Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: I'm Stephen Monticelli, a journalist in Dallas who covers political
Speaker 2: extremism in Texas.
Speaker 3: I'm Michael Phillips, an historian who wrote a history of
Speaker 3: racism in Dallas called White Metropolis. Both of us grew
Speaker 3: up in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, and for both
Speaker 3: of us, our home state has been a matter of
Speaker 3: both wonder and horrified fascination. In this episode of It
Speaker 3: Could Happen Here, we're going to try to explain Texas
Speaker 3: culture and politics and why the country and the world
Speaker 3: should care. Spoiler alert, What happens in Texas doesn't stay
Speaker 3: in Texas. The state has always had a disproportionate impact
Speaker 3: on national politics. The annexation of Texas in eighteen forty
Speaker 3: five provoked the Mexican American War. From eighteen forty six
Speaker 3: to eighteen forty eight. The United States grabbed two thirds
Speaker 3: of Mexico's territory, and there was an ugly and bitter
Speaker 3: fight over the status of slavery and all that new
Speaker 3: land the United States acquired. That's going to turn out
Speaker 3: to be one of the major causes of the Civil War,
Speaker 3: a conflict that resulted in the liberation of four million
Speaker 3: African Americans from slavery, but also the death of three
Speaker 3: quarters of a million Americans. Texas also was the epicenter
Speaker 3: of the Populist Movement, a leftist movement largely based in
Speaker 3: Texas that actually challenged the power of the Democratic Party
Speaker 3: in the South. And if the Populist Party had succeeded,
Speaker 3: everything else that happened in America in the twentieth century
Speaker 3: in terms of Jim Crow, lynching, the Clan, etc. May
Speaker 3: have had a very different outcome.
Speaker 2: Slavery didn't end in Texas until June nineteenth, eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 2: months after it had ended in the rest of the country.
Speaker 2: It's a state that today is the second most populous
Speaker 2: state in the nation and it's the eighth largest economy
Speaker 2: in the world. Two of the most consequential presidents over
Speaker 2: the last sixty years hailed from the lone Star state.
Speaker 2: There was Democrat Lyndon Johnson, who brought the country not
Speaker 2: only Medicare and Medicaid, but the nineteen sixty four Civil
Speaker 2: Rights Act and the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act,
Speaker 2: two issues that the right wing continue to fight against
Speaker 2: to this day. Those laws made African Americans perhaps the
Speaker 2: most important constituency in the Democratic Party. Racist backlash to
Speaker 2: johnson civil rights legislation, urban uprisings and places like the
Speaker 2: Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles, and white flight generally led
Speaker 2: segregationists and their children in the South, who had been
Speaker 2: loyal Democratic voters to switch allegiance to the Republican Party.
Speaker 2: Over the next three decades, another Texas president, Republican George W. Bush.
Speaker 2: He aggressively embraced homophobia, tightened the ties between the Republican
Speaker 2: Party and the most right wing Christians in the country,
Speaker 2: and made denial of climate change strict GOP orthodoxy. Of course,
Speaker 2: the Bush family's oil wealth was central to their rise
Speaker 2: to pa and broadly speaking, the wealth of right wing
Speaker 2: oil barons in Texas has helped push the Republican Party
Speaker 2: further and further to the right, in no small part
Speaker 2: due to a particular belief in a particular strain of Christianity,
Speaker 2: which we'll get to later in this episode.
Speaker 3: Bush's response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade
Speaker 3: Center in the Pentagon on September eleventh led to the
Speaker 3: rise of the modern surveillance state and the two longest
Speaker 3: wars in American history. Both of them disastrous failures. The
Speaker 3: combination of white backlash to the LBJ era civil rights initiatives,
Speaker 3: the intense religiosity of the Bush era and the Republican
Speaker 3: Party in that time period, and the sense of the
Speaker 3: United States was a declining power unable to impose its
Speaker 3: will on Afghanistan and Iraq opened the door of the
Speaker 3: Donald Trump's ascendancy. In short two Texas presidents played a
Speaker 3: major role in making the Democratic Party vastly more diverse,
Speaker 3: more urban based, and more mainstream liberal, and the Republican
Speaker 3: Party more white, more right wing, more isolationists, and far
Speaker 3: more fundamentalists and skeptical science.
Speaker 2: Texas has been in the national news frequently in recent years,
Speaker 2: and often for the worst reasons. It's become famous and
Speaker 2: infamous for its wide open gun laws and several of
Speaker 2: the worst mass shootings in American history, including at an
Speaker 2: army base in Killeen, a Walmart and al Paso, and
Speaker 2: an outlet mall in Allen. Draconian abortion laws allow complete
Speaker 2: strangers to sue women who go out of state and
Speaker 2: their pregnancy, and new laws are being considered to prevent
Speaker 2: women from traveling through particular counties on highways who if
Speaker 2: they are seeking abortion, you know, they could be arrested
Speaker 2: for basically trying to leave the state to seek an abortion.
Speaker 3: In the last three years in this state, a group
Speaker 3: of teachers in the Southflex School District in the Dallas
Speaker 3: Fort Worth area were in struct did to tell quote
Speaker 3: both sides of the Holocaust in order to not run
Speaker 3: a foul of the legislature's ban on critical race theory.
Speaker 3: A beloved teacher, Nerving, was fire for displaying a rainbow
Speaker 3: sticker in our classroom as a sign of support for
Speaker 3: LGBTQ students. The first ever African American high school principal
Speaker 3: at Heritage High and yet another Dallas suburb, Colleville, was
Speaker 3: forced from his job when he sent an email to
Speaker 3: his high school community after the murder of George Floyd
Speaker 3: that acknowledged existence of systemic racism in the United States.
Speaker 2: So, you know, I think you could maybe pick up
Speaker 2: on a trend here in Texas that our fundamental rights
Speaker 2: like free speech are under threat, particularly if you run
Speaker 2: a foul of the orthodoxy that comes out of the
Speaker 2: Republican Party. And one target of that orthodoxy has been books.
