Blake Callens: The Case Against Christian Nationalism DMW #179

Exploring Theology, Doctrine, and all of the Fascinating Subjects in Between, Broadcasting from an

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Usually, I ramble on a bit, but if you're watching, you see that I have another body in the studio with me here, which we usually do a lot of our stuff over Zoom.

If we can have a guest in studio, we absolutely love it. It's Blake, Blake Kalins.

How are you doing? How are you, man? Good. Full disclosure, Blake is families, my cousin's husband.

We've been talking back and forth on text and, you know, Twitter and all the places that you can.

Isn't it crazy you can connect like 17 different ways now? Especially when I talk to a client, I'm like, do I text you?

Do I Facebook message you? Do I DM you? You know, do I signal? But there's so many ways to connect, but we've been talking and, you know, had some really interesting conversations.

I know that you're researching for a book that you're writing right now. Do you have a title yet? It has a working title.

I just finished it. Do you want to share it or can you share it? I mean, the working title is The Case Against the Case for Christian Nationalism.

Interesting. So this is going to be a fun episode for a lot of the listeners too, because we've had some

Christian nationalists, pro -Christian nationalists people on, or just people who wanted to try to explain it, like Joel Webben's been on talking about it.

Joseph Spurgeon's been on talking about it. I know, who else? We had AD on, who you've had interaction with back and forth on Twitter.

So I think this is going to be a new perspective. Not that they all lined up, but they were all pretty much pro.

And I'm not saying you're necessarily con, but I think you want to get into the, really the undertones of the movement, kind of the, the minutia and the mud that no one else really gets into.

You, you, you really like get down in there and you're seeing where the connections and what are the motivations and things like that.

And I thought it'd be interesting to have you on. You just happened to be up from South, South Carolina, South Carolina.

Cause you went from North to South Carolina, right? I escaped. So you're a care. Yeah. You were one of them Carolina boys down there, up to up back at, but you didn't grow up down there.

No, I grew up in LA, Hollywood, dude. Hollywood. Wait a minute. Is that, did we just think of a new nickname for you?

Is your name just not Hollywood now? What's up Hollywood? As long as it's more like Hollywood, Hulk Hogan.

Yeah, that's our man. I need my, I should have armed my pad here.

We got all kinds of drops. I don't know. We're gonna have to use one on you. Well, I don't have them in there, but, so I thought we'd just have a conversation, man.

Cause you're in town, your family, we talk about the stuff all the time. I know you and I are trading sources back and forth for theology and stuff like that.

I really appreciate you. So first of all, tell me a little bit about the research you're doing on your book.

Yeah. Do you expect that at what next year? You think? I don't know, man. You don't know? I mean, I, I've never written a book.

Get right up on that mic for me too. Oh yeah. So we want to be able to hear you. Right on it. I'll eat it. There you go. Okay. So, well, the research really,

I have kind of always been a history nut. Okay. And when I got out of the army, started going back to school in the

GI Bill, I thought for a while, maybe I want to be a history professor. And I dropped that real quick to be a software engineer.

And that's what I've been doing for 15 years. But I just keep reading history books all the time. And then about, I don't know, eight years ago, yeah, about 2015 or so,

I started reading about the history and philosophy of totalitarianism.

I really got into it. I think I got into it with what everybody else gets into it with, which is the Gulag archipelago.

Okay. And then, you know, I kind of just kept going with that. Mostly focused on left -wing stuff of it, you know, at least at first.

Read about maybe like five books a year on the subject, but it became my main history interest. And then 2020 happened.

Okay. Yeah. What happened in 2020? Wait a minute. Wait, what? So, I mean, my interest in the subject grew exponentially.

Okay. Yeah. Did you start to see some of those streams of the stuff you've been studying kind of take place?

Like tactics, kind of? Absolutely. I mean, when you looked at the way that COVID was handled. Yeah. Right.

The second they started saying, we're going to do vaccines passes, the first thing that comes to my head is Gesundheit pass.

Oh, you're going to Germany 1934 me. Okay. Yeah, I see what we're doing. Right. And so I started writing about that quite a bit.

Most of the stuff that, you know, even though what I'm writing about now. Where are you putting it out at? You got a website or sub stack or what do you do?

I do. I have two. The one for the Christian nationalism stuff, which I think most people are going to be interested in is christiannationalismnotes .com.

Okay. And then I have another one that I don't know why I named it, but I named it on peaceful non -compliance.

Okay. Dot sub stack .com. And that's where like most of my earlier writings, which you're going to see,

I'm, you know, COVID was more of a left -wing authoritarian thing. Okay. At least in the way they tried.

Most folks tried to handle it. And I've written extensively about that while that was going down.

Okay. Especially while the, the mandates were coming down, how, how similar that was to.

That's pretty crazy. The subject you're really interested in, you see almost a once in a lifetime like situation where it really kind of plays out to where you can study it, see it, see reactions.

Yeah. See tactics. The one that blew my mind in that sense was, you know, there's something called the

Milgram experiment. I'm not familiar. Okay. This is really interesting. So early sixties, they decide they want to study why did people go along with the

Nazis? And so they do this experiment where a guy comes in to a room with a doctor and he's put in front of a series of dials and there's talking to somebody on a microphone that he can't see.

Okay. And the whole thing is the, the doctor's going to ask, or actually

I think the person asks the person that he can't see a question. And if the answer is wrong, he's supposed to give the guy an electric shock.

Okay. And the doctor says, how many, like, how about the voltage of the shock is as it goes up?

Okay. And. Is the person he giving a shock to in the room with him? No, he can't see him. Okay. Just by audio.

Okay. And the voltage keeps going up and up and up. And there's areas in this dial that clearly mark, like, this is dangerous.

Don't do this. And the thing is the, the person with the dial is told the experiment is how the effect of the shocks will, and stress will change the way they answer.

