National Guard Shooting Reveals the Right’s Dangerous Western Supremacy

Brad Onishi: Welcome to Straight White American Jesus. I'm Brad Onishi, founder of Axis Mundi Media, scholar of religion, author of Preparing for War. Today, I want to talk about the response to the killing of a National Guardsperson last week and the shooting of one other. The response to this incident, which is tragic and harrowing and horrific, reveals something that I've been talking about on this pod for a long time.

We are long past a stage, I think, of what we might call Christian nationalism in this country. If Christian nationalism is the idea of wanting to have a Christian nation because the country has a Christian history, has been influenced by Christian people, and in some minds has been built for and by Christians—well, that's not an ideology I think is democratic. It's one I think is harmful. It's something I've told thousands of audiences and everyone listening to this pod hundreds of times is harmful. It leads to xenophobia. It often leads to racism. It often leads to patriarchy and misogyny and so much more.

But what I've been trying to show all of you over the last month is something that I think is beyond that now in ways that are quite startling, and we see that in the response to what happened in DC last week.

Last week, Sarah Beckstrom, a 20-year-old who joined the National Guard two years ago after graduating from high school in West Virginia, died on Thanksgiving Day. Her colleague and friend, Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolfe, is still in the hospital. The suspect in this shooting is somebody who was born in Afghanistan and came here in the last couple of years. According to ABC News, they previously worked with the US government, including the CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar, which ended in 2021 following the withdrawal from Afghanistan. According to CIA Director John Ratcliffe, he applied for asylum in 2024 and was granted asylum in April under the Trump administration. According to sources in Afghanistan, the suspect was involved with the Zero Unit, working closely with the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command. The suspect was a trusted member of that team which went after US counterterrorism targets, according to sources.

So despite what Donald Trump says—and he has reacted to this by saying that this was all Biden's fault—this person was granted asylum in 2024. We can talk about a lot of things with this. We could talk about Afghanistan, America's withdrawal. Talk about foreign policy. We could talk about why this person was here, what caused them to make the disgusting and tragic decision to attack these two National Guardspeople. We could talk all about the fact that the National Guard shouldn't be in DC at all, that they've been spending their time walking around and picking up trash, that Sarah Beckstrom, the person who was killed, talked with her boyfriend about the fact that she did not like this deployment, that she was bored and did not see this as part of why she signed up and was trying to make the best of it while living in DC. We could talk about those things for a long time, but today I want to just focus on something that I think is evident in the responses to what happened here.

What you see revealed in the wake of the shooting is Western civilizational supremacy. This is a moment where you see the ideology and worldview and how it's escalated from calling the United States a Christian nation where Christians should be elevated, privileged, somehow given more authority than others. And that's still here—this is not like that's gone. There's plenty of people who still believe that, and especially people who are in high places of power and influence in the Trump administration, those who are part of what we might call the New Apostolic Reformation, those who are part of what we might call legacy evangelicalism. I'm not saying that's gone away.

What I'm saying is that we've reached a place where instead of someone claiming, "Hey, this is a Christian nation, it should be led by Christians because it was built by Christians and it is for Christians, and so if you're someone else—Muslim, Hindu, if you're from South Asia, if you're from the Middle East, if you're from East Asia, if you're from the African continent and you're not a Christian—you can be here. We're not saying this is not a place for you. We hope you convert to Christianity. We hope you become a Christian who will understand our national ethos and founding." Now, as I've argued for years in my book and on this podcast, there's a lot of racism built in there. So it's usually, "Hey, the white Christians will always be in charge, but everyone else, as long as they understand how things are done here and get in line, it's all good." Okay, that's Christian nationalism for the most part.

