“Project Blitz” is a Completely Real Thing That You Sadly Have to Know About
Trump is Gone. The powerful Christian movement that helped bring him to power is just getting started.
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There are a lot of reasons for us to be breathing big sighs of relief right now. Joe Biden announced one of the most expansive and thorough set of pro-environmental regulations, including banning oil and gas drilling on federal lands for starters. There are also adults that are finally taking on the challenge of getting us 300M vaccines by this spring. January 2021 should certainly make you feel optimistic about at least some of the directions that the federal government is headed.
Meanwhile in the states where the Republican Party still has a serious stranglehold on power, shit is about to get real...worse. And with the SCOTUS positioned the way that it is, some truly horrifying bills could impact all of us whether you live here or not.
Project Blitz sounds like something made up for a Marvel movie, but it’s sadly real and it’s hardly new. It’s a coalition of far-right Christian organizations with a pretty simple agenda: to introduce religion into every aspect of legislation on the state level. The Guardian recently reported that now that the U.S. Supreme Court has tilted far right, the group is gearing up to flood the states with a new and horrifying slate of anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ, and school choice legislation.
The group works similarly to other hard-right conservative groups that dismember democracy on the state level, like ALEC. Blitz writes up the legislation, delivers it to their minions (state reps) and those minions introduce it, as written, and pass it. One example of Blitz’s handiwork is a 2015 bill passed in Oklahoma that enables private adoption agencies to bar gay couples from adopting kids on religious grounds. It was the 10th version of the same law passed in some version in other states.
According to data pulled for the Guardian article, “In 2018, state lawmakers introduced 74 bills similar to Project Blitz draft legislation.”
The time is ripe for anti-choice, and anti-LGBTQ legislation with the new stacking of the SCOTUS, and the group is ready to strike. In a recent call to state legislators that was made public thanks once again to the not-at-all-failing New York Times, David Burton, founder of the Christian-right organization Wall Builders and one of four members of the Blitz steering team, calls this new flurry of legislation a game of “like whack-a-mole for the other side,” which sounds horrifying if you’re a proud member of the “other side” (hello?) who believes that, you know, you should be able to drink clean water and not fund religious schools with public money.
Burton went on to say in the call, “It’ll drive ‘em crazy that they’ll have to divide their resources out in opposing this.” The aim, ultimately, isn’t to drive us crazy (oh, sure, it’ll do that). It’s to steer very controversial legislation to the Supreme Court where it could, you know, fuck absolutely everyone in the country.
The agenda is familiar: slowly erode the separation of church and state at the edges by doing things like introducing religious monuments on public grounds. Do small things that seem harmless but when considered by courts (and become law) enable private institutions to commit horrible acts of discrimination, and worse.
The Guardian spoke with Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism who puts it pretty plainly:
“Considered individually, these bills making their ways through state legislatures appear to have a scattershot quality. In reality, they are very often components of a coordinated, overarching strategy.”
With this election cycle come and gone, and with a lot of efforts from a lot of very hardworking activists doing absolutely nothing to curb that power in red states, what can we do now? Your potential actions could include putting out calls to your local media to highlight the issue. Call your legislators, no matter where you live, and put your voice on the record as being aware of this issue and being horrified that it’s happening. Even if those legislators are Republican. It makes a difference if they know you’re paying attention.
Or, you could crawl back under your sofa and cry until your eyes bleed. Do you.
At the very least, our ask is that you stay vigilant and read up. Sorry. Things are getting better, but they have a way of also staying horrible when the Christian fascists get involved.
Articles cited for this story:
Project Blitz: the legislative assault by Christian nationalists to reshape America
Opinion | A Christian Nationalist Blitz
For more information about Project Blitz: