Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Day It Happened Here, a podcast about I
Speaker 2: don't know, this is coming out like Tuesday, right, maybe Wednesday.
Speaker 2: You probably know what this podcast is about. If you don't,
Speaker 2: it's about things falling apart putting it back together again.
Speaker 2: I'm your host Mia Wong.
Speaker 3: With me is James Hi Mayh and I'm very excited
Speaker 3: to to lend some stuff. I'm sure to be great.
Speaker 2: Nothing, well, okay, the good news that the first guy
Speaker 2: we're talking about died. That's that's the only good news. Great, great,
Speaker 2: more good news. But we're doing some episodes about the
Speaker 2: Daily Wire. You're gonna get a lot more actual stuff
Speaker 2: about the Daily Wire in the next two episodes. This
Speaker 2: is the this is the preliminary background information episode. But
Speaker 2: you know, for people who aren't familiar with the Daily Wire,
Speaker 2: the Daily Wire is a very large and very powerful
Speaker 2: right wing media empire. You know, Ben Shapiro's people, Matt
Speaker 2: Walsh is there, and they are They've become increasingly powerful
Speaker 2: because of their ability to drive the actions and sort
Speaker 2: of like not even really mid level, like high mid
Speaker 2: high level like Republican officials, particularly at a state level,
Speaker 2: towards you know, horrific anti trans policies stuff like that. Yep,
Speaker 2: they've had this incredible divorced dad power of those two guys.
Speaker 2: Like it's like a yeah, it's like a Pokemon situation,
Speaker 2: you know, like it just it's inside, it's like shaken ball,
Speaker 2: but sometimes they let it out and control their Republican
Speaker 2: body with it. Yeah, and so okay, you know. But
Speaker 2: in order to really sort of understand who these people
Speaker 2: are and why they're able to sort of be like this,
Speaker 2: we need to talk about the ways that this is new,
Speaker 2: because you know, there's always been of writing, like Christian
Speaker 2: media figures who do terrible stuff, but the way the
Speaker 2: daily wire works is different than this stuff has worked
Speaker 2: in the past. And in order to understand what is
Speaker 2: different about this than these sort of like previous eras
Speaker 2: of like Christian antiqueer violence, we need to talk about neoliberalism.
Speaker 2: So this is this is not the normal starting place.
Speaker 2: You're talking about the religious right, but if you want
Speaker 2: to actually understand what's happening right now, you have to
Speaker 2: go back to the origin and structure of neoliberalism so
Speaker 2: you can understand how it's shaped. Right when Christian organizing
Speaker 2: the last about fifty years. I want to start this
Speaker 2: by talking about a guy who is not normally considered
Speaker 2: part of the Christian right at all. In fact, he's
Speaker 2: not even an American and his greatest influence is on
Speaker 2: his home country of Germany. The man I'm talking I
Speaker 2: want to talk about is Wilhelm rope Key. I've mentioned
Speaker 2: him on this show before, but that was several years ago.
Speaker 2: Now he is not a very well known figure, and
Speaker 2: that's not good because he is one of the smartest
Speaker 2: and one of the most dangerous neoliberals. So in order
Speaker 2: to really get a sense of who rope Key is,
Speaker 2: we need to talk about the beginnings of neoliberalism.
Speaker 3: So we need to.
Speaker 2: Talk about Hyak and his sort of attempt to recruit
Speaker 2: a bunch of new liberals to oppose. While mostly to
Speaker 2: oppost communism, it later becomes about also opposing fascism. But
Speaker 2: the problem that Hyak has is that so in the
Speaker 2: nineteenth this is happening in the nineteen twenties and really
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties. The problem is that the people who
Speaker 2: Hayak have been trying to recruit from Germany a dream
Speaker 2: the thirties all joined the Nazi Party. So in Many
Speaker 2: such cases. Yeah, it's a real issue for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, once again the Libs have let us down. Shocked.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, you know, in the in the nineteen forties
Speaker 2: after the war, when Hyak is trying to do this again,
Speaker 2: he turns to William rope Key instead of the original
Speaker 2: guys who've been Nazis because Ropeke had been out of
Speaker 2: the country for the whole Nazi things, so he kind
Speaker 2: of had skipped out on it.
Speaker 3: Okay, smart move on his front.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know this this gets him an invite
Speaker 2: to like Montpellier, and so the whole sort of the
Speaker 2: origins of neoliberalism and rope Key is he's one of
Speaker 2: the architects of what's called ordoliberalism. So the Order Liberals
Speaker 2: are one of the factions of you know, they're one
Speaker 2: of the factions of neoliberalism. What's interesting about the way
Speaker 2: We're gonna talk a bit about what they believe. But
Speaker 2: what's interesting about the Order Liberals is that they're not
Speaker 2: really economists. I mean, some of them are, but it's
Speaker 2: a lot of sociologists. And this means that the way
Speaker 2: that they think about the world is very different than
Speaker 2: the way that like Hayek or you know, like a
Speaker 2: like von Mises or like all the you know, the
Speaker 2: sort of like mainline like guys who are economists in
Speaker 2: the neoliberal movement think the order. Liberal roles believe that
Speaker 2: there is a natural capitalist hierarchy in a society that
Speaker 2: produces stability. But they also understand that capitalism in general
Speaker 2: and neoliberalism, like specifically the thing they're trying to bring about,
Speaker 2: adamizes people. You know, it destroys social bonds, It tears
Speaker 2: the fabric of communities apart, and it destroys the notion
Speaker 2: of any collective self identification, replacing them with sort of
Speaker 2: market exchange and empty consumer symbols masquerading as identity. You
Speaker 2: know thing for example, the rise of stand culture or
Speaker 2: i mean, god like the thing we do, which is
Speaker 2: like it's.
