Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. We're on vacation, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we don't have an excellent show for you today. Skidmore
Speaker 1: College Assistant professor Bradley Onishi tells us about his new book,
Speaker 1: Preparing for War, the extremist history of White Christian Nationalism
Speaker 1: and what comes next. But first we have democratic strategist
Speaker 1: Tim Hogan, who tells us about his strategy to have
Speaker 1: democratic billionaires by TV stations to combat the right wing
Speaker 1: media takeover. Welcome Tim Hogan to Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: Thank you, it's good to be here.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk to you about your super
Speaker 1: interesting idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So we put together, over the last few months
Speaker 2: a look at the trends in media production, consumption, the
Speaker 2: ownership landscape, without really doing like a full analysis of
Speaker 2: every media trend because that would be impossible to do
Speaker 2: in eighty pages, we put together. And interestingly enough, while
Speaker 2: we're putting that together, BuzzFeed folded. But BuzzFeed News folded
Speaker 2: Vice felt for bankruptcy. They were layoffs. I've met a Twitter, NBR, ESPN,
Speaker 2: The watching Spotify Box, I mean, name like any media company,
Speaker 2: and you're seeing these rolling layoffs, and then we're continuing
Speaker 2: to see a gutting of local newspapers year over year,
Speaker 2: plummeting in circulation advertising revenue. And so it's a really
Speaker 2: meaty question of what's happening in the media space. And
Speaker 2: we don't presume to have all of the answers, but
Speaker 2: we wanted to take stock of what was happening give
Speaker 2: some directional recommendations because we initially thought, well, let's look
Speaker 2: for this document. Where does this document exist? There's this
Speaker 2: big conversation happening, but we couldn't find it.
Speaker 3: Oh, so you decided to create it.
Speaker 2: And so we decided to create it ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: So you know, Margaret's Alivan and from the Washington Post
Speaker 1: is like my she's not the Washington posting were now
Speaker 1: she said Guardian, but she is my mentor, and she's
Speaker 1: constantly having this conversation about what happens when you don't
Speaker 1: have local news. So I mean, were you able to
Speaker 1: sort of see what the consequences of that were.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you see, in a lot of different markets, people
Speaker 2: are just not informed about what's happening, and there are
Speaker 2: a lot of downstream effects of that, whether that is
Speaker 2: people not voting, or an increase in corruption in local offices,
Speaker 2: or just people not being informed about what their representatives,
Speaker 2: to take a political view of it, are doing. You know,
Speaker 2: I came to this rapport from the perspective of someone
Speaker 2: who has worked at a media company, the BCPTA twenty
Speaker 2: Am in Chicago. It's an am radio station. We launched
Speaker 2: a digital newsroom. We watch what people are doing in
Speaker 2: state houses and what they're saying and what legislation they're passing.
Speaker 2: And it's stunning to watch some of this regionally in
Speaker 2: the Midwest and realize that there are no local news
Speaker 2: outlets that are able to cover what's happening, simply because
Speaker 2: they don't have the resources. So we have a debate
Speaker 2: in Wisconsin, for example, last week over access to birth control,
Speaker 2: and you've got a Republican taken in the floor saying
Speaker 2: that birth control makes women feel superior to nature, it
Speaker 2: deductive system at least proliferation of STDC Jesus, I haven't
Speaker 2: even seen that, yeah, exactly, And I'm like, is anybody
Speaker 2: else watching this? And frequently the answer is no. And
Speaker 2: so you know, from that perspective, it is just a
Speaker 2: lack of information about who's representing you, what's happening in
Speaker 2: your government.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's crazy.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because I've seen little bits of
Speaker 1: the people who took away choice trying to get involved
Speaker 1: with taking away birth control. So none of this should surprise,
Speaker 1: but it still kind of does.
Speaker 2: Right, it's people like that. But it's also you know,
Speaker 2: we monitored a candidate in Michigan, mad Daperno, as a
Speaker 2: Republican candidate there. He's running for attorney general. He compared
Speaker 2: Plan Beat a fentanyel. We caught that We saw Georgia
Speaker 2: Governor Brian Kemp say he was open to signing legislation
Speaker 2: that would restrict access to contraception. So it's it's these
Speaker 2: little bits of information that I think paint a clearer
Speaker 2: picture sometimes of who's representing you that get missed if
Speaker 2: you don't have the resources to do it right.
