https://politicalresearch.org/ The latest research related to right-wing conferences en https://religiondispatches.org/2024/07/11/pro-life-theater-open-white-nationalism-and-virility-fear-day-3-natcon The closing day of NatCon 2024 (day 3) opened with a benediction by Reverend Uriesou Brito: a Christian nationalist, staunch defender of Doug Wilson, and Senior Pastor of Providence Church in Pensacola, Florida. Humanity versus unhuman and the Hot Gulag… Thu, 11 Jul 2024 05:41:35 EDT Annika Brockschmidt, Ben Lorber 34ce8754-e58f-4af5-a909-a1a6bcab5764 https://religiondispatches.org/2024/07/10/white-nationalist-mottos-fate-jews-new-christian-state-and-appeal-heaven-humor-day-2 No friends on the “other side of the aisle”—only enemies In a morning panel of the second day of NatCon 2024, a group of Republican senators hammered home a confrontational message. Sen. Jim DeMint : “There is no reasonable consensus… Wed, 10 Jul 2024 06:29:12 EDT Annika Brockschmidt, Ben Lorber f0e00bda-e8a2-4670-935a-2c1be898b490 https://religiondispatches.org/2024/07/09/persecution-betrayal-and-zero-sum-fight-global-domination-day-1-natcon-2024 The opening day of 2024’s National Conservatism conference was shot through with familiar themes of far-right triumphalism, civilizational war, xenophobia and existential threat. The majority of conference attendees were White, though far from exclusively; majority male, though not entirely; and… Tue, 09 Jul 2024 04:35:33 EDT Annika Brockschmidt, Ben Lorber 74d5a7bb-5eae-478b-9edf-e07d19d4d9d1 https://religiondispatches.org/2023/09/27/america-appears-be-heading-religious-civil-war Civil war is coming to America. At least that’s the view sizable numbers of Americans have expressed to pollsters in recent years. A 2022 Economist/YouGov poll found that 43% of respondents think it’s likely a civil war will break out… Wed, 27 Sep 2023 04:02:13 EDT Nilay Saiya e8ff7500-f053-4cb7-a716-93dae679a053 https://religiondispatches.org/2023/03/27/launch-rally-waco-former-president-sets-stakes-trump-24-campaign-apocalyptic-violent Donald Trump ’s Waco rally this past weekend was, in the end, filled with echoes of the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound —just not the kind we like to talk about. And, despite the New York Times profile… Mon, 27 Mar 2023 05:05:09 EDT Annika Brockschmidt, Thomas Lecaque 6a5cc7ee-f0b1-40de-9e97-cf95edff5466 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/2023/03/06/2023-cpac-lived-down-expectations-dont-buy-narrative-gop-not-divided-you-might-think Considering that CPAC is the largest conservative conference in the US, the line-up of their 2023 conference was distinctly unimpressive, with some notable names absent from the list of speakers . While Mitch McConnell hasn’t been invited to CPAC in… Mon, 06 Mar 2023 03:43:20 EST Annika Brockschmidt 478c4d63-ff3b-4e9a-a662-a5ab2c5bb83b https://religiondispatches.org/2023/02/13/who-could-possibly-take-issue-human-dignity-beware-trojan-horses Upon the recent death of the conservative British historian Paul Johnson, the right-wing journal Public Discourse praised Johnson as the “historian of human dignity.” Another recent piece in the Washington Post by Justin Dyer—executive director of the conservative Civitas Institute… Mon, 13 Feb 2023 02:48:58 EST Peter Schwartz ad4f02c0-36f0-4a1b-8a47-12c957abe0fc 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/2022/10/19/new-anti-trans-strategies-floated-family-research-councils-pray-vote-stand-summit As anyone with access to the internet is likely aware, former college football star Hershel Walker is running for US Senate in Georgia as a pro-Trump Republican. Walker, who has four children —three of whom he appears to have just… Wed, 19 Oct 2022 09:10:21 EDT Heron Greenesmith, Asia Korkmaz 92bf9060-b4bc-491c-84ac-4a4852926882 https://religiondispatches.org/2022/10/04/white-nationalist-ideology-shines-through-elite-maga-conference-inside-natcon-part-ii Below is the second of a two-part report on the third National Conservatism Conference that took place in Miami, FL from September 11 - September 13, 2022. Read Part I here . “Exercise your dominion, O Lord, over this nation”… Tue, 04 Oct 2022 05:23:09 EDT Ben Lorber 8b40abd3-629f-4727-a893-35feb44bb83d https://religiondispatches.org/2022/10/03/elite-movement-laying-foundation-maga-will-outlast-trump-and-remake-america-inside “Most people can’t even articulate a political thought. Like, why do they get to vote? It’s stupid.” It’s the evening of September 11, and I’m sipping whiskey by the bar at a 4-star resort hotel in Miami, as a 29-year-old… Mon, 03 Oct 2022 02:51:03 EDT Ben Lorber 6663c40d-e1d0-4923-8e9c-1df64285ab08 https://religiondispatches.org/2022/09/23/inspired-anti-abortion-movement-and-qanon-anti-trans-rhetoric-blatant-call-violence They care for trans children and teenagers—and they’re getting death threats. On August 30th, Boston Children’s