But really that's not the experiment. I think I've heard, I think I have heard of this and they're seeing how far that person will go from an authority figure.

Exactly. The possible harm or death of the person. Yeah. Fictitious person on the other side of the dial. Yeah. And the conclusion was two thirds of people will basically do whatever a person of authority tells them to do.

That is nuts. Now here's the thing. I always think like, cause I have a real problem with authority. The Lord's working with me on it.

As I joke, I joke, I like it. Got a rebellious streak. Sometimes it is good to defy tyrants and obey

God. Other times it is good to submit and understand submission. I had a real problem with COVID for those kind of authoritarian reasons.

And I would always like to think I'm one of those people I think that would stand up, but I've looked back in my life and there's been certain times where I probably have done something that was maybe against my moral principle or principles or morals because there was not only authority, but maybe there was a pressure because there was multiple people of authority there and I was in the minority.

Not very many times, but my point of saying that is two thirds of people.

I mean, that is a huge subset. That's the majority. It's 66 % of people.

If you're an authority figure, we'll do it. And we saw that kind of play out. I mean, it took, I saw

COVID take what I thought were sane people and turn them almost insane with, you have to do this.

You're going to kill people. And you're like, well, hold on. I mean, have you read the data and the science behind it and things like that?

So I think we saw that experiment kind of play out firsthand in COVID, not only in the

United States, but globally. We did. And I wrote a piece on the weirdly named

Substack that was about that happening in my town because we lived in a town that I think has like the fourth highest amount per capita of people with PhDs.

Really? Yeah. Okay. And you know, it's kind of like the Silicon Valley of the South, me being a software guy when we moved here a long time ago, that was the place to be.

Now I can be anywhere. Yeah. And, you know, in based off of like,

I, you know, people I talked to, I, you know, it was kind of known that I was, look, it wasn't about the vaccine for me.

Yeah. Right. It was, it was about, I'm not going to give you my medical information and really the stand that I decided to take.

And I lost my job over it because I was working for a federal contractor at the time or a company that had federal contracts.

It wasn't a direct federal contractor. And that was a, do not pass, go, do not collect $200, no testing option.

You're going to, you know, get it. Yeah. But I could have filed for the religious exemption. Right. And would have gotten it.

But my thought process was, if I do that by proxy,

I am condoning the stripping of the rights of consent from people who were not believers.

Right. And I could not say, Hey, I'm a follower of Christ that went along with that.

Yeah. And you're looking at it in the broader sense of just the, the, the actual act of taking someone's rights away was immoral.

And it was a crazy time. I mean, like November of 2021, Noam Chomsky was saying, you know, you, you should like kick all the vaccinated out of society and finding food is their problem.

Yeah. You know, Jacinda Ardern, yeah. Former, former poster child of the leftist hippie.

And yet he wants to, yeah. Yeah. Well, she, she, you know, former, I think she,

I don't know if she's finally out, but she's not running again. The prime minister of New Zealand. Okay.

Who was the former president of the international socialist, socialist youth, you know, is on camera saying, yeah,

I'm going to create a two -tier society. You know, it was a crazy time and people lost their minds.

It really was. And here's the thing that really bothers me is everyone who kind of stood up. It sounds like you and I, and other people who just said, nah, we're not going to go along with the clown show.

I found most of those people, not all of them, but most of them in our ilk pretty reasonable. I was just having a discussion with Jennifer, your wife, and a couple of days ago and said, look at,

I was pretty, no, I, I wasn't wearing a mask in my car by myself.

I wasn't going to take your vaccine, but before COVID, it was like, you had cough or you felt weird. We didn't go to grandma's house.

We warned other people. We were generally, Hey, let's, let's be, you know, cognizant of other people when we're sick and try not to spread.

So it was this weird thing where most people were like that, but then they were almost being ostracized and put into this thing of like, oh, they're just these crazy people that don't care if they kill people with their virus and this.

And what really, what really irked me was even after we had hard data, I'm a data guy.

You're probably a data guy. You like, right. I did happen to write a piece of software that went through the

VAERS database. Well, there you go. Even after we had that hard data, I mean, that was eight months, nine months after not only on the vaccine, but I'm just saying in general, what the, the, the

COVID SARS, you know, family of this virus did. We still push forward with a very specific narrative that was, that was anti -data.

And, uh, I just went, you know, you just stand there and you go, am I, am I crazy? Am I crazy person?

Why is the majority of the globe jumping on this? And in something that seems so data -wise felt so, uh, plain and out in the open and we're doing the exact opposite.

I mean, it's almost like the whole world got mob mentality. It's like, I don't,

I don't know it, or it may be, you can explain it as someone who, who, who, uh, studies, you know, authoritarianism and things like that.

Is that a tactic or is that part of it where once some people get on board, then it's like everyone just kind of follows and falls.

You know, there is the Milgram experiment aspect of it. I think what I saw and what really, really shook me was, you know, the highly educated town

I lived in was very agnostic atheist. And I saw the existential dread take over people who had no belief that there was anything else.

Right. And if your whole existence is maximizing your life, and that's the majority of the world, right. You know, and, and that idea of like,

Oh, you got to think about like March, 2020, we got these videos of people collapsing in the street in China.

Right. Right. You know, I think so much of that was just driven by like, if I catch this thing, and I just happened to be the statistic, poof,

I'm gone. Yeah. Nothing. And I think that took over, you know, a lot of people's minds, even, even some

Christians minds, you know? Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. So we weren't going to make this a

COVID episode, but I think there's some parallels here. What we're talking about too, of like, kind of falling in line, maybe not quite understanding definitionally what it is that we're following.

Yeah. Because I'm not all in on, on Christian nationalism. And here's the thing.

It's so tough for me, because there's like 10 different definitions of Christian nationalism.

And I know some groups are trying to define it and say, here's the, you know, you got the, the G3 guys defining it.

