamentally connected battles for bodily autonomy and the right to live lives free from persecution. The right to live lives free from persecution also encompasses those whose racial, ethnic, or religious identities make them non-white or non-Christian. In 1971, Fannie Lou Hamer delivered a speech before the founding meeting of the National Women’s Political Caucus titled “Nobody’s Free Until Everybody’s Free” in which she enjoined Black and white women to work together for freedom for all. To apply that to this instance, all those targeted by white christian nationalism must recognize the interconnectedness of the struggle against the manifestations of white christian nationalism, whether it presents as white supremacy, white nationalism, anti-immigrant, Islamophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, misogyny, anti-LGBTQ+, or in any other way. This book is intended to highlight that interconnection. If we begin with the rationale that the only “true” Americans are white, then voter suppression of people of color should be expected. In fact, it is necessary. The voter suppression in the twenty-first century comes with a well-developed Playbook compliments of organizations advancing white christian nationalism on the policy front. Under the guise of protecting elections from fraud, this Playbook includes strict voter identification requirements, restrictions on early voting and voting by mail, purging of voter rolls disproportionately affecting voters of color, state takeovers of local government functions, and gerrymandering, to name a few. The culminating strategy in this campaign is the complete eradication of the Voting Rights Act. This has been facilitated by the elimination of the Act’s preclearance requirement in Shelby v. Holder in 2013, which ushered in the current phase of voter suppression. Elimination of the potential for federal oversight means that individuals are dependent on states to protect their ability to vote and their access to the polls. These are the same states, however, that have created the barriers to access and voting in the first place. The spread of misinformation about compromised voting systems is often used to justify voter suppression tactics. This is a key tool for those who seek to impose authoritarianism, as it reduces democratic participation. White christian nationalism, an ideology that is incompatible with democracy, often exploits social media platforms to spread divisive and misleading narratives. Social media is an extremist incubator contributing to the self-radicalization phenomenon existing today. Primary radicalization occurs online rather than from an in-person group exchange. This often results in the blurred ideological constructs seen in today’s unaffiliated extremists as well as in the membership of extremist organizations. Social media platforms provide space for those with extremist ideologies to connect with others who share their

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beliefs. This was seen with incels, as well as the January 6th insurrectionists. Because these spaces lack external moderation, they foster conspiracy theories and normalize hatred. The spread of extremist content is accelerated through social media algorithms. Having made people afraid of those who look different and from those who live differently, radicalization via social media operates to weaponize that fear. Social media also spreads conspiracy theories fueling anti-government extremism. Conspiracy theories about stolen elections, QAnon, and COVID19 misinformation fuel anti-government sentiment and activity. Their narratives spread rapidly through the ecosphere that is social media. The most significant danger of conspiracy theories lies in their ability to motivate individuals to engage in collective criminal or violent activity. This results in events such as the January 6th insurrection. The ultimate goal of these efforts is the destruction of democratic institutions in this nation.

WHERE WE ARE GOING A coalition of far-right groups led by the Heritage Foundation, as part of their planning for the next Republican administration, has put together the book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project. Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, author of Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity, has sounded an alarm regarding the fact that the theocratic elements of the plan have been overlooked in the focus on those aspects of the plan that consolidate presidential power, dismantle government regulations in some areas such as environmental protection, but increase them in other areas. Graves-Fitzsimmons notes “[r]ight-wing groups do not want to ensure all Americans have religious freedom, but want to impose conservative Christian views on our religiously-diverse country.”1 In the preface to Project 2025 authored by Kevin D. Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, and titled A Promise to America, Roberts states that America’s future will be decided on four fronts: (1) restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protection of our children; (2) dismantle the administrative state, returning self-governance to the American people; (3) defense of national sovereignty, borders, and bounty from global threats; and finally (4) securing our God-given rights to live freely identified in the Constitution as the Blessings of Liberty.2 This section will look at several of the selected essential elements Roberts provides for that very first building block, restoration of the family, and provide an overview of what it really means for the future of our nation if implemented. An idealized notion of family is preeminent. Roberts in Project 2025 is clear that “[e]very threat to family stability must be confronted.”

