I just fell upon this 'Stack and love it. Marvelous piece of work intelligible to us mere humans (as opposed to, for example Sage Hana), funny, pointed, enlightening. Nice job. Glad I subscribed.
Doug Wilson is unfortunately not the Christian Nationalist you were warned about. Stephen Wolfe and Andrew Iskar are those Christian Nationalists. Wilson is more of a boomer, Daily Wire, thenomic libertarian. Wilson's doxxed our guys and strongly gatekeeps right wing politics.
These are adjacent to my circles (reformed and presbyterian). Most Presbyterian groups have a history that follows back before the founding of America with European origins (mostly Scotland, England, and Netherlands) and the various splinters that have occurred around the Civil War, The Mainline Modernism Controversies, responses to the Great Awakening, and so on.
Wilson however is basically self appointed and self ordained, who holds to an eclectic blend of theological and political views that borrows from all over, but identifies as Presbyterian. He holds views greatly at odds with the traditional views of Presbyterians to the point that many are borderline if not actually heretical views. Because of these theological views, other denominations will not have him, and as a bid for legitimacy he started his own denomination, the CREC, his own college, and his own publishing company. The CREC is essentially a place for theological outcasts to flee to where they will have safe haven to minister, but the CREC standards are so broad they are functionally unenforceable, and you can be Presbyterian, Baptist, Congregationalist, or Anglican and still be part of the denomination. I could talk for hours on the details of the theological issues but that is not exactly the point. Because the CREC was a safe haven, it became a place where based pastors could flee to avoid longhousing from old guard boomers and with the Covid regime this growth accelerated. Average people are not theology nerds and aren't aware of the history or the issues, they just see what seems like based people being based.
Now, Wilson himself has a political philosophy based in Reconstructionism which gained notoriety in the 1970s under RJ Rushdoony and Greg Bahnsen, both of whom had novel views of politics, arguing that political law is prescriptive based on the laws of the Bible, functionally arguing that the laws of the Pentateuch are demanded by God for all nations. Gary North would later synthesize this view with Austrian Economics creating a sort of functional Christian Libertarianism by extrapolating a few biblical facts about property and arguing from the lack of biblical laws against X meaning that no government could ever legislate something not touched on by the Bible.
Wilson being the most popular figure in the CREC carries a lot of influence but being a big tent there is a lot of diversity on all issues, including politics. The CREC has its own feminist shrills, its own longhousing, its own boomer cons, but it also has some who have more NRx or New Right politics. This is especially true of the CREC church in Pella, Iowa. Pella being an ethnic Dutch city that never had its Dutch culture destroyed, the CREC church there has much more race-realist opinions and other verboten ideas that Wilson's gatekept including doxxing some of the members in his blogs, including of a screenshot of one of the members retweeting Andrew Torba of gab as evidence of racism. That guy had already lost his job once from being doxxed in an unrelated situation.
Complicating this further, Stephen Wolfe of Ars Politica wrote the book on Christian Nationalism and published via Doug's publishing co, Canon, but Wolfe's book is not theonomic libertarian, creating the awkward situation of the Wilson affiliated media attacking the principles espoused in Wolfe's book which he published.
Additionally, Wolfe's Ars Politica cohost was majorly doxxed (a different guy than above) - this was national news. It was when Rod Dreher had a public freakout and betrayed our guys, leading Charles Haywood to comment, "NETTR!" That doxxing came by way of FBI agent Brian Auten through Devanant Institute (using Alastair Roberts as a cats paw). This is the same agent who suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop.
Ultimately the Wilson media empire show signs that it wants to be a major player in conservative talk radio like Daily Wire or Tucker, and they have a show called CrossPolitic to this end - very cringe show. Anyway that is a high level summary.
Wow, thank you for the thorough summary! I do remember the Dreher doxxing and subsequent NETTR conversation. A generous explanation for Wilson's behavior would be that he simply must police the outer fringe of his movement so as to not torpedo their chances of growing in power and influence. Do you think there's any merit to that approach? Or is he just a cuck?
Wilson actually enjoys controversy, and maintains a permanent location on his blog to highlight a selection of them because he knows the principle that all publicity is good publicity and is in the position to profit from exposure. The majority of the criticism comes from libs and he knows that the optics of owning the libs and being hated by them actually promote the brand. Tons of people move to Moscow, ID to be a part of the movement and the operate a subscription service for their content on Canon+. He wrote a book about Christians adopting Alinsky tactics called "Rule for Reformers" and consciously engages tactically.
He's done his own race dog whistles, writing a book on American slavery that wasn't apologetic called Black & Tan. He also talked about owning the libs by having white babies. So he's not afraid of the controversy associated with race, but he absolutely does gatekeep on racial realist positions.