Speaker 2: All across this nation, we've seen dust ups over books
Speaker 2: in schools and libraries, and Texas has been one of
Speaker 2: the main flashpoints of this fight. So the literary organization
Speaker 2: pen America reports that Texas and Florida lead the nation
Speaker 2: in book bands at public schools, with more than fifteen
Speaker 2: hundred books banned in the state of Texas. Most of
Speaker 2: those books deal with issues like racism or LGBTQ experience,
Speaker 2: and one deputy constable in Granbury, a suburb near Dallas
Speaker 2: Fort Worth, even spent two years investigating three librarians on
Speaker 2: alleged felony charges of providing so called harmful materials to
Speaker 2: miners simply because they allowed miners to access acclaimed books
Speaker 2: like The Bluest Eye by Tony Morrison. According to an
Speaker 2: investigation by NBC News, the law enforcement officer Scott London,
Speaker 2: was a member of the extremist Oathkeepers organization. He subpoened
Speaker 2: names of young readers who checked out supposedly objectable material,
Speaker 2: and he even secretly recorded his conversations with the librarians
Speaker 2: who drew his unwonted attention. The investigative report that came
Speaker 2: out of this investigation into so called harmful materials was
Speaker 2: eight hundred and twenty four pages long, and no charges
Speaker 2: were ever filed, but nonetheless a lot of people's lives
Speaker 2: were made difficult and a bunch of books have been
Speaker 2: taken off the shelves.
Speaker 3: So as we mentioned, Texas has been on the cutting
Speaker 3: edge of right wing politics in America on issues like abortion,
Speaker 3: the treatment of trans children, and on immigration particular. Texas
Speaker 3: has modeled the Republican attitude on newcomers and migrants and
Speaker 3: policies towards them. The state's governor, Greg Gabbott essentially tried
Speaker 3: to establish his own independent border policy, even though the
Speaker 3: constitution makes that the responsibility of the federal government. Texas
Speaker 3: so far has built thirty four miles of a wall
Speaker 3: Abbot valves will eventually extend along the entirety of texas
Speaker 3: twelve hundred and fifty four mile international border with Mexico.
Speaker 3: One estimate says that project, if it were completed, would
Speaker 3: take thirty years and cost twenty billion dollars. The state
Speaker 3: of Texas has placed Buoy's entangled with razor wire in
Speaker 3: the Rio Grande River near Eagle Pass, a border town
Speaker 3: that's a major crossing point for migrants fleeing the violence
Speaker 3: and economic hardship in Central America, Venezuela, and the rest
Speaker 3: of Latin America.
Speaker 2: One of Governor Abbot's border initiatives, Operation Loan Star, has
Speaker 2: flooded the border with hundreds of law enforcement agents and
Speaker 2: has touted thousands of arrests, but it also costs eleven
Speaker 2: billion dollars and it's unclear what it's really done in
Speaker 2: terms of making the state safer. Texas insists, through statements
Speaker 2: from people like Greg Abbott, that immigrants are dangerous and
Speaker 2: that they are flooding our streets with crime, never mind
Speaker 2: the fact that studies indicate that immigrants are far less
Speaker 2: likely to commit crimes on average. These initiatives have been deadly.
Speaker 2: In August twenty twenty three, a buoy trapped a twenty
Speaker 2: year old Duran and a small child, causing them both
Speaker 2: to drown. The Texas border patrols El Paso sector has
Speaker 2: become one of the deadliest areas of the border here,
Speaker 2: with one hundred and forty nine immigrants dying over a
Speaker 2: twelve month period between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three. Recently,
Speaker 2: on a podcast, Abbot expressed regret that Texas has been
Speaker 2: unable to shoot immigrants who are attempting to enter Texas
Speaker 2: by crossing the Rio Grant and has complained that the
Speaker 2: Biden administration might file murder charges against border agents if
Speaker 2: such lethal force was used.
Speaker 4: And the only thing that we're not doing is we're
Speaker 4: not shooting people who come across the border.
Speaker 2: Because of course the Bid administration would charges with murder.
Speaker 3: One of the issues about immigration is a panic amongst
Speaker 3: the Anglos living in the state that white people will
Speaker 3: become a shrinking and less politically powerful minority, and this
Speaker 3: connects to the issue of abortion. Throughout the history of
Speaker 3: abortion laws in Texas, there's been a discussion of whether
Speaker 3: or not white Texans were committing what they said in
Speaker 3: the early twentieth century was so called Reese's suicide, a
Speaker 3: real panic that black and brown people would eventually out
Speaker 3: number whites and would seize political control of the state.
Speaker 3: And this is tied to the abortion issue because throughout
Speaker 3: the history of abortion laws in America and in Texas,
Speaker 3: there's been a concern that white women are having abortions,
Speaker 3: and that really fuels some of the extremism in how
Speaker 3: Texas has approached this issue. Twenty twenty two, this state
Speaker 3: legislature passed the law that would allow a third party
Speaker 3: to sue anyone who helped a woman getting an abortion,
Speaker 3: although the courts have so far blocked enforcement of that law,
Speaker 3: called Senate Bill eight. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton meanwhile
Speaker 3: has addressed another issue dealing with trans children, and again,
Speaker 3: trans children, if they're white, would be out of the
Speaker 3: reproductive demographic race that panics white racist in the state.
Speaker 3: He has tried to force doctors and other states to
Speaker 3: provide medical information on young people receiving gender affirming care
Speaker 3: outside of Texas, and the parents are trans children in
Speaker 3: Texas have been investigated for child abuse. In each case,
Speaker 3: these extreme laws have been discussed in some cases imitated
Speaker 3: in other red states.
Speaker 2: So, on the one hand, we've got anxieties about immigrants
Speaker 2: allegedly replacing the white race rhetoric that has been repeated
Speaker 2: by people as high up as Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick,
Speaker 2: who has said that immigrants are trying to take over
Speaker 2: our country without firing a shot. This is something that
Speaker 2: people like the Hitler admirer Nick Fuentes, who has met
Speaker 2: with a high ranking and influential Republican consultant who works
Speaker 2: for one of the largest political donors in the country.
