Haidt Crimes: On Moral Foundations Theory and the Normalization of Fascism

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I suppose it was inevitable. When Donald Trump was voted back into power—more nakedly authoritarian and backed as enthusiastically as ever by authoritarian Christians—somewhere, some cringe white men with sociology PhDs were going to do it.

They would trim their salt-and-pepper beards, straighten their ties, crack their knuckles, and—by the power vested in them by public intellectual Jonathan Haidt, the creator of moral foundations theory—they’d “well, actually” any American who would listen into treating Trump’s Christofascist supporters with respect and deference. Accolades would surely follow. Maybe even TED conference invitations. Hey, a balding white man with a sociology PhD can dream.

And so it came to pass that sociologists Kerby Goff, Eric Silver, and John Iceland began using their study published in October 2024 to call American liberals and leftists to, as it were, calm our tits and learn to love our Christian nationalist neighbors. In the study, based on a nationally representative sample of 1,125 Americans, our Haidt-loving heroes take issue with moral critiques of Christian nationalism focused solely on its consequences, including support for anti-LGBTQ, anti-trans, anti-Muslim, anti-abortion, and anti-gun control policies, as well as “heightened punitiveness” and “skepticism toward claims of racial injustice.”

Before we can dissect exactly what’s going on there, however, it’s important to understand two things: the basics of moral foundations theory (don’t worry, the theory is hella basic) and how the Christian nationalism discourse functions in the American public sphere.

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