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Project 2025 promises to elevate family authority, formation, and cohesion as the top priority of policymakers, who will use government power, including the tax code, to restore the American family. This has to be read against a national backdrop that seeks to delegitimize non-traditional families. Will these families, for example, be denied the use of the standard child deduction on their income taxes? By cohesion, does this mean, as some Republican state lawmakers have called for, the end of no-fault divorce? Elevation of family authority should be read in consolidation with directives to return the control of education to parents. Family authority also needs to be understood as resting on a strong patriarch, not co-equal parenting partners. Project 2025 promises to delete the following terms from every existing federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, and piece of legislation: sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gendersensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, as well as “any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights.” The Orwellian connotations of literally removing words from the English language are overwhelming. Particularly when it is considered that it will next be required that states and localities comply with this promise in order to continue receiving federal funds. But consider the impact of essentially wiping anything related to women, minorities, and the LGBTQ+ community from the public record. This not only has the effect of rewriting history but is an effort to remove entire groups from the public record. Project 2025 promises to outlaw pornography. But it links pornography to “the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children.” Project 2025 promises to classify educators and public librarians as registered sex offenders for purveying pornography. When coupled with this understanding of pornography, it suggests the criminalization of teachers and librarians who have books on their shelves about non-traditional families. Or criminalization of those that call a student by a pronoun inconsistent with the one assigned at birth. As well as criminalization of those acquiescing to a student’s request to be called a different name from the one assigned at birth. Project 2025 promises that the rights of parents as their child’s primary educators will be non-negotiable, with universal school choice as the ultimate goal. There will be a complete loss of federal funds for all states, cities, counties, school boards, union bosses, principals, and teachers who disagree. Ignoring the free speech issues, this appears to hand complete control of curricula and classroom issues to a select group of parents. Not addressed is how teachers are expected to respond when they have competing demands from different parents regarding curriculum matters for the same class. However, the assumption is that they will be expected to go with the most biblical

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directive. Equally important is the funding issue that is raised. What is left unsaid is that the role of parents as the child’s primary educator also raises the issue that the per-pupil expenditures used as the basis for school funding allocations will follow the child whether or not they are in a traditional public school. For instance, the funds will go to parents of homeschooled students. Or they will go to religious schools if that is where the parent has decided to send their child. The caveat is that there will be criteria determining which type of religious schools get funded. Project 2025 promises to remove critical race theory and gender ideology from curricula in every public school. For clarification purposes, critical race theory is a legal theory taught in law schools. It is not in the curriculum of K-12 schools. However, in this instance, critical race theory is a synonym for African-American history, or any recitations of history specifically mentioning the forced enslavement or oppression of Black people in America. Gender ideology is broad. It can encompass women’s studies or issues, as well as anything connected to LGBTQ+ studies or issues. To be on the safe side, history and social studies courses will only discuss white men. English classes will only read works written by white heterosexual men. Project 2025 promises to end the ability of parents or doctors to reassign the sex of a minor, which will be classified as child abuse. It is ironic that parents are the primary educators of their children, over and above professionally trained teachers, but when it comes to medical decisions, neither the parent nor the doctor is permitted to act in what they determine is in the best interests of the child. This is also deceptively vague. At first glance, it seems irrelevant since physical sex reassignment of minors is extremely rare. But then you consider that this could encompass any treatment, including hormonal puberty blockers. What if a parent permits their child to dress in a manner that someone else deems inconsistent with their gender assigned at birth? Does that come within the ambit of this promise? To be safe, should parents only dress their daughters in dresses? Project 2025 promises to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction, at the federal and state level. It also promises Congressional enactment of robust protections for the unborn. The danger in this can be seen in the 2024 state court decision in Alabama, which declared that embryos were children and had the impact of effectively shutting down IVF clinics throughout the state. The Alabama state legislature attempted to reverse the impact (although not the meaning of the decision) by providing some protection to IVF clinics. But this may be transitory. The reality is that if the Alabama state court is correct, and if, as Project 2025 assumes, embryos are children, then there are several implications. IVF relies on harvesting numerous embryos because multiple embryos are required to generate one live birth. Some families have been able to have several children, spaced as they determine, from their initial harvested

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embryos. When there is no longer a need for the embryos, they are destroyed, donated for research, or donated to other couples. But, if they are children, you cannot destroy them. If you have embryos harvested, are you going to be required to eventually implant each one? If you stop paying the monthly fee to maintain your frozen embryos, will you be charged with child neglect, or will the frozen embryos be turned over to state custody? Project 2025 is the product of numerous people and many right-wing organizations, some of whom are listed as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. At the local level, in school districts, in state legislatures, we can already see the initial tentacles of their envisioned white christian theocracy. Project 2025 provides the instructions for releasing those tentacles nationwide in every aspect of our lives. This chapter did not address the transition to an autocratic chief executive as prescribed in Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project, but once again, the irony and hypocrisy have to be noted. These are people who consistently rail against government overreach and argue for a limited national government. Yet, they are poised to bring in the most autocratic, invasive, expansive government ever seen.