Speaker 2: He believes that sort of rhetoric and pushes it. On
Speaker 2: the other hand, we've got the issue with LGBTQ issues
Speaker 2: in general. We've seen books being taken off the shelves
Speaker 2: as we've previously mentioned. We've seen rights taken away from
Speaker 2: students with regard to their access to bathrooms. We have seen,
Speaker 2: as doctor Phillips mentioned, the targeting of parents, and a
Speaker 2: lot of this comes from this anxiety that students are
Speaker 2: being groomed into becoming LGBTQ in public schools, in public libraries,
Speaker 2: and other settings, the idea being that, yes, they're trying
Speaker 2: to turn your kids gay, that's what they're saying. And
Speaker 2: so of course they're going to be extremely upset about
Speaker 2: any shrinking demographic numbers among the white population, or a
Speaker 2: growing acceptance of queerness or people being transgender, and so
Speaker 2: much of that is rooted in religious belief. But all
Speaker 2: of this it matters in a bigger perspective, and I
Speaker 2: think we can understand why some of this is so
Speaker 2: prevalent in Texas through the lens of Texas's importance to
Speaker 2: national politics.
Speaker 3: Texas counts for forty of two hundred and seventy votes
Speaker 3: needed to win the electoral College. Only California has more
Speaker 3: electoral College votes, and the Republican Party has been able
Speaker 3: to rely on winning every single presidential election in the
Speaker 3: state since nineteen eighty. If Texas should ever flip politically,
Speaker 3: it'd be hard to see how the Republicans could ever
Speaker 3: win the White House again. And it always seems like
Speaker 3: Texas is just on the verge of flipping blue.
Speaker 2: Right, there's been a lot of talk for a long
Speaker 2: time about this pending demographic revolution, the idea that eventually,
Speaker 2: you know, the numbers are just baked in and that
Speaker 2: Republicans will no longer control the state. So let's look
Speaker 2: at some of those numbers. So, Tejano's or people of
Speaker 2: Latino Hispanic descent, make up more than forty percent of
Speaker 2: the state's population, so they're the largest single population group.
Speaker 2: Non Whites account for sixty percent of all Texans, and
Speaker 2: as a group, they vote mostly for Democrats, and they
Speaker 2: control most of the state's largest cities in terms of
Speaker 2: political dominance. But because of low voter turnout among people
Speaker 2: of color, laws that intentionally make registering to vote harder,
Speaker 2: making voting itself even more difficult, gerrymandering the general feebleness
Speaker 2: of the Democratic Party in the state. The state has
Speaker 2: remained in control of a very conservative, very white, Republican
Speaker 2: minority for three decades. In Texas, every major city is
Speaker 2: blue except for one, and that's Fort Worth, which is
Speaker 2: in a place called Tarrant County. And I think it
Speaker 2: is not a coincidence that the largest, flashiest conflicts have
Speaker 2: often been in Tarrant County when it comes to things
Speaker 2: like schools, when it comes to things like books. Colleyville,
Speaker 2: as we previously mentioned, is in Tarrn County. If you've
Speaker 2: ever heard of the name South Lake, that's a town
Speaker 2: in Arrant County. There are numerous national articles about issues
Speaker 2: that have emerged from this one single stronghold of Republican
Speaker 2: power in the state, which if it were to fall,
Speaker 2: would pretend great changes not just for the politics in
Speaker 2: the state of Texas, but perhaps even the nation.
Speaker 3: It's been remarkable because school board meetings used to be
Speaker 3: really dull and talking. You used to talk about boundaries
Speaker 3: for particular campuses, you know which students are going to
Speaker 3: tend which class. But now, over the last few years,
Speaker 3: very often they've been scenes of screaming, matches, threats, and
Speaker 3: so on. Texas in many ways has become a laboratory
Speaker 3: of autocracy, and again it's a model for other states
Speaker 3: that have a right wing political leadership. For instance, the
Speaker 3: Texas Republican Party platform adopted this year called for changes
Speaker 3: in the way statewide officials like governor would be elected,
Speaker 3: and essentially, the Republican Party called for creating a local
Speaker 3: version of the electoral college. Under these proposed changes, a
Speaker 3: candidate for governor, lieutenant governor, all the down ballot statewide
Speaker 3: offices could win the popular vote and still lose the
Speaker 3: election unless they carry a majority of the two hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty four counties in the state, most of which
Speaker 3: are very white, very conservative, very fundamentalist. If this became law,
Speaker 3: the proposal would guarantee permanent Republican rule in the state,
Speaker 3: and as I said, other Republican states are looking at
Speaker 3: this proposal. It hasn't been proposed as legislation, but that
Speaker 3: would really end any pretense of democracy because most people
Speaker 3: in Texas live in cities like the rest of the
Speaker 3: United States. Another way that Republicans have maintained their grip
Speaker 3: on the state is by waging a never ending culture
Speaker 3: war centered on matters of faith. So If you really
Speaker 3: want to understand Texas, its culture and its politics, you
Speaker 3: can't avoid a discussion of religion. You have to dive
Speaker 3: into one particular type of Christian Christianity we've already referred to.
Speaker 3: This interpretation of the Bible motivates right wing voters and
Speaker 3: the vast rural sections of the state and the outer
Speaker 3: suburbs and the major cities. It's disproportionately molded the state's
Speaker 3: laws and attitudes where it's African Americans, immigrants, and the
Speaker 3: people we've talked about, women, gay and trans people, and
Speaker 3: also non Christians like Jews and Muslims.
Speaker 2: If you trap the sort of issues that are being
Speaker 2: discussed by the Republican Party of Texas and you look back,
Speaker 2: say to the time of George H. W. Bush, and
Speaker 2: you look to now, it will be very clear to
Speaker 2: you that the topics have changed. The sort of things
Speaker 2: that they talk about. It's less about low taxes, it's
Speaker 2: less about being business friendly, it's less about letting you
Speaker 2: do what you want in your personal life, and it
Speaker 2: is much more about imposing a particular religious viewpoint on
Speaker 2: others through policy and the most vocal, perhaps one of
Speaker 2: the most highly organized and certainly flush with funds. Sect
Speaker 2: of Christianity that is, you know, driving this is this
Speaker 2: group of Christian fundamentalists that religious scholars broadly describe as dispensationalists.
Speaker 2: So what's a dispensationalist. It's a fancy word for someone
Speaker 2: who believes that we are living in the end times.
