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Feb. 4, 2023 - Straight White American Jesus
45:06
Weekly Roundup: Transcontinental Spy Buffoons

Brad and Dan break down three issues: The GOP attack on trans people and drag queens - why the obsession? The removal of Ilhan Omar from House committees and the blatant hypocrisy behind it The Neo-Nazi homeschool network and how it is related to Christian nationalist organizing efforts 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 To Donate: Venmo: @straightwhitejc https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/BradleyOnishi SWAJ Apparel is here! https://straight-white-american-jesus.creator-spring.com/listing/not-today-uncle-ron Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Axis Mundi You're listening to an irreverent podcast.
*Oooohhhhhh* Visit irreverent.fm for more content from our amazing lineup of creators.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco, our show's hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center, UCSB.
I'm here today with my co-host.
My name is Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Battling apparent technical issues, maybe because it's like sub-zero temperatures where I am.
I don't know, but it's good to be with you, Brad.
Yeah, this is try number two, friends.
We were on a roll and then things disappeared.
And part of it could be that Dan is living in a part of the country that is... What are you at, Dan?
Minus 10?
Minus 20?
Where's the wind chill?
Wind chill's somewhere in there.
I will say that compared to, you know, Syracuse, it remains balmy where I did my, my grad work.
So I love how people, I love how people from Syracuse or you can tell people in Syracuse, like, yeah, three feet of snow minus 15.
And they're like, oh yeah, summer, huh, pal?
Like it just, it's like the ultimate flex if you're from Syracuse until we talked to somebody from like Minneapolis and then they're like, hold my beer.
Let me show you what 40 below looks like, but yeah, we do.
Okay.
All right, we're going to talk about some issues, not issues, we're going to talk about some attacks upon trans people and just sort of address something that I think a lot of people are wondering about, which is why are so many people in this country fixated on trans folks and drag queens?
So Dan's going to help us understand that.
We're also going to talk about Ilhan Omar and what happened in The House yesterday in terms of committee assignments and just everything involved there.
Then we'll talk about a truly terrifying story out of Ohio, which is a Nazi homeschool ring that was discovered.
And some of you might think, well, what does that have to do with Christian nationalism and narrator voice a lot.
So Dan, let me say real quick, I'll be down at Santa Barbara on February 19th in Solvang.
So if you're around Solvang somewhere, come hang out at Bethania Church.
February 20, Chaucer's Bookstore.
I'm not going to lie, Dan, Chaucer's Bookstore is like maybe one of my top three favorite bookstores in the world, just for nostalgic reasons and spending a lot of time there as a grad student.
So I'll be there on February 20 at 6 p.m.
and then February 23 will be over at Santa Clara University on Thursday.
So that's really exciting.
So if you're anywhere around those places, come hang out.
All right, Dan, let's talk about what's going on in this country with Um, just attacks on trans folks and, uh, drag queen story hour and so on.
So, uh, on Tuesday night, Donald Trump released a video basically saying that if he's reelected, he will punish doctors who provide gender affirming care to minors and push schools to promote positive education about the nuclear family and the roles of mothers and fathers.
Dan, this is really, I think, Trump trying to catch up to DeSantis and really show everyone that he's still the biggest bully around and that if you elect him, don't worry, he'll be just as barbaric As he was the first time around.
You've noticed it.
You're the one who talks about it.
He is getting flanked, outflanked to the right by DeSantis on COVID, on vaccines, on education, on now gender and sexuality issues.
So he's trying to not let that happen.
This leads to a bigger story.
And I don't really want to talk about Donald Trump as much as I want to talk about why is the fixation on trans people and and also on Drag Queen Story Hour.
I mean, people have been emailing us.
Hey, what's the deal?
About this like obsession with the drag queens and libraries and story hours.
So would you, you know, as somebody who works in queer theory, who's written a lot about these issues, break this down for us so people out there can understand what's going on.
Yeah.
So you're right.
Like people reach out about this and, you know, they'll, they'll reach out to you.
They reach out to me.
People have talked about it with the, it's in the code series.
Why is, why are people on the right, whether it's politicians, whether it's people that they know, whether it's their like brother or sister or brother-in-law or whatever, who are super, super, super just, just fixated on, On trans and gender non-conforming people and things like that.
I've talked about that.
We've talked about that on the podcast.
I've published some things.
People can check out things I've written with the Canopy Forum that talk about this.
Don't want to rehash all of that.
But the one that I kind of, I want to dive into because it is kind of in the abstract, the strangest one is the fixation on drag queen story hour.
And if somebody's like, what the hell is drag queen story hour?
It's this thing that started, I don't know how prevalent it is at not, it's not every library in America is not having story hour for kids with people in drag, like reading books.