WHAT THE FUTURE MAY HOLD There is a reason they always began with the revisioning and re-whitewashing of history. In public school classrooms across the country, the Ten Commandments are prominently displayed at the front of the classroom. A testament to our Judeo-Christian heritage. Each school day begins with a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. A testament to our status as a Christian nation. Educational expenditures have decreased dramatically. After all, there is no need for science labs or for books. The only book needed is the Bible. That is what the first European arrivals on the continent used to teach their children to read. The teachers are men or young unmarried women. After all, a woman’s highest duty is to be a wife and mother. Working for pay is what women do as they are waiting to get married, not after they marry. The exception might be for work emerging from the domestic sphere, such as selling baked goods, and so on for pocket money. The school principals are all men, of course. White christian nationalism is based on a patriarchal system. Even in schools, this hierarchy must be modeled and preserved. Most public-school buildings will fall into disarray as they will be unused. Since parents are the best teachers, to encourage parents, specifically mothers, to homeschool their children, school funding will follow the student. This means that public tax dollars will be paid directly to parents who homeschool their children with no restrictions on their use or any requirement that

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minimal educational standards be met. Public schools will still exist but will mostly be utilized by two very different categories of students. The larger group will be those students whose parents are unable to homeschool them, primarily because both parents need to work. The other group will be the elite who will use public money to fund the conversion of former public schools into elite, expensive private Christian academies for their children. Parents will no longer have to worry about their children being groomed by members of the LGBTQ+ community. There will be no homosexuality. It is unclear whether its absence is because it was addressed as a public health issue and treated with mandatory conversion therapy, or because it was criminalized and punished with incarceration. What is clear is that teachers and librarians will be criminalized, registered as sex offenders, and will lose their jobs if they call a student by a gender other than the one on their birth certificate, or if they use they/them pronouns in reference to a student. Since pedophilia and homosexuality are not synonymous, the eradication of homosexuality will do nothing to eradicate those who actually prey on children. Although by a sleight of hand the numbers can be reduced. A child who is impregnated by a rapist, of course, cannot have an abortion. Instead, they will be compelled to marry the rapist (assuming the rapist is unmarried), making sure they are then victimized four times over. First by the rape. Second by being forced to give birth to their rapist’s child. Third by the physical and psychological damage resulting from that forced birth. And finally, by being compelled to relive the horror, day after day. But a family will have been created. This only addresses those pedophiles who prey on young girls, leaving unaddressed, however, those who prey on young boys. The absence of real reproductive health care for women means that women and girls will die. But there will always be more with which to replace them. The elimination of no-fault divorce will make it harder for women to leave abusive marriages, also meaning more women will die. Poor women will work outside the home as they have always had to do. However, their job opportunities will be limited, with many jobs deemed not suitable for women. Naturally, those include most supervisory jobs and most high-paying jobs. The union jobs and government jobs that propelled generations of families into the middle class will be gone. In a pro-business environment, unions will be prohibited. In the hostility to government workers, the government workforce will be further hollowed out with the majority of government work done by private companies with big government contracts. The minimum wage has been eliminated to restore the age-old practice of unequal bargaining power between employer and employee. The result, an even wider income gap than currently exists. The decline in educational standards (remember, parents are the supreme arbiters of what their child should learn) means that, over time we are no longer an economic powerhouse. As a result, there are very few