Speaker 3: Going to say streamers, you know, so that's friends on
Speaker 3: your phone.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this is extremely bad, and rope Key realizes
Speaker 2: this is a real issue for the success of neoliberalism,
Speaker 2: because people don't actually like being completely autonomized market agents
Speaker 2: with no real social relations other than wages and contracts.
Speaker 2: And you know, if presented with these options, they might,
Speaker 2: for example, turn to communism or god forbid, anarchism, yeah,
Speaker 2: but Rokey, you know, Rokey is on the side of
Speaker 2: bad and.
Speaker 3: The side of bad. Yeah, I think a great title
Speaker 3: for the episode side of that me his biography God.
Speaker 2: Rokey's conclusion from this is that you can't just rely
Speaker 2: on the market passively coming into existence, because if markets
Speaker 2: were supposed to passively come into existence, or if they
Speaker 2: were you know, like the sort of like spontaneous order
Speaker 2: thing that talks about when he's lying, like, if that
Speaker 2: was actually true, they would just have there would be
Speaker 2: everything would be market economies already. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: It's like no, like we would have had the exact
Speaker 2: same economic and political system for the last thirty thousand years,
Speaker 2: but we haven't. So in order to do this, you
Speaker 2: have to make people into good neoliberal market subjects, and
Speaker 2: this requires the intervention of the state. The product of
Speaker 2: this is that Roki is one of the architects of
Speaker 2: what's called structural policy. These are specific state policy things
Speaker 2: that are used to create markets by you know, sometimes
Speaker 2: it's it's there's a whole variety of ways that this happens,
Speaker 2: but by acting on and transforming like physically people right
Speaker 2: like what they do, what they believe, how they congregates,
Speaker 2: like what things they're allowed not allowed to do, what
Speaker 2: things are incentivized. This, this is structural policy. This is
Speaker 2: the origin of what's later going to be called structural
Speaker 2: or reform, which is the kind of stuff that the
Speaker 2: IMF does to an economy to create markets by taking
Speaker 2: food from the mouths of babies and making the babies
Speaker 2: work to get the food.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great to see any way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that part of neoliberalism broadly, a lot of
Speaker 2: that comes from order liberalism, and it comes from people
Speaker 2: like Roki. But rope Key realizes that, you know, there's
Speaker 2: a problem of structural policy as an abstract concept, right,
Speaker 2: which is that in order for it to work, you
Speaker 2: need to a take control of the state, because again
Speaker 2: this is a state, but there is a top down
Speaker 2: state reform project, right, and be there has to be
Speaker 2: something beyond the state to create the kind of subjectivity
Speaker 2: you need to instill, you know, to instill in people
Speaker 2: to make them behave quote unquote as market agents. Right,
Speaker 2: you can't just use the state in the market to
Speaker 2: make people behave in the way that they're supposed to,
Speaker 2: you know, to be good sort of like workers for
Speaker 2: the workers for the Great market. You need something else
Speaker 2: is specifically, neoliberalism needs its own form of collectivity. It
Speaker 2: needs its own thing that creates social bonds between people.
Speaker 2: It needs its own kind of sort of identification to
Speaker 2: combat the sort of collective society of the left. Now.
Speaker 2: Part of Ropekey's plan, and this is something you share
Speaker 2: us with the other order liberals is that they want
Speaker 2: to do this with you know, they want to use
Speaker 2: the patriarchal family and small businesses as like the sort
Speaker 2: of social basis of all of their sort of routing politics.
Speaker 2: This is very endurable routing politics stuff they also have. Weirdly,
Speaker 2: this is one of the things. It's in the fifties
Speaker 2: and sixties. There's a lot of sort of on every
Speaker 2: side of the political aisle, like kind of romantic utopianism
Speaker 2: ish about like the countryside. You know, this can swing
Speaker 2: wildly between like Mao or like the Japanese fascists or
Speaker 2: the neoliberals. They have this dream of sort of turning
Speaker 2: rural areas into these like bastions of like reaction against
Speaker 2: the left, and that did kind of happen in the US,
Speaker 2: but it didn't happen like it happened because the rural
Speaker 2: economy was completely annihilated and replaced with like a series
Speaker 2: of meth labs, not because I guess technically was a
Speaker 2: dowddream result. It's just that it didn't it. It wasn't
Speaker 2: the sort of idyllic like good like farmer family things
Speaker 2: that these people wanted.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, they got there in an interesting way. Yeah,
Speaker 3: with like massive agribusiness and meth labs are your two
Speaker 3: choices in life?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like and you know, so like like yes,
Speaker 2: they this is one of these things where instead of
Speaker 2: achieving their goals through cultural means, they achieve their goals
Speaker 2: through like the massive uh like unbelievable economic violence. But
Speaker 2: you know, okay, so that's that's the other thing that
Speaker 2: that and that's all sort of standard neoliberal theory, right.
Speaker 2: But what makes rope Key kind of unique is that
Speaker 2: he's really one of the first of these people to
Speaker 2: realize that you need another force, and that force is
Speaker 2: the church. And this is something that people don't talk
Speaker 2: about a lot when they talk about neoliberalism, but a
Speaker 2: lot of these people are very very deeply Christian. Here's
Speaker 2: Ropeke talking about his ideal society, quote rendering to the king,
Speaker 2: what is owed to the king, but also giving to
Speaker 2: God what belongs to God?
Speaker 3: So what belongs to God?
