Joel Webbon, a Christian nationalist who believes women should not have the right to vote and Jewish people should not be able to hold public office in the U.S., devoted an episode of his “New Christian Right” podcast to reveling in recent media coverage he has received, treating it as evidence of the ascendancy of his antisemitic, anti-feminist, and anti-equality brand of Christian nationalism among right-wing youth and young adults.
One of Webbon’s co-hosts read from a recent New York Times article that quoted Webbon writing “the youth are ours” after attending the recent Conservative Political Action Conference. That article quotes an administration official estimating that 75 percent of young Republican staffers are groypers, the name given to followers of the antisemitic and racist “America First” online personality Nick Fuentes.
On the podcast, Webbon described young people feeling betrayed by Trump’s decision to go to war and being radicalized by the lack of economic opportunity and declining expectations for their quality of life. “They’re like, we can’t pay for gas, we can’t pay for groceries, we can’t afford a house, we can’t get married, we can’t start a family.”
Webbon has an all-too-familiar answer to those frustrations: blame the Jews. Webbon described President Donald Trump’s war against Iran as just the latest episode in an ongoing cycle of American politics being manipulated by both conservative and liberal Jews. He suggested that the Trump administration “pretended to put the woke away just long enough to get the young Christian Southern white boys in the military to go and fight the war and die.”
So like, this is American politics in a nutshell. You need to understand this. You have right-wing Jews and left-wing Jews, right? The GOP and the DNC. So you have war Jews and gay Jews, war Jews and homosexual Jews.
When the war Jews are in charge, they fight Muslims because they're very, very, very dangerous, which displaces them. Then, all of a sudden, four years later, or maybe eight, and the left-wing Jews are in charge, and then they open up our borders and say, we need to have sympathy and compassion and let these refugees in.
…That's American politics. If you're wondering, what is American politics? It is Jewish supremacy, gay Jews on the left, war Jews on the right. Gay Jews on the left, war Jews on the right. Those are your choices. The only alternative is an American first Christian nationalism.
Webbon laid out four characteristics that a genuinely “America first, America only, Christian nationalist” candidate would have to exhibit to earn his vote:
- He must be unapologetically and explicitly Christian nationalist
- He must be anti-feminist and anti-egalitarian and “be willing to say some form of this: ‘Women, go home. It's time to bake pies. Go home. We do not need loudmouth, boss babe, pantsuit women in politics, leading men, disparaging men.’”
- He must be a “race realist” and “be able to say, ‘We don't have a gun problem in the United States. We have a black crime problem in the United States.’”
- He must be “J-pilled” and go beyond criticism of Israel to say, “There is a Jewish problem.”
Webbon said that if Christian nationalists will refuse to vote for anyone who does not meet the above criteria, “then guess what—they’ll run those candidates.”
Webbon went on to say, “It’s not all Jews, but it’s always Jews” behind “degenerate filth” in entertainment and mass migration to “replace all the white young men in their jobs.”
Webbon criticized Trump for elevating people like Pam Bondi and Kash Patel in his administration, saying it was “playing to a leftist framework around diversity.”
The true strong man, right? The true Caesar who will come, when he comes, he won't play to leftist tropes. He won't. He won't give the pretense of diversity….He'll mock it. He'll say, no, we're not going to pretend to be diverse because we're not going, what fellowship does light have with darkness? What fellowship does evil have with good? What fellowship does Christ have with Beelzebub? Diversity is an egalitarian scheme.
Webbon went on to insist that diversity is neither a strength nor a virtue, and should be “outright publicly, unapologetically rejected.”
He claimed biblical support for his belief that not only is it is an offense to God for women to have influence in the governing of society, it is actually God’s way of punishing nations that rebel against him:
Women in positions, formal positions of civil governing authority are God's judgment on a nation, his punishment on a nation. Because if you think what could hurt a nation, God's rod of discipline, punishment for a nation steeped in idolatry, a nation that's rebelling against him, God looks at a nation like that and says, ‘They're disobedient, they must be disciplined, and it has to hurt so they might come to their senses and repent.’ And when God thinks, ‘I need discipline, will hurt this nation currently in rebellion,’ he thinks, ‘I know what will hurt: women in leadership.’
Nothing hurts more than women in formal leadership, because they will do exactly the opposite of everything that leads to prosperity and life and blessing. And the nation will be crushed under their incompetent, deceptive, and foolish leadership. And eventually they will cry out and say, God, save us from this gynocracy. Save us from this woman-ruled world. We earned it by our rebellion and our idolatry. We earned your rod. And the rod has written on it, women in leadership. We earned it. We deserved it. We repent in dust and ashes. We cannot take another day of women leading our government. Please have mercy. Please have mercy.
Webbon is part of a loose network of far-right Christian figures that some people call “theobros.” Along with Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers, former Trump administration official William Wolfe, and others, Webbon contributed to “The Statement on Christian Nationalism and the Gospel," which declared that the United States must formally “acknowledge the Lordship of Christ” in all its laws, “abolish abortion,” outlaw marriage equality, and “recapture our national sovereignty from godless, global entities who present a grave threat to civilization.” The statement was published by Canon Press, Christian nationalist Doug Wilson’s publishing arm.
