Antisemitism 101

 

A German poster from the early 1940s about shadowy Jews conspiring to instigate war, and a modern meme about Jews controlling the pharmeceutical industry and conspiring to force vaccines on you. 

        I never thought I would have to write a post like this. I used to take an off-ramp that had a giant sign reminding people of the Holocaust and warning us not to let it happen again. I always thought that was overwrought. I mean, who is going to start casually spouting rhetoric that eventually leads to something like the Holocaust?

        Then Hamas waged a campaign of rape, torture, kidnapping, and terror on October 7th. When Israel tried to fight the terror group hiding behind its own women and children, and retrieve hostages being sexually abused, tortured, and murdered, including a mother and her two toddlers who were beaten to death, Israel was accused of uniquely monstrous war crimes simply for defending itself. While every death in war is tragic, Israel was fighting what one Modern War Institute scholar called the most restrained war in history in response to a terror attack.

        Even more sadly, Israel’s justified self-defense reignited some very old antisemitic tropes. Jewish people experienced a 200-500 percent increase in hate crimes. And I now regularly encounter enough Jew-hating nonsense that I’m forced to write a post about it.

        Antisemitism is often cloaked in the camouflage of “criticizing Israeli policy”. As a military analyst, I find genuinely informed criticisms quite rare. More often, “criticizing Israel” or “criticizing Netanyahu” is the bumper sticker used as a shield against valid charges of antisemitism. That phrase then becomes a socially acceptable way to recycle ancient bigotry with updated language.

        The most basic rule of antisemitism is simple: if you believe a shadowy group of powerful Jews is secretly behind your problems, you’re antisemitic.

        Modern buzzwords about bankers, media elites, globalists, or pedophiles don’t make it any less conspiratorial and wrong. Conspiracy theories thrive by misusing the inevitable gaps in human knowledge to create the illusion of hidden insight. And it feels comforting to imagine yourself as one of the enlightened few uncovering secret truths hidden from the masses. But go back to rule number one: if your explanation for world events ultimately boils down to secret powerful Jews, then you are trafficking in antisemitism.

Dual Loyalty Trope:

        This trope claims that Americans who support Israel must be doing so because they are manipulated, bribed, or controlled by Israel or Jews. You can already see rule number one appearing again here, because the implication is that Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of a country roughly the size of New Jersey and widely criticized internationally, somehow secretly controls world leaders and American foreign policy.

        This is especially odd considering Trump himself publicly styled himself the “daddy” of NATO, and when Netanyahu violated a ceasefire Trump reportedly helped broker, Trump openly said on camera, “[Bibi] doesn’t know what the f-ck he’s doing.” Several times in the war with Iran he has publicly rebuked Netanyahu, which is a rather odd thing to do if Netanyahu was the public facing leader of the cabal of powerful Jews pulling the strings. But antisemitism often falls apart upon cursory thought because it relies on stoking powerful emotions instead of calm and rational examination. 

        This trope comes closest to a potentially sincere foreign policy disagreement. People can absolutely debate whether the United States should support Israel to the extent it does. But  the problem is how quickly legitimate disagreement mutates into the insinuation that Jews are secretly controlling governments, media, or finance from behind the curtain, and that they don’t have a right to exist. Unfortunately, the line between valid, substantive disagreed about US foreign policy consistently crosses into Jews controlling the US, which is the fundamental feature of antisemitism. 

“All About the Benjamins”:

        “Money grubbing” Jews is an old stereotype that portrayed Jews as greedy, manipulative, and obsessed with money. Historically, many Christians considered lending money at interest to be sinful usury. Jewish communities often operated under different legal and religious traditions regarding trade and finance, and, like many middleman minorities throughout history, some Jewish communities became economically successful in certain sectors.

        That success frequently became the object of resentment and jealousy. Combined with conspiracy thinking about secret Jewish power, it produced centuries of scapegoating, persecution, expulsions, and violence. The stereotype survives today anytime people reduce Jews to caricatures about money, banking, influence, or financial manipulation.

Blood Libel:

        This is one of the oldest and ugliest antisemitic tropes. Historically, blood libel referred to false accusations that Jews kidnapped and murdered Christian children for ritual purposes. The accusation was completely fabricated, but it spread throughout medieval Europe and helped justify massacres and persecution.

        The modern versions usually revolve around claims of secret Jewish depravity, hidden abuse networks, sexual perversion, or elaborate conspiracies involving harm to children. It is the same basic structure repeated across centuries: secretive Jews committing monstrous acts behind closed doors.

        A recent example was the New York Times running a deeply irresponsible story implying Israeli handlers trained dogs to sexually assault prisoners — published the same day detailed reports were emerging documenting the mass sexual violence committed against Jews on October 7th.

        This post was difficult to write because the experience reminds me of Ellis from Die Hard. For those who remember the movie, Ellis was a sleazy 1980s corporate cokehead who suddenly started throwing around ethnic slurs I had never even heard before. I had to look some of them up afterward.

        The sudden resurgence of antisemitism has felt similar. I was generally familiar with Jew-hatred in the abstract, but I found myself having to study the tropes more carefully just to identify, refute, and ultimately shun antisemites when they surface in supposedly respectable conversations.

        The uncomfortable truth is that antisemitism rarely presents itself honestly. It almost never announces itself as hatred of Jews outright. Instead, it disguises itself as criticizing foreign policy, “anti-elite” politics, anti-globalism, anti-Zionism, complaints about elite pedophiles, conspiracy thinking, or moral outrage selectively applied only to Jews and the Jewish state.

        That is why people need to learn the patterns. Because once you recognize the structure of the rhetoric, you start seeing the same old poison recycled over and over again with slightly updated branding. Never again is right now, and every decent person should call out antisemitism when they see it.

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America Has Lost the War with Iran! A Case Study in Bad Analysis

 

        Every crisis produces a bevy of speculative analysis that is often untethered from facts on the ground and good reasoning.

        The popular claims from “Astrado” at LDS Freedom forum provide an excellent example. He claimed the United States and Israel are on the verge of running out of defensive missiles, Iran is unleashing thousands more with escalating capability, the Strait of Hormuz is closed, information is being censored, and unless there’s a ceasefire within days, we face total collapse—military defeat, economic ruin, or nuclear war.