Speaker 3: It's such an interesting sort of quandary that we find
Speaker 3: ourselves in here with this. So, I mean, it's funny
Speaker 3: because it's like, I feel like one of the worst
Speaker 3: examples of it is like watching these tech bros. Right, So,
Speaker 3: like Twitter is now dominated by people like David Zax
Speaker 3: and he's a tech bro. I mean I could explain
Speaker 3: who he is, but who cares?
Speaker 1: And Elon Mush and these people, and you see in
Speaker 1: real time, like these people do not read The New
Speaker 1: York Times like they must not, so they come up
Speaker 1: with these things. You know, David Sax was furious that
Speaker 1: there were troops in Ukraine, right, I mean, there are
Speaker 1: not supposed to be any troops in Ukraine. And this
Speaker 1: whole time, Biden has made a real point of We're
Speaker 1: not sending a single troop to Ukraine. So you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they're American contractors, maybe there are Americans, but there
Speaker 1: aren't troops. And there's so much disinformation with this crew
Speaker 1: that are all like Ivy League graduates, who are you know,
Speaker 1: at least with some things known to be quite adapt.
Speaker 2: That is an example of what we found too, is
Speaker 2: that there is this explosion of options for consumers and
Speaker 2: you don't have an editorial staff outside of community notes,
Speaker 2: you know, right right, I'm not who is that. I
Speaker 2: don't even know. You've seen as a result that people
Speaker 2: just go to where they're comfortable, versus when you used
Speaker 2: to have a local newspaper or local TV station was
Speaker 2: your main way of getting the news. Now you need
Speaker 2: to have a little bit more of a motivated consumer
Speaker 2: if you really want to seek out accurate information. And
Speaker 2: so I think the question is, as a lot of
Speaker 2: these standard newspapers TV stations have struggled with a shift
Speaker 2: to digital distribution, people are going out elsewhere. How do
Speaker 2: we adapt to that type of information ecosystem. And one
Speaker 2: of the recommendations that we make in the report is
Speaker 2: that we do shift to looking more at investment in
Speaker 2: creators because they carry a certain level of credibility and
Speaker 2: they are where people are going to get their news.
Speaker 2: So what derivative content, for example, do they create from
Speaker 2: a bombshell news report. Not everyone's going to go to
Speaker 2: pro Publica right and read the intricacies of their coverage
Speaker 2: of Alito or Thomas or really good study they did
Speaker 2: in the trucking industry. So how do you get people
Speaker 2: who are already have an audience involved in helping distribute
Speaker 2: that type of content?
Speaker 1: Is it just me or does it seem like there
Speaker 1: is a real movement from like the trusted brand of
Speaker 1: the New York Times to the trusted brand of the
Speaker 1: actual journalist.
Speaker 2: I think that's right.
Speaker 3: I feel like The New York.
Speaker 1: Times a bad example because that is like the gold standard.
Speaker 1: But like if you think of the trusted brand of
Speaker 1: like Vice, which we love but has gone now rip
Speaker 1: to the trusted brand of like Jim Acosta.
Speaker 2: Yes, and but I think that's a good like The
Speaker 2: New York Times is a very good example there because
Speaker 2: I think they as an institution are grappling with this
Speaker 2: question even more because yes, the trend is toward individuals
Speaker 2: as the brand and the trusted voice. But you do
Speaker 2: have these big institutions that weathered a lot of changes, right,
Speaker 2: But the New York Times, like the Washington Post, who
Speaker 2: did create a smart revenue model and Ben Smith writes
Speaker 2: about this in Traffic for Themselves, you know, in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, based on subscription and not necessarily just traffic
Speaker 2: and ad revenue generated that way, so they were able
Speaker 2: to weather some of it. But the larger trend is
Speaker 2: still towards individuals. And you see someone like Ben Smith
Speaker 2: at Semaphore. He was just talking it can about how he,
Speaker 2: you know, wants to give his journalists the ability to
Speaker 2: follow things that they're curious about and build an audience
Speaker 2: that is attached to them, not necessarily to Semaphore, but
Speaker 2: Semophore is their home. And I think that's a large
Speaker 2: trend that we're seeing too.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting because it's like, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: of my own career, right, I popped around, you know,
Speaker 1: I started at The Daily Beast, and then I went
Speaker 1: to Vogue and now I'm at Anti Fair.
Speaker 3: So I've seen, you know, firsthand that.
