Brad speaks with Sarah Posner, author of Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump. They discuss how Trump is the result of strategies used by GOP operatives in other countries. The approach is simple: label liberal democracy as an assault on family, faith, and nation; sell a strong, charismatic leader as the only hope to save the country from ruin at the hands of godless socialists; then systematically weaken all democratic guardrails in order to ensure the leader has maximal power over the country. Unfortunately, this strategy has worked by uniting the Religious Right and the Alt-Right into an alliance of aggrieved White Americans-or MAGA Nation. With Trump's loss to Biden, MAGA Nation is carrying on a cultural secession with Trump at the helm of the alternative United States of America.
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White American Jesus, hosted in partnership with the University of California Santa Barbara's CAP Center.
My name is Brad Onishi, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College, and I am joined today by a journalist whose work I just completely respect, and every time she has a new piece out, I can't wait to read it.
So, Sarah Posner is joining us.
She's been on our show before as part of the Orange Wave series.
And Sarah is a reporting fellow with Type Investigations.
Her work has appeared everywhere, Rolling Stone, Vice, The Nation, Mother Jones, The New Republic, HuffPost, and other places.
She's also the author of Unholy, Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump.
We featured that text in our Orange Wave series this summer.
It is an incredible, incredible investigation into the alliance between the 45th president And white evangelicals.
So, Sarah, it is great to have you back.
Thanks for joining me.
Thanks for having me, Brad.
We are a couple weeks out from the election, and I wanted to talk to you today about authoritarianism.
And I think maybe for obvious reasons.
And I wanted to talk about particularly the allure of a strongman leader and why religious conservatives Are often the biggest supporters of strongman leaders or autocrats.
You know, we've now lived through an election week that resulted in Joe Biden winning the presidential election.
Biden's campaign flipped the Rust Belt back to blue.
They flipped Arizona and Georgia for the first time in a long time.
This was followed by a week where President Trump refused to concede and elevated charges of election fraud and mismanagement with absolutely no evidence.
There's been Really no hard evidence provided.
All legal attempts to make inroads along these pathways has gone very poorly for the president.
I personally don't believe at this moment that we're in danger of a hard coup.
All signs point to Biden taking office.
Looks like we'll have a peaceful transition.
However, many of us are wondering what's next for Trump and MAGA Nation over the weekend.
Trump tweeted that he lost the election because it was rigged and that he refused to concede anything.
And he actually didn't even say he lost.
He said Biden won because the election was rigged.
This coincided with a MAGA rally in DC where, among other things, Trump flags flew alongside the thin blue line flag and the Confederate flag and the Nazi flag.
So again, one of the reasons I wanted to have you back is because there are already rumors of Trump announcing his 2024 bid as soon as Biden swears in.
True to his nature, I wouldn't be surprised if he did it as a competing TV event during the inauguration or some sort of something similar.
And one of the distinct parts of your book, Unholy, is the connections you make between white nationalists and Christian nationalists.
And all of this, to me, just came to the forefront this week, seeing the MAGA rally in D.C., seeing Trump sort of Starting to build what looks like a nation within a nation, right?
A group who doesn't, who recognizes him as their president, even as he is being ushered out of office.
I guess I just wanted to ask you about how many on the Christian right see Trump as a divinely anointed figure.
That's been established.
That's, that's something that's part of Magan Nation and also white evangelicals seeing Trump as a savior.
But scholars of fascism and authoritarianism often point out that leaders of such movements are viewed in much the same way, that, you know, white nationalists see their leader, that many in Nazi Germany saw Hitler as divine in some sense, as transcendent.
So I guess here's my first question, long intro, I apologize, but is this maybe the easiest way to understand why white nationalists and Christian nationalists are sort of on the same side here?
They both see the president as a savior who is uniquely capable of saving the nation.
Is that just the easiest way to get at this alliance?
I actually think that they share the same grievances about what liberalism is.
And I think that the historical comparisons are very helpful.
And I'm a big fan of a lot of the scholars of fascism that have been writing about These sorts of comparisons and analogies, people like Ruth Ben-Ghiat or Jason Stanley or Frederico Finkelstein.
I think that, you know, all of their work is incredibly helpful.
But, you know, if I were an academic, I would be considered an Americanist.
And I actually look at Trump through the lens of the particular American experience and the particular backlash.
For some reason, I couldn't think of the right word.
The particular backlash of white Christian America against basically, let's call it post-1954 America.
And it's such a uniquely American thing.
And I think that the historical analogies are absolutely on point and useful for understanding authoritarianism, but I think, and just sort of generally understanding authoritarianism and more specifically understanding Trump.
But I also cannot disassociate the Trump phenomenon.
From the backlash to the uniquely American experiment of desegregation and feminism and secularism and the LGBTQ rights movement that came in a wave over them in the second half of the 20th century.
And I think that that's part of what makes him unique and not fit right precisely in those international comparisons.
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