        That sounds incredible dramatic. Material like this is very popular, often repeated, the center of attention, and it’s also wrong.

        The author started his click bait fear mongering with only partially true points about missiles. “They’ve fired thousands, they have tens of thousands more, therefore we’re about to be overwhelmed.” Yet that’s an example of straight line projections, one of the most common mistakes. When I was in grade school back in the 80s, my teachers warned that Japan and Germany had strong economies that would quickly overtake us. But both countries stagnated and struggled since then, with Japan experiencing “lost decades.” In the 90s I remember Time’s Magazine showing pictures of a Red China and warning of their ascendence. But among other factors, they had a real estate bubble and population collapse that suggest they won’t. (Note how Japan’s lost decades also started with a real estate bubble.) And every politician assumes the good times will always continue and they spend money instead of saving for disaster.

        Additionally, you might add a dose of common sense to the straight-line problem. Early in conflicts, you often see spikes in activity. Generally, a country doesn’t get stronger as a war continues, so they send large salvos to probe defenses, saturate systems, or create psychological shock. (As you’ll see below, Iran also had a use or it or lose it incentive.) Treating those spikes as a sustainable baseline is how you end up predicting collapse that never comes.

        More importantly, it ignores how missile capabilities can be degraded. While defending against launched missiles, the U.S. and Israel aggressively targeted the systems that launch them. Launchers, stockpiles, factories, and command-and-control nodes are all part of the battlefield. The US doesn’t have to worry about dwindling stockpiles of counter missiles when they actively and dramatically reduced Iran’s ability to launch them.

        There’s a historical analogy here. Alexander the Great didn’t defeat the Persian fleet in a decisive naval battle. He marched along the coast and captured the ports that sustained it. Without docking, resupply and repair the fleet quickly became a non-factor in the war.

        Once you account for straight line projections, initial burst, and America’s degradation strategy, you find the author’s confidently asserted claims of solid analysis are both shaky and paltry.  Their analysis is based on incomplete information, incorrect assumptions, and ignores dynamic interaction between offense and defense.

        Second, the supporting claims—like the Strait of Hormuz being closed or widespread censorship—are asserted but not meaningfully developed. Even if we take them seriously, they’re not one-directional in their effects. Closing the Strait of Hormuz would harm Iran’s own economic lifelines as much as anyone else’s. That doesn’t make it impossible, but it does make it far more complicated than a simple “checkmate” move. Except for higher gas prices, there doesn’t seem to be much impact from restricted traffic through the strait.

        At the lowest point, the author parenthetically claims AI agrees with him. But AI relies on a people pleasing and sycophantic design. Combined with bad inputs outlined above, AI becomes little more than a yes man for analysis no matter how incredulous it becomes.

        Speaking of incredulous, the author claimed that the lack of missiles would result in the use of the nuclear, or Samson Option. This is the classic fear escalator. When conventional arguments feel shaky analysts jump to the worst-case scenario. They expect the emotionally charged language and general unease to bypass arguments while commanding attention.

        But deterrence doctrines exist precisely to prevent their use. Israel has faced existential threats for decades, including from Iran and its proxies, and has not used nuclear weapons. That track record matters and it suggests the doctrine functions as intended. Nuclear weapons remain a last-resort deterrent, not a trigger waiting to be pulled because of an initial flurry of missiles.

        The final mistake is the cascading collapse scenario. The author claims “all U.S. bases will be destroyed, carriers sunk, the petrodollar gone, global economic ruin.” This is where the analysis fully detaches from reality. Iranian missile forces have demonstrated they can inflict some damage, but not at the scale required to produce that kind of systemic collapse. After the initial flurry Iran’s ability to damage their enemies has collapsed.

        As I’ve written in my book on modern Chinese strategy, missiles today are simply the newest version of technology that has been around since World War II. Regardless of the number of missiles or improvements fielded, counter defenses have also improved. AEGIS Destroyers have better radar, carriers increasingly employ rail guns and missiles, F35’s can actively seek out and destroy launchers from longer distances than ever before. That is why I wasn’t surprised when more reputable analysts concluded that the Iran showed us the threat of missile swarms are overblown.

        You didn’t have to be an analyst to see through most of the smoke and fear mongering. A simple browsing of recent history in the area shows we’ve seen versions of this before. During the Gulf War, there were similar fears about regional escalation and economic shock. Oil prices spiked but then they stabilized. Markets adjusted. The war was disruptive, but only for a short period of time and not automatically apocalyptic.

        To summarize, the bad analysis does the following things:

        They extrapolate linearly from peak data. Ignore counter reactions and adaption. They assert instead of demonstrating key claims. (This is frequently accompanied with various insults and posturing.) They lean on worst case scenarios and present them as likely outcomes.

        Good analysis is uncomfortable because it requires vast amounts of study along with uncertainty, tradeoffs, and competing variables. This makes it seem dry and is often lost in the noise. Bad analysis is confident, simple, and catastrophic which makes it as loud and popular as it is wrong. This example falls squarely into the second category.

Prooftexting War: Even the Pope Gets It Wrong

        

        Recently, Pope Leo XIV weighed in on the Iran war and declared that God cannot be used to justify war. Quoting Isaiah 1:15, "He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: 'Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.’”

        Calls for peace are understandable. War is ugly, costly, and often tragic and we all want peace. But it’s discouraging to see the Pope of all people prooftext a single verse and present it as if it settles the entire moral question of warfare.

        That kind of selective reading sounds nice, but it doesn’t hold up. The Babylon Bee joked that "God Does Not Listen To People Who Wage War So Long As You Don’t Count Moses, David, Joshua, Elijah, Saul, Gideon, Samson, Or Anyone Else In The Bible."

        I could stop there as the Bee presents the fundamental problem with the Pope's words in that the Bible and LDS scripture are not so easily presented as anti war. If anything, they reflect a strong just war sensibility. 

        That's because I can name Christian fathers like Cyprian, Tertullian, and Origen,[1] who prayed for the success of the emperor and his armies, and many scriptures, such as D&C 98:37, say the Lord will join His people in battle.