Speaker 2: The end times being this idea that at any moment
Speaker 2: now all true Christians will be whisked up into the
Speaker 2: clouds in an event called the Rapture, that an embodiment
Speaker 2: of Satan called the Antichrist will take over the world
Speaker 2: and try to destroy Israel. And you know, all of
Speaker 2: this is, you know, presaging the final judgment, you know,
Speaker 2: the day when the Lord Jesus comes down and he
Speaker 2: basically decides who's done well and who's done bad, and
Speaker 2: that settles it for all eternity.
Speaker 3: This particular strain of fundamentalism in Texas culture and politics
Speaker 3: has a profound impact on global politics. The dispensationalists are
Speaker 3: certain World War three is going to consume the planet.
Speaker 3: They believe there's going to be a final battle between
Speaker 3: good and evil called the Battle of Armageddon. And they
Speaker 3: believe this, and this is significant. They believe that Jesus
Speaker 3: Christ will come back specifically to stop World War three
Speaker 3: for a particular purpose. He's going to come to prevent
Speaker 3: the destruction of all remaining Jewish people on the planet.
Speaker 3: And they believe that millions of Jewish people are going
Speaker 3: to die, those who survive are going to convert to Christianity,
Speaker 3: and when Jesus returns, he will establish what's essentially a
Speaker 3: divine dictatorship that will be a time of perfect peace
Speaker 3: and harmony, called the Millennium.
Speaker 2: Texans have played a major role in popularizing dispensationalism and
Speaker 2: its doom day theology, both in modern times but also historically.
Speaker 2: One Texas writer named Michael Ennis once called the city
Speaker 2: of Dallas the Athens of the apocalypse, and in the
Speaker 2: late twentieth century, predicting the end of the world was
Speaker 2: a lucrative business. So there was a theological center here
Speaker 2: in Dallas that was one of the most influential groups
Speaker 2: when it came to originating and promoting this idea of
Speaker 2: the end times. And it also has to do with
Speaker 2: one gentleman named Cyrus Scofield. But before we talk about
Speaker 2: Cyrus Schofield, a quick ad break.
Speaker 3: What happened was there's this member a convert to the
Speaker 3: Congregationalist Church who came from Kansas. He had been a
Speaker 3: politician in Kansas who had to leave office because he
Speaker 3: was accused of accepting bribes. He later said he was
Speaker 3: struggling with alcoholism at the time. His name is Cyrus Schofield,
Speaker 3: and he converts to Christianity and he's invited to head
Speaker 3: this Congregationalist church that has a tiny congregation in Dallas, Texas.
Speaker 3: And when he gets here, he brings this dispensationalism he's
Speaker 3: learned from other evangelists, and he's a modernizer. He has
Speaker 3: adult education classes, correspondence courses on the Bible, and eventually
Speaker 3: he produces something published in nineteen oh nine called the
Speaker 3: Schofield Reference Bible that basically is the King James Bible
Speaker 3: with footnotes that he and his co editors have put
Speaker 3: together where they say, these strange verses in the Book
Speaker 3: of Daniel and the Book of Revelation that referred to
Speaker 3: beast with seven heads and ten horns, and you know,
Speaker 3: these other strange creatures, and this highly symbolic language has
Speaker 3: a very literal obvious meaning, and that is the return
Speaker 3: of Jewish people to the state of Israel and how
Speaker 3: that marks the beginning of the end.
Speaker 2: So the Schofield Reference Bible extremely popular when it comes out.
Speaker 2: It was so popular it didn't save effectively the Oxford
Speaker 2: University Press from going.
Speaker 3: Yeah under during the Great Depression. That was very much
Speaker 3: a possibility that Oxford University Press would go under. And
Speaker 3: Schofield was lucky in some ways that you could put
Speaker 3: it that way, because the Reference Bible comes out in
Speaker 3: nineteen oh nine, and four years later what was at
Speaker 3: that point the most catastrophic war in human history. World
Speaker 3: War One breaks out with a level of death and
Speaker 3: technology that was unprecedented in its destructiveness. Then the Depression happens.
Speaker 3: You have the rise of these fascist dictators, and there's
Speaker 3: a sense that the world as we knew it was collapsing.
Speaker 3: Capitalism might collapse, you know, you might have communists takeover,
Speaker 3: you might have fascist takeover. And then of course World
Speaker 3: War Two, and then finally the thing that really makes
Speaker 3: Schofield seem like he was onto something in terms of
Speaker 3: his Biblical interpretation. And this particular interpretation had been around
Speaker 3: certain variants for centuries and centuries, but it had always
Speaker 3: been a minority view. But what really made it seem
Speaker 3: like Schofield was onto something was nineteen forty eight when
Speaker 3: the State of Israel is established, the modern state of Israel,
Speaker 3: because he had been saying this would happen, this would
Speaker 3: be the sign of the end. It becomes the point
Speaker 3: where a lot of churches ministers are measured by the
Speaker 3: degree to which they promote Scofieldism, and Protestant churches ministers
Speaker 3: get fired if they don't begin to talk about the
Speaker 3: end times.
Speaker 2: Schofield kind of won the lottery with timing, and you
Speaker 2: can imagine a world maybe where the Schofield Bible didn't
Speaker 2: take off because it hadn't come out at that time
Speaker 2: that it did.
Speaker 3: Now one of Schofield's acolytes separated by several decades. Scofield
Speaker 3: had been dead for a long time. When you have
Speaker 3: a student at the Dallas Theological Seminary, name how Lindsay,
Speaker 3: who had been a tugboat captain, is attending this particular school.
Speaker 3: Dallas Theological Seminary had actually been established in the nineteen
Speaker 3: twenties by allies associates of Cyrus Schofield. It had been
Speaker 3: a center of the study of biblical prophecy, and basically
Speaker 3: Lindsay's a student, and a lot of his peers said,
Speaker 3: basically he took his class notes and turned into a book.
Speaker 3: And his real effort. He had been a leader in
Speaker 3: the campus Crusade for Christ, which was an evangelical group
Speaker 3: that was trying to fight the counterculture hippies, LSD and
Speaker 3: so on, and so he had that experience and he
Speaker 3: brought it into the writing of a best selling book
Speaker 3: called The Late Great Planet Earth. And The Late Great
Speaker 3: Planet Earth is written in the language of the time.
