Religion, Race, and the Making of White Nationalism

In this talk, I argue that white nationalism is best understood as a religio-racial formation rather than simply an extremist political movement or a variant of Christian nationalism. Drawing on research for my forthcoming book, Religion, Race, and the Making of White Nationalism, I examine how the myth of 'white genocide' has become one of the movement's most powerful organizing narratives, framing demographic change as an existential threat and casting racist violence as an act of collective self-defense. Tracing the historical roots of this worldview from modern ideas of race to contemporary online extremism, I argue that antisemitism provides the conspiratorial logic through which anti-Blackness, Islamophobia, anti-immigrant racism, and other forms of exclusion are brought together into a single story about the world. By understanding white nationalism as both a political and religious phenomenon, the talk offers new insight into how far-right extremism continues to evolve and gain influence in the United States today.