You got Joel Webben and his guys kind of, you know, saying, no, this is what it is. You've got the secular leftist version of it.

You got the far right version of it. So what, even when I say that, it's like, when I say evangelical, like, what does that even mean anymore?

It's such a wide variety of, of definitions underneath that. But I mean, I'm, I've said before,

I'm, I'm Presbyterian in my denomination. I'm reformed in my faith. I hold to the Westminster.

I'm probably a general equity guy. And you know, it clearly says not every law is for the new covenant.

But we will take the general equity from it thereof and use it if there was an old, you know, so I don't know if that relates to Christian nationalism in a authoritarian kind of every single municipality state and federal government has to be

Christian and, and, you know, function under the mosaic law. I know this sounds like a non -answer when we're talking about Christian nationalism, but I go, man, the, the, the founding principles in the

Bill of Rights and the Constitution is pretty darn close to what I say you could get to as a, as a

Christian nation that isn't implementing mosaic law, but, but under a covenant of grace, that would be pretty close to that.

Now, obviously you'd have people, well, there was still slavery and there was still, you know, women's suffrage. I get that.

I'm saying we've made some strides towards that, but I'm saying that what it said in word in the founding documents was, was pretty darn close.

And people go, oh, it's a cop -out. You just sound like one of those 1776 conservatives, you know, let's go back to the founding fathers.

I'm saying, I think the founding documents could be explored a little bit differently than we've explored them.

We've had, you know, huge federal expansions and all this stuff that's really harmed kind of the uniqueness of the constitution, but that's where I'm at right now.

You, where are you at on the Christian nationalist movement? So, so the listeners can kind of understand where you're coming from.

So, well, first you got to separate what you talked about, which has kind of a theonomy side to it from, and even what like the

G3 guys are doing. And even, I would say, even what like Joel Webben's talking about, you have to put

Stephen Wolf's theory like way out here. It's something completely different, right? Stephen Wolf is not a, he's not a theologian.

Yeah. He's a political, political theorist. He has a PhD in political theory.

He wrote a book of political theory, which I think confused a lot of people because he was published under Canon Press with the

Doug Wilson guys in, in the theonomy thought and the general equity thing. And it was like, oh, here, this is something we kind of promote and endorse.

And I think that's, I'm just interjecting, but keep going with your thought. But it was confusing because it's like, oh, so this is kind of what

Doug must be talking about, or this is what, you know. And the people that reviewed it, I mean, the reason I'm sitting here with you,

I don't want to be here. Like, I never wanted to write this book. I mean, I do. I love, I love seeing you, but like, but like,

I didn't want to write this book. Yeah. Right. But the reviewers, you know, they didn't get that either.

And they're reviewing, you know, Stephen Wolf's book starts out with this kind of weird, unscriptural, if you ask me.

I'm not, you know, I'm not a theologian, but I've run it by some. And actually that's what the theologians focused on in the reviews.

This theory of - You don't have to be a theologian to know if something's unscriptural though. I mean, that's a logical fallacy, right?

It's an argument from authority. I hate that stuff where it's like, well, you're not a, well, look it, I can read.

Fair. And actually, actually I've, I have described his theory to people who don't even really think about it.

And they're like, wait, how would that work? It's that kind of broken. Right. His, his, you know, pre -fall, prelapsarian theory on how man, if Adam had never taken of the fruit would repopulate the earth and they would have distinct ethnicities that would potentially war against each other.

And it's like, well, if I hold hate for another person in my heart, that's a sin. And therefore we're not prelapsarian anymore.

Right. Right. So it doesn't really work in that sense. And that's what guys like Kevin DeYoung point out.

Right. But if you read his book and if for, for me, for me it just set off alarm bells in my head because it's just littered with classic authoritarian and ethno -nationalist talking points.

And he does a good job of sprinkling them about and kind of maybe sometimes slightly obfuscating them.

Some of them are just dead in there. Yeah. That if somebody like a Neal Shimbey, who like me,

STEM guy, but he's really read up on critical theory, reads a book, a woke church book, he's going to know that the lingo, he's going to pick up on things.

And that's what Stephen Wolf's book did for me for right -wing authoritarian nationalism.

Okay. It's like, it's all in there. And if you don't know it and you don't study it, you don't necessarily pick up on it.

And so I like to say that Stephen Wolf's book is it's not a Christian book. It is a book of mostly secular styled authoritarian and ethno -nationalism, very early 20th century style and ideas wrapped in Calvin's two kingdoms theology.

Okay. So that it could be laundered to a Christian audience. What are some things, and I don't want to go into a full review of his book, but what are some of the things in there off the top of your head that if you could remember some things where you see authoritarianism or, you know, that that secular authoritarianism kind of taking hold in the book?

The big one right at the top of the book is how he defines nationalism. Okay. Right. The first thing he says is nationalism, and then he builds on to it to Christian nationalism.

There's a phrase, it's a totality of national action. Now, if you study totalitarianism, the word total, any derivative of the word total sticks in your mind.

And the first person to use the word totalitarian was

Mussolini in a positive context. Okay. The Italian fascist philosopher

Giovanni Gentile used the word total throughout his writings specifically to convey this, what we think of a totalitarian, this entire overarching government running everything, what

Mussolini would say, you know, everything within the state, nothing outside the state. Sure. Nothing against the state.

And so he starts with that. So the first time I, you know, somebody says my definition of nationalism is a totality of national action, alarm bells are going to go off in my head.

And then in that area he comes around and he says this totality of national action creates a redundant web of obligations that orders everything to the national good.

That is the textbook definition of fascism. Like, it's, I know that's a word that has become practically useless in our society, but it has a definition.

Right. And the definition of fascism is this. We think about our liberal democracy. Okay. The liberal democracy is the society for the individual, the sovereignty of the individual.

We would prefer a hundred guilty men go free so that one innocent man doesn't spend his life in prison.

