https://politicalresearch.org/ The latest research related to proud boys en https://religiondispatches.org/2025/01/21/while-global-media-are-clear-musks-nazi-salute-us-media-engage-nazi-washing At President Trump’s post-inaugural festivities, Elon Musk rose to the podium emblazoned with the Seal of the President of the United States to make a speech. It was a privilege earned through the $277 million he paid to back Trump… Tue, 21 Jan 2025 04:38:26 EST Steven Gardiner 81daa90e-3690-4374-9d24-3a0d6bf02a43 https://religiondispatches.org/2024/06/11/hello-trump-warriors-little-known-preachers-and-rabble-rousers-are-unregulated-id-felons “I don’t care about you, I just want your vote.” That’s the clip from Trump’s Sunday rally in Vegas that went viral: ex-president, navy blazer; open-necked white shirt, the sagging orange lizard hide shadowed by a bright red MAGA cap… Tue, 11 Jun 2024 04:41:30 EDT Jeff Sharlet e77c1358-1960-4e92-a0b9-dac888d52b55 https://religiondispatches.org/2024/06/03/fox-news-farther-right-calls-violence-and-retribution-follow-trump-verdict When Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, was convicted on 34 felony counts in New York on Thursday, it was to be expected that the Right would take the news badly. And indeed—the various factions of the US… Mon, 03 Jun 2024 06:21:00 EDT Annika Brockschmidt beff88df-e4e0-4ed9-9a9d-34f4a7425664 https://religiondispatches.org/2024/04/04/virginians-may-vote-elections-counties-militias-democracy-hangs-balance Religion Dispatches’s sibling publication, The Public Eye—a quarterly magazine for analysis and commentary on the U.S. and Global Right—is back! To celebrate The Public Eye’s return, Religion Dispatches will present a series of articles from the magazine’s Fall 2023/Winter 2024… Thu, 04 Apr 2024 05:00:56 EDT Carolyn Gallaher, Priya Dixit 88a085e0-ca20-4589-bb69-2fd520c76c29 https://religiondispatches.org/2024/02/12/meet-bronze-age-zionists-far-right-jews-embracing-fascism-wake-october-7 The US online hard-right isn’t exactly known as the friendliest place for Jews. It’s the place where antisemitic conspiracies thrive and cries of ‘Jews will not replace us’ resound. It’s where the Pittsburgh and Poway synagogue shooters (and many more… Mon, 12 Feb 2024 04:47:08 EST Ben Lorber 5e2d253c-8c97-43ba-9cba-d801317b3a91 https://religiondispatches.org/2024/01/05/age-insurrection-radical-rights-assault-american-democracy-explains-how-we-got-here-and “As far as I’m concerned, I’m done with this,” investigative reporter David Neiwert told us, followed by a tremendous sigh, as if setting down an enormous weight that someone else would be obliged to pick up. “Next, I’m writing a… Fri, 05 Jan 2024 04:00:48 EST Shane Burley 1d2477b9-47a8-4f3f-aa3b-7c08ff170d3d https://religiondispatches.org/2023/12/21/roundup-conspiracies-and-bad-ideas-caught-or-gained-momentum-2023 In 2023, the landscape of conspiracy theories witnessed a significant evolution, with some older conspiratorial ideas surviving into the new year and others moving from the fringe to become influential narratives shaping public discourse and political agendas. QAnon , the… Thu, 21 Dec 2023 02:42:39 EST Carmen Celestini, Amarnath Amarasingam 6e4679f3-e515-4063-92fe-063b4da3227e https://religiondispatches.org/2023/07/24/christian-nationalism-hurts-children-it-claims-protect-author-lillian-smith-understood Recently, an Indiana Moms for Liberty chapter included — and attributed — a quote from Adolf Hitler in their newsletter: “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future.” After backlash, the chapter went into damage control and chapter chair… Mon, 24 Jul 2023 03:18:51 EDT Matthew Teutsch, Emma Williams 5f140ad7-6fe2-4cda-b015-b5e7833e0076 https://religiondispatches.org/2023/07/06/moms-liberty-summit-mama-bears-declare-spiritual-war-radical-left “Mamas are the