Trump is Bringing Back Enslavement
WTF did he mean by "owners?" He meant exactly what you're afraid he did
The purpose of Alligator Alcatraz is to advance a return to structured enslavement, which is a longstanding yet covert goal of Christian Nationalism.
You may have seen this clip from Trump’s press conference, where he used “owners” to refer to farmers and employers.
I think that when Trump is bumbling along, butchering language, and offering confusing details that sound like there’s no plan, it’s easy to forget that the people around him have a very clear and concise plan. They want to bring back enslavement.
While they flood us with a rapid newscycle of decisions, behaviors, and actions to reshape American society, we struggle to comprehend the “why” of it all:
Gutted healthcare, especially for women
Constitutional and judicial challenges
Disenfranchising women voters
Tax breaks for a teeny-tiny minority at the top
An end to birthright citizenship
LGBTQ+ and Trans rights denial
Concentration camps
Mass deportations
Data surveillance and privacy violations
Censored education and information
All of it is a means to an end.
Why:
Christian Fundamentalists believe in dominionism: that God appointed a white male patriarchal authoritarian power structure to have dominion over the world.
Individual freedom, democracy, and diversity all threaten this worldview.
How:
Project 2025 changes our laws and government.
Social influence coaxes belief and cooperation.
Thrupled with the cult of personality through Donald Trump, it will look like Christian MAGA is choosing these changes for themselves. They will do what Daddy tells them to do, and he makes them feel like it’s a wise, safe, clever idea. Their idea, even.
While MAGA’s enthusiasm for Aligator Auschwitz horrifies the rest of us, it’s evidence of the plan working.
A return to enslavement is a long-term strategy in Christian Patriarchy, promoted through theologians like Doug Wilson, who (until he softened his stance in 2020), maintained from the mid-90s that slavery was benevolent, kind, and biblical.
In 1996, the same year my oldest son was born, Wilson wrote an essay that he published, called "Southern Slavery as It Was," extolling the virtues of peaceful plantation life and the harmony slaves enjoyed with their owners.
“Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its predominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world. The credit for this must go to the predominance of Christianity. The gospel enabled men who were distinct in nearly every way, to live and work together, to be friends and often intimates. This happened to such an extent that moderns indoctrinated on ‘civil rights’ propaganda would be thunderstruck to know the half of it. Slave life was to [the slaves] a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes and good medical care. In spite of the evils contained in the system, we cannot overlook the benefits of slavery for both blacks and whites . . . Slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the War or since.”
Southern Slavery As It Was, Doug Wilson
At the time, the essay made waves through our fundamentalist communities, as we lustily debated “The War of Northern Aggression” and fantasized about bucolic Antebellum farm life. Wilson offered theological justification for bigotry and an economic structure romanticized in the South. The conversation among the men, with Wilson’s work as the throbbing heart, was that white men should aspire to caretaking roles as they worked toward Christian dominionism. The maligned plantation owners of yesteryear would someday be redeemed, should America ever have another chance to do slavery right.
These conversations were held over cigars and whiskey, the same way podcast bros like Joel Webbon wax on about removing women from the public sector. They were listened to on cassette tapes bought from Reformed ministries in the car on the way to work. Typed out in blog comments on websites like Vision Forum and Wilson’s “Blog and Mablog,” which still exists today. Laughed over at church potlucks and picnics on the grounds as young Christian Nationalists dreamed of the day when we’d win Republican power, dominate every branch of government, and make this Christian nation great again.
In 2016, they almost made it. In 2020, Wilson reframed his views to insist and clarify he’s not racist, and that some slavery was bad. But that was too little, too late. 1996 to 2020 is a lifetime, and Christian Nationalists were growing up around those sermons and conversations. Notably, many of them currently hold leadership positions, including Mike Johnson, Russell Vought, and Pete Hegseth.
In 2023, on a joint panel discussing “Theology of American Statecraft” Russ Vought spoke on “The Christian Case for Immigration Restriction,” sponsored by Wilson’s New St. Andrew’s College.
