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A strain of explicit pro-slavery sentiment is coursing through the MAGA movement. Operatives and influencers aligned with the movement — which has made the treasonous Confederacy into a cause célèbre and sought to keep the history about the brutality of chattel slavery out of public view — have been documented in recent weeks offering wholehearted defenses, if not outright support, for the idea of owning other human beings.
Joshua Haymes — a far-right podcast host and former pastor at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s church who argued that the fall of the pro-slavery Confederacy inflicted longterm damage to the nation — went on a rant last week saying “the institution of slavery is not inherently evil,” that it’s “not inherently evil to own a human being,” and that “every Christian in today’s society should be able to defend” those claims, Right Wing Watch noted. Haymes said it was “chronological snobbery” to condemn the United States’ slave-owning founders, who “could in fact treat their slaves the way the Bible tells them to treat their slaves,” and that although he condemns slaveowners who “actually engaged in real abuse,” Christians “cannot condemn the entire institution of slavery outright.”
For the record, all slaveowners engaged in “real abuse” because claiming ownership over another human is inherently abusive. Beyond that, a great many slaveowners literally raped, beat or killed the people they enslaved.
Right Wing Watch documented similarly disturbing pro-slavery apologism from another far-right pastor and pro-MAGA podcaster, Joel Webbon, who said in a recent podcast that today’s Black people would be “living in a grass hut” if not for the white people who held their ancestors in bondage. “The greatest moment in history for any brown or black country is the moment that the White man’s ships arrive on your shore,” he claimed.
GOP operative Peter Giunta reportedly endorsed a conservative group he said supports “slavery and all that s---. Mega based,” according to Politico’s reporting on a vile, Republican-run group chat. (Giunta told Politico that “I am so sorry to those offended by the insensitive and inexcusable language” but suggested the texts “may have been deceptively doctored.”) Giunta was dismissed from his chief of staff position with New York Assemblymember Mike Reilly on Friday.
And in at least one example, the MAGA movement’s fascination with slavery appears to be not merely about re-litigating the past, but setting a path for the future. Earlier this month, Media Matters captured pro-Trump streamer Zack Hoyt, who goes by the name “Asmongold” online, saying federal agents enacting Trump’s anti-immigrant crackdown shouldn’t harm protesters, “only because I would want to utilize their bodies for compelled slave labor.”
“That’s the only reason,” said Hoyt, who has vocally supported Trump’s authoritarian mass incarceration plans.
All of this is important context for Americans to consider the next time they see Confederate flags waving at a Trump rally, or the next time you hear the Trump administration tout its efforts to lionize confederate generals.