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Deznat (deseret nation) = White nationalism? - Part 3


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19 hours ago, teddyaware said:

I find it interesting and somewhat perplexing that it’s now painfully obvious our nation is in the grip of modern-day Gadianton robbers who are in the process of dragging the United States of America down into the prophesied “post day of the Gentiles” godless tyranny , and that instead of focusing on this most devastating emergency our attention is diverted to a relatively small group of patriotic, Ezra Taft Benson loving members of the Church who think General Moroni was a cool guy. This amounts to a modern Latter-Day Saint version of fiddling while Rome burns. 

In the last General Conference address of his life, President Benson most solemnly warned the Church that the worldwide secret combination of the last days, which was prophesied by Moroni in Ether chapter 8, that was going to be set up by the devil to destroy the freedom of every nation on earth was, even then (October of 1988), in the process of gaining control over America and the entire world. And very recently President Nelson warned the Church that we are now in the last scenes of.the unfolding drama.of the last days as the Second Coming of the Lord draws near. But rather than heeding Moroni and awakening “to a sense of our awful situation” before this satanic secret combination gets above us, we’re fixing our attention on members of the Church who actually have awakened to the extreme dangers that are happening all around us and then condemning them as the enemy.

I would be much more receptive to threads like this one if there were a more balanced awareness of what’s going on around us and if, at very least, an equal focus was being placed on this secret combination whose goal it is to destroy everything that’s good and holy, rather than focus on a few overzealous and/or misguided members who take seriously the prophecy that the elders of Israel are going to rise up and save the Constitution of the United States from utter destruction as it dangles precariously over the edge of destruction. But do continue fiddling as I’m confident this warning will largely be mocked, ridiculed and fall on deaf ears.

A final thought: The day is going to come when the vast majority of the world’s people are going to wonder how in the world they could have been so easily distracted and deceived when the unpleasant truth was right in front of their eyes. But when that day comes these can at least take some measure of solace in the realization that it was prophesied nearly entire population of the world was going to end up be deceived, with the exception of a small remnant who would possess the spirit of revelation in sufficient measure to safely be able to navigate through the treacherous, beguiling waters of the last days.

A joyous Easter to all!

 

you keep saying that about President Benson's last general conference message but it isn't true so I don't know why you keep saying it

"To the Elderly' was his last

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1989/10/to-the-elderly-in-the-church?lang=eng

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43 minutes ago, Duncan said:

you keep saying that about President Benson's last general conference message but it isn't true so I don't know why you keep saying it

"To the Elderly' was his last

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1989/10/to-the-elderly-in-the-church?lang=eng

It was a coded message. It was saying the elderly are the Gadianton communists. Have faith and trust the plan.

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  • 4 weeks later...

This is very disturbing. This Hank Smith professor at BYU sounds terrible if what she says is correct. We already know how bad DezNat is for the church. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/COEaR0VBzWC/?igshid=1x1hcfjyxfyot&fbclid=IwAR2z8WH5CaM7ex0oIymaajedRnIgy3jdP7YHgVUydTMiJPSJCCK1HdVPCJw

Found this on Hank Smith. Does anyone know him? https://hanksmith.com/

Edited by Tacenda
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23 minutes ago, Calm said:

Can you summarize what the issue is. I do not want to watch the video. 

I didn't watch the video but tis is the situation

Hank Smith posted on twitter some tweets basically stating is you believe in eternal marriage, Heavenly Mother, and some other unique doctrine of the LDS church  then you should believe that Joseph Smith is a prophet. This was taken very hard by a lot of people on Twitter. A BYU student posted on Twitter that "On behalf of Mormonism I apologize for Hank Smith"  Hank then tweeted "Korihor" in response. This same student went after Al Carraway last week. Both Al and Hank have apologized 

Edited by Nacho2dope
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2 hours ago, Tacenda said:

