YouTube influencer Nick Shirley, whose viral video alleging fraud by daycare centers servicing Minneapolis’s Somali American community came days ahead of the Trump administration’s declaration of a national funding freeze, has for years published conspiracy-minded takes on hot-button rightwing issues.
He also has close ties to the White House, Republicans, and to representatives of an earlier generation of rightwing partisan “ambush journalists” such as James O’Keefe. He worked with Minnesota Republicans to produce the viral video on Somali-run daycares.
Shirley has collaborated closely with his mother and fellow influencer Brooke Shirley, with the pair traveling together to flashpoints elevated by rightwing discourse online and in conservative media, and publishing across platforms including TikTok and YouTube.
Their US destinations have included the southern border, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, but they have also traveled overseas for big-ticket rightwing and anti-immigrant events including the Tommy Robinson-organized “Unite the Kingdom” rally last September.
Shirley’s videos frequently sensationalize conflict, or focus on street violence. The titles of recent videos include Dearborn Michigan has Fallen… Christians and Muslims Battle, Portland has Fallen… ANTIFA has Taken Control of City, and I Confronted Dangerous Migrant Scammers in NYC | Canal Street, the latter of which highlights a physical confrontation between Shirley and a street vendor in New York.
The last paragraph has links to the relevant videos, but I’m not posting them here.
I love the look on their faces when I give them the real stats on the percentage of America that is xtian. A lot of these goofs are so deluded, so much in their bubble that they really do think nearly all of America is xtian.
I remember telling someone the stats around 2004 or so and I think it was just about 80% then, but dropping about 1% per year, and they looked like they were having a bit of a panic attack, to be honest. They were babbling on about how “well, most of America is xtian, only a few percentage of Jews and Muslims and hardly and atheists - xtians are 95%+ of the country, yadda yadda…” and I told him it’s nearly 20% that are non-xtian. He stopped talking and really had to process what I had said. I told him to look it up himself; don’t believe me.
Now it’s hovering just above 60% or so that are xtian, depending on the survey. The steady decline may have leveled off.
Thing is - it shouldn’t even matter to them, since a minority of xtians would have their rights preserved, too, because we have religious freedom. They just want all their extra privileges to be lorded over others, and having politicians cater to them, and if they are a minority, that’s less likely to be the case.
Seeing these people panic at the idea of not being the majority is very instructive if you ask me. I doubt very much of it is about real concern about people “going to hell” or whatever. They know that they want to subject minorities to second-class citizens and fear that others would do that to them…
It’s a matter of cultural control IMO, you can see it best in the long term with the Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Basically the Pan-protestant groupings historically had their territories and dominated culturally so not much pressure existed for those at the top of said hierarchy to react, but with the big three cults you see it a lot more clearly they have always been a minority and with maybe the exception of the Mormons have had to deal with being surrounded by folks who aren’t particularly friendly. For example my kin have been feuding with the Seventh Day Adventists for about a hundred and something years at this point because they try to culturally dominate everyone that isn’t them through legalistic and economic means, my kin responded by basically undermining their power at all costs which has worked.
The problem is that now we are seeing even the dominant protestant branches and even Catholics weakening culturally and politically. This has spooked those at the top of the power structures who historically could exercise subtle pressure to achieve their goals, resulting in the increasing batshit insanity we are seeing from them as a whole.
Personally I think it’s all dead in the water regardless, even if they passed a bunch of laws mandating one thing or another it’d probably shatter once they start struggling for power and killing each other.
I used to say similar things as I was watching xtians dwindle by a percent or more per year, and as I saw Obama elected, etc…
Then the right wing had a collective freakout over things like a black President and over things like who was pooping in public restrooms as well as being extremely mad that liberals were RIGHT about gay marriage being nearly inevitable.
I fear these people have banded together as one big blob of awfulness and Taco was just cunning enough to basically be a walking, talking version of the Faux memeplex - he’s even adopted the complete nonsense about “a war on xmas” and even still is saying stuff like “it’s okay to say Merry Xmas again” as if he thought of this himself, and about 38% of the country laps that shit up.
Now that they have ICE funded they are deporting brown and black people and assaulting them, I don’t think it will be too long before they start seeking out other targets. Obviously they murdered the lesbian woman this past week and she was a white citizen. The kind of people that think this is a “xtian nation” are quite thirsty to have forced indoctrination/conversion into xtianity and now that this stuff is rolling, I fear where it ends up.
Sure, the various sub-cults may turn on each other later, but in the meantime, they may cause a lot of pain and suffering, including murder of non-xtians.
Honestly I think this version of the right is moreso the end result of what amounts to propaganda runaway. Basically they e been doing propaganda and whatnot for so long that it’s basically self evolving amalgamation of vibes, utterly unstable and uncontrollably past a point. There’s a reason why it’s hard to find a start point for the whole thing as a social movement, because it has like five of the damned things and is almost wholly inorganic in its maintenance and structure. There’s a reason you come across folks who broke out of it all by just being isolated for awhile.
I do think it’ll all burn out eventually it’s moreso a question of why and what the end damage will be.
I sure hope you are right.
As for when it started: I think things started at least as far back as the Birchers (way before my time), but I think they’ve refined and honed their craft, and had more and more money dumped in by the donor class, and more tools came along to further weaponize them finding each other and spreading their message.