Speaker 2: And now one now I'm concerned. I mean he's it's
Speaker 2: funny because like he's taken the Bible verse like that
Speaker 2: you're taking to the render under Caesar, like what belongs
Speaker 2: to Caesar, render under blah blah blah blah blah. But
Speaker 2: like it's he's made it enormously more alarming. Yeah, yeah, deeply,
Speaker 2: like because like the thing about the render under Caesar
Speaker 2: is that that's a statement about about like living under
Speaker 2: the Roman Empire, right, right, Like this is just he
Speaker 2: just wants you to fucking have a king. Yeah, give
Speaker 2: shit to everyone needs to a God who is also
Speaker 2: the king.
Speaker 3: Right, It's not even like like the necessity of the
Speaker 3: state thing, like you just dump dumped in like a point,
Speaker 3: let's hereditary, inbred person to give money to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean she's not like I So, okay, I
Speaker 2: I should I should probably not slander him as thoroughly
Speaker 2: as I'm doing here because I don't actually quite think
Speaker 2: he literally becomes a monarchist. But she does believe that
Speaker 2: there should be like I don't know, you describe it
Speaker 2: like there should be democratic parties, but that like actual
Speaker 2: economic policy shouldn't be like managed by them, Like you
Speaker 2: need like a super a thing above the democracy, which
Speaker 2: is the IMF, to make sure that there's the little
Speaker 2: the little democratic people don't like start getting any ideas
Speaker 2: about the economy.
Speaker 3: Like technocracy like a.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but you don't put but like the thing
Speaker 2: with the technocracy and this is this is genuinely kind
Speaker 2: of what has been happening in Europe is that like
Speaker 2: living under a technocracy really sucks. Yes, like it sucks
Speaker 2: like politically, it sucks materially, and it sucks like emotionally.
Speaker 2: And you know, the right has been able to make
Speaker 2: a lot out of sort of like this opposition to
Speaker 2: like the global bureaucracies or whatever, which is like, okay,
Speaker 2: like you guys made these things in the first place,
Speaker 2: Like I, I, you know, you don't get a fucking
Speaker 2: complain about the bureaucracies that you set up and ran,
Speaker 2: but you know I haven't stomped him. Yeah, but but
Speaker 2: rope key, rope key.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So a lot of the other order liberals become really
Speaker 2: sort of like you know, are become obsessed with taking
Speaker 2: over the IMF, which they do and they take over
Speaker 2: the World Bank and they become you know, they do
Speaker 2: that stuff. Rope Key is obsessed with using the using
Speaker 2: religion as like another kind of social force that he
Speaker 2: can bind the othererberal sort of movement together with. And
Speaker 2: so he sets out to form like like a kind
Speaker 2: of like reactionary Catholic international to bring neoliberalism to the world.
Speaker 3: That is a troubling concept.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it doesn't work, which is the good news. Well,
Speaker 2: and the problem is it doesn't work. It's not that
Speaker 2: it doesn't work because it's a bad idea. The reason
Speaker 2: that it doesn't work is that he's trying this in
Speaker 2: like the fifties and sixties, and it is too early
Speaker 2: for that shit. Yea, Like you know, I mean, and
Speaker 2: this is something I feel like I should at some
Speaker 2: point I should actually do a deep dive into this
Speaker 2: on the show. But I've talked about this a couple
Speaker 2: of times. There is a very powerful form of kind
Speaker 2: of like conservative Christian politics in Europe at this time.
Speaker 2: It's like the Christian democracy movements. There's like if every
Speaker 2: single country if you look at it like this, from
Speaker 2: like the fifties through like the nineties, I mean, and
Speaker 2: even to this day. In Germany, for example, like there
Speaker 2: was a party called the Christian Democrats yea, and they
Speaker 2: win like at least sixty percent of all elections, like
Speaker 2: in Italy, they're in power for like forty years. But
Speaker 2: the problem with Christian democracy from the perspective of someone
Speaker 2: like Roki is that like if you sort of if
Speaker 2: you take like these parties, right, these parties are you know,
Speaker 2: these are these are the Christian Conservatives of this era.
Speaker 2: They are way way too far left for uh, for Roki.
Speaker 2: And that's not just a sort of like Rope, Look
Speaker 2: got how far right Rope he is, although he is
Speaker 2: so like if if you took Elder Moro, who's like
Speaker 2: the great Italian Christian democratic statesman, multiple time Prime Minister
Speaker 2: of Italy, killed in an insane web of conspiracies, like
Speaker 2: if you, yeah, look i'd labor. Like if you took
Speaker 2: Elder Morrow and you dropped him into the modern American Congress,
Speaker 2: he would be to the He is again the leader,
Speaker 2: he's like the leader of Italian Well he's technically from
Speaker 2: the central left faction of the Christian Democrats, but he's
Speaker 2: like the guy who's not a socialist or a communist,
Speaker 2: like in terms of Italian politicians, who's not also a fascist?
Speaker 2: And if you took him from like the seventies and
Speaker 2: you plopped him into the American Congress, he would be
Speaker 2: to the left of AOC, Like AOC is pro ceasefire
Speaker 2: in Gaza, right, like she's she's pro ceasefire in Palestine.
Speaker 2: Alder Morrow allowed the Popular Threat for the Liberation of Palestine,
Speaker 2: which is the Palestinian Communist per mill terry, to operate
Speaker 2: out of and carry out attacks like from Italy. Right,
Speaker 2: like this guy you would like she is.
Speaker 3: Well, if you go far enough right, you might get
Speaker 3: that as well.