        This sentiment is frequently repeated in scripture, including many Biblical verses the Pope didn't include: 

“And I the Lord would fight their battles” (D&C 98:37).

“As I said in a former commandment, even so will I fulfill- I will fight your battles” (D&C 105:14).

“Thou will fight for thy people as thou didst in the day of battle, that they may be delivered from the hands of all their enemies” (D&C 109:28).

“The Lord your God which goeth before you, he shall fight for you” (Deut 1:30).

“The Lord fought for Israel” (Joshua 10:14).

“The battle is not yours, but God’s” (2 Chron. 20:1-29).

        So it seems odd to say that the Lord doesn't hear the prayers of those who make war and whose hands are covered in blood, while the Lord Himself says so many times he'll fight our battles. The answer in the supposed contradiction is that the verse cited by the Pope, (Isaiah 1:15) described a wicked Israel, condemned not simply for violence, but for hypocrisy, injustice, and unrepentant sin. It is not a blanket condemnation of all warfare in every context.

        Unfortunately, a random scripture taken out of context and used as a sanctiminous bumper sticker is quite common. See, for example, how many pacifists invent a new category of "sanctified" behavior in D&C 98, or how often someone quotes only the first half of Mormon 7:4.[2] 

        But with a full framework that doesn't pick and choose which scriptures to turn into bumper stickers, one that accepts both the pro- and anti-war passages, the real question becomes motives, what is being defended, methods, and the justice of the cause. In that light, it’s not hard to conclude that God hears prayers of those who wage war. His record throughout scripture is one of justified warfare and strengthening his people in battle. The apostle Paul himself describes rulers as “agents of God’s wrath” (Romans 13:4), tasked with punishing evil.

        In short, the quote is nice, and it's ironic to see how many unbelievers suddenly like the Pope because he provided a quote that can bash Trump and their political opponents. But even the strongest sentiment backed by a single scripture, even when delivered from the Pope himself, isn't enough to settle a question as complex as war.

        If we’re going to take scripture seriously, we have to take all of it seriously, not just the verses that fit the mood of the moment and are useful for bashing our opponents. 

**********

1. Tertullian, Apologia 32, 33. Gordon Heath, "The Church Fathers and the Roman Empire," in Empire in the New Testament, Stanley Porter ed., (Pickwick Publications, 2011,) 267 (259-282). David Corey, J. Daryl Charles, Just War Tradition: An Introduction (ISI Institute, 2012), chapter 1. (Page number forthcoming. I packed all my notes for an upcoming move.) 

2. See also, Patrick Mason, David Pulsipher, Proclaim Peace: The Restoration’s Answer to an Age of Conflict, (Deseret Book, 2021), preface. (Page number forthcoming. I packed my library too.) 

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The Restoration Shouldn’t Need Inquisitors

 

        Elder Clark Gilbert was recently appointed as the newest apostle. Around the same time, I was an invited guest of the Interpreter: A Journal of LDS Scripture, to speak at their conference on the small plates. But someone at BYU’s “clearing office,” which is a new creation from Gilbert, decided I was unfit to present. Maybe it was my lack of temple recommend, maybe it was my exit from BYU-Idaho, maybe they didn’t like my reliance on Confucian thought to engage the Book of Mormon, or maybe I dumped his daughter. I don’t know, and that black box is part of the problem.

         But I do know that my research supports the divine Book of Mormon and enhances readers appreciation of it. And some bureaucracy blocked me. (Don’t worry, it’s a modified version of chapter two from my latest book, so you can still read it.)

        That experience made a recent categorization Gilbert reportedly used at BYU feel less theoretical and more dogmatic than free. As summarized by the Salt Lake Tribune, when assessing professors at BYU he described a group just short of “secular foes,” worse than the “faithful core” and “supportive center,” called “secular first” — individuals who put “truth” from any source on equal footing with the LDS gospel. 

        That category is astonishing because Brigham Young explicitly taught that we should seek truth from any source, even from the “infidel”:

“Mormonism,” so-called, embraces every principle pertaining to life and salvation, for time and eternity. No matter who has it. If the infidel has got truth it belongs to ‘Mormonism.’ The truth and sound doctrine possessed by the sectarian world, and they have a great deal, all belong to this Church.

        The Church’s own statement, Treasuring All Truth, affirms that Mohammed, Confucius, the Reformers, Socrates, Plato, and others received a portion of God’s light. If that is our doctrine, then placing truth from any source on “equal footing” with the gospel is confidence in the restoration, not secularism.

        As I studied for my PhD in Chinese history, I’ve come to appreciate Confucianism deeply and have found real wisdom there. In researching my recent book on just war thought and the Book of Mormon, I was struck by how much more developed the broader Christian tradition’s discourse on war and peace has been.

        My book was a small attempt to strengthen LDS discourse on war and peace using both of those traditions. In fact, it’s my study of the Book of Mormon, delighting in its complexities and engagements it has with critical questions, that has kept me in the Church. This pursuit of understanding is not an attack on the church or a danger for faithful members, but my attempt to magnify my God given talents and let my light shine (Matthew 25:14-30; 5:16).

        Leaders who block or discourage my academic study risk stifling the very faith they claim to protect. If serious engagement with non-LDS thinkers places someone one step below a “secular foe,” that signals a disturbing shift into orthodoxy policing.

        Perhaps the Tribune mischaracterized his remarks.  If he meant those who subordinate revealed doctrine to fashionable ideology, that is a legitimate concern. But if the category includes those who refuse to dismiss or minimize truth simply because it originates outside our institutional boundaries, it restricts the pursuit of light and truth.

        I’m reminded of Galileo because the broad arguments he made in his defense against heresy are often repeated by modern scholars. And his expulsion is an easy cultural touchstone that everyone knows: institutional anxiety about and reactive defense against external truth have never aged well. The restored gospel should not reflexively align itself with inquisitors against inquiry. It should be the most confident intellectual tradition in the room.

        Only time will tell if these fears are unfounded. But my personal experience — and the cancellation of things like the Mormon Theology Seminar — already represents a disturbing shift. The restored gospel claims continuing revelation and the fullness of truth. As a scholar on a fearless quest to study the Book of Mormon and the truths it contains, I shouldn’t have to wonder if I’m “cleared” to share it. If the gospel is confident in light, it should be confident in all who seek it — no matter where that truth shines.

