Brad and Dan analyze the January 6 Insurrection at the United States Capitol.
They begin by discussing the unprecedented aspects of the events.
Then, a discussion of Christian nationalism and its manifestation through insurrectionists, the actions and rhetoric of Senator Josh Hawley, and the activism of Ginny Thomas--wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
After discussing the new conspiracy theory that antifa was behind the Insurrection, they turn to details surrounding the Capitol Police.
The episode finishes with reasons for hope: Abrams, Warnock, Ossoff--stalwart members of the Religious Left.
Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC
Order Brad's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-War-Extremist-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1506482163
SWAJ Apparel is here! https://straight-white-american-jesus.creator-spring.com/listing/not-today-uncle-ron
To Donate:
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/BradleyOnishi
Venmo: @straightwhitejc
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
My name is Brad Onishi, Associate Professor, Religious Studies, Skidmore College, and I am here with my co-host today.
I'm Dan Miller, Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought.
It's good to see you, Brad, after A couple weeks.
I guess I'm seeing you, the listeners probably aren't, but it's good to be talking again after a couple weeks off that ended up being sort of unexpectedly tumultuous.
And I feel like we say that every single week, but here we are again.
You know, I was thinking about this last night.
It feels like we took, it feels like today is like the championship game because like everything, and I'm not saying that lightly friends, like I'm not trying to make like light of what happened the other day.
What I'm saying is like everything we talk about in this podcast, Dan, Like, came to a flying head the other day, and there's so much to talk about.
I mean, I was like, last night, up late, got up early, like, trying to figure out how we organize all of what happened into a coherent sort of analysis for the next hour.
Part of me was just like, we should just make this a seven-hour marathon, because there's that much to talk about.
But it really does feel like we were set to play in the championship game and we were like, you know what we're going to do?
Let's just take three weeks off before that.
No practice.
No thinking about the game.
Let's just take three weeks off.
And then like all of a sudden, here we are.
So it's good to be back.
We've had a couple of weeks off and as we sort of ease into 2021, 2021 is doing anything but making it easy on us.
So, Dan, let's just get into it.
There was an insurrection on January 6th at the United States Capitol.
We're going to get into the Christian nationalist dimensions.
We're going to get into the conspiracy theories.
We're going to get into the authoritarianism.
But let me just ask you this.
What are your first reactions?
You know, when you saw what happened that day, what did you think?
So it was it was kind of weird because I was actually sort of avoiding the news that day because like my focus was on on Georgia.
I knew that the obviously the Congress was supposed to certify the election results.
I knew that GOP people would oppose it, but it wasn't going to go anywhere.
It was largely spectacle and so forth.
And so I just didn't have the patience for that.
So I turned off the news for a while and I went that afternoon to pick up my kids from an activity they were doing and I like flip on the radio and it's talking about, you know, an insurrection of, you know, hundreds or thousands of people like storming the Capitol.
It was sort of unreal.
On one hand, on the other hand, my first reaction to that when you hear that is, Well, what the hell do we expect, right?
Like you talk about, you know, sort of talking about these things for what we've been doing this for years now, right?
Christian nationalism and rhetoric.
And as you've said, sort of your mantra through a lot of this year has been leadership matters and so on.
And the rhetoric is never just rhetoric and you know that sort of thing and sort of like it's it's not surprising at all that this happened I think I was I wasn't even surprised about the lackluster response from the Capitol Police and we'll we'll talk about that a little bit later But it was it was just kind of like, you know, it okay.
It finally it finally sort of happened I will say that my reaction wasn't that it was uh, it was gonna change anything.
I think I It should be taken as serious.
It was an insurrection.
I think that for lots of reasons it was a terrifying sort of thing to happen in the U.S.
I think anybody who thought that, I don't know, you could like storm the Capitol and stop the presidential transition, I think that that was naive on the part of any of the activists who did that.
But none of that's to minimize it.
So I wasn't afraid that, I don't know, that the country was going to fall or something like that, but I think it was And attempt to basically do that, as you say, as an authoritarian ideological act to keep Donald Trump in place.
The last point I'll make, and I'll throw it back to you, is with the Nashville bombing that happened recently, there was a lot of debate about definitions of terrorism, right?
And people get confused about that, but terrorism is hard to define because it has to be violence undertaken to a specific political or ideological end.
I think that this was very, very clearly an act of domestic terrorism undertaken at the instigation of the President of the United States.
It was very clearly about political ideology and, you know, sort of the MAGA ideology, if you like.
And I think that was one of my first reactions as well, is to track where that goes.
So I'll throw it back to you, but those are some of my quick hits of what I was feeling when I first heard about it.
Yeah, I was in front of my computer, I was writing that day, I was on Twitter, and I started to just see the events unfolding.
One of those very surreal moments, my wife came up to my office upstairs and we were talking about something else, and as she was going back down the stairs, I said, you know, I knew she was working and not paying attention to the news and things, and I said, Like, very just casually.
I think there's a coup happening at the Capitol.
And as soon as I said the words, like, the sort of, like, extraordinary nature of that sentence hit me.
And like you, Dan, there was never a moment I thought, oh, I think This group is going to be able to take down the country, install Trump as the, you know, everlasting, evermore leader, and now we're all doomed.
It didn't feel that way, but nonetheless it was, and David Moran said this on TV the other day, he said, it's a moment of profound national humiliation.
on more levels than we can probably understand even right now.
And I think that's just the way to think about it.
So, you know, let's get into some of this, Dan.
I want to, you know, in the flood of info, the flood of images, the flood of tweets, the flood of articles that I'm sure all of you have seen and all of you are sort of digesting, I just want to make sure we don't miss a couple of sort of aspects of the unprecedented nature of this.
So let's just start here, Dan.
One, we have been a country that has prided itself on a peaceful transition of power.
That's a hallmark of our democracy, and it's been one of the examples that we feel we set for the world.
Well, I hate to say this, but five people died the other day, which is tragic and awful, and I don't like it any one bit.
It's just awful.
Thanks for listening to this free preview of our Swadge episode.
In order to get access to the full episode and so much more, become a Straight White American Jesus Premium Subscriber by clicking the link in the show notes.
It'll take you like two clicks, I promise.
In addition to getting access to this episode, you'll have access to the entire Swadge archive, over 550 episodes.
You'll also get an extra episode every month, ad-free listening, Discord access, and so much more.
All that for less than six bucks a month, and it helps us keep our flag up and continue to safeguard democracy from religious nationalism, extremism, and rising authoritarianism.