Hospital was shut down due to a bomb threat , and shut down a second time on September 9th, the latest in a series… Fri, 23 Sep 2022 03:01:47 EDT Annika Brockschmidt, Thomas Lecaque b8fa6819-5726-427a-a0cf-bebf925256fd https://religiondispatches.org/2022/09/15/pray-vote-stand-2022-kicks-some-head-scratchers-predictable-topics The following kicks off RD and PRA’s special coverage of the Pray Vote Stand Summit. All subsequent posts can be found here. - eds 9/14/2022 Evening The Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand Summit starts with a flourish as a… Thu, 15 Sep 2022 10:19:04 EDT PRA Staff ec29157a-389f-486c-b96e-61597cfe461b https://religiondispatches.org/2022/08/12/crossing-rubicon-mar-lago-raid-enflames-right-wing-fantasies-christian-caesarism A Roman, a Confederate, and a Nazi walk into a political discourse… Sorry, there’s no punchline. This is just how the online conservative pundit machine is dealing with the FBI raid on Trump’s Florida home, Mar-a-Lago —comparing it to the… Fri, 12 Aug 2022 05:48:29 EDT Annika Brockschmidt, Thomas Lecaque 1edfdecb-c11d-4a47-9e0e-178021baf1aa https://religiondispatches.org/2022/08/10/right-using-fbis-mar-lago-search-martyr-trump-and-maintain-violent-myth-big-lie On Monday, the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s home in Florida, during which, according to the former president, federal officials even “broke into my safe.” While there are reports that the warrant for the search is related to classified documents… Wed, 10 Aug 2022 05:29:56 EDT Bradley Onishi 96f6945e-b89b-4c6f-9b77-4c5c9e920444 https://religiondispatches.org/2022/07/27/if-family-research-council-church-im-taxthechurches-supporter Like other authoritarians, right-wing Christians often prefer to minimize transparency in order to avoid accountability. Those who have considerable power within the social hierarchies prescribed by conservative Christianity can often evade accountability on a variety of fronts. The success of… Wed, 27 Jul 2022 01:26:23 EDT Chrissy Stroop 7be1dc5a-c096-4bfd-a138-f90757e3ea83 https://religiondispatches.org/2022/06/15/anti-trans-hate-machines-conspiracies-dont-stop-us-border Right-wing media have been relentless in their attacks on trans people. In a single three-week window during March and April of this year, Fox News aired over 170 anti-trans segments . And over the past few months and weeks, calling… Wed, 15 Jun 2022 02:19:33 EDT Annika Brockschmidt bf4ac3e0-87f5-4fe4-b5d3-faec348795da https://religiondispatches.org/2022/06/14/largely-overlooked-shakeup-russian-orthodox-church-looking-westernize-yes-and-no A major shakeup at the highest levels in the Russian Orthodox Church is offering new insight into the Moscow-based church’s internal struggles and strategic position towards the West — and oddly no one in the West seems to care. Metropolitan… Tue, 14 Jun 2022 04:06:17 EDT Katherine Kelaidis 26b51eb6-968c-4a81-95d6-f2df6acfedef https://religiondispatches.org/2022/03/31/white-nationalist-fringe-just-took-giant-step-closer-center-gop “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?” It was this statement that finally got Steve King, the former Iowa… Thu, 31 Mar 2022 05:30:04 EDT Annika Brockschmidt aed51690-d140-435a-9147-b8fb20056339 https://religiondispatches.org/2021/08/09/whats-missing-popular-discussions-todays-christian-nationalism If you want to know where the Republican Party is headed, you need to set aside your assumptions and simply listen to what its leaders and activists say—especially when they’re talking amongst themselves. As a reporter and author on the… Mon, 09 Aug 2021 03:37:44 EDT Katherine Stewart 66119b48-f33a-4bdb-9132-15093a340a05 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/2019/03/06/cpac-president-got-one-thing-he-needed When you center abortion at the cost of all other issues, you center the unborn whose lives are supposedly at stake. The unborn become angels who must be protected at all costs, which means the rest of us—the born and bodied—are of secondary concern at best. Wed, 06 Mar 2019 04:18:54 EST Bradley Onishi 6a001783-b411-41fc-be35-4e6b5dcb9a89 https://religiondispatches.org/2019/03/05/trumps-cpac-meltdown-wasnt-just-comedy-gold-it-was-groundbreaking-extremism Prior to Trump, no president has actually spoken at public right-wing events like CPAC and the Values Voter Summit, and he’s the first president to actively embrace the prosperity gospel. Tue, 05 Mar 2019 12:42:01 EST Becky Garrison 7086328c-143e-43af-8a43-8e33ab40bfdc https://religiondispatches.org/2017/10/18/religious-right-has-come-out-closet There’s a certain satisfaction for those of us who came of age at the time of the Christian Right’s ascendency to see such widespread acknowledgement of what many of us knew all along—that the so-called Christian Right was always a… Wed, 18 Oct 2017 03:20:13 EDT Patricia Miller ad9bd2c4-8415-4e66-9db6-b6713a1f3cdf