Equal before God, and God Alone: Cultural Fundamentalism, (Anti-)Egalitarianism, and Christian Rhetoric in Nativist Discourse from Austria and the United States

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the use of Christian rhetoric by nativists in Austria and in the United States in the twenty-first century. Based on a frame analysis of right-wing ephemera, it shows that while the Austrian Freedom Party has increasingly made use of religious allusions since 2005, it references Christianity as a cultural marker rather than as a faith. Ethnicity and culture are found to play a bigger role in Austrian nativist discourse than in the United States, where faith and value dimensions emerge as more prominent. The article describes the different maneuvers nativists perform to reconcile their policies—and the use of Christian rhetoric in this context—with Christian ethics (egalitarianism, hospitality imperative, etc.). Borrowing a term coined by Verena Stolcke, I qualify some of these maneuvers as manifestations of “cultural fundamentalism,” including the presentation of segregation as God's will, opposing immigration in the very name of a diligently reframed “neighbor love,” and blanket definitions of culturally “indigestible” groups of immigrants. Inter-case differences are interpreted as effects from dissimilar traditions of nationalism and faith-politics relations, the distinct makeup of the two right-wing spectra, and demographic peculiarities in immigration flows.