Speaker 2: To be fair, no, but but it wouldn't be the PFLP,
Speaker 2: though I guess I guess some of the German neo
Speaker 2: Nazis kind of liked them. But right, yeah, like like
Speaker 2: imagine in the US any politician being like, yeah, the
Speaker 2: PFLP could operate out of the US or only our
Speaker 2: only our only condition is that we like we're gonna
Speaker 2: let you operate, but we're not gonna like protect you
Speaker 2: from uh like shim Bette or whatever, like the Masad. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like racontact you from the Masade like that. But you
Speaker 2: know you can you can do your stuff here? Could
Speaker 2: you imagine that shit happening? This guy was a this
Speaker 2: guy is a conservative in Europe right in like you know,
Speaker 2: so this is what Rope he's responding to, like the
Speaker 2: the existing Christian you know, and and and you know,
Speaker 2: to some extent, like the Christian the Christian Democrats are
Speaker 2: very very successful stopping communism, right, They're really good at it.
Speaker 2: They stop communism from taking hold anywhere in Europe. But
Speaker 2: they're not like capitalist enough for ROKEI. So when we
Speaker 2: come back from this thing ROKEI would have loved, which
Speaker 2: is ad transitions, we're going to talk about more of
Speaker 2: what Rochi was doing and how it shaped neoliberalism and
Speaker 2: the Christian right. Woo yay, we're back. Roki is having
Speaker 2: a great time in his grave. We're gonna get the
Speaker 2: thing that makes him spin at his grave, which I'm
Speaker 2: very excited about.
Speaker 3: Accident.
Speaker 2: But okay, so you know, like as we've sort of
Speaker 2: been talking about, the Christian Democrats are not the Christian
Speaker 2: The Christian Democrats in a lot of countries are Catholic.
Speaker 2: Some of them, like I think like there are Protestant
Speaker 2: like Christian, but like yeah, but like a lot of
Speaker 2: a lot of them are Catholic, So I mean, it's
Speaker 2: it's it's a really interesting kind of like predecessor to
Speaker 2: like modern fire right politics, where you get these like
Speaker 2: both of the US and Latin America, where you get
Speaker 2: these sort of like these Catholic Protestant alliances like this
Speaker 2: is this is like Matt Walsh. You know, we're gonna
Speaker 2: be talking about more in the next two days, Like
Speaker 2: is a Catholic theocrat, right, but a lot of his
Speaker 2: base are like you know, are like Baptists and like
Speaker 2: the more even more feral charismatic Christians and like you know,
Speaker 2: but but you know, but these these groups are able
Speaker 2: to sort of work together, but they're not able. They're
Speaker 2: not working together way that Rokey wants. So and this
Speaker 2: is the thing that I think is very very scary
Speaker 2: about rop Key, and and especially about the people who
Speaker 2: took this model right, whether explicitly or implicitly, people who
Speaker 2: people who figure out the same because a lot of people,
Speaker 2: some people like kind of directly to go for Roki,
Speaker 2: some people discover it through like I very weird readings
Speaker 2: right wing readings of gramscy Uh, it's a whole thing.
Speaker 2: I'll talk yeah one day I'm gonna get Eve on
Speaker 2: the show and we're going to talk about that, because
Speaker 2: it's fucking wild.
Speaker 3: What the Yeah wow, I think that Gramscy is not
Speaker 3: the most like inaccessible you know, like it. You know,
Speaker 3: there there are some like left theorists who just just
Speaker 3: vomit words so much so you can just project a
Speaker 3: meaning on z them, But I have not.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're thing their thing. This is This is
Speaker 2: Eve Avenger's like thesis is that these people saw that
Speaker 2: like leftist are reading Gramsey read Gramsey, and we're like,
Speaker 2: we're going to do the right wing version of this. Okay,
Speaker 2: yeah so now it's yeah, but you know, so so
Speaker 2: so man, these people are rediscovering the same things that
Speaker 2: Roki has figured out in like the fifties. But the
Speaker 2: thing that Roki is doing is she's figured out all
Speaker 2: the essential elements of the modern Christian right. You promote
Speaker 2: neoliberalism with one hand, and then you sell the solution
Speaker 2: to the atomization that your neoliberalism causes on the other
Speaker 2: hand with the church and the church, yes, we will
Speaker 2: serve as the basis of your political organization.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is that is a there's a way of
Speaker 3: doing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this. It's an interesting there's a lot
Speaker 2: of people who do this same thing. Like, at some
Speaker 2: point I'm going to finish my I'm going to write
Speaker 2: the thing about like this is actually what libertarianism is
Speaker 2: to a broad extent, is that libertarians are the people
Speaker 2: who like take the problems that the market produces and
Speaker 2: then try to sell you a solution which is more
Speaker 2: of those same problems but worded differently.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so with people that weed now, so it's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but but you know so, but this is this
Speaker 2: is the Christian version of it. But again, rope Key
Speaker 2: to a large extent is smarter than the people who
Speaker 2: come after him because he understands that this project, this
Speaker 2: this this sort of Christian deliberal project is a constant
Speaker 2: struggle against atimization that and and this adamization has to
Speaker 2: be actively politically combated by the church, like both politically
Speaker 2: and socially. And if it's not like actively combatd by
Speaker 2: the Church, this whole project is going to start to
Speaker 2: come apart. Now rope Key is not the man who's
Speaker 2: going to lead the mob of Christian fanatics into the
Speaker 2: Promised Land. And part of this is also because he
Speaker 2: is like too racist for like the sixties, which again
Speaker 2: like so like in the parts of the sixties when
Speaker 2: he's saying the really racist stuff like segregation is legal
Speaker 2: in the US, right, like yeah, like that, this is
Speaker 2: this is this is where we're at with this off.
