Speaker 1: Good morning, Peepsen. Welcome to Willkate f Daily with Meet
Speaker 1: your Girl Danielle Moody. Recording from the home Bunker. Folks,
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to welcome to Willgate Fu Daily for
Speaker 1: the first time. Kristin Dumay, who is the author of
Speaker 1: the book Jesus and John Wayne, How White Evangelicals Corrupted
Speaker 1: a Faith and Fractured a Nation in our supersize in
Speaker 1: depth conversation that Kristin and I have, we talk about
Speaker 1: the rise of the far right and how it has
Speaker 1: connected with and grown deep roots inside of the white
Speaker 1: evangelical Christian movement, and what it means to also have
Speaker 1: this skewed or I would say, a corrupted, corroded version
Speaker 1: of religion layered on top of misogyny, layered on top
Speaker 1: of anti LGBT sentiments, layered on top of white supremacy,
Speaker 1: and really understand the core tenants of this I will
Speaker 1: use air quotes quote unquote faith and how it has
Speaker 1: begun to corrode and erode our sense of values around
Speaker 1: equity and justice for all. And you know what, Kristen's book,
Speaker 1: which came out in twenty twenty and is accessible everywhere,
Speaker 1: So if you have not gotten an opportunity to read it.
Speaker 1: This is my full throated endorsement of that book. Is
Speaker 1: you know, I am not interested in any of kind
Speaker 1: of the bullshit, you know, segments that have been done
Speaker 1: since Trump came onto the political scene. Let me get
Speaker 1: inside of the hump voters mind and all of those things.
Speaker 1: I think that that's bullshit. We know that they're racist,
Speaker 1: we know that they're misogynist. However, what I do think
Speaker 1: is interesting is how faith has become a recurring player,
Speaker 1: a recurring actor in uprisings in this country that come
Speaker 1: at the hands of violent white Americans, from the KKK
Speaker 1: to the Tea Party to now Trumpism and before right,
Speaker 1: faith quote unquote has been a large part of creating oppression,
Speaker 1: creating and sustaining patriarchy, and upholding white supremacy. And so
Speaker 1: if we understand what drives people to be connected to
Speaker 1: faith in that way, then maybe we can figure out
Speaker 1: how to counter message. Right. This is not about oh,
Speaker 1: I don't want to hurt your feeling. It's that I
Speaker 1: want to understand why you choose to be a part
Speaker 1: of a religion that is based in suppression, What does
Speaker 1: it offer to you? And so Kristin and I get
Speaker 1: into a really great conversation on today's episode. I would
Speaker 1: love to hear from all of you, so do send
Speaker 1: out tweets, Do put in the comment section what comes
Speaker 1: up for you as you listen to this episode. Coming
Speaker 1: up next, my conversation with author Kristin Dumey, Folks, I
Speaker 1: am very excited to welcome to Woke f Daily for
Speaker 1: the very first time, author, historian, and just all around
Speaker 1: just insightful where it's in on how we are weaponizing
Speaker 1: religion in this country and around the world. Kristin Cobez Dumey,
Speaker 1: who is the author of Jesus and John Wayne, How
Speaker 1: White Evangelical corrupted a faith and fractured a nation. Kristen,
Speaker 1: I don't think that anyone's book is more I know
Speaker 1: that it came out in twenty twenty, but it's just
Speaker 1: more on the mark with what is happening right now
Speaker 1: in this country and what we are seeing happen around
Speaker 1: the world. You know, I know that it's not new
Speaker 1: right that religion is used as a tool for politics,
Speaker 1: for the advancement of cruelty, for the justification of violence
Speaker 1: in many ways, but I kind of want to open
Speaker 1: up with asking you, you know, when you wrote your book,
Speaker 1: did you think that you would be in this space,
Speaker 1: in this global space that we find ourselves right now,
Speaker 1: or do you see yourself as a soothsayer that you
Speaker 1: know you're like you were reading the Tea Leaves, you know,
Speaker 1: as I was writing Jesus and John Wayne, I did
Speaker 1: have this feeling of urgency. I you know, I was
Speaker 1: sitting in my home office and looking at the historical
Speaker 1: documents and putting all these pieces together, and also just
Speaker 1: watching what was unfolding two seventeen, two and eighteen, and
Speaker 1: I was just thinking, over and over again, I can
Speaker 1: make sense of this, right, I think I can explain this.
Speaker 1: And so honestly, as I was writing, I did have
Speaker 1: a sense that this book was explanatory and that it
Speaker 1: could just describe how all of these pieces were kind
Speaker 1: of coming together. That said, I could not foresee the future.
Speaker 1: I could not foresee where we have found ourselves post
Speaker 1: January sixth, post Stop the Stealer. We're not even posts.
Speaker 1: We're in that moment, and we're in that moment globally.
Speaker 1: And so I think it's fair to say I thought
Speaker 1: it was an important book. I did not have a
Speaker 1: clear sense for just how much it was going to
Speaker 1: speak into the urgency of our global moment. You know,
Speaker 1: let's let's unpack um the kind of the the connection
Speaker 1: of white evangelical Christians with the far right. How does
Speaker 1: how does this marriage of sorts come about? Kristen like
Speaker 1: And again I say, this is not anything that is new.
Speaker 1: I understood learning as a child about the clue Klux
Speaker 1: Klan and their cross you know, on their white robes,
Speaker 1: that Christianity and organized Christianity has its roots in white
Speaker 1: supremist ideology, or it has been co opted i'll say,
Speaker 1: by white supremists m rather to advance their ideology. And
Speaker 1: so tell us about this, this this relationship and how
Speaker 1: it has kind of grown and shifted, but it's still
Speaker 1: very strong. Yeah. I think first it's important to draw
Speaker 1: some distinctions, which is actually a really hard thing to
Speaker 1: do because it's not even clear to some of us
Speaker 1: very careful observers exactly where the lines can be drawn.
Speaker 1: But we're talking kind of far right, and then we're
Speaker 1: talking mainstream conservative white evangelicals, and you know, what kind
Speaker 1: of overlap is there, And it is a really difficult
Speaker 1: question to get to the bottom of. And really throughout
Speaker 1: my book, I was kind of asking this, what is
Speaker 1: mainstream and what is fringe? What is extremist here? And
Speaker 1: are we in fact seeing a shift between fringe and
Speaker 1: mainstream or maybe it was always that way and we
Speaker 1: didn't fully understand it. So but it's important for me
Speaker 1: to say that clearly because right now what I see
Speaker 1: happening within some conservative white evangelical spaces is the weaponizing
Speaker 1: even of this kind of conversation that they'll be very
Speaker 1: quick to say, see the other side they are, they
Speaker 1: are just tarring all of us as extremists, and so
Speaker 1: of course we have to stick together, right, And so
Speaker 1: that's a dynamic at play here. In fact, there are
Speaker 1: many conservative white evangelicals who hold to family values politics
Speaker 1: and still firmly support our democracy, right, And that's kind
Speaker 1: of a distinction that I think is important to draw.
Speaker 1: And then there are some who are very clear that
Speaker 1: democracy is less important than carrying out God's law and
Speaker 1: are supremely confident that they have within themselves the power
Speaker 1: to interpret what God's law is and to impose that
Speaker 1: on America, because they believe that God has a special
Speaker 1: role for America, America as a Christian nation, and that
Speaker 1: they personally have a job to sustain that. Now, how
Speaker 1: they interpret Christianity and how they imagine this Christian nation,
Speaker 1: that's where we can talk about things like race and
Speaker 1: gender and power. But there are many Christians that will
Speaker 1: hold to similar values and be okay with democracy, even
Speaker 1: be supportive of democracy. And then there are some who
Speaker 1: are ready to just throw that aside. And it's often
Speaker 1: hard to perceive within conservative evangelical spaces where people are
Speaker 1: drawing that line. And even now I'm watching in day
Speaker 1: to day conversations and the people who will step out
Speaker 1: and say, yes, you know, we want to promote conservative
Speaker 1: gender roles, or yes, we want to organize against abortion
Speaker 1: and we want to see that become the law of
Speaker 1: the land. There are some who say, and we're doing
Speaker 1: that through democratic processes, And there are others who are
Speaker 1: who are very comfortable saying the ends will justify the means.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess what is wild for me, Kristen,
Speaker 1: is that I don't see the distinctions. And the reason
Speaker 1: I say that is because you have voices like Marjorie
Speaker 1: Tailor Green, for instance, who has become the face of
Speaker 1: the New Republican Party, who has been in interviews talking
Speaker 1: about America as a Christian as a white Christian nation.
