Class of 2020

The Emboldened Militants of the Christian Right

Conservative White evangelical Christians delivered the White House to Trump in 2016,^[4] with around 81 percent voting in his favor.^[5] In 2020, some polls show their support slipped to 76 percent, but they remained an overwhelming part of his coalition,^[6] driven by the belief that Trump would help foster a Christian nation—a conviction bolstered by his appointment of anti-abortion judges to the Supreme Court.^[7] But for some Christian Rightists, that’s not enough. A network of anti-abortion militants known as “abortion abolitionists” view the majority of U.S. White evangelicals as mere reformists who compromise with a secular system that fundamentally opposes biblical beliefs.^[8] And this year, these purists began to make political headway.

In February 2020, the country’s leading abortion abolitionist group, Free the States, organized a national conference in Oklahoma, where the group is based, to promote a new strategy of working with local and state politicians to introduce model legislation.^[9] Buoyed by Trump’s anti-abortion promises, over the last two years, abortion abolitionists have shifted their strategy from solely protesting outside abortion clinics to building inroads with state legislators to introduce bills—in six states so far^[10]—that would treat abortion at any stage as murder. While none of the bills have yet passed, they form a blueprint for the militant anti-abortion movement to continue working within government to agitate for theocracy.

As 2020 progressed, the movement’s political standing advanced again, as nine Republican candidates for Oklahoma’s state legislature ran on abortion abolitionist platforms.^[11]  Among them was Warren Hamilton, an Army veteran who ran in District 7^[12] on promises to ban abortion and return the state “to our Judeo-Christian foundations.”

“We can not let Oklahoma become New York, California, or Virginia, where they celebrate abortion, force co-ed bathrooms and showers on school children, deprive citizens—who’ve committed no crime—of their God-given, unalienable right to bear arms, and prosecute Biblical Christian doctrine and American patriotism as hate speech,” wrote Hamilton in a newspaper announcement launching his campaign last January.^[13]

District 7, predominantly White and historically Republican,^[14] was represented by incumbent Sen. Larry Boggs, an establishment conservative who prioritized the economy and getting “everybody back to work” amid the Covid-19 shutdowns.^[15] Hamilton, whose campaign materials highlighted his outsider status (“I’M NOT A POLITICIAN. I’M A SOLDIER,” read one), focused on ending abortion and getting people to “turn back to God,”^[16] while echoing far-right antisemitic claims, including that liberal philanthropist George Soros is the sole financiers of “the liberals” in Oklahoma.^[17]

At a critical meeting to determine the district’s Republican nomination, Hamilton and Boggs debated an abortion abolitionist bill that was introduced to the state Senate in 2019, which would have created penalties up to life in prison for anyone involved in an abortion.^[18] State Senator Joseph Silk, the bill’s author and a close ally of Oklahoma’s abortion abolitionist movement, criticized Boggs for failing to support the bill when it was first introduced.^[19] The meeting escalated with a Hamilton supporter shouting at Boggs to “repent,” and that he was “perpetuating abortion.”^[20]

In late August, Hamilton narrowly defeated Boggs, becoming the district’s Republican candidate.^[21] And on November 3, he won the general election in a landslide, with nearly 75 percent of the vote,^[22] a seeming vindication of the abortion abolitionist strategy to infiltrate local government. Immediately following the election, Free the States posted a celebratory meme on their Facebook page, picturing Hamilton alongside another movement candidate, John Jacob, who’d just won a seat in the Indiana House, exclaiming, “ABOLITIONISTS WIN!”

Within days of assuming office on November 16, Hamilton announced plans to file a new bill—an update to the bill he and Boggs previously debated—in Oklahoma’s Senate: the Abolition of Abortion in Oklahoma Act/Equal Protection and Equal Justice Act.^[23] And with abortion abolitionist chapters in numerous states—including Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington—Hamilton’s victory seems likely to embolden the movement’s efforts to advance their agenda within the GOP.

