Content warning for discussions of antisemitism and the Holocaust.
The Republican candidates in the 2022 midterm elections are a grab-bag of outlandish extremists, including anti-choice false doctors, election deniers, and actual January 6th rioters.
Yet even with all these terrible candidates, I never would have imagined this one exists: a Holocaust fanfiction writer.
Johnny Teague, an evangelical pastor, business owner, and candidate for Texas’ 7th congressional district, published The Lost Diary of Anne Frank in 2020. The work of fiction features Anne Frank asking questions like, “Where is the Messiah? … Did He come already, and we didn’t recognize Him?” and has her generally admiring Christians for their faith.
When asked about his Christian-washing of the most well-known victim of the Holocaust, Teague was evasive. “Do I think Anne Frank became a Christian? No one can know what spiritual decisions or conclusions people make in a time of tragedy and persecution,” he said. “This book does not indicate either way.”
Except Anne Frank is not a fictional character. She was a real person who was murdered for being Jewish. Teague’s head-canon that she may have wanted to be ‘rescued by Jesus’ is him imprinting his personal values onto the life of a girl who cannot speak for herself because she was murdered. Anne Frank was born in 1929, meaning she might still be alive today if the Nazis hadn’t killed her. Her diary is unfortunately all that is left of her voice in the world and Teague touting his story as the “lost” diary of a victim of genocide is nothing short of hateful misinformation and Christian propaganda, as well as a sorry attempt to capitalize on her death.
Unfortunately, this is just one incident in a long history of Christians attempting to use the Holocaust for their benefit. During the Holocaust, many Christians cited the potential for conversion as the main reason to help Jewish people in the first place and the Catholic Church resisted attempts to reunite Jewish orphans with their surviving family members even after the war ended—which just shows what side of history they were really on.
If your version of ‘saving someone’ also forces them to change the thing they are being killed for, then you’re not really saving them as much as you are the lesser of two evils fighting for the same cause. The harm of cultural genocide is under-discussed, but its destructive power cannot be understated.
But the thing is, that doesn’t matter to Teague. He, like many other Republican extremists, doesn’t care about facts. He just wants everything to fit nicely into his own Christian-centric worldview.
What’s even worse is that the district he is running to represent has a large Jewish population. This man could potentially be the congressional representative for the Jewish neighborhood of Meyerland.
Thankfully, the neighborhood does lean strongly Democratic and he already had one failed campaign for Texas’ 9th congressional district in 2020. But it still is a harsh reminder of how important every election is at every level and how Republican extremism is actually often at odds with the communities they claim to represent.
(image: Montinique Monroe/Getty Images)