This is very disturbing. This Hank Smith professor at BYU sounds terrible if what she says is correct. We already know how bad DezNat is for the church. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/COEaR0VBzWC/?igshid=1x1hcfjyxfyot&fbclid=IwAR2z8WH5CaM7ex0oIymaajedRnIgy3jdP7YHgVUydTMiJPSJCCK1HdVPCJw

Found this on Hank Smith. Does anyone know him? https://hanksmith.com/

My summary of the vid:

1. Church was founded in America, so it "has a lot of America's problems embedded in it."

2. "White nationalism" and "white supremacy" have "always been strains running through my faith tradition, because I am Mormon."  Now it's "metastasizing" into something "pretty horrifying."  They have also "gone so mainstream," such that a president (Trump) "can run on them as his platform."

3. These are "kind of beginning to try to go mainstream in Mormonism."

4. References DezNat, saying they are "white nationalist larpers" who gather on Twitter.  Talk a big talk.  They're "scary" because they think all their talk is "real."  There have been stories written about them and their beliefs in the Salt Lake Tribune, including that they think the Church needs to be "purified," including by "blood atonement."  "They're racists, of course."  They're anonymous.  

5. DezNat wants "expulsion, instead of expansion when it comes to this country" and in the church.

6. She claims that they have gone onto her Twitter "timeline" and told her that she is "sinful" and needs to be "raped as punishment."

7. Peggy Flether Stack wrote about DezNat a few months ago and quoted her.  She's been told her concerns about DezNat are "overblown" because DezNat types are "lone wolves" who are "playing a game online" and are "never going to hurt anyone."

8. She says that yesterday (presumably 4/24) Hank Smith, a BYU professor of religion, had "quite a day on Twitter."  He spent time telling non-Latter-day Saint Christians telling them what they belief, and telling people who have left the Church can't take the doctrines with them.  He harassed people who disagreed with his tweets, particularly women.

9. She says that anyone who is "targeted" by Hank Smith gets "swarmed" by DezNat guys, that they "harass" women in tweets, post close-ups of their faces, say that nobody will "ever want to impregnate" them, they "sexually harass" them and tell them that they (the women) are "not worthy to be a member of the religion," and that Hank Smith knows this is happening.

10. She references Calvin Burke, a gay BYU student.  She says he loves the Church, God, BYU, the Church, and his own "gayness."  She says Calvin was one of Hank Smith's students a while ago, and Hank Smith even gave him a priesthood blessing.  She said that Hank Smith has blocked Calvin on Twitter.

11. She references JP Ballum, the guy who originated DezNat.  She says he is "horrifying," and that he has "harassed Calvin relentlessly for years," including in November 2020 when he posted a $1,000 reward for information that could get Calvin kicked out of BYU.  He harasses Calvin and makes his life "scary," and DezNat "swarms" Calvin as a result.

12. Hank Smith responded to JP Ballum's tweet with "Korihor" (apparently a reference to Calvin).  She then explains that Korihor was trampled to death for preaching false doctrine, and that Hank Smith just called him an anti-Christ.  And DezNat, she says, believes in blood atonement.  

13. "So Hank Smith, a professor at BYU, went into the DezNat hive and named Calvin as the type of person for whom it is a duty for people like DezNat to kill in order to perform blood atonement.  Hank Smith is a religion professor.  He teaches religion at a Mormon university.  He knows the history of blood atonement.  He knows that DezNat is into it.  He knows that Cal, as a gay student at the university, is already open to harassment from regular Mormons.  He knows.  What was he doing?  I was pretty shocked."

14. She says that Calvin thereafter DM'd her, that he was terrified and still is terrified.

15. She suggested that Hank Smith must have been accidentally tweeting from his own account when he thought he was posting under his anonymous DezNat account (she assumes he has such an account).

16. She then imputes this misconduct onto all the men in the Church.  "{This} feels like everything I've been afraid of.  What are the men sitting in the pews next to us doing online?"