Speaker 3: He tries to use hippie type of lingo in to
Speaker 3: catch on with the youth culture, and it's his timing,
Speaker 3: just like Schofields is great. This is a time where
Speaker 3: there's an obsession with hidden knowledge. You have really popular
Speaker 3: books selling about the lost continent of Atlantis UFOs, the
Speaker 3: phenomena supposedly a spontaneous human combustion. Did ancient aliens build
Speaker 3: the Pyramids? And if you went to a convenience store
Speaker 3: or a store department store, you might find racks of
Speaker 3: paper books with all this hidden knowledge. And people believed
Speaker 3: that there was something hidden because of Watergate and because
Speaker 3: of Vietnam, and so this became a phenomenal seller. It
Speaker 3: was the best selling quote unquote nonfiction book of the
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies. It later got made into a pseudo documentary
Speaker 3: that was narrated by the movie star Orson Wells.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it was so successful that it was
Speaker 2: like twenty eight million copies by nineteen ninety had been sold.
Speaker 2: And if you've got Orson Well's buttery voice narrating it
Speaker 2: as if it has some real import, certainly, many, many,
Speaker 2: many people were exposed to the ideas of how Lindsay Man.
Speaker 5: Is faced by unprecedented perils that threatened to send his
Speaker 5: crashing and the extention now from how Lindsay's incredible best
Speaker 5: selling book comes the film which explores the terrifying prophesies
Speaker 5: of the revelations Here's Our Planet Truly and Mortal Peril
Speaker 5: the Late Great Planet Earth, featuring Orson Wells.
Speaker 2: But it didn't stop there. Lindsay's book inspired some other
Speaker 2: guys who you may have heard of, these two right
Speaker 2: wing political activists and Christian evangelicals named Tim Lahay and
Speaker 2: Jerry B. Jenkins, And they are the creators of the
Speaker 2: Left Behind series. Now, if you don't know that Left
Speaker 2: Behind series, you may have been living under a rock,
Speaker 2: or maybe you weren't born yet, and that's not your fault,
Speaker 2: but it is this publishing empire. At this point, retail
Speaker 2: giants like Walmart stocked the books. They sold eighty million copies,
Speaker 2: warehouses full of merch sequels, prequels, graphic novels, audiobooks, calendars,
Speaker 2: greeting cards, a shoot them up computer game based on
Speaker 2: the books. All of this stuff was centrally talking about
Speaker 2: the rapture, the end times. That's what the Left Behind
Speaker 2: series was about. And those who are left Behind are
Speaker 2: those who were not raptured, and these films center on
Speaker 2: the chaos that breaks out right after the rapture. Really
Speaker 2: really popular stuff will play a quick clip so you
Speaker 2: can get a sense of what that's like. He took
Speaker 2: them to protect them, what from the darkest time in
Speaker 2: the history of this world, persecution.
Speaker 3: And seven years of darkness?
Speaker 2: He took than that. The Left Behind books, they basically
Speaker 2: depict Jesus not as a source of love and forgiveness,
Speaker 2: but as this source of vengeance and bloodshed. One person
Speaker 2: who spoke to in the preparation of this episode described
Speaker 2: him as a sort of rambo Jesus, to be compared
Speaker 2: to mister Rogers. Jesus, you could say.
Speaker 3: And what's particularly dangerous is sometimes believers in this interpretation
Speaker 3: of the Bible try to make the end times happen
Speaker 3: sooner rather than later. Yeah, I can mention two cases,
Speaker 3: one better known than the other. You had a father's
Speaker 3: son evangelical team called Gardner Ted Armstrong. His father was
Speaker 3: named Herbert W. Armstrong, that had a radio broadcasting empire.
Speaker 3: The problem was called the World Tomorrow.
Speaker 2: And they had.
Speaker 3: College campuses in California and in Big Sandy, Texas, unaccredited college,
Speaker 3: unaccredited college absolutely And one person who had listened to
Speaker 3: the Armstrongs on the radio. And there's an Australian named
Speaker 3: Michael Dennis Rohan on August twenty first, nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 3: actually travels to the Aloxa Mosque in Jerusalem because he
Speaker 3: believes that's a key focal point of where armageddon is
Speaker 3: going to take place, and he actually starts a fire
Speaker 3: in that mosque, and that's a revered one of those
Speaker 3: holy sites in Islam. And there was a time where
Speaker 3: there was a diplomatic crisis caused by this believer in dispensationalism. Then,
Speaker 3: of course we have what had happened to Waco, where
Speaker 3: you had a sect very much obsessed within Times and
Speaker 3: with dispensationalism, led by a man named David Koresh nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety three. He led his followers on this fifty one
Speaker 3: day standoff with federal and state officials over the illegal
Speaker 3: weapons that this group, the Branch Davidians held. Eventually you
Speaker 3: have an exchange of gunfire between the agents and the
Speaker 3: Branch Davidians, and then on April nineteenth, the Feds decide
Speaker 3: to charge in and there's a fire and seventy six
Speaker 3: people die, including twenty five children.
Speaker 2: In the modern day, we've got two hugely influential people
Speaker 2: who promote End Times theology. Now, one of them is
Speaker 2: the biggest political donor in the entire state of Texas,
Speaker 2: more money donated than anyone else. And his name is
Speaker 2: Tim Dunn, and we'll talk about him in a second,
Speaker 2: But first I want to talk about someone who is
Speaker 2: also pretty influential, maybe not as wealthy as Tim Dunn,
Speaker 2: who I should mention got his money through Wale. But
Speaker 2: this is a man named John Hagy. He is the
Speaker 2: pastor of a twenty two thousand member church in Texas
Speaker 2: called Cornerstone Church. And I think he has a global
Speaker 2: audience as large as one hundred million people. So back
Speaker 2: in the day, as a twenty eight year old young man,
Speaker 2: he took part in the Wallace Youth, which is an
Speaker 2: organization devoted to supporting the presidential candidacy of white supremacist
Speaker 2: Alabama Governor George Wallace in nineteen sixty eight. Yeah, let's
Speaker 2: just hear from Wallace real quick, in the.
