The following is mainly opinion and conjecture, not journalism. I’ve included
links to show where I found some of the items contained herein.
I was at my local laundromat. The TV was playing with the sound off, when the
above ad appeared. I didn’t need to hear it, since the candidate’s words were also
printed on the screen. I was shocked by the inflammatory
wording. Phrases like “socialist Biden agenda”; “it’ll be weak, moderate
‘Republicans' [sarcastic quotation marks hers] and wannabe socialists IN OUR
WAY” [capitalization mine]; “shutting down the federal government to break Biden”;
and “the Marxist agenda today’s Democrats endorse” tend to get one’s attention, for
good or ill.
I searched for information about Heidi St. John. The first hit was for her eponymous
website, with the subheading “The Busy Mom” (heidistjohn.com). She writes books
with titles like “The Busy Homeschool Mom’s Guide to Romance” (yuck), and
“Becoming Mom Strong: How to Fight With all That’s in You For Your Family and
Your Faith" [incorrect capitalization hers].
As mentioned, she home schools her children. She also has a podcast, a blog, and
speaking engagements. Oh, and she’s running for U.S. Congress for the
3rd District of Washington State. A very busy mom, indeed.
When I visited her campaign website (heidistjohnforcongress.com), I was
particularly interested in the first sentence of the third and last paragraph
of the mission statement on her home page:
“Together, we can make sure that Washington’s 3rd District remains a beautiful and
safe place to live, work, and raise our families for generations to come.”
The second sentence of the paragraph goes on to say:
"The United States of America is an idea worth sacrificing for, and the American
dream must be preserved and safeguarded for the sake of our children and grand-
children."
Wow.
I suppose one of the things that first caught my attention was the fact that on my
Samsung mobile device, that first sentence is mysteriously bold-faced. Oddly
enough, in both Chrome and Firefox on my laptop, the sentence doesn’t appear in
bold-face. I’ve included a screenshot from my phone to prove it.
Just 26 little words in that first sentence. Innocent enough on the face of it, I
suppose. But they rang a faint alarm bell in my mind. They reminded me of another
set of just 14 words, which goes like this:
"We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."
If you don’t recognize that phrase, it was spoken by infamous white supremacist,
David Eden Lane (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words).
The phrase has been picked up and repeated by many Neo-Nazis and white
supremacists and is often coupled with the number 88 (H is the eighth letter of the
alphabet, so HH, for “Heil Hitler”) in tattoos and written on vehicles as a code for,
well, being a fucking asshole.
There is another 14-word sentence that goes along with the first one: "Because the
beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the Earth.”
So a total of 28 words, only two more than Heidi’s pithy little sentence. Heidi’s
phrase and the two “14 words” certainly share a lot of the same words, or similar
ones, as if she made heavy use of a thesaurus to try to dress them up differently:
Heidi: “we can make sure”
David: “we must secure”
Heidi: “beautiful”
David: “beauty”
Heidi: “place to live”
David: “existence”
Heidi: “raise our families”
David: : "our people”
Heidi: “for generations to come”
David: “future for white children”
And to compare some words from Heidi’s second sentence to one of Lane’s
14-word bon mots:
Heidi: “the American dream must be preserved and safeguarded”
David: “must not perish from the Earth”
Maybe I’m making too much of this. Perhaps I’m just being paranoid. I sure hope so.
But given the current rush toward Christofacism by the Republican Party, I don’t
have a good feeling about this. Also, the geographical location of Heidi is concerning.
For a little background, Washington State’s third district is in the southwestern-most
corner of the state. The largest city in the district is Vancouver, just a short drive
across the Columbia River from Portland. Politically the two cities couldn’t be more
different. Portland is famous for being “weird”, but also for being very liberal in a
state where it was once illegal to be Black. Vancouver is very conservative. Many of
the officers of the Portland Police Bureau live in Vancouver. This is probably mostly
because Washington has no income tax. By contrast, Oregon has no sales tax. So
many people who work in Portland live in Vancouver, and cross the Interstate Bridge
to shop.
Many of the members of the extreme alt-right groups who fought with Antifa on the
streets of Portland also came from Vancouver and surrounding communities. Thus
plenty of Portland police live right amongst the violent haters. There were many
documented incidents during the literal 100 days of civil unrest in the summer of
2020 where it was obvious that Portland Police Bureau was giving preferential
treatment to the alt-right.
It’s late, I’m tired, and I feel like I’m starting to ramble. To sum up, I think that
Heidi’s mission statement is a thinly veiled dog whistle for white, Christian,
Neo-fascists. And that scares me.