PRA Senior Analyst Frederick Clarkson, who has followed Christian Right legislative strategies for decades, said the merger of this sector of militant Christians into mainstream Republicanism is noteworthy: “People like this used to have a home in the Constitution Party, but have now found a home in the GOP.”^[24]

Anti-Muslim Sentiment Still Binds the Racist Right

When far-right social media provocateur Laura Loomer won the Republican primary for Florida’s 21st congressional seat in August, Alt Lite and Trump supporters flocked to West Palm Beach to celebrate her nomination.^[25] Attending her victory party was Gavin McInnes, founder and former leader of the misogynist street gang the Proud Boys; disgraced former Breitbart News personality Milo Yiannopoulos; and Roger Stone, Trump’s close confidant whose 40-month prison sentence for lying to Congress was commuted earlier last year.^[26] As her general campaign began, challenging incumbent Democrat Rep. Lois Frankel, Loomer enjoyed the support of White nationalist website VDare,^[27] Trump ally Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, and even Trump himself.

Before her campaign, the 27-year-old Loomer was best known as a “proud Islamophobe” and Alt Lite activist who’d been banned from social media platforms for spreading misinformation and hate speech.^[28] She first gained notoriety in college, when she informed Gateway Pundit that an imam was on her campus, insinuating that he was a potential terrorist,^[29] and worked with far-right media operation Project Veritas, donning undercover disguises and personae to investigate her school’s alleged ties to ISIS. McInnes’s Proud Boys also have worked closely with Project Veritas.^[30]

A fact-sheet compiled by Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative, which researches Islamophobia, details Loomer’s long resume of anti-Muslim activism, from joining anti-Sharia law rallies with ACT for America, to citing dubious studies from the anti-Muslim Center for Security Policy, to writing for anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI).^[31] In March 2019, following the Christchurch mosque massacre in New Zealand, where 51 Muslims were murdered by a White nationalist gunman, Loomer wrote on Telegram, “Nobody cares about Christchurch. I especially don’t. I care about my social media accounts and the fact that Americans are being silenced more than Christchurch.”^[32] 

Florida’s 21st district has favored Democrats in the last few elections for Congress, so Loomer had little chance in the general, which incumbent Rep. Frankel won handily this November.^[33] But Loomer’s campaign raised in excess of $2.2 million—over $700,000 more than her opponent^[34] —providing her a sizable platform to denounce big tech companies that deplatformed her and issue disingenuous warnings about Muslim terrorism.

Daryle Lamont Jenkins, executive director of the antifascist research group One People’s Project, noted that Loomer’s success was due less to her own talents than the mobilization of the far-right movements in Florida that backed her. “For her to get this far is not so much a testament to her, but who’s supporting her: the Proud Boys types and the Islamophobes,” Jenkins said.^[35]

While Loomer won’t join Congress, Jenkins worries that the campaign war chest she amassed will help fund her next venture. “Every time one of these far-right figures with no chance of winning runs for something, I call it a fundraiser, because ultimately that’s what it ends up being,” Jenkins said. “It remains to be seen what Loomer will create with that money, but she’s doing something with it, that’s for sure!”^[36] 

The Candidate from Q

Far-right conspiracism long predates the Trump presidency, but a particularly pernicious example has swept through the country since he came into office: QAnon. (See “Conspiracy for the Masses” in this issue.) According to the preeminent QAnon origin story, in October 2017 an anonymous Trump administration insider known as “Q” (for their alleged high-level “Q” security clearance) began sending coded messages positioning Trump as a savior battling a “Deep State” cabal of Democratic and Hollywood elites running a child trafficking ring. Amplified by Trump’s flirtations with QAnon supporters, the online community grew into a movement with a mass base of support.^[37]

QAnon stands on the shoulders of earlier far-right conspiracy theories, adopting antisemitic language and framing used within neo-fascist and White nationalist circles that blame a Jewish cabal for social ills and repurpose ancient antisemitic slurs of the Blood Libel.^[38] These familiar claims are gaining adherents through all kinds of offshoots, such as vaccination anxieties among the New Age health and wellness community,^[39] allowing the conspiracy to cast a much wider net than typical far-right claims.

In November 2020, the movement graduated beyond the coded support they received from Trump to electing one of their own to Congress: Marjorie Taylor Greene, who successfully defeated her Republican opponent in the primary election for Georgia’s 14th district, and praised QAnon as “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out.”^[40]

Though she was the most successful example, Greene was far from the only QAnon candidate last year. The Washington Post reported that nearly 600,000 people have voted for a QAnon-aligned candidate,^[41] and according to Media Matters for America, 46 candidates running for political office in 2020 expressed support for the conspiracy theory.^[42] With national polls reporting that more than one in three Americans believe a “Deep State” has worked to undermine Trump,^[43] broad support for QAnon candidates points to a reservoir of conspiracist voters who might be captured by Greene-like politicians in the future.

Greene owns a successful construction company with her husband and formerly owned a gym before deciding to run for Congress. As a political outsider and stalwart Trump supporter, she ran on the slogan, “Save America, Stop Socialism.”^[44] Her campaign videos attacked New York’s Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez for proposing policies like the Green New Deal, which, according to Greene, would “plunge us into Communism.”^[45] Politico also unearthed a series of racist videos she posted,^[46] in which she variously describes unemployment as the product of “bad choices” and laziness, and claims that she would still feel “proud” of Confederate monuments even if she was Black.^[47]

Greene’s social media presence reveals her anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, pro-gun, and anti-LGBTQ ideology. When an unauthorized militia group, United Constitutional Patriots, illegally detained hundreds of migrants at New Mexico’s southern border in 2019, she came to their defense.^[48] In February 2019, she live-streamed an attempt by her and a small crew

of MAGA activists to accost Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib in their congressional offices, accusing them of supporting Sharia law and questioning their legitimacy as Congresswomen.^[49] Greene has also amplified anti-LGBTQ institutions such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal group leading efforts to redefine religious liberty as protecting discrimination against LGBTQ communities.^[50]

Greene additionally has direct relationships with far-right and paramilitary organizations, which backed her campaign in Georgia. Among them are the Three Percent Security Force militia,^[51] which Greene joined at an Atlanta rally against “red flag” gun laws in March 2019, and which publicly congratulated her after her primary win.^[52] Greene also publicly welcomed the endorsement of Larry Pratt, a pivotal militia and Patriot movement leader who led the far-right group Gun Owners of America for 40 years and spoke at a 1992 meeting of neonazis and Ku Klux Klan leaders that helped launch the militia movement of the 1990s.^[53]

After winning her August primary, Greene claimed to have distanced herself from QAnon, saying that once she started finding misinformation from Q, she decided to “choose another path.”^[54] Nonetheless, she continues to walk a thin line between plausible deniability and placating her base.^[55] Greene supported QAnon networks in the “Stop the Steal” demonstrations that attempted to discredit the presidential election results and stoked

fears of voter fraud in the lead-up to Georgia’s pivotal Senate runoff elections in early January. Trump, who has praised Greene on multiple occasions, professed his love for her and invited her to speak at a rally with him in Georgia.^[56] On January 4, she wore a “Stop the Steal” facemask while speaking with Republican members of Congress on the steps of the U.S. Capitol,^[57] two days before a mob of far-right MAGA supporters and QAnon^[58] activists stormed the U.S. Capitol, temporarily interrupting Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s election, and causing the deaths of five people.^[59]

Following the insurrection, Greene issued a press release, calling threats to impeach Donald Trump another “coup” from the Democratic Party.^[60] “The new generation of MAGA Republicans will not back down to your threat,” she wrote. “We will not back down from the smear campaigns from the Enemy of the American People, the Fake News. And we will not be silenced by Big Tech who wants to end free speech. We will stand up and defend the 75 Million Americans who you are trying to cancel and ruin the lives of for daring to reject your Marxist ideology.”^[61]

In late January, Greene came under renewed condemnation after CNN reported that she had supported, on social media, calls for executing Democratic politicians and members of federal law enforcement as well as conspiracy theories that cast school shootings as “false flag” operations.^[62] Video also surfaced of her harassing Parkland mass shooting survivor and gun reform activist David Hogg in 2019.^[63] Nonetheless, the same week the evidence came to light, Republicans assigned her to the House committee responsible for overseeing education.^[64]

It’s clear that Trump’s time in office helped provide a model and pave the way for a wide cast of far-right candidates and movements to force their way into power. Whether they’re Christian militants hoping to erect a theocracy, or conspiracy theorists promoting claims that scapegoat people of color and religious minorities for systemic inequality, the 2020 election made it clear that the GOP has a place for them.