Speaker 1: You have you know, actors who have been on the
Speaker 1: political stage for quite some time, you know, like a
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell, who again they want to force there. They
Speaker 1: look for every excuse to have religious quote unquote exemptions
Speaker 1: in what would normally be just the advancement of equity
Speaker 1: for people who were left out of the constitution and
Speaker 1: the creation of this country. And so when you look
Speaker 1: at and you and you think about these religious exemptions,
Speaker 1: have they allowed us to get to this place where
Speaker 1: religion has continued to be reapanized and those on the
Speaker 1: left have continued to tiptoe around what they have given
Speaker 1: space and rise too. Yeah, I think if we look
Speaker 1: at conversations around religious liberty, for example, can see how
Speaker 1: some of the conservative conservative organizations that have been the
Speaker 1: strongest proponents of religious liberty often you know, are far
Speaker 1: more invested in protecting the religious liberty of conservative Christians
Speaker 1: and not Also, there's going to be a smaller number
Speaker 1: who are working across different faith traditions and in deciding
Speaker 1: that note to protect this constitutional right, we need to
Speaker 1: protect it for all. But at the core of Christian
Speaker 1: nationalism is the idea of privileging Christianity and a certain
Speaker 1: type of Christianity. And so then it makes perfect sense
Speaker 1: if for them, you know, the whole country in their
Speaker 1: mind has been established on Christian principles, divinely established, and
Speaker 1: so to be blessed by God, you need to align
Speaker 1: your laws with God's will, and if you don't, your
Speaker 1: country is going to be cursed. Our country is going
Speaker 1: to be cursed. Right, and so there's this logic that
Speaker 1: to actually and then you'll get teachings of you know,
Speaker 1: the Constitution was divinely inspired, and that's somewhat of a fringe,
Speaker 1: but not as far fringe as you might think that
Speaker 1: kind of rhetoric. And so certainly the interpretation of some
Speaker 1: of these constitutional rights absolutely privilege their own kind right.
Speaker 1: And this is a very kind of us versus them,
Speaker 1: real Americans versus the rest, and if you are not
Speaker 1: with us, you are against us kind of rhetoric which
Speaker 1: at its core is anti democratic. I mean, how did
Speaker 1: they move their God from being a benevolent I'm bringing
Speaker 1: in and taking in the poor. I am about creating
Speaker 1: community and love and acceptance in all of these things,
Speaker 1: and turn their God into this gun toting like caricature
Speaker 1: of Christianity. How is that? How have people taken hold
Speaker 1: to that? So, I mean, it really is about power,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot that can be justified in the
Speaker 1: name of really seizing power and grasping power and so
Speaker 1: that you have the power to shape your realities, that
Speaker 1: you have the power to control your world. And you
Speaker 1: just see that as a theme over and over again
Speaker 1: in recent history of just this grasping for power but
Speaker 1: covering it in language of righteousness, of you know, we're
Speaker 1: doing this for the good of all of you. Right,
Speaker 1: trust us, and again God will bless us if you
Speaker 1: follow these laws. But that God is not just a
Speaker 1: benevolent deity. There is an understanding that this is also
Speaker 1: a God of judgment, of wrath, and that you will
Speaker 1: come under the punishment if you are disobedient, and that
Speaker 1: we as a country have this divine calling and if
Speaker 1: we as a country are disobedient, then we also will
Speaker 1: suffer this punishment. And so but you do see a
Speaker 1: lot of kind of picking and choosing when you look
Speaker 1: at the Christian scriptures. You're right, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of passages that are about love. God is love and
Speaker 1: it's about the heart of the Christian Gospel traditionally has
Speaker 1: been understood as you know, Jesus Christ divesting himself of power,
Speaker 1: offering himself as a sacrifice for the redemption of all things.
