Rachel Maddow Rips Republicans’ Promotion Of Christian Nationalism

In an interview Saturday with the conservative Next News Network at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Florida, Greene said, “Republicans really need to recognize the people they represent, ok? Their voters, not the lobbyists donors, not the corporate PACs, not those people. That’s not who the Republican Party should represent. We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and, I say it proudly: We should be Christian nationalists.”

“The Trumpiest part” of the Republican Party is increasingly supporting this right-wing movement, Maddow noted.

Andrew Torba, CEO of the social media company Gab and a political consultant for Pennsylvania state Senate Doug Mastriano, who’s the GOP candidate for governor, said Monday that there was no room in the movement for Jews.

“This is an explicitly Christian movement, because this is an explicitly Christian country,” Torba told Media Matters.

“We don’t want people who are atheists. We don’t want people who are Jewish. We don’t want people who are, you know, nonbelievers, agnostic, whatever,” he added.

That said, Torba noted that the movement has no plans to deport Jews, nonbelievers or people of other faiths.

“You’re free to stay here. Right? You’re not going to be forced to convert or anything like this. But, you’re going to enjoy the fruits of living in a Christian society under Christian laws.”

What’s less known about Christian nationalism is that the movement is also racist, Maddow pointed out. She shared several quotes by Gerald L.K. Smith, a preacher, politician and Nazi sympathizer who ran against Franklin Delano Roosevelt for president in 1944 on the America First ticket and founded what he coined as “Christian Nationalism.”

“We must keep control of our own money and our own blood. In other words, we must remain true to the Declaration of Independence. That is nationalism,” Smith wrote of Christian nationalism. “We believe that the spiritual symbol of our statesmanship is the Cross, which indeed is the symbol of Christianity.”

“Fight mongrelization and all attempts being made to force the intermixture of the black and white races,” he added. ”…Preserve America as a Christian Nation, being conscious of the fact that there is a highly organized campaign to substitute Jewish tradition for Christian tradition.”

Maddow called the quotes the “milder” version of what Smith was known for.

“He was a virulent, violent racist and anti-semite, and that was the core of his movement, Christian nationalism,” she said. “Which you’d think that would make Christian nationalism kind of a hard thing for today’s Republicans to try to raise as their new banner.”

Watch Maddow’s commentary here: