The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy

by Philip S. Gorski

On March 12, 2021, a year into the COVID pandemic, the Republican senator from Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, reflected on the two defining political events of the tumultuous year gone by: the Capitol insurrection on January 6 and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. Johnson said that he “wasn’t concerned” about the insurrectionists, because “those were people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement [and] would never do anything to break the law.” “Now, had the tables been turned,” he mused, “and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and Antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned.”