Our country was built on this idea of racial superiority. With America's long standing and deeply rooted history of white nationalism, Dr. Damon Berry, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at St. Lawrence University, joins us to discuss the role Christianity has played within the Alt right and American white nationalism.

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Noelle: Can you give our listeners a little bit of some historical background here with that?

Dr. Damon: Sure. Sure. You know, the elements that become modern white nationalism had existed before. For example, Charles Lindbergh. The Charles Lindbergh wanted to avoid World War II when he was part of the America First movement. In part because he didn't want to see Europeans killing each other again. He felt that the actual threat was the rising tide of Color to call upon an earlier work of white nationalist idealism, so that the notions that inform pan-European white nationalism post-World War II didn't necessarily get invented after World War II but they come together in a particular way after the defeat of state-based fascisms in Germany and in Italy, and they come out of… a lot of the ideas come out of the work of an American named Francis Parker Yaki, who is then championed later by people like Willis Carto and a person I wrote a lot about, Revilo Oliver, in rethinking exactly what the right wing in America should look like. So, the things that primarily identify American white nationalism is of course pan-Europeanism, right? So, their allegiance is not to the American government, as a matter of fact, they by and large view the American government as the enemy and they view racial identity or white identity as the basic political motive and foundation of any state and that that's what they try to create. Now, how they understand that is different? So, and as that continues post-World War II, leading off of Yaki, Oliver and others, you get further developments of this and of course the latest mutation, if we can use that word, that people are probably most familiar with is in the context of the alt-right and especially articulated by people like Richard Spencer.

Miranda: Yeah, definitely. Well, then over time, Damon, we see… well, at least we've… we perceive that there's been kind of two different camps that have emerged. You know, there's this one that rejects religion entirely and then one that incorporates it into white nationalism, you know, as you've been speaking. So, can you tell a little bit more about that evolution?

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Join us for season 2 as we explore extremism, the Alt-Right, hate crimes, and the blurred lines of religion underneath it all.

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