Speaker 2: He's too racist for that. And the thing that he's
Speaker 2: really really racist about is Rhodesia. Oh fucking hell like apearance, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is this is the Rhodesia pivot, which is that. Okay,
Speaker 2: So the orthodox neoliberals, people like Hayak are pro Rodesia, right,
Speaker 2: and this is Milton Friedman. These people are pro Rhodesia,
Speaker 2: but they're smart enough to use dog whistles and talk
Speaker 2: about it in terms of like economic terms and like
Speaker 2: stability of gard and blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: Rooke is just openly saying race war shit like I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna read it, but he is effectively like the
Speaker 2: spiritual forefadder of like the four chan mass shooter like that,
Speaker 2: that's how racist he is. And you know, it turns
Speaker 2: out that just again openly like open race war shit
Speaker 2: is like too much for Hyak and he gets kicked
Speaker 2: out of the mainsream neoliberal organizations, and tragically, tragically for
Speaker 2: all of us. Rokey dies before you can see his
Speaker 2: beloved Rhodesia reduced to a pulp by a series of
Speaker 2: anti imperialist insurgencies. He dies before he dies, before all
Speaker 2: of the Rhodesion or like society's fucking fuel supplies stored
Speaker 2: in one spot blown out.
Speaker 3: I can say, see, if they had a more distributed
Speaker 3: market economy, man, they wouldn't have had just just that
Speaker 3: all their fuel in one giant bottle which they burned.
Speaker 3: Spoiler for anyone who hasn't been following the history of Rhodesia,
Speaker 3: not the country anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank Christ. I actually don't think Christ. Fuck Christ.
Speaker 2: Christ didn't do shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank all those people who went out there and analyst,
Speaker 3: et cetera. Yeah, and of course all the American people
Speaker 3: who went out to join the Rhodesian military and killed
Speaker 3: other white Rhodesians by accident, by shooting at people who
Speaker 3: are theoretically on their side. Yeah, shout out to them.
Speaker 2: We're not going to get into North Korea backing another
Speaker 2: genocide in Zimbabwe here. That's also a fucking thing. I've
Speaker 2: not doing. Apologies for that, because actually fucking sucked yeah,
Speaker 2: but you know, okay, but he he dies before he
Speaker 2: can see his beloved Rhodesia fucking eat shit die. But
Speaker 2: what ROKEI had is a very clear version of the
Speaker 2: the hierarchical, neolerbal society that he wanted to create. Right,
Speaker 2: and he is very especially by the end of his life,
Speaker 2: if he is very explicit about what this is. It
Speaker 2: is a Christian, white supremacist, patriarchal world. And to build it,
Speaker 2: the right is going to have to use the church
Speaker 2: to stave off the alienization and adamization of capitalism. And
Speaker 2: we're back now. In order to build this new world,
Speaker 2: the world that Ropekey sort of imagines, the religious right,
Speaker 2: the actual religious right that's going to bring this up
Speaker 2: into fuition, sets off from a number of angles. I
Speaker 2: think the most famous part of this is probably the
Speaker 2: sort of moral majority infrastructure, which is this network of
Speaker 2: like Think Tank's political advocacy Organization's TV Network's mailing lists,
Speaker 2: like their own insane right wing colleges, god terrifying places.
Speaker 2: But the fundamental social basis right, the fundamental collective space
Speaker 2: around which the right is organized eyes was the church.
Speaker 2: There's been a lot of sociological talk in the last
Speaker 2: few years about like quote unquote third spaces. So the
Speaker 2: third space is supposed to be this place that's like
Speaker 2: not the home or not the workplace that people can
Speaker 2: exist in and form bonds in. And you know, people
Speaker 2: talk about like bridge clubs blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: But the thing about the US is that, like the
Speaker 2: fucking YMCA, like all of these things that people talk
Speaker 2: about as the third space are just the church in
Speaker 2: different forms, yea literally church or a bunch of church
Speaker 2: run events.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially like the more like a rural you get
Speaker 3: like it is this and this and this is one
Speaker 3: of these things like that this was actually like one
Speaker 3: of the sort of rear flanks of the workers movement, right,
Speaker 3: which is that like in large parts of Appalachia, right,
Speaker 3: you have a bunch of really really militant like miners
Speaker 3: unions for example.
Speaker 2: But then you know, but all of them are also
Speaker 2: like are also are also Baptists. And that is fine
Speaker 2: as long as you know you're you're you're dealing with
Speaker 2: Baptists who are doing well. I mean, I say fine,
Speaker 2: but like it's not an existential threat to the workers
Speaker 2: movement when you're dealing with like like you know, like
Speaker 2: it's easier for an arrow to like, sorry, it's easier
Speaker 2: for a camel to walk through the head of a
Speaker 2: pin than it is for a rich mandy go to
Speaker 2: have in Baptists. But the moment that still starts flipping,
Speaker 2: that's a very very dangerous sort of rear guard. You
Speaker 2: see this Naian American communities where like you know, Asian
Speaker 2: Americans generally, like the last two generations like Millennials and
Speaker 2: gen Z are tacking really really hard left, except the
Speaker 2: fucking Christians who are like forming this this insane rearguard.
Speaker 2: Because I've complained about this before around fucking I'm doing this.