Now, if you're an expert out there, you're going to have so many examples of ways that might work differently, people for whom that works differently in terms of pastors and pundits and all kinds of folks. The New Apostolic Reformation is way more multi-ethnic and multi-racial than other strands of American evangelicalism. There is a sense in the NAR that you don't have to be white to be a leader. But in many other places, you actually kind of do, all right? But for the most part, I hope you can see—there's this sense of "this is a Christian nation, the white Christians are going to be in charge, everyone else as long as you know your place will be good, and if you convert to Christianity, that's way, way better. We're not going to let you be in charge, but you will be somebody we can trust a little bit and who we can know will do the right thing when it comes to assimilating to this culture." To me, that's Christian nationalism on the whole in this country. Again, lots of examples of how we can do that differently.

What we've reached the point of now is what I have been talking about on this pod for the last month or so, which is civilizational populism. And it's this idea that there are different civilizations in the world. Some of you might be familiar with Samuel Huntington and The Clash of Civilizations, but it's basically like there are Islamic and Hindu and Buddhist and Christian and pagan societies, and they're just not compatible with each other. They're just different. There's just not a way to make them work in the same society. These different civilizations have a history, a culture, and a religion. This comes out of work, as I've said before, by Yilmaz and Morieson and Rogers Brubaker and some others. And I'll be talking more about this on the pod, and I certainly talk more about it in my book that's coming out next year.

But what that leads to in the United States is what I would call Western supremacy. It's the idea that we have a Western civilization, the United States is the leader and the preeminent power of that Western civilization, and that Western civilization is superior to all other civilizations. So there might be Hindu and Muslim societies, there might be an African civilization in the mind of whoever in this country, there might be a Buddhist civilization in Sri Lanka or Myanmar or in Thailand or wherever, there might be a Chinese civilization—we can go down the road here—but Western civilization, born in Greece, developed in Rome, flowered in medieval Christendom, carried on in early modern Europe, leading to the founding of the United States, this is the most superior, moral, virtuous, good, upright civilization in the world, in world history.

There's a lot of Christianity built into that. But what I want you to see today is that you don't have to be a Christian and you don't have to frame things in Christian terms to put forward, to advance this idea of Western supremacy. You can say, "Look, Western civilization is superior." You might be Jewish, you can fit in. You might be Elon Musk. You might be Stephen Miller, who has Jewish ancestry, and you can still advance Western supremacy and fit in with all the other folks who are part of the movement and part of this worldview. And that includes many, many, many Christian nationalists. The Christian nationalists—it's not one of these situations where you give up Christian nationalism in favor of Western supremacy. No, your Christian nationalism fits into your Western supremacy, because you can say, "Yes, America is a Christian nation, built by and for Christians. It's the best country because it's part of a Western civilization that has been Christian longer than any other." Greece might have set the stage for democracy, great, but then Christ comes and the Roman Empire is converted. Constantine was good news in the fourth century, and the Roman Empire became a Christian empire, and that led to a Christian civilization called Christendom that eventually led to the United States, which was built forward by Christians. So my Christian nationalism fits right in there. But I'm also not mad at the other people who advance Western civilization.

So after what happened last week, a man named Samo Burja tweeted, "The United States of America is the last stand of Western civilization. It lives or dies here. Let's hope it lives." Elon Musk quote-tweeted Sam and said, "America will live." So here's Elon Musk, somebody who is not a Christian. When he was pressed about this at Charlie Kirk's funeral, he sort of gestured towards Christianity, but he's talked about being a cultural Christian. This is not a guy who's in church. This is not a guy like Pete Hegseth who's going to listen to Doug Wilson all the time. But this idea of Western civilization, the last stand, this is it.

Now, what is a big part of this whole worldview? It is that invaders coming from civilizations that are not compatible with this one are a threat to our Western way of life. They are a threat to our society. Let me play a clip from Fox News that illustrates how this is all articulated by those who adhere to Western supremacy.

Fox News Commentator: We do not have any obligation whatsoever to anyone to allow them entry into our country and to all of the benefits that that offers. We don't have any obligation to do that. And quite frankly, it's asinine that we can't have a realistic policy conversation about how certain cultures are quite literally incompatible with ours. It should be okay to say that, and more importantly, it should be okay to base our immigration policy on that. So I'm glad that President Trump is taking some steps in that direction because it is a long time coming indeed.