Speaker 1: Love your neighbor as yourself, Love your enemies, turn the
Speaker 1: other cheek, put the sword away, right. My kingdom is
Speaker 1: not of this earth kind of thing. That is not
Speaker 1: what we're seeing here. And in many cases they are
Speaker 1: very explicitly rejecting that, even mocking some of that language
Speaker 1: that you know, my kingdom is not of this earth
Speaker 1: like this. These are the words of Jesus Christ. But
Speaker 1: I've seen in just recent days Christian nationalists who are
Speaker 1: just ridiculing that language. That's the language of like softness.
Speaker 1: You can't trust those, you know, fake Christians who are
Speaker 1: who are who are talking about loving your enemies right now.
Speaker 1: The idea is that this time is so desperate it
Speaker 1: requires all at war, really a kind of spiritual war,
Speaker 1: but also political, and so you have to be all in.
Speaker 1: It's this kind of warrior mentality. Now. The trick is,
Speaker 1: if you look historically, leaders in within this movement could
Speaker 1: always identify a dire threat right there. There's a long
Speaker 1: history of conservative evangelicals situating themselves as embattled. You know,
Speaker 1: anti communism was just core to their emerging political identity
Speaker 1: in the mid century, and then opposition to the civil
Speaker 1: rights movement, especially in the American South, opposition to feminism,
Speaker 1: to the anti war movement, and the enemies of secular humanism,
Speaker 1: and then later radical Islam or either. There's always a threat,
Speaker 1: and once you identify that threat, then it's so easy
Speaker 1: to fall into this ends justify the means mentality where
Speaker 1: you don't need to just go to war but actually
Speaker 1: preemptive war. You want to take them down before they
Speaker 1: take you down. This is terrifying. And what's even more
Speaker 1: and like I mean, I don't even like it's terrifying
Speaker 1: in so many ways because I'm trying to understand, you know,
Speaker 1: not in the not in the segments that we've seen.
Speaker 1: You know, I want to understand the Trump voter. It's
Speaker 1: not it's not from that vein. It's like I need
Speaker 1: to we need to understand what these people are preparing
Speaker 1: for and if what you just said is this place
Speaker 1: of desperation that they are looking in America right now
Speaker 1: as a religious battle field and a political battle field
Speaker 1: and if they are willing literally and I mean literally,
Speaker 1: to lock and load because they believe that they are
Speaker 1: divinely anointed in doing so, in holding in holding, standing
Speaker 1: their ground against the liberals that are coming to, you know,
Speaker 1: turn this nation that they believe to be Christian into
Speaker 1: this secular den of evil, then they will literally do anything,
Speaker 1: in everything in order to keep that what they believe
Speaker 1: to be this righteous order. How do you think that
Speaker 1: that then the opposition deals with that reality. It's hard
Speaker 1: because if you try to meet it had on and
Speaker 1: call this out, you're just kind of proving their point that,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody's against them and everybody's attacking them. And
Speaker 1: some of the leaders within this movement are very skilled
Speaker 1: at a spinning things in that way. We have some
Speaker 1: statistics that show that I think it's around sixty percent
Speaker 1: of evangelicals believe white evangelicals believe the election is stolen,
Speaker 1: and around a quarter of white evangelicals believe that it
Speaker 1: might be necessary to use violence right to restore this order.
Speaker 1: And so that's not the majority, but it's really important
Speaker 1: to look at again this connection between the more extreme
Speaker 1: elements and the more mainstream, if you will, and what
Speaker 1: we do see is a lot of sense of cultural displacement.