Speaker 2: This is this is this is a Christianity episode. I
Speaker 2: could talk about this that the thing the thing about
Speaker 2: Asian Christians is that they're all they're almost all like
Speaker 2: first Schenk converts, so they all have convert brain, which
Speaker 2: means completely fucking bat shit. Yeah. So you know, and
Speaker 2: this is one of the things that we're talking about here, right,
Speaker 2: is that the physically the church serves this very very
Speaker 2: important engine kind of kind of revolution. There's this engine
Speaker 2: of sort of spreading reactionary politics even among groups of
Speaker 2: people who you normally wouldn't get that kind of sort
Speaker 2: of right wing politics from. And this is where, you know,
Speaker 2: face with the sort of leftward shifts in the US
Speaker 2: and the sixties and seventies globally too, face with you know,
Speaker 2: I mean literally the specter of revolutions and not even
Speaker 2: like sometimes not even specters like you know, this is
Speaker 2: post sixty eight, right, there's been a bunch of actual uprisings. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they're the place that they make their move is
Speaker 2: by trying to seize control of various pieces of church infrastructure.
Speaker 2: We're going to take a Catholic example and a Protestant example,
Speaker 2: and we're not going to do the obvious Orthodox example
Speaker 2: because we'd be here for a century. So let's start
Speaker 2: with Roki's beloved Catholic church. I think I don't know
Speaker 2: if I'm gonna do a little bit of left inside baseball.
Speaker 2: I think people on the left tend to be really
Speaker 2: obsessed with the like liberation theology people. But the problem
Speaker 2: with liberation theology people is that they were around for
Speaker 2: maybe like thirty years, right, But by the time you
Speaker 2: get to the end of the eighties, these people are
Speaker 2: all dead, right, Like they're either dead or they're like
Speaker 2: Ortega and they've become these like literally they start calling
Speaker 2: themselves the Third Way and are like cutting all these
Speaker 2: deals with like really right wing social groups. But so
Speaker 2: and so this means that the dominant politics of like
Speaker 2: the capital, like t Capital c. The Catholic Church is
Speaker 2: very gets very very right wing. Well it's not even
Speaker 2: that as much as it gets right wing, but it
Speaker 2: is very right wing. And the stuff that they're doing
Speaker 2: is very, very scary. One of the things that I
Speaker 2: don't think people really realize is that so that probably
Speaker 2: you've heard the term gender ideology. Yeah, yes, yeah, do
Speaker 2: you know where that's from?
Speaker 3: Is it from I've fucking forgotten the place where Harry
Speaker 3: Potter goes.
Speaker 2: Hogwarts. Yeah. JFK is a fucking Johnny come late bastard.
Speaker 2: Like she she she got into this game after that
Speaker 2: ship had already started. Gender ideology is a term k rowling.
Speaker 3: Jfk rowling is powerful speaking like this.
Speaker 2: The term gender ideology comes from the Catholic Church, and
Speaker 2: it's developed in reactions specifically to feminism, and very specifically
Speaker 2: it's developed in reaction to to arguments from feminists that
Speaker 2: that you know that gender is socially constructed, you know,
Speaker 2: because in the Catholic Church's position is like, well, no,
Speaker 2: that's heretical because obviously gender was assigned by God. And
Speaker 2: because gender is asigned by God, like women are like
Speaker 2: you know, women are like like submissive blah blah blah
Speaker 2: blah blah. Yeah, like natural this is this is this
Speaker 2: is the natural order. This isn't like a sociologically constructor thing.
Speaker 2: This is the natural It's been in tusays Billy b
Speaker 2: because they're like like unfathomably sexist.
Speaker 3: Is this like around there, like Elaine Pagel's beef with
Speaker 3: the church, I'm not sure of Blaine Pagel's if with
Speaker 3: Elaine Pagel's God the Father Got the Mother.
Speaker 2: I think this is a bit before my time.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, yeah, this is for World History stands at
Speaker 3: the University of California in common topic.
Speaker 2: Well, I think I think this is actually in the same.
Speaker 3: I've played videos of her to my students, and definitely
Speaker 3: in the eighties, like the vibe is powerfully eighties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I guess that's a bit late because so
Speaker 2: a lot of the generality, all this stuff comes out
Speaker 2: of the early night. Well, I guess it's like early nineties. Okay,
Speaker 2: So one of the things that happens is that a
Speaker 2: lot of you know, in the nineties, the Catholic Church,
Speaker 2: and they have a bunch of like rad fam allies here,
Speaker 2: by the way, do you have this massive fight in
Speaker 2: the un about like recognizing the right abortions and other
Speaker 2: like sexual reproductive rights. And the Red Fems are pissed
Speaker 2: off because I mean, there's a whole so they're they've
Speaker 2: been they're aligned with the Catholic Church is like an
Speaker 2: anti sex work thing and like an anti porn thing.
Speaker 2: And then also like a lot of the Red Fems, well,
Speaker 2: I gat, I got in so much trouble for saying this,
Speaker 2: but like, holy shit, there's somebody those people are insanely
Speaker 2: trenchs phobic. Yeah damn wow. But you know, but like this,
Speaker 2: this is this, there's this massive battle inside the United
Speaker 2: Nations between a bunch of feminists and or like feminists
Speaker 2: who are like normal, and then like there's the shitty
Speaker 2: radvm factions and the Catholic Church on the other side.
Speaker 2: And Pope Benedict in particular goes like all out on
Speaker 2: this stuff, both on the international level and in terms
Speaker 2: of like local churches like goes on the offensive against
Speaker 2: abortion and queer liberation, and meanwhile the Protestant Church is
Speaker 2: doing like exactly the same thing. They're like pro except
Speaker 2: like I think, I think, like even more fascist, which
Speaker 2: is really really and I say, this is someone who
Speaker 2: has raised Lutheran like that that is really the core
Speaker 2: of Protestantism is like what if we did Catholicism but
Speaker 2: like somehow shittier, like like Martin Luther. One day, I'm
Speaker 2: going to do my thing on the world's greatest kind
Speaker 2: of revolutionaries and then one of them is Martin Luther,
Speaker 2: because oh yeah, very clear, because like like I might.