Speaker 1: Like it's interesting because it's like I almost wonder, like
Speaker 1: I come from the nineteen nineties. So in the nineties,
Speaker 1: the platform was a much bigger deal than the creator, right,
Speaker 1: and so if you had a piece in Vogue or
Speaker 1: you had a piece in the New York Times, you know,
Speaker 1: that was sort of it.
Speaker 3: And now that's really different. I mean, it really is.
Speaker 3: Explain to me what you guys are talking about with
Speaker 3: this idea.
Speaker 1: Of buying a.
Speaker 3: TV local news station.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I feel like that was the ghost of
Speaker 2: BuzzFeed showing up at Themophore and said, we need to
Speaker 2: really click baby headline it is. You know, we do
Speaker 2: talk about local TV in the report, and what we
Speaker 2: see that's interesting about it is that unlike newspapers, which
Speaker 2: truly have been in free fall, local broadcast TV, at
Speaker 2: least so far, has proven relatively impervious to you know,
Speaker 2: declines and employment and revenue and news production volume. And
Speaker 2: they also hit that spot of trust because we frequently
Speaker 2: see people less trusting of national institutions, national brands, but
Speaker 2: more trusting of their local for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 2: I mean, like I can name the news anchors that
Speaker 2: I grew up with in the suburb of Minneapolis. I
Speaker 2: think that is part of it. And part of it
Speaker 2: too is that they see their community reflected back to them,
Speaker 2: and we haven't really seen a huge change in local
Speaker 2: television formats right think about what it was a decade ago,
Speaker 2: two decades ago, three decades ago. It feels kind of
Speaker 2: the same. And part of that too is that they've
Speaker 2: been able to be stable with the revenue that they've
Speaker 2: brought in. They rely cyclically on political ads, that's a constant,
Speaker 2: and we're seeing record spending that's helping them keep afloat.
Speaker 2: And they're also making some money from these retransmission fees
Speaker 2: from some of their content. So that is a place
Speaker 2: that I think is underappreciated. I think we light our
Speaker 2: hair on fire when thinking about local news focused on
Speaker 2: newspapers because there's been such a decline there. But we
Speaker 2: should be looking at television too, because it's been relatively stable,
Speaker 2: very surprisingly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I feel like a lot of this
Speaker 1: sort of came up when we saw Sinclair come into town.
Speaker 3: Yep, go on, you talk to me about that.
Speaker 2: From the you know, I want to say, like twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, you started to see people paying attention to
Speaker 2: them doing must runs right where you see the same
Speaker 2: talking points echoed by that video.
Speaker 3: Is amazing, Wow, amazing. Right, So this is we're talking
Speaker 3: about a video that sint Clair.
Speaker 1: They came up, by the way, recently was brought back
Speaker 1: to the forefront by one Elon Musk, who was criticizing
Speaker 1: it for that it was group think, but it was
Speaker 1: actually this conservative station called Sinclair had these must reads
Speaker 1: and every news anchor, no matter what if it was,
Speaker 1: you know, Michigan or Wisconsin or Florida, had these same
Speaker 1: must reads and they said the exact same thing the
Speaker 1: exact same way at the exact same time.
Speaker 2: Right, exactly. Hilarious, like history collapsing in on itself. But yeah,
Speaker 2: the point being, it is a trusted medium. It's not
Speaker 2: something that really ever gets looked at in terms of investment.
Speaker 2: It has a reach, it has audience that relies on it,
Speaker 2: it has high trust, and it's not a place where
Speaker 2: we really have looked. But you have seen organizations like
Speaker 2: Sinclair make investments in local TV and I think, you know,
Speaker 2: move the need probably in key markets as a result
Speaker 2: of their coverage.
Speaker 1: I think a lot about there's this one state where
Speaker 1: it's a small New England state, New England. It's a
Speaker 1: small northeastern state where all of the local newspapers are
Speaker 1: owned by the same guy. And you know, if a
Speaker 1: conservative conglomerate AD buys them, that's it, right.
Speaker 2: Right, It's a huge problem, and they often do so quilely.
Speaker 2: There's not a ton of pushback. And I think, you know,
Speaker 2: one thing that is frustrating sometimes when you think about
Speaker 2: political spend, and we didn't approach this just as a
Speaker 2: you know, we're Democrats and this is a political goal.