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people at the top and a larger number at the bottom. In some countries, that might be the recipe for revolution. But in our diverse society, we are able to resort to the oldest trope of all and tell the poor white people at the bottom, that the Black, brown, and Indigenous people are responsible for their plight. By thus empowering their whiteness, no matter how little they have economically, they see themselves as aligned with the elites and will fight to maintain the status quo, no matter how much they are disadvantaged.3 CONCLUSION This is the world in which white christian nationalists want us to live. There are many questions to consider when examining their written vision of this world. Just to mention a few: Will you have to be a Christian to have a government job or to be a schoolteacher? After all, can you really have a nonChristian molding the minds of the nation’s youth? In the family authority or, more appropriately, the authoritarian family, will women need their husband’s permission to work? Will married women be able to establish credit in their own names? At one point in the nation’s history, they could not. Will marital rape be permitted? At one time, it was. In short, will this be a return to the ancient legal truism “the husband and the wife are one, and that one is the husband?” These are the consequences of where white christian nationalism wants to take the nation. NOTES 1. Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, “Opinion | Inside the Far Right’s Roadmap to Introduce Christian Theocracy,” MSNBC​ .co​ m, September 8, 2023, https:// www​.msnbc​.com​/opinion​/msnbc​-opinion​/project​-2025​-heritage​-foundation​-christian​ -nationalism​-rcna103510. 2. Kevin D. Roberts. “A Promise to America,” in The Heritage Foundation, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project (DC, 2023), 3, chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://thf​_media​.s3​.amazonaws​.com​/project2025​/2025​_Man​date​ForL​eadership​ _FULL​.pdf. 3. For a description of this phenomenon, see generally, Jonathan Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland (New York: Basic Books, 2020).

Afterword

Our nation stands at a precipice. It is confronting the reality that the past 70 years of progress are being dismantled. We did not reach this point overnight. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund spent 20 years getting to Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. They began with equalization cases at the graduate school level in the 1930s. The far-right has spent the past 70 years attempting to subvert the progress made in advancing constitutional protections for individuals based on race and ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation. We are engaged in a generational struggle. We must be just as deliberate and consistent in pushing back. White Christian nationalism has broadened its appeal by obscuring its true nature and reaching out to individuals who would not typically be expected to align with its ideology. It convinces people that it is not only okay but necessary that their lifestyle or personal morality be imposed on others as a matter of law, instead of as an individual’s personal choice. Often not realized is that you may then be victimized in this manner as well. What is required in response is a recognition that personal preferences or morality are for each individual’s personal behavioral regulation. They are not meant to be imposed by the government. The words of Martin Niemöller, the prominent Lutheran pastor and eventual outspoken opponent of Adolf Hitler’s interference in the German Protestant church, are still significant almost a century later. First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.

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What is especially instructive is that Niemoller originally supported many right-wing political movements and was an early Nazi sympathizer.1 Santayana was correct, “those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”2 That is why any authoritarian regime trying to take power always starts by rewriting history. In chaos theory, it is posited that in chaotic systems, behavior repeats almost the same, but with a slight variation, over and over again. That is our present situation. The oppressive systems of the past are being resurrected, but this time cloaked in the righteousness of God’s word. Successful resistance to the emergence of a theocratic white ethnostate requires an ability to look beyond the noise that says, “our struggles are different” and recognize the commonalities. It requires thoughtfulness in our consumption of information sources. It requires a real commitment to participate in the political process at all levels. It requires that we recognize the importance of our individual votes so that they are cast thoughtfully and not in protest. We must be aggressive in exercising our right to vote and not be swayed by disinformation campaigns that attempt to convince us our vote is meaningless. If our vote is as meaningless as suggested by some disinformation campaigns, why does the conservative far-right try so hard to keep us from voting? Above all, we must study the past so we recognize it when it attempts to re-emerge. While white christian nationalism is a threat to our democracy and our pluralistic society, it is not invincible. White christian nationalism thrives on exploiting divisions. To combat it, we have to embrace our differences by exploiting our shared victimization to build working coalitions across divides. Groups are always stronger than individuals. Groups made up of disparate people, identities, and issues are stronger than single-issue groups. We must be aggressive in calling out discrimination against those who, for whatever reason, may be different from the way in which we see ourselves. Discrimination against one is merely a license to discriminate against all. I asked an experienced schoolteacher from Florida how they were managing in the current Florida educational system. I expected consternation and dismay. Instead, what I got was hope. Times may seem precarious for the state of the education system in Florida. However, I am grateful that I have administrators who care deeply about helping students have a well-rounded learning experience. We, as teachers are encouraged to teach students the history of African-Americans. As well as that of Native-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Hispanic-Americans. I have hope that there are more school board members, administrators, teachers and parents in Florida who want to learn about and appreciate the experiences of others. In doing so, our youth will grow up and build a more inclusive culture in the future.3

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This addresses an essential component in any resistance to white christian nationalism. Underlying everything else is truth. We must know and speak the true history of a nation of diverse people with their diverse experiences. The stakes have never been higher. If the spread of white christian nationalism is unchecked, our children and our grandchildren will be the first generations to move backward in terms of social progress. It is within our ability to arrest this spread. NOTES 1. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Martin Niemöller: ‘First They Came for the Socialists. . .,’” accessed July 13, 2024, https://encyclopedia​.ushmm​.org​/content​/ en​/article​/martin​-niemoeller​-first​-they​-came​-for​-the​-socialists. 2. George Santayana, The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress, Vol. 1: Reason in Common Sense (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1905), 286. 3. Anonymous, Interview with a Florida Educator, February 27, 2024. Interview conducted by Angelyn Flowers.