Right. And fascism by its core definition inverts that relationship and says, it's not society for the individual.

It's the individual for society. It's right -wing collectivism. Everything goes up and you are part of this collective and everything you do must be ordered to the ultimate national good, which is everything that we put our effort into.

Sure. And I mean, it, it's, it's not even obfuscated.

Like, that is, I, a lot of people don't necessarily get that because we don't talk about what the definition of fascism is.

Yeah. Just a little anecdote was like, I was talking with Chris Rosebrough on Twitter, fighting for the faith, who does study fascism.

I was surprised to learn, happy to learn. We were talking about it and I showed him, I was talking about it.

I go, yeah, here's what Stephen Wolf says. And his response was, oh yeah, that's fascism. Right. That very section

I just talked about. Yeah. It's that straightforward. But most people don't, you know,

I think you think of like the big Lebowski and he throws the mug at the cop and goes, you fascist. That's what most people think fascism means.

Right. Or I've heard it's so overused on the left of everything. You know, someone who says, I, you know,

I, I, who's pro -life or an abolitionist, you fascist. And you go, what, how do we connect the two?

It's an author. It's somebody who's doing something I don't like. So what's your definition of nationalism? Let's take

Christian out of it. What, what, what's the correct idea if we're just thinking of secular nationalism and then we'll throw the adjective in front of it,

Christian. So is nationalism a, is it patriotic? Is it like a thought?

Is it a feeling? Is it a movement? Like what I'm really asking because I've heard so many definitions of it and I'm not really sure when someone says nationalism, is it close to fascism?

Cause it sounds like it is. Is it, it is a, it is. Hmm. I mean, it depends on whether you want to take it down to the definition of what is a nation state.

Right. Okay. And so is it a collective of, um, people, whether under, as Stephen Wolfe would argue, all the best governments are, um, based off of a common ethnicity and we're kind of like a tribal people that has grown into a larger nation or is it like our nation is, is more based upon a nation of ideals.

Right. There's a unifying common factor amongst a people that makes them decide that we are going to be a collective under this banner.

Yeah. Throughout history, it usually was the, the ethnicity of the people though, wasn't it?

That's usually what did create nations. Um, and like you said, we're a nation of ideals, more melting pot.

Um, so, so is nationalism just pride in that tribe, in that national tribe?

Like, like that's what I'm trying to get to. Nationalism. Yeah. You know? I mean, I don't think it has to be.

No. Like, like, I mean, I think that's maybe more of a byproduct.

Yeah. Right. Than the core of it. Yeah. Um, the core, I think the core of nationalism is we want to come together under this collective banner.

You can, you know, you can have nationalism for a city state. Right. Right. It doesn't have to be a giant country like ours.

It doesn't have to be a federal system like ours. Yeah, it is at its core.

I is believing, you know, counter it to anarchy.

Yeah, it is the idea that we're going to come together, have a system that is our collective, whatever our collective identity is, whether it be our ethnicity or our ideals.

Yeah. So really quick to, just to go back before we go forward again.

So what, so where are you on Christian Christian nationalism in, in general, as like I said, it's hard because you have a couple of different definitions.

It sounds like the wolf, the wolf definition of Christian nationalism. It's a hard, it's a hard pass for Blake.

I mean, it's a hard pass for the Andrew Torba, Andrew Isker version too. It's not much better. Okay. Um, it's, and that would be why, because we're seeing authoritarianism kind of inserted in that, uh, uh, underlying of, of fascism you're saying, or do you think there's ethnic reasons as well?

There's, it's explicitly ethno -nationalist as well. Right. Okay. So explain that for me and people listening ethno -national, ethno -nationalist.

So they, there's three things that we could talk about, right? There's white nationalism, there's ethno -nationalism, there's anti -Semitism, and they all don't have to be the same thing.

Okay. Right. I can be a black anti -Semite, right? Right. I can be a black ethno -nationalist, right?

White nationalism is a very specific subset of ethno -nationalism, particularly characterized, well, you got to be white, otherwise it's not white nationalism.

Okay. Um, and then on top of that, very most often, pretty much all the time includes anti -Semitism.

Okay. Right. So, but I prefer to use the word ethno -nationalism because frankly,

I try to use language that hasn't been ruined by the left. Right.

Right. And like you go to Twitter and you see people like say the slightest thing and someone's screaming white supremacist at them.

Right. And so I don't want to use that language because if I start talking about white supremacy or white nationalism, even though it might be that legitimately.

You already have it in your mind of something because of the way it's been used the last five years. Yeah. The same reason

I don't bring up the Nazis once in my book, I focus on Italy and Spain for fascism.

And I spoke focus on nativism and the clan for ethno stuff. Yeah. And because nobody's going to listen if I start calling everybody a

Nazi. Yeah. So ethno - nationalism is the term I like to use because it's kind of that it fits.

It just fits. Okay. And so for the, but I mean, to me, to me, that sounds like you're just saying a nation based on ethnicity.

You could. And didn't we just say that most nations were based on that? If that's how we kind of congregate.

That's not technically what the term would mean. It would mean so like black

Hebrew Israelites are ethno -nationalists. Okay. Right. It ethno -nationalism comes with a assumption of you believe you were superior.

Okay. All right. Okay. As opposed to we are a nation of Germans and we have an ethnicity, you wouldn't say

Germany is an ethno -state. Okay. Right. Okay. No, that's, I'm glad you made that clarification. I'm glad you asked.

So, but so Torba and Isker, Torba being the owner of GAD. Okay. Okay. Isker being a pastor.

He used to be a CREC pastor, I believe. And now I think he has an independent church. They co -wrote this book.

It's about 60 pages of actual book long called the Christian Nationalism.

Something about taking dominion and discipling nations. Okay. And their form of Christian Nationalism.

First of all, that book, like I said, it's only 60 pages long and devotes an entire chapter to denouncing Talmudic Judaism.

