The Nazi Ideology of the Synagogue of Satan in American Politics Today
We used to take it for granted that candidates for public office in the United States, though they disagreed about policy priorities, all shared the belief that democracy is the best form of government. Over the last few years, however, political extremism in the Republican Party has become so commonplace that it can no longer be assumed that Republican politicians are in favor of keeping democracy alive in the USA.
The growth of anti-democracy extremism has been particularly strong in this year’s campaign for Governor of Pennsylvania. Republican candidate Doug Mastriano has openly stated that he wants to convert Pennsylvania’s state government into a Christian theocracy. His campaign has been staffed with Christian Nationalists such as Andrew Torba, who has written a manual for how to overthrow American democracy and replace it with a Christian dictatorship.
This summer, Torba explained that there could be no place for atheists or Jews in the Doug Mastriano campaign, because the Mastriano campaign is part of a Christian movement. He said,
“We are going to take back this country for the glory of god, and this is a Christian, an explicitly Christian movement, because this is an explicitly Christian country. From its founding throughout its entire history, it has been an explicitly Christian country.”
The Mastriano for Governor campaign has been associated with antisemitic Christian Nationalism on many fronts, but there is no Christian Nationalist who is closer to Doug Mastriano than his wife, Rebecca. Rebecca Mastriano isn’t just the wife of Doug Mastriano, of course. She is also the right-wing Christian chaplain at Martin’s Famous Pastry Shoppe, a company known for making potato rolls and for funneling huge amounts of money into the Mastriano campaign. Rebecca Mastriano has played a prominent role in her husband’s campaign.
A few days ago, while on stage at a campaign stop in Warminster, Pennsylvania, Rebecca Mastriano made the following statement about the purpose of the Mastriano for Government campaign:
“We are all of the same mind of turning our state around and getting things back under god’s order instead of man’s order. We’ve been under man’s order here, and we, it hasn’t been working.”
Listening to Rebecca Mastriano’s diagnosis of the problem in America’s politics makes me wonder what she’s talking about. She says that “man’s order” hasn’t been working, but in what way has it not been working?
The entire system of government in the United States is based upon establishing a human order. It’s government of the people. The American system is all about having the American people make choices about their own government. The alternative, an order that’s supposed to have been set up by anyone’s idea of a god, was what people had suffered under for centuries. The founding of the United States was a rejection of belief in the divine right of kings. Our democracy is the establishment of order by the people of the nation. It’s the most foundational political principle in American government.
To replace the people’s order with a “god’s order” would be to replace American democracy with a totalitarian theocracy. That’s what Rebecca Mastriano said her husband will do if elected Governor of Pennsylvania. The Mastrianos seem to hate the very idea of democracy.
Rebecca Mastriano claims that “we are all of the same mind” in favor of “getting things back under god’s order instead of man’s order,” but that isn’t true at all. Although recent polling shows that the majority of Republicans agree that democracy in America should end so that America can be declared to be a Christian nation, the majority of Americans oppose the creation of a Christian dictatorship. Most Americans don’t want to allow Christian priests and preachers to take over our country and take the authority to control everyone’s lives.
The majority of Americans want to keep what Rebecca Mastriano calls “man’s order”. The majority of Americans want to keep democracy alive.
The danger of a Christian dictatorship in America was made clear in another speech that Rebecca Mastriano gave just a couple of days before, at Life Center Ministries, a church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Standing on the stage with her husband, Rebecca Mastriano told the audience that Pennsylvania should allow Christians to have exclusive control of its state government. She described a new system of government for Pennsylvania in which the Christian god is the sole gatekeeper to power, opening doors and closing doors according to his will, rather than according to fair laws and procedures established by the people of Pennsylvania.
Here’s what she said:
“We should be declaring god’s word. We should be declaring from Revelation, where it says, you know, when god opens a door, right, no man can shut it, or no one can shut it, and when god shuts a door, no one can open it, and when god shuts a door, no one can open it, and that’s spoken over the Church of Philadelphia, and so we need to be declaring god’s word that’s appropriately applied to our state and this season and our time.”
Rebecca Mastriano was saying that the government of Pennsylvania should be declaring god’s word as found in a specific bible verse from the Book of Revelation, but what exactly is that word?