Speaker 2: But when you think about political spending and the amount
Speaker 2: of money that gets dumped into thads ads in the
Speaker 2: final two weeks of an election, and you know, maybe
Speaker 2: I'll never get work in Florida, but is it worth
Speaker 2: you know, dumping fifty million dollars in the in the
Speaker 2: final sprint for television ads, or should you invest in
Speaker 2: some actual infrastructure and look at this in a more
Speaker 2: long term way? And I think pretty clear where I
Speaker 2: would come down there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that's a really good point.
Speaker 1: You do see like there's so much money going into politics,
Speaker 1: especially now that every candidate, or not every candidate, but
Speaker 1: certainly in the GOP primary, each one of these candidates
Speaker 1: has a pack, right.
Speaker 3: They have their own money, and then they have their
Speaker 3: pack money. So you really do see that there is.
Speaker 1: A place, for sure for some sort of thoughtful spending, right, It's.
Speaker 2: True in the political side too. And then part of
Speaker 2: the report, we also looked at what investment looks like
Speaker 2: on just digital global digital ad spend, right even even
Speaker 2: just divorced from politics, and you've got to market where
Speaker 2: influencer sponsored content in twenty twenty two looked something like,
Speaker 2: you know, sixteen billion dollars, which sounds like a huge
Speaker 2: amount of money, but you compare it to the overall
Speaker 2: global digital ad spend of six hundred billion dollars, and
Speaker 2: it just seems like there's a bunch of efficiency there
Speaker 2: that should be should be looked at and uncovered, and
Speaker 2: I think that is one of the lessons we learned too,
Speaker 2: is where is capital going and is it being effectively spent?
Speaker 2: And then there are also questions embedded there of us
Speaker 2: for us for media models of you know what do
Speaker 2: these types of entities even look like?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Are they nonprofit newsrooms where I think we've seen an
Speaker 2: awakening of a lot of local coverage through those vehicles.
Speaker 2: Are they for profits that are our low profit you know,
Speaker 2: you no longer looking at a news or media outlet
Speaker 2: says something that you need to draw a large value from.
Speaker 2: Or are they like journalists driven or influencer driven to
Speaker 2: mediums like substack, you know that are sort of empowering
Speaker 2: journalists in a way where you can build a really
Speaker 2: loyal audience, sustain yourself. And they have some tools like
Speaker 2: you know, a substack defender, which is a legal legal
Speaker 2: shields or you know, legal access if you ever get
Speaker 2: in trouble, you know, for some of your reporting. So
Speaker 2: I think that's a big that's a big part of
Speaker 2: this report too.
Speaker 3: Can people find this report?
Speaker 2: Yes? How we have a really self descriptive website and
Speaker 2: it's at Media Landscape report dot org. And nobody had
Speaker 2: taken it. So we took and that's where this lives.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is, like, I think, a really important thing
Speaker 1: to be thinking about and to be thinking about how
Speaker 1: people can get like just legitimate information that's real. Facebook
Speaker 1: and Twitter, I mean Twitter now whatever.
Speaker 3: I think we give up on Twitter at this point.
Speaker 1: But Facebook had this opportunity to really like they had
Speaker 1: killed local news and they could have really come in
Speaker 1: and replaced it with like actual quality news, but instead
Speaker 1: they decided not to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was you know, a companied of maybe a
Speaker 2: year or so spaced apart to the metaverse, which is
Speaker 2: like a cartoon video game. Guess that is our future, right,
Speaker 2: that's the social value we're getting there, which is bobbing.
Speaker 2: But and it's also you know, for Googles, for Facebook,
Speaker 2: for other platforms you're seeing for example in Canada, Australia.
Speaker 2: California is considering legislation that would in some ways reimburse
Speaker 2: publishers for content that gets shared. But you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know, and it's a little bit out of the
Speaker 2: purview of this whether or not that's a solution for
Speaker 2: funding local journalism. It feels like the genius is out
Speaker 2: of the bottle there, and you've also got these platforms,
Speaker 2: and this is a pressure that we heard from a
Speaker 2: lot of folks who are individuals publishing their own content.
Speaker 2: They're just at the whims of these platforms, right, Like,
Speaker 2: in the world in which you are a writer, editor,
Speaker 2: and distributor of your own content, Google can change something
Speaker 2: in their algorithm and your entire model can be upended
Speaker 2: and they won't even tell you about it. I mean, Facebook,
Speaker 2: same thing, Twitter, same thing. What do the blue checks
Speaker 2: even mean anymore? It's a little bit of like a
Speaker 2: Wild West situation. And I do think part of the
Speaker 2: reason that individuals have shifted back towards email is that
Speaker 2: that feels a little bit more under control. Right, I
Speaker 2: am emailing you via substag, via ghost via medium work.
