Oops, We Invited Nazis to Our Christian Nationalist Conference
Organizers expected controversy, just not *that* controversy.
THE SECOND TRUMP TERM has been a great time for Christian nationalists seeking to make the United States into an explicitly Christian state. Their leading pastors have been embraced by administration figures like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
But behind the scenes, things haven’t been going so smoothly. The latest example came when a recent conference left members divided on a key issue: Just how racist is Christian nationalism supposed to be?
Last weekend, roughly 1,500 Christian nationalists from across the country met in Ogden, Utah, for “The War for Normal”—a gathering featuring some of far-right Christianity’s most online thinkers and posters.
Organized by Utah podcasters and pastors Eric Conn and Brian Sauvé, the conference had an undeniable macho, MAGAfied flair. Speakers were announced via nicknames like “Big Hoss,” and their almost ubiquitously bearded faces were plastered on wanted posters labeling them outlaws “For Thought Crimes.”
The organizers and attendees, in other words, were leaning into—even reveling in—a “bad boy,” edgy, naughty vibe. And the conference had the type of attractions you’d expect from an event attempting to blend Christianity with anti-woke politics. There was a single’s mixer for “based” attendees, with chaperones provided. Men could compete “in feats of strength and agility.”
Fatefully, the event also included a booth for Antelope Hill Publishing—an extremist publishing house that has made its name putting out racist books, as well as translating and reprinting old ones. To give you an idea of what we’re dealing with here, Antelope Hill got its start translating the memoir of an unrepentant commander in the Nazi SS. Their current online store is offering not one but two “Third Reich Bundles”—a collection of books written by prominent Nazis for between $126.89 and $180.49.
Antelope Hill didn’t exactly clean up for the big conference. The press tweeted out a picture of its booth, showing stacks of both the SS memoir, Burning Souls, and other pro-Nazi books like The Essential Speeches of Adolf Hitler.
Making matters worse, Antelope Hill also handed out a flyer recommending other racist and weirdly esoteric websites attendees might want to check out in their spare time. One flyer lists its “heroes” as people like American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell. Another website endorsed by Antelope Hill praises Cosmotheism, a strange religion started by William Luther Pierce III, who was—you guessed it—an American neo-Nazi.
Another website Antelope’s flyer endorsed sold white supremacist terrorism books like The Turner Diaries. The flyer also promoted Man’s World, the bizarre men’s magazine by right-wing writer “Raw Egg Nationalist,” whose book Antelope published.
All in all, the appearance of such overtly pro-Hitler work provoked criticism among more moderate Christian nationalists. Talk-radio host Erick Erickson called it a “mess.”
“I have been going to Reformed Christian conferences of varying sizes for 33 years, and I have never been to one that was selling pro-Third Reich, Pro-Nazi books,” noted one pastor on X.
The Nazi collision was even disconcerting for some Christian nationalists who hold fairly reprehensible views of their own. Doug Wilson, a Hegseth ally and perhaps the most prominent Christian nationalist pastor in the conference, was one of them. Though Wilson has taken such retrograde stands as calling for women to lose their right to vote, he wrote on his blog that he found the Ogden conference Nazi situation to be a little extreme.
“You don’t host a conference promising to fight for normal, and then bring in Nazis,” Wilson wrote.
The conference had become such an optical disaster for Christian nationalism, Wilson wrote, that he suspected Antelope Hill was being secretly funded by the federal government or the Southern Poverty Law Center.1 But in a moment of mild introspection, he also said Christian nationalists should grapple with why the Nazi publisher thought it would be able to successfully sell books at the event.
“Vendors go to conferences because they believe that there will be a healthy market for their wares there,” wrote Wilson. “The Antelope Hill people seemed very happy with what—for them—was a fruitful trip.”
Despite the criticism, the conference’s organizers weren’t especially apologetic about turning part of their event into a Nazi confab. Responding to the criticism on their podcast—the grandly named The King’s Hall—Conn and Sauvé described Antelope Hill’s books as “varying historical works,” and said the controversy was wildly overblown.
“People would think that it was a goose-stepping SS march!” Sauvé said.
Joel Webbon, a prominent far-right pastor and internet personality who has hosted podcasts with the likes of disgraced, libidinous far-right commentator Elijah Schaffer, agreed. As the controversy blew up, Webbon posted that he would “never” criticize the conference’s organizer.
As for Antelope Hill, they thought the entire affair was a clear success. One of the individuals who manned the company’s conference booth, himself a white supremacist podcaster who posts under the name “Mainstream Dissident,” rejoiced at having made racial solidarity among white people part of the conference’s theme.
The key, he said on a video livestream, was acting like they were just there to sell historical books.
“Dude, we’re just humble book merchants, man,” he said, laughing. “We’re just selling Third Reich literature at a Christian conference is all!”
A classic move.
This piece is amazing.
These Dudes have beards because they have no chin underneath that beard and look like Elmer Fudd. Prove me wrong.