(RNS) — It’s a excellent factor that no violence has occurred this Jan. sixth because the 2024 presidential election outcomes are licensed by Congress. A peaceable switch of energy, which acknowledges the legitimacy of free and truthful elections whatever the winner, is a central pillar on which democratic life is constructed. 4 years in the past, this pillar was almost toppled by a violent rebel on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump who wished to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 election.
Trump’s supporters referred to as the 2020 election “stolen” and have been keen to “Cease the Steal” by any means obligatory, together with violence. However alleged (and extensively disproven) voter fraud was by no means the actual supply of the supposed theft. If we take the insurrectionists’ phrases on the Capitol that day critically, they considered the election as stolen as a result of the candidate chosen by nearly all of white Christians — these the insurrectionists framed as “actual Individuals” — had misplaced.
The identical conspiratorial voices who had fanned the flames of “Cease the Steal” conspiracies in 2020 have been poised to take action once more in 2024 ought to their chosen candidate (Trump) lose once more. However a curious factor occurred when Trump received. We heard hardly a peep about fraudulent ballots or stolen elections. Out of the blue, the Make America Nice Once more motion appeared to belief elections once more.
This peace reveals a darker fact. The proper’s assist for democratic establishments like elections has at all times been contingent. Particularly, it has been contingent upon these establishments sustaining a standard social hierarchy.
For the previous decade, massive shares of white Christians have lamented the demographic and social shifts which have made them a minority in “their very own nation.” Trump rose to energy, partially, by promising this group that he would return them to a place of energy and privilege in a rustic they imagine God meant for them to rule.
The MAGA motion has coalesced round this political theology of hierarchy, which sanctifies a social order resting on hierarchies between social teams—racial, non secular, gendered and ethical. Furthermore, it asserts that the nation’s very survival is dependent upon the upkeep of this hierarchical social order through which conservative white Christian males are on the high.
However one needn’t really feel invested in all of those types of hierarchy with the intention to embrace the overall package deal Trump presents, or to really feel anxious about threats to this hierarchical system on the whole. The MAGA motion has masterfully stoked worry that threats to anyone prong of this hierarchical system augurs social collapse.
It isn’t shocking that this message would enchantment to conservative white Christian males who stand to profit personally from the upkeep of this hierarchy. However observers have been shocked to see that girls, and a few voters of colour and non-Christians, are additionally amongst Trump’s most ardent supporters at present. A few of these supporters could not explicitly endorse a theology of hierarchy, but they overwhelmingly specific frustration with efforts to subvert the standard social order — DEI initiatives, wokeness, feminism, anti-racism, resistance to white Christian nationalism. Disdain for such efforts is the glue that binds the MAGA motion.
In recent times, MAGA’s leaders have additionally taken pains to advertise a model of the theology of hierarchy that makes area for social range. Whereas describing america as a white Protestant nation, one such chief, the avowed Christian nationalist William Wolfe, put it this fashion: “That is our homeland, and we welcome you on the situation of conformity.”
Put in another way, the nation rightfully belongs to white Christians, however racial and non secular others might be tolerated so long as they settle for the legitimacy of this social hierarchy and their subordinated place inside it.
As we replicate on this anniversary of the Jan. 6 rebel, we should acknowledge that those that view a hierarchical social order as sacred have a posh relationship to democratic establishments and processes: They’re very happy to make use of them as instruments to keep up these hierarchies. However when democracy produces outcomes that threaten these hierarchies, they may defend the sacred hierarchy and reject democracy as profane — illegitimate, corrupt, a instrument of the satan. When democracy empowers teams they view as illegitimate, at present’s proper is keen to burn all of it down, simply as they tried to do 4 years in the past.
So whereas we needs to be celebrating the peaceable switch of energy at present, we shouldn’t be so naive as to imagine this represents a brand new embrace of democratic norms and establishments on the fitting.
(Ruth Braunstein is an affiliate professor of sociology on the College of Connecticut and the director of the Meanings of Democracy Lab. The views expressed on this commentary don’t essentially replicate these of Faith Information Service.)