Speaker 2: You can subsproud and support me if you.
Speaker 1: Like, right, and that you feel like there's more object
Speaker 1: permanence to email.
Speaker 2: Right exactly.
Speaker 1: Oh that's really really interesting. Thank you so much, Tim.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, this was great. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Bradley Bonishi is an assistant professor of religion at Skidmore
Speaker 1: College and the author of Preparing for War, The Extremist
Speaker 1: History of White Christian nationalism and what comes next?
Speaker 3: Welcome to Fast Politics, Bradley.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, so talk to me about your book.
Speaker 4: Sure Preparing for War is I look at the history
Speaker 4: of white Christian nationalism basically start with the Goldwater Campaign
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty four and we end with January sixth. Then
Speaker 4: what comes next? And you know, for me, it's it's
Speaker 4: pretty personal. I converted to a church that was a
Speaker 4: white Christian nationalist church when I was fourteen.
Speaker 2: I became a minister at twenty.
Speaker 4: So when I watched January sixth, I thought maybe I
Speaker 4: could have been there, and that scared me.
Speaker 2: So as a scholar religion, I wanted to lay out the.
Speaker 4: Kind of history that led us to that point and
Speaker 4: show that, Yeah, it was definitely an aberration. It was
Speaker 4: definitely singular in American history, but there was a lot
Speaker 4: of signs throughout the last decades that that's where we
Speaker 4: might be heading as a nation.
Speaker 3: How did you change your course?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when I was twenty, I was a full
Speaker 2: time minister.
Speaker 4: I was married, I was in charge of like a
Speaker 4: couple hundred kids in a youth ministry at a megachurch.
Speaker 2: You know, I just began reading and reading and reading.
Speaker 4: I you know, heard all the time that if you
Speaker 4: if you let your brain, it'll lead your heart away
Speaker 4: from God. And I don't know if that's true, but
Speaker 4: I definitely had a more expansive understanding of the world.
Speaker 4: After investigating history and philosophy and theology, I went to
Speaker 4: Oxford to get a degree, and that obviously changed everything
Speaker 4: for me. So I began to realize that the faith
Speaker 4: I'd been brought into was more about a conservative political
Speaker 4: agenda and a certain myth of the United States than
Speaker 4: you know, something about a timeless faith.
Speaker 2: And that's when things really really changed.
Speaker 3: Was there one specific thing that did it? A book?
Speaker 4: There was a lot of moments, but you know, one
Speaker 4: moment was really the John Carey George W. Bush election.
Speaker 4: I was convinced I was going to vote for John Carey,
Speaker 4: and I told all my elders at church, you know, look,
Speaker 4: I just think this is somebody who has a vision
Speaker 4: for the country that's just more in line with what
Speaker 4: Jesus teaches. And they said, hey, great, that sounds wonderful
Speaker 4: for you. But he is pro choice, and if you
Speaker 4: vote for someone like that, you and along with everyone else,
Speaker 4: will be responsible for the murder of millions of unborn babies.
Speaker 4: So if you want that on your conscience, then go ahead.
Speaker 4: Otherwise I would think about it a little harder. And
Speaker 4: you know, for me, that was a moment, a watershed moment,
Speaker 4: because I realized that we'd reduced some of the most
Speaker 4: complex issues of our public square, the human condition, to
Speaker 4: either or this or that. There was no nuance, there
Speaker 4: was no detail, there was no compassion, And after that whole,
Speaker 4: you know, set of events, I was really on a
Speaker 4: different path.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting because I constantly have this argument conway
Speaker 1: about abortion, and you know, I wonder how much of
Speaker 1: it is like nurture in a way it is.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think the trick is convincing people, as
Speaker 4: I was at one time, that life begins a conception,
Speaker 4: and that that is a fact that has been not
Speaker 4: only scientifically proven, but has been taught by the Christian
Speaker 4: Church for two thousand years. And as long as people
Speaker 4: buy that simple piece of teaching or propaganda, however we
Speaker 4: want to frame it, it's really hard to get them
Speaker 4: back from the brink because anything you say is simply,
Speaker 4: in their ears, a pro murder agenda. And that is
Speaker 4: the tragic effectiveness of that approach.
