From Trash World to Even Trashier, Nazi Chic, and the Immanent Frame

Introduction

The very newest n-word, like we needed another one, is Nazi. More than a few disillusioned young people have given up on the founding myth of the secular post-war consensus—and that part of it is fine with me—but have found themselves strangely drawn to a different kind of founding myth—a blood and soil founding myth. It is a different sort of founding myth in that it didn’t succeed in actually founding anything that lasted, so there’s that.

But they did have a good run for two thirds of the way up Mount Barbarossa. Gave everybody quite the scare.

Getting a Few Things Out of the Way First

But I can’t really talk about Nazi chic and the imminent frame without dedicating at least one section to the imbroglio that broke out over the Antelope Hill vendor controversy at the recent Ogden “War for Normal” conference. I just want to touch on a few things in rapid succession, and then we can go on to the larger issues.

Antelope Hill is a publishing house that publishes and republishes reprehensible stuff. They were there at the Ogden conference with assorted Nazi stuff, and they also had a flyer that promised to connect you to even more reprehensible stuff. For example, there was a foodstuffs web page that sells Zyklon/Gift Gas Hot Dust, cornbread mix with a swastika on top, and a piece of a door from Auschwitz. In the aftermath of the conference, the news about this particular bit of fecal matter hit the electric rotating cooling device. Discussion ensued.

In this whole gala episode, the Ogden conference organizers had obviously stepped on a rake, and there was clearly a need to provide a response to all of it. This was gamely attempted by Eric Conn and Brian Sauvé. Their response to the controversy ran along the lines of the conference is huge, the flyer was handed out to consumers contrary to the rules, the conference was emphasizing a lot of practical Christian living, and so why are people assuming that Nazism was somehow a theme of the conference? Well, shall we walk on over to the Nazi booth?

First, you don’t host a conference promising to fight for normal, and then bring in Nazis.

Second, the problem with trying to maintain that “no one should ever make the mistake of thinking that we are Nazis,” is that Samuel Holden just released another White Boy Summer video that was a pastiche of lots of really cool Americana stuff but then, true to form, he slipped a diehard Nazi into the mix, as unobtrusive as a fresh cow pie on top of your chicken Caesar salad. And Eric Conn retweeted that video, just a few days ago he did that, even though this is the third salad and third cow pie in a row. I mean, man, stop going to that restaurant. Me being able to count the cow pies does not make me a slanderer of the brethren—it makes me a mathematician. A rudimentary one, but a mathematician still. Three in a row.

Third, vendors go to conferences because they believe that there will be a healthy market for their wares there. The Antelope Hill people seemed very happy with what—for them— was a fruitful trip. Why was it a fruitful trip? Why would they think that there would be anything for them there? Why did they think it was worthwhile afterward?

Fourth, I was very glad to see that Zach Garris issued a statement on the glaring inconsistency between the Christian faith and whatever that booth was up to. Doing this kind of thing to people like Zach Garris who trusted your earlier protestations was just a shabby thing to do. He was already in trouble in the PCA and Ogden just made his troubles a lot worse.

Fifth, much was made of all the many wholesome Christian families that were there in attendance, and I grant it. Nice Christian people shouldn’t be such chumps, but some of them still are.

Sixth, the book table included speeches of Adolf, not so that niche historians might satisfy their curiosity, but rather so that the unwary might be recruited. And the one book for sale there that Eric had read, and which Brian has on his shelf to read, and which was discussed by them, was summarized as “just a book,” and you know, “anti-Zionist,” that kind of thing. It is actually a book with its very own cow pies in it. Vile stuff.

Seventh, I think that Meg Basham should put her considerable talents to use here. We need some to track any dark money that might be going on. Antelope Hill is so out there, and is such a cartoon, that I suspect there might be Fed money involved, or SPLC money, or perhaps something even fruitier. Not that I realistically hold that this situation could get any fruitier, but it is worth checking.

Eighth, there is a difference between studying the works of the enemy—like a creationist reading Darwin—in order to refute what is read, and a full-blown Nazi hawking his ideology. But—and I don’t think this should really qualify as a pro tip—you don’t let a wolf work a vendor table at your sheep convention. Keeping wolves away from the sheep is not cancel culture.

