Where is the GOP headed four months after an attempted coup? Even further down the rabbit hole of authoritarianism. In the wake of his jarring interview with Dr. Sarah Riccardi-Swartz on fascism in rural America, Brad shows that these anti-democratic impulses are not limited to fringe pockets of the country. They are at the heart of the contemporary conservative movement and GOP. This portends even more anti-democratic maneuvers, threats of violence, and repeats of the 1/6 coup attempt, even as Trump fades from public consciousness as time goes on. He may be on his way out, but the trendy fascism he instituted in our public square is not.
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
AXIS Moondy AXIS Moondy You're listening to an Irreverent Podcast.
Visit irreverent.fm for more content from our amazing lineup of creators.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty in religion, Skidmore College.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB.
Today I want to talk about illiberalism, which may not sound like a very sexy word, but it follows up on my interview with Dr. Sarah Riccardi Swartz from earlier this week.
And in that interview, Dr. Riccardi Swartz shared her research on a community in rural Appalachia, a Russian Orthodox community populated by many ex-evangelicals.
And they have an alarming set of politics.
You know, one woman in the interview said to Sarah that she says, I'm a fascist, right?
And so it was this incredibly jarring text that she wrote, Sarah, and her article really was, in many ways, a gut punch.
What I want to talk about today, briefly, is just how it may seem like that's an outlier and that that is a sort of extreme fringe example.
But I don't think it is.
And I think it's actually something that indicates where the Republican Party and where the conservative movement in this country is at this moment.
And especially in the wake of January 6th.
This morning, the sociologist of religion at Yale, Philip Gorski, tweeted that the thing we need to know about the Republican Party in this moment is that they are not going to accept electoral defeat in 2024.
I'm going to have an interview with him coming up later, actually next week, and so we'll get to hear more about that.
I think his tweet sort of portends a couple of things.
One is, Republicans are working hard at the state level, the local level, and the national level, as they always do, to organize and to retake the House, to substantiate their majorities in state legislatures, and to pass their agenda, which includes many anti-trans bills, abortion bills, and bills meant to suppress voting rights.
I also think, though, that Gorski's tweet—and I'll ask him about this later this week in our interview—is one that portends more of what we saw on January 6th, that we're in a place where many on the right in this country will just simply not accept not being in power any longer.
And you say, well, you know, what's the basis for that claim?
And let me just point you to a couple of things.
There's a nice article from Adam Seward at The Atlantic from just a couple of days ago titled, The Illiberal Right Throws a Tantrum.
And he talks here about how folks on the political right in this country have reacted to Trump's loss, to certain things that have taken place during the Biden administration, and things that have been brewing for over a decade now.
Things like same-sex marriage, things like Extended rights for LGBTQ plus folks, Obamacare, so on and so forth.
So here's what Seward says.
The tide of illiberalism sweeping over Western countries and the election of Donald Trump have since renewed hope among some on the religious right that it might revive its cultural control through the power of the state, inspired by Viktor Orban in Hungary and Vladimir Putin in Russia, A faction of the religious right now looks to sectarian ethno-nationalism to restore its beliefs to their rightful primacy, and to rescue a degraded and degenerate culture.
All that stands in their way is democracy, and the fact that most Americans reject what they have to offer.
This is something we have talked about, of course, on our show time and time again.
We've talked about it with the journalist Sarah Posner, whose work is exemplary, in my opinion, on this topic, and she's been on this beat for years now.
Her book, Unholy, is a great expose of this movement within the religious right.
I want to touch on this word illiberal, however, before we move on.
One of the things that you might hear often is that we live in a liberal democracy, and I know that sometimes that can be confusing when you think about conservatives versus liberals.
Basically, we are supposed to live in a governmental system.
That is marked by free and fair elections and by democratic rule.
That is what makes it liberal.
Liberal, right, comes from the root word liber or free, okay?
And so the idea is that we live in a free society where we can vote for who we choose to vote for.
Where the person who gets the most votes will become the elected official.
And where everyone in the society, regardless of their opinion or their desire, recognizes the legitimacy of the person who has been elected, right?
So it's a free election.
Everybody has the freedom to vote.
Everybody has the freedom to choose.
And that is what marks a kind of liberal democracy, okay?
Free and fair elections, democratic rule, and the recognition of the legitimacy of the elected official.
Seward's talking about illiberal conservatives, and what that means is something different than the liberal-conservative sort of tug-of-war, right?
If you have a democracy that is marked by free and fair elections and duly elected officials, then you might have people who are, quote, more liberal or more conservative in that society.
But they are all sort of participating under the umbrella of a liberal or free democracy, right?
Liberal democracy does not mean Democratic versus Republican.
It just means free.
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.