Speaker 3: Yeah's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about Goldwater, because I want to talk
Speaker 1: about Goldwater. You know, there's this chicken of the egg
Speaker 1: thing with trump Ism, like was it Trump?
Speaker 3: Was it Nixon? Was it Goldwater?
Speaker 1: Where did Republicans start to go wildly off the rails?
Speaker 1: Though there's an argument to be made that they were
Speaker 1: always off the rails, but yes.
Speaker 2: Go on for sure.
Speaker 4: And I think for me Goldwater was a nice place
Speaker 4: to start because Goldwater really appears on the scene after
Speaker 4: two decades of either a Democratic president or Dwight eis
Speaker 4: At Howard, who's famous for his Middle Way. Hey, you know,
Speaker 4: Goldwater shows up and says, look, we want it our
Speaker 4: way and we won't compromise. And you know, he's just
Speaker 4: this magnetic force. He's got a big baritone voice and
Speaker 4: a square jaw, and he's you know, supposedly a cowboy senator,
Speaker 4: and he's willing just to say bombastic and outrageous things.
Speaker 4: You know, we're gonna use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. There's
Speaker 4: no way I'm going to sign legislation for civil rights
Speaker 4: and so on. And when he accepts the nomination, you know,
Speaker 4: the most famous line in San Francisco at the GOB
Speaker 4: Convention is extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
Speaker 4: And he's basically setting the stage for the next six
Speaker 4: decades by saying, Look, we're in the midst of a
Speaker 4: decade here in the sixties, or in the midst of
Speaker 4: a time of what feels like change. If you're gonna
Speaker 4: keep your country, if you're gonna get your country back,
Speaker 4: extremism is your approach. And you know, he got destroyed
Speaker 4: in his race against Lynnon Johnson, but the foot soldiers
Speaker 4: of that campaign never forgot those lessons. You know, Paul
Speaker 4: Wirick was like a twenty one year old kid at
Speaker 4: that point, and he goes on to found the Council
Speaker 4: for National Policy, the Heritage Foundation and ALEC. So Goldwater's
Speaker 4: really for me this moment of Hey, white Christian men,
Speaker 4: if you want your country, extremism is the way to
Speaker 4: do it. And you know, there's a line from there
Speaker 4: that kind of brings us into the present from Goldwater.
Speaker 3: Just give me a little bit trace it, keep going.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, I'm from southern California and Goldwater is
Speaker 4: a place where he gets just a ton of support
Speaker 4: from that part of the country. But you know, Goldwater
Speaker 4: sets the stage for a Republican party that embraces extremism,
Speaker 4: that sees moderation as something to be avoided as a vice.
Speaker 4: And he sort of inspires a whole generation of a
Speaker 4: Republican party that understands something. And this is where Wyrick
Speaker 4: and his cohorts and the Council for National Policy really
Speaker 4: were genius. If they can combine what is an essence,
Speaker 4: a right wing libertarian agenda, with the voting power of
Speaker 4: millions of white conservative Christians, then they can occupy the
Speaker 4: GOP and eventually occupy the country.
Speaker 2: And that's what they do.
Speaker 4: And so if we go from Goldwater all the way
Speaker 4: fifteen years later to the Carter Reagan election, we see
Speaker 4: another foreshadowing of Trump. Jimmy Carter is like built in
Speaker 4: a lab. If you're a white Christian, you know he's
Speaker 4: your guy.
Speaker 2: He's a Southern.
Speaker 4: Baptist by birds right, Yeah, your rural Georgia peanut farmer,
Speaker 4: Mary's his high school sweetheart, goes into the Milletary. I mean,
Speaker 4: what else do you want from this man? If you're
Speaker 4: a white Christian to vote for him? And yet who
Speaker 4: do they vote for? They vote for the divorce Hollywood
Speaker 4: actor who at one point was pretty good, you know,
Speaker 4: into abortion as the governor of California.
Speaker 3: Right, he was the guy.
Speaker 1: Who ended no fault divorces, which is one of the
Speaker 1: most progressive legislations.