Speaker 4: Name of the greatest people that I've ever taught differ.
Speaker 4: I've brought a line in the dust and passed the
Speaker 4: garment before the seat of Turner, and I faced segregation,
Speaker 4: now segregation, the MA and segregation.
Speaker 2: However, since then, in his fifty eight years as a
Speaker 2: non denominational pastor, Hagey has proven to be as much
Speaker 2: of a lightning rod as Wallace. When Hurricane Katrina killed
Speaker 2: nearly fourteen hundred people in New Orleans in two thousand
Speaker 2: and five, Hagey insisted the superstorm represented God's wrath at
Speaker 2: a planned gay PRII pride. I can't even believe that
Speaker 2: that's real. Yeah, so he really said, Oh, you celebrated
Speaker 2: the gays, and so God killed a bunch of you
Speaker 2: with a hurricane. He really said that He's also called
Speaker 2: the Catholic Church a false cult and has falsely claimed
Speaker 2: that Muslims are commanded by the Qur'an to kill Christians
Speaker 2: in Jews. So he's a really moderate guy when he
Speaker 2: comes to his word choice in his rhetoric.
Speaker 3: Hagey, for instance, believes said Jewish people are still God's
Speaker 3: chosen and he often quotes a line from Genesis twelve three,
Speaker 3: twelfth chapter, third verse in which God says that Abraham,
Speaker 3: I will bless those who bless you, and curse those
Speaker 3: who curse you, and he interprets that the mean that
Speaker 3: if the United States ever fails to support the State
Speaker 3: of Israel in any of its policies, or if it
Speaker 3: attempts to encourage Israel to trade land for peace, to
Speaker 3: set aside land for the Palestinians to establish their own nation,
Speaker 3: that that leader is violating a divine commandment to quote
Speaker 3: not divide my land, and there will be terrible consequences.
Speaker 3: So I one dispensationalists pastor basically said that the United
Speaker 3: States has economic problems whenever it fails to support Israel.
Speaker 3: Hage in twenty fourteen, said that a small outbreak of
Speaker 3: the Ebola virus in the United States was God's vengeance
Speaker 3: against President Barack Obama for supporting the establishment of Palestinian State.
Speaker 3: And of course, when that is a big attitude amongst
Speaker 3: a really significant block of voters, that makes the United
Speaker 3: States really have problems when it tries to mediate in
Speaker 3: that conflict.
Speaker 2: We'll talk a little bit more about John Hagey. Right
Speaker 2: after this ad break, you might be asking, who cares
Speaker 2: about this guy John hagy Like why does his interpretation
Speaker 2: of the Bible matter at all? Why does what he
Speaker 2: say have anything to do with my life? And there's
Speaker 2: a number of reasons why it matters. So, I mean,
Speaker 2: he could be considered the most important leader of the
Speaker 2: Christian Zionist movement for starters. He formed an organization in
Speaker 2: two thousand and six called Christians United for Israel, which
Speaker 2: has like a reported ten million members in the United States.
Speaker 2: Not sure how accurate or real that is, but you know,
Speaker 2: he has donated through his organizations more than fifty eight
Speaker 2: million dollars to right wing extremists in Israel's specifically ones
Speaker 2: that have you know, sponsored settlers to move to the
Speaker 2: occupied West Bank in you know, violation of international law.
Speaker 2: And he's you know He's pushed Congress to take a
Speaker 2: hard line on the Palestinian issue of Palestinian statehood. He
Speaker 2: has the ear of elected officials in Texas, so state
Speaker 2: level politicians like Greg Gabbett and Dan Patrick have been
Speaker 2: seen with him at campaign events, have featured him at
Speaker 2: campaign events. Hagey has tried to, you know, influence a
Speaker 2: number of issues and has had success. He was sought
Speaker 2: as someone whose endorsement mattered in the presidential elections of
Speaker 2: George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. He was
Speaker 2: an early supporter of Donald Trump, and he influences other
Speaker 2: major pastors as well. And so it's it's hard to
Speaker 2: say that people like this don't matter, particularly whenever you know,
Speaker 2: they have been invited to speak during big events like
Speaker 2: the March for Israel in twenty twenty three, which drew
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of people to Washington, DC. And who
Speaker 2: was there, John hage And here's.
Speaker 3: One of the paradoxes of this movement. When hage was
Speaker 3: invited to speak at this pro Israel event after the
Speaker 3: October seventh Hamas attacks in Neurope, Israeli Kibbutz hage was
Speaker 3: invited and a lot of Jewish people were horrified because
Speaker 3: he really does capture one the central paradoxes of dispensationalism,
Speaker 3: and that is someone can be inflexibly pro Israel in
Speaker 3: anti Semitic at the same time. And so John Hagey
Speaker 3: is promoted a very old anti Semitic myth that rich
Speaker 3: Jewish people control the world's finances. He talks about the
Speaker 3: Rothschild family, which has always been an obsession of anti Semites,
Speaker 3: you know, the secret puppet masters of the world, you know,
Speaker 3: who rob the typical, the average person of money to
Speaker 3: gain wealth. They cause wars to enrich themselves. He actually
Speaker 3: described Hitler based on nothing as a half breed Jew,
Speaker 3: and he said that Hitler was sent by God himself.
Speaker 3: So he's Hitler was an emissary of God as a
Speaker 3: hunter to persecute Jews in Europe in the nineteen thirties
Speaker 3: and nineteen forties, specifically for the purpose of forcing them
Speaker 3: to leave Europe and settle in Palestine. And you know,
Speaker 3: he said that this was all part of the Divine plan.
Speaker 3: Nazism was part of the Divine plan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I don't just take our word for it.
Speaker 2: You can listen to him say something along these lines
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 5: How did it happen because God allowed it to happen.
Speaker 5: Why did it happen because God said, my top priority
Speaker 5: for the Jewish people is to get them to come
Speaker 5: back to the land of Israel. Today Israel is back
Speaker 5: in the land, and they are at His equal thirty
Speaker 5: seven and eight. They're physically alive, but they're not spiritually alive. Now,
Speaker 5: how is God going to cause the Jewish people to
Speaker 5: come spiritually alive and say the God of Abraham, Isaac
Speaker 5: and Jacob, he is God.
