2022 Midterm Debrief + Twitterpocalypse with Annika Brockschmidt
Brad is joined by return guest and co-author Annika Brockschmidt to discuss three things:
Her recent piece at Religion Dispatches on the fascist elements of the Right's taste for violence and cruelty
The 2022 midterms, including J.D. Vance, Blake Masters, and the looming DeSantis/Trump showdown
What the f*ck is happening with Twitter? We have thoughts.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center, UCSB.
And I have today someone who is a return guest, a former co-host, a co-author now of mine, and a friend, and that is Annika Brockschmidt.
So Annika, thanks for joining me.
Thank you so much for having me.
You are the author of God's Warriors, which is God's Holy Warriors, excuse me, which is a book, a German language book on the religious right and the Holy Crusade of Christian nationalists in this country.
A couple of days ago, you were on German television discussing the American midterms.
Do you feel like that was a good warm up so that you're not nervous to come on Straight White American Jesus?
Oh, I think so.
But I think this will be less rage-inducing, I guess, because I think the level of information between the two of us is a lot better than the hot takes I've had to hear on German media, which is quite something.
Maybe I can share some of those with you later, just to, you know.
There are worse things than American public discourse, and that is German public discourse on America.
I always feel good on Straight White American Jesus because, like, you know, you're on German television and then you come here, so of course you're not nervous.
You're ready for the big leagues like Straight White American, you know, Anthea Butler comes from MSNBC straight over here.
Yeah, no problem.
You know what I mean?
Robert Jones from the readout to Straight White American Jesus.
All right, a little bit different of an interview today.
Instead of talking about one thing, we're going to talk about three things.
And that is a recent piece that you had at Religion Dispatches on the reactions to Carrie Lake and other right-wingers who had some very disgusting ideas about Paul Pelosi.
Now, that happened a while back, but I think it's worth just spending a few minutes talking about because you have a really unique perspective and it really kind of gives us a clue into how far I think the American right has ventured in terms of their politics.
We'll then talk some about the midterms, and we're going to talk some, and then we'll be talking more about it this week.
And then you and I have been discussing kind of off and on, like what is happening at Twitter, the Twitterpocalypse, Elon Musk.
And so we're going to venture some hypotheses, We don't have all the answers.
We're not going to be like, you know, telling you that we think we have all the answers and we're the conspiracy people you should be listening to.
It's more just hopefully an informed conversation about something that is actually pretty important.
Let's start here.
You wrote in Religion Dispatches this week about the reactions to Paul Pelosi.
And, you know, we've discussed those on this show.
We've talked about how Carrie Lake's reaction was disgusting.
We've talked about Glenn Junkin and others.
And I think by now, if you're listening to this, you know that there were jokes.
There was laughter.
There was kind of playing it off as not that important.
But you really liken it to something that I think is quite important, which is it's kind of part of, you know, the rise of or the process or the slippery slope to fascism.
And you're a historian of fascism.
You have a unique lens on this as a German historian.
So, you know, when you see these reactions, I guess, can you explain to people why this is more than just kind of disgusting politics?
It's more worrying that for you.
How does that work in your mind?
Yeah, so I think there's two sort of factors that are really worrying.
One is the sort of general climate of hate that Republicans have fostered, not only over the last couple of years, but for decades now.
So they have basically created a base Which has only seen Democrats, not as political opponents, but as a deeply un-American force, a force of evil, a force that's in cahoots with the devil, with destructive forces.
That's horrible things to children.
So that's kind of one of the classic dehumanisation tactics of the political enemy that you also see in fascist and totalitarian movements.
This is kind of more to be expected.
What I think has kind of been lost a little bit in the debate about this is something that I don't think we talk about very often and that is an aspect of
of fascism, there is maybe one of its ugliest aspects, and that is the revelling, like the revelation and the glee that fascists take in the suffering, in the physical and mental suffering of their political enemies.
And I think, in order to write this piece, I watched the clips back, you know, the Janken clip, the Carrie Lake clip, And I stopped listening to what she was saying, to what he was saying, and I started to watch the people.
And you could see the anticipation, you could feel the sort of the giggles rising, you could see that these people wanted to laugh, they were waiting for it, and they were gleeful when they finally got to do it.
The moderator was laughing so hard he had to cover his face with his cue card, you know, while the audience cheered in the Carrie Lake example.
So you have this reveling in cruelty.
So it's not enough to inflict violence, in this case by proxy, on the political enemy.
You also have to savour their suffering.
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