Deport Clarence Thomas? 'I Don't Find It To Be Obscene,' Christian Nationalist Pastor Says
Pastor Joel Webbon sat down with Patriot Front founder Thomas Rousseau, a white nationalist, insisting diversity should wait until heaven.
Christian nationalist Pastor Joel Webbon was trying hard to make nice with Patriot Front founder Thomas Rousseau—after all, both men are united in their opposition to the notion of America as a place where all races are welcomed.
Rousseau, who wants to turn the United States into a White ethnostate, refused to concede that one of Webbon’s favorite Black people, ultra-conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, would not have to “go back.”
The best Webbon could get out of Rousseau is that the Black, American-born Supreme Court justice “would be at the very end of the line” for deportation.
Still, the Reformed Baptist pastor from the Austin area assured Rousseau that he found his position on Clarence Thomas “understandable.”
“ Now, your position, I disagree with it, but I don’t find it to be obscene,” Webbon continued.
“I just want you to know when I hear you say, ‘Uh, Joel, I’m trying to be consistent and so I cannot say that a Black is an American’ … I hope you know this, like, I don’t hear that and say, ‘You dirty racist, that’s terrible’ or ‘I can’t believe that.’ Yeah, I perfectly understand the position.”
Watch excerpt below:
By the way, as Webbon explained, “Under my scheme, a lot of Black people could not vote. Mm-hmm. Clarence Thomas could, and I would thank God for it.”
Perhaps that explains why the pastor does not find Rousseau’s views “obscene.”
‘I actually like diversity—in heaven’
This week, Webbon hosted Rousseau, a fellow Texan, on his New Christian Right podcast. The meeting followed Patriot Front’s successful effort to capture headlines with its white nationalist march through Washington, D.C., on July 4.
In Hitleresque tones, Rousseau delivered a speech outside Union Station that celebrated “the blood and spirit of the race which created America.” He also denounced the “Jewish cabals” and “homosexual peddlers of vice and exploitation” who, in his mind, are the “enemies of our people.”‘
In cryptic terms that certainly would have been understood by his audience, Webbon assured Rousseau he was “aware of the JQ”—slang for the “Jewish question,” a term straight out of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf—and claimed America has been living under a “Jewish theocracy.”
Like Ku Klux Klan preachers of the past, Webbon invoked the Bible to defend a separation of the races—at least, on Earth.
“I actually like diversity—in heaven, right?” Webbon insisted.
He told Rousseau:
“ If I want to be surrounding the throne of my Lord and Savior—worshiping Him forever with my brothers and sisters in Christ of every tribe, tongue, and nation, people who don't look like me and speak like me—to have diversity in the end game, heaven, those distinctions have to be maintained and not eroded now, here, temporally on Earth. And if we eradicate all distinctions and it just becomes this amalgamation, this brown soup, and we all speak the same … dialect, we all look the same, then you actually lose this great eternal eschatological promise. And here's the thing, it's not just what I like. Who cares what Joel likes? It seems like God mentions this because he likes it, it seems like there's something about the Christian God who actually prefers and designed that there would be not just one people, but there would be a variety of distinct peoples in different dialects with different cultures who all love and worship him.”
Listening to Webbon’s theological contortions, I was reminded of Jesus’s prayer: “Thy will be done on Earth, as it is in heaven.”
I seemed to have missed the asterisk: “Diversity not included.”
Modern Christianity ‘has become the poison’
As Webbon described it, White people were chosen by God. From Rousseau’s perspective, it was the rugged individualism that put his race on top.
Still, both men agreed that the U.S. Constitution needs some work to preserve the White man’s proper role in American society.
“I’m not against the Constitution, but I regularly find myself spurring on our politicians to be willing to at times go against the Constitution to save the Constitution,” Webbon argued.
They disagreed about whether America should be a theocracy.,
In the view of the Patriot Front funder, whether one is White would be the primary determinant of whether a person could be an American. The pastor’s analysis would first begin with whether the individual was a Christian.
Rousseau, who admittedly is not religious, acknowledged that Patriot Front’s members include people who practice Odinism, an ancient European, pagan religion whose Gods include Odin, Thor, and other deities from the Norse pantheon.
Even there, Webbon seemed eager to find common ground
“What I’m trying to constantly convey to white nationalist guys who are a little bit more interested in Thor and Odin than they are Jesus,” he recounted, “is I’m saying, ‘No, no, no, no, Christianity is not the liability. It’s the modern liberalization of Christianity that has become the poison.”
Under what circumstances, the Christian nationalist pastor “constantly” encounters pagan white nationalists was unclear.
Curiously, Webbon insisted he did not believe that Rousseau’s pagan friends were just imagining their gods, although he suggested they were fallen angels.
He told Rousseau:
“Angels are real, and angels descending to Earth, and fallen angels, and taking the daughters of men and marrying. And like, so when I think of, like, a god of the sea, I think that's probably real. And that that god of the sea that some called him Poseidon, others called him Neptune, but that this god of the sea was probably a fallen angel that had a regional jurisdiction.”
The pair also found agreement in their desire to limit who would be allowed to vote in America, although they disagreed over who should be shut out.
A final thought…
As I was listening to the Webbon-Rousseau podcast, a meeting of white nationalism and Christian nationalism, I was also scrolling through Telegram, the messaging app popular among America’s far right.
On one of those accounts, I spotted an image that portrayed the “factions of the movement”—extremist elements divided by their different approaches, but united by a similar vision of taking the country back to a time when White people were seen as supreme.
They are quietly working, sometimes together, podcast by podcast, to convince their fellow Americans that their views are patriotic, even godly.
They are waiting for a moment where history might give them an opening through which they can achieve their goals.
This is why we cannot afford to close our eyes.
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