I have written for the Spectator for years. I value it. I read it. I defend it. It remains one of the few places where serious argument is still possible. Which is why Luke Lyman’s recent essay on “Christian nihilism” is so frustrating. It mistakes metaphor for diagnosis — and confusion for insight.

Lyman opens with a disturbing scene: a protester in Minneapolis screaming at armed officers to shoot him. From this single episode, he extrapolates a sweeping claim — that America is drifting into a kind of “Christian nihilism,” a pseudo-religion that mimics Christianity’s language of sacrifice while stripping it of meaning.

What we are witnessing is not Christianity curdled into violence, but the consequences of a culture in which Christian moral limits have collapsed.

As Lyman writes:

Violence serves a central role in Christianity: the hinge of history, the Crucifixion, is bloody. Christ endures the Cross to purify mankind, because he knows we crave purity. Revolutionary leaders have stolen this idea, given it a godless twist, and sold it to their followers to encourage them to sacrifice themselves for whatever cause demands it.

That conclusion does not follow.

A cultural template

This is because Lyman treats Christianity as a cultural template — a set of symbols and emotional cues — rather than as a moral and metaphysical system with hard limits. Once you do that, anything that resembles sacrifice or martyrdom can be described as “Christian-adjacent.” But resemblance is not inheritance. Borrowed language does not imply borrowed belief.

What Lyman is describing is not Christianity emptied of content. It is secular despair borrowing familiar moral imagery. There is nothing Christian about begging for death on camera. Christianity teaches endurance, restraint, and perseverance — not theatrical self-annihilation. It demands self-control and humility. The gospel was not written for livestreams.

Lyman gestures toward Christian theology but never quite engages it. He suggests that Christianity centers on violence because the Crucifixion was bloody. That is like saying surgery centers on knives. The cross is not an endorsement of violence; it is a confrontation with it. Rome used crucifixion to terrorize and dominate. Christ faced that machinery of force and answered it with mercy. When Peter reached for the sword, Christ stopped him.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Interrupting the cycle

Christianity does not command others to die in God’s name. Christ gives Himself. He absorbs hatred rather than unleashing it. He prays for those driving the nails. That distinction matters. It reverses the logic of every revolutionary movement ever devised. One path runs on rage and always demands another victim. The other interrupts the cycle, insisting that no human life is expendable.

Lyman claims that revolutionary violence is Christianity drained of belief — that figures like Mao or Frantz Fanon merely stole the cross and removed God. This misstates the relationship entirely. Revolutionary ideology does not distort Christianity; it rejects it outright. Christianity insists that every person bears the image of God. Revolutionary politics insists that some lives are disposable. These views do not occupy the same moral universe.

Calling this phenomenon “Christian nihilism” only deepens the confusion. Nihilism denies meaning. Christianity proclaims it. What we are witnessing is not Christianity curdled into violence, but the consequences of a culture in which Christian moral limits have collapsed.

Spiritual starvation

Lyman suggests that Americans secretly want Christianity but refuse the church. There is a grain of truth here. Human beings crave meaning, ritual, belonging, and redemption. But that longing does not turn protests into pseudo-liturgy. It indicates spiritual starvation. What Lyman treats as evidence of Christianity’s corruption is better understood as evidence of its absence.

Minneapolis is not a city of warped martyrs. It is a city where public order has broken down and civic leadership has failed. Dressing that disorder in theological language may sound evocative, but it explains very little.

When Lyman points to murals of George Floyd or grotesque memes about a murdered CEO and sees religious iconography, what he is really observing is a loss of proportion. To blame Christianity for that is to confuse the absence of moral limits with their cause.

American Christianity is not driving mobs into the streets begging for bullets. Churches across the country are feeding families, running recovery programs, rebuilding marriages, and teaching repentance, forgiveness, discipline, and duty. Those are not the ingredients of nihilism. They are the antidote to it.

‘We’re dealing with a domestic Marxist insurgency’ — why ICE protests are WORSE than Portland

Jack Posobiec is sounding the alarm that the growing unrest surrounding ICE operations is no accident, but part of a coordinated effort to intimidate, obstruct, and destabilize law enforcement.

And he believes Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) is in on it.

