(LifeSiteNews) — On Sunday, March 15, Senator Ted Cruz retweeted a long anti-Catholic X essay by the Republican Zionist account “Insurrection Barbie,” stating:
READ every word of this.
It’s the best & most comprehensive explanation of what we’re fighting.
READ every word of this.
It’s the best & most comprehensive explanation of what we’re fighting. @DefiyantlyFree https://t.co/EYeYBWEM46
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 15, 2026
In the essay, which runs over 8,000 words, the author claimed that the Republican Party was being taken over by a small bloc of Catholics and undermining its support for “Christian Zionism.”
A chief influence for this bloc is “the world of the Latin Mass hardliners,” which the author describes as the SSPX and others who recognize the ongoing crisis in the Catholic Church.
The author also includes in this bloc the mainstream apologetics outlet Catholic Answers, as well as “a sprawling ecosystem of Catholic and Orthodox content creators.” Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes are also attacked, along with the political theorists Adrian Vermeule, Sohrab Ahmari, Patrick Deneen and Gladden Pappin.
Although the author distinguishes this bloc from “everyday Catholics” who “don’t even know its [sic] happening,” the article promoted by Ted Cruz resurrects a number of anti-Catholic tropes from America’s history.
READ: Zionism is turning Protestant politicians into anti-Catholics
The author describes the bloc as “foreign” – recalling the anti-Catholic Know Nothing party of the mid-nineteenth century whose motto was “Beware of Foreign Influence.” This movement led to violent riots in the 1850s, as well as the burning down of a Catholic church and the tarring and feathering of Fr. John Bapst, SJ in Maine in 1854. “SSPX traditionalism” is pointed as being a particular foreign influence:
The SSPX traditionalism is French in origin — founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, a bishop who openly expressed sympathy for the Vichy government.
The inflammatory rhetoric in this article continues, with Insurrection Barbie describing the bloc as “parasites,” engaged in “theft” and “the slow poisoning of existing institutions.”
Catholics who refer to St. Thomas Aquinas are condemned as “deploying a medieval theological framework” against Christian Zionism.
The bloc, the author claims, is insincere: they are not seeking to evangelize or spread the Gospel but are – as Ben Shapiro is cited saying – “frauds and grifters.” Insurrection Barbie herself says of the online Catholic apologetics world:
The goal is not conversion – it is doubt.
The “doubt” refers to undermining the political ideology of Christian Zionism.
The centrality of ‘Christian Zionism’ and ‘Israel Theology’
The article which Cruz described as being “the best & most comprehensive explanation of what we’re fighting” condemns Catholics for their embrace of the Catholic doctrine of “the Social Kingship of Christ,” which holds that the state has a duty to recognize Our Lord Jesus Christ and the religion which he has revealed, to offer him public worship in accordance with this religion, and to ensure that all its laws are conformable to the Gospel. It mistakenly characterises this vision as a “theocratic monarchy” in which the clergy rule society.
However, while the author rejects this vision, the chief objection raised is Catholic opposition to “Christian Zionism,” which it treats as central to Evangelical Protestantism and the American republic. The central crime of the bloc discussed is that it undermines this ideology.
The essay claims that modern American conservatism “rests on a theological claim,” which is not about America at all.
[T]hat God made an eternal, unconditional covenant with the Jewish people, that the modern state of Israel is a fulfilment of biblical prophecy, and that Christians who “bless Israel” are obeying a direct divine command. Remove that conviction and you remove the moral engine that has driven evangelical political engagement for half a century.
READ: Ted Cruz calls ‘Christ is King’ an anti-Semitic ‘code word’
The author also characterizes this claim as central to “evangelical theology,” whilst admitting that it is a novel theology:
For most of Christian history, the dominant theological position regarding the Jewish people was supersessionism — Replacement Theology: the belief that the Christian Church has superseded the Jewish people as inheritor of God’s covenant promises. Under this view, the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are now fulfilled in the Church, and the Jewish people have no ongoing special covenantal status.
The author then condemns Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes for “mainstreaming” what the author recognizes was already the “dominant theological position” in the Church.
The specific and chief problem the essay raises about Catholic apologetic material is that it undermines Christian Zionism and often produces converts “who no longer share the conviction that God’s covenant with the Jewish people remains operative.”
The great fear the author expresses is that this will lead to a 2028 presidential candidate who “no longer needs to make the same explicit commitments to evangelical Israel theology that every Republican nominee since Reagan has made.”
This in turn will lead to what the author characterizes as the final goal:
By the early 2030s, if the operation succeeds, the Republican Party will have a fundamentally different theological character. The party’s grassroots energy will come from a coalition dominated by ethnically and religiously defined Catholic and Orthodox nationalism, with evangelicals present but no longer theologically sovereign. The U.S.-Israel relationship will be treated as a negotiable interest rather than a biblical imperative. The Judeo-Christian vocabulary that every Republican president since Reagan has used will have been replaced by Christian civilization — which means something entirely different.
In short, Cruz has praised an essay that presents Christian support for the foreign nation of Israel as integral to being an American and condemns those who disagree with its “Israel theology” as “foreign” and “parasites.”
Incorrect claims
The essay praised by Ted Cruz also contains several negative generalizations and factual errors.