So if you've only given yourself 60 pages to describe your thesis and you give a whole chapter to that, we know where your priorities are.

Right. So, and Torba is known for being, you know, a hardcore anti -Semite.

And a lot of people try to defend him, but it's, you know, actually in the last day, Michael Young, local distance on Twitter, has been going at it with a lot of people, including

Stephen Wolf, about Torba's anti -Semitism and them defending it.

They're openly defending it. What kind of anti -Semitism stuff? Is it like statements against Jewish people?

One of the ones that actually Michael Young pulled out was Torba saying that Jewish negative stereotypical

Jewish traits are part of their phenotype. Like, I mean, that's where we're getting, right.

He's one of the ones that I always sticks with me as he says, he's currently today in 2023 fighting

Judeo -Bolshevism. What does that mean? He means commies are Jews and he's fighting them.

It's really like, yeah, I don't link academic linguistic obfuscation of that. Yeah. I don't know how you, why is he linking those two?

Because he's an anti -Semite. But I mean, I mean, there has to be a basis somewhere.

Why are you linking communists and in Jews? So that's a long time. Is that just, that's a long time.

Is it? Okay. See, I just don't know that. Yeah. Because, because there were so many people in the original

Bolshevik revolution that were Jewish. And so it's just, you know, it's like Stephen Wolf's podcast co -host who had a secret white nationalist account, which maybe we can get into, you know, put out a whole thread where he said, like, all

Antifa are Jews, right? Is this kind of, this is when they're out in the areas, like I've been watching,

I'm an old internet guy. I've been watching how white nationalists operate and ethno -nationalists, like real white nationalists on, on, on social media for years.

And when they're out in the main spaces, there's all these, there's lingos, there's code words, there's things like that.

And when you get to their places where they feel they're safe, they just come right out with it. Right. Okay. So, and Torb is one of those guys that comes right out with it.

And then maybe we'll delete the tweet before he thinks he's going to get banned. Right. Right. And so, and Isker, Isker on Twitter, who is 8th century wood chipper on Twitter, if you are familiar with that count, he straight out came and said one of the main policy points, he said, of Christian nationalism should be, what was it exactly?

I'm trying to, I don't want, I want to be accurate here. He said that stopping the democrat, demographic replacement of the majority demographic in America, he says, when you bring that up, a lot of people in Christian nationalism bristle, and that's a bad thing.

He's also said that, kind of alluded to, he was talking about training men, and he said, like, talked about turning young Christian men into stone cold killers.

Like, it's crazy stuff, man. These guys are cuckoo bananas. So why do you think there's, why do you think there is that vein of white supremacy or, as you're saying, ethno, what was the word?

Ethno -nationalism. Ethno -nationalism. Think white nationalism, but just say ethno. Yeah, ethno -nationalism in, in the

Christian nationalist movement. You think those guys were always there, and they went, oh, this is our time, let's seize, and we can advance stuff.

Or is it like, well, if there's going to be a national movement, we need to get on board with it, you know, because that's our ultimate goal anyway.

Like, or, I don't know, I mean, I. It's a yes and. If you, if you really, if you really read through the

Bible, you can't, you can't really pull any type of white nationalism, nationalism out of there.

You really have to do some misinterpretations and bad hermeneutics when you're talking, it's a book full of, you know,

Jewish people and Middle Eastern people. So like, where, why do you think there's that, that vein within it?

Or, I mean, are you not, are you throwing the baby out with the bathwater too? And you're like, any form of Christian nationalism can't be done, can't be accomplished because we have these bad actors.

Or like, where are you on that too? Get back to the subject we're supposed to be talking about. Yeah, I, I think, well, first of all, talk to a white nationalist, a non -supposed

Christian with the Uganda flags in the bio on, on Twitter, and they'll tell you all why, you know, the

Bible's cool with white nationalism. They have their own set of, sure, you know, eisegesis that they do for that.

But as far as where I am with Christian nationalism, look, I'm a Christian, right?

Yeah. So I would be a really bad Christian if I didn't think that my country's social mores should be ordered around Christian social mores.

Right, right, right. But, but I, I firmly believe that that is a product of the

Great Commission. That is not a product of... What's a product of the Great Commission? Nations turning to God, or at least a majority of the nation turning to God.

And in a representative democracy, we would naturally get the voting power.

Therefore, we would naturally start, you know, orienting things, orientating things that way.

And what I think the New Testament is exceedingly clear about is that we are not to use violent methods to bring that about.

You know, a, a government, and I'm going to get a little more enlightenment here, but I agree with this.

I think, you know, enlightenment values at points can be natural as well. And, you know, a government is a collective individual on the, in the legal sense.

Yeah. In the moral sense. And if you're going to have a Christian nation, then a

Christian nation must follow the same social mores as the individual

Christian. And the individual Christian is told to leave blasphemers in peace.

Right? Yeah. The individual Christian is told not to use violence, but that our, you know, words are our weapons, right?

Yeah. That we destroy lofty arguments, right? It doesn't say, hey, when somebody says something bad about God, you know, punch him in the face.

Right. Right? And so if you're going to organize a nation as a Christian nation, you've got to follow the same rules.

And like you were saying earlier, you know, in the Greg Banson theonomy, you know, the essence of even the civil law, you know, the moral implications of that should bubble up into a

Christian state law. Well, that is overruled, as we know, by changed rules in the new covenant.

Right. And one of those changed rules is leave blasphemers in peace. Yeah. Right.

And so I know a lot of theonomists don't hold on to that, but I think that's a contradiction in their thought.

Right. Well, that's why I kind of look and say, okay, so this kind of libertarian system that really, you know,

I don't think the founding documents of this country are really left or right.

I think they're more libertarian than anything. I would say that's the closest I think you could come to a

Christian nation, because if I'm living under a new covenant, and I am to respect civil governments as Romans 13.