One of the key architects of Donald Trump’s plans for a second administration has been quite public about the driving force animating that radical agenda: a “cold civil war” to be won by those willing to use “biblical principles” to “instruct government” to do what the MAGA right wants. - Josh Kovensky for TPM
Reintroducing structured enslavement is a hard sell, even to MAGA. Most Americans seem to assume it would look like it did last time, with white owners enslaving Black people on the basis of race. There’s plenty of cause to think this when Southerners resist Black Lives Matter, change the names of schools and bases named after Confederates, and remove statues honoring the side that lost. Plus, our prisons.
But enslavement won’t look like the Antebellum South, no matter how many young trad wives sweeten their voices to sound like sugared iced tea and don the sort of ruffles that would make Scarlett O’Hara swoon.
Modern enslavement won’t look like it did 150 years ago. The field and house slaves will be farm and hotel workers. The term will be “illegal.” The population will begin with Latinos, and then likely Muslims, because there’s less resistance. Wilson and his ideological children believe in a benevolent patriarchy that sees itself offering solutions to labor problems and care for people who otherwise serve no purpose in their worldview.
Trump loves to be the strong, heroic figure who saves the day. If Vought, Hegseth, and company dangle making farmers and hoteliers responsible for an approved list of laborers they own, who are offered a pass out of the concentration camp, permitted to keep the agriculture and hospitality industries going, he will see it as a great thing, an important thing, the most beautiful thing. Karoline will hold a press conference extolling the virtues of this housing solution and labor to come. He won’t get the nuance or details, because that’s not his “thing.” Critics will be vilified; followers will laugh and make concentration camp merch.
Through legislation, social coercion, and their bumbling leader who drips hints and confusion, Christian Nationalist leaders are reshaping our country back to segregation and enslavement by design.
It doesn’t stop here.
The dominionists want to rule a nation (and then the world) that controls us through our data, by our skin color and gender, to an end that enriches and empowers a select few. This includes women out of the public sector, white men who own people as the only voters, and bans on contraception, education, information, and medication. This model is already in place in their families and organizations. They’ve preached it, written about it, and held entire conferences to share their plans.
What you must decide:
Between flooding, wildlife, heat, isolation, and cruelty, Alligator Auschwitz is a place where someone will agree to anything to leave. The Klan as Proud Boys as ICE, embolded by theologians who were lurking and building patiently, are trying to take us all the way back.
What Christian Nationalists are demanding of Americans, and especially white Americans, is to acclimate to living in a country that enslaves people as an ordinary operation of our ethics and economy. Christian Nationalists are banking on your acceptance of their revisionist history—that enslavement was the best alternative, that concentration camps offer acceptable and humane housing, and that authoritarian religious control is what all of us needs and wants for our country. They are assuming you’ll normalize the enslavement of “illegals” as our magical mystical border numbers “improve” and that you’ll be relieved that thank God, at least it isn’t you.
What will it feel like to visit Walt Disney World in Orlando or sit in the sun in Miami Beach, knowing there’s a death camp hours away in the Everglades? How will it feel to see death camps marked on American maps, and laborers carted as property to work, not for wages to support their families, but because they have no other way to stay alive? Will we eat those tomatoes? Will we shortcake our berries and smile, the way Americans once wore cotton picked by the hands of enslaved children, and washed of their blood?
Don’t forget that DeSantis already loosened child labor laws in Florida.
They’re counting on Americans to swallow this move, just as we’ve gasped and sputtered but ultimately given in on everything for the last six months. They’re counting on none of us knowing what they’re up to, or at least not knowing in time. They’re counting on no one who voted for him changing their mind.
We outnumber them. We out-kind and out-love them, too. We know enslavement is wrong, and we remember why.
When we share their secrets and strategies, we strain and sometimes shatter their assumptions. When you wonder what you can do, by reading this, you’ve already begun. Out them. Share them. Call your representatives and senators. Support targeted communities and refuse to make this normal. Don’t fall for the siren’s call to diminish this or reject it for what it is, because it seems too horrible and impossible to see a return to enslavement.
We’re already here.
To wonder another day: is it a coincidence that Dutch enslavers, many of whom settled in South Africa are the forebearers of apartheid, PayPal tech bros, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel (who's behind JD Vance, Palantir, and Evie Magazine), and the Reformed churches at the forefront of today’s Christian Nationalism? Sometimes the haystack is full of needles, and finding them just isn’t that hard.
I have been thinking this was the plan all along. Too many people I spoke to thought I was "catastrophizing".