Weekly Roundup: White Supremacist Christians Are Christians
Brad and Dan unpack how religions are what people do. The same goes for political parties. This means that White Supremacist Christians and QAnon Christians are Christians. They may not be the kind you like or want to be associated with, but it's unhelpful to write them off as lone wolves who can be dismissed. This also means that insurrection-inciters and conspiracists like Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Kevin McCarthy are the real Republican party. After discussing why it's important to recognize people and groups based on what they do and how they identity, Brad and Dan discuss the Reddit/Game Stop controversy and how it is not equivalent to the populism of MAGA Nation. Just because you are for the people, or popular, does not make you a populist. The episode ends with an important thesis: Joe Biden is the most religious president since Jimmy Carter.
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Axis Mundi My name is Brad Onishi, faculty of religion, Skidmore College, and here with my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller, associate professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
It's nice to see you, Brad.
I'm talking to you as I watch the wind whip through, like, sub-zero temperatures outside my window.
So, California, even to me, doesn't sound terrible right now.
You are also wearing a t-shirt as we speak.
So somehow it's minus one, you're wearing a t-shirt.
In California it is probably 52 degrees and I am wearing a very big flannel.
So the really hardcore thing is I'm wearing a t-shirt and I'm outside.
I'm not.
I'm not outside.
I wish you were.
That would be incredible.
So we have a lot to analyze this week.
I think you and I are sort of at a place where we are both seeing analogies drawn between various sides of different debates, whether that is day traders and Wall Street, whether that is Republicans and Democrats in Congress, whether that is Christians on perhaps either side of the aisle.
So we want to, I think today's going to be one of those days where we're basically saying for the next 45 minutes, these two are not the same and stop trying to say they are because that's either duplicitous or just lazy.
So Dan, I wanted to start today by just sort of resetting our palette.
I feel like, you know, once in a while, Some of you who are writers or do projects, you know that you have to kind of go back to the basic facts of what you're up to and kind of remind yourself of what's up.
So Dan, this is a thread on Twitter from last night by Asha Rangappa, who is an editor and somebody who's just done a lot of things.
Former FBI agent, lawyer, faculty, editor, does things at CNN, does things various places.
So let me share this with you, Dan.
I think it will just sort of help us Remind ourselves of the bare facts of our situation.
Okay?
First, Donald Trump did not win the 2020 election.
Okay.
That's fact number one.
He could not accept this outcome.
Because of his inability to accept this outcome, he manufactured a big lie that he did win the election and put all of it, all of the official powers at his disposal to force this to be the case.
Truth number two.
As part of this effort, he attempted to shake down the Secretary of State and conspired with officials at DOJ to manufacture false cases of voter fraud in Georgia.
He also rallied his supporters using the big lie to convene in Washington to fight against Congress electoral college certification.
He also used his official authority to permit the National Guard and other reinforcement mechanisms to protect the official and constitutional functions of a co-equal branch of government.
In doing so, he violated his oath of office.
Truth number three.
His words and actions, in addition to his failure to act, resulted in the death of five people, including law enforcement officials, and the threat to the lives of members of Congress and his own vice president.
Truth number four, if he had succeeded, it is unclear what state of functioning our democracy would be in at this moment.
Truth number five, there are members of Congress who subscribe to the big lie and are effectively representing the interests of domestic terrorists who invaded our capital in our democratic processes.
Dan, there's more to the thread, but I just wanted to sort of lay that out as a way to bring us back to the very bare kind of like basic truths of where we are.
I thought that Rangappa did a great job laying that out last night.
And from there, we can kind of extract some analysis of things that have happened this week and are continuing to happen in the wake of January 6th.
But here's where we're at.
Donald Trump didn't win.
He wouldn't accept it.
He manufactured a big lie.
That big lie led to the interference in the election process in Georgia and other places.
It led to him trying to get DOJ to do his treason for him.
It led to people Insiding an insurrection or riot at our Capitol and people died, okay?
So that's where we're at.
The last part is really something we're going to hit on today, which is there are members of Congress who are perpetuating the big lie, whether because they believe it or because they think it's politically advantageous, okay?
And so we need to unpack from there, but I just wanted to give everyone a reset.
That is the basic situation.
And it leads to conversations about Christian nationalism.
It leads to conversations about the extremism of the GOP.
And we'll even get into, don't worry, friends, I know you're wondering, we're going to get into Reddit, GameStop, and Wall Street.
So that is coming.
Dan, let me turn this to you.
There was a piece out from AP News the other day.
And we both, I think, looked at it.
But you had some interesting takeaways from that piece.
So do you want to run us through this for a second?
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