“These situations, obviously they’re always unfortunate, right? Obviously the chaos and the confusion and any time a human life is lost, it’s totally unfortunate. But imagine that you’re an ICE officer, and you have an entire city who is out to get you,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales tells Posobiec.

“They’ve created these chats to monitor you, to follow you, to harass you, to intimidate you, to obstruct you from doing your job. ... How can we be surprised that this happened?” she asks.

“I think it also helps to kind of zoom out and look at the context in so many of these situations,” Posobiec replies. “Tim Walz, who’s the governor of Minnesota, he could right now issue an executive order saying that he wants the state police and the local police to work with ICE, and that they would be able to go out and provide security.”

“But that’s not what he’s done. No, Tim Walz has sent out the National Guard to go give milk and cookies and doughnuts to the agitators that are out there at the Whipple Center. He’s actually taking sides against ICE,” he continues, pointing out that the tactics being used against ICE are eerily similar to the Chinese Communist Party.

“And it occurs to me that, ‘Oh, yeah. Didn’t Tim Walz go to China 30 times, including lying about being there during Tiananmen Square?’ So, you wonder why it looks like a Chinese Communist insurgency,” he says.

“That’s exactly where Tim Walz learned how to do this stuff. These guys are operational. They are trained,” he adds.

Posobiec has also learned that the protests are “more heavily organized than Portland, more heavily organized than CHAZ, than anything that we’ve seen before.”

In fact, it’s so insidious that Posobiec tells Gonzales, “We’re dealing with a domestic Marxist insurgency.”

“What do the Marxists do? What do the communists do? They use them as a martyr, these useful idiots, because they want to create the crisis because then they can use the crisis to destabilize the actual party in power or the government that’s in power, because they want to take power themselves,” he says. “This is a tried and true communist tactic.”

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Conservatives panic that Trump is caving in Minnesota — but Glenn Beck explains his master strategy

On Monday, January 26, President Trump announced that he had had "very good" and "productive” conversations with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) amid the escalating anti-ICE protests, violence, and backlash over fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

According to statements from all three, their conversations centered on de-escalating tensions from the anti-ICE protests and federal immigration operations in Minnesota, including potential reductions in federal agent numbers, allowing state-led investigations into the recent fatal shootings by agents, cooperation on handing over criminal noncitizens from state custody, reassigning Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, and assigning border czar Tom Homan to oversee matters on the ground.

Many people on the right interpreted this as the Trump administration caving to leftist protesters. Glenn Beck confesses that that was his initial reaction upon hearing the news.

“When I first saw this story yesterday … I thought, is he waving the white flag? What is he doing? ... Is this all about the election and getting re-elected and he's got to make nicey-nice?” he admits.

But deeper scrutiny led Glenn to believe that it is not surrender but rather "counterinsurgency” that we are witnessing in the Twin Cities.

“We're seeing Trump shift the battlefield, not abandon it,” he says, explaining that if Trump were legitimately surrendering, he would “end the enforcement nationwide,” “call off ICE operations,” “publicly repudiate Homan or Miller,” “admit wrongdoing,” and “accept the 'Gestapo snatching people off the streets' narrative.”

But “none of that happened,” says Glenn.

Instead, Trump “narrowed the enforcement criteria. Political pressure is rerouted, optics cooled, legal authority preserved, responsibility transferred back to the states,” he explains. “This is not a surrender. I believe this is a reframing of the fight, and it's really smart.”

From the get-go, Trump was clear about ICE’s objective, says Glenn: “Get the really bad criminals off the streets.”

“So the goal was never ICE agents everywhere all the time. The goal was this: Force blue-state leadership to choose publicly and unmistakably between protecting violent criminals or cooperating with federal law enforcement,” he explains.

Minnesota was sliding into irremediable chaos, which would only benefit the radical left, which is aiming to cultivate a “legitimacy crisis,” he says. Escalation is exactly what the insurrectionists wanted Trump to do.

But he smartly didn’t drop the hammer. Instead, he made some moves in order to win the “optics war” — one of them being relocating Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, whom Glenn calls “a walking headline” and a “symbol” for the left’s anti-ICE movement.

This one move, Glenn says, accomplished a number of things. It weakened the Senate shutdown talks, took the media’s favorite villain out of the story, and moved the fight from “personality back to policy.”

