Saturday, May 7, 2022

Recent origins of the Christian nationalist anti-abortion movement

This fascinating 18 minute interview by Christiane Amanpour with a former Christian nationalist propagandist, Frank Schaeffer. Schaeffer now says he regrets his role in helping to convert Evangelical Christians from mostly positive or neutral about abortion to rigidly anti-abortion. He claims that he and his father were important players in the demagoguery and the conversion.[1] The one group that was the most anti-abortion was Catholics. They did not need to be convinced to oppose Roe v. Wade. The Evangelicals needed to be convinced.  

Schaeffer made propaganda films that demagogued abortion for maximal emotional impact, especially to foment moral outrage and hate. A key point was that this was an effective way to raise money and trap votes for Republicans. Republican politicians and activists, e.g., Paul Weyrich[2], noticed this and started pandering to the anti-abortionists in the Republican Party quest for money and power. 

In all of what is going on in American neo-fascist conservative politics, lust for money and power among the elites is a constant central theme. The minds of most rank and file supporters (~95% ?) are quite different.





Footnotes: 
1. I don't know the history of this well enough to know how important Schaeffer was in the conversion of Evangelicals to rabid anti-abortionists. If what he claims is true, he was arguably a significant player in both the anti-abortion movement and in crystallizing (maybe inadvertently) Christian nationalism into the toxic, powerful neo-fascist political and social movement it is today.

2. Apologies for posting this short video so many times. It just strikes me as important to know. This 40 second video is Weyrich stating the fringe of the Republican Party view on free and fair elections in 1980. Today in 2022, that old fringe opinion is now dominant mainstream Republican Party dogma. The Republican concern Weyrich stated in 1980 is still true today.  


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