Speaker 2: My argument for this is that the greatest kind of
Speaker 2: revolutionary is the person who starts out at on on
Speaker 2: the side of the revolution and then turns against it.
Speaker 2: And so Martin Luther's thing was he was trying to
Speaker 2: outflank the Catholic Church in the sixteen hundreds from the
Speaker 2: right on anti Semitism. Sorry, I meant a sixteen sixteenth
Speaker 2: century fififteen hundred and fifty hundreds, which is even worse,
Speaker 2: fifty hundreds Catholic Church they have expelled they have like
Speaker 2: just they have there. This is this is in the
Speaker 2: period where they were like expelling all of the Jews
Speaker 2: from Spain right, and Martin Luther's trying to like flank them,
Speaker 2: and this is the kind of shit that's happening like
Speaker 2: in the US at this point, which is you know,
Speaker 2: this is this is this is the this is the
Speaker 2: Protestant sort of following the Catholic like why and in
Speaker 2: some ways blazing their own trail of going really hard right.
Speaker 2: So probably the most famous and I think definitely one
Speaker 2: of the most important examples of this is the right
Speaker 2: wing seizure of the Southern Baptist Convention in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2: So for people who don't know about the Southern Baptist Convention,
Speaker 2: they are a very very large and influential like group
Speaker 2: of Baptist churches, and they've been kind of like they'd
Speaker 2: been anti segregation, they've been sort of like trending left,
Speaker 2: and there's this is one of the things. This is
Speaker 2: a very very famous thing in the history like if
Speaker 2: if you're you know, it's sort of like the history
Speaker 2: and mythos of the right wing is like in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine, at this convention, these like there's like these
Speaker 2: group of pastors who are like, ah, the church is
Speaker 2: getting too woke or getting too left. They scrolled out
Speaker 2: this plan like on a fucking napkin to like how
Speaker 2: they were going to take over the church. And they
Speaker 2: do it. They see they seek control Baptist Convention, and
Speaker 2: they purge all of their enemies and it is very
Speaker 2: very quickly, within a matter of like a couple of years,
Speaker 2: it's converted into this factory for right wing violence. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they they are. They ruthlessly Purgectingo sent in the churches.
Speaker 2: A bunch of churches leave because they're like, what, who
Speaker 2: the fuck are these people? Like just these absolutely right
Speaker 2: wing fanatics. Is like I've taken controls. A bunch of
Speaker 2: churches leave, but a lot of them stay. And you
Speaker 2: know what they're what their project is is that they
Speaker 2: start creating these sort of totalitarian micro states, like in
Speaker 2: like this is this what they turn churches into, and
Speaker 2: this is what they turn households into, because these households
Speaker 2: become enormous centers of abuse, like just unfathomable amounts of
Speaker 2: violence can sort of get get sort of spread out
Speaker 2: of this stuff. And you know the way that these
Speaker 2: things work, right is is is you may have seen
Speaker 2: have you seen those like fucking deranged umbrella memes that
Speaker 2: the Christian right makes on Twitter. No, so, okay, they're
Speaker 2: supposed to be like these like umbrellas, and there's like's
Speaker 2: some familiarly or the umbrella like protect you from the things.
Speaker 2: So there's like the family and is had the family.
Speaker 2: They're like protected by the authority of the husband. You're
Speaker 2: protected by the authority of the church, protected by the
Speaker 2: authority of like the theocratic state.
Speaker 3: Okay, no, this is like the most cursed Russian doll.
Speaker 2: It's awful, And this is just what these people believe, right,
Speaker 2: and they enforce this through psychological and physical violence. These
Speaker 2: people are they're sending out instruction manuals about how to
Speaker 2: beat your children right and how to do it in
Speaker 2: ways that you won't get caught, you know. And like
Speaker 2: what I'm saying, these are like totalitarian micro states. That's
Speaker 2: not an exaggeration that that is what these households are. Like,
Speaker 2: they're unbelievably violent. You as a child or is under
Speaker 2: constant surveillance. You are literally forced to through physical violence
Speaker 2: to maintain their gender norms. And this is the base
Speaker 2: of the Christian of the homophobic Christian right. These churches
Speaker 2: are pumping out shocktroopers. And these are the shock troopers
Speaker 2: both of neoliberalism and homophobic con transphobic violence. And when
Speaker 2: I say shockstroppers, I do mean this literally. Because an
Speaker 2: enormous number of these people, and this is part of
Speaker 2: the reason's politics, it starts to fall apart. Like I
Speaker 2: grew up around these people. A lot of these people
Speaker 2: went to fucking a rock and got the absolute shit
Speaker 2: blown out of them. But you know, these people, like
Speaker 2: these these churches, this is you know, you can look
Speaker 2: at the sort of panopoly of the people who do
Speaker 2: right wing like homophobic violence. Right the queer basher, the
Speaker 2: peronew kicks their kid out of their homes for being gay,
Speaker 2: the homophobic boss who fires and abuses queer workers, the
Speaker 2: doctor who assaults us and then denies his medical care.
Speaker 2: These people are pumped up by the church. And what
Speaker 2: the church is doing here is they're serving as the
Speaker 2: equivalent of sort of of unions in the left right.
