The far right consultant to a GOP gubernatorial candidate has declared America is a “Christian nation,” Christians are “taking back” America from Jewish people, and bragged how they have “Christian nationalists” who are current members of Congress, along with a multitude of Christian nationalists who are running for elected office at the local, state, and national levels.
Doug Mastriano (photo) is the Republican Party of Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial nominee. A far-right-wing state senator and QAnon supporter who “was seen crossing police barricades” during the January 6 insurrection, he has increasingly embraced his fellow extremists, including Andrew Torba, the CEO of the social media platform Gab.
Media Matters describes Torba as a “consultant” to Mastriano, noting that “Mastriano stated in a campaign filing for his Pennsylvania gubernatorial campaign that he paid $5,000 to far-right social media platform Gab for ‘consulting’ services on April 28.”
Bloomberg News has called Torba’s Gab “an online haven for white supremacists.” The Atlantic has called Gab “the de-facto home to extremist figures who have been booted off mainstream social networks for threats, inciting violence, or promoting racist, sexist, and anti-semitic ideas,” and adds, “It has been called a ‘hate-filled echo chamber of racism and conspiracy theories’ and ‘Twitter for racists.'”
Media Matters reports in his new video Torba “responded to criticism of Mastriano using his antisemitic platform by telling Jews that ‘we’re not bending the knee to the 2% anymore.’ He also said that people are ‘done’ with them and they won’t be ‘told what we’re allowed to do in our own country by a 2% minority.'”
Those remarks echo ones he made on Monday, as Media Matters also reported.
“We don’t want people who are atheists,” Torba said. “We don’t want people who are Jewish. We don’t want people who are, you know, nonbelievers, agnostic, whatever. This is an explicitly Christian movement because this is an explicitly Christian country.”
America is not an “explicitly Christian country,” and not a Christian nation at all, as the founders made extremely clear. The vast majority of the American people support separation of church and state.
Below is a copy of Torba’s video posted by Media Matters’ Eric Hananoki, and the remarks from his video, as transcribed by Media Matters:
This is a Christian nation. Christians outnumber you by a lot. A lot. And we’re not going to listen to 2%. You represent 2% of the country, OK? We’re not bending the knee to the 2% anymore. The 98% of the rest of us — you know, 70, 75% of which are Christians, self-identifying Christians — we’re not taking it anymore, bud. We are taking back our culture. We’re taking back our country. We’re taking back our government. So deal with it.
You know, there’s nothing you can do to stop us because what has been set into motion, it’s snowballing now. Right? We have Marjorie Taylor Greene openly saying that she’s a Christian nationalist. We have Matt Gaetz kind of flirting with it a little bit today with his tweet on Christian nationalism. You know, we have Paul Gosar. We have like people in Congress right now, members of Congress right now who are openly, openly saying that they’re Christian nationalists. We have multiple candidates for governor who won their primaries in a landslide, are winning in the polling right now, and are going to win the governorships of multiple states who are Christian nationalists.
We have officials not only at the state level, not only at the federal level, but also at the local level. People who are running for school boards — Christian nationalists who are running for school board and by Christian nationalists, I mean like concerned Christian parents who are done, who are done, done with this, done, done being controlled and being told what we’re allowed to do in our own country by a 2% minority or by people who hate our biblical worldview, hate our Christ, hate our Lord and savior. Done. It’s over. So you better deal with it.
You can — you can demonize me individually. You can try and attack me. But guess what? You know, I am just one of hundreds of millions of Christians in this country, bud. So guess what? It’s inevitable. Sorry.