A big part of this is that Wilson is heavily influenced by George Gilder, who is a mega cuck and was literally adopted by a Rockefeller. Canon recently republished one of his books and beclowned themselves in promoting it. Gilder said for example that opposition to Israel always comes from envy of success. Gilder's wife won't even let him have coffee in the house. He believes that men are tamed by women from being brutes and that all men have deep seated homoerotic urges. Weird stuff.
I think the more likely explanation of Wilson's motives is that his platform and decades of content and intellectual property is based on a certain strand of political thinking that is on the way out and he has to gatekeep that in order for you to have a reason to subscribe to Canon+, want to be a part of his church, send your kid to his school, etc.
Wilson seems to be getting to the point of breakout success with mainstream players legitimizing him, and with that comes a level of seriousness he is not used to. He is used to deflecting his controversies with Chestertonian witticisms and country slangs, but as he gains prominence people expect more seriousness, which is part of what made the Tucker interview awkward. Wilson kept making jokes that Tucker didn't know to laugh at.
Deep down evangelicals have been longhoused for a long time and I think most have really internalized it as being biblical and people aren't faking it, but sincerely believe it and believe that it is being biblical. There is kind of a budding controversy between red pilled or vitalist takes on women and trad con takes on women, with most evangelicals being trad con. Historically the fight was always trad con vs. feminist, so being trad con feels like it is on the right, but this is why we are constantly duped by figures like Nala, or getting "based women" as conservative talk show hosts.
Doug's view of relationships is based on courtship over against dating, which is supposed to be based because it involves asking the father, wooing the girl, etc. but functionally turns into gamma males prostrating themselves to win pedestalled women and then jump through the hoops of the dad. I'd argue that the bible is not prescriptive of how we should pair up but that if we were to follow it as an example it would be more legitimate to treat women as property for dad's to give away as reward for military action... which I don't think most people want to do that these days...
By the way finding PPP loans for the new Floyds is free, you can do it at home
I dream of a future where every single criminal in the headlines has their PPP loans revealed
People are gonna start giving you the bat signal for the PPP loan reveal.
I just fell upon this 'Stack and love it. Marvelous piece of work intelligible to us mere humans (as opposed to, for example Sage Hana), funny, pointed, enlightening. Nice job. Glad I subscribed.
Very nice to hear, thank you!
How do these keep getting better and better?
Thanks, we're trying!
Doug Wilson is unfortunately not the Christian Nationalist you were warned about. Stephen Wolfe and Andrew Iskar are those Christian Nationalists. Wilson is more of a boomer, Daily Wire, thenomic libertarian. Wilson's doxxed our guys and strongly gatekeeps right wing politics.
Doxxed? I'm not familiar with the lore here.
These are adjacent to my circles (reformed and presbyterian). Most Presbyterian groups have a history that follows back before the founding of America with European origins (mostly Scotland, England, and Netherlands) and the various splinters that have occurred around the Civil War, The Mainline Modernism Controversies, responses to the Great Awakening, and so on.
Wilson however is basically self appointed and self ordained, who holds to an eclectic blend of theological and political views that borrows from all over, but identifies as Presbyterian. He holds views greatly at odds with the traditional views of Presbyterians to the point that many are borderline if not actually heretical views. Because of these theological views, other denominations will not have him, and as a bid for legitimacy he started his own denomination, the CREC, his own college, and his own publishing company. The CREC is essentially a place for theological outcasts to flee to where they will have safe haven to minister, but the CREC standards are so broad they are functionally unenforceable, and you can be Presbyterian, Baptist, Congregationalist, or Anglican and still be part of the denomination. I could talk for hours on the details of the theological issues but that is not exactly the point. Because the CREC was a safe haven, it became a place where based pastors could flee to avoid longhousing from old guard boomers and with the Covid regime this growth accelerated. Average people are not theology nerds and aren't aware of the history or the issues, they just see what seems like based people being based.
Now, Wilson himself has a political philosophy based in Reconstructionism which gained notoriety in the 1970s under RJ Rushdoony and Greg Bahnsen, both of whom had novel views of politics, arguing that political law is prescriptive based on the laws of the Bible, functionally arguing that the laws of the Pentateuch are demanded by God for all nations. Gary North would later synthesize this view with Austrian Economics creating a sort of functional Christian Libertarianism by extrapolating a few biblical facts about property and arguing from the lack of biblical laws against X meaning that no government could ever legislate something not touched on by the Bible.
