The Decian Persecution of the Republican Unfaithful
A concerned look at the purging of the GOP
There’s been a lot theorizing and analysis on why Elizabeth Cheney was kicked out of the Republican House leadership position. I’ve seen many pundits and analysts reviewing the situation from a variety of points of view. I think there is a very old lens that isn’t being considered. Trumpism isn’t like a cult. Trumpism is a religion that is both trying to build a theocracy and purge itself of the unfaithful. Let me lay my argument out for you.
History of the Decian Persecution
If you are, or have been, Christian, you are probably familiar with the Decian Persecution, even if you don’t know it by name. Early in Christian history regional Roman governors became concerned with a new movement within the Empire, Christianity. Early Roman governors didn’t see Christianity as a real religion, it wasn’t ancient enough. Of course, the Romans found Jews to be strange with their prohibitions against worshiping idols and the gods of other people, but their faith was ancient (ironically, this lack of ancientness is the same argument Christians use today against neopagan religions). The Jewish religion was older than the Roman Empire. Christians were seen as this quasi-political sect that branched off from the Jews, only dating back to Pontius Pilot, and Christians seemed to show more loyalty to each other than they did to the Empire.
The first empire wide persecution of Christians came in 249 AD, under Emperor Decius. Decius declared that all Roman citizens must make a sacrifice to the Roman gods. This sacrifice was required to be witnessed and certified by a Roman official. Jews were granted a special exemption from the requirement because of their prohibitions against idol worship.
The exact wording of Decius’ edict and specifics of the sacrifice have been lost to time. However, the Romans were meticulous about documentation and several examples of the certificates issued upon performing the ritual have survived. The text of the certificates generally would say:
(Hand writing of Citizen): To those in charge of the sacrifices of the village (Name of Village) from (Name of Citizens). We have always been constant in sacrificing to the gods, and now too, in your presence, in accordance with the regulations, I have poured libations and sacrificed and tasted the offerings, and I ask you to certify this for us below. May you continue to prosper.
(Hand writing of Witness): We, (Name of Witnesses) saw you sacrificing.
(Hand writing of Roman Official): I, (Name of Official), certify. (Year of Certification).
The Romans were religious people, but their relationship with their gods was not the same as Christians’ relationship with their god. Christians tend to believe in having a personal relationship with their deity and to pray for things that they personally want or need. The Romans believed their gods were arbitrary and capricious. They were generally fearful of their gods taking an interest in their personal lives. If you prayed to a Roman god for rain, you might get snow in June.
But this is mostly beside the point. The point of making an annual sacrifice in accordance with the Decian Edict was not the performance of the ritual, the citizen’s faith, or the relationship with the deities. The critical part was the witnessing and certification of the performance of the ritual. You had to be seen burning the incense, tasting the wine, and eating the meats. Documenting the sacrifice on a libellus was proof of a citizen’s loyalty to Caesar and the Empire.
Christians who did not perform the ritual generally fled or went into hiding. If they were found, they were punished as traitors and faced imprisonment, slavery, and/or execution. However, many early Christians renounced their faith in Christ or performed the ritual to avoid punishment. In later years, there was a schism over whether those who obeyed the Decian Edict should be allowed back into the Christian Church.
Death of the Old Normal
When Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, as an almost 28-year former-Republican (another story), I optimistically thought there was chance the Trumpian fever that gripped the GOP might finally break. Trump committed what should have been the ultimate sin.
Trump lost.
Trump lost bigly (or is it big league?).
When the party in power loses, an autopsy is performed on the election to determine the causes for the loss. A metaphorical circular firing squad is formed and those responsible for the loss are excised from leadership.
Not so with Trump.
Trump ignored the last autopsy performed on a Republican Presidential loss. Not only deny the party its post-loss autopsy, but he immediately pointed to a vast conspiracy to steal the election from him.
What’s so different with Trump? Trump has always been more of a scammer and brander than a businessman. His business has been to brand mediocre with his name and market its exclusivity. When everyone realizes they have been sold a mediocre product, they pull out and Trump declares bankruptcy and leaves someone else to hold the bag. By mythologizing himself, Trump has been able to develop a cult political following of gullible people for a very long time.
The Early Political History of Donald J. Trump
In 2000, Donald Trump briefly ran for President on the Reform Party ticket. After three months, he withdrew from the race citing party in-fighting and prominent white nationalists within the Reform Party, like David Duke, Pat Buchanan, and Lenora Fulani, as the reasons why. Buchanan eventually won the Reform Party’s nomination and garnered 449,895 votes in the 2000 election by running on an anti-NAFTA, pro-life, anti-war, and non-interventionist platform.
Trump began filming The Apprentice in 2004. That year, Trump made a bit of a jackass out of himself on the show as he showed up at the wrong polling location twice before casting his vote. While I can’t find any record of him endorsing a candidate in that election, in 2005 and 2016, he went on the record saying he voted for President Bush (43), although he denied it for a bit in 2009.