key political force in 2024 and we need to harness that energy!” Ron DeSantis called down from the stage in the Franklin Ballroom of the Marriott Hotel in Philadelphia, where 650 “joyful warriors” had gathered for the… Thu, 06 Jul 2023 05:17:05 EDT Annika Brockschmidt 05c2af7f-1129-4f98-bdc8-5b2821f0da3e https://religiondispatches.org/2023/04/18/dragged-through-mud-little-church-backed-support-group-lgbtq-teens-suffered-bomb-threats “Twenty years ago I thought now would be better. And it’s not.” That’s how Tiffany Vasquez, a longtime resident of Roseville, California, feels after weeks of vicious right-wing attacks on the local LGBTQ community—attacks that are part of an increasingly… Tue, 18 Apr 2023 05:29:15 EDT Chrissy Stroop 1d99a2ef-0f38-442f-ba14-429adebdcf74 https://religiondispatches.org/2023/03/21/trumps-arrest-prediction-inflames-holy-war-narrative-and-sanctifies-violence-welcome This coming Saturday, March 25 th—one week after a hysterical all-caps social media post in which he declared that he “will be arrested on Tuesday” and called on supporters to “protest, take our nation back!”— Trump will host his first… Tue, 21 Mar 2023 04:20:27 EDT Thomas Lecaque c4b85ca0-0967-4720-88c5-7797bcadeca3 https://religiondispatches.org/2023/01/11/coups-feather-striking-similarities-between-brazils-insurrection-and-jan-6-may-be-due The images were eerily similar: Insurrectionists were storming the halls of Congress, beating police officers who tried to fend them off, wreaking havoc in the offices of legislators, desecrating the very symbol of democracy itself— all in the name of… Wed, 11 Jan 2023 02:54:25 EST Annika Brockschmidt f9fdf7a3-8b05-459a-8079-5a6e36adfb88 https://religiondispatches.org/2023/01/06/evidence-strongly-suggests-trump-was-collaborating-christian-nationalist-leaders-january On December 22, the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Capitol Riot released its report, reopening the question of what forces and figures incited the insurrection as we observe its two-year anniversary. Yet, as numerous observers have noticed, the… Fri, 06 Jan 2023 09:47:02 EST Matthew D. Taylor, Bradley Onishi e45d5649-75da-422d-81de-9396248c9d77 https://religiondispatches.org/2022/12/06/trans-talmud-could-1500-year-old-book-have-any-relevance-struggle-trans-equality-and To many, last month’s brutal attack on a queer nightclub in Colorado Springs, in which five people were killed and 25 were injured, was the logical conclusion of the Right’s increasingly dehumanizing rhetoric against the LGBTQI+ community. This tragic event… Tue, 06 Dec 2022 09:49:06 EST Shane Burley bdef2ab3-7f30-484b-95f0-77a712d467ba https://religiondispatches.org/2022/08/29/disturbing-trend-far-right-candidates-are-getting-crucial-support-militia-groups-and How many local churches are providing direct electoral support to far-right-wing Christian candidates for political office? How many of these churches have members who participated in the January 6, 2021 insurrection, radicalized in part by their pastors’ extreme preaching? How… Mon, 29 Aug 2022 02:53:31 EDT Chrissy Stroop 8dca006f-c49b-4325-ac22-d69be0d48f1f https://religiondispatches.org/2022/06/27/embryo-men-decades-conspiracy-christian-nationalism-and-fear-led-us-end-roe-v-wade This morning as we again awaken to the realization that American women have lost their bodily autonomy , that five individuals can decide that States’ rights can’t control guns, but that they do have the power to control women’s bodies… Mon, 27 Jun 2022 02:18:42 EDT Carmen Celestini 4decb173-6927-4006-b0fb-cf236d4a5747 https://religiondispatches.org/2022/01/01/whose-house-their-house-just-who-was-held-accountable-16-insurrection-telling Almost as soon as the tear gas cleared from the Capitol grounds on Jan 6, multiple stories emerged. About what happened, and when, and who was