Scott Lively: If “Patriots” Lose in 2022, Christians Should “Go Underground”

Anti-LGBTQ activist Scott Lively — the man who inspired Uganda’s infamous “Kill the Gays” bill — is now warning Christians to go underground if “genuine patriots” don’t gain control of the country by the next election.

“Hopefully, we can take back the country in 2022,” Lively said. “If we don’t, if we don’t get it back by 2022, I don’t think it’s going to happen, short of some kind of violent insurrection, which is still possible. People are eventually going to stop putting up with tyrannical authority, and when the only remedy and the only avenue of resistance becomes armed rebellion, then some people are going to act in that way. And if they have any success at all, a lot of other people will follow them.”

This is the sort of extremist, anti-democratic thinking that fueled the previous (failed) insurrection. Having learned nothing from that disgraceful act, and caring nothing about the police officers who have lost their lives trying to stop those attacks, Lively is trying to drum up more outrage for another attempt.

But it’s also worth asking: What “tyrannical authority” is out to get Christians?! The one compelling them to get vaccinated to save their lives and their neighbors’? The one trying to get them healthcare and infrastructure and child tax credit payments? (Or do real patriots already know what he’s really referring to?)

“Do what it takes … to bring the country back into the hands of genuine patriots in this next election cycle, because if we don’t take it back in ’22, it’s not takeable back,” he added. “Because if they can cheat us in ’22, then it’s sort of a lost cause from that point. Just sort of hunker down, build your bomb shelter, gather your survival supplies, get your children out of the public school, move to a place that the government doesn’t know they exist, raise them without letting the government know who they are or where they are, and go underground with your church and your social network, your social structure. Disconnect from the grid if we don’t take the country back in [2022]. Right now, they have an incentive to be less radical — Biden and all the rest of them — they have an incentive to be less radical because they know everything hinges on 2022. But once that’s over, once we have thrown everything that we can [at them], if they are able to break that and beat that, that’s it. That’s the last bastion right there.”

There are sore losers… and then there are Scott Lively sore losers. The kind who lose an election and decide they can no longer function in civil society. That said, if Lively’s most ardent fans decided to self-expel themselves from society, I doubt they’d get much of a fight.

The irony is that many of these same victory-or-bust claims were made during the Obama era. Literally zero of them came true. The only thing standing in the way of in-person church attendance at this point, for example, is a refusal to get vaccinated. It’s not Democrats standing in front of the doors. If Lively and his crowd want to kill off their own congregations by urging them to stay at risk while attempting to overthrow a legitimately elected government because they can’t deal with the fact that their policies just aren’t popular, it’s their own fault.

(via Right Wing Watch)