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Several years ago, I was visiting my mother’s home ward in my hometown in the South. My wife and I went to church with my mom and, as it was a fifth Sunday, all the adults in the ward (without a calling elsewhere) gathered together to watch a video. Normally, this just means that the bishopric hasn’t really had the time to put together a lesson (or call someone to do so). After all, we’ve all looked forward to Church videos when we haven’t gotten our Sunday School lesson together. However, this video wasn’t obviously by the church. I don’t recall the production company, but the content was disturbing.

The main point of video was that women don’t have enough babies. As a result, there were going to be fewer white people. It couched all this in the language of demographic shifts and societal trends, but that was the thrust. At the time, I was irritated because of what it implied we should do about the “problem” (more on that below). Now, I realize that the bishop (or whoever chose the video) was showing us the message of the alt-right.

I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about the message of white supremacy in the last few days and about the alt-right’s connection to it. Primarily, it is the message that white folk are the best people, responsible for all the good stuff in western civilization, and that we must maintain some white folk in the world because we’ll lose their special brand of awesomeness otherwise. To do this, white folk must breed true; marrying in the covenant (of whiteness) is the only way to maintain the purity of whiteness. Now the video we watched wasn’t explicit about this. Instead, it simply said that the face of America was changing and that if white women didn’t have more babies we’d have a demographic shift and become a majority Latino and Muslim country. Who wants that, amirite?

I point this out not because I think the bishopric was racist (I mean, they were (we all are, to some degree), but they were probably trying not to be). Nor do I point this out because I know this wasn’t a church-produced video, yet here it was being shown by the local authority in the ward (although one wonders where he got it and why he decided to show it). No, I point it out to note that, although we all know that the alt-right movement is profoundly racist, it is also incredibly misogynist.

You might say that this is obvious; after all, what movement founded in the wilds of 4chan and reddit isn’t wildly misogynist. But here was a crazy, anti-woman screed flying under the radar in a relatively well-to-do, suburban ward. Included in the reasons for this potential “white genocide” was the fact that women go to college, that no-fault divorce is a thing, that marriage is often being postponed. These are all things that increase the economic, political, and societal power of women.

Consider the most famous current Mormon alt-righter. How did she first come to grace our internet presence? By stating that women ought to be having more babies and that she was doing her share. That’s not an explicitly “white power” statement (although those came quickly after) and it’s a statement that probably resonates with a lot of Mormons. Or consider the criticism levied at the woman who was murdered at the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. Alt-Right and White Supremacist sites have justified her death because she was over 30 and childless. They call her a drain on society. Those are sick, disgusting thoughts, but they aren’t too far removed from the pushes I heard on my mission to baptize more priesthood leaders and fewer single women.

Which is the real issue I have with that video. That no-one in the local leadership thought twice about showing it indicates that they felt like the things that it was saying about women (that women are valuable primarily as mothers, that women’s education distracts them from their true purpose, that women’s independence was a threat to society and social mores, that the best way for women to change the world is to have children) aligned pretty well with what they thought the church taught. Think about that: Valuing women only as mothers is the kind of thing that Nazis do. And we frequently do it in the church.

So, as has been said, it is no wonder to find Fascist folk popping up in the church. Because even if President Hinckley spoke strongly against racism, or the current folk speak softly against it, none of them have disavowed the ideas about women we hold in common with the Nazis. And that is a shame.