White Christian Nationalism after the January 6 Insurrection: GiveSendGo's Online Pulpit
| by Phoebe Jones
Abstract
White Christian nationalism–an ideological framework that amalgamates politics and a specific version of Christianity–has risen to mainstream attention in recent years, especially following its visible presence at the January 6, 2021, US Capitol insurrection. Existing work on white Christian nationalism provides strong survey evidence of its core principles, but as of yet, little qualitative work has been done to better understand its narrative structures and individual-level usage. This project analyzes 91 GiveSendGo crowdfunding pages that were established to solicit donations for 96 insurrectionists who were criminally charged for their actions that day. We analyze these posts for signals of white Christian nationalism and examine how post authors use narratives and concepts central white Christian nationalism to construct retroactive narratives about January 6th, its participants, and their political violence. We find that these narratives explicitly and implicitly rely on traditional gender roles to argue that insurrectionists are not only innocent of any criminal wrongdoing but are, in this framework, patriots who are fighting against perceived enemies of both God and nation. This project adds to insights on how such narratives may continue to be used to motivate and justify real-world acts of political violence.