Brad: Now, this was articulated by Donald Trump himself in what was a long and hate-filled tweet on November 27th, Thanksgiving. In very Trumpian fashion, he begins by saying "a very happy Thanksgiving"—and for any other president it would say "to all those hard-working Americans out there, anyone in this country, we give thanks today"—but not him: "To all our great American citizens and patriots who have been so nice in allowing our country to be divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged and laughed at, along with certain other foolish countries throughout the world, for being politically correct and just plain stupid when it comes to immigration."

So here it is: immigration is the problem. Everything that's happened in this country—the wrong, the inequality, the pain, the suffering, the economic hardship, whatever you want to talk about—is all the fault of the immigrant. And we've heard this from Trump for a decade now. He talks about how there's supposedly 53 million people from other countries who are migrants. Most of them, he says, are on welfare. And here's something I think is really key: they are from failed nations. And he talks about how they're at best mooching off of the United States—that you might make $30,000 a year, but you're going to get $50,000 in yearly benefits, okay? But he goes on to say something in this long tweet that I think is really important.

"I will permanently pause migration from all third-world countries to allow the US system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden's auto-pen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States or is incapable of loving our country."

The Western supremacist says, "Look, if you're from Afghanistan, if you're from Sub-Saharan Africa and you're not white, if you're from the Middle East—generally other than Israel, you're not Israeli—you're not capable of loving this country. The person from South Asia, from India, from Sri Lanka, you're not capable of loving this country. You're just not compatible here." Just like we heard on Fox News. Look what he says in the next paragraph: he's going to denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility. "Domestic tranquility"—you're not compatible here, therefore you're an infection, a pollutant. You are disrupting a very good ecosystem. And deport any foreign national who is a public charge, security risk, or—and I quote—"non-compatible with Western civilization."

That is what Donald Trump put on Thanksgiving. The US Department of Labor the next day tweeted, "The fight for Western civilization has begun, and Americanism will prevail."

The same day, Kevin Roberts, leader of the Heritage Foundation, shepherd of Project 2025, somebody who has been in hot water because he would not condemn Tucker Carlson for Tucker Carlson's platforming of Nick Fuentes, tweeted this: "We will not apologize for our American heritage. And as I told my friends in Madrid, no other Western nation should apologize for theirs either. We must protect our way of life by forging a politics that safeguards the things that made Western civilization great in the first place."

Here's a short clip of Kevin Roberts talking about Western civilization and what it means to protect it.

Kevin Roberts: And so if in fact we're going to be the party of creation, we're going to create not just a new politics, maybe new political parties, but we're going to create, even more importantly, a new politics of the heart, in which we draw a line in the sand and say our politics must reflect the family. It must reflect the human dignity that comes from work, the dignity of free enterprise. It must reflect national security—America first, Spain first, the UK first. That's not at the expense of the others. It actually clarifies what your priorities are and what is our heritage. What is our Western heritage? What's our American heritage, our Spanish heritage, and to have not just pride in that, but for our politics to reflect it.

Brad: And just in case you didn't believe me, here is a little clip of Stephen Miller himself, the shadow president, the one who is the xenophobic chief in this country, talking about what it means to protect America from those who are not compatible with it.

Stephen Miller: We've never faced a threat like this: 20 million people brought into our country from the most failed societies on Earth—Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Iraq—brought here, no vetting, no conditions, no rules. Brought here on visas, brought here as refugees, brought here as asylees, brought here as illegals, brought here in every way imaginable—by plane, train, bus, automobile, by land, by sea. For four straight years they deluge this country, and now more blood is being spilled as a result.

Brad: Now I just want to emphasize today that this is an incredibly dangerous escalation of an already malignant ideology. Christian nationalism, as I have said on this podcast for years and in my book Preparing for War, is anti-democratic. It is anti-pluralist. You cannot have a democracy if you sit around a round table with every American who is an atheist, a humanist, an agnostic, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Muslim, a pagan, somebody who's Wiccan—doesn't matter—somebody who is Sikh, whatever religion or non-religion you are. You cannot have a democracy if you sit around a round table with people who are white and Black, people who are from the Middle East, people from East Asia, from South Asia, from Sub-Saharan Africa, from Northern Africa, people from all over the world—you cannot sit around that table and have a democracy if the Christian, and particularly the white Christian, raises their hand and says, "Look, it's great everybody's here. Just need you to know I'm always going to have a different place at this table than you. You can be at the table, that's fine. I'm going to have a different place than you." That's anti-democratic, period. And that's Christian nationalism.

