US State Dept. touts Great Replacement and Christian Nationalist ideas in wild Substack post
Last week, the department published a post titled "
The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe," in which author Samuel Samson – who also serves as Senior Advisor for the agency's Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor – says the US and Europe have "a unique bond forged in common culture, faith... and above all, a shared Western civilizational heritage."
But Samson argued that current social and political issues in Europe will inevitably have repercussions in the US.
"Across Europe, governments have weaponized political institutions against their own citizens and against our shared heritage. Far from strengthening democratic principles, Europe has devolved into a hotbed of digital censorship, mass
migration, restrictions on religious freedom, and numerous other assaults on democratic self-governance," Samson wrote.
"Europe's democratic backsliding not only impacts European citizens but increasingly affects American security and economic ties, along with the free speech rights of American citizens and companies," he later added.
Samson is a 2021 college graduate with no experience whatsoever as a diplomat. He now serves as an aide to Department Secretary Marco Rubio.
He has written essays in the past about "entryism," a strategy in which a small group joins an organization with the intent of changing it from within, which he and others appear to be implementing now.
Critics slam the underlying themes of Samuel Samson's blog post
Samson's post has been getting a lot of attention as critics have accused him of touting a number of far-right ideologies, such as the Great Replacement theory, which the
National Immigration Forum defines as the idea that "welcoming immigration policies – particularly those impacting nonwhite immigrants – are part of a plot designed to undermine or 'replace' the political power and culture of white people living in Western countries" plus aspects of Christian Nationalism.