The current nationalist movement in America likes to imagine itself revolutionary. It is not.

The script is familiar.

• Step one: Convince the majority that equality is oppression.
• Step two: Wrap resistance to civil rights in religious language.
• Step three: Redefine dissent as criminality.
• Step four: Expand state power in the name of safety.
• Step five: Call it patriotism.

This playbook goes far back. Long before the modern Republican Party. It predates the Civil Rights Movement. It predates World War II. It predates ICE.

When Black Americans demanded equal treatment under the law, segregationists warned of societal collapse.

When civil rights activists marched, they were labeled agitators When students protested the Vietnam War, they were called traitors. At Kent State, four were killed by the National Guard. Many Americans blamed the students. When Japanese Americans were incarcerated during WWII, it was justified as precaution.

The pattern is not subtle. It’s consistent. Authoritarian impulses gain power not because dictators are strong, but because ordinary citizens surrender moral clarity in exchange for promised security.

Religious language has historically been one of the most effective vehicles for this surrender. A movement that can claim divine sanction is shielded from critique.

That is why Christian nationalism is so potent and so dangerous. It offers believers a story in which they are both victims and heroes. Threatened and righteous. Persecuted and powerful.

• The problem is not patriotism. The problem is when patriotism becomes exclusionary.
• The problem is not faith. The problem is when faith becomes a political weapon.
• The danger is not dissent. The danger is when dissent is criminalized.

Every generation believes its fear is justified.

History suggests otherwise.

The beliefs of the KKK have never gone away in America; they just now wear a hat of a different color – a red one.