The International Christian Nationalist Alliance of Pete Hegseth
Hegseth moves to spread Christianity using bombs and bullets.
Pete Hegseth urged military officials from Central and South America to join the US in an alliance of Christian nations under God.
At a conference of military officials from countries throughout the Americas today, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced a new foreign policy in which the United States will seek to establish an international alliance of Christian Nationalist governments, using military force if necessary to create it. Hegseth said:
“President Trump has shown what is possible when you reject the status quo delusion that threats to our Homeland and our hemisphere are somehow secondary. America is prepared to take on these threats and go on the offense alone if necessary. However, it is our preference and it is the goal of this conference that in the interest of this neighborhood we all do it together with you, with our neighbors and with our allies who are eager and willing and capable. To do this, to work together, we must first acknowledge what was lost and then understand what needs to be restored. All the nations represented in this room are offsprings of Western civilization. Our nations are and always will be united by our heritage, our history and geography in this new world. We share the same interests, and because of this we face an essential test whether our nations will be and remain Western nations with distinct characteristics: Christian nations under God, proud of our shared heritage.”
Pete Hegseth describes Christianity as if it is under siege by foreign enemies. In reality, there is no military threat to Christianity in the Americas.
Christianity is declining in the United States and elsewhere. That decline is taking place because of longstanding patterns of abuse by Christian preachers and the embrace of fascism by many Christian organizations.
There is no legitimate role for any military organization in efforts to place Christianity back in the socially central position it enjoyed during the Roman Empire and the subsequent centuries of Christian kings. Christian Nationalism in despotic monarchies resulted in atrocities around the globe, including the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, and colonial programs of genocide against non-Christian populations. The authors of the Constitution of the United States created separation of church and state because they knew the history of suffering caused by Christian-controlled governments.
What Pete Hegseth is talking about is using military force to impose Christianity on an entire half of the planet. Hegseth is planning to use the US military to go on the offense against non-Christians, not just in the United States, but everywhere between the southern tip of Argentina and the northernmost end of Greenland.
What “needs to be restored” in this area, Pete Hegseth says, are “Christian nations under God”. This is the same vision of international Christian Nationalism that Marco Rubio articulated last month in Europe, when he told representatives of European governments that they should follow the fascist example of Donald Trump because the United States and the nations of Europe have the same racial identity and are all Christian nations.
Under this international Christian Nationalism, people are presumed guilty, and executed without being given any chance for a fair trial. Stephen Miller shared the stage with Pete Hegseth at the conference today, and said that governments must no longer recognize the human rights of people accused of crimes. Under Christian Nationalism, the only right to survive is the right to strict social order. Miller told the gathering of military officials:
“The human rights that we protect are not of the savages that torture and rape and murder. The human rights that we protect are of the peaceable citizens who have an absolute human right to live in physical safety and security every day of their lives.”
In Christian Nationalist America, every abuse is justified by the name of Jesus. Today, as the death toll of civilians killed by America’s war against Iran rose above 1,000, a group of 20 Christian preachers praised Donald Trump and crowded around him to hold an official government prayer for him in the name of Jesus.
Pew Research released the results of a survey today, showing that 68 percent of Americans understand that it isn’t necessary to believe in any god for a person to be moral. 20 years ago, the majority Americans - 57 percent - believed that belief in God is necessary for morality. Today, only 31 percent do.
The conspicuous arrogance, cruelty, and violence of the Christian Nationalist fascists who currently control all three branches of the US federal government is helping Americans to understand that Christianity may not be an effective method of teaching decent moral values.