Brad speaks with Matthew Sheffield, the editor and publisher of the new media outlet Flux. They discuss his article, "Republicans are banking on a fusion of Trump autocracy and McConnell nihilism, but will it work for them?"
One of the arguments Sheffield makes is that the GOP has given up on policy and has become the party of outrage and resentment. Their only play is belligerence via Fox News and other outlets.
He then argues that it's been hard to ramp up this outrage machine during the Biden presidency because Biden is a boring grandpa who is as old or older than most Trump voters; a president who largely stays out of view; and one on whom they can't use racist and xenophobic tacts like they do with other politicians.
Finally, he argues that the GOP and the White Christian fundamentalists who anchor it are losing power and numbers, but becoming more violent. Leading to the question of our time: Can our democracy survive the autocracy and nihilism they are turning to in order to remain at the top of the political and social hierarchies?
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
As we announced last week, we are doing our first ever Straight White American Jesus Seminar.
And I know some of you are like, what does that mean?
So basically it's this, in September, Dan Miller is going to be teaching what is basically like a college level seminar, and it's open to all of you.
What's included in this seminar are four live sessions, and they're going to be two hours each.
So they're gonna be on Wednesday nights in September, two hours in a live session with Dan and the other participants in the course.
It also includes five exclusive course videos that participants will be asked to watch before the class each week and readings from both Dan and I on the select topic.
I'll be making appearances in some of the videos and other materials, but Dan will be really leading up the seminar and it is limited to 12 people.
Dan, I'm pretty excited about this, not only because it's our first seminar, but because I know you're an amazing teacher, and whoever signs up is going to have a great experience.
I think we've both been really excited about this for a long time.
We talked about this last week, but there are people who wanted to do sort of a deeper dive, something a little bit more formal than what we can do in the podcast.
We say it's like a college class without all the bad stuff.
I don't have to grade anything.
That's what we don't like.
Nobody has to do any homework.
Nobody's there because their advisor said that they have to take it.
It's just people who want to take it.
So I'm really looking forward to it.
I'm really looking forward to the other piece of this is that The participants also, part of this is what we're calling office hours, where each individual will get to just meet with me if they want for half an hour.
And that's a chance to just clarify things or ask about other material or whatever.
So we're really excited about it.
Put a lot of work into it.
I'm really excited and hope that people will join us for that.
So the class is called Pure America, Religion, Race, Nation, and we're going to be looking at how white Christian nationalism tries to create a quote-unquote pure America.
It tries to purify the national body, and we're going to link this to things like xenophobia and racism.
We'll also link it to purity culture.
So it's a wide-ranging course.
It hits on all the classic things from our show.
And you can find the info at www.StraightWhiteAmericanJesus.com under the Seminars tab.
So check it out today.
As we said, space is limited, so you'll want to grab yours as soon as you can.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
I'm Brad Onishi.
Our show's hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB.
And today I'm joined by Matthew Sheffield, who's the editor and publisher of Flux.
And Flux is a new outlet, a new media outlet, and I'm going to let Matthew actually talk about it and explain the mission of Flux.
But let me just talk about Matthew for a minute and embarrass him.
He's written all over the place, New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, was at one time a staff reporter at Salon and worked extensively in actually right-wing media and ended up leaving that world in 2015.
And so, first of all, let me just say, Matthew, thanks for joining me today.
Thanks, good to be here.
Let's just start here.
You have launched Flux in the last little bit here.
I've had friends, friends of the program, Chrissy Stroop and Matthew Bode and others who have published great work at Flux, and so I see what's happening there.
Would you mind just explaining to folks, what is Flux?
What makes it different, perhaps, than some of the other media outlets that they might be accustomed to?
Sure.
Well, one of the things that sets us apart is that we're a nonprofit and we are trying to avoid so many of the mistakes and terrible things that other commercial media entities do.
So like a lot of them have these spyware advertising and I mean, like there's so many sites you visit, like it just slows down your computer to visit them unless you have an ad blocker and that's ridiculous.
And so we have no advertising, no tracking, and we use all open source code for everything that we do.
But beyond the technical aspect, we try to bring an in-depth approach to our journalism.
And the area where I think we're best known for that is in our coverage of religion.
And that's one of the reasons that I started it, is that as somebody who came out of A very strict and fundamentalist Mormon perspective, and then later moved away from that and away from faith entirely.
I had always been frustrated at how little... I had been very into religion and its effects on politics, and I had published some things about religion in various outlets, but I had always found a strong resistance to Talking about how powerful Christian fundamentalism is on it on the people who believe it.
And what a what a tool it is for the Republican Party to distract and manipulate its voters.
And a lot of mainstream publications are not comfortable expressing that idea.
And so I decided what This when you look at actual real research, because a lot of when people look, why do people vote for Trump or like Trump?
A lot of the studies that are done on that in the academic world don't even include religion as an as an independent variable.
And so people are constantly coming out with stuff.
Oh, this is this is why people like Trump.
It's because of X.
And then you go and look in the research and they don't talk about religion at all.
And so, and so, but then when you look at, so like when you look, there's other scholars who actually understand the material, like Andrew Whitehead and some others, they, when you actually do have that as a, as a, as a thing to look at as an independent variable, That is the number one indicator for why somebody tends to be a loyal Trump supporter is that they have a Christian nationalist viewpoint.
And so we try to bring an extensive focus and examination on How that how religion is used as a as a political tool in politics and and then also we look at Chrissy Stroop is one of several people who's done some.
We also try to do some in-depth personal essays on showing the influence of fundamentalism and how it distorts our thinking.
And so that's the sort of material that we publish.
And we also publish things on media and the media industry and trends and technology as well.
Thanks for listening to this free preview of our SWADGE episode.
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