Speaker 1: And some of this is real, right, We do have
Speaker 1: real demographic change happening in this country, as Robbie Jones
Speaker 1: has called it, the end of white Christian America, right,
Speaker 1: that has been getting a lot of attention. We see
Speaker 1: some declining attendance and declining loyalty among younger evangelicals, and
Speaker 1: so this is causing some alarm. But then we have
Speaker 1: these broader cultural changes, really going back to the Obama
Speaker 1: presidents and the sea change on LGBTQ rights with the
Speaker 1: Obergophile decision, And at that point you kind of see
Speaker 1: things shifting. The whole combination of and they've been using
Speaker 1: rhetoric of embattlement for a very long time and using
Speaker 1: it effectively, but it was taking hold in a new
Speaker 1: way against the backdrop of these demographic changes, and with
Speaker 1: the realization all of a sudden that not only were
Speaker 1: they not going to be in the majority, but they
Speaker 1: also might not have the religious liberty that they thought
Speaker 1: they needed to live faithful lives. Now, for them to
Speaker 1: live faithful lives isn't just a private devotional matter, it's
Speaker 1: also a kind of culture shaping, shaping the rest of
Speaker 1: society and shaping the nation's laws. But all of these
Speaker 1: things really kind of came together to intensify things in
Speaker 1: the two thousands and to really position many, even seemingly
Speaker 1: moderate people to say, yeah, things have changed, we might
Speaker 1: need to try some new tactics. And of course this
Speaker 1: is what they were being told over and over again
Speaker 1: by right wing radio, religious or otherwise by Fox News,
Speaker 1: and so this has just been a narrative that they
Speaker 1: have been absorbing now for a very long time. And
Speaker 1: we're seeing the fruits of that, that real desperation and
Speaker 1: since even among some of the more moderates of yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe we are, maybe we are under some kind of
Speaker 1: threat our values, right, and we need to stand up
Speaker 1: for our values before it's too late. Get a behind
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Speaker 1: Tell me how this line of thinking is different than
Speaker 1: what the Islamic Republic is doing in Iran and has
Speaker 1: done over the last forty years. Tell me how there
Speaker 1: is not this very like obvious correlation, except for a
Speaker 1: different interpretation, a different a different manuscript for the religion.
Speaker 1: Because this isn't. Yes, America was founded by or I
Speaker 1: don't even know. I don't even know how to how
Speaker 1: to frame it anymore. Yes, religious zealots came here because
Speaker 1: they no longer wanted to pay taxes to the king,
Speaker 1: and then they destroy an indigenous population and you know,
Speaker 1: build a country off of the backs and labor of
Speaker 1: indigenous people and black enslaved people. At that same time,
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be a secular nation, right like
Speaker 1: where this melting pot that allows other religions to come here,
Speaker 1: other people to be able to exist inside of their
Speaker 1: faith with how without having to subscribe to one religion
Speaker 1: or the other. Well, now they've said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we want prayer back in school. We want God. We
Speaker 1: want the rules that are followed to not be the
Speaker 1: rules that are created by man, but that which we
Speaker 1: follow that God has has intended for us to follow.
Speaker 1: How is that different than what we are seeing right now?
Speaker 1: And frankly, should that should we be looking out at
Speaker 1: these countries that we are seeing that we've always looked
Speaker 1: down on, that are making these hard pivots. You look
Speaker 1: at Iran, what happened over the last forty years. You
Speaker 1: look at what just happened recently with the election in
Speaker 1: Italy and they the rise of Christio fascism there. You
Speaker 1: look at what is happening and has happened in Hungary, like,
Speaker 1: is this not an alarm Kristin for the rest of us? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm I'm an Americanist by trading. I don't
Speaker 1: do comparative work. So my observations here are going to be,
Speaker 1: you know, that of a lave person really, and they're
Speaker 1: trying to keep up with what's happening. But uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there there is a sense of what this is is
Speaker 1: a battle over identity and that people are finding identity
Speaker 1: in certain communities and certain value systems. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot in flux right now. I mean, we're living through
Speaker 1: a global pandemic and uh, you know, we're coming out
Speaker 1: of in the two thousands of economic downturn, downturn? Have
Speaker 1: we really come out of it? That seems very precarious.
Speaker 1: We're in what may be the end of neoliberalism, not
Speaker 1: that neoliberalism was all that great, right there, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of really big issues happening right now that
Speaker 1: that have a powerful kind of destabilizing effect, and people
Speaker 1: are looking for meaning and they're looking for something solid
Speaker 1: and right now, we do have a very powerful movement
Speaker 1: through media, through religious networks that that's offering certain people,
Speaker 1: certain people a strong sense of identity, a sense of
Speaker 1: who they are, and a sense of their own righteousness.