Cultural Gaslighting

Cultural gaslighting is attempted when people in charge of something take some absurdity, throw a saddle on it, and then stand next to it, booted, spurred, and ready to ride. For example, the absurdity could be saying that the attempted beheading in Ireland was the result of us not being welcoming and inclusive enough. And believe me, they will ride that absurdity as long as the people out there put up with it.

Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?

There are, famously, four stages: “It is not really happening.” “It is happening, but it is not a big deal.” “It is happening, and it is a good thing actually.” “People freaking out about it are the real problem.” In the matter of Nazi chic, we are currently a bit out of order, as we are toggling between #2 and #4. Perhaps soon we will settle down between #3 and #4.

Query: How many videos will Sam Holden have to make, and that Eric Conn will decide to retweet, each one containing the obligatory Nazi hat tip, before we all decide that Eric Conn is doing it on purpose? Is everybody waiting for him to give us clearance by saying, “It is a good thing actually, and I am tired of pretending its not”?

Christian Nationalism, the Real Thing

The recent PCA report aptly recognized that Christian nationalism is not some monolithic thing. There are various currents and cross currents out there, which is a good thing to remember. But in the providence of God, as it happens, I am the spokesman for one of those currents. So as the spokesman for our corner of this CN world, let me tell you what real Christian nationalism is like.

Real Christian nationalists . . . love the Lord Jesus Christ, and intend to live for Him. They love the holy Scriptures, both Old Testament and New, and intend to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. They love the worship of God on the Lord’s Day, revolving around Word and sacrament. They love singing the psalms of David. They love their wives, love their neighbors, and love their enemies. They love football in the fall and baseball in the spring. They love their nation and desire to see America blessed with true reformation and revival. They love the Jews, and pray for their coming conversion to Christ. They love dispensationalists, and pray that they would drop their peculiar form of Christian Zionism. They love the fact that they get slandered from both directions—as the longhouse anti-feminists. They love Trumpkin the dwarf and his dogged loyalty to Caspian and his equally dogged refusal to have anything to do with Nikabrik’s proposed alliances.

They hate every evil way, which would include every form of socialism there is. This would include national socialism, international socialism, and greater metro area socialism. They hate abortion, child pornography, and white self-loathing.

So if you want to know what kind of Christian witness we are seeking to establish in Hillsdale, or in DC, please see above. We are conservative Christians who believe the Bible, all of it. We are Presbyterians, not Lesbyterians. Our motto is not semper deformanda.

Trapped in the Immanent Frame

I ran across a marvelous phrase in Malcolm Guite, that phrase being the immanent frame. Friends tell me that it comes from Charles Taylor, but regardless where it comes from, it puts our whole generational malaise into a true perspective. The problem with all our reactionary bros is that they are trapped in the immanent frame.

Their categories are not functioning with reference to the transcendent. This is another way of saying that their political calculations are not being made in the light of the fear of God. When the fear of the Lord is missing, all you have left for making all your ethical determinations is a sliding scale on a horizontal axis. Terms of praise and blame have to be reduced to left and right, or based and not based, Zionist or anti-Zionist, in the longhouse or out of it, and so on.

Once you are in that trap, you cannot afford to be called certain names—names for any places along that horizontal scale that you have abjured forever. So being labeled one of “them” is the one thing that must be avoided at all costs. Being tarred with that brush as a “sell out” would wreck everything. And this is because, without reference to the transcendent God, your position on the horizontal axis is everything. It is arbitrary, but it is also everything. This is a positional idol. You are in the immanent frame.

In just the same way that the squish evangelical cannot abide the idea of being called a racist, and thus can be steered into full-tilt communism, so also the same mechanism can be hooked up on the other end of the horizontal axis. The soft evangelical lives under the progressive gaze, as Joe Rigney so helpfully explained, and cannot bear the thought of disappointing that little man standing on his left shoulder. By way of comparison, the men in Ogden are living under the gaze of a little Holden man on their right shoulder. If they were to disappoint him, they would be mocked from the right, and because that sliding scale is now everything to them, that has to be avoided. This is the prison of the immanent frame.

They think nothing of disappointing us, or conservative Christians like us, because on that horizontal axis, we are to their left, or so they think. But the real difference is that we are functioning in terms of a vertical axis.

And there is a vertical axis.