Are Republicans and Christians just a step or two removed from neo-Nazis and far-right terrorists? That assumption appears to be part of the theoretical underpinnings of a government-funded program organized by an Ohio university.
According to an article published by Fox News this morning, the Department of Homeland Security provided a grant to PREVENTS-OH (Preventing Radicalization to Extremist Violence through Education, Network-Building and Training in Southwest Ohio), a project of the University of Dayton that aims to “develop a proactive, informed and resilient network of organizations, coalitions and civic entities aware and capable of collaborating to prevent domestic violent extremism in Southwest Ohio,” as the university’s website puts it.
The Fox News article draws from a 49-page report written by the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group. According to the MRC report, the PREVENTS-OH program applied for a DHS grant, and its application referred to a seminar held earlier at UD. One of the presentations at that seminar involved a graphic depicting normal conservative and Christian groups alongside Nazi groups. The more normal groups were placed at the bottom of a “pyramid,” with groups decreasing in size but increasing in extremism as one ascended the “structure.” From the report:
Among the organizations and movements displayed on the pyramid were the Republican Party (RNC), The Heritage Foundation, the American Conservative Union, Fox News, Breitbart News, the National Rifle Association (NRA), PragerUniversity, Tea Party Patriots, the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement, the pro-police Blue Lives Matter movement and the Christian Broadcasting Network.
Also on the pyramid, as if somehow comparable to the aforementioned reputable organizations and movements, were rabidly hateful groups like the militant neo-Nazi gang The Base and pro-Nazi publication The Daily Stormer.
This chart was among others included in the original grant application submitted by the University of Dayton to DHS to successfully secure TVTP funding.
Other speakers at the same seminar from which this “pyramid” originated compared the Trump administration to the genocidal communist Khmer Rouge dictatorship and called Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s proposed volunteer civilian military force, which would be activated in emergencies such as hurricanes, an “armed state force” that should be viewed as one of several possible “warning signs” about his ominous plans.
This program is yet another example of Biden-era attempts to ostracize and even pathologize dissent from leftist viewpoints. In the eyes of this project, the difference between watching Fox News and committing fascist terrorism is apparently one of degree, not of kind. The federal government has no business funding such a blatant attempt to lump perfectly legitimate political and religious activity together with far-right extremism.