Update: Cheryl Bruno, along with a wide range of scholars researching polygamy—many of them faithful and trained at BYU—were recently denied access to tour BYU’s Special Collections library. These are precisely the kinds of scholars institutions should want to engage: people committed enough to attend conferences, seek out specialized training, and work directly with primary sources.

Of course, we can’t know every detail behind the decision. But taken alongside similar incidents, it begins to look less like an isolated case and more like a troubling pattern—one where dogma crowds out genuine inquiry. It’s one thing when that happens to me. It’s another when an entire community of serious scholars finds the door closed.

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Just War Theory in the Age of Political Violence

My recent article, Just War Theory in the Age of Political Violence has just been published at Public Square Magazine. I'm happy to take part in a very important conversation when so many people feel justified in taking the law into their own hands. The article is an edited version of this post from several months ago. 

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The Church Doesn't Need Your Panic: My Guest Post at Times and Seasons

      

  I wrote this piece in response to a pervasive pattern of despair. Since I was responding to a specific Times and Seasons post I submitted it to them as a guess post and they were gracious enough to post it. You can read it here and its republished below: 

        I read Johnathan Green’s post and because the underlying flaws have been repeated at least three times over the past year, I thought it was worth a substantive response, and it was too long for comments. There’s a lot of heat, hyperbole, and moral posturing in his post, but very little that holds up under scrutiny. I take strong exception to his exaggerations, false equivalence, and the assumption that his political lens should dictate the Church’s actions.

        Screaming “Nazi” louder is not an argument. He treated “warning signs” as functionally equivalent to moral certainty. Using German terms to dress up Nazi comparisons doesn’t make them more persuasive, it just adds rhetorical heat without light. As a result, much of his post rests on false equivalence and superficial similarities rather than serious analysis.

        He said in point three that the Church should “ignore the administration,” yet the post itself spends thousands of words obsessing over it. That contradiction matters, because point four revealed the underlying assumption: that the Church should function as an arm of his political views. I used to think that way too, that the Church should take a forceful position on every partisan controversy. That was twenty years ago and frankly, I grew up. The Church is not my political representative. It teaches principles that allow members to vote, persuade, and act in the public square on their own responsibility.

        He’ll probably respond that his post was a “strategic” argument about institutional survival rather than personal fixation. But strategy still reveals priorities. When every hypothetical risk is filtered through one political diagnosis, that diagnosis becomes the guiding authority, functionally replacing the Church’s own judgment with Green’s.

        The Church’s primary concern is ministering to the members it already has. We saw this in its restrained statement on the Russian invasion of Ukraine: as strong as possible while preserving its ability to support members and maintain its global mission. That same logic applies here.

        There’s also an implicit claim throughout that Green knows better than the prophets and apostles. If God had a direct, binding political message about Donald Trump, I assume we would have heard it from them. He defined “threats to the Church’s mission” in a way that mirrored his political hysteria.

        He appealed to Abinadi and Bonhoeffer to argue that prophets speak in principle rather than names. I can name a half dozen instances in the Bible where prophets directly name the wicked ruler but let’s go with his point. He went further and treated his interpretation of those principles as if it carries the same moral authority as prophetic judgment. That’s the move I’m rejecting.

        Points five and six repeated the same demand in softer language: he wanted the Church to endorse his position. It hasn’t, because its mission is ministering, not issuing grand political declarations that satisfy a political minority from a single country within a global church. He might claim he only wanted the church to act when faced with a clear red line, but that red line just happened to be what Green’s political beliefs say it was.

        He framed this as setting “red lines,” not seeking endorsement. But those red lines did not come from institutional revelation, global consensus, measurable harm, or even a consensus of LDS national security professionals—they came from his own political risk model. Calling that a moral threshold doesn’t make it one.

        Phrases like “surveillance by a corrupt, vindictive, unchecked personalist autocracy” read less like analysis and more like a political Gish gallop. Voters clearly weren’t persuaded by that framing. Yelling it louder won’t change that.

        He correctly noted that “getting upset over someone else’s silence is actively harmful,” yet most of the post is a sustained complaint about the Church’s silence. That tension ran through the whole piece.

        Point seven genuinely made me laugh. My life is fine under this government. I voted for border security, strict immigration enforcement, and a strong foreign policy. Inflation has stabilized, gas prices are reasonable, and I have the sense that someone is finally in charge. That calm is not a luxury based on my race, gender, or class. Unless a person lets it through their own hysteria or misdeeds, the government doesn’t affect much of your life.

        The discomfort Green described felt less like lived reality and more like a self-reinforcing media spiral: every action is filtered as sinister, which heightens anxiety, which then seeks out more bad news.

        His Gish gallop in the comments about there only being “one side” shows the harm of that cycle. Screaming “concentration camp”, “starving children”, and “torture”, might feel morally righteous or advance a partisan case, but it also heightens anxiety and escalates conflict. In short, it hurts as much as it helps.

        The healthier response is simple: consume less political media, touch grass, respect differing views, and count your blessings—basic Church principles. Screaming, “but he’s a nazi” when you’re asked to calm down and show respect is a ludicrous substitute for reasoned engagement and more of the problem.

        Green insisted that the Church shouldn’t threaten its own mission but repeatedly argue that it should adopt his political mission. “You should be appalled” isn’t a neutral principle—its Green’s emotional filter presented as moral obligation. To people who don’t share it, this comes off as unhinged, and even deranged, not persuasive.

        Green’s Trump–King Noah comparison is another false equivalence. Noah wasn’t elected. He raised taxes to intolerable levels; Trump reduced them and talks about tariff rebates. Noah imprisoned and tortured dissidents; Trump enforces immigration law, including against violent criminals. You can oppose that policy, and perhaps think it’s immoral, but calling it tyranny by analogy doesn’t make it so.

        Green claimed Trump and his supporters “rejoice in bloodshed.” As a former Marine and military analyst, I find that condescending—and a reflection of the privilege of living in peace and security. Wanting a strong defense and feeling pride in providing it is not rejoicing in bloodshed; it’s more like Captain Moroni rejoicing in the welfare and protection of his people.

        You might claim some of Trumps military actions are fascistic. But debates over presidential war powers found in Article II Section II of the constitution have been a feature of our government since Thomas Jefferson. Not part of a fascist dictatorship.

        When Green invoked Abinadi, he placed himself in the role of calling both fellow saints and Church leaders to repentance for not opposing Trump as he thinks they should. That circles back to the same contradiction: he says the Church isn’t political but then condemns it for not being political in the right way.

        He’ll say this is about obedience versus resistance under tyranny, not about Trump. But that only works if the premise, that we are already living under something functionally equivalent to tyranny, is established. He assumed the premise; he didn’t demonstrate it.

        Point 15 mentioned many recent, good talks. But scriptures should be used to examine our own conduct, not to bludgeon fellow members. If we’re staying in the Book of Mormon, Alma’s work of knitting hearts together in unity, even with love towards our fellow enemies, seems the better model.

        I agreed with one line in point sixteen: “Anticipatory despair is not a form of resistance.” That’s the clearest and strongest sentence in the entire post. The answer to despair is more time with family, friends, and neighbors, not arrogantly browbeating them into repentance for voting differently than you.

        Finally, the insider language such as “cringe resist libs” and “MWEG moms” doesn’t clarify anything. That insider framing is telling. It signaled that his argument was aimed less at persuading a broad body of saints and more at rallying a politically fluent in-group that already shared his sense of impending catastrophe.

        The Church has survived lynch mobs, federal invasion, disincorporation, KGB surveillance, and Hitler—it will survive this political moment too, without Green’s help. His post amplifies anxiety, casts fellow members and leaders as moral failures for not sharing his political conclusions and confuses personal panic with institutional necessity. Inflating warning signs into moral certainties and treating his interpretation as Church directive does nothing to build unity, influence policy responsibly, or foster understanding—it is simply noise. If we are serious about clarity, faithful witness, and real community, we need charity and reason, not labels, hysteria, or overreach. 

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Throw Granny in Front of the Bus: The Ethics of Violence in Gaza

        

        Many people claim that all violence is equally wrong, as if harm alone defines morality, but this is a misunderstanding; violence must be judged by context, intention, method, and purpose, and failing to make these distinctions obscures the difference between deliberate terror and defensive action, which is why comparing Israel’s military campaign to Hamas’ attacks demonstrates how moral evaluation depends entirely on circumstances and objectives.

        This is precisely why, in my military ethics class, we spend time on examples that force students to confront how intent, circumstances, and foreseeable outcomes shape moral judgment.

        One example we use is the case of the grandmother and the bus. Imagine you are standing on a street corner and a grandmother is about to be struck by an oncoming bus. You push her out of the way, she breaks her hip but survives, and you are rightly called a hero. Now imagine an almost identical situation, except this time the bus is a few seconds earlier and the grandmother is still standing near the curb. You push her, she breaks her hip, falls into the street, and is run over and killed. You are now a villain.

        The physical action is the same, a grandmother being pushed. The injury is nearly the same, a broken hip. Yet the moral evaluation could not be more different. The difference lies entirely in context, intention, and the relationship between the act and its outcome. Ethics has always understood that harm alone does not determine moral guilt, and anyone pretending otherwise is either unserious or willfully evasive.

        This distinction matters when discussing Israel and Hamas. There is a profound difference between deliberately moving through civilian neighborhoods like Kfar Aza and Kibbutz Be'eri, burning families alive, including infants and children, beheading civilians with garden tools, and taking civilians hostage to torture, starve and kill them, and conducting a military campaign in one of the most densely populated urban environments on earth against those same terrorists who use their own people as human shields and deliberately embed themselves in churches, hospitals, and schools.

        In both cases women and children die, and that fact is tragic, but tragedy does not erase moral distinctions. One campaign is targeted butchery pursued for the sake of terror itself. The other is a state under siege attempting to dismantle an enemy that openly celebrates rape, torture, and slaughter, while trying, however imperfectly, to protect its own population and limit civilian casualties under extraordinarily difficult conditions. Complaints about Israeli settler violence or other Israeli imperfections are largely attempts to obfuscate that difference and function as apologies for terrorists rather than serious moral analysis.

        The goals, attitudes, and methods used by the two parties remain entirely different, despite both using violence, and those differences matter. Israel’s use of force and the resulting deaths of Gazans are regrettable, they are still just in the moral sense because they are directed at stopping future atrocities and defending a population from an enemy that has made clear its intent to repeat them.

        Ultimately, the responsibility for the suffering of Palestinian civilians lies with Hamas. Israel’s campaign is imperfect, as all wars are, and many of the alleged crimes attributed to Israel rely on casualty figures and narratives produced by wildly Gazan sources and uncritical and even propagandist international organizations. Even where mistakes occur, a mistake made in pursuit of a just cause is morally different from deliberate evil.

        Hamas deliberately uses its own people as shields, operating from hospitals, schools, and residential buildings precisely because civilian deaths serve its propaganda goals. Despite this, Israel takes measures that are historically rare in urban warfare. According to John Spencer at the Modern War Institute, Israel has fought the most careful war in history. Israel provides advance warnings of operational zones, allows vaccination campaigns for children, and according to the United Nations itself facilitates the entry of millions of tons of food into Gaza. Israel possesses the military capability to kill the entire population of Gaza several times over, and supposedly seeks their genocide, yet it continually restrains itself and conducts a limited campaign aimed at dismantling a terrorist organization while simultaneously providing aid to the very population that organization endangers.

        In a perfect world violence would not be necessary, but we do not live in that world. In the end, recognizing the moral difference between deliberate terror and measured military defense is not a theoretical exercise but a practical imperative; Israel’s campaign is imperfect and tragic, but it is conducted with restraint, guided by the goal of protecting its citizens and dismantling an enemy that celebrates mass murder, while Hamas’ violence is indiscriminate, celebratory, and aimed at civilians, and anyone who refuses to distinguish between the two fails to grapple with the realities of war and the obligations of moral judgment, and the only responsible stance is to condemn the perpetrators of terror rather than those who act to stop them.

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Is Starship Troopers Fascist?