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Index

Note: Page numbers in italics refer to figures/tables. 9/11 attacks, 9, 15, 139 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 77 700 Club, 51 1984 (Orwell), 61 Abington School District v. Schempp, 3 abortion: laws and policy, 58–64, 63; protective policy, 62–64, 63; restrictions/restrictive policy, 62, 63; self-medicated, 62 Abrams, Jenna, 116 accelerationism, 121 Active Clubs, 39 adolescents: as social media consumers, 110 Affordable Care Act (ACA), 78 After the Fall (Rhodes), 7 Aguirre, Mark Anthony, 131–32 algorithms, social media, 108, 114–15 Allen v. Milligan, 102 Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), 75–76, 81–82 American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), 93–94 American Public Media, 99 American Revolution, 36 anti-abortion extremists, 48–52 anti-abortion laws, 60

anti-Arab extremists, 37–38 Anti-Defamation League (ADL), 27 anti-government extremists: bombings/ explosions, 122–23; conspiracy supported extremism, 127–34; hate groups, 123–24; militias, 124–27 anti-masking demonstrations, 131 anti-Muslim extremists, 36–38 Arizona, 5–6 Arizona Educational Opportunity Scholarship Program, 6 armed assaults/attacks, 24–34 Aryan Nation, 56 Asbury United Methodist Church, 133 Atari, Mohammad, 113 Atlanta (Georgia) Race Massacre, 90 Atomwaffen Division (AWD), 121–22 Atwood, Margaret, 61 Authoritarian Playbook, 7, 14 AWD. See Atomwaffen Division Barnett, Lou, 93 Beirle, Scott Paul, 55–56 Biden, Joseph, 14, 78–80, 82, 116, 118, 129 Big Lie, 133 Black Lives Matter, 125, 133 Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon), 57 169

170

Index

Blue Laws, 4 bombings/explosions, 122–23 book bans, 1 Booker, Cory, 129 Bopp, Jim, 61 Bostock, Gerald, 79–80 Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, 79–80, 84 Bowers, Robert Gregory, 29–30 Breitbart, 111 Brennan, John, 129 Brennan Center for Justice, 108–9 Bright, Bill, 81 Brockhoeft, John, 50 Brookings Institute, 6 Brown v. Board of Education, 2 Bulso, Gino, 81 Bundy, Ammon, 125 Bundy, Cliven, 125 Bundy family saga, 124–26 Bureau of Land Management, 125 Burkett, Larry, 81 Bush, Jason Eugene, 126 Bushman, Sam, 23 Bushmaster XM-15 semiautomatic rifle, 33 businesses, attacks on, 37–38 cable news networks, 107 Cali, Frank “Franky Boy,” 129 Cambridge Analytica, 116 Capitol Complex Improvement District, 100 Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), 40 Center for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), 9 China, 47 Christian Identity: adherents, 11; group memberships and affiliations, 11–12, 12; ideological affiliations, 11, 11 Christianity, 3–6 Christmas, 4 Cielo Vista Walmart, El Paso, Texas, 30–31

Civil Rights Act of 1964, 2, 8 Civil War, 91 Clapper, James, 129 Clinton, Hillary, 117, 129 Club Q, 69 Collins, Addie Mae, 35 color of law, 23 Comello, Anthony, 129 Comet Ping Pong Restaurant, 128 Compromise of 1877, 89 contraceptive access, 64 Coors, Joseph, 94 Council of Conservative Citizens, 28 COVID-19, 117; conspiracy theory extremism, 130–31 Craig, Charlie, 75 crisis actors, 112 Crusius, Patrick, 30–31 Cruz, Nikolas, 24–25 Daily Record, 90 Dar Al-Farooq Mosque in Bloomington, Minnesota, 35 Dear, Robert Lewis, 52 de Blasio, Bill, 129 deepfakes, 117–18 deep-state, 128, 129 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), 73–77 Definite Hate, 26 dehumanization, 140 Democracy in Chains The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (MacLean), 99 demographic variations in social media usage, 109–11 De Niro, Robert, 129 DePape, David, 14 Department of Defense (DOD), 78 Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), 78, 79 Descovich, Tina, 82 Dickinson, Tim, 23–24 digital media, 112. See also social media