But libraries started doing this.
Some did it and then other places heard about it and they did it and so forth where somebody in drag, like reads a book to a group of kids for story time.
And that's what it is.
And it completely sets the hair of everybody on the right on fire.
And they run around like crazy and talk about the destruction of America and everything else.
And so it's a part of a broader phenomenon.
I would just call sort of queer panic, right?
the panic about all things queer, right?
Gay people, trans and gender non-conforming people, drag queens and so on.
So what is it?
If you're out there and you're like, I'm not sure exactly what drag is, what drag is in its most basic form is when it's a man who dresses as a woman to perform.
It's a form of entertainment.
It tends to be very campy, very flamboyant, very over the top, very exaggerated.
It was a style of performance that really originated in the LGBTQ Subculture and played in gay clubs and drag clubs and so forth.
That's simple enough, right?
The issue is what does it mean, right?
And I feel like I'm doing like an it's in the code episode in like the weekly roundup, but that's what it's about because the fact of what it is.
It doesn't seem to be that freaky to people or wouldn't people we talked to, right?
They're like, that's all it is.
What's the matter?
Well, here's the thing.
If somebody said, well, why do drag performers perform?
What was the point?
Why does it arise in that subculture in the context and times that it does?
Because what drag performance did and does and aims to do is to contest or unsettle Visions of sexuality and gender, normative gender codes, normative visions of gender performance, normative visions of sexuality.
And it's why it, as I say, originated in queer culture and not sort of straight spaces and places like that.
And so there's this this fear and this panic about this.
And on one hand, people I talk to, people you talk to, they'll say, I don't get like if it's if it's just a performance, right?
It's it's it's this kind of, you know, so culturally, like, why is that so scary?
Here's my take on it.
I think the reason that this issue in particular really makes people on the right apoplectic is that it is performance.
The fact that somebody is explicitly sort of performing notions of gender and sexuality and so forth.
And I think the reason that it's scary is because it performs fluidity, right?
So let me be clear in case people are worried about this or don't know this or whatever, right?
Drag is not the same thing as being transgender or gender non-conforming.
People who are trans and gender non-conforming are not necessarily in drag.
These are different things, but what they all have in common Is this notion of fluidity, right?
What they do is they confront anybody, especially straight people, especially cisgender people.
They confront us with the reality that gender is fluid, that it shifts, that it changes, that identity is fluid and it shifts and it changes.
And I think that that is what really, really scares the right.
Why?
Because everything in Christian nationalism, so much in American evangelicalism, is built on the notion of rigid definitions.
Rigid definitions of sort of Christian and non-Christian.
Rigid definitions of male and female.
Rigid definitions of sexuality.
It's built on the notion that identity is not something that's fluid.
And not only that, it's not something we get to perform or we get to contest or we get to question.
It's given from the outside.
God gives it to us.
And just as importantly, I think for Christian nationalists and lots of a certain kind of Christian, it also means that certain people are licensed to police it, right?
The pastor of your congregation is authorized by God to make sure that you are living out your identity the way you're supposed to.
The teenage girl, you're not having premarital sex.
That teenage boy who feels attracted to other boys, that you're not doing that.
That biological quote-unquote girl who identifies as male, that you're not doing that, right?
It's policing all of that.
And so I think the reason for the panic about trans and gender non-conforming people and drag queens and so forth is it confronts us with the possibility, and I would say the reality, right?
That all of that's a myth.
That identity is fluid, that it shifts, that we all exist on these spectrums from one gender to another with lots of stuff in between, that sexuality is fluid and so forth.
And I feel like if somebody says, well, why the drag queen focus specifically?
What I would say is it's because it's even more scary because it's sort of an explicit, knowledgeable, intentional performance and an intentional disruption of that, right?
Trans folk?
People who don't identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, that's just something they experience.
Often it comes after years of pain and confusion and all kinds of things trying to sort that out.
They're just trying to be who they are.
But drag queens, drag queens are trying to unsettle.
Those norms.
And so I think it's, there's a sense in which it's perceived as a threat.
And so you get like Fox News headlines about, you know, subverting childhood sexuality and so forth by having drag performers read books.
The only thing I would throw out is this, the flip side.
In my view, I think it's good to confront kids with the reality that, guess what?
No matter what your gender identity is, somebody else has different gender identities, and that's okay.
No matter what your sexuality is, people of different sexualities exist, and that's okay.
No matter what your identity is, we affirm you and accept you, and that's what drag is all about.
And that's exactly the fear.
So I think all of that wraps in and it wraps in with so many things we talk about.
Christian nationalism and firm borders and firm boundaries and boundaries of who's in and out on so many different axes.
