Opinion | Trump just promised an authoritarian ‘task force’ to impose Christian ideology
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The former president is still feeding the Christian right’s persecution complex

The former president is still feeding the Christian right’s persecution complex

In recent campaign stops and on social media, Donald Trump has reprised lies aimed at inciting his Christian-right base against Joe Biden. These tirades, centered on the false charge that the Biden administration is persecuting Christians, aren’t just Trump’s typically dubious claims. Much like Trump’s lies about a stolen election, they are designed to immerse his loyalists in a grievance-laden alternative reality in which Trump alone can rescue them from an evil government threatening their freedom.

In a Dec. 19 speech in Iowa, for example, Trump pledged, “As soon as I get back in the Oval Office, I’ll also immediately end the war on Christians. I don’t know if you feel it. You have a war. There’s a war.” Speaking just after the Colorado Supreme Court disqualified him from appearing on the state’s GOP primary ballot, Trump tied this “war” to his own legal woes. “Under crooked Joe Biden, Christians and Americans of faith are being persecuted and government has been weaponized against religion like never before. And also presidents like never before,” he added. “I always say Al Capone was treated better than I was treated.”

Trump has promoted the theme of Christian persecution in the past, but is elevating it again as these legal issues mount. His clear purpose is to deflect attention from his own criminal liabilities by insinuating that the same Biden administration he falsely claims is unfairly targeting him for prosecution is similarly persecuting religious Americans.

  • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
    29·
    11 months ago

    This smells a lot like very old school anti-Catholic sentiment. People forget that the KKK hated Catholics just as much as blacks. They don’t see Biden as a real Christian like they are.

      • TimLovesTech (AuDHD)(he/him)@badatbeing.socialEnglish
        22·
        11 months ago

        I don’t think he was a grand wizard, but he was arrested during a KKK march in NYC in 1927.

        The Wikipedia citation states Trumps denial it even happened, and this:

        The KKK was then a far-right white nationalist Protestant group in the U.S. that specifically targeted black and brown people, Jews, Catholics, and immigrants. (It also opposed birth control, consuming alcohol, and the public teaching of evolution.

        Edit - adding the Wikipedia page on Fred Trump as reading that you’ll see the “apple didn’t fall far from the tree” and Trump learned from the beginning that:

        1. Rules don’t apply to the rich
        2. Even when “enforced” you deny and keep criming because you’re rich