The Shtick
It never ceases to amaze me how some people haven’t figured out that Doug Wilson’s shtick is to play every angle, all the time. For example, yesterday I pointed out how Wilson recently wrote that “globalization” (aka the world’s ethnic groups intermarrying) would “render us all into a light brown homogenous goo scramble,” something that is objectively racist.
Since then, clips of Joel Webbon have emerged, in which he claims that more “faithful,” exclusionary groups will be blessed with better genetics over time, a theme that has come to the forefront in “Reformed” Christian Nationalist discourse. This presented Wilson with an opportunity, because Webbon is one of several people currently playing the fall guy for Wilson’s world of “boomer” posmillennial theonomists. Because Webbon is on the chopping block, and it was him and his camp making this claim, Wilson could virtue signal that he’s not against ethnic intermarriage, per se, even though, again, he recently said that its ultimate ends would be “a light brown homogenous goo scramble.” Better yet, he could do it in service of his current narrative, that he’s boldly standing up against the racism and eugenics within his camp.
The only problem is, Wilson continues to defend, promote and profit from a book that explicitly makes the “better genetics” argument, Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism:
Inequality in bodily stature, beauty, knowledge, virtue, domestic authority, and civil authority were regularly affirmed as good and not due to the fall… Aquinas states… that differences in food sources, climate, and other factors would make some “more robust… and also greater and more beautiful, and all ways better disposed.” Here, he has in mind not only individual difference but also differences in groups.1
In his book, that he has admitted on Webbon’s podcast promotes “blood and soil,” Stephen Wolfe leverages Thomas Aquinas to make the very same case that Webbon did, that certain ethnic groups, should they be isolated from each other, would become more beautiful, intelligent and even more naturally virtuous than other ethnic groups over time. He goes so far as to claim that this would still be the case, should man never have fallen. It’s also not like this claim is buried in the book; it’s in chapter one.
How much has Wilson defended a book that says this? He went on Tucker Carlson’s show and recommended it as a “scholarly defense” of Christian Nationalism, saying that his Canon Press’s publication of it was their “embrace of the term.” If you would like to know how Wolfe’s book is laundering authoritarian and white-nationalist political theory—the chapter containing the above statement even opens with a pull quote of the late white nationalist Sam Francis writing for the late white nationalist website VDARE—I wrote a full-length, section by section rebuttal that you can get for free. Canon Press is currently planning on releasing an abridged version of Wolfe’s book.
By throwing Webbon and friends under the bus, Wilson has created another problem for himself: Because he spent years courting them with deliberately transgressive rhetoric, this contingent of racists know the game he’s playing and they’re not afraid to point it out. They also know that Wilson ran cover for a church in his own denomination that’s full of their allies, including Shane Anderson, the closest compatriot of admitted white supremacist Michael Spangler, a friend of Stephen Wolfe who is one of the people currently on the Webbon-related chopping block.2
As is always the case, those who financially benefit from Wilson’s many business endeavors will commend him for his bold stance, knowing the game full well. What really flabbergasts me are the cadre of Wilson fans who, after so many years of this shtick, still haven’t picked up on it.
Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 67.
The “someone” who Wilson said “sent [him] a statement on ethnicity adopted by Church of the Redeemer there in Pella” was Shane Anderson, who continues to promote Spangler’s extreme white-nationalism.
Thank you for shining a light on this madness, Blake.
Also, this is the first time I’ve heard of the Michael Spangler you referenced. There’s no relation but it’s sad to see him tarnish the name. I’m keeping my R.