Debating a Jew, Trump supporters endorse America’s ‘European and Christian’ identity
Sam Seder debated Trump supporters over Nazi-adjacent ideology
“What’s the problem with xenophobic nationalism?” asks a young, blonde-haired woman in a viral YouTube clip. “Don’t you think that’s better for Americans in general?”
The woman in question, Sarah Stock, was one of 20 Trump supporters debating leftist podcaster and political wonk Sam Seder. The resulting video, from YouTube channel Jubilee Media, has gone viral across numerous platforms — in its first 24 hours, the full hour-and-a-half-long video had been viewed over 1 million times. And Stock’s clip was just one of several extreme moments in the debate being passed around X and Reddit.
The debate’s rules were simple: Seder would argue against whichever Trump supporters were fastest to claim the chair opposite him; if 11 or more of the other supporters raised red flags to indicate that they did not feel their viewpoint was being well-represented in the debate, someone else from the crowd would swap in.
Most of the topics were the ones you might expect: abortion, tax cuts on the 1%, DEI and healthcare. But then Seder made the claim that “unless you’re a billionaire, religious fundamentalist or a xenophobic nationalist, voting for Trump was a mistake.”
The supporters rushed to oppose Seder. But, it became increasingly clear, they didn’t disagree with him. Five people sat down to argue that their Christian beliefs should be enforced. None of them looked like the stereotypical white nationalist or neo-Nazi, carrying a tiki torch; they were both women and men, of various ethnicities, wearing hipster glasses and flannels, espousing ideas that would have been at home in the Nazi party.
Seder is a Reform Jew, he told one of his first opponents; he has no beef with religion. “The problem I have with religious fundamentalists, and really I guess it’s theocrats, is that they want to impose their morality which comes from their religion,” he said. “I don’t think that you have the right to corner what God is telling us is right and wrong, and there’s differences between religions.”
At this, his opponent excitedly asserted that Seder’s humanistic Judaism has no real moral foundations. It is just “reduced to preferences,” he said. Christianity, on the other hand, “provides this foundation where you do prioritize the nuclear family,” he argued, before comparing gay men to pedophiles.
“Under Trump, your Christian nationalism has gained an advantage,” Seder agreed. “Which is necessary,” his opponent said, adding that gay people “should be straight” and “women should submit to their husbands.”
At this moment, he was voted out — perhaps this was too extreme for some of the audience. (In fact, the video has also gone viral amid a pro-Trump crowd, many of whom seem to think that Seder was arguing on their side and are making fun of his opponents’ lack of intelligence.) But he was replaced by Stock, who began to argue that everyone in America should be like her.
“We should have a coherent culture, everyone should be part of the same culture, we should have assimilation,” she began. “It would be better for everybody in society. Same for xenophobic nationalism.”
When Seder asked her who gets to pick that dominant culture, she scoffed; there already is one, she said, “based on European and Christian values and identity.”
None of Seder’s opponents openly addressed the fact that he would be one of the people pushed to the margins of the Christian society they hope Trump will enforce. But given that he opened the debate by identifying himself as a Jew, it hardly needed saying.
When time was up on the debate topic, of course, no one’s mind was changed. This was just one video, crafted for virality; the point was always for people to splutter and get angry and draw clicks, not to change anyone’s mind. It’s all part of the social media outrage game.
Still, if a group of what appear to be normal Americans can sit across from a Jewish man and openly argue that the U.S. should be a white Christian nation, well, maybe it’s worth seeing.
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