responsible. A year later, we can look back and see that accountability for the… Sat, 01 Jan 2022 01:11:27 EST Susannah Crockford 531b059f-556b-48f2-98ef-a8fac5f3c9e3 https://religiondispatches.org/2021/11/22/we-remember-united-states-fought-nazis-german-scholar-fascism-weighs-christian “January 6 helped argue the case for fascist tendencies in Christian Nationalism,” Annika Brockschmidt tells me. As someone who spends his time on the front lines battling Christian Nationalism and writing about it, including a new epilogue on the January… Mon, 22 Nov 2021 01:10:12 EST Andrew L. Seidel 6726860c-dc8f-45ae-b645-40bc9faa064f https://religiondispatches.org/2021/08/11/new-clashes-portland-confirm-christian-nationalism-remains-clear-and-present-danger On Friday, August 7, the Department of Homeland Security announced to state and local authorities that an uptick in violent online chatter about the Big Lie of “election fraud” might lead to more anti-democratic street violence like what the United… Wed, 11 Aug 2021 02:24:58 EDT Chrissy Stroop 4c313649-5196-479e-8255-2d0fa3a8e7c0 https://religiondispatches.org/2021/07/19/cult-inaccurate-unhelpful-and-dangerous-label-followers-trump-qanon-and-16 In the twentieth century the word “ cult ” (originally meaning “worship”) became a pejorative word that people apply to a group or movement that they do not like and perhaps fear. The word “cult” implies a stereotype that involves… Mon, 19 Jul 2021 02:22:53 EDT Catherine Wessinger a0342f76-3e08-4527-8e0b-18a8e97d57ca https://religiondispatches.org/2021/06/22/bidens-new-domestic-terrorism-strategy-addresses-trumps-omission-white-nationalism-fails Last week, the Biden administration published the first-ever National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism . With an initial summary released in March of 2021, the full report is in response to the January 6 th insurrection and the subsequent order… Tue, 22 Jun 2021 04:24:21 EDT Sara Kamali 261abaf1-f93d-4c64-8c41-48016e64e273 https://religiondispatches.org/2021/02/26/problem-evangelical-petition-calling-white-nationalism-heresy Me, starting column: Well, actually, an evangelical sign-on petition calling white nationalism a heresy is not helpful for many reasons, not least because many of the 1/6 insurrectionists were themselves Christians, and there’s no standard method to determine who’s a… Fri, 26 Feb 2021 04:22:53 EST Daniel Schultz f4a30920-15a5-466a-b0dd-bf4ee1793683 https://religiondispatches.org/2021/01/21/inaugurations-beautiful-call-unity-was-undermined-invocation-religion There’s a reason religion and politics are forbidden topics in polite conversation: they’re divisive. Mixing the two is doubly so. President Joe Biden is a deeply religious man who turns to his faith in dark times. But 85 million Americans… Thu, 21 Jan 2021 10:43:04 EST Andrew L. Seidel fb143f3a-9b3e-441a-a9d1-19bc73168367 https://religiondispatches.org/2021/01/19/where-were-they-radicalized-no-answer-complete-without-addressing-evangelical-churches As the United States prepares for the end of a nightmarish one-term presidency that seemed to drag on forever, Americans continue to unpack the January 6 insurrection that now even soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell admits was “provoked” by… Tue, 19 Jan 2021 05:02:50 EST Chrissy Stroop 78c57897-d281-47df-8f07-71cf169c40fd https://religiondispatches.org/2021/01/14/attack-us-capitol-has-many-journos-finally-taking-white-evangelical-authoritarianism-and A month ago, I argued here on RD that America’s national conversation about Christianity is “fundamentally unserious.” Not because, as conservative Christian commentator Bonnie Kristian would have it , Democrats find it offensive when an elected Republican like Rep. Madison… Thu, 14 Jan 2021 12:21:35 EST Chrissy Stroop d15fdda2-be80-4518-9fcd-7bf492d01e8b