Monday, July 5, 2021

Stark raving crazy. He has a following.

 Pastor Greg Locke has 2.2 million followers on Facebook. 


     "Donald Trump is the legitimate president of the United States of America!"


     "Fraudulent Sleep Joe. He's a sex-trafficking, demon-possessed mongrel."


     "Mike Pence is Judas."


     "Do you honestly believe, Pastor Locke, that the military uncovered tunnels underneath the Capitol building and the White House. . . do you really believe they found kids?--Yeah. Both live ones and dead ones, and if you disagree with that. . . you're just as complicit as Hunter Biden and the rest of them crack-smoking perverts."


     "God's about to bring the whole house down, ladies and gentlemen. These bunch of sex-traffickers are about to be exposed."


Pastor Greg Locke is an outlier. 


He isn't a typical example of Christian Nationalist preaching. He knows he is extreme and he jokes about being thought "crazy." I include two clips of him so readers can experience what is out there in the American political and religious atmosphere. 

Locke represents the angry "burn the house down" theme of Christian Nationalism voiced in some churches, a political impulse Trump solidified for the GOP. Trump linked themes of Christians under siege by the secular left; White people enduring prejudice; globalism and diversity being celebrated at the expense of the traditional social order that existed before Black Civil Rights and Women's Liberation; and resentment at the financial and cultural hegemony of elites. 

The GOP and conservative media are now downplaying themes of income distribution and jobs sent overseas. Democrats are better at distributing money than are Republicans, and are proud of it, not reluctant. The culture war is a better battleground, and Locke is part of it. The themes dominating conservative media are about borders, cancel culture, disrespect for the flag, transgenders taking advantage, and the indoctrination of children by Critical Race Theory. Non-college working people are the new GOP base voter and they are being told their religion, values, and political majority are at risk. For Locke, "mongrel" is an insult. Democrats aren't fellow citizens he disagrees with. They are perverts.

Locke is one point of the spear--the most extreme voice--in political/religious condemnation of modern culture. Armed militant groups are another spear, saying aloud proudly what more moderate voices cannot, that "the people" have the right and responsibility to take up arms against the government.

Spokespeople at the "point of the spear" understand their roles. They are sincere. They say the unsayable. Locke can call Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey perverts and pedophiles, but Trump cannot and need not. Locke does it for him. Spear-points hope to move the boundary lines of plausible, acceptable debate, what political scientists call "The Overton Window." Someone says the un-sayable, which moves that idea from impossible to extreme, and then sometimes to acceptable, then mainstream, then popular policy. The political left has its own version of spear-points, especially in universities.

Locke is a showman. Time and again in American history people with this kind of high-emotion oratory have moved public opinion. Viewers who think this is so crazy as to be irrelevant or counterproductive under-estimate his appeal and misunderstand his role. Locke and people like him help make Trump and his rallies possible. In the context of Pastor Locke, Trump is a moderate.







8 comments:

Dave said...

The scariest part is the lead, 2.2 million followers on Facebook. I quit Facebook a year back for these kind of things. America is in trouble, we won’t survive when social media, Fox News, and it’s even crazier counterparts are able to foster such hatred that the masses consume. Technology has made freedom of speech a danger to our society. Can we trust government to restrict it, like in China? It sure doesn’t look like it. I will be dead in the next decade or two, but I wonder how great America will be for my kids, grandkids. What a bummer.

Rick Millward said...

What is worse, the liar or the believer?

In my yesterday I mentioned "unscrupulous charlatans" and today what do we see? A prime example, thank you. An extreme example, if I say so.

Wow...

"God will bring it down". When, exactly?

You are correct that this is a performance, but you neglect to point out that it's for money. This sad creature is probably smart enough to make a living doing something useful, but he chooses to be a simultaneously a liar and a clown. You are also correct in making a comparison to Trump, sort of a caricature of a caricature.

"The political left has its own version of spear-points, especially in universities."

On the other hand, this is disappointing and incorrect. Intellectually lazy Regressives whine about woke; previously it was political correctness, and before that communist professors. Don't fall for it.

Michael Trigoboff said...

The spearpoints on the left are every bit as bad as the spearpoints on the right.

The danger of “Reverend” Locke is that his toxic, pathological words fall on fertile ground created by decades of betrayal of the working class by our cultural and economic elites. Their jobs got exported for the benefit of hedge funds. Their culture was sneered at by smug urban elites. No one spoke for them until Trump and his ilk came along. The closest anyone else came to empathy was telling coal miners to “learn to code.”

It’s no wonder that people in that situation turn to charlatans like Locke. Our elites are reaping what they have sown. They will continue to reap it until they decide to take care of everyone in this country, including the “deplorables.“

Mike said...

Trump attracts crazies like Locke, Giuliani and Lindell the pillow guy because like attracts like. What's dismaying to realize is that he drew over 70 million voters, like moths to the flame.

Art Baden said...

No one spoke for them until Trump came along? WRONG.

Bernie Sanders spoke for them, Ralph Nader spoke for them, Sherod Brown spoke for them. But they only started listening when Trump conjoined it with racism and xenophobia.

Michael Trigoboff said...

If Trump’s appeal were solely to racism and xenophobia, how did he manage to increase his proportion of the Black and Hispanic vote in 2020?

Liberals are way too ready to see the working class as “deplorable.“ The working class correctly experiences this as smug elite contempt and reacts accordingly. Hillary should have been an object lesson in where that ends up.

Mike said...

In 2020, Trump managed to increase his proportion of the Black vote from 8% to 12% and the Hispanic vote from 29% to 32% respectively. If he were such a boon to minorities, you'd think they'd know about it.

Anybody who considers Trump's behavior appropriate is as crazy as he is.

Ralph Bowman said...

My mother took me to tent preachers healing by casting out demons. Similar MO only this guy name calls. He is not preaching Revelations, the end of the social order, the last days..but overthrow of the government by suing , hunting down Hollywood figures, and ginning up hate.
The perfect vigilante. I really don’t think he will last long because someone will come forward and reveal something sorted about his past.
Like Tammy and Jimmy Baker suddenly the money trail will lead to his doom. Someone in his audience who is holding their Bible high in the air might just read not the hell and fire of Old Testament but the beatitudes. The congregation cannot live on hate snd shouting for very long.
He is going to have to preach the Bible to justify his sermons pretty soon, his political rants need a scriptural foundation. I am not hearing it in these clips.