Now, listen, that doesn't mean we roll over and we're a complete pacifist. We've had those episodes here, and I've talked about it at length.

And I'm not a pacifist. Right. And there's a balance there. And we are to leave blasphemers at peace and things like that.

I don't know how you can have an authoritarian Christian nationalist nation.

That really starts to worry me because we're getting into theocracy. We're getting into these crazy things that we've literally done in Christian history already.

We've had crusades. We've had monarchies. I talked to some of these people that are proponents of a more authoritarian

Christian nationalism, and I go, we fought a revolution because we essentially,

I can't make direct comparison, but we had a state -ran religion. Right.

So I just, I don't understand how it's being, because I think we're on the same page.

When I look at fascism and that authoritarian type of installation of forced

Christian values, and I say forced, that seems technically, if you make a law, it is technically forced if you don't agree with it.

But we all think murder's wrong. So we should have a law that says thou shall not murder.

Right. But I'm saying that kind of authoritarian type of Christian nationalism, I would disagree with that.

I think we're both on the same page there. I'm just kind of scratching my head going, how is this getting so much traction?

Is it because the pendulum has swung so far, it feels like culturally we go, oh, we got to have a response.

We got to take back the, I feel, okay, here's the thing. I just, sorry, I'm getting off subject here, but this is why I'm saying this real quick.

I feel like we have those, I feel like these movements always start with, we need to take back the country to the way it used to be.

Every 30 years we have this. I mean, every 30 years, even through slavery, through, right, we got to take back, take, and it's like, we use this excuse.

I just did an episode on, with Bill Gothard in that whole situation. We used ATI curriculum in homeschooling, and he was this one guy who was very authoritarian, legalistic, and said, hey, it was the 80s.

He's like, I know how we can change the culture, man. We got it. You know, Cabbage Patch Dollars are from Satan, drum music is from Satan, you know, rock music, all this stuff, and we've got to really hunker down, and I'm right, and I got all the answers.

And I feel like we do this within the Christian realm. I feel like every 30 years, if not every 30 to 50 years, throughout history, there's always these things popping up where it's like, the pendulum's swaying this way.

You don't agree with the culture. Oh, we've got an extreme way to fix it, and it feels like some of these actors within the

Christian nationalism stream are doing that, but is it that and something else too?

There's always those bad actors where, like I said before, the question before of like, hey, let's take advantage of this, and yeah, let's start our white nationalist kind of thought process through this stream of Christian nationalism.

My point being is, it's very frustrating when you have the far left, and they're kind of authoritarian in some of the woke culture and the stuff that they're doing, and then you have like a guy like Torba, who owns

Gab, and he's like, hey man, freedom for all, and come over here and say what you want. We won't censor you like Twitter does.

And then he started drinking his own Kool -Aid of the people that came over. And then you come along, and you're like, well, you know, there's a poop trail in that shrimp.

You know what I'm saying? Like, why are you popping that in your mouth right now? You know what I mean? Like, there's some vestiges and holdovers of that.

Like, I don't know. It's disheartening, because I feel like I look at the landscape, and you go, well, geez, who in the heck can you trust here when the

Christian nationalist movement has felt like it's been, I don't know, it's been taken over by kind of white supremacy, and basically making ethnicity like the ultimate thing.

Yeah, they've gotten really, by the way, like more overt with it in the last few weeks, too. It's been, it's, they're kind of like buying in, you know, with American Reformer, right?

Commissioning Stephen Wolf to write an article. Who runs American Reformer again? I can't, do you know? Because I feel like I know the name.

It's Josh Abatoy and Nate Fisher, right? You talked to Fisher, right? Yeah. And, but they've, that, and they also run

New Founding, right? Okay. And you can kind of think of, I mean, it's a crossover. I kind of think of these as the, you got two of the top same owners.

It's basically the same org. And what's your beef with them? Oh. Well, I don't have beef.

I'll describe what they do, okay? New Founding, which is really the core. New Founding is investment.

And what they have done is they have positioned their investment around capitalizing upon the eventual collapse of the

United States. Okay. They're pretty overt about it. Like, I mean, they were just yesterday calling for the

Balkanization of the United States. Okay. Right? Like, and, you know,

Abatoy has also some investments in real estate. Like they're building, you know, subdivisions basically out in like small town

America to get people to come out there with the idea of like, you're just a remote worker now, come live in the country. Okay. But it kind of plays into that whole thing of like, we're going to Balkanize and we're going to move people to rural, you know, it's, everything's kind of interconnected.

American Reformer is, I think it's co -owned also, but I mean, at least directly involved it with Aaron Wren.

Okay. Right. That's where he comes in play. And he's obviously long talked about like negative world and what's coming.

So, and that same thing about like, you know, I think he thinks the Balkanization is coming and he talks a lot about, you know,

Indiana. And I think that's where he's kind of set his flag for that maybe coming down, but American Reformer itself.

And really let's talk about Josh Abattoy, who, by the way, I just, I have to say hi to my best bud,

Josh, who confirmed my CIA connections. He announced on Twitter that he had confirmed that I am actually

CIA connections. You know, AD called me a Fed. Jeff Wright calls me a Fed.

You're working for all branches, man. Josh goes all in and says he has confirmed my

CIA connections. How do you do that? Is that, does he have your resume that you turned into the

CIA or like, what does he? I don't know. He must, he must got the hookup, man. You know, it's not my favorite one because Mike Cernovich called me a bug man once.

I don't know. What's a bug man? What does that mean? It's a derogatory term for a urbanite liberal that lives like in New York.

And it's like, yeah, no, no, dude. I'm a former airborne infantryman that lives in South Carolina. Right.

With guns. On paper, you're NASCAR's number one fan. On paper.

I mean, yeah. So in a way, new reformer year, what they were doing was what?