Speaker 2: And when I say unions, I'm talking more like the
Speaker 2: nineteen oh seven IWW of in like the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three AFLCIO. These churches are the social and organizational space
Speaker 2: in which the right constructions its world right, it's the
Speaker 2: sort of nexus of homophobic organizing from the beginnings of
Speaker 2: the Hope of Home, like right through like their fight
Speaker 2: against gay marriage. But Kaba, something happened that rope well,
Speaker 2: I think rope Key might have suspected this, but something
Speaker 2: happens that his inheritors did not expect. And that's something
Speaker 2: is the only thing I failed to consider is what
Speaker 2: if neoliberalism came for the church. So one of the
Speaker 2: things that has happened in the last and I mean
Speaker 2: literally we are talking the last ten years or ten
Speaker 2: to fifteen years, really the last like ten years, church
Speaker 2: attendants and this is also actually true well of synagogual
Speaker 2: mosco attendants with the church tendants has been declining way more.
Speaker 2: It used to be like you know, if if if
Speaker 2: you're are you a member of a church? Moster synagogurea
Speaker 2: like Gallup has been pulling this since the fucking forties.
Speaker 2: It used to be the rate of it of being
Speaker 2: a member of a church st Agaga mosque was it
Speaker 2: was for like basically until like two thousand, it was
Speaker 2: hovering around seventy percent. It's now forty seven. That is
Speaker 2: a catastrophic drop. That is a rewriting of like fundamentally
Speaker 2: what the US is. The US has been a like
Speaker 2: Christian health state, like since it was created, right, Like
Speaker 2: the US is founded by like religious extremists whose problem
Speaker 2: is that they weren't allowed to pursue Catholics enough. So
Speaker 2: this has been this has been a church country more
Speaker 2: so than like most of the European countries. You did
Speaker 2: the settling up until literally the last twenty years, and
Speaker 2: the drop between twenty ten and now is like fourteen percent.
Speaker 2: And this is this is and it's not just that
Speaker 2: the membership rates are going down, like the actual church
Speaker 2: attendance is going down. And so in this context where
Speaker 2: less people are going to a church, less people belong
Speaker 2: to a church, the political strategies that have been based
Speaker 2: on using the church as like your default social network. Uh,
Speaker 2: they don't have the kind of reach that they used to. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and if that's your political strategy, this is a catastrophe
Speaker 2: for you. Now, you know, we could talk that there
Speaker 2: are like, there are lots of reasons this is happening,
Speaker 2: part of which is sort of like the secularization of
Speaker 2: the US. Part of this is that there's been so
Speaker 2: many fucking atrocious abuse scandals in these churches that people
Speaker 2: are just fucking leaving because that's what happens. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: and one day, one day, the thing I really will
Speaker 2: get canceled for is when I would the episode I
Speaker 2: do about how this happened in the DSA and how
Speaker 2: it just haulowed out the membership because you know, it
Speaker 2: turns out wh people get abused, they just fucking leave.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not just the DSA, like unfortuately.
Speaker 2: Yes, this happens in so many organizing like this is yeah,
Speaker 2: stuff being fucking creeps. Yeah, but like you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: the Christian right has a particularly bad because they don't
Speaker 2: they did there or address it, right, this is part
Speaker 2: of their ideologies that this is good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the problem, like at least in the left,
Speaker 3: Like it keeps fucking happening, and we do recognize it's bad.
Speaker 3: We sometimes just seemingly people on the lefts are prepaired
Speaker 3: to allow it to happen because I think it's not
Speaker 3: as bad as the alternative, but which is bullshit. But yeah,
Speaker 3: when you have a church which actively kind of encourages it, yes, actually.
Speaker 2: And and and part of and the other the other
Speaker 2: thing that's happening here, right, is that, like the other
Speaker 2: thing that's generating this is just there is just the
Speaker 2: neoliberal adimisation of society, like it's it's tearing apart, sort
Speaker 2: of like social bound you know. And and I mean
Speaker 2: one of the things I think you have to be
Speaker 2: careful of when you talk about neoliberalism tearing about social
Speaker 2: bonds is that not all a lot of those bonds sucked,
Speaker 2: Like it was not good that everyone with seventy percent
Speaker 2: of Americans were going to church, right, Like, not good
Speaker 2: at all. That sucked. It was deeply evil. But you know,
Speaker 2: it tears apart like it tears, it tears apart bonds,
Speaker 2: not entirely without regard to ideology, but it still does
Speaker 2: do it. And this means this context has completely reshaped
Speaker 2: what right wing like anti career and anti transorganizing looks like.
Speaker 2: And the right right now, the right solution to that
Speaker 2: is the Daily Wire. And we will get explained that
Speaker 2: in very great length tomorrow and the day after that,
Speaker 2: So stay tuned.
Speaker 3: Does and three of the bad Guy, Well, we already
Speaker 3: had a bad guy. I guess he's dead.
Speaker 2: These ones, Yeah, this is the bad guy number two, yeah, three, four,
Speaker 2: maybe after the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they're right up there there. They've still got
Speaker 3: time too. You know, they're already only in their ascendancy,
Speaker 3: so we shouldn't judge him too, Eddie.
Speaker 2: Yep, but yeah, this has Beennike, it happened here. Go
Speaker 2: make these people's lives miserable.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Bench Perry is miserable because I write a
Speaker 3: peace of pop mechanics about how to tear down the
Speaker 3: statue and he is still mad about it because he
Speaker 3: said I can't wait for their piece about mods of
Speaker 3: cocktails and I never wrote that as well, So Ben
Speaker 3: Shapiro can suck it. Thank you for the career help
Speaker 3: of Ben Shapiro.
Speaker 1: It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening