Because we were "perfect" and "God's chosen nation," we reacted to any civil rights protests or protests in general by assuming they were in bad-faith and evil.

We believed it was a plot against us, something out of the Book of Revelation, and reacted with violence.

15/
One thing you have to understand, with nationalist myths, is that there has to be a belief in "conspirators" and "traitors" that explains when things go wrong.

If the country has God's will, after all, losses and failures have to be blamed on someone or something else.

16/
This myth of the "Knife in the Back" was used by Adolf Hitler to explain Germany's troubles. Germany, like the US, was held captive by a nationalist myth of being the universe's chosen nation and people.

This nationalist myth leads to fascism and the conspiracy powers it.

17/
In the "perfect" United States, there had to be a reason why African Americans protested for equal rights.

After all, we had been "scrubbed clean" of white supremacy with Lincoln's death and the Civil War.

The explanation was that it was a conspiracy against the US.

18/
Neo-Confederate preachers like Jerry Falwell opposed desegregation and Civil Rights, preaching that God had "drawn a line of distinction" and that equality was sinful.

He portrayed protesters as bad-faith, communist actors, and claimed they were devilish.

19/
To understand the modern moment, you have to look at this moment in history and see that Civil Rights was portrayed as a communist conspiracy, its leaders as anti-American, as terrorists.

This is what the Right does. It relies on that religious, nationalist myth.

20/
What happens is that protesters are considered traitors, terrorists, conspirators, they're motivated by anti-American actors, part of a satanic conspiracy against "God's chosen country."

They're met with brutality. Injured. Beaten. Murdered. All in "self-defense."

21/
Any conversation about the modern moment would be remiss if we didn't talk about how the Neo-Confederate American myth married with Ronald Reagan and how we ended up in this bizarre, dangerous situation where reality is completely warped and many Americans lost in paranoia.

22/
Reagan is the modern Right's inspiration as he resurrected the idea of American Exceptionalism after the tumult of the 1970's, claiming that America should be "a shining city on the hill," a beacon for the world, a champion in God and freedom's name.

It was a civic revival.

23/
Reagan's revival of American Exceptionalism and the Shining City On The Hill was planted with a myth he told about how the Founding was divinely inspired, how an angel appeared and urged Founders to sign the Declaration.

This is a cornerstone of the modern Right.

24/
The only problem is that it never happened. The legend was a lie told by a guru named Manley P. Hall who claimed to divine "ancient knowledge" and gave talks to New Agers like Reagan in California.

It was all a giant hoax and it continues to reverberate to this day.

25/
What Hall believed, and relayed to Reagan, was that America was a project of freedom and liberty that'd been created through God's will and centuries worth of secret societies.

It was bizarre, paranoid, involved rantings about Atlantis, but it inspired Reagan.

26/
Reagan sold Americans on American Exceptionalism again, the idea that we were God's chosen nation, that we were in a supernatural fight against "Evil," which was whoever opposed us.

It was a supernatural world and we were continually vulnerable to a devilish opponent.

27/
Because Reagan wielded the weapon of American Exceptionalism, his campaign strategists determined they needed to make him the embodiment of American myth.

They laid all their fortunes on this idea, that he could be a living embodiment of American mythologies.

28/
It worked. Reagan won a landslide reelection and became a mythological character. It didn't matter that he ran up the deficit, hardly worked at all, didn't understand his briefings, and was controlled by conservative think-tanks.

He was a living symbol of exceptionalism.

29/
When the USSR fell, however, America was without its Satanic counterbalance. It needed an opponent that the mythology and nationalist faith could fear and combat.

Unfortunately, the American Right found its next evil right here in the United States.

30/
The globalist structure was a project of Reagan and George H.W. Bush, but it came to fruition and NAFTA was signed by Bill Clinton, with the backing of Republicans.

This new economic structure changed everything, and was turned into the New World Order conspiracy.

31/
The New World Order conspiracy theory is a reprisal of antisemitic conspiracies mixed with the American nationalist, Christian mythology.

The Right once more claimed the Left were traitors, in league with a satanic conspiracy to undermine America, God's chosen country.

32/
One of the most powerful propagandists of the New World Order conspiracy theory was Roger Ailes and his network Fox News, which quietly peddled the NWO as a constant threat to white Americans without saying it explicitly.

But it was all there. Right under the surface.

33/
In Fox and the Right's paranoid New World Order fantasy, America was under attack by outsiders, Satanic forces, people of color being manipulated, and liberal traitors.

They were the Knife in the Back, the people responsible for any failure that might take place.

34/
The disturbing truth is that this bizarre alternate reality is all based on the American Exceptionalism myth, the idea that we're locked in a supernatural, Christian struggle between God and the Devil and that supernatural events are determining our day-to-day evens.

35/
What Fox and the Right are selling to Americans is a bizarre reality where white people are under attack by traitors and evil forces determined to unseat Christianity and white supremacy.

This has been the Right's call since the Founding of this country, it's only growing.

36/
And, as the Left is an antichrist-like figure, it's only natural, in the white-identity Neo-Confederate world, for there to be a balance: a messiah.

Trump is that figure because he has embraced the mantel but also because he embodies the white supremacist ideology.

37/
The "Deep State" is just the New World Order conspiracy theory with new paint, a brand-new "Knife in the Back" that explains every one of Trump's failing.

Like it was in 1930's Germany, it is an explanation of how a chosen, perfect country and leader could fail.

38/
With the pandemic, the Knife in the Back tells us that traitors are either creating this crisis to unseat God's country or their using it for nefarious plans

Trump couldn't have failed, after all. America couldn't have failed. They're God's chosen. It has to be a conspiracy

39/
This is how the pandemic becomes a satanic conspiracy, a vaccine an attempt at the Christian "Mark of the Beast."

It's another chapter in the white supremacist, nationalistic, Neo-Confederate Christian mythology. God's chosen nation under attack by Satan and traitors.

40/
Once more, protesters asking for protecting and their rights are being portrayed as terrorists, as threats, white supremacists claiming they have to brutalize them, shred the Constitution, and adopt any means necessary

They're evil, after all. They're out to destroy America

41/
It's this mythological worldview, that American Exceptionalism and our position as God's chosen country, that inspires extralegal measures, brutal attacks, anything to repel evil, anti-American terrorists and traitors.

This isn't just a war, it's a HOLY WAR.

42/
These things aren't coincidences. They are the means by which white supremacy has protected itself for generations.

The myth of American Exceptionalism happens to be one of the most powerful weapons ever created, and this is how it maintains power

This weaponized paranoia.

43/
The only way we can escape this death spiral, is to disabuse ourselves of the myth of American Exceptionalism.

It is a weapon that has been used to hold us down since the beginning, and now, like all nationalist, religious myths, it's dragging us into fascism.

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