Speaker 1: Right That's that it's really um. It's it's meeting a
Speaker 1: lot of needs, I think, And so that is um
Speaker 1: is what we're seeing in this country, and I think
Speaker 1: that you can see other examples of that in other
Speaker 1: countries as well. Now the form that this is taking
Speaker 1: in many Western countries, we're seeing a rise of global
Speaker 1: um right wing populism, and there is a kind of
Speaker 1: common playbook here. It is elevating quote unquote traditional values,
Speaker 1: you know, traditional gender roles, patriarchy, and patriarchy is is seen.
Speaker 1: It's not just male leadership, but really kind of a
Speaker 1: dominating male leadership. In many cases, it's very muscular um
Speaker 1: masculinity that is necessary to defend faith, family, and nation
Speaker 1: against all of these threats. And then women have to
Speaker 1: kind of pop up that masculinity, that masculine strength through
Speaker 1: their own subservience and by being mothers to many children. Right,
Speaker 1: this is kind of this ideal family system that's seen
Speaker 1: as the foundation of the social order. And there's a
Speaker 1: long history of that. Now, everybody who holds to those
Speaker 1: or at least two kind of traditional family values is
Speaker 1: not a fascist by any stretch. But what you see
Speaker 1: right now as I'm watching, not really what's happening in Italy,
Speaker 1: so I'm not an expert there, but I am watching
Speaker 1: very closely today in American Christian spaces, how are they
Speaker 1: responding to this news. And what I'm seeing is a
Speaker 1: whole lot of celebration, have a lot of excitement, and
Speaker 1: a whole lot of taking this clip where she's talking
Speaker 1: about traditional family and traditional gender and you know, this
Speaker 1: is who I am as a woman, and and they
Speaker 1: are saying, you know, amen to this. Finally somebody is
Speaker 1: saying these things. And then they're saying, oh, and look
Speaker 1: at all of the media calling them, calling her a
Speaker 1: far right or fascists, right, and saying this is these
Speaker 1: are just common human values. These are just you know, virtues,
Speaker 1: and they are out to get all of us who
Speaker 1: hold these right. And so they're really kind of whitewashing
Speaker 1: the fact that this this is uh, you know what
Speaker 1: post fascist, some stage of fascism, pre fascists, you know,
Speaker 1: different kind of terminology here of what we're looking at,
Speaker 1: but certainly there is a strong connection to historical tradition
Speaker 1: of fascism that she represents. All of that is just
Speaker 1: being kind of pooh pooed, and instead they're celebrating these
Speaker 1: are our values too. And I actually see that as
Speaker 1: very dangerous, very dangerous, because these are influential figures in
Speaker 1: Christian spaces who are putting themselves out. They are saying
Speaker 1: this is good, this is right, and anybody who says otherwise, right,
Speaker 1: don't trust them. I mean, I just I don't know
Speaker 1: what does the disruption of this narrative look like. Because
Speaker 1: to me, all I see, Kristen is that this is
Speaker 1: our future. I don't see. I don't see America, which
Speaker 1: is for the first time in our history in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, been labeled as a backsliding democracy. I don't
Speaker 1: see America not continuing to collapse under the pressure and
Speaker 1: the rhetoric and the media exacerbation of Christope white nationalism
Speaker 1: in this country. And so I like, what does if
Speaker 1: anything to you, what does disruption look like. It's hard
Speaker 1: to envision successful disruption at this point. What some disruption
Speaker 1: has looked like is people inside these communities saying no. So,
Speaker 1: you know, this is dangerous, calling people out inside their traditions. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: what happens more often than not is those voices of
Speaker 1: resistance are the ones who end up losing their jobs.