Thanks,

-Smac

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Here's a reddit thread about this:

Quote

BYU professor Hank Smith, Deznats team up on Twitter to defend an all-or-nothing approach to the prophet Joseph Smith’s teachings

renderTimingPixel.png

https://mobile.twitter.com/hankrsmith/status/1384991631074422784

There’s obviously more than this thread (feel free to check out the rest of his twitter from the last two days), but it sounds like one of Hank’s students (?) friends (?) said she no longer believes in the church due to issues with Joseph Smith, but still believes in Heavenly Mother and Eternal Families.

This hits a nerve with Hank, and a whole discussion between him, deznats, progmos, and exmos breaks out.

Any thoughts on this? Are you allowed to reject Joseph as a prophet but still hold on to some of the teachings he taught? Do you think Hank’s all-or-nothing approach is helpful for anyone on the fringes of belief?

The linked tweet/thread is no longer available.

Thanks,

-Smac

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Quote

 

8. She says that yesterday (presumably 4/24) Hank Smith, a BYU professor of religion, had "quite a day on Twitter."  He spent time telling non-Latter-day Saint Christians telling them what they belief, and telling people who have left the Church can't take the doctrines with them.  He harassed people who disagreed with his tweets, particularly women.


So any screenshots from her proving her more extreme claims about him?

 

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3 hours ago, Tacenda said:

This is very disturbing. This Hank Smith professor at BYU sounds terrible if what she says is correct. We already know how bad DezNat is for the church. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/COEaR0VBzWC/?igshid=1x1hcfjyxfyot&fbclid=IwAR2z8WH5CaM7ex0oIymaajedRnIgy3jdP7YHgVUydTMiJPSJCCK1HdVPCJw

Found this on Hank Smith. Does anyone know him? https://hanksmith.com/

He’s actually a popular speaker at BYU Education Week, Especially for Youth and events of that nature. Quite mainstream. 
 

I haven’t been following this brouhaha, but from the summary Smac provided, it sounds like the woman going after Hank Smith is pretty radical in her own right. I wouldn’t put much stock in what she says. 

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On 4/2/2021 at 10:03 PM, Tacenda said:

I like that too, and I like a happy medium, no far right or far left.

The only problem is that the so-called “moderate” political center has been moving further and further left for over 100 years until today’s moderates are like the socialists of the Eugene Debs era. Give it another twenty years and the moderates will be like Eurocommunists, while those on the far left will be like hardcore Maoists. Oh wait! Those on today’s far left are already like hardcore Maoists. Forget what I said...

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1 hour ago, Calm said:


So any screenshots from her proving her more extreme claims about him?

 

Nope.  Just her verbal narrative/characterizations, and the reactions to his comments on Reddit.

Not the best sources, these.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited by smac97
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22 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

He’s actually a popular speaker at BYU Education Week, Especially for Youth and events of that nature. Quite mainstream. 
 

I haven’t been following this brouhaha, but from the summary Smac provided, it sounds like the woman going after Hank Smith is pretty radical in her own right. I wouldn’t put much stock in what she says. 

Yeah, she's pretty clearly trying to slant the story a particular way.

That said, I'm increasingly disliking DezNat.  Even if this is being blown out of proportion, there is an increasing coarseness and aggressiveness in our communications these days.  The Brethren have spoken to us a number of times about what we say and how we say it.

Thanks,

-Smac

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19 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

He’s actually a popular speaker at BYU Education Week, Especially for Youth and events of that nature. Quite mainstream. 
 

I haven’t been following this brouhaha, but from the summary Smac provided, it sounds like the woman going after Hank Smith is pretty radical in her own right. I wouldn’t put much stock in what she says. 

Isn’t that the problem? Is in not true that in today’s.”woke” cancel culture yesterday’s Latter-Day mainstream professors are today’s dangerous fascist reactionaries? Meanwhile the Church leaders are trying oh-so-hard to skate right down the middle to prevent a schism between the traditional Constitutional Republic members and the “let’s embrace the ‘morality’ of the fallen world” members.

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11 minutes ago, teddyaware said:

The only problem is that the so-called “moderate” political center has been moving further and further left for over 100 years until today’s moderates are like the socialists of the Eugene Debs era. Give it another twenty years and the moderates will be like Eurocommunists, while those on the far left will be like hardcore Maoists. Oh wait! Those on today’s far left are already like hardcore Maoists. Forget what I said...

Yeah, there has been a general movement towards more leftist policies. They really should have stomped on it back when those uppity serfs first started getting ideas above their station.

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2 minutes ago, teddyaware said:

Isn’t that the problem? Is in not true that in today’s.”woke” cancel culture yesterday’s Latter-Day mainstream professors are today’s dangerous fascist reactionaries? Meanwhile the Church leaders are trying oh-so-hard to skate right down the middle to prevent a schism between the traditional Constitutional Republic members and the “let’s embrace the ‘morality’ of the fallen world” members.

Nope.

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1 minute ago, teddyaware said:

Isn’t that the problem? Is in not true that in today’s.”woke” cancel culture yesterday’s Latter-Day mainstream professors are today’s dangerous fascist reactionaries? Meanwhile the Church leaders are trying oh-so-hard to skate right down the middle to prevent a schism between the traditional Constitutional Republic members and the “let’s embrace the ‘morality’ of the fallen world” members.

Assuming this is actually the case, are you critical of the current leadership of the Church on this issue?

For the timing being, I'll ignore the false dichotomy of "the traditional Constitutional Republic members and the "let’s embrace the ‘morality’ of the fallen world” member."

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10 minutes ago, smac97 said:

That said, I'm increasingly disliking DezNat.  Even if this is being blown out of proportion, there is an increasing coarseness and aggressiveness in our communications these days.  The Brethren have spoken to us a number of times about what we say and how we say it.

Not condoning or supporting in any way, but they (they, being the hashtag users or Facebook group people) seem to me to be trolling and triggering people, and people are happy to oblige them. They use crude humor to comment on social issues and the Church. I think people take them way too seriously about things like blood atonement. They are triggering, and people continue to feed the trolls. 

That said, their form of humor violates the 13th Article of Faith and current admonitions from our leaders. They are not a good way to promote the cause of the gospel within and without the Church. 

ETA: Their approach is akin to the very short-lived FAIR approach with Kwaku. I was amazed with the short-shelf life of that --- from John Lynch's full-throated defense to the mea culpa and 180 degree shift (obviously brought on by high-ups disapproving of the videos). I was surprised that FAIR leadership tried the experiment in the first place. 

The humor and in-you-face approach of DezNat and Kwaku are similar. 

Edited by rongo
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I don't know much about Deznat.  My understanding is that it might be a reaction to those leaving the fold and perceived doctrinal attacks as well as perceived defeats regarding LGTBQ rights.  When an ideology or religion is attacked, some adherents get insular and are more apt to lash out through these types of hateful memes.  Perhaps it is just people letting off some steam?  Hopefully it is just that.  However, if the group stands for blood atonement like the Laffertys did, even in jest, it is time to back away from the abyss.  https://www.newsweek.com/murder-name-god-139285

Too much harsh talk can lead to unfortunate actions.

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5 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

Which claims, specifically?

1) He spent time telling non-Latter-day Saint Christians what they believed

2) telling people who have left the Church can't take the doctrines with them

 But especially

3)  He harassed people who disagreed with his tweets, particularly women.

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33 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Yeah, she's pretty clearly trying to slant the story a particular way.

That said, I'm increasingly disliking DezNat.  Even if this is being blown out of proportion, there is an increasing coarseness and aggressiveness in our communications these days.  The Brethren have spoken to us a number of times about what we say and how we say it.

Thanks,

-Smac

This was posted on the DezNat facebook page on 4/24:

May be an image of text that says 'DEZNAT DEZNAT Hank Smith DEZNAT DEZNAT DEZNAT DEZNAT'

Whether or not her characterization of Hank Smith is accurate, this picture says a lot about how DezNat viewes him.

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