Americans United spends a lot of time debunking the fake history peddled by Christian Nationalist groups. For example, these organizations frequently assert that the United States was founded to be an officially Christian nation, even though our secular constitution doesn’t say that. They’ve also tried to portray key U.S. founders as conservative Christians when in fact many were Deists.
But Christian Nationalists do more than try to rewrite the distant past; they’re also part of a broader far-right campaign to recast much more recent history. These efforts are especially audacious when we’re dealing with issues many of us have personal memories of.
Consider the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. Even as it was unfolding, Christian Nationalist evangelist Franklin Graham attempted to blame the insurrection on Antifa, a line other Christian Nationalist groups soon parroted. That collapsed after people started being arrested for taking part in the assault: They were all right-wingers. No worries, though, Christan Nationalists simply shifted the narrative and started portraying the violent mob, whose members assaulted several police officers, as harmless patriots who simply wanted to visit the Capitol.
Steve Benen, a former Americans United staffer who now works as a blogger/producer for MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, explores this brazen attempt to rewrite recent history in his new book Ministry Of Truth: Democracy, Reality, And The Republicans’ War On The Recent Past.
Steve’s book doesn’t focus on Christian Nationalism, but as I’ve been reading it, I can’t help but notice that the tactics he outlines are often employed by leaders of that theocratic movement. They try to tell us that things we personally witnessed, events that were heavily covered in the media, incidents that resulted in people being tried in courts and sent to prison, didn’t really happen or didn’t happen the way we think.
Steve calls these efforts “frantic gaslighting campaigns to rewrite the stories that have unfolded over the last several years, molding the developments into unrecognizable new accounts.”
It’s an alarming strategy and a threat to our democracy. And it’s highly ironic to see it being spearheaded by conservatives. These are the people, after all, who claim to stand for unyielding truths and objective reality.
If you’re a fan of George Orwell’s 1984 you may recognize the title of Steve’s book. Winston Smith worked in the Ministry of Truth, where he rewrote old newspaper articles to make them conform to the doctrine of the oppressive ruling party.
Smith’s real-life counterparts keep at it today. They do it for a reason: Like the party leaders in 1984, Christian Nationalists and their allies know that history matters. We should know it, too. And that’s why we should always correct the record when Christian Nationalists push falsehoods about the past – whether we’re dealing with events that happened 250 years ago or last month.