Speaker 1: They're the ones who are no longer in power. They're
Speaker 1: the ones who are voted out of office. Right, And
Speaker 1: so we see that happening and then adding to the
Speaker 1: difficulty as a scholar who is diagnosing this condition, right,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of caught up in a predicament because the
Speaker 1: clearer I can describe what is actually happening and articulate
Speaker 1: the dangers, the anti democratic impulses that I see here
Speaker 1: just building over time. The clearer I articulate that, the
Speaker 1: more it kind of plays into the hands of those
Speaker 1: who are trying to convince those moderates. There's there are
Speaker 1: some moderates that are up for grabs here, right, are
Speaker 1: they going to if push comes to shove, which side
Speaker 1: are they going to choose? Right? And the tactics that
Speaker 1: you know, to just call out what this is what
Speaker 1: we're seeing. That's my job as a scholar, right that
Speaker 1: takes it. You have to be direct, and you just
Speaker 1: have to be you have to be blunt. Those may not,
Speaker 1: in fact be the best tactics to win people over
Speaker 1: right there. You need to come alongside. You may need
Speaker 1: to make people not feel demonized. You need to make
Speaker 1: people feel affirmed in their identity and not necessarily called
Speaker 1: out for being racists or bigots, or being aligned with
Speaker 1: racists and bigots, right, and so it's a kind of
Speaker 1: delicate process, and I think that there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people paying a lot of attention to calling this out,
Speaker 1: and I think we would probably benefit from bringing some
Speaker 1: more social psychologists into our conversations, particularly those in with
Speaker 1: political influence or in media and messaging those for whom fighting,
Speaker 1: you know, this anti democratic rise of Christian nationalism. Those
Speaker 1: folks should be very smart about which strategies they pursue.
Speaker 1: And those may not be the same people as those
Speaker 1: of us who are diagnosing this situation and just kind
Speaker 1: of providing the evidence, but those who are actually trying
Speaker 1: to address this in their communities and in the media
Speaker 1: and in the nation at large, I think that they
Speaker 1: need to be much more sensitive to how to combat
Speaker 1: this resentment that is so easily stoked in field and
Speaker 1: so easily turned against fellow citizens. Yeah, I just you know,
Speaker 1: I'm definitely no one's social psychologist because my work is
Speaker 1: about calling out fascism to try and wake those people
Speaker 1: up who are not acknowledging what's happening. So it's not
Speaker 1: for those that are embracing you know this, or trying
Speaker 1: to call moderates back in. It's really trying to wake
Speaker 1: up the people that are asleep at the wheel and
Speaker 1: think that what they are witnessing abroad or what they
Speaker 1: have heard about or read about in their history books
Speaker 1: is something that can't possibly ever happen here. And what
Speaker 1: we're saying is that it is happening here. We are,
Speaker 1: you know, we're we're two elections away from you know,
Speaker 1: the loss of everything that we've ever come to understand
Speaker 1: about about democracy. Um, you know, and and yes, we
Speaker 1: have all of these acknowledgements around and God we trust
Speaker 1: and bless our troops and all of these things that
Speaker 1: have always been a part of American rhetoric. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, you have been the beauty of America
Speaker 1: has always been about the freedom of other people to
Speaker 1: worship or not worship if that is their choice, and
Speaker 1: if we are in moving to a place where this
Speaker 1: is going to be mandatory and the subservient you know
Speaker 1: of women, people of color, you know, queer people, is
Speaker 1: going to be what is necessary in order to sustain
Speaker 1: in this country. I just don't see how violence doesn't
Speaker 1: become the only answer, one way or another. And I think,
Speaker 1: to me, that is what becomes really terrifying. I'm just
Speaker 1: not sure where we go. Yeah. Now, I you know,
Speaker 1: as a historian, my outside field of back way back
Speaker 1: when I was in graduate school was in twentieth century Germany,
Speaker 1: with a focus on the Holocaust and the German Christian movement.
Speaker 1: And so I confess that for a long time I've
Speaker 1: kind of had my eye on some of those those questions.
