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

by Philip S. Gorski

D’Souza himself is not white and has no personal experience being targeted as a white Christian man. But it’s no coincidence that he references white men and Christians together. In his mind, and likely that of his readers, the socialist assault on one might as well be an assault on the other. And he exhorts his readers in conclusion, “[W]e need a new generation of leaders who can assimilate the things that Trump does so effectively, fearlessly and gleefully. Trump has made it fun to beat the hell out of leftists and socialists, and even when Trump is gone, we must continue to enjoy the Trumpian experience of being a butt-kicking Republican, Christian, right-wing American capitalist.”18 The dog whistle character of “Christian” language is on full display here. We might all be inclined to ask, “What exactly is ‘Christian’ about the ‘Trumpian experience’ D’Souza describes?” But inserting “Christian” in with that list of identities makes perfect sense if D’Souza is appealing to what political scientist Lilliana Mason calls a “mega-identity” that merges the various individual identities that distinguish “people like us” from “people like them.”19 And in both Trump’s and D’Souza’s statements, being a faithful American is connected to both promoting Christianity in the public square and opposition to those who would replace “our” culture and prosperous free markets with totalitarian socialism. D’Souza fuses the ethnic and economic threats together in a phrase he uses frequently:...