But I think that's why things like trans and gender non-conforming people and drag queens just sort of touch on a really, really raw nerve at the heart of American conservatism and everything around it.
It's my, what, I don't know how many minutes that was, my primer on the topic.
I'm interested in your thoughts about this.
Yeah, no, everything you said I think I agree with, and I know it's helpful for people to hear that.
I mean, you've said it before, and I think it's true that it's hard at this date.
It happens, and believe me, I know it happens, and I know that we have gay and lesbian and bisexual friends and people listening.
To whom this happens.
There are attacks on gay and bisexual and lesbian people these days.
I think you've pointed out that the culture wars have shifted over the last two decades to the point where the easier targets in a kind of public right-wing media scape are trans folks, are gender non-conforming folks, and are drag queens.
The drag queen story started for the very reasons you discussed, Dan.
It's a 501c3.
And they wanted to give kids a great time, story hour, and a great performance of reading stories along with, as you've just sort of outlined, this performance of gender and just a sense of being really proud and joyful about who you are and every dimension.
That's how it started.
So, you know, I think a lot right now, I was just teaching a class where we referenced Phil Gorski's thought about how Christian nationalism is really about policing, and it's really about order.
And Sam Perry, and Gorski, and Andrew Whitehead talk about this.
I think of Kirsten Kobe's Dume as well on gender and masculinity.
And I just think that's really at play here, that there's a sense of Drag queens feel like they're out of order.
And one of the final things I'll say on this before we move on is that what you're going to hear over and over again, and if you watch like Fox News the other night talking about the African American AP course, if you talk to, if you ask folks about Drag Queen Story Hour on the American Right, They're always going to say that, look, when you introduce that to kids, that's propaganda, and I don't think we should be introducing little kids to gender propaganda, okay?
And what they're doing, and this is subtle, and again, I kind of feel like I'm doing it's in the code now too, but this is subtle, but what they're doing there is they're slipping in a conception of the natural.
And then they're saying anything beyond the natural is propaganda.
It's additional.
So it's like, hey, you know what's natural?
Two genders, men and women.
You know what's natural?
The nuclear family.
You know what's natural?
Having a dad and a mom and nothing else.
Okay?
So if that's the natural, then if you add something, That's propaganda.
And they're not going to say that first part, right?
So when they talk about gender propaganda, what they're trying to do is just basically operate on the assumption of the natural.
And Dan, we've talked about this on the show.
Friends, if you're listening, I mean, we could spend the next 29 hours talking about how the natural Natural theology, assumptions about the natural order in Christian history and theology have really shaped all these discussions going back, I mean, millennia.
We will skip that for now.
Perhaps one day we will do a 29-hour episode on that.
But I'll just say that that is part of what's up here.
Right?
They're trying to get you to think, as long as you stay within the bounds of the natural, then we're good.
If you want to do propaganda, this additional stuff, what I take to be out-of-order stuff, what I take to be fluid stuff, what I take to be non-binary stuff, well then, that's just, you know, that's transgressive.
That's more than is actually provided by biology and by God.
My kids don't need to hear that.
And what I hear you saying, Dan, is that's just not true.
And that that itself is propaganda.
That itself is a certain vision of what it means to be a human being, a gendered human being.
And that itself is already a conception of a family, of a sense of embodiment and so on.
So last thing I'll say, Donald Trump's statements about like, I'll punish people for care and make sure that we teach about Nuclear families and mom and dad.
I mean, that sounds like Soviet Russia.
It sounds like Soviet Russia.
It sounds like you go to school and you get told about, uh, like a certain, you know, anyway, I, uh, whatever.
All right, go ahead.
You jumped in.
Yeah.
Last thought about this.
Like one of the things about that, that I really appreciate about drag and you talk about like that, the positive role for kids is.
People have ever been to a drag show.
I challenge anybody to go to a drag show and not have a good time.
Right?
Like it's so over the top.
And I feel, I feel like, like fabulous is always the word that like has to go with drag.
Right.
Why does that matter?
Because I think it's a vision of.
Gender and sexual euphoria.
We talk about gender dysphoria.
We talk a lot about the negative aspects that can come with people having to come out in society, having to live as a sexual minority or a gender minority, and all the very real challenges of that.
And I think what's What's phenomenal and powerful about drag and just sort of drag culture is the way that you can experience the euphoria of alternative identities and different identities and not fitting into what is typical or normal or whatever.
And again, I think that where I see that as empowering, I see that as something that kids and all of us should hear and should see.
And the kids should see.
I think that's also on the flip side, exactly why it is so disempowering and so threatening.
