Counterspell: Field Manual for the Counter-Revolution
A book preview
On “Christian Nationalism”
Anti-Communism holds the wartime coalition together, but a negative vision is a bridge, not a destination. The transcendent ethic is the only firm foundation on which a lasting order can be built—anti-Communism merely unites the democratic factions (a necessary evil) long enough to get us there. There are many people who want you to fear the idea that America’s founding metaphysics are Christian. They promote the dialectical political warfare operation known as “Christian Nationalism.”
The term “Christian Nationalism” is generally undefined and utilized as a “floating signifier.” This is a political warfare concept where a label with a nebulous definition is slandered and coded as evil—placed outside the Overton Window as taboo—in order to apply it to any variety of political opponents at opportune times to negate their political will. They have done the same thing with the word “racist,” where they changed the understood, reasonable definition of color-based hatreds into something only definable, and therefore only operational, by and for Leftist “experts.” The mechanism is identical: create a term sufficiently vague that it can be affixed to anyone who threatens the revolution, sufficiently terrifying that the accusation alone produces social death, and sufficiently undefined that no defense against it is possible because the goalposts are never fixed. This operation is being run by the Democratic Party and their media apparatchiks. It is joined by some combination of opportunistic Christian Rightists (wisely or not) seizing the moment to build support behind their particular ideas, and also by bad-actor controlled opposition players bolstering the Leftist operation from inside the Right. Make no mistake: the origin and purpose of the “Christian Nationalism” label is a Leftist operation, and the sheer volume of Left-aligned media coverage invoking the term in recent years tells you everything you need to know about where it comes from.
This is the same dialectical weapon we have traced throughout this book—the aufheben of language. “Christian Nationalism” is not a description of a coherent political movement. It is a spell—and we know what spells are. Those who propagate it are wizards. Those paralyzed by the accusation are spellbound. And those who see through it are based. It is designed to make the articulation of the positive vision we just discussed—a return to Constitutional principles grounded in the transcendent ethic on which America was actually founded—unspeakable. It is designed to ensure that the only permissible coalition glue on the Right remains the negative vision of anti-Communism, because the moment anyone attempts to articulate what we are for rather than merely what we are against, the floating signifier descends and the speaker is cast out.
These political warfare operators want you to believe that the future will be some sort of dystopia of forcible conversions, slave-wives in weird robes, wars of fire-and-maneuver between sects, and on and on towards tyranny. Nonsense.
Some have voluntarily adopted the term “Christian Nationalism.” Among them are those who are simply both Christians and nationalists, some are Theonomists, Postmillennialists, and other flavors of theologically informed political activists, some are would-be oligarchs themselves hoping to ride a revival wave to power, and others have adopted the term as enemies of the Right in order to assist the Left in making the term toxic. There is not, at present, anything approaching consensus within Christian America to transform American government into a Christian theocracy of the hard-establishment, State-Church type, and most Christians (including this one) would fight tooth and claw against any effort at State-Church sectarian establishment. After all, that is what the Puritans were running away from. What the vast majority want is simply a return to Constitutional principles and public—read: government—respect for their religion, traditions, and ethics – and a government responsive to the things that Christians believe the government ought to do, such as wielding the sword against evil, and leaving parents to raise up their children. In other words, Christians generally just want government to stay in its lane.
The Myth of Neutrality
The deeper problem is the assumption of neutrality that the “Christian Nationalism” smear exploits. Those most susceptible to the smear—often the liberal contingent within the Right coalition—operate from a presupposition that the public square can and should be religiously neutral. This belief in neutrality causes them to have something akin to an allergic reaction to any assertion of Christian metaphysics in public life, sensitized by the political warfare operation, and because they fundamentally do not view Christianity as neutral. So, the ideas of faithful Christians, even though entirely unrelated to the caricature of theocratic tyranny in pop culture, must be vigorously opposed according to this ideology of secular neutrality.
But neutrality has never existed in America, and it cannot truly exist anywhere. It has been taken for granted that American metaphysics are a human universal when in truth they are absolutely not. The Trojans killed their disabled infants in a eugenics program by tossing them from cliffs. Romans fed people to lions for entertainment. Communists murdered tens of millions for being “enemies of the people,” largely through purposeful starvation. All these things could be classified under the “free exercise of religion” when placed in their broader context, as they follow from religious convictions of those societies, but they are not to be practiced in America under penalty of law. There is no right to practice, within America, those foreign religious practices so antithetical and subversive to the American metaphysic that they present a threat to it.
America was never neutral in the application of its presuppositions and law. It is not neutral now that the foundational metaphysics of America have become Marxian. The current regime punishes its enemies. It always has. The question has never been whether metaphysical presuppositions will govern public life—they always do. The question is which presuppositions.
A nation grounded in Christian metaphysics can withstand nonbelievers who, nonetheless, carry on with compliance to the basic laws rooted in that metaphysic: though shall not murder; thou shall not steal. But a nation adrift on the sea of relativism that has achieved the critical mass necessary to delegitimize the whole of the law will never find any option but submission to the zeitgeist – the world spirit. There is no way forward without, once more, recognizing the Christian basis of the American founding, and there is no reason to fear tyranny in so doing rightly—but there is every reason to fear tyranny if we do not.
Why Freedom Requires the Transcendent
It is only under the paradigm of the Christian metaphysic that freedom is even possible. This is the case because it is only this particular set of metaphysical presuppositions that affirmatively lays out the good, transcendent ethic on which America was founded while simultaneously placing many elements of authority outside of the authority of the civil government. This is liberty.... [continued in the book, Counterspell: Field Manual for the Counter-Revolution, coming May Day 2026]
Michael Belcher lives in New Hampshire where he serves as an elected Representative to the NH House, leads the Counterspell Group, and operates a modest homestead in the mountains. He can be found on X @MikeBelcher14 or at his website:
https://counterspellgroup.com/
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