CTV News Vancouver — Religion and Politics in Vancouver’s Municipal Election

I spoke with CTV News Vancouver about the role of religion in municipal politics following a social media post by ABC Vancouver council candidate Lorraine Lowe.

As advance voting began, Lowe posted a prayer describing the campaign in spiritual terms and asking God to protect her team. The post prompted discussion about religious expression, secular government, and the separation of church and state.

I spoke with CTV about how explicitly religious political messaging can be received differently by voters. While such language may be polarizing for some, it can also resonate strongly with voters who understand politics through a religious framework and believe that God plays a role in political life.

New at The Cult Following: Political Lies, Constructed Victimhood, and the Can of Beans Problem

My latest piece examines the Senate Leadership Fund’s anti-transgender advertising campaign targeting Democratic Senate nominee Sherrod Brown in Ohio.

The substack examines how the campaign constructs narratives of childhood victimhood, threat, grievance, and protection, placing the advertisements within a broader political strategy in which transgender people are positioned as a danger to children and Republican candidates as their protectors.

It also explores the unusual legal environment surrounding false and misleading political advertising in the United States and connects the contemporary campaign to a warning made by Arthur Larson in 1963: American law could regulate false claims about something as mundane as the contents of a can of beans more readily than political falsehoods involving claims of existential national danger.

More than sixty years later, the paradox remains. When political power is the product being sold, protections against falsehood can be considerably weaker than those governing ordinary consumer products.

New Review of God’s Angry Men

A new review of God’s Angry Men: The Political Legacy of the John Birch Society has been published in the Journal of Hate Studies.

Camille Kaminski Lewis highlights the book’s extensive archival research and its contribution of new historical material to our understanding of the John Birch Society and its influence on American conservative politics. The review particularly notes the book’s examination of grassroots conservative organizing and its discussion of Phyllis Schlafly’s relationship with the John Birch Society.

God’s Angry Men traces the political and religious legacy of the Society and argues that many ideas now associated with contemporary American politics—including conspiracy narratives, perceptions of persecution and national decline, and the mobilization of religious and political grievance have much longer histories.

The review appears in Volume 19, Issue 1 (2026) of the Journal of Hate Studies.

New Publication: Review of The Great Right North

My review of Stéphane Leman-Langlois, Aurélie Campana, and Samuel Tanner’s The Great Right North: Inside Far-Right Activism in Canada has been published in the latest issue of the Journal of Hate Studies.

The book provides a much-needed map of the far-right landscape in Canada. Rather than treating far-right groups as isolated or static organizations, the authors describe a shifting “nebula” of movements that respond to changing social conditions and differ in their relationships to political institutions, violence, and the construction of otherness. Their research draws together historical analysis, interviews, and examinations of media and social media to show how this ecosystem operates.

This is very much in my research wheelhouse. In the review, I was particularly interested in the book’s findings around perceived victimization and resentment, conspiracy theories, religion and gender, and the ways online communities can help move people toward real-world political action.

I also wanted more. In particular, I argue that greater attention to conspiracy theory scholarship, emotion and victimhood, and the relationships between far-right movements and Canadian political parties would help us better understand how these movements influence broader political discourse, populism and democratic life. Overall, I describe The Great Right North as a well-written book, an excellent resource for undergraduate students, and a much-needed snapshot of the Canadian far-right landscape.

The review appears in Volume 19, Issue 1 (2026) of the Journal of Hate Studies.

Conference Presentation Today

Presenting this morning!

I’m delighted to be presenting at the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory conference, Religion, Politics, and Cognitive Warfare: Information, Interpretation, Conspiracy, and the Struggle for Reality.

My paper, “Religion, Conspiracies, and Hate: Orthobros and Catholic Crusades on Social Media,” looks at the growing intersection of far-right Catholicism, Knights Templar and Crusader mythology, conspiracy theories, masculinity, AI and social media, and how these ideas are moving between online spaces and the real world.

I’m presenting this morning as part of the Evangelicalism & Christian Nationalism panel.

The conference runs online October 1–3 and registration is free and open to interested participants.

What the Kamloops action tells us about what conspiracy narratives do for extremist movements.

Days before the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, masked men appearing to be associated with Second Sons Canada displayed a “Got bones?” banner in Kamloops.

I looked at the response from Derek Harrison, DerekRants online, who identifies with Second Sons online, and his earlier posts about residential school burials. My new piece examines how denialism moves from online posts into public acts of intimidation and why the response matters.

Orthobros Conference Presentation

Next week I’ll be presenting some of my new research on the intersection of religion, conspiracy theories, and online extremism at the JCRT online conference, Religion, Politics, and Cognitive Warfare: Information, Interpretation, Conspiracy, and the Struggle for Reality.

My paper, “Religion, Conspiracies, and Hate: Orthobros and Catholic Crusades on Social Media,” looks at the growing use of crusader and medieval Catholic imagery online, including the Knights Templar, “Christ is King,” and other historical and religious narratives, and how these become entangled with conspiracy theories, nationalism, and extremist politics.

I’m particularly interested in what happens when imagined histories migrate through social media and become tools for constructing contemporary religious, extremist, and political identities.

I’ll be presenting Thursday, October 1, as part of the opening panel on Evangelicalism & Christian Nationalism.

The conference is online, and the full program and registration information are available here.

Fear Itself

Fear is trending.

Not just on X, but in our politics, our conspiracy theories, and increasingly in how we understand the world around us.

Who gets to decide which fears are “rational”? Who profits from keeping us afraid? And what happens when fear overwhelms critical thinking?

I wrote about fear, Trump, Carney, conspiracy theories, echo chambers—and the people making bank from our anxiety.

Suffering Bastard

Grocery bills. Gas prices. Angry truckers. A rumoured October 1 strike. And a whole lot of fear circulating online.

This week I look at what happens when very real economic anxiety collides with social media, conspiracy theories and disinformation, and why a sense of helplessness can make simple explanations and promises of control so powerful.

Also, naturally, there’s a cocktail. 🍸

Baal So Hard

A senior U.S. official reportedly worried that a bull statue at an American exhibition could evoke Baal: the ancient deity who has recently acquired a very strange second life in online conspiracy culture.

That headline is funny.

What’s underneath it is much more interesting.