Josh Abitoy, well, this is the thing. They are also coming out very, very hardcore authoritarian nationalism, right?

Josh Abitoy, we were having, I was having a back and forth with somebody else who was a fan of the

Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Okay. And we were just talking about him.

We were talking about him the other day. Not a good guy. And Josh Abitoy, in response to that, got himself in some hot water by tweeting in response to, because he had jumped into this thread and then he tweeted out,

America needs a Protestant Franco. Now, most people have no idea who

Francisco Franco is, but when you're a nerd about totalitarianism like me, you do. So let me give you a quick idea of who

Francisco Franco was and what these guys are pushing. And by the way, Fisher backed him up on that. Timon Klein backed him up on that.

These are American reformer guys. Francisco Franco, we'll just say the

Spanish Civil War happened. He was the right wing guy who built a right wing coalition. He was a military guy, monarchist, allied himself with what we might call rad trad

Catholics and legit fascists, the Falanjistas.

And he was the commanding officer of the

Spanish Foreign Legion in Morocco. Okay. So the right wing side of the

Civil War allies itself with Hitler and Mussolini. Hitler and Mussolini organize a

Luftwaffe, an Italian Air Force, I don't remember what they're called, an airlift of Franco's army from Morocco into Spain.

Yeah. He lets them have loose. And if you have kids in the car, earmuffs. He lets them rape and Sorry, that was a little too fast.

He lets them literally rape and pillage Spanish towns. Lets word get out, uses that as a fear tactic.

Okay. Yeah. When he takes over a town, he sieges a town and he finally takes it over. He takes any man that he even remotely thinks was loyal to his opposition or even friendly to his opposition, pulls them out into a field and mows them down with machine gunfire.

Thousands of people at a time. Okay. While that's happening, lets the soldiers have their way with the wives, the men he's murdering.

It is estimated between 1936 and 1939. Under his direct orders, roughly 200 ,000 people were extra extra judicially murdered in this way.

They are still to this day finding mass graves. Right. In the war. A lot of people say he stayed out of the war because he was smart.

He was worn out because he just fought a three -year civil war. Of course, he's not going to get into it in 39. He won and he won his civil war in 39.

When he won the civil war in 39, he made Catholicism the only religion legal to publicly practice in Spain.

He sent, he couldn't really fight the war, but he sent the Falanjistas, the legit fascists to fight for the

Nazis in Russia. Okay. So he was involved in the Axis side.

This guy sounds like a real jerk. He sucked. Okay. Last piece I'll tell you. When people say we need a

Protestant Franco in America, this is what we're talking about. He kidnapped, he sent his opposition.

You can tell this is the stuff I care about. He sent his opposition to concentration camps to work and die.

Okay. Kidnapped their children and put them in loyalist homes to be educated as loyal Francoists.

Yeah. It's called the white terror. Right. So let me ask you this.

What if that tweet is just from a guy whose either intelligence level is, is so low that he's just, he's, he's, he's trying to say, we need a

Protestant that can handle business. And he's not saying, look at, we need a process that can go out there and rape people and kill people.

I don't think that's what he, I mean, I don't know the person that you said that made this tweet. It sounds, if you say we need a

Protestant Franco, that'd be like someone saying we need a Christian Mussolini. I think that's a stupid comment, but I would take that as them saying, oh, we need someone, we need someone who can just take over everything for Christians.

That's how I would read that tweet. So what are you, are you, he started talking about like why we need a

Protestant Franco. And it was because he, he destroyed the commies. This is the common line, right.

That you get from the authoritarians. He, he, he used the textbook reasoning on top of this, which is he wiped out the commies.

The commies were murdering people too, which is true. Yeah. You know, two wrongs don't make a right. You asked me to choose between fascism and communism.

And I say, no, the two rights make an airplane. Hey, so I'm here for the dad jokes.

So anyway, he he, this, this common line, this was also a

Nazi line, by the way, right. The Nazis commissioned a guy named Adolf Erd to write books.

He was a historian to write books about how this isn't like when they took over in like 33. Isn't it great we stopped the commies from taking over Germany, right.

This is a common line from authoritarians on both ends.

The communists and the fascists are each other's mortal enemy. And they spend most of their time trying to convince all of us in the middle that the other is an existential threat, right.

So when he came back and was like, oh, well, yeah, he stopped the communists, which is the exact same line that the guy that I had been talking to previously was using, right.

I'm like, you know, then Charles Haywood jumps in, who has written extensively, glowingly, he wrote a glowing review in his own words of Franco, right.

These people know who they're talking about. They're not dumb. Right, right. So, so what do you attribute it to?

I don't want to spend too much more time on this Twitter thread. But what do you what do you attribute that to then, in the sense of do you think that that person who tweets we need a president

Franco, who was it again? It was Josh Abattoy. Josh Abattoy. Right. Are you saying he supports all the things that Franco supports secretly?

Are we saying he's using a bad analogy for clicks? Are you saying like, what are you saying when you when you see a tweet like that?

Because I look at it and I go, okay, that that's to me, that looks like an unintelligent tweet to try to get clicks.

That's what I see. But I don't I'm not. I don't know him. I don't. Yeah, I'm not in that world.

I may be a yes. And but look at American reformer. That's what I'll say. Look at the types of writings that are happening in American former.

I'll have, I've only glanced over, I'll have to go look and take a hard look at it.

It's not all that, but it's there, right? Timon Klein writing article called

Hail Caesar, where he was generally positive on Stephen Wolf's Christian Prince, who, in my book,

I show the parallels to Francisco Franco, El Caudillo, with the

Christian Prince. It's very, very similar in the way that he writes it in that Spanish propaganda wrote about him as he's like this great

Christian savior. You know, they commissioned Stephen Wolf just last week to,

I mean, published last last week to write an article that's saying true hospitality is about deporting people who are not ethnically and culturally similar to you.