Speaker 2: So yeah, you know, Hagy has predicted that the Antichrist
Speaker 2: will be a half breed gay Jew and will rule
Speaker 2: the planet on behalf of Satan. Those are the kinds
Speaker 2: of things that he believes and he spreads. And in
Speaker 2: spite of statements like these, several Israeli governments have welcome
Speaker 2: to the support of right wing and times pastors like Hay.
Speaker 2: I mean, they don't have any issue with, you know,
Speaker 2: working with someone like Haig. You know, obviously that relationship
Speaker 2: is cynical because you know, people like Hagy are able
Speaker 2: to help bring material resources to Israel and further solidify
Speaker 2: the relationship that Israel has with the state of Texas.
Speaker 3: And there's a real interesting synthusis between the far right
Speaker 3: in Texas and the very right wing government that rules Israel.
Speaker 3: Now Israel depends on Texas oil. Many of the weapons
Speaker 3: Israel is using in its warren Gonza are manufactured in Texas,
Speaker 3: including in the Dallas Fort Worth area where Steve and
Speaker 3: I are having this conversation. You have some of the
Speaker 3: wealthiest American supporters of Israel, like hyper conservatives, such as
Speaker 3: the widow of the casino magnate Sheldon Addison, who have
Speaker 3: spent quite a bit of money flying Texas politicians like
Speaker 3: Governor Greg Abbott, the Agricultural Commissioner, said Miller, members of
Speaker 3: the state legislature to Israel to promote close business ties
Speaker 3: and to ensure that weapons manufactured in Texas and that
Speaker 3: Texas oil flows to that state.
Speaker 2: In the background of all of this is the money,
Speaker 2: the money backing these politicians, and the largest and most
Speaker 2: powerful political donor in Texas is someone who we have
Speaker 2: mentioned already, billionaire oil man Tim Dunn. So Tim Dunn,
Speaker 2: who is he? What's his deal? He's a pastor. He's
Speaker 2: based in Midland, which is in West Texas, and over
Speaker 2: the last decade, Dunn has dumped tens of millions of
Speaker 2: dollars into the campaign coffers of far right politicians and
Speaker 2: political action committees that promote incendiary messages, including the one
Speaker 2: group that I previously mentioned was caught meeting with a
Speaker 2: self admitted Hitler fan Nick went Is. Nevertheless, Dunn is
Speaker 2: named alongside Hagey on the annual list of Israel's Top
Speaker 2: fifty Christian Allies published by the Israel Allies Foundation, of
Speaker 2: which Done incidentally is the chairman of the It's like
Speaker 2: the Christian Advisory Board. So yeah, this really really powerful
Speaker 2: donor who has his thumb on the scales all across
Speaker 2: the state. He too, is an End Times prophecy believer,
Speaker 2: and he's not just a believer. He preaches it at
Speaker 2: his own church in Midland where he's a pastor.
Speaker 6: God is a consuming fire taking vengeance on those who
Speaker 6: do not know God and on those who do not
Speaker 6: obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The word
Speaker 6: obey means listen to. So we're talking here about unbelievers.
Speaker 6: These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence
Speaker 6: of the Lord and from the glory of His power.
Speaker 2: And you know it's completely changed the nature of the
Speaker 2: Republican Party his influence. They were already conservative and already
Speaker 2: religious to begin with, but the sort of wave of
Speaker 2: politicians that have been supported by Dunn has taken that
Speaker 2: to a new level.
Speaker 3: And you know, I mean it's resulted in, I think,
Speaker 3: a real assault on free speech in the state of Texas.
Speaker 3: We have religious groups like Christians United for Israel in
Speaker 3: the Texas Eagle Forum lobbing the state legislature and persuading
Speaker 3: politicians like Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick were sympathetic to
Speaker 3: their agenda to pass laws that limit the way people
Speaker 3: who oppose Israeli policies can protest. So, for instance, twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: Texas passed has Spilled eighty nine a law that banned
Speaker 3: to stay from doing any business with any company or
Speaker 3: individual contractors who participate in the boycott of Israel that
Speaker 3: many activists have participated in. And on March twenty seventh
Speaker 3: of this year, when you began to have a wave
Speaker 3: of protests across the nation and in Texas, and there
Speaker 3: were major protests at the UT Austin campus at the
Speaker 3: University of Texas at Dallas, which is in a suburb
Speaker 3: called Richardson another one at the University of North Texas
Speaker 3: UT Arlington University of Texas at San Antonio. Abbott responded
Speaker 3: to these protests by issuing an executive order that defined
Speaker 3: a common slogan chanted by supporters of Palestinian statehood from
Speaker 3: the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free, as antisemitic,
Speaker 3: and it required public colleges and universities to review their
Speaker 3: free speech policies and to punish what the state regards
Speaker 3: as anti Semitic speech by faculty and students. And it
Speaker 3: targeted two specific groups, two student groups, the Palestine Solidarity
Speaker 3: Committee and Students for Justice and Palestine, to be disciplined
Speaker 3: for violating these policies the State of Texas saying these
Speaker 3: words are forbidden.
Speaker 2: Indeed, and despite the fact that the University of Texas
Speaker 2: at Austin had issued a video celebrating their so called
Speaker 2: free speech Week, I think it was just a matter
Speaker 2: of months before they arrested one hundred and thirty six
Speaker 2: pro Palestinian demonstrators at the University of Texas at Austin.
Speaker 2: All across the state, we've seen pro Palestinian protests or
Speaker 2: what you could call anti genocide protests or calls for
Speaker 2: divestment at these various universities, and arrests have happened at
Speaker 2: least three different universities.
Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier a paradox in dispensationalism, and that is
Speaker 3: that some of the people who have absolute devotion to
Speaker 3: promoting the state of Israel are at the same time
Speaker 3: anti Semitic. And another paradox is that Schofield himself, Cyrus
Speaker 3: Schofield himself said that Jesus wasn't into politics. He said
Speaker 3: that when Jesus was alive, slavery, inequality of wealth, all
Speaker 3: of these political pressure were all at their worse, and
Speaker 3: Jesus and his apostles didn't address any of that. They
Speaker 3: focus on salvation. That Christianity is not about changing this world,
Speaker 3: because this world is doomed and the only person who's
Speaker 3: going to fix anything is Jesus himself. But nevertheless, these
Speaker 3: dispensationalists at the same time are very happy to be
Speaker 3: involved in politics that's not involved in social or form.