Index

Discord, 108 disinformation/misinformation on social media, 111, 115–18 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 1, 59–61, 64, 75, 76, 84, 85 Dobson, James, 81 Doe v. Bolton, 58 DOMA. See Defense of Marriage Act domestic violent extremists (DVE), 21, 23 Dominion, 116 Don’t Say Gay, 82 doxxing, 108 early voting, 98 East St. Louis (Illinois) Race Massacre, 90 echo chambers, 108, 112–14. See also social media education, 146–47; gender identity and, 80 educational institutions, 38 “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution” (YouTube video), 55 Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Charleston, South Carolina, 27–29 employment, 147–48; gender identity and, 79–80 End Apathy, 26 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 77–78 extra-judicial killings, 23 facility/infrastructure attacks, 34–38; businesses, 37–38; educational institutions, 38; private property, 36–37; religious institutions, 34–36 Faith Education Commerce (FEC) United, 124, 126–27 fake groups, 116–17 Fanon, Frantz, 57 far-right extremism, 9–10 far-right extremist movement, 123–24

171

far-right groups, 117 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 12 Feulner, Edwin, 94 Fields, James Alex, Jr., 14 The Flag and the Cross (Gorski and Perry), 2 Flint, Michigan, 99–100 Forde, Shawna, 126 Fox News, 116 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, 50 Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, 61 Gab, 107–8; Bowers’ account, 29–30 Gaxiola, Albert Robert, 126 Gen-Alpha, 110–11 gender: dysphoria, 79; expression, 71; identity, 71–72; as social media news consumers, 110 Gendron, Payton, 32–34 gerrymandering, 101–2 Gilroy Garlic Festival Shooting in California, 25 GLAAD Media Reference Guide, 71 Global Terrorism Database (GTD), 9– 10, 18n20, 18n22, 22, 35, 41–42n3, 42n8, 49, 54, 56, 65–66n1, 122, 135n5, 135n10 Gorski, Philip, 2 government-issued ID, 97 government officials, attacks on, 14 Graves-Fitzsimmons, Guthrie, 6, 143 Great Replacement theory, 31, 33, 108, 113 The Guardian, 133 Gurdwara (Sikh Temple), Oak Creek, Wisconsin, 26–27 Guttmacher Institute, 62 Hail the Crossed Hammers, 27 Hamer, Fannie Lou, 47, 142 Hammerskin Nation, 26–27 Hammond, Dwight, 125 Hammond, Steven, 125

172

Index

Handmaid’s Tale (Atwood), 61 Hari, Michael, 35 Harper-Mercer, Christopher, 55–57 Harris, Kamala, 129 Harris County, 100 hate crimes, 21–22, 140–41; concept, 12–13; reported, 13–14, 13 Hayes, Rutherford B., 89 healthcare and gender identity, 77–78 Helder, John, 122–23 Heritage Action, 94 Heritage Foundation, 94–96 Heyer, Heather, 14 Hitler, Adolph, 56 Holder, Eric H., 129 Hyde, Henry, 93 Immigration Policy Center, 40 improvised explosive devices (IED), 37, 133–34 incels, 48–49, 52–57; attacks, 53–56; male supremacy, 53–54; misogyny, 53; whiteness, 56–57 Infowars, 111, 112, 117 Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law, 132 Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, 125 Internet Research Agency, 116 intersectionality, 10–12 January 6, 2021 attack on Capitol, 131–34 Jewish globalists, 30 Jim Crow, 91 Johnson, Jay Allen, 14 Jones, Alex, 112 Joseph, Peniel E., 1 Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity (Graves-Fitzsimmons), 143 Justice, Tiffany, 82