“This is classic Trump,” he says.

“Never die on someone else's hill if it isn't the hill you chose. … Only die on the hill you choose,” he adds, quoting Trump’s iconic 1987 book “The Art of the Deal.”

“So when he talks to Walz and Frey, I don't think this is capitulation. I think these were traps.”

To hear more of Glenn’s analysis, watch the video above.

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Conflicting narratives, one dead American: Glenn Beck cuts through the media spin on Alex Pretti shooting

Minneapolis’ anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protests have continued to intensify. Over the weekend, several clashes between protesters and ICE agents occurred, one that resulted in 37-year-old Minnesota local Alex Pretti, who was carrying a legally concealed handgun, being shot and killed by several ICE agents during a federal immigration enforcement operation on January 24.

The reporting on the circumstances surrounding Pretti’s death has been conflicting. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, as well as other Trump administration officials, have framed the ICE officers’ actions as justified.

In her official statement, Noem said, “An individual approached U.S. Border Patrol officers with a 9-millimeter semi-automatic handgun. The officers attempted to disarm this individual, but the armed suspect reacted violently. Fearing for his life and for the lives of his fellow officers around him, an agent fired defensive shots.”

She further described the incident as “a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage and kill law enforcement," labeling it "domestic terrorism.”

Multiple bystander videos, forensic audio analyses, and video analyses and reporting from major outlets including the New York Times, BBC, and NPR, however, directly contradict these claims. This evidence indicates Pretti was already pinned to the ground, disarmed (his concealed handgun removed from his waistband during the scuffle), and no longer posing a threat when agents fired numerous rounds.

As of now, many American citizens appear genuinely confused and divided about what really happened in Alex Pretti's shooting due to the sharply conflicting narratives.

On this episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn offers some insight to the truth behind Alex Pretti's shooting — examining the conflicting claims, the chaotic scuffle, and why rushing to judgment or prosecution could miss the bigger picture of escalating unrest.

“First of all, what Noem said is not true,” says Glenn frankly.

“If you want to say technically he approached carrying a 9mm, he did, but it was holstered and in his back. And you have a right to carry a gun at a protest. ... It is perfectly legal and constitutionally protected,” he adds.

While it was unwise for Pretti to carry a gun and get involved with federal officers, it was not technically illegal because he never actually pulled the gun, Glenn explains.

On the other hand, the officers who shot Pretti were in an extremely “chaotic situation,” Glenn pivots, noting that these men are on edge after enduring ceaseless violence, doxxing, and threats from protesters.

Video footage captures a tangle of people — officers in tactical gear, one in plainclothes, Pretti, and other protesters — in a wrestling match on the ground. The officer who discovered Pretti’s handgun and removed it from his waistband was wearing plainclothes, meaning bystanders — including the ones who yelled “gun” — could have easily mistaken him for an armed protester.

Further there’s a good chance agents in the scuffle with Pretti didn’t see the plainclothes officer remove the handgun and could have assumed that the people yelling “gun” were referring to Pretti.

Glenn says that the civil rights protests spearheaded by Martin Luther King Jr. were only successful because they were peaceful. Protesters didn’t bring guns to demonstrations; they didn’t escalate confrontations with police; and they didn’t intentionally create chaos.

“King would have let [Pretti] rot in prison and wouldn't have marched for that guy because he had a gun, because he made the rest of the movement look dangerous. Even though he had a right to have a gun, Martin Luther King would have said, 'You don't bring a gun. You don't push back. You don't do it because that's the way peaceful protests win,’" says Glenn, “and everybody who knows anything about protesting knows this.”

“The left, they've been preaching Martin Luther King forever. They know this is not the tactic of Martin Luther King. This is the tactic that escalates, not de-escalates, things.”

All evidence considered, Glenn falls somewhere in the middle on Pretti’s death.

“We have to be very careful with our words and speak the truth at all times, even if it hurts our side,” he says.

“I don't think he should have been shot, but I also don't think they should prosecute [the officers who shot him] because it's a chaotic situation. ... It's just a really nasty, bad situation.”

To hear more of Glenn’s analysis, watch the video above.