 

        The 1990s version of this movie was such a good satire of fascism that most don’t realize it was satire, or that it didn’t accurately reflect the book.

        In the book version of Starship Troopers anyone can participate in government by simply volunteering for the military. In other words, the government in Starship Troopers is a democracy, but suffrage is based upon military service and not simply being born in the country and reaching a certain age. The civics teacher in the book explains why, and it boils down to only those that have skin in the game get to have a say in policy.

        The military service isn't forced or conscripted like you'd see in a dictatorship. In fact, the military gave the main character plenty of chances to back out of their contract, even after they’ve shipped off. Those that didn’t fulfill their term of service weren’t sent to the gulag. They still enjoyed all the rights of being a citizen except voting. Most qualifying terms of service were only two years long in non combat support roles. The main character grew into a such a man that he went career in the infantry.

        The government respected the rights of its citizens including free speech. There were no secret police rounding up minorities and dissidents like a person would expect in a fascist government. The court system, especially for the military, had protections for the accused. The main character witnessed his military leadership trying to help the average soldiers avoid the harshest punishments until they blurted out their crime and it was unavoidable. The main character is Filipino, showing there wasn’t some master race ideology that motivated the government.

        They are fighting a war, but there is almost nothing about higher strategy or the reasons for either side fighting it. The main character's hometown was attacked, so in contrast to the desire for greater East Asian prosperity sphere or “living space”, the war in Starship troopers was arguably defensive. But Rico literally says, the pawn doesn't interrogate the grand master about why its moved so that is secondary.

        The tactics displayed by Rico, particularly in the opening chapter are violent, but comparable to airborne operations from World War II, negating any charges of attempted "genocide." (Ever since Gaza that word has been overused to the point of meaningless anyway.)

        In short, the book is no more militaristic or fascist than the memoir of any real-life veteran. Any veteran reading this book would appreciate its focus on military life and culture but wouldn’t call it fascist. The message of the book was simply: a dumb kid finally grows up and learns how to be a good son, father, and citizen after joining the military.

        I highly recommend you read the book for yourself.

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When Pacifism Met Reality: A Response to Ward Radio's Jonah Barnes

      

         I recently spent over an hour watching a debate among Jonah Barnes and Luke Hansen at the podcast, Doctrine and Governance. It was illuminating mostly for what was left out and engaged. Since I literally wrote the book on the subject I felt it was worth explaining those points.

Failure to Define

        Barnes never defined pacifism beyond vague gestures toward “having a peaceful heart” and disliking violence. Having a peaceful heart is important, it's literally the first chapter of my book, but he never fully explains his position which makes it more sentiment than consistent theology. Nor did he ever explicitly state if he believed all violence is immoral. If he does believe that he’ll have to explain many, many, examples of divine violence. This is usually done using the pacifists’ favorite tactic of minimizing or discounting most scriptures.

        Barnes claimed, many, many times, he took a “non-accusatory” position on pacifism, even as he accused others of “twisting the scriptures” or just being “idiots.” Yet when he claimed he was on “The Lord’s Side” the moral framing was clear: if his view is the righteous one, then those who disagree must be immoral. That’s a great deal of posturing that might be good for a debate but makes for very poor dialog and ignores the need for justice in this world. In a massive case of projection he minimized clear war chapter verses (Alma 48:14; 43:47) a great deal, offered a tortured reading of D&C 98 and ignored clear statements that we are not command to lay down our arms (Alma 61:12-13).  Barnes never considers that if warfare were inherently sinful, why would the Lord direct His people in how and where to defend themselves (Alma 48:15; Exodus 14:14; Deuteronomy 20:4)? Why would the Lord join them in battle in DC 98:37, and bless them with victory if warfare was so sinful?

        I’ll return to this below, but a better reading is to see how all the scriptures fit together. So instead of discounting the Old Testament, the war chapters, and the command to use force in DC 98, a person should understand what it means to renounce war, proclaim peace, and know when to wield the sword. The answer to that seeming contradiction is the center of my writing, the first chapter of my book, and a subject of frequent discussion.

Pacifism Meets Reality

        The greatest weakness of Barnes' position was the failure to offer hypothetical but likely real world examples, even while claiming that pacifism “thrives in the real world.” To me, that was a tacit admission that pacifist theories don’t work in the real world. Reading scripture isn’t designed to articulate grand castles in the sky, it’s supposed to help us “liken the scripture” to everyday life (1 Nephi 19:23).

        Moreover, Jesus used parables, and the hypothetical example of the Good Samaritan, Lost Sheep, Talents, Wise and Foolish Builder, and Sower, to explain His principles. The Book of Mormon is full of examples where hypothetical beliefs met the sharp edge of the sword where faithful believers were commanded to defend their families and freedom. Alma 43:47, 48:21–23, and 61:12–14 all affirms the divine duty to protect the innocent, “even unto bloodshed.”

        I’m particularly interested in Abraham’s rescue of Lot. D&C 98:32 says the Lords Law of War was also revealed to Abraham. And yet when raiders captured Lot, Abraham didn’t lift a standard of peace and wait for three trespasses. He launched a sneak attack! But he was blessed by a prince of peace (Alma 13:18). Clearly, the Old Testament's explanation of D&C 98 differs from that of Barnes. The famous command “thou shall not kill” should read, “thou shall not murder.” That’s because Exodus 21–22, immediately after the Ten Commandments, discusses multiple instances of justified defensive killing.

        Discussion of the New Testament often focuses on the supposed pacifism of the Sermon on the Mount, but Jesus supported the use of force as well. When talking to soldiers neither John the Baptist (Luke 3:10-18) nor Jesus commanded soldiers to lay down their arms (Matthew 8:5-13). (John the Baptist addressed hypothetical future situations when told soldiers to be content with their pay instead of extorting the people for more.) Jesus praised the centurion for his faith!  Jesus described parables where the master used force to compel servants to enter during a hypothetical banquet (Luke 14:23). All four gospels describe Jesus using whips to cleanse the temple. (Mason and Pulsipher tried to explain this away as “only” violence against objects and animals. But similar violence in the Book of Mormon was enough for Ammon to main and kill people.) Jesus said that he didn’t bring peace but brought the sword (Matthew 10:34), and in another instance, fire and division (Luke 12:49). Jesus killed a fig tree for not being fruitful (Mark 11:12-14). When struck, Jesus didn’t turn the other cheek (John 18:22-23).