Kemp, Brian, 99 Kennedy, Anthony, 74–75 Kennedy, D. James, 81 Kremer, Amy, 133 Kremer, Kylie, 133 Ku Klux Klan (KKK), 35–39 Lanza, Adam, 112 Last Rhodesian, 28 Lawrence v. Texas, 3, 72–73 League of Women Voters, 93 Lee, Robert E., 14 Legan, Santino William, 25 LGBTQ+, 69–85, 141–42, 147; crimes against, 72; education, 80; employment, 79–80; healthcare, 77–78; laws and legislations, 69–70, 72–80; marriage equality and resistance, 73–77; military service, 78–79; Moms for Liberty, 82–83; socialpolitical environment, 80–83; victimization rate, 129 Long, Robert Aaron, 31–32, 52–53 Lopez-Zuniga, David, 131–32 The Lord’s Prayer, 3 Mace, Marilyn, 27 MacLean, Nancy, 99 mail bombs, 129 Make America Great Again (MAGA), 15, 129, 139 manipulation, social media, 116–18 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, 24 marriage equality and resistance, 73–77 Martin, Trayvon, 28 Massachusetts Bay Colony, 4 mass casualty attacks, 24–34 Masterpiece Cakeshop, 75–76 Masterpiece Cakeshop LTD., et al v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, et al., 76, 84 McFadden, Jesse T., 130 McNair, Carol Denise, 35 McVeigh, Timothy, 37

Index

McWhorter, Michael, 35 Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, 133 military service and gender identity, 78–79 militias, 124–27 Minutemen, 126 Mississippi, 100–101 Moms for Liberty, 82–83, 124 Montana Human Rights Network, 125 Moreno, Eduardo, 130 Morris, Joe, 35 Morrisey, Patrick, 60 Mother Jones Magazine, 94 Movement Advancement Project (MAP), 70 Mullins, David, 75 Murkowski, Lisa, 14 Myers, Caitlin, 62 NAACP, 81, 102, 149 National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), 97 nationalism, 6. See also white christian nationalism Newhouse, 122 news consumption on social media, 109–14 New World Order, 124 “Nobody’s Free Until Everybody’s Free” (Hamer), 142 Oath Keepers, 124, 131 Obama, Barack, 13, 15, 26, 77–78, 80, 92, 129, 139 Obamacare. See Affordable Care Act (ACA) Obergefell v. Hodges, 3, 74–75, 78–80, 83–85, 141 Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), 24 Oklahoma City bombing, 37 Oltmann, Joseph T., 126, 127 Orwell, George, 61 othering, 21–40, 140

173

Page, Michael, 26–27 Pagourtzis, Dimitrios, 25 Parler, 113 Patriot Freedom Fighters, 35. See also White Rabbit Three Percent Illinois Freedom Fighters Militia Patriot Front, 39 Patriot Groups, 124 Patriot Muster, 127 Patriots of Ozaukee County, 133 pedophilia, 147 Pelosi, Nancy, 14 People’s Rights network, 125 Perry, Samuel, 2 Pew Research Center, 110 Phillips, Jack, 75–76 photo ID, 95, 97–98 Pinckney, Clementa C., 27 pipe bomb, 133–34 PizzaGate, 128 Planned Parenthood Clinic, 49, 52 Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 58, 59 police killings, 23 presidential election of 2020, 1–2, 131–33 Priestley, Paul James, 50–51 private property, 36–37 Profiles of Individuals Radicalized in the United States (PIRUS), 10–11, 22–23 Project 2025 (Heritage Foundation), 143–46 Proud Boys, 131, 133 psychological warfare, 108–9. See also social media purge of voter rolls, 98–99 QAnon, 128–29 radicalization, 107 religious affiliation, 95 religious institutions: attacks on, 34–36 reproductive control, 47 reproductive justice, 141

174

Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA), 64, 76–77, 84 Rhodes, Ben, 7 riots, 90 Roadblock to Care, 62 Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, 101 Roberts, John, 79 Roberts, Kevin D., 143 Robertson, Carole, 35 Rodger, Elliott, 55–57 Roeder, Scott, 51 Roe v. Wade, 3, 49, 50, 58–60, 63, 64– 65, 75, 76, 81, 84, 85, 94, 141 Roof, Dylann, 27–30 Rosewood (Florida) Race Massacre, 90 Rudolph, Eric, 52 same-sex marriage, 64 Sanders, Felicia, 27 Sanders, Tywanza Kibwe Diop, 27 Sandy Hook Elementary School, 112 Sayoc, Cesar Altieri, 129 Schiff, Adam, 129 Sears, Alan, 81 second founding of the nation, 139 sexual orientation, 71 Shannon, Rachelle Ranae “Shelley,” 51–52 Shelby County v. Holder, 1–2, 91–92, 96–97, 99, 102–3 Shirk, Kenelm, III, 14 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, 112 Siddiqi, Maggie, 6 Sikh Temple. See Gurdwara (Sikh Temple), Oak Creek, Wisconsin Singh, Naunihal, 26 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, 34–35 social media, 107–19; algorithms, 108, 114–15; bot-run accounts, 116; deepfakes, 117–18; demographic variations, 109–11; disinformation/ misinformation, 111, 115–18;

