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"If you mashed together a Vietnam War epic with a Christian end-times movie, what might emerge is one of the recent social media videos produced by the Department of Homeland Security. In early July, the department posted a minute-long short ...As the action unfolds, a man is heard quoting from the Book of Isaiah: “I heard the voice of the Lord say, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go forth for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me.’” The theme was echoed three weeks later by another DHS video...set to a different ominous soundtrack — “I’m the Shadows,” by the electronica act Ryutqc. A line from Proverbs appears: “The wicked flee when no man pursueth; but the righteous are as bold as a lion.” The videos conjure a veritable holy war, in which God’s soldiers prepare to battle evil, a.k.a. undocumented immigrants. These adversaries are largely implied, rendered as shadows visible only through night vision goggles — a stunning bit of dehumanization....
One running theme consists of wistful images that convey the idea of the United States as a Christian nation rooted in European aesthetics and ideals...Late last month, DHS shared an image of painter John Gast’s 1872 canvas, “American Progress,” which salutes Manifest Destiny, the concept that European settlers and their descendants had the God-given right to settle the West. The painting shows a White woman in a flowing white gown — an allegorical figure representing the United States — moving westward as she brings forth the telegraph and the steam train. Trying to get out of her path is a small group of Indigenous people. The caption reads: “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.”.... In these depictions, said historian Matthew Baigell in Smithsonian Studies in American Art, Natives were “reassigned the roles of savages and barbarians who blocked ‘progress.’” Stephen Aron, the director of the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, which owns “American Progress,” put it simply in an interview with NPR. Gast’s painting, he said, “is a whitening vision of the West.”
...As sociologists Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry note in their engaging book, “The Flag and the Cross,” the enemies targeted by White Christian nationalism have evolved over time. If in the past they were Native Americans and Catholics, these days the hellfire is reserved for immigrants and woke libs. The constant is that there is always an “us” versus “them.” “The goal is to forever redeem and restore a lost world corrupted by ‘outsiders,’” Gorski and Perry wrote. “That won’t happen without a fight. So, white Christian nationalism marches its adherents toward a bloody battle.” It’s a battle that is dragging this country into the past, a past in which some people were held up as righteous while others were treated as obstacles. This past was a vicious and ugly place, and there was nothing Christian about it."
Link
Fascinating article.
One running theme consists of wistful images that convey the idea of the United States as a Christian nation rooted in European aesthetics and ideals...Late last month, DHS shared an image of painter John Gast’s 1872 canvas, “American Progress,” which salutes Manifest Destiny, the concept that European settlers and their descendants had the God-given right to settle the West. The painting shows a White woman in a flowing white gown — an allegorical figure representing the United States — moving westward as she brings forth the telegraph and the steam train. Trying to get out of her path is a small group of Indigenous people. The caption reads: “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.”.... In these depictions, said historian Matthew Baigell in Smithsonian Studies in American Art, Natives were “reassigned the roles of savages and barbarians who blocked ‘progress.’” Stephen Aron, the director of the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, which owns “American Progress,” put it simply in an interview with NPR. Gast’s painting, he said, “is a whitening vision of the West.”
...As sociologists Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry note in their engaging book, “The Flag and the Cross,” the enemies targeted by White Christian nationalism have evolved over time. If in the past they were Native Americans and Catholics, these days the hellfire is reserved for immigrants and woke libs. The constant is that there is always an “us” versus “them.” “The goal is to forever redeem and restore a lost world corrupted by ‘outsiders,’” Gorski and Perry wrote. “That won’t happen without a fight. So, white Christian nationalism marches its adherents toward a bloody battle.” It’s a battle that is dragging this country into the past, a past in which some people were held up as righteous while others were treated as obstacles. This past was a vicious and ugly place, and there was nothing Christian about it."
Link
Fascinating article.