In 2008, Trump endorsed John McCain on the Larry King show and criticized Obama for not picking Hilary Clinton as a running mate. In 2012, Trump briefly flirted with entering the Republican Primary. When he didn’t, the great weathervane, Mitt Romney, specifically sought out and obtained Trump’s endorsement.
The reason that Romney went for Trump’s endorsement was because in 2011 Trump became the official spokesman of Birtherism. Of course, Birtherism predated 2011. It was a conspiracy theory on the fringe of the Republican Party throughout the 2008 campaign. There was the famous moment when a woman at a McCain town hall said she feared Obama was a Muslim and McCain pushed back, saying, “No, he’s a good family man.” However, the roots of Birtherism date back to 2004 when then Senator Obama gave the response to Bush43’s State of the Union address and a 2008 era chain email.
2011 was a watershed moment in the Birtherism movement within the Republican Party. By 2011, about half of Republican voters polled had bought into the Birther conspiracy theory, including Donald J. Trump. In 2011, Trump would repeat this conspiracy theory to anyone who would listen and even claimed to have private investigators in Hawaii uncovering the truth. unsurprising, Obama’s eventual release his long form birth certificate did not stem the tide of conspiracy theories. By the time the 2012 election rolled around, any Republican primary candidate who had a chance of winning needed to wink and nod at Birtherism. Romney did this by joking, “No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate.”
If Trump’s 2020 lie about election fraud is “The Big Lie,” then Birtherism was the foundational lie. The lie racist Republicans were desperate to believe and which cemented the majority of the Republican base around him. Unfortunately, ‘objective’ media proved itself incapable of calling obvious lies ‘lies,’ and acted as though there was some possible legitimate claim to this conspiracy theory, or that somehow Trump did not know he was telling people things that were untrue. By the time 2015 came around, there wasn’t much debate among Republican primary voters. They had been fully indoctrinated with the Birther lie by Trump’s regular appearances on Fox News, other conservative media, and the winks and nods it was given by other Republican leaders. In late 2015, Trump rode down his golden escalator, announced his candidacy for President, and proceeded to run on Pat Buchanan’s the white nationalism, anti-NAFTA, pro-life, anti-war, and non-interventionist platform.
The 2016 Campaign
There are six key points I want to keep in mind about Trump’s 2016 campaign. The first is the vilification of the news media. At Trump rallies, he penned the reporters in the middle of the arena and then encouraged his supporters to taunt and scream at them. He would repeatedly lie to his supporters, telling them that the news wasn’t covering his campaign rallies, while most, if not all, daytime news shows were carrying them live and in their entirety.
The second key point is the merchandizing of both Trump and hate. Even though the Trump campaign may not have been selling hate-themed shirts directly, they had de facto approval by the Trump campaign as they were literally sold in the event parking lots. Hate shirts regular featured at Trump rallies included: “Donald Fucking Trump,” “Trump That Bitch,” “Rope Tree Journalist,” and “Hillary Sucks But Not Like Monica.”
The third key point is the normalization of political violence. Besides the aforementioned encouragement of attacks on journalists, Trump encouraged his supporters to attack people protesting in and around his rallies. It started with Trump offering to pay the legal fees for anyone who physically attacked these protesters. When it actually happened, they turned to encouraging the crowd to swarm the protester and shout them down with chants of “Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.” If you ever watched a rally and random “Trump” chants came from the crowd, that is what was happening. Over the course of four years, Trump cultured a band of political enforcers unafraid to threaten, harangue, attack, and even murder in his name.
The fourth key point is Trump’s July 21, 2016 RNC acceptance speech. The speech was really quite breathtakingly disturbing. Reagan’s 1984 acceptance speech is commonly referred to as “Morning in America,” because of its opening line and its vision of a prouder, stronger, and better future. I personally refer to Trump’s 2016 acceptance speech as “I Alone Can Fix It,” due to laundry list of American despair, fear, and hate. The speech claimed America was in ruins and despair because of: protesters, attacks on police by protesters, terrorism in American cities and around the world, violence in the streets, increasing crime rates, illegal immigration, violence illegal immigrants, unemployment, decline in income, failing infrastructure, national debt, manufacturing decline, trade deficits, and wage suppression caused by legal immigration and refugee resettlement programs. Unsurprisingly, Trump fixed nothing during his tenure as President. Most of the public and reporters were too busy trying not to die from COVID to notice that, not only did Trump not fix anything on his list, but almost everything had become worse during his Presidency.
The fifth key point is the hacking of John Podesta’s emails by Russia in March 2016 and their dump by Wikileaks on October 7, 2016. This document dump occurred at a crucial moment during the campaign. The document dump pulled attention away from several other bad news items affecting Donald Trump. That morning the Access Hollywood tape was leaked in which Trump bragged about how his fame allowed him to sexually assault women without repercussions. This was also the same day the Obama Administration blamed the Podesta email hack on Russia. It was also just over thirty days until the election, leaving the Clinton campaign very little time to challenge the document dump.