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Glenn Beck goes SCORCHED-EARTH on church protest ringleader after his ‘come and get me’ taunt to Pam Bondi

Last week, anti-ICE agitator and left-wing activist William Kelly, also known as “DaWokeFarmer” on social media, was arrested by the FBI and charged with obstruction, conspiracy to deprive rights, and violating the FACE Act for his role in invading Cities Church during a worship service as part of an anti-ICE protest on January 18 in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Shortly following the demonstration, Kelly took to social media and posted a profanity-laden video challenging Attorney General Pam Bondi to arrest him.

“Yesterday, I went into a church with Nekima Armstrong, and I protested these white supremacists. The pastor of the church is a f**king ICE leader in the city. How can you be a f**king pastor and be a f**king ICE agent? F**k ’em,” Kelly railed, donning a “F**K TRUMP” beanie.

“They want to come after me. F**k ’em. How can they live so comfortably while the f**king people from Somalia that are in this country legally that have f**king citizenship can’t even go to their mosque and pray? How do they deserve any f**king different? F**k those f**king Nazis. Come and get me, Pam Bondi, you f**king traitorous bitch. F**k, all power to the people,” he continued.

To Kelly’s expletive-filled video, Bondi humorously replied, “OK,” before arresting him just days later.

When Glenn Beck saw the footage, he was appalled by Kelly’s delusional rant.

“Hey, farm boy,” he taunts, “the policies that you’re pushing for right now, let me ask you: How’d they work out for the farmers in the Soviet Union? How’d they work out for the farmers in Ukraine? How’d they work out for the farmers in China?”

When it comes to “these policies that you’re so in love with ... you know who loses their farms right away? The stupid farmer like you!”

On this episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn responds to “DaWokeFarmer” with a truth bomb so savage, you’ll feel the heat through your screen.

In communist regimes like the one Kelly advocates for in the U.S., farmers are some of the first to be targeted, Glenn points out.

“They take people like you, and they shoot them. And then they take dummies like you who know nothing about farming and say, ‘Hey, now you go farm.’ ... And then everybody starts to starve, and then the government comes back and says, ‘You’re part of the problem too.’ And they take those people and shoot them. ... And it just, lather, rinse, repeat,” he excoriates, denouncing Kelly as a “moron.”

Glenn then pleads with Kelly to send him the “list of Somali citizens that are citizens who have done nothing wrong.”

If such a list exists, he vows to “stand with” Kelly — but, of course, no such list exists.

“How do I know? Because if you had that evidence, it would be all over ABC, NBC, and CBS. It’d be everywhere. But I don’t see that,” Glenn says. “I just see people like you using the F-word, wearing a hat with the F-word ... saying they’re coming and they’re arresting innocent people.”

The truth is, in the first year of the Trump administration, ICE has arrested only two Somali-American citizens.

“One was released a couple of hours into it. The other one, they didn’t sort it out until the next day, but they were immediately released once the problem was found,” Glenn says.

“These victims are all made-up people,” he says.

The fact that these protesters are still so concentrated on Renee Good — the 37-year old woman who was lethally shot after she struck an ICE officer with her vehicle while deliberately impeding a federal immigration operation — is proof that there isn’t a genuine victim list, Glenn says. Otherwise they wouldn’t need Good to be their convenience linchpin.

“They know they have nothing,” he concludes.

To hear more of his epic rant, watch the video above.

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Minneapolis ICE protesters are BEGGING for civil war — and we need to take them seriously

Liberal protesters have descended upon Minneapolis following the ICE shooting of Renee Nicole Good — and after viewing footage from the protests, BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales can’t help but get “civil war vibes.”

“I do take them seriously that they want violence,” Gonzales says. “OK, I want to be clear. I do take them seriously that they are trying to take down America from within and that they do very much want a civil war.”

“Over the weekend, you’ve got more civil unrest, once again, you have all of these people putting their lives on the line to protest and obstruct ICE agents who are there to round up criminals. Like that’s all there is to it. They are there to cause a problem for the law enforcement officials who went out there to round up actual criminals,” she continues.

One clip from the weekend protests even shows a man screaming that he plans to buy a gun and learn how to use it because it’s “time for armed resistance against the United States of America.”

