The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released its annual report this week, The Year in Hate and Extremism 2023, which lists a new “Christian supremacist” movement as the biggest threat to U.S. Democracy that “you’ve never heard of.” The report chronicles trends in hard-right activity, not simply as a reality check, but as a tool to act alongside those working to prevent radicalization and counter white supremacy, disinformation and false conspiracies in 2024.
SPLC documented also the highest number of active anti-LGBTQ+ and white nationalist groups we have ever recorded. These record numbers accompany increases in direct actions against minoritized groups, including hate crimes and other tactics such as anti-Black and antisemitic flyering, protests, and intimidation campaigns targeting LGBTQ+ people, libraries, schools and hospitals. Together, the activities of hate and antigovernment groups, the “holy war” and “race war” rhetoric they employ, and the environment of fear and disruption they foster foreshadow an attempt to exploit American democratic and electoral processes in 2024 to finally accomplish the goals of the insurrection — the suppression of multiracial, pluralistic democracy.
The report also focuses on a group of authoritarian, theocratic fascists, Fundie Freaks called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), which formed in 2022. According to the report, this hate filled dominionist group of Fundie Freaks follow what is known as the Watchman Decree, an anti-democratic document envisioning the end of a pluralistic society in America.
Guess who has ties to and support these monsters?
The “apostles” in this group of twisted freaks claimed they had been given “legal power and authority from Heaven” and are “God’s ambassadors and spokespeople over the earth,” who “are equipped and delegated by Him to destroy every attempted advance of the enemy.”
And who’s the enemy? Basically anyone who does not adhere to NAR beliefs. NAR adherents see their critics as being literally controlled by the devil.
“There are claims that whole neighborhoods, cities, even nations are under the sway of the demonic,” the report states. “Other religions, such as Islam, are also said to be demonically influenced. One cannot compromise with evil, and so if Democrats, liberals, LGBTQ+ people, and others are seen as demonic, political compromise — the heart of democratic life — becomes difficult if not impossible.”
This rhetoric has become increasingly widespread among Republican lawmakers, including former President Donald Trump, who last year referred to Marxists and atheists as “evil demonic forces that want to destroy our country.”
