The legacy media is freaking out; they believe that the so-called ‘far right’ is taking over the world; and one media outlet claims to have a solution that’s going to stop this takeover, but we’re going to find out: they couldn’t be more wrong! Christian nationalism is the wave of the future, and there’s nothing they can do to stop it!
-Christian Nationalism is surging worldwide!
-A new MAKE EUROPE GREAT AGAIN bloc is rising in the European Parliament!
-And the woke leftists SEETHING can do NOTHING to stop it!
Politico recently ran a rather hysterical piece panicking over the prospects of Christian nationalism taking over the world. Now, by Christian nationalism, specifically the author is referring to what she calls the far-right, a rightwing that breaks with neocons like Paul Ryan or Boris Johnson and instead who advocate a new world order based on faith, family, and freedom, a world order that in effect overthrows the liberal globalist order and replaces it with the values of God, family, and patriotism! The author of this piece, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge, is clearly freaked out that such a new conservative era is indeed rising, and is even now replacing the old liberal globalist order! Quote: ‘The far right is currently ruling in: Hungary with Viktor Orbán, who has come out against race mixing in Europe and was a speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Texas this summer; Poland with the Christian nationalist party, Law and Justice, which opposes gay marriage, abortion and immigration; India, the most populous representative democracy in the world, with Narendra Modi, who has pursued Hindu-nationalist policies against religious minorities; Turkey with the imposition of Islamic nationalism and the ethnic cleansing against Kurds by President Erdoğan; Brazil with Jair Bolsonaro, who has denounced “homosexual fundamentalists,” called indigenous peoples “parasites” and advanced agribusiness by promoting the burning of the Amazon basin; and more recently, Italy with Giorgia Meloni, heir to Mussolini’s fascist legacy, the new prime minister after her right-wing coalition achieved a majority in Parliament.’
Well, that’s quite a list! Of course, since the article was written back in March, Bolsonaro was (ahem) defeated by Lula in the single most pristine election in the history of democracies; but the Christian Right absolutely dominated the Brazilian legislature in the very same election, funny how that happens, isn’t it? Regardless, this so-called scholar nervously recognizes that the current surge in MAGA republicans as well as Donald Trump’s return to the campaign trail are all part of the very same trends! Now her assessment of it all is really quite telling; at one level, she’s absolutely right; she recognizes that this is all part of a massive worldwide trend towards the nationalist populist right. It’s what some scholars call an ‘internationalizing of the nationalist right.’ We’ve seen this particularly in Europe; while the various nationalist right parties have of course focused primarily on local and national elections, they all recognize that transnational politics are in many ways just as important, if not, in the case of the European Union, maybe even more important. And this is because the ultimate adversary in all of this is globalization, and globalization is by definition. Transnational. And so, virtually all of the nationalist right parties and organizations out there have begun to mobilize beyond just the national level, creating networks with like minded parties and organizations in other countries.
So, most recently, an exciting new nationalist populist alliance is being formed in Europe between Hungary, Poland, and Italy. Euro News is reporting that Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban is officially joining forces with Poland’s prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Italy’s Matteo Salvini to form a new patriot political alliance at the European level, vowing to create what they’re calling a ‘European renaissance based on Christian values’ or in Matteo Salvini’s words they want to ‘make Europe great again’! So this scholar is absolutely right that there really is an internationalizing of the nationalist right, a worldwide trend towards what she calls the far-right; but she completely misses the mark when it comes to her assessment on how to stop this! Again, writing for the legacy media, she’s a hundred percent all-in with globalism; she’s a liberal, she’s a leftist; she’s a secularist; and she believes that all of this momentum towards the so-called far right can be stopped if globalists like Joe Biden just find the right economic policies! The assumption here is that the populist right is rising primarily out of a dissatisfaction in material conditions that continue to reverberate after the GFC, the Global Financial Crisis some 14 years ago. Unfortunately, what scholars like this don’t get is that the nationalist populist uprisings, particularly in Europe, began long before the 2008 economic crisis.
Populist movements enjoyed their greatest successes in nations that were already experiencing rather strong economic growth long before 2008. For example, in Britain, Nigel Farage first stormed the political stage in the European parliament elections back in 2004, and this was just after 48 consecutive periods of economic growth, drawing tremendous support from rather affluent conservatives. And in terms of the working class, one study found that before the 2008 economic crisis, working-class voters were twice as likely as their middle-class counterparts to vote for national populists in the nation of Austria, three times as likely in Belgium and France, and four times as likely in Norway. Economics are not driving this worldwide turn to the nationalist populist right! So what is? Well, the answer is going to absolutely astonish this liberal scholar writing for Politico!
A number of scholars are beginning to recognize that the surge in Christian nationalism actually comes out of the futilities found from WITHIN liberalism. Unfortunately for leftists, it turns out that liberalism lacks certain frames of reference necessary for a sustainable social order, such as healthy fertility levels and group-bonding dynamics that contribute to high levels of social trust. Scholars such as University of London’s Eric Kaufmann have long recognized that, due to its adoption of what’s called ‘liberal lifestyle values,’ liberalism actually necessitates the freedom NOT to reproduce, a freedom that its adherents are living out quite faithfully! A number of studies have examined the significant fertility differences between atheists and the religious and between liberals and conservatives. In all kinds of demographic studies, all over the world, but particularly in North America and Europe, there is a clear and direct relationship between how right wing you were, and how many children you had. For example, in 2010, the average number of children born to leftist liberals in the US was about 1.8, however, the average number of children born to what demographers term the far right was three! Again, this is a pattern that holds throughout the West in both the US and Europe. On average, for every one child born to the irreligious, two are born to the religious! Another factor in all of this is that the children born to conservative Christian families are increasingly likely to retain that religious conservatism into adulthood!
Again Kaufmann has documented how the retention rate among the Amish has actually been increasing in the last decade or so. Upwards of 85 percent of Amish youth retain their faith into adulthood! Comparable numbers apply to conservative families in general! And so, what we’re seeing here is something that turns out to be rather simple: Christian nationalism is flourishing because, in the end, conservative religionists are having kids all the while secular liberals aren’t! And you can’t NOT replace yourself and expect your political ideology to remain! That appears to be what’s happening all over the world! Conservative religionists are winning the demographics battle, and they’re winning it overwhelmingly! And so, if demographics is destiny, all the warnings that this liberal scholar gives to Politico’s dwindling audience turn out to be moot; the era of Christian nationalism is just beginning!
