The murder of the German politician Walter Lübcke in 2019 by a far-right extremist with links to Neo-Nazi groups exposes the need to address European ethno-nationalist extremism from a wider array of approaches, one of them, the religious one. European ethno-nationalists have found profitable the distortion of elements of Western Christianity and its use to reject individuals they consider undesirable, especially Muslims and non-European immigrants. By doing this, far-right extremists have managed to consolidate an ideological basis known as Christianism. This work examines the characteristics of the extremist ideology Christianism and its relation to white supremacism, as well as the historical bias of the Crusades they use and that is a central part of their ideology. This work analyses the manifesto written by white supremacist terrorist Brenton Tarrant with the aim to expose the relation between white supremacism and Christianism, as well as the influence on terrorist acts against non-Europeans in the West, and the main propositions of such extremist ideology. The conclusion proposes the need of better education in history and critical thinking skills in societies affected by white supremacism, as well as the participation of followers of traditional Christianity in counter extremism efforts.
Keywords: Christianism, Islamism, white supremacy, Crusades, the Great Replacement
DOI: 10.22250/2072-8662.2019.4.96-101
About the author
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Joel Ivan Gonzalez Cedillo - PhD Student (International Relations and World Politics), St. Petersburg State University; 1/3 Smolny St., St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, 191060; ivangzz.ced@gmail.com |