Speaker 3: I want you to you know, Schofield was living at
Speaker 3: a time of progressive movement when they were trying to
Speaker 3: end child labor, trying to make workplaces safer, and so on.
Speaker 3: Today we're dealing with issues of wealth, inequality and so on.
Speaker 3: The dispensationalists will say believing that humans can fix those
Speaker 3: problems as satanic, But nevertheless, you should be involved in
Speaker 3: politics if it involves denying women sovereignty over their bodies,
Speaker 3: if it evolves banning people from gender affirming care and
Speaker 3: so on, but that politics is okay and so and
Speaker 3: we see this with this activism and trying to suppress
Speaker 3: a particular side of the Israel Palestine debate.
Speaker 2: Right, And I think that if that strain of dispensationalism
Speaker 2: that's Schofield represented, that sort of a political dispensationalism, if
Speaker 2: it still exists, it is certainly no longer dominant because today,
Speaker 2: you know, we're seeing this end times theology, this belief
Speaker 2: in this theory around the end times. It's increasingly overlapping
Speaker 2: with other sort of distinct trends in Christianity. So on
Speaker 2: the one hand, there's things like the prosperity Gospel, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, best represented by Kenneth Copeland. He's the richest
Speaker 2: pastor in all of the United States, and his whole
Speaker 2: thing is, yeah, if you know, you give, you get,
Speaker 2: and so you give me your money, and you prove
Speaker 2: that you're you know, holy person, you will be rewarded.
Speaker 2: In turn, you will be healed, all of your things
Speaker 2: will be solved. And then the other thing that it's
Speaker 2: overlapping with this End Times theology belief is what you know,
Speaker 2: we might just call the Seven Mountains dominionist trend or
Speaker 2: dominionism broadly speaking, which you may or may not be
Speaker 2: familiar with, but it really just breaks down to this
Speaker 2: idea that Christians should be at the top of all
Speaker 2: of the mountains of society and these are just you know,
Speaker 2: basically stand ins for the segments of society they think
Speaker 2: are important, so education, media, politics, what have you. This
Speaker 2: is a really growing idea as a sort of meme
Speaker 2: in right wing Christianity in these sort of non denominational churches,
Speaker 2: which are the fastest growing and largest segment of churches
Speaker 2: I think we're talking about.
Speaker 3: And those dominionists are the ones who are taking over
Speaker 3: these school boards that are adopting the anti trans policies
Speaker 3: and also banning the books.
Speaker 2: That's right, and it is a very active form of Christianity,
Speaker 2: very politically active, and so through people like Hagey and
Speaker 2: you know, people like Tim Dunn. We see that embodied
Speaker 2: in what they do, the sort of advocacy that John
Speaker 2: Hagey takes part in. In the millions and millions of
Speaker 2: dollars that Tim Dunn umps into the state of Texas.
Speaker 3: You could almost characterize the Republican Party in Texas, which
Speaker 3: is one of the most important state wings of the
Speaker 3: Republican Party in the United States, as a wholly owned
Speaker 3: done subsidiary.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: He really many of the most infamous Texas politicians in
Speaker 3: this era, such as Ken Paxton, are generously supported by Dunn.
Speaker 3: And so I think that if we kind of wrap
Speaker 3: this up, I think that we could say that the
Speaker 3: disdain from activism that dispensationalists claim is a ruse that
Speaker 3: activism is bad if it advances any attempt to create
Speaker 3: equal opportunity, reduce income inequality, and dispensationalists vote and they,
Speaker 3: you know, with Texas as one of the major bases
Speaker 3: for dispensationalism, they are a hugely influential budding block. Thirty
Speaker 3: nine percent of Americans have told polsters that they believe
Speaker 3: we're living in the end times. And the simple fact is,
Speaker 3: if you think the world's going to end, you're not
Speaker 3: going to invest much time in making the world better,
Speaker 3: making it a more just place. You're not going to
Speaker 3: try to clean the water, clean the air. Half of
Speaker 3: Evangelical Protestants in the United States believe that supporting Israel
Speaker 3: is absolutely essential to fulfilling Bible prophecy, and that group
Speaker 3: constitutes a third of all adult Texans, and they want
Speaker 3: to love Israel to death because they believe that if
Speaker 3: they push Israel to annex the West Bank, to take
Speaker 3: the most aggressive standards Palestinians, that will provoke the wrath
Speaker 3: of the Antichrist, which will lead to armageddon. And they're
Speaker 3: willing to make that sacrifice. They're willing to fight for
Speaker 3: the Second Coming to happen down to the last Jewish person.
Speaker 3: And this is creating instability for the world and putting
Speaker 3: the United States in a very difficult place in the
Speaker 3: world stage, and the chain of events leading to our
Speaker 3: position currently visa the Middle East can be drawn back
Speaker 3: to this state.
Speaker 2: That's right. And I think one thing that I really
Speaker 2: want to emphasize that we haven't dived into as much
Speaker 2: as we could have, is that this sort of belief
Speaker 2: system tends towards dehumanization. So if you believe that your
Speaker 2: opponents are in league with the devil, or are satanic,
Speaker 2: or are doing the bidding of evil, and that you
Speaker 2: are on the side of good unequivocally and you are
Speaker 2: doing the Lord's work. It is easy to treat your
Speaker 2: opponents as in human, less than human, to see them
Speaker 2: as other than someone who has equal rights and equal standing.
Speaker 3: And if you're wondering if it could happen here, it
Speaker 3: meaning fascism in many ways. It's happened in Texas already,
Speaker 3: and we have a large population here. As they wait
Speaker 3: for the end, they're building walls around the lives of
Speaker 3: more than thirty million people who live in the state.
Speaker 2: I'm Stephen Manicelli.
Speaker 3: I'm Michael Phillips.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening.
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