        Expanding to look at New Testament more broadly, Paul says the rulers are appointed by God as “agents of his wrath to the wrong doer” (Romans 13:4; see below). And Jesus promises in revelation that he will kill so many people that the blood will flow like a wine press for 200 miles (Rev 14:20).

        Last but not least, our new prophet, Dallin H. Oaks gave a talk where he described how we must ask ourselves, "where will it lead?" His entire talk was based on hypothetical situations where a person might take preemptive action. 

Twisting

        In addition to misreading scriptures, the claim of twisting scriptures with overburdened reasoning is a frequent tactic of internet sophists to sound simple but decisive, and make opponents look manipulative and weak with mental gymnastics.

        But matters of war and peace are not decided by who has the best slogan. That might sound strong on a discussion board, but ethics of war and peace are best determined by how dozens of scriptures interact with each other. (Such as how someone might “renounce war” and “resist bloodshed with your sword” at the same time.)

        For those who claim to be experts on peace and love, and pacifists are among the most arrogant people I've met, they should be able to move beyond bumper stickers to explain their point using scriptures, including likely hypotheticals. It’s not quite a bumper sticker, but Barnes’ catch phrases are an indictment of his shallowness, not my depth.

Moral Logic and Justice

        Finally, there was a singular point where Barnes declared: “Justice is the last thing I want.” That is an astoundingly privileged comment from someone who has never experienced a grave injustice. The victims whose blood “cries from the ground” (Genesis 4:10; 2 Nephi 28;10) deserve more than passive compassion. It sounds a bit like Game of Thrones but it’s accurate, until the afterlife, the only justice a person receives is what is delivered to people by a secular government. That is why God said that rulers are “agents of wrath to the wrong doers,” and Thomas Aquinas cited ruler’s need to “deliver the poor and needy” (Psalms 81:4).

        Justice entirely deferred to eternity is justice denied on earth. In short, tell the families of 9/11 victims or Jews in Europe during the Holocaust justice is the last thing they should receive.  They should be okay with the perpetrators of heinous rape, mutilation, and murder living their entire lives, smiling with the sun on their face, having meals and every joy they could have. Meanwhile the victims spend countless hours in tears, feeling like a storm cloud is always raining on them…all because Jonah Barnes has a vague aversion to violence to the point he says that he doesn’t want “justice.” But the Book of Mormon directly repudiates that opinion when Alma taught that mercy can’t rob justice (Alma 42:25). That is even more important in matters of war and peace, and explains why Bib Netanyahu, for example, seems so motivated to pursue war. Only eliminating Hamas, (or the less perfect peace deal that disarms them and bars them from power) was justice for the innocent victims of Hamas’ barbaric rampage and a defense against future attacks. 

Conclusion

        I didn’t even get to many other topics. For example, Barnes drew shaky parallels between modern conflicts and ancient wars, equating acts like Hiroshima or Pearl Harbor defense with evil. War is terrible but pretending that all use of force is immoral doesn’t make us holy, it makes us irresponsible and idle witnesses to slaughter. Scripture, history, and reason converge on a simple truth that peace sometimes requires courage.

        We can wield the sword with clean hearts, but we cannot lay it down while evil thrives. We should abandon bumper stickers like “war is bad” or Barnes’ favorite, “we aren’t commanded to pick up arms.” And realize that we must love our neighbor enough to stop their slaughter using our God given right to defense ourselves. 

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I'm creative too! You'll find my fiction under the pen name MT Deane. 

Blurred Lines: Why So Many Killers Confuse Terrorism with Justice

 

        The recent shooting at a Mormon chapel in Michigan is part of a disturbing trend: the growing justification of violence. A Catholic church was recently attacked, Charlie Kirk was assassinated, and the murderer of a health care CEO is treated as a romantic figure because of his looks. Even Lori Vallow, the “doomsday mom,” defended her killings by invoking Nephi’s slaying of Laban.

        These examples reveal how dangerously blurred the moral line has become between justified violence and terrorism. Increasingly, those who commit crimes are excused, while ordinary law-abiding people, working unglamorous jobs in average towns or simply attending church, are painted as guilty of society’s ills and, in some eyes, worthy of death. Such thinking only makes sense when guilt and innocence are determined not by individual actions but by membership in a group.

        This logic can be traced through intellectual traditions that divide the world into two hostile camps: the oppressors vs. oppressed of Marx, or the colonizers vs. colonized of Frantz Fanon. Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, praised by Jean-Paul Sartre and Cornel West as a revolutionary manual, has become particularly influential. Its vision of collective struggle and sanctioned violence echoes today in the defense of Hamas atrocities, the celebration of political assassinations, and even in some strands of leftist Mormon thought.

        This post examines Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth to show how violence is sanctioned when individual responsibility is erased and why Just War theory provides a much needed moral antidote.

Violence

        The Wretched of the Earth both justifies and minimizes intense violence. The first line of the book said, “decolonization is always a violent event” (1). Then, “decolonization reeks of red-hot cannonballs and bloody knives” (3). Fanon warned of a “human tide” that sounded like the French Reign of Terror (13.) Fanon says the colonized are filled with “blood feuds” and “fratricidal blood bath(s)” (17, 21). “It is clearly and plainly an armed struggle” (42). “For the colonized, this violence represents the absolute praxis” (43). And finally, “For the colonized, life can only materialize from the rotting cadaver of the colonialist.”

        His theories result in a Manichean view, his words, that erase individual moral virtue and justified murder. Because if a colonized person kills colonizer cops, he is a hero. As Fanon wrote “If the act for which this man is prosecuted by the colonial authorities is an act exclusively directed against a colonial individual or colonial asset, then the demarcation line [between right and wrong] is clear and manifest (30).”

Minimize Western Religion and Values

        When he does quote Christian teachings, he either invalidates or perverts them. According to Fanon, the teachings of love and harmony (3) are simply part of the “confusion mongers” that make exploitation easier (4).  Fanon said, “The last can be first only after a murderous and decisive confrontation” (3).

