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Welcome back to False Flag! I’m normally not one to look backwards. The exhausting churn of the newsletter-writing beat prevents excessive retrospection. But sometimes, I admit to feeling the itch to consider past work.
Tuesday’s newsletter on pro-Trump influencer Ryan Fournier’s arrest and his accompanying fake Secret Service badge debacle has—I’m told—become a real talker in Washington’s MAGA social scene. Fournier is a wild character, even in those circles. And there has been some anticipation as to how he would respond to the item. After all, he had promised to post an X thread explaining himself. But, as of now, he has not.
And so, we move forward. Today we’ve got a look at the divisions growing in the world of Christian nationalism, which were worsened by a recent conference at which a sponsor booth featured overtly pro-Nazi literature.
From MAGA influencers fighting over Secret Service badges to pastors fighting over Third Reich memoirs, how do I keep it all straight? Only with the support of our Bulwark+ members. Join up!
–Will
Oops, We Invited Nazis to Our Christian Nationalist Conference
Organizers expected controversy, just not *that* controversy.
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THE SECOND TRUMP TERM has been a great time for Christian nationalists seeking to make the United States into an explicitly Christian state. Their leading pastors have been embraced by administration figures like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
But behind the scenes, things haven’t been going so smoothly. The latest example came when a recent conference left members divided on a key issue: Just how racist is Christian nationalism supposed to be?
Last weekend, roughly 1,500 Christian nationalists from across the country met in Ogden, Utah, for “The War for Normal”—a gathering featuring some of far-right Christianity’s most online thinkers and posters.
Organized by Utah podcasters and pastors Eric Conn and Brian Sauvé, the conference had an undeniable macho, MAGAfied flair. Speakers were announced via nicknames like “Big Hoss,” and their almost ubiquitously bearded faces were plastered on wanted posters labeling them outlaws “For Thought Crimes.”
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The organizers and attendees, in other words, were leaning into—even reveling in—a “bad boy,” edgy, naughty vibe. And the conference had the type of attractions you’d expect from an event attempting to blend Christianity with anti-woke politics. There was a single’s mixer for “based” attendees, with chaperones provided. Men could compete “in feats of strength and agility.”
Fatefully, the event also included a booth for Antelope Hill Publishing—an extremist publishing house that has made its name putting out racist books, as well as translating and reprinting old ones. To give you an idea of what we’re dealing with here, Antelope Hill got its start translating the memoir of an unrepentant commander in the Nazi SS. Their current online store is offering not one but two “Third Reich Bundles”—a collection of books written by prominent Nazis for between $126.89 and $180.49.
Antelope Hill didn’t exactly clean up for the big conference. The press tweeted out a picture of its booth, showing stacks of both the SS memoir, Burning Souls, and other pro-Nazi books like The Essential Speeches of Adolf Hitler.
Making matters worse, Antelope Hill also handed out a flyer recommending other racist and weirdly esoteric websites attendees might want to check out in their spare time. One flyer lists its “heroes” as people like American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell. Another website endorsed by Antelope Hill praises Cosmotheism, a strange religion started by William Luther Pierce III, who was—you guessed it—an American neo-Nazi.
Another website Antelope’s flyer endorsed sold white supremacist terrorism books like The Turner Diaries. The flyer also promoted Man’s World, the bizarre men’s magazine by right-wing writer “Raw Egg Nationalist,” whose book Antelope published.
All in all, the appearance of such overtly pro-Hitler work provoked criticism among more moderate Christian nationalists. Talk-radio host Erick Erickson called it a “mess.”
“I have been going to Reformed Christian conferences of varying sizes for 33 years, and I have never been to one that was selling pro-Third Reich, Pro-Nazi books,” noted one pastor on X.