What we have now is Western supremacy, which says a lot of you can't be at the table. You see the round table here? A lot of you are not compatible with Western civilization, and you need to go. There's literally not a place here for you. I don't care if you act right. I don't care if you, quote-unquote, assimilate. I don't even care if you convert to Christianity. There's just not a place for you in Western civilization no matter what you do. No matter what you do, you'll never be able to be part of this civilization in a way that promotes domestic tranquility. You will never be able to love this country. I'm sorry. What the world needs is for everybody to be in their civilization and stay there. And when there's conflict between civilizations, we got to fight it out. We'll see who wins. But the first step is you need to go there.

Why is this even more dangerous than Christian nationalism, which was already anti-democratic? Because it looks at the person who is Buddhist from East Asia, it looks at the person who is Hindu from South Asia, it looks at the person who is Muslim from Sub-Saharan Africa, it looks at the person who is Palestinian, Iranian, Afghani, it looks at the person who is not of European heritage and Christian, and it says you're just not compatible for this. This society will never be one in which you can love and contribute how you should.

So in response to what happened last week, C.Jay Engel said, "The answer is just immigration. Every single time, the problem is always immigration." Andrew Isker, his partner in crime who's a podcaster, said that after Donald Trump's tweet about Thanksgiving and Western civilization and migrants, he said, "It's time." When I read that tweet, I got chills to my bone. Why? Because it made me think there's going to come a time when Western supremacy on the part of people who are open Christian nationalists—C.Jay Engel, Andrew Isker, Doug Wilson, Pete Hegseth, you name it—but also people like Elon Musk or Stephen Miller who are not really Christians but can fit themselves into Western supremacy and often advance the worldview of Western supremacy. There's going to come a time when they say, "It's time." All of those who are not compatible with Western civ, it's time. Either you get out or you're going to get what's coming next.

To me, that was—when I read "it's time," it was like this is the Kristallnacht pretext for the United States. This is how you justify saying, "Look, unless you get out, we'll give you 90 days, but unless you go, we can't promise safety." And next, you know, round up what's going to happen here. It gave me chills.

And again, I'm going to keep on this beat because I want you all to see the shift. You heard it on the Fox News clip. You heard it with what Stephen Miller said. You heard it with Kevin Roberts. "You're just not compatible here, so you got to go. And if you don't go, then, well, we'll see what happens."

Now, is that every Christian nationalist in this country? No. And especially, you know, I'm thinking of my friend Matt Taylor and all the work he does with the NAR, and everything that I've learned from him, and I've studied myself about the NAR, and I know about the NAR—there's so many multi-ethnic, multi-racial Christian congregations in this country that don't think this way, at least in a hardcore manner. But I will tell you, the mainstream is now one of talking about Western civilization and who is or is not compatible with it.

Just today we had President Donald Trump—wait, Stephen Miller, the shadow president—Elon Musk, richest man in the world, ally or sometimes ally to the president—prominent Christian nationalists speaking this way. Kevin Roberts, leader of the most prominent think tank on Capitol Hill. Fox News talking this way. So you can tell me, "Oh Brad, well that's great, but don't try to tell me all the Christians think this." I don't think that. But I think a lot of the most influential elected officials and other people with grand influence in this country are talking this way.

This is not just, "Hey, we're around the round table, as long as you know your place at the table, you're good, we won't have a problem." This is "some of you do not have a place at this table. You need to get out of here in the next half an hour, or some people might enter the room and do things to you that will not be pleasant. You may never leave the room." That's what I'm afraid of. That's why I'm highlighting this. That's why this is something we have to notice.

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