Brad Onishi, a scholar of religion with the University of San Francisco who has written extensively about Christian nationalism, raised red flags on MSNBC on Wednesday about the rhetoric the Department of Homeland Security is using to recruit people to become deportation officers for the Trump administration.
"What comes next, Brad? I guess that is my question," said anchor Antonia Hylton. "What comes next, and what do you make of DHS incorporating this kind of imagery and these thematics in official government propaganda?"
"What we're seeing is an escalation, an escalation of Christian nationalist rhetoric," said Onishi. "And if we just take ... that last ad that you highlighted, it's about a minute long. It includes an overlay of a voice saying — here's a Bible verse I've thought about many times, and that Bible verse is, 'Here I am, Lord, send me.' It's from Isaiah, chapter six. And of course, the imagery there is of soldiers, of DHS agents, of people who are engaging in what seems to be DHS operations, folks getting ready for conflict, for warfare, for battle."
"To me, there's something there that we really have to notice," Onishi continued. "That's not just an ad that says, hey, if you join up with DHS, if you become an ICE agent, that's a good career path for you, maybe this is a new start. That's not an ad that says, join up in a patriotic endeavor, something that you might think of as a great American program that started by, you know, Donald Trump. This is an ad that says, if you join up with us, DHS and ICE, you are answering a call from God. You're entering a holy war. You are answering the call to play a part in a story that is transcendent."
This idea, he said, is "Christian nationalism in a nutshell. It commingles nationalistic rhetoric and ideas, and it gives them authority by bringing in religious imagery, scripture, symbolism, and so on. And to me, that ad is a dangerous escalation."
"We've seen this kind of rhetoric for a long time, especially since Trump entered public life," Onishi added. "To see it from the official DHS account online is, is truly frightening."
Watch the video below or at the link here.
- YouTube youtu.be
