Pastor Greg Locke has 2.2 million followers on Facebook.
"Donald Trump is the legitimate president of the United States of America!"
"Fraudulent Sleep Joe. He's a sex-trafficking, demon-possessed mongrel."
"Mike Pence is Judas."
"Do you honestly believe, Pastor Locke, that the military uncovered tunnels underneath the Capitol building and the White House. . . do you really believe they found kids?--Yeah. Both live ones and dead ones, and if you disagree with that. . . you're just as complicit as Hunter Biden and the rest of them crack-smoking perverts."
"God's about to bring the whole house down, ladies and gentlemen. These bunch of sex-traffickers are about to be exposed."
Pastor Greg Locke is an outlier.
He isn't a typical example of Christian Nationalist preaching. He knows he is extreme and he jokes about being thought "crazy." I include two clips of him so readers can experience what is out there in the American political and religious atmosphere.
Locke represents the angry "burn the house down" theme of Christian Nationalism voiced in some churches, a political impulse Trump solidified for the GOP. Trump linked themes of Christians under siege by the secular left, White people enduring prejudice, globalism and diversity being celebrated at the expense of the traditional social order that existed before Black Civil Rights and Women's Liberation, and resentment at the financial and cultural hegemony of elites.
The GOP and conservative media are now downplaying themes of income distribution and jobs sent overseas. Democrats are better at distributing money than are Republicans, and are proud of it, not reluctant. The culture war is a better battleground, and Locke is part of it. The themes dominating conservative media are about borders, cancel culture, disrespect for the flag, transgenders taking advantage, and the indoctrination of children by Critical Race Theory. Non-college working people are the new GOP base voter and they are being told their religion, values, and political majority are at risk. For Locke, "mongrel" is an insult. Democrats aren't fellow citizens he disagrees with. They are perverts.
Locke is one point of the spear--the most extreme voice--in political-religious condemnation of modern culture. Armed militant groups are another spear, saying aloud proudly what more moderate voices cannot, that "the people" have the right and responsibility to take up arms against the government.
Spokespeople at the "point of the spear" understand their roles. They are sincere. They say the unsayable. Locke can call Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey perverts and pedophiles, but Trump cannot and need not. Locke does it for him. Spear-points hope to move the boundary lines of plausible, acceptable debate, what political scientists call "The Overton Window." Someone says the un-sayable, which moves that idea from impossible to extreme, and then sometimes to acceptable, then mainstream, then popular. The political left has its own version of spear-points, especially in universities.
Locke is a showman. Time and again in American history people with this kind of high-emotion oratory have moved public opinion. Viewers who think Locke is so crazy as to be irrelevant or counterproductive under-estimate his appeal and misunderstand his role. Locke and people like him help make Trump and his rallies possible. In the context of Pastor Locke, Trump is a moderate.
This guy needs to be locked up, in order to get his head straightened out. A large dose of Big Nurse might actually bring him back to reality. Certainly, something needs to. Reminds me of a sub para Elmer Gantry.