While driving in the car, I like to listen to podcasts. One in my regular rotation is “The Influence Continuum,” which is hosted by Steven Hassan, Ph.D.
In the way of background, Hassan — who’s Jewish and mentions that from time to time — joined the cult led by Sun Myung Moon, a Korean religious leader and founder of the Unification Church, in the 1970s. The group members are popularly known as Moonies.
/ TRUMP IS MY PRESIDENT.” (Truth Social)
After breaking free of the mind-control cult, after two-and-a-half years, Hassan continued his studies and became an authority on various authoritarian, undue influence groups. In 2019, Hassan published The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control (Free Press).
Hassan’s guest on a recent podcast episode was Matthew D. Taylor, Ph.D., a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies (ICJS). Taylor is the author of a forthcoming book, The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy, which tracks the role certain Christian leaders, especially those from the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) networks, played in instigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Taylor and ICJS also created a 25-minute video documentary, Spiritual Warriors: Decoding Christian Nationalism at the Capitol Riot, which can be viewed on YouTube. The documentary delves into the key individuals and ideologies involved in the Christian nationalist formation, which is a bulwark of Donald Trump’s base.
This subculture might seem weird and forbidding to American Jews, but Matthew Taylor, along with others who study the phenomenon, warns that the Christian nationalists, who superimpose a religious overlay on domestic politics, pose a significant danger to our democracy. In short, the Christian nationalists see the Democrats as agents of the devil, and spiritual warfare is required to remove these “demons” from society. These people seek to remake society so that Christians rule all sectors — they are Christian supremacists. The Christian nationalists view liberals as Satan-worshipping pedophiles and think that their political opponents are “possessed by demons,” as Taylor states in the Spiritual Warriors documentary. He says that the “politics of spiritual warfare” is “antithetical to democracy” and is fueling the “extreme polarization” in this country.
In the way of illustration, the documentary includes a clip of Michael Flynn, former national security adviser in the Trump administration, speaking at a political gathering: “This is a war that we’re in, this is a big-time spiritual war. I mean, people like Nancy Pelosi, she’s a demon!” In October 2022, a man broke into Pelosi’s home in San Francisco, asking, “Where’s Nancy?” The intruder attacked Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer, seriously injuring him. In the documentary, Taylor states such calls for spiritual warfare are the “instigation to actual violence,” as we all saw in the violent January 6 siege of the Capitol.
In Trump — the hero of the Christian nationalists, who overlook his immoral behavior — we have a person who admires authoritarians and dictators around the globe. His model of a strong authoritarian leader is Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, who has consolidated economic and political power in his country. Orbán recently was Trump’s guest at Mar-a-Lago.
And now Trump has launched an attack on American Jews.
On March 18, Trump was interviewed by Sebastian Gorka, a far-right commentator who once worked as an adviser in the Trump White House.
“Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion, they hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed,” Trump told Gorka, as reported by JTA.
“Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who is facing off again against Joe Biden in this year’s presidential election, has long been baffled by how American Jewish voters continue to favor Democrats in overwhelming numbers, despite the series of pro-Israel policies he advanced as president, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and pulling out of the Iran deal,” as per JTA.
The story noted that Trump’s Rosh Hashana message last year was directed at “liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel because you believed false narratives!”
Trump supporters, including some Jews, point to the former president’s daughter, who converted to Judaism, and to Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as arguments against seeing Trump as a Jew hater. However, his recent comment about Jews who vote in the Democratic column, i.e., perhaps, 70 percent of Jews in this country, places him beyond the pale.
Even the ADL, which recently honored Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, at the group’s annual conference, condemned Trump’ s recent remarks.
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt stated, “Accusing Jews of hating their religion because they might vote for a particular party is defamatory and patently false. Serious leaders who care about the historic U.S.-Israel alliance should focus on strengthening, rather than unraveling, bipartisan support for the State of Israel.” As a thought exercise, imagine a Democratic elected official stereotyping Jews as sharp business negotiators or saying that they should be “ashamed of themselves” for holding certain political views. Again, Trump — who is facing some seven dozen serious criminal charges in four separate trials, and was recently found liable for sexual abuse and defamation — has attacked most Jews in this country for holding liberal views. It’s truly shocking, if anything about Trump could still shock us at this point.
I’ve mentioned previously that most Jews in this country view Trump with revulsion. Further, many American Jews think that their co-religionists supporting Trump are clinically meshugge. Trump’s previous stint in the Oval Office was marked by incompetence and corruption. His previously mentioned son-in-law was a defender of the Saudi crown prince and reportedly offered some kind of counsel when he was accused of ordering the brutal murder and dismemberment of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, on Oct. 2, 2018. Shortly after leaving his White House post, Jared Kushner received a $2 billion investment for his new private equity firm from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aka MBS. The investment was made against the advice of the fund’s economic advisers. Kushner’s payday stands as an egregious example of corruption in Trump’s circle of family and sycophants.
In his one term as president, Trump proved to be too lazy and stupid to fashion an effective authoritarian regime. However, if Trump returns to the White House in 2025, his allies, especially among those in the Christian nationalist ranks, could do irreparable harm to our democracy, which is in a fragile state. A segment of our compatriots approve of authoritarian leadership and seek to return a mythical era of American greatness. Chaos could ensue, and social upheaval in various eras and lands has not benefited minority Jewish communities.
We should work to defeat Trump and then figure out how to contain the remnants of Trumpism.
The editors and staff of the American Jewish World wish all of our readers a happy and meaningful Passover, our Feast of Freedom.
Mordecai Specktor / editor [at] ajwnews [dot] com
(American Jewish World, April 2024)