The sixth key point is the formation of Qanon. Not many people realize this, but the formation of the Qanon conspiracy theory is directly tied to the Wikileaks document dump. As stated above, the document dump took place on October 7th. The Comey Letter on the FBI reopening its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails was leaked to the press on October 28th. On October 30th, an anti-Semitic/white supremacist twitter account claimed that the NYPD had discovered a pedophile ring being operated by Democratic politicians. This led to Qanon’s predecessor, the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, and a man with a gun terrorizing the restaurant on December 4, 2016, demanding to be taken to its nonexistent basement where children were allegedly sex trafficked. The pedophilia conspiracy theory would eventually be incorporated into the Q-conspiracy as an article of faith.
Qanon, Republicans, and the Deification of Trump
Over the following months, a number of 4chan conspiracy theories surrounding Comet Ping Pong, Bill Gates, Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah, Chrissy Teigen, and Justin Bieber were consolidated under a central theme.
The 4chan forums’ deliberately anonymous postings (Anons) were encouraged. Of course, the problem inherent with Anons is you don’t know who is behind the information, so, the information should have been treated as highly suspect amd assumed entirely fictitious or the product of disinformation campaigns by unfriendly countries. Instead, they were believed to be postings from inside government officials releasing secret information to the public. This supposed secret information related to the Clinton email investigation, investigation into the Clinton Foundation, Princess Diana’s death, and the September 11th attacks. In 2018, a nonexistent snuff tape featuring Anthony Weiner, Huma Abedin, and Hillary Clinton was added to the Qanon conspiracy theory.
One of the central themes of these conspiracy theories is that President Trump, the quintessential government outsider who was supposed to destroy the ‘Deep State’, was going to destroy the Democratic satanic cabal that had overtaken the federal government and send them to the Guantanamo Bay prison. In the four years of its existence, Qanon has become its own quasi-religion with an anonymous electronic prophet and Donald Trump elevated as its messianic savior.
The 2020 Election
Q-shirts and open winks and nods were being made by Trump and other Republican politicians during the 2020 election. There are even Representatives in Congress whose main campaign themes surround the Q-conspiracy.
You’d think the loss of the 2020 election would be enough to break Trump’s enthrallment of the Republican base. But with so many having accepted the foundational lie of Birtherism and the messianic lie of Qanon, Trump’s faithful followers were ready to be sold on The Big Lie — Trump lost because of mass voter fraud.
The Big Lie, though not officially part of the Q-conspiracy, mirrors its primary tenant: there is a vast conspiracy of faceless deep state operatives working in secret to harm Americans, and only Trump, their savior, can save the country. If you accepted this false reality, why wouldn’t you join the attack on the Capitol on January 6th?
The Decian Persecution within the GOP
The Decian Persecution is officially underway with Elizabeth Cheney’s ouster from House Republican leadership. Republicans who have recently stood against Trump, such as Mitt Romney, are being booed at Republican state party conventions.
Recent polling of Republican voters show:
· 30% of self-identified Republicans favorably support the Q-conspiracy theory (YouGov, January 2021).
· 23% of self-identified Republicans believe Donald Trump has been secretly fighting a satanic cult of child sex-traffickers whose members are prominent Democrats and celebrates (YouGov, January 2021).
· 76% of self-identified Republicans believe there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election (Quinnipac March 2021).
· 50% of self-identified Republicans believe the January 6th insurrection was a largely nonviolent protest and that the violence was caused by left-wing activists trying to make Trump look bad (Reuters, March 2021).
· 80% of self-identified Republicans still have a favorable view of Donald Trump (Reuters, March 2021).
· 60% of self-identified Republicans want Trump to run again in 2024 (Reuters, March 2021).
Trump’s 2020 election loss failed to shake Repubican faith in their messiah, in much the same way that the release of Obama’s long form birth certificate failed to make them recognize the President as a natural born U.S. citizen. Facts don’t matter to the faithful.
Republican politicians have to make a choice:
1) Go all-in on supporting Trump, the Big Lie, and Q-conspiracy theories like Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
2) Support Trump and give a wink and nod to the Big Lie and Q-conspiracy theories. This is where the majority of the Republican Party is.
3) Stand firm against Trump and the conspiracy theories, as Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, and a reported 120 former Republican office holders and officals are doing.
Republicans who fall into the second category are required to make the journey to Mar-a-Lago, Fox News, or other conservative media in order to profess their faith in and love for Donald Trump. Ted Cruz, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Mike Lee, Matt Gaetz, Kristi Noem, Kevin McCarthy, and Rick Scott are among those who have all recently made the pilgrimage to the temple to burn incense, pour libations, and taste the offerings to Caesar. The ceremony has been witnessed by Trump and documented on social media so the masses know who the good ‘Party Citizens’ are.
Republicans who fall into the third category are apostates. They have publicly declared their abandonment of their faith in Caesar. They refuse to burn incense, pour libations, or taste the offerings to Caesar. This is why they are being purged from leadership positions and efforts have been made by state party organizations to sanction them. Some of these Never Trumpers are calling on anti-Trump Republicans to form their own party for the 2024 Presidential election. It’s going to be tough to win if they are only pulling a maximum of 40% of Republican voters with them.
Only time will tell who wins out, Trumpism or the Never Trumpers. In the short term, my money is not on the Never Trumpers.