        Fanon says Christianity is the white man’s church, “as we know in this story, many are called but few are chosen” (8). After he told story of rebel that killed colonizers Fanon said it was a “baptism by blood” (46).

        He ignored Western values the same way. Without evidence he asserted that “government agents use the language of pure violence” (4). Discussions of Western values cause the natives to tense their muscles and grab a machete and sharpen their weapons (8). Fanon said the West wages a war in values, that the people don’t care about. All they care about is land appropriation and blowing the colonial world to smithereens (6).

Putting It All Together

        All the above matters because the Western values that he diminishes, which were often promulgated by Christian thinkers, established guardrails against the kind of bloodbath Fanon justified and unleashed and provides moral correction against the abuses that supposedly justify the violent outbursts of the colonized.[1]

        Salamanca school scholar Francisco Suarez wrote that revolt is only violence is just only “if essential for liberty, because if there is any less drastic means of removing him it is not lawful to kill him…always provided that there is no danger of the same or worse evils falling on community as result of the tyrants death.[2]

        Early modern scholar Hugo Grotius wrote about the same right to revolt if the king alienates his people, but also warned potential usurpers that it would lead to gory factionalism and “dangerous, bloody conflict.”[3]

        In similar language, Mosiah recognized the danger of revolt when he argued for the end of the monarchy: [Y]e cannot dethrone an iniquitous king save it be through much contention, and the shedding of much blood (Mosiah 29:21).

        In contrast to Fanon, Christian writers espousing what eventually became notable Western values recognized the same danger in revolution and warned against slaughter. At the same time, they recognized the rights of the oppressed and just war often became a catalyst for reform. Fanon dismissed the talk of rights as the “erstatz,” or fake struggle of the elite for the people “insipid humanitarianism” (28). Yet those supposedly insipid beliefs according to Fanon, or beliefs that are insufficient according to multiple LDS scholars,[4] are stronger than any of Fanon’s theories because they clearly address the morality of revolution.

        Despite being minimized by Fanon as abstract values that don’t matter, the Salamanca school scholars advocating for human rights of natives, the Grimke sisters arguing for abolition, the missionaries arguing for abolition, and the Christian missionaries that reported the abuses in the Belgian Congo suggest religion was often a reforming counter agent to colonialism. A focus on individual morality instead of collective guilt promoted by Fanon noticed the stark differences between the philosopher that opposed colonization compared to the politicians that wanted it, the ministers that built roads and bridges and the rapacious tax collectors, and the leaders of the Western Concession in Shanghai that shielded dissidents.

        Using collective accusations that erases individual moral responsibility is why we end up with Hamas apologists. Cornell West said the Palestinians most embody the “spirit of Fanon” (xii), so when they killed, they were simply part of the colonized oppressed and their actions turn them in to “heroes.” I quoted this earlier, but it is worth repeating what Fanon wrote regarding the morality of violence against the colonizers, “If the act for which this man is prosecuted by the colonial authorities is an act exclusively directed against a colonial individual or colonial asset, then the demarcation line is clear and manifest.” Even though their violence was a barbaric campaign of mass slaughter and rape against innocent families, the ideas of Fanon made all Jews guilty and all terrorists innocent.

        That is why Americans witnessed the bizarre spectacle of liberal groups making gliders their logo. (Gliders are how the terrorists travelled to the massacre at the Nova music festival.) And this confused moral logic led to tweets which argued the barbaric savagery of Hamas was “what decolonization looks like.”

        This collective guilt theory is why so many rationalized away the assassination of health care CEO Brian Thompson. (The other reason was the killer’s attractiveness.) He never killed anyone and arguably worked to provide health care to millions. But he was part of a hated industry, attacked for killing thousands. Thus, the nominal morality that opposes murder held less sway for the masses of morally confused. It’s true that the health care system really stinks but relying on collective guilt to indict one person as guilty and worthy of death and justify murder by another, is a dangerous slope and signals a dangerous erosion of clear moral standards.

Bad Categories Escape Morality

        In short, the problem was summarized from my post about the Visions of Glory. As I wrote about Visions of Glory, once a person starts labelling yourself as part of a righteous group, and their opponents as zombies, it becomes easier to justify killing them. When Fanon described an event as naturally violent (1) and a population existing in an “atmosphere of violence” (31) it’s natural to strike out.[5]

        The antidote is not to invent new theories or indulge in vague moralizing, but to return to the clarity of Just War principles and the wisdom of earlier thinkers. As both Christian tradition and the Book of Mormon warn, revolution comes only “through much contention, and the shedding of much blood.” That is not a license to glorify violence but a sober caution to resist collective guilt and hold fast to individual responsibility.

        We are judged by our own sins, not by the accidents of class, race, or category. If we truly wish to resist the age of blurred lines and confused morality, we must recover the values of love, harmony, and conciliation that Fanon dismissed, and recognize that peace is found not in collective vengeance, and random shootings, but in clear moral standards rooted in justice.

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[1] Morgan Deane, To Stop a Slaughter: Just War and the Book of Mormon, (Arsenal of Venice Press, 2024,) 104-106.

[2] Andre Azevedo Alves, Jose Moreira, John Meadowcroft, The Salamanca School, (Bloomsbury Academic Pro, 2013), 53. 

[3] Grotius , 73-76. Grotius also placed limits on potential usurpers that included another warning that it is difficult to determine the morality of a rebellion. He suggested that individual shouldn’t take it upon themselves to decide a question on their own, which involves the whole people.

[4] Patrick Q. Mason and J. David Pulsipher, Proclaim Peace: The Restoration’s Answer to an Age of Conflict (Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021), 135. Duane Boyce, Even Unto Bloodshed: An LDS Perspective on War (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2015), 223. Boyce states “modern just war framework…makes no explicit use of scripture…it seems obvious that it cannot be sufficient to address the concerns of Latter-day Saints.”

[5] There is an absurd double standard here as well. When conservatives do something as simple as enforce immigration law, they are attacked as evil for creating a “climate of fear.” But when a third world nation is on the verge of a horrific orgy of violence they honor scholars that call that violence natural, necessary, and heroic.