Summary: Analyzing the death of 16-year-old Nex Benedict, a non-binary Oklahoma high school student, in the context of U.S. Christian Nationalism and capitalism — Editors
Nex Benedict was a non-binary student at Owasso High School in Owasso, Oklahoma. Just 16 years old, Nex’s tragedy has come to symbolize the plight many LGBTQ+ youth are experiencing. Last year, the ACLU tracked 510 anti-LGBTQ+ pieces of legislation that were introduced in state legislatures across the country. While 2023 was a record-breaking year, 2024 has nearly surpassed the number of bills introduced. As of February, 452 bills have been introduced seeking to restrict the existence of the LGBTQ+ community or censor our ability to teach and learn queer history. States such as Oklahoma have led the charge.
The facts surrounding Nex’s death are murky. Nex defended themselves and their friends against three female bullies who were mocking their friends and them for the way they dressed and how they laughed. A frustrated Nex dumped a water bottle on one of them, leading to an altercation in the bathroom that would ultimately result in their death. Nex reportedly blacked out during the altercation before complaining of a headache, being hospitalized, and passing away. The high school maintains they did everything they were supposed to protect all their students. While this may or may not be true, the cause of Nex’s death is part of a much larger, more disturbing, trend in the United States.
Nex ultimately succumbed to their injuries from the fight, some postulate a head injury. The police department has not been forthcoming, they appear to be stalling, nor has the superintendent of the school district been particularly sympathetic to the role anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric may have played. Ryan Walters, the superintendent, expressed that the death was a tragedy to the New York Times; however, he doubled down on his promotion of “Christian values” and gender conformity. As did Republicans in the state legislature, specifically State Senator Tom Woods.
State Senator Woods doubled down even more despicably than Walters, saying, “I represent a constituency that doesn’t want that filth in Oklahoma” [emphasis added]. Using the word filth, to describe a recently deceased 16-year-old, demonstrates the dehumanization of gender-nonconforming individuals and the extent to which LGBTQ+ people are vilified for existing. LGBTQ+ rights groups and advocates have pointed to rhetoric like this, as well as state laws and school policies, as responsible for causing the death – arguably more so than the girls who committed the act. Why? When people in authority speak in this manner and a group is dehumanized, reactionary violence is plausible. The Overton Window shifts and tragedies such as this are not perceived as objectively evil – which they are.
In addition, if lawmakers do not apply pressure from the top down on police departments and other institutions to conduct thorough investigations, they may not. This appears to be the case regarding the Owasso Police Department’s investigation. Despite what appears to be obvious, that head trauma from the beating ultimately resulted in death, the police department has ruled out trauma. Interestingly, they make mention of a pending toxicology report in their official statement. Sue Benedict, Nex’s mother, believes the police department is covering or placating the public, somehow.
This is merely a flashpoint for a larger narrative that is developing, unfortunately. The violence against Nex is not isolated. Anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes have increased steadily over the past few years. Trump’s ascension to the presidency and dominance within the Republican Party has enflamed and cemented these trends, which were bubbling beneath the surface independent of him, but which were ultimately brought to the fore of the MAGA Movement.
By MAGA Movement I more precisely mean the resurgence of Christian Nationalism within the United States. This growing ideology merges what MAGA first drew upon – a nostalgia for an idealized America that never really existed – and a twisted version of Protestantism. The latter has a long history in the United States, perhaps tracing back to the Salem Witch Trials. U.S. Christianity is heavily Puritanical, and the dominant group has long harbored prejudice against outsiders. Religiously, this has been directed at Catholics, Jews, and, most recently, Muslims (despite them all being within Abrahamic traditions). Racially, Black people and other immigrant groups have long been vilified for their moral or intellectual inferiority. Specifically, Black people’s alleged inferiority and animalism, as reactionaries see it, were used to justify slavery, segregation, and over-policing of their communities. Regarding gender and sexuality, women are secondary to the man and any identification outside of the gender-binary or heterosexual relations is considered immoral and an affront to God’s will.
What these ideas translate to are the policies that restrict LGBTQ+ existence and visibility, multiculturalism, and female bodily autonomy. At the same time, these politicians seek to enshrine the supremacy of Christianity in law and perhaps go to the extent of infusing it with the state – despite the non-establishment clause of the First Amendment and their “originalist” take on the Constitution. At the federal level, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, and other figures like Marjorie Taylor-Greene embody this impulse. At the state level, the aforementioned Oklahoma State Senator or Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida are working hard to move this country toward what I understand to be authoritarianism… perhaps even a variant of fascism.
Christian Nationalism can be understood as a strain of fascism, and fascism, as I understand it, is capitalism in decay. This is to say, as the contradictions of capital sharpen and this mode of production becomes less and less efficient, the system begins to fall apart, and the facade crumbles. The bourgeois democracies established no longer complement and enable the generation of capital as they once did. No, the insatiability of capital’s appetite requires states to uphold corporations, banks, hedge funds, etc. in order to keep capitalism working. This is state capitalism. In the U.S., FDR’s New Deal sought to maintain the economic system, despite its failures, with policies to avoid the fascism of Nazi Germany. This can only last so long, however, and authoritarianism eventually becomes necessary to maintain order. More specifically, fascism.
Why fascism? Fascism provides a scapegoat for the dominant ethnic or religious group, whose quality of life continues to decrease, to project the failures of capitalism onto. It points to scapegoats as the source of their frustrations and their removal as the solution. Hitler did this most horribly with the Jews in Germany. All the while, the people are propagandized with notions of a return to a greatness that was lost or arguments for ethnic and national dominance. For Nazi Germany, this was the Aryan race.
Similarly, in the United States, Christian Nationalism cannot be understood without white supremacy. While whiteness in the U.S. is more ephemeral than the “Aryan Race” Nazis emphasized, it is clear many Christian Nationalists are xenophobic and opposed to multiculturalism. Some have argued for changes in U.S. citizenship laws, tying them to family lineage rather than birth. Others go so far as to state individuals who ought to be granted full rights should be able to trace their roots back to the country’s colonial days and founding.
Many of those who stormed the Capitol on January 6th would be considered, in my opinion, Christian Nationalists. Groups present, most notably the Proud Boys, easily fit within this label. This is important because it demonstrates their bloodthirsty nature (also seen with Nex’s death), their renegade group consciousness (despite being part of the dominant ethnic or religious class), and their capacity for violence (despite supporting “law and order”). If these people do take power or propel Trump to a second term, how will this violence then be directed?
There are already indications a second Trump term would be far more fascistic by drawing on the ideas from Christian Nationalist think tanks. For example, Trump himself has indicated he would use the Department of Justice for revenge and install a Trumpist Attorney General to prosecute his political enemies. Moreover, the old guard of the Republican Party is crumbling. Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney are long gone. Mitch McConnell has one foot in the grave, literally and politically. Nikki Hailey will likely be ostracized from the party when she inevitably loses the primary to Donald Trump. Just as bad, the Supreme Court favors conservatives, and judges like Justice Alito, Gorsuch, or Thomas seem to favor reactionary impulses. Increasingly, Trump sycophants – who tend to be or at least share views with Christian Nationalists – are dominating the U.S. Republican Party.
Nex’s death cannot be properly understood without grappling with the Christian Nationalist leviathan we are now confronted with. LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, ethnic minorities, women, and political opponents are all potential targets. These groups must form a united front to resist the rising fascist forces in this country – they must resist so Nex’s self-defense and resistance to bigots were not in vain. I say this because, if we do not, there will be many more Nex Benedicts.
References:
https://www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rights-2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/23/us/oklahoma-nonbinary-student-superintendent.html
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