Right? That was a new reformer? As an American reformer, American reformer. So, so the, the, the tone of conversation and their positioning themselves, let me,

I, you know, if job at Abitur is that dumb, you know, he's working for the wrong, he's running, he's the executive director of the wrong thing, because they're positioning themselves as intellectuals.

Maybe I shouldn't have said dumb. I'm saying like a dumb decision as in, Oh, this because here's what

I feel like I go through 80 % of it is just people tweeting things for shock value.

I just see people going, Oh, I'm going to tweet that because that's going to get a conversation started. That's how people make careers now.

Like, like that's how, unfortunately, it's like how pastors are doing this. Scholars, historians, theologians, it's like, let's say something way out there.

And then, and then if we get called on it, Oh, well, this is what I really meant. And I'll pull it in a little bit, but it got my million, million reshares is what

I wanted. And now, you know what I mean? Like, I feel like I'm just surrounded by that to where no one's really speaking.

Uh, maybe, maybe, maybe you would argue they are saying exactly what they believe. But to me,

I go, you, that's like saying, you know, around, uh, around square, like you can't say

Protestant Franco, you can't say Christian Mussolini. You can't say we need a, you know, we need a

Christ -like, uh, Hitler. Like they're opposites there. There's a factor in this. And that is that Franco and also

Augusto Pinochet are the two authoritarians that guys who might want a

Christian Mussolini or guys like in what you watch the people who talk about this and have been talking about it for a long time.

The guy who knows that he comes out and says, yeah, I want a Mussolini. He's going to get shot down. Franco and Pinochet are kind of like the safe options, right?

So I'm not saying that's what Josh Abattoy did, but I'm saying that's a, that is a co -factor as somebody.

He doesn't sound very safe from what you're telling me. Like I said, I don't know much about him, but from his, from his history.

Next look at Pinochet, right? Rick Koppel came out. If you know who he is, he's a, you know, outspoken

Christian nationalist online. He came out and there was that meme, you know, my, my political leanings in 2016 versus 2023.

His 2023 was Pinochet, right? Pinochet. And if you see the meme of, you know, helicopter rides, it's because he, he threw in there.

And here we go back to, he stopped the commies. He threw the communists out of helicopters.

Yeah. Well, he threw anybody who was against him out of the helicopter, right? Not just the commies, man.

And so this theme, it's like this, like fool me once kind of thing, right?

Like if you see it over and over and over, and I'm just basically, you know, looking at the people at the forefront of this movement online.

And it's still, it's a small movement. Right. But, you know, it just happens to sit at the absolute center of the

Venn diagram of my interest, which is reform theology and authoritarian nationalism. Right.

So of course I'm obsessed with it. Right. But, but when you look at this movement, I mean, there is,

I mean, it's just, it's everywhere. We've right now just touched the tip of the iceberg, dude.

Yeah. Like there's, there's, there's people and, and movers and shakers that we haven't even brought up that are also engaged in this stuff.

Yeah. So as we finish this out, what is that, is that the kind of stuff that is going to be in your book when it, when it is finished?

My book is. Give us like a couple of minute overview of what you're going to discuss in there. Sure, man. So really it is a section by section refutation of Stephen Wolfe's book.

Okay. So I do talk about like, I draw from what Stephen Wolfe wrote elsewhere to bring context.

Okay. Right. To the book, but it is essentially I prove I do prove that his theory, like I said, at the top is mostly secular driven authoritarian and ethno -nationalism, right.

Wrapped in this really bad definition of natural law where natural law is anything I find expedient for my cause.

And then on top of it, we're going to bake in two kingdoms theology and some idea of like having, you know, these two different kingdoms that run the government, even though when you see it, he's actually very integral.

Baptist and Presbyterian. No, no, they have loser theology, the Baptist, if you remember.

I love my fellow Baptist. You got one sitting next to you. That's what I mean. So, but really he really is integralist, right.

You'll see that in the book. I lay that out. And just proving that that's what this is, right.

It's not a Christian book. It's a book of authoritarian political theory that kind of has

Christian quote unquote grafted on. Yeah. So final word, if you have someone, a listener out there or someone comes up to you, they're a believer, they go,

I've heard some stuff about this Christian nationalism stuff. What do you think?

Or what should, you know, what should I believe? Like, what are you telling someone who has a clean slate who's coming to this?

Let's say in 2023, they don't know much about it. What are you telling them? Do your research, ignore it all together.

Don't get involved. Read the Bible. Like what's the last one? Absolutely. Read your

Bible. Yeah. Trust in Christ. Yeah. Right. Like, don't like put your treasure in heaven.

Yeah. These guys are putting like all their treasure in earth. Yeah. And what kind of society

I can get into. Like, I mean, don't go so hard and core on the post mill that you forget that you're going to have treasure in heaven.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's what I'm going to say. Trust in Christ. Yeah. Right. And trust that he's going to see all of us through this.

Yeah, that's good. I think we should end it right there because I think that's a pretty good. Cool, man. That's the message.

Trust in Christ. Guys, thanks so much for listening to another episode of Deadman Walking Podcast. Blake, thanks for stopping by, man.

Anytime you're in town, come on. And when that book comes out, come back on. We want to discuss it because I think it's a very interesting book.

I don't think there's anyone that I know of or anything out there quite like what you're describing and how you're going to answer that book.

So I'd be very interested to see how it does, too, once you get it out to the public. And even if you're self -publishing, man,

I think there's going to be people that don't want to read it, especially. I can definitely tell you're interested in that subject and very passionate about it.

So, guys, thanks for listening to another episode. As always, we appreciate you. We appreciate the feedback.

We appreciate you sharing, telling a friend, all that good stuff. And as always, guys, chief in demand to glorify

God and enjoy him forever. God bless. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Deadman Walking Podcast for full video podcast episodes and clips or email us at deadmenwalkingpodcast at gmail .com.