Students line a busy intersection and overpass in the Denver suburb of Littleton, Colo., on Sept. 25, 2022 protesting a Jefferson County School Board proposal to emphasize patriotism and downplay civil unrest in the teaching of U.S. history.
Since 2019, the number of conservative, patriotic, and pseudo-religious political groups has proliferated across Colorado and the nation. One unabashedly unapologetic, calling itself the Colorado Conservative Patriot Alliance, claims as its motto: “No Apologies – No Retreat – No Surrender.”
In its own words, it is “an activism, networking, advocacy, and educational organization dedicated to promoting patriotism, conservative principles, traditionalist morals and values, and the concept of national conservatism. Founded in the beautiful state of Colorado, we have expanded our message and movement to the national stage.”
What it doesn’t say is that its members appear to hold extreme values that include eliminating large portions of our government, centralizing “strongman=dictatorial” power into a Trump Oval Office, getting rid of pesky portions of the Constitution that they don’t happen to like, and inciting violence at every level from local to the national level if they don’t get the election result they want.
According to Wikipedia, the patriot movement in the United States is a term that is used to describe a conglomeration of non-unified, right-wing populist and nationalist political movements, most notably far-right armed militias, sovereign citizens, and tax protesters.
But this group’s website sets out some interesting goals including:
“Conservatives must not be afraid to use the power of the state and the streets to halt the spread of the radical theories that are poisoning our children, culture, and civilization.”
[Really — we get what the power of the state is — which in our estimation includes the ballot box and true representative government. But the reference to “the power of the streets” is interesting — is this the kind of January 6 “friendly demonstration” that we witness live on television? And exactly who has determined the claimed “poisoning”? What one sees as poison, another might see as ambrosia.]
Many of these so-called “patriots” don’t just claim to be the keepers of conservative principles, and traditionalist morals and values, but appear to claim a corner on patriotism, liberty, and freedom.
“The Conservative Patriot Alliance seeks a transformed society based upon constitutional governance, ordered liberty, and timeless conservative principles. An ultimately successful conservative movement cannot be based upon polls, political fads, or transitory political personalities. Instead, we must become a mass movement of dedicated ideological warriors demanding dramatic, fundamental change in the nature of the Republic.”
[What kind of dramatic, fundamental change are they talking about? Fifty-six percent of respondents to a Monmouth University poll said it is appropriate to call what happened on Jan. 6, when a mob of former President Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, an insurrection, while an even larger majority — 72 percent — say it could be appropriately described as a “riot.”]
It should be noted that the threats and hate espoused by that group of rioters weren’t just armed revolt, it was “threat speech”. According to the U.S. Senate Report on the First Amendment, threat speech is not protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution]
“We do not care about being on the right side of history, but about being on the right side of right and wrong. Conservative patriots are engaged in a multi-generational struggle for the heart and soul of a nation and failure is not an option.”
[What we appear to be witnessing is the conservative backlash to progress. Is this the group’s version of ‘fight to the death’? It seems as if every time a minority wins a right or makes progress, or a segment of the population — such as women — gets equal rights, conservatives (often angry white men) feel compelled toward a reinstatement of the status quo. This might explain the far-right obsession with denying women the right to determine health care for their own bodies, just lately causing panic over controlling IVF, and next up – limiting access to contraception.]
The Colorado Conservative Patriot Alliance does some of its programs as “Citizens for a Conservative Society.” Recently, it has moved into sponsoring debates, such as the one for Colorado’s eastern plains District 4, whose Facebook page has a recording of the night’s speeches, which included some eyebrow-raising remarks from GOP candidates running in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District (CD4), located in eastern Colorado.
In this debate, the candidates attempted to outdo themselves continuing to claim the 2020 election was stolen [it was not]. Former Colorado Congressman Ron Hanks attempted to focus them on preparing for “another 9-11 and the coming civil war.”
Then there is this fact, far down the home page of its website, which indicates that “Many of our national projects are carried out under the name Citizens for a Conservative Society.” That connection places it in direct execution mode for the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, designed to dismantle much of our federal government, and presumably allow a far-right president not just to consolidate power not just into one branch of government — the executive branch — but into the Oval Office itself.
Proliferation of Conservative Groups Attempt to Recapture “Yesterday”
So many of these new (mostly nonprofit) efforts claim allegiance to this country with words that they have attempted to co-op; patriotism, freedom, liberty, family values. Interestingly, so many of them first took root and have grown in rural areas, outside of metropolitan areas.
Why that is, is not entirely understood. But it might be that rural areas have been more resistant to, or affected by, the level of cultural change and the stress of everything from housing costs, and the loss of small-town capitalism, to climate change.
