Nation Magazine Smears Thanksgiving: Calls Pilgrims ‘Doomsday Cultists’
The far-left Nation used the Thanksgiving holiday to rebrand the Pilgrims and Puritans as “radical Protestant apocalyptic groups” whose “sectarian” ideology, it asserts, “has become the bedrock of American culture,” urging Americans to consider this day as “the most opportune time to begin to accept the radical sectarian origins of the country.”
In an article titled “The Pilgrims Were Doomsday Cultists,” author Amanda Montell argues that the settlers who arrived in Plymouth “were not escaping religious persecution at all” but rather “left on the Mayflower to establish a theocracy in the Americas,” insisting that they “were no doubt eager to continue building their patriarchal theocracy in the hope that Jesus would soon return.”
“The Pilgrims and Puritans were high-control radical Protestant apocalyptic groups,” Montell says, adding that “if they existed today, most Americans would identify them as cults.”
She calls them “hot Protestants” who believed the apocalypse was imminent and cites prime ministers John Cotton and Increase Mather, whom she describes as anticipating specific end-times dates. According to Montell, this apocalyptic worldview caused the colonists to “erase everything that did not fit their ever-diminishing vision of justice,” thereby defining their approach to power and society.
Montell insists that the colonists did not value religious freedom, arguing that “the Pilgrims, in particular, already enjoyed religious freedom in Holland,” and that they instead came to America because “they did not want to raise their children in a liberal society” and wanted the power to expel dissidents and “exert total control over the culture.”
She depicts early New England as a “highly controlled” environment in which rulers allegedly regulated “behavior, thoughts, and information-taking” through community pressure, punishment, and threats of damnation, recounting lurid descriptions of public brandings, ear-cutting, and whippings for infractions such as gossip, flirting, or staying out of church.
Montell maintains that the psychological toll was heavy on the children, citing anonymous scholars who claim that second- and third-generation Puritans exhibited “melancholy, pathological abnormalities, nervous breakdowns, suicides, and insanity.”
She goes on to argue that the Pilgrims and Puritans did not “become avatars of America’s founding” until later, in the 1800s, when the young United States reportedly needed a “distinct” origin story from the slave trade and adopted the Thanksgiving narrative to fill that void.
Montell says she aims to offer an “accurate portrait” of the Pilgrims – a phrase she uses when promoting her recent book on American “cults” – before arguing that their worldview shaped everything from modern political rhetoric to the criminal justice system. “Their radical apocalyptic ideology has not disappeared. It has become the foundation of American culture,” she writes.
She claims that Americans have inherited an “instinctive anti-intellectualism,” an “obsession with self-inquiry,” a “tendency to worship the rich,” and a yearning for a “strong man to save us from crisis,” arguing that these traits help explain why the United States has “one of the highest incarceration rates in the world.”
“This latent influence has also made us a nation of gullible brands of crooks, cult leaders and demagogues,” says Montell, blaming this alleged legacy for the “division and extremism” that she says are “currently rampant” in the country.
Summarizing his thesis, Montell writes that “Americans today often ask ‘how we got here’ as a nation,” answering bluntly: “My answer: the Mayflower and the Arabella.”
Montell then expands his argument into a broader indictment of American culture, asserting that “sectarian thinking is not unique to the United States, but it is more prevalent in the United States for three reasons.”
She lists them as the supposed ideological heritage of the land of the Pilgrims and Puritans; the First and Second Great Awakenings, which she says “broke down the hierarchy of the Church and allowed everyone to gain charismatic followers”; and the First Amendment, which she said “effectively protects a number of crooks, a necessary evil in exchange for religious freedom.”
“People in crisis, like broke and desperate Americans, turn to cult-like thinking,” she writes. “We have been and will continue to be easily manipulated. »
To prevent what she calls “our national flirtation with autocracy and extremism ravaging America,” Montell says the country must dramatically expand government safeguards by guaranteeing “health care, shelter, food and social security – for all Americans.”
She concludes by urging readers to use Thanksgiving not as a celebration but as a political reckoning. “And we must turn towards each other rather than away from each other,” she writes. “This Thanksgiving is the perfect time to start coming to terms with the country’s radical sectarian origins. The consequences are being felt and we are all in this together. There is no turning back.”
The Nation also published a second essay on Thanksgiving titled “Make Thanksgiving Radical Again,” arguing that the modern narrative is “a myth” and insisting that the holiday’s “true roots” lie not in the 1621 celebration but in abolitionist activism linked to “anti-racism, liberation, and resistance.”
This article challenges readers to “reconnect” Thanksgiving to an explicitly ideological framework, thereby transforming the holiday into a political project rather than a unifying national tradition.
The outlet has previously taken similar photos from the vacation. Last year, he published essays debating whether the United States should “abolish” or “decolonize” Thanksgiving — including one suggesting that “Americans can give thanks by giving back their land.”
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