Index

echo chambers, 108, 112–14; fake groups, 116–17; fake news, 111–12, 115; false flag narratives, 117; manipulation, 116–18; as news, 109– 14; psychological warfare, 108–9 Sodini, George, 54–55 Soros, George, 129 Sotomayor, Sonia, 61 Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), 9, 11, 29–30, 38–39, 64, 81, 82, 121, 123 Springfield (Illinois) Race Massacre, 90 Spyer, Thea, 74 state takeovers of local functions, 99–101 Stephens, Aimee, 79 Steyer, Tom, 129 stolen election myth/propaganda, 116, 117 Stop the Steal, 133 Sullivan, Dan, 14 swatting, 108 Tanton, John, 40 Tarrant, Brenton, 33 Tate, Andrew, 53–54 Telegram, 107–8 Terre Haute, Indiana, 37 Texas, 100–102 Texas House Bill 2 (HB2), 58 Texas Senate Bill 8 (SB8), 61 Texas Senate Bill 1515, 5 Thomas, Clarence, 64 Tiegen, John “Tig,” 127 Tiller, George, 51–52, 54 Title VII of Civil Rights Act of 1964, 77–78 Top’s Friendly Markets Supermarket in Buffalo, New York, 32–34 Tree of Life Synagogue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 29–30 trigger laws, 60 Trump, Donald, 1, 10, 14, 15, 26, 31, 32, 78–80, 108, 111, 113, 116, 117, 124–29, 131, 133, 139

Index

Truth Social, 113 Tulsa (Oklahoma) Race Massacre, 90 Tyler, Amanda, 6 United American Defense Force (UADF), 127 Unite the Right rally, 14, 39 U.S. Constitution, 1, 5, 89, 101, 139 U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), 109 U.S. Intelligence Community, 21, 23 U.S. Supreme Court, 1–3, 91–92. See also specific court cases Vietnam War, 9 voter identification laws, 97–98 voter rolls, purge of, 98–99 voter suppression, 89–104; ALEC and, 93–94; early voting, 98; gerrymandering, 101–2; Heritage Foundation and, 94–96, 95; laws, 57–58; purge of voter rolls, 98–99; state takeovers, 99–101; strict voter identification, 97–98; voting by mail, 98 voter turnout: early voting, 98; voting by mail, 98 voting by mail, 98 Voting Rights Act, 1, 2, 8, 91–92, 102–3 Waddell, Alfred, 89–90 Walter, Barbara, 114, 121 warrior spirit, 39 Waters, Maxine, 129

175

Welch, Edgar M., 128 Wesley, Cynthia, 35 Westgate Entertainment District in Glendale, Arizona, 56 Weyrich, Paul, 93–94 white christian nationalism, 3–4; action, 12–14; defined contextually, 6–8; far-right extremism, 8–10; ideology, 10–12. See also individual entries White Rabbit Three Percent Illinois Freedom Fighters Militia, 35–36 white supremacy, 107–8 Whitmer, Gretchen, 117 Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt, 58 Willis, Fani, 108 Wilmington, N.C., 89–90 Windsor, Edith, 74 women: anti-abortion extremists, 48–52; incels, 48–49, 52–57; laws restricting autonomy, 57–64; professional workforce, 49; as social media news consumers, 110; sterilization, 47 Women for America First, 133 Woodward, Samuel, 121 Wright, Matthew, 129 Young’s Asian Massage Parlor, Acworth, Georgia, 31–32 Zarda, Donald, 79 Ziegler, Bridget, 82 Zimmerman, George, 28

About the Author

Angelyn Spaulding Flowers is chairperson of the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences and a professor in crime, justice, and security studies at the University of the District of Columbia. The founding director of the university’s graduate program in Homeland Security, she is also the cofounder and director of the university’s Institute for Public Safety and Justice. Flowers coauthored Twenty-years of School-Based Mass Shootings in the United States: Columbine to Santa Fe (2021). A social scientist with an interest in complex social systems and their intersection with technology, she has authored chapters appearing in a diverse range of books from cybersecurity to emergency management to public policy. She is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court as well as the courts of the District of Columbia.

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