Perhaps these changes have been more understood and accepted in metro areas. Perhaps it is that the financial gains of metro areas have not been felt in rural areas.
Perhaps it is nostalgia for what once was — if not in reality, in hindsight. These are certainly understandable human emotions, but what one person experiences as stress, the next person may call progress.
The right appears to see group association as an answer to their anxiety. Whether they are actual “patriot-named” groups, are really moms (as in “Moms for Liberty” or “Moms for America”), or election integrity grifters attempting to intimidate voters or make false election fraud claims, or the group known as Citizens Defending Liberty (CDL) there appears to be legitimacy if not strength inside a group.
The conservative activism model is an old one; religious right groups were using it in the late 1980s. While many of these groups are organized nationally, they work at the county level. Christian conservatives take over school boards and other local political entities, where their influence is at the school district and classroom level and within local voting precincts. They can win there because local political opposition tends to be polite, and local news media coverage is rarely investigative.
There are a number of versions of county patriot groups, including the one here in this county known as Chaffee County Patriots. It popped up in this county over the space of a few weeks back in 2020 (more than a year before their marketing materials now claim they existed) and quickly grew to more than 700 members.
Originally, they described “the criteria for joining the closed group included the willingness of its members to arm themselves and be ready to “defend their values”. At the time AVV discovered the group, while the general public couldn’t access the content, Ark Valley Voice learned that Chaffee Patriots’ social media was filled with right-wing memes advocating violence and hatred, disinformation, and expressions of threatening attitudes to those moderates and liberals with whom they apparently disagreed.
A conversation today with Chaffee County Patriots member Dennis Heap confirmed that the group has no connection with any other state or national organization. Over this past year, it has become apparent that they have been working to normalize the group’s activities.
“We focus on three things,” explained Heap. “We do our monthly “town-halls”, we do flag-waving on the weekend following our town halls, and we have our summer flag program.” [which lines state highways in Chaffee County with American flags in various states of wear and tear.]
What does the Constitution say about Religion?
There is a conservative (increasingly strident Republican) idea that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation. But the concept means different things to different people, and historians say that the Constitution does not establish a state religion:
“(N)o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” (Article VI)
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” (First Amendment)
Among many designations calling themselves Christian nationalists, all appear determined to make their version of far-right-nationalist, fundamentalist Christianity the official religion.
One particular group calling itself the Seven Mountain Mandate, also Seven Mountains Mandate, 7M, or Seven Mountains Dominionism, is a dominionist conservative Christian movement within Pentecostal and evangelical Christianity. It holds that there are seven aspects of society that believers seek to influence: “religion and faith; family; education; government and law; media, news and commentary; arts and culture, business and economics,” and they aren’t shy about what they intend.
The Alabama judge who just handed down a ruling from the bench that declared fertilized embryos at infertility clinics are children (throwing into limbo thousands of couples trying to conceive children through assisted means), actually quoted directly from the Bible and dominionist dogma in his ruling. This country’s Rule of Law is not based on the Bible.
In Shasta County, California, a Seven Mountain Dominionist congregation has just announced that church members should bring their primary ballots to church for an “Engaging U.S. Politics 2024” event, with speakers including city council members. [Note: this is not legal in a country that enforces separation of church and state.]
The mythical hydra – A multi-headed snake, hydra was one of the most fearsome monsters in Greek mythology, if its heads were cut off, it simply grew more heads
Dominionism has close connections with Woodland Park, Colorado and the chaos that has engulfed the Woodland Park School Districts. It is also the home base of the religious-political group known as the Truth and Liberty Coalition, founded by Andrew Wommack, Lance Wallnau, and David Barton.
This dominionist organization believes God has given Christians “a mandate to bring Godly change to our world, through the seven spheres of societal influence.”
It is this group that attempted to sway school district board of education elections across at least four rural Colorado counties, including the Buena Vista Board of Education election here in Chaffee County.
So what does all this mean?
There is an undetermined element of the population that it appears, believes that they have a corner on patriotism and that they are the designated arbiter of what constitutes freedom, liberty, religion, and the Rule of Law.
Is there a connection among the Colorado Conservative Patriot Alliance, Project 2025, and Christian Nationalism? The short answer is — yes — this is a far-right multi-front hydra.
It would appear that in this country, even down at the local level, far-right radicalization is a combination of holy war and revolution, mixed with an authoritarian-fascism.
Ark Valley Voice points out that what most agree on — whether one identifies with the right, or the left — that this country may be more divided than it has ever been. The question is — what do you think is causing this?
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