Speaker 1: And it was not lost on me that some of
Speaker 1: the rhetoric that I was reading this goes back. I
Speaker 1: started this research almost twenty years ago, so I've been
Speaker 1: following this for a long time, and some of the
Speaker 1: rhetoric I was reading in these conservative evangelic popular books
Speaker 1: and you know, Christian radio and so on, was not
Speaker 1: dissimilar from the rhetoric that I was familiar with in
Speaker 1: the German Christian movement, right the Nazi Christian movement, of
Speaker 1: this kind of traditional masculinity, traditional femininity as just being
Speaker 1: absolutely central to the strength of the nation. It needs
Speaker 1: to be defended against enemies, and we know who those were,
Speaker 1: and and so I've been attuned to this for a
Speaker 1: long time. But I think but it was, honestly, it
Speaker 1: was hard to speak to that without just you know,
Speaker 1: getting a lot of eye rolls or being called an
Speaker 1: extremist myself. That has changed now we are now in
Speaker 1: a place where we can talk about some of these things.
Speaker 1: I remember back in November of twenty sixteen, I was
Speaker 1: chair of the History department at the time, and I
Speaker 1: actually told my colleagues, you know, we need to offer
Speaker 1: a class on the history of fascism. And it looked
Speaker 1: at me like I was joking, and I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that we are now in a fascist America,
Speaker 1: but I can see that we are going to have
Speaker 1: to train people to have this conversation, because this is
Speaker 1: going to be the conversation we're going to be having.
Speaker 1: And so we have to understand our history, we have
Speaker 1: to understand our language, we have to understand our categories
Speaker 1: so that we can be responsible citizens. In a democracy,
Speaker 1: we have to be able to have those conversations. And
Speaker 1: the fact is, for a very long time we haven't
Speaker 1: really been able to have these conversations. And there are
Speaker 1: a number of people, powerful people who are very invested
Speaker 1: on the other side to make it impossible to have
Speaker 1: these conversations. You know how that goes, right? You know,
Speaker 1: for all the talk of cancel culture on the right,
Speaker 1: you know, the attacks come fast and furious if you're
Speaker 1: trying to surface some of these issues and the way
Speaker 1: that words can get twisted and just misrepresented, and in
Speaker 1: a democracy is so absolutely critical that we can have
Speaker 1: honest conversations because we will not all agree, right we
Speaker 1: are all We're going to have differences, in deep seated
Speaker 1: and perhaps even reconcilable differences among ourselves. But somehow in
Speaker 1: this society we have to find a way to use
Speaker 1: our words and our ideas to convince each other. And
Speaker 1: once we lose that ability or feel like we've lost
Speaker 1: that ability, and the democratic norms and institutions have eroded
Speaker 1: to the point that we feel like our words are
Speaker 1: no longer effective, that's when it brings us to a
Speaker 1: place of potential violence, and honestly, as a historian, I'm
Speaker 1: still shocked that we are finding ourselves here, that even
Speaker 1: you and I are having this conversation right now, six
Speaker 1: years ago, I could not have imagined this. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: am and remain terrified of what the future of this
Speaker 1: country and the world looks like. I think that we
Speaker 1: are entering some extraordinarily dark times, and I don't think
Speaker 1: that America or Americans are prepared for that reality. And
Speaker 1: I think that, in all honesty, Kristen, that by the
Speaker 1: time that everyone does wake up, I do think that
Speaker 1: it will be too late that this new world order
Speaker 1: will have found itself strengthened and legitimized. And you know,
Speaker 1: the coming out of that is you know, we may
Speaker 1: not actually see the coming out in our in our lifetime.
Speaker 1: Is what I'm beginning to wrap my mind around. Um,
Speaker 1: Kristen dumay, please please please do come back to woke
Speaker 1: f I don't know if we'll ever have something good
Speaker 1: to talk about. But nonetheless, hey, it's always very very dark,
Speaker 1: and neither of us the other up. No, always God,
Speaker 1: it's always bad. But I really do enjoy our conversation
Speaker 1: it's like I believe me, folks. The book is Jesus
Speaker 1: and John Wayne, how white evangelicals corrupted a faith and
Speaker 1: fractured and nation. Do pick it up. And Kristen please
Speaker 1: do come back to Woke f We appreciate, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. That is it for me today,
Speaker 1: dear friends on Woke f As always, Power to the
Speaker 1: people and to all the people. Power, get woke and
Speaker 1: stay woke as fuck. Get a behind the scenes look
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