Just a couple of weeks ago, Julie Green, a self-described Christian prophet who claims to receive direct messages from the Christian god, referred to the very same bible verse from the Book of Revelation. She claims that this god spoke the following words to her:
“I heard this prophetic word on September 16, so just a few days ago. I have the favor of god who goes before me, that opens up doors that no man can shut.”
Julie Green isn’t just some random Christian fanatic. She’s a close friend of Doug and Rebecca Mastriano, and a part of his political campaign to become Governor of Pennsylvania. She’s referring to the same bible verse that Rebecca Mastriano did, with the Christian god opening up doors that no man can shut.
Rebecca Mastriano and Julie Green were quoting the same bible verse, but they weren’t reciting it word-for-word. So, if we want to understand the context of what these Mastriano for Governor proxies are proposing for the state government of Pennsylvania, we should go and look at the original source that they are referring to. The actual bible verse is from the Book of Revelation chapter three. It reads as follows:
“These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. I will make those who are of the Synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars—I will make them come and fall down at your feet.”
Let’s repeat that last part, and remember that Rebecca Mastriano says that she wants this, as part of her god’s word, to be officially declared as the policy of the state government of Pennsylvania.
“I will make those who are of the Synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars—I will make them come and fall down at your feet.”
This specific bible verse, the one that Rebecca Mastriano chose to emphasize this week, has been historically linked to Christian genocide against Jews for almost as long as Christianity has been in existence. The Museum of Tolerance explains, “The Book of Revelations described the ‘Synagogue of Satan’ making explicit a linked identity between the Devil and the Jews that would continue for centuries.” This long history of Christian violence against Jews set the stage for the Nazi holocaust and all the destruction of World War II.
Without the hate represented by the specific bible verse that Rebecca Mastriano celebrated, World War II would never have happened. She didn’t cite that bible verse by accident, either. Remember, Rebecca Mastriano is a professional Christian chaplain. She knows her bible verses forwards and backwards. She knows exactly what she is saying when she points her audience to these antisemitic lines from the Christian bible. She also knows that Christian Nationalists in her audience will pick up on the reference.
The alternative to this interpretation is that Rebecca Mastriano, as a professional Christian chaplain, isn’t familiar with the Christian bible, is ignorant of Christian history, and doesn’t know much about Christian doctrines. If this is the case, we’d have to assume that Rebecca Mastriano is incompetent.
The thing is, although Rebecca Mastriano’s beliefs are unhinged, she hasn’t demonstrated incompetence. She has successfully gathered together a vast network of Christian Nationalist activists. She has obtained the position of Christian chaplain at a large Christian Nationalist corporation. Before that, she was a Christian chaplain at Marketplace Ministries, and a leader of the Christian organization Protestant Women of the Chapel. She has been a bible study leader, a deacon at her church. She has helped her husband to become the Republican nominee for Governor of Pennsylvania.
With this long background of professional and personal involvement in Christian Nationalism, it isn’t plausible that Rebecca Mastriano referred to the Synagogue of Satan bible verse in the Christian New Testament without understanding what she was doing. Furthermore, it isn’t only Rebecca Mastriano and Julie Green who have used the “Synagogue of Satan” reference from the Christian bible to signal alignment with antisemitic hatred. The bible verse has long been associated with the Christian persecution of Jews.
Catholic hate preacher John O’Connor, for example, infamously released a video under the title “Synagogue of Satan”, which declares that the Nazi Holocaust is a lie, and that Adolf Hitler did not in fact murder millions of Jews during World War II. We like to think that the extreme antisemitism of the Nazi Party died when Adolf Hitler committed suicide, but it didn’t. It survived in American right wing Christianity, and in the Republican Party politicians who aligned themselves with Christian Nationalist preachers.
In 1973, the Christian preacher Billy Graham had a telephone conversation with President Richard Nixon, in which they both complained about how Jews were interfering with the Republican Party agenda. Nixon recorded an audio file of the conversation. That audio file is now available online, archived by the Nixon Presidential Library. The following sample from that recording shows just what Billy Graham and President Nixon talked about.
Richard Nixon: “This has happened to the Jews. It’s happened in Spain. It’s happened in Germany. It’s happening, and now it’s going to happen in America, if these people don’t start behaving.”
Billy Graham: “Well, you know, I told you one time that the Bible talks about two kinds of Jews. One is called the Synagogue of Satan. They’re the ones putting out the pornographic literature. They’re the ones putting out these obscene films.”
Richard Nixon: “I think really they don’t deserve to live.”
In this recording, we hear Billy Graham talking about the same bible verse that Rebecca Mastriano referred to. Because Billy Graham thought his conversation was private, he got right to the heart of the matter, using the Book of Revelation’s phrase “Synagogue of Satan”.
Billy Graham’s words let us know that this isn’t the first time he told President Nixon about Jews belonging to a Synagogue of Satan. Graham refers in this conversation to a previous time that he and Nixon talked about what the Christian bible says is a demonic organization of Jews who must be forced to kneel at the feet of their Christian masters.
In that previous conversation, which was also recorded by Nixon, Billy Graham explicitly stated that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party were right that the Jews were an evil group that needed to be brought under control. He told Nixon that Jews were controlled by a sinister supernatural force. Then, Graham urged Nixon that, “if you get elected a second time we might be able to do something” to crush Jews in America.
The Christian bible’s conspiracy theory of a Synagogue of Satan isn’t the sort of thing that an ordinary person would accidentally refer to more than once. Christian Nationalist preachers like Billy Graham and Rebecca Mastriano are, like the Nazis, obsessed with the belief that Jews are servants of Satan.
President Richard Nixon’s response to Billy Graham’s talk about Jews belonging to a Synagogue of Satan is chilling. He said that he didn’t think Jews deserve to live.
This recording from almost 50 years ago shows that the power of violently hateful Christian Nationalists within the Republican Party isn’t something new. It’s been there for decades, festering in churches and behind the doors of political power, spreading its violent agenda.
The goal of this Christian Nationalist movement is not just to influence American government, but to destroy American democracy. Julie Green, the Christian prophet who has been working as part of the Mastriano for Governor campaign, recently gave another prophecy. That prophecy declared:
“Saith the lord, the storm is not coming. It is here. Brace for impact of a spiritual storm that will destroy your enemies’ power. The storm is great and its power will not be denied. Watch them all fall. This is a season for a great fall… Oh, America the beautiful, oh you have been betrayed, stolen, and infiltrated, but I am the one who has anointed your land, and no matter what is taking place in this land, I have honored the prayers of millions, and I will cleanse this nation once again. So, my children, be prepared for the shaking, because a great shaking is coming… for I, the lord of hosts, am here to avenge, and it will set you completely free. The time of removals is here, and the time of your great celebrations are about to begin, saith the lord.”
The ”lord of hosts” is a title that is used in the Christian bible to refer to the Christian god in military terms. “Hosts” is a fanciful word for armies. When Julie Green chooses this term in her prophecy, she does so to indicate to her followers that the opponents of Christian Nationalism are going to be destroyed in an actual military battle. When Julie Green talks about a “storm” with which the “lord of hosts” will “cleanse this nation” in a “great shaking” that will “avenge” Christian Nationalists through a “great fall” and a “time of removals”, she is telling her followers to prepare for violence.
This is the End Times hope of Christian Nationalism. Christian Nationalists’ goal is not to avoid bloodshed, but to seek it, to eliminate non-Christians in America so that Jesus can return to Earth carrying a sword and throwing all who defy him into a lake of fire. They are eagerly looking forward to the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy in which righteous Christian genocide will avenge the crucifixion of Jesus with the deaths of all who refuse to join the Christian army.
Part of this violent prophecy is the bible verse’s promise in the Book of Revelations that the Christian god will force Jews to fall down at the feet of Christian armies. This prophecy, given in part in the bible verse cited by both Julie Green and Rebecca Mastriano, is a call for the slaughter all the Jews who have refused to convert to Christianity, who the Christian bible refers to as the “Synagogue of Satan”, the Jews that Richard Nixon and Billy Graham agreed “don’t deserve to live”.
If you’re still having trouble believing that Christian Nationalists could really support the violent antisemitic ideology of the Nazi Party, keep this in mind. It was on the Christian Nationalist social media platform Gab, operated by Mastriano for Governor campaign consultant Andrew Torba, that Robert Bowers announced his attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Bowers killed eleven Jews at the synagogue that day, and wounded many others.
In response to that, Andrew Torba depicted himself as the victim of the incident, and defended his decision to provide a platform for American Nazis, saying, “We refuse to be defined by the media’s narratives.”
It was in full knowledge of Torba’s history promoting the murders of Jews at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pennsylvania that Doug Mastriano chose Andrew Torba to work on his campaign to become the Governor of Pennsylvania.