Speaker 4: Weirdly, right, it's wild. It's absolutely wild to think of,
Speaker 4: you know, Reagan as the golden child of the religious
Speaker 4: right and the Council for National Policy and everyone we're
Speaker 4: talking about. But they chose power over piety, right. You know,
Speaker 4: so when you go from Goldwater to that and you
Speaker 4: start looking at Trump, you're like, wow, I see a
Speaker 4: lot of Goldwater and a lot of Reagan in this
Speaker 4: man who eventually becomes worse than all of them. But
Speaker 4: it's no accident, you know, it's not like there was
Speaker 4: no historical precedent for this.
Speaker 3: Right. So interesting, I mean, it's funny because it's like
Speaker 3: you really.
Speaker 1: Do see that the difference between Reagan and Carter, right,
Speaker 1: the guy who's so right, and then the difference between
Speaker 1: Trump and Biden, right, Biden, who like was the poorest senator,
Speaker 1: it speaks to really, you know, the sort of hypocrisy
Speaker 1: of the Republican Party.
Speaker 4: It's repeating itself in the sense that you know, Biden.
Speaker 4: And I know everyone's going to have their different views
Speaker 4: on this, whether good or bad. But Biden's like one
Speaker 4: of the most religious presidents. I mean, the man goes
Speaker 4: the Mass numerous times per week.
Speaker 3: You know, he is very inter religion.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then you know Josh Holly and the folks
Speaker 4: are saying if if you bring up God on the left,
Speaker 4: they laugh at you. And it's like, and again, I
Speaker 4: I'm not here to debate whether it's good or bad.
Speaker 4: Biden's so religious. I'm just here to say it's the
Speaker 4: same thing playing out of again for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as someone who is not religious, who grew up
Speaker 1: not religious. My family Jewish, atheist, communists. But you do
Speaker 1: really see that Biden is quite religious. I mean it
Speaker 1: speaks to this idea. And again I don't love this,
Speaker 1: but it is it's worth mentioning. Is that there was
Speaker 1: always you know, this anxiety I think underlying anxiety that
Speaker 1: Trump was actually I mean, he's obviously not. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you think about who has probably had more experience
Speaker 1: in our lives with abortion, Trump or Biden. So you
Speaker 1: got out, you became an academic, Tell me a little
Speaker 1: bit more about your story.
Speaker 4: Sure, I'd become somebody who studies religion from a historical perspective,
Speaker 4: from a sociological perspective, and during the Trump years, I
Speaker 4: wanted to kind of find a way to help people
Speaker 4: decode how all this happened from a religious perspective. And
Speaker 4: so we started our show Straight Wide American Jesus. And
Speaker 4: we don't think Jesus was straight white or American, but
Speaker 4: we want to know why so many people do and
Speaker 4: why they see the image of Jesus and Trump and
Speaker 4: what we offer. And I think for me, this is
Speaker 4: what I I'm always sort of telling folks is I've
Speaker 4: lived this. I've been on the inside, and I can
Speaker 4: help you understand that. And I've now spent twenty years
Speaker 4: studying it from the outside, and so we can give
Speaker 4: the long historical view, we can also give the insider view.
Speaker 4: And so yeah, I spent the last five years basically
Speaker 4: every waking hour analyzing their every corner of the religious
Speaker 4: bride and Christian nationalism in a country and basically trying
Speaker 4: to warn folks about what I take to be a
Speaker 4: proto fascist movement.
Speaker 1: What is the single sort of scariest thing that you
Speaker 1: think when you think of this proto fascist.
Speaker 4: Movement Democracy is not a sacred value to this group.
Speaker 4: Democracy is not the goal, the goal's power. The goal
Speaker 4: is to have dominion over the United States, and if
Speaker 4: democracy needs to be done away with in order for
Speaker 4: that to happen, they're completely fine with that. And I
Speaker 4: can show you the evidence. I mean, democracy is a problem,
Speaker 4: not a solution for many of the folks that I
Speaker 4: that I'm talking about, and that's overwhelmingly scary. And the
Speaker 4: tentacles of that position just sort of go every where
Speaker 4: in terms of dehumanizing migrants, dehumanizing trans folks, in terms
Speaker 4: of being willing to follow an authoritarian leader, being willing
Speaker 4: to write a rough shot over democratic norms and processes.
Speaker 4: So if democracy is a problem and not a solution
Speaker 4: for you, then it's really hard to have a public
Speaker 4: square that is healthy or safe at all. And I
Speaker 4: think for me that's what it comes down to.
Speaker 3: So interesting, Bradley, I hope you.
Speaker 2: Will come back, of course, anytime.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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