They’re being “groomed” on Tik Tok
I’ve been ragging on right wing religion a lot lately but now that we have seen the fruits of their labor in the overturning of Roe v Wade and the subsequent extremism in red states around the country, I think we need to pay closer attention.
This piece in Vice takes a look at one corner of the social media universe that’s making an impact on the younger generation:
Patrick Bateman, the lead character in American Psycho, walks toward you as a rapid montage of images depicting Medieval-era religious wars between Christians and Muslims flashes in the distance. Madonna’s 2005 chart-topping single “Hung Up” is playing. You see the words “Fight for Glory; Western Man.”
This isn’t a fever dream. It’s a TikTok video with 11,000 views and part of a growing online subculture that’s propping up surging Christian nationalist and Christo-fascist ideology in the United States and beyond.
Christian nationalists believe that their country’s policies and laws should reflect evangelical Christian values, and culture war issues like LGBTQ rights, “critical race theory,” or immigration, are regarded as signs of moral decay that imperil their nation’s future.
Christo-fascists take that one step further, and believe that they’re fighting primordial battles between West and East, good and evil, right and left, Christians and infidels. These two labels, however, sometimes overlap.
On TikTok, ideologues from both ends of the spectrum are weaving together a shared visual language using 4chan memes, Scripture, Orthodox and Catholic iconography, imagery of holy wars, and clips from movies or TV featuring toxic male characters. Many of the videos, on their face, are innocuous enough, but they exist in close proximity to disturbing, violent, or explicitly white nationalist content.
It’s no accident that this community is expanding on TikTok, of all places, according to Thomas Lecaque, an associate professor of history at Grand View University in Iowa who focuses on apocalyptic religion and political violence. “You build your audience with a young demographic, and then you spread your ideas that way. This is how you build the next generation of fascists,” he said.
Fascist? You bet. Tik Tok is where the kids are. And they know it.
This online community seems to be growing at a time when Christian nationalist ideology is attaining mainstream acceptance, particularly in the U.S., where a conservative majority on the Supreme Court has opened the floodgates to a torrent of regressive opinions, including dismantling the national right to abortion. After that decision, one Christian nationalist podcaster, who has nearly 45,000 followers on Telegram, declared the current moment the “era of Christian Nationalism.” “People are thirsty for it, they are hungry for this,” he said. “We are the Christian Taliban, and we will not stop until the Handmaid’s Tale is a reality—even worse than that, to be honest,” he said.
Unsurprisingly, misogynist and reductive portrayals of women are rife within the #ChristPilled community on TikTok. Views about abortion, feminism, or “traditional family values” are often expressed through the “Trad Wife Wojak,” a female version of the sad internet character “Wojak” with blond hair and a modest floral dress. She’s meant to represent women who embrace submission to their spouses and take on ultra-traditional roles in their households.
One TikTok video from December, under hashtags like #Christian and #GenZ, shows Infowars’ Alex Jones dancing with a light-up fidget spinner. A quote appears, “If you ban abortion, women will die in backstreet abortions.” “Good,” the video goes on to say.
Other videos contain imagery of the Crusades, a series of religious wars between Christians and Muslims between 1096 and 1291, which began to secure control of “holy sites,” like Jerusalem. Crusader imagery has often been employed by white nationalists to signify or even justify violence against Muslims in Europe around the Syrian refugee crisis. In their bios, some accounts feature the Christian motto “Deus Vult,” which translates to “God Wills” and was chanted by the Crusaders.
You can read the whole thing here. It’s something else.