On more than one occasion, it attacks traditional Catholics by linking them with Nick Fuentes – despite Fuentes’ outspoken critiques of the SSPX and “traditionalism” in general:
“NICK, THE POPE IS FAKE YOU HAVE TO JOIN SSPX!!!” pic.twitter.com/Fh5iUpMnvu
— Fuentes Updates (@FuentesUpdates) July 4, 2024
Nick Fuentes clarifies his position on the SSPX and the tendency of online Catholics to try to outdo each other’s piety
“It’s in a very political scene, everyone’s ideological… and it’s all the converts.” pic.twitter.com/3HnOPwyAfP
— Fuentes Updates (@FuentesUpdates) October 17, 2025
The “integralist” academics which the author mentions are also not consistently identified with “the world of the Latin Mass” as described.
Cruz’s recommended essay also makes much of the supposed influence of Aleksandr Dugin on this bloc. But Dugin himself, who is not Catholic, described Jewish Kabbalah tradition as “the greatest achievement of human spirit.”
No no.
It’s essentially Kabbalistic, and that is what must be understood about it.
If you remove the Kabbalah, there is nothing to it.
Remember what Dugin said: pic.twitter.com/a6A7PIkvX2
— TheRohanian 🇺🇸🇻🇦🐸🍄📦 (@TRohanian) July 28, 2024
Dugin is also famously anti-Catholic. In a 2021 interview, he stated that Catholicism “is not really Christian” and that his movement wants “to end Catholicism.” He also praised anti-Catholic movements in Poland.
GRZEGORZ GÓRNY: In a word, from your point of view, all anti-Catholic activities in Poland are beneficial?
ALEKSANDR DUGIN: Exactly. Catholicism must be dismantled from within, Polish Freemasonry must be strengthened, secular subversive movements must be supported, and heterodox and anti-papal Christianity must be promoted. Catholicism cannot be absorbed into our tradition unless it is profoundly reoriented towards nationalism and anti-papalism.
If there were a lodge in Poland similar to Ireland’s Golden Dawn, whose leaders—such as William Butler Yeats or Maud Gonne—were, on the one hand, Catholics, and on the other, fanatical occultists inspired by Celtic culture, then there would be some hope.
Such people could dismantle Catholicism from within and reorient it in a more heterodox or even esoteric direction. My acquaintances in Poland tell me, moreover, that there are small groups of this kind, connected with Thelema or the legacy of Aleister Crowley.
Divide and rule
Cruz has attempted to walk back his endorsement of the article since his initial message. Writing on X, he said:
We desperately NEED to preserve the strong union of faithful Catholics and Evangelical Protestants—it has been the foundation of the modern conservative movement. The article lays out how profoundly harmful the concerted efforts are to drive a wedge between them.
I read it as precisely the opposite. We desperately NEED to preserve the strong union of faithful Catholics and Evangelical Protestants—it has been the foundation of the modern conservative movement. The article lays out how profoundly harmful the concerted efforts are to drive a…
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 16, 2026
However, such a message leaves intact the condemnation of traditional Catholics and “political Catholic integralists,” and even doubles down on it by describing them as “a wedge.”
Such a comment itself, by the evangelical senator, is an attempt to “drive a wedge” between those who promote the teaching of the Popes and the received Catholic political philosophy and their “victims” – whom the article calls “regular Catholics.”
TED CRUZ gets BOOED off stage by Christians.
His comeback?
“If you will not stand with Israel, then I will not stand with you.” pic.twitter.com/jerocmCK9r
— Parody Jeff (@Parodyjeffx) March 11, 2026
Growing anti-Catholicism in the U.S.
Anti-Catholicism is growing in American political life.
Ted Cruz shared this anti-Catholic article soon after he claimed that “Christ is King” is an anti-semitic “online code word” intended to mean “Screw you Jews” or “I hate Jews.”
On March 12, the White House officially removed Catholic convert Carrie Prejean Boller from the Trump administration’s Religious Liberty Commission following a heated debate over Zionism and Catholic teaching in February.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth also invited Pastor Doug Wilson to deliver a sermon at the Pentagon in February 2026. Wilson is on record calling for Catholic processions and other public expressions of faith to be banned in America:
Secretary Pete Hegseth Pastor who was Invited to Pray at Pentagon Says Publicly Eucharist and Marian Procession Should NOT be Permitted in Public. See more here: https://t.co/5fpjjd1ff8 pic.twitter.com/iKJg1bPCuI
— John-Henry Westen (@JhWesten) March 13, 2026
In 2023, whistleblower and former FBI agent Kyle Seraphin leaked an eight-page memo from a local Field Office, which associated “Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology” with “violent extremists” and “white nationalists” and specifically called for spying on and infiltration of traditional Catholic groups, including the SSPX.
The memo was later redacted, but it later emerged that this surveillance was considerably wider than thought. Stanley Meador, the Special Agent in Charge, has also since been appointed Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security for Virginia.
In 2023, Ted Cruz condemned the FBI’s actions on his Verdict podcast, calling this surveillance “absurd”:
With regard to the to the targeting of the Catholic Church, look these documents indicate that they see as a “warning sign” people who attend Latin Masses. Latin Masses are something attended by millions of people across the world.
And simply following traditional Catholic beliefs – the idea that that is indicative of being a criminal, or being violent, or being a terrorist, it is absurd.
But also it demonstrates a deep animosity and distrust to people of faith.