Wilson being the most popular figure in the CREC carries a lot of influence but being a big tent there is a lot of diversity on all issues, including politics. The CREC has its own feminist shrills, its own longhousing, its own boomer cons, but it also has some who have more NRx or New Right politics. This is especially true of the CREC church in Pella, Iowa. Pella being an ethnic Dutch city that never had its Dutch culture destroyed, the CREC church there has much more race-realist opinions and other verboten ideas that Wilson's gatekept including doxxing some of the members in his blogs, including of a screenshot of one of the members retweeting Andrew Torba of gab as evidence of racism. That guy had already lost his job once from being doxxed in an unrelated situation.
Complicating this further, Stephen Wolfe of Ars Politica wrote the book on Christian Nationalism and published via Doug's publishing co, Canon, but Wolfe's book is not theonomic libertarian, creating the awkward situation of the Wilson affiliated media attacking the principles espoused in Wolfe's book which he published.
Additionally, Wolfe's Ars Politica cohost was majorly doxxed (a different guy than above) - this was national news. It was when Rod Dreher had a public freakout and betrayed our guys, leading Charles Haywood to comment, "NETTR!" That doxxing came by way of FBI agent Brian Auten through Devanant Institute (using Alastair Roberts as a cats paw). This is the same agent who suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop.
Ultimately the Wilson media empire show signs that it wants to be a major player in conservative talk radio like Daily Wire or Tucker, and they have a show called CrossPolitic to this end - very cringe show. Anyway that is a high level summary.
Wow, thank you for the thorough summary! I do remember the Dreher doxxing and subsequent NETTR conversation. A generous explanation for Wilson's behavior would be that he simply must police the outer fringe of his movement so as to not torpedo their chances of growing in power and influence. Do you think there's any merit to that approach? Or is he just a cuck?
Wilson actually enjoys controversy, and maintains a permanent location on his blog to highlight a selection of them because he knows the principle that all publicity is good publicity and is in the position to profit from exposure. The majority of the criticism comes from libs and he knows that the optics of owning the libs and being hated by them actually promote the brand. Tons of people move to Moscow, ID to be a part of the movement and the operate a subscription service for their content on Canon+. He wrote a book about Christians adopting Alinsky tactics called "Rule for Reformers" and consciously engages tactically.
He's done his own race dog whistles, writing a book on American slavery that wasn't apologetic called Black & Tan. He also talked about owning the libs by having white babies. So he's not afraid of the controversy associated with race, but he absolutely does gatekeep on racial realist positions.
A big part of this is that Wilson is heavily influenced by George Gilder, who is a mega cuck and was literally adopted by a Rockefeller. Canon recently republished one of his books and beclowned themselves in promoting it. Gilder said for example that opposition to Israel always comes from envy of success. Gilder's wife won't even let him have coffee in the house. He believes that men are tamed by women from being brutes and that all men have deep seated homoerotic urges. Weird stuff.
I think the more likely explanation of Wilson's motives is that his platform and decades of content and intellectual property is based on a certain strand of political thinking that is on the way out and he has to gatekeep that in order for you to have a reason to subscribe to Canon+, want to be a part of his church, send your kid to his school, etc.
Wilson seems to be getting to the point of breakout success with mainstream players legitimizing him, and with that comes a level of seriousness he is not used to. He is used to deflecting his controversies with Chestertonian witticisms and country slangs, but as he gains prominence people expect more seriousness, which is part of what made the Tucker interview awkward. Wilson kept making jokes that Tucker didn't know to laugh at.
Deep down evangelicals have been longhoused for a long time and I think most have really internalized it as being biblical and people aren't faking it, but sincerely believe it and believe that it is being biblical. There is kind of a budding controversy between red pilled or vitalist takes on women and trad con takes on women, with most evangelicals being trad con. Historically the fight was always trad con vs. feminist, so being trad con feels like it is on the right, but this is why we are constantly duped by figures like Nala, or getting "based women" as conservative talk show hosts.
Doug's view of relationships is based on courtship over against dating, which is supposed to be based because it involves asking the father, wooing the girl, etc. but functionally turns into gamma males prostrating themselves to win pedestalled women and then jump through the hoops of the dad. I'd argue that the bible is not prescriptive of how we should pair up but that if we were to follow it as an example it would be more legitimate to treat women as property for dad's to give away as reward for military action... which I don't think most people want to do that these days...
Thx again for all this, really upping the quality of discourse around here!
Hey! That fat retard that stabbed kids in the river is GenX, not a boomer. We boomers have surpassed our quota of fat retards and don’t need anymore.
The Wifejack is dead. Long live the Wifejack.
And once again, I am driven from any desire to look for political cooperation on the internet.
Check out bro. Get offline. You’re just playing a loser game with loser online friends.
um, exqueeze me?