“First of all, I need the administration to take this very seriously. They need to take this extremely seriously. Any of these protesters who are out there threatening these ICE agents who are out there threatening, saying, ‘I’m going to get a gun and then I’m going to kill you,’ should be arrested,” Gonzales says.

“You’ve gone far over freedom of speech. You do not get to threaten someone with murder. You’re not allowed to do that. You know how I know? I’ve had people prosecuted for doing the same thing. You are not allowed to do that,” she continues.

And Gonzales can’t help but notice that the reason for their protest is about as ridiculous as it was the last time Minneapolis saw riots.

“And this is the state of leftism. They are rioting over a chick who tried to protect Somali criminals from being deported. And that is why I’m saying this is actually worse. People protesting this are actually like, this is actually dumber than the George Floyd protests,” she says.

“It’s actually dumber ... if you obstruct ICE, if you make the wrong decision, if you put their life on the line and they are forced to defend themselves or their partners or any other innocent people, they will do that,” she adds.

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Judge orders Minneapolis to hire more police officers after crime spike and mayor defunds police force

A judge ordered the city of Minneapolis on Thursday to hire more police officers after several residents sued over the lack of law enforcement in the face of a spike in violent crime.

The Hennepin County District Court judge ordered the Minneapolis City Council and Mayor Jacob Frey to "immediately take any and all necessary action to ensure that they fund a police force."

The judge gave the city until June 30, 2022, to employ at least 730 sworn police officers. They are projected to have only 669 officers after an "exodus" through retirement, resignations, and officers taking extended leave.

A majority of Minneapolis City Council members committed to defunding the police force weeks after the death of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police in May 2020.

Although violent crime spiked in the city, Mayor Frey agreed to cut $8 million from the police force and reroute the money to violence prevention and mental health response initiatives.

Among the residents suing for more police was Don Samuels, a former member of the Minneapolis City Council.

"We have made the emotional appeal," Samuels said. "We have demonstrated the statistical uptick and now this is the legal action we are exercising because it seems as if the City Council cannot hear us and doesn't feel what we feel."

The "Defund the Police" movement gained steam during the Black Lives Matter protests, but some like New Salem Baptist Church Rev. Jerry McAfee argued that it puts people at risk from crime.

"Let's look at the facts! It has caused harm!" McAfee said to MSNBC about the "defund the police" movement.

"To defund the police right now is absolutely, positively, insane," he added.

Here's more about Minneapolis defunding police:

'To Defund The Police Right Now Is Absolutely, Positively Insane' : Minneapolis Residentwww.youtube.com

VIDEO: Left-wing militants block car of black transgender Minneapolis City Council VP; won't let it move until their list of demands is signed

Left-wing militants blocked a car in which black transgender Minneapolis City Council Vice President Andrea Jenkins was a passenger — and wouldn't let the vehicle move until Jenkins agreed to their list of demands and signed it.

Jenkins was attempting leave a Loring Park event Sunday when the vehicle blocking took place, the Star Tribune reported.

A 23-minute video showing a portion of the incident ended with Jenkins agreeing to "leave George Floyd Square alone," support the creation of a civilian-led commission to oversee police, and call for Mayor Jacob Frey's resignation, the paper said.

But the vehicle blocking purportedly lasted about two hours.

What are the details?

Here's what led up to the vehicle blocking, according to the Star Tribune:

Activist D.J. Hooker posted the video to social media, said in an interview that he approached Jenkins after a "Taking Back Pride" event decrying police brutality. The event, according to a posting on social media, sought to prioritize the voices of people who are Black, transgender or queer. Jenkins was the first transgender woman of color elected to public office in a major U.S. city.

Hooker said he approached Jenkins to raise concerns about community groups contracted with the city to de-escalate tensions. Hooker said he grew frustrated when Jenkins told him she didn't have control over them and she wouldn't commit to leaving George Floyd Square alone, so he said they would hold a peaceful protest outside her house. Hooker said he and Jenkins argued and someone jumped between them.

Hooker said Jenkins began walking away, and he yelled, "Oh, you're gonna call the cops on me knowing ... what the cops have done to George Floyd, what the cops have done to Dolal Idd and Winston Smith and Daunte Wright."

Hooker's video begins with him narrating and complaining that Jenkins was "mean" and "rude" and that the car's driver already has called police on him and fellow militants: