RzstProgramming/Twitter
January 20, 2021, 7:24 am
One of the videos scraped from Parler after the Capitol riots showed a man complaining that he was probably going to lose his job as a pastor thanks to his participation in the event. Now, that man has finally been identified.
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@RzstProgramming shared both the video and a number of still images from it to Twitter before coming to the conclusion that the man in it was Tyler Ethridge, a youth pastor from Florida.
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In the video, Ethridge pushed the baseless claim that the election was stolen from Donald Trump, and insinuated that they had no other choice but to act.
“What is it gonna take?” he asked. “I think we’re at the point where talk is cheap, and this makes me lose my reputation, I don’t care. I don’t care about my reputation, I care about my nation. I care about it for my daughter and my child.”
Despite proclaiming that “there comes a point where you have to do,” Ethridge did try to save his skin by claiming in a similar video that he wasn’t involved, he was simply inside the Capitol observing.
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According to both @RzstProgramming and The Daily Dot, the investigation into his identity uncovered that Ethridge regularly spouts all sorts of rightwing conspiracy theories and claims that COVID is a hoax on his Twitter accounts (one of which has since been deleted, and the other privatized).
He also claimed to have reported himself to the FBI.
“I have nothing to hide,” Ethridge wrote, before hiding his entire Twitter account.
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Additional footage not directly related to the Capitol riots revealed Ethridge calling on veterans, and later all Americans, to “create armed militias to defend our businesses, to defend our churches, to defend our statues, to defend our monuments, and defend our heritage.”
“This is why you’re alive,” he told them. “Start a militia. Bear arms. And protect our land.”
The link between evangelical Christianity and rightwing extremism is strong, and only seems to have grown stronger during Trump’s time in office.
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A Christian fundraising site, GiveSendGo.com, is currently under scrutiny after members of the Proud Boys and other “fringe groups” raised nearly a quarter of a million dollars for expenses related to the Capitol riot. Footage from inside the Senate Chamber shows rioters screaming out in prayer, hoping to overthrow their enemies. Trump himself has constantly appealed to the Christian idealism of persecution by the world and played them like fools to achieve his own goals.
Whether this is a conversation the United States is ready to have yet remains to be seen, but the ties are there, and impossible to ignore.
As for Ethridge, or #PastorParler, he no longer has that youth pastor job.
*First Published: January 20, 2021, 7:24 am
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