To those on the right, because part of their social control, as you say, part of naturalizing particular genders and sexualities and so forth is to make sure that we pathologize all of these other ones, that we make them abnormal, that we make them make them negative, that we make them a danger to kids or whatever.
And I think drag challenges that.
And I think it's just really powerful for that reason.
All right, let's take a break, come back, and we'll talk about more fear of impurity on the American right in ways that are resonant with everything we just talked about.
Be right back.
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Okay, Dan, a lot of folks might have heard about this, but yesterday Ilhan Omar, who is a representative from the state of Minnesota, was ousted from high-profile committees, assignments, and the reason given, Dan, was that the Republicans on the committee pointed to remarks and tweets that Omar had made two years ago that were considered anti-Semitic, okay?
Now, what I will say has happened since then is that Ilhan Omar has apologized for those remarks, has said that they weren't right.
She's learning and trying to do better.
And I'll get to this in a minute, but her colleague from Minnesota, Dean Phillips, who is a Jewish person, Got up and gave a speech on her behalf and said, we've talked about this.
Her public comments match her private comments.
We've had discussions about why this was hurtful to the Jewish community, etc.
So that's there.
That's a stated reason.
The apology has happened.
The repentance has happened.
The trying to learn has happened.
However, that didn't stop Republicans from taking her off high level committees in the In the House.
Now, it's worth pointing out, Dan, and I know you'll probably touch on this further in a minute, but Omar is somebody who came to the United States as a refugee from Somalia, is the only African-born member of Congress, so the only member of Congress who was born on the African continent, and one of the only Muslim women in the House, okay?
She was in line to be the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Panel's Africa subcommittee, But is no longer.
Dan, a lot of this is really seen, and I think rightly, as revenge on the Democrats for removing, or not allowing at least, insurrectionist Republicans to be on certain committees, and trying to basically block the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene from having high-level appointments, okay?
Once again, we've talked about this, we talked about it last week with Adam Schiff and Swalwell, This is a sort of, you did it to us, we did it to you, okay?
It's revenge.
And there's two sides to every coin, and our response has always been there's not actually two sides to this coin, and everything is sort of different here.
I have a little bit more to say.
I want to get into what Dean Phillips pointed out about Republicans who are on committees, and why there's just a deep sense of hypocrisy here.
But you have thoughts that kind of resonate with the previous discussion on purity when it comes to Omar and Omar's identity as an African-born woman, as a black woman, as a Muslim woman, and as a woman.
So off to you.
Yeah.
So I think tied in with this is because it's obvious to anybody, right?
This is, you know, you did it to us.
Now we're doing it to you.
McCarthy promised to do this before, you know, as part of winning the house speakership, right?
Was agreeing to do things like Punish Schiff and punish Swalwell and punish, um, Omar.
And I think, I think the issue is, is like, not that it's like, okay, yeah, we get it.
It's hyper-partisan.
You don't like Democrats.
And so you're going to remove prominent Democrats from committees.
The issue for me is always like, why this one?
Because we all know That the GOP has been opposed and sort of, it is, it's like the drag queen issue.
She has been under their skin since she came into Congress.
Since before the issue of the anti-semitic comments and so forth, right?
And for me the issue is why?
And I think it's because of all those things you just listed.
She just is not What Christian nationalists in America think that America can be.
She's like every box that they can tick just about that.
They don't think a real American is, as you say, she's foreign born and not just foreign born, but born in Africa.
And that matters.
We can just remember what Trump said about Africa and African nations.
Uh, when he was president, she is, as you say, Muslim, uh, she's, she's a woman.
Um, And she's read as black, etc, etc, etc, etc.
I think it disrupts this notion of purity.
Again, it's like having a black man in the White House, right?
It's just something that for a certain kind of Republican, and that's most of the Republicans in Congress, and it's certainly the Marjorie Taylor Greene's and the others of the world.
There just is no place in governance for somebody who looks And looks like and is so many things of what Omar is in terms of her identity.
I think that's why it just strikes again a nerve with the GOP and they've been targeting her for so long because she for them represents an impure America.
She's an America that is not what Christian nationalists think it should be.
And the last point I'll make, if somebody says, if somebody versus me, Uncle Ron Willshow proved that to me, well, she did apologize and went through this kind of whole process of exploration in the aftermath of the anti-Semitic comments.
Show me Marjorie Taylor Greene doing that.
Right?
Because she's on the committees now.
She doubled down and said, if I had been involved in J6, we would have been armed and so forth, which I think is the direction that you're going of just showing the hypocrisy of this, of holding her to a standard that she has met, Omar that is, while at the same time allowing avowed Christian nationalists To gain positions of authority and not batting an eye at it.
So I could go on forever.
I will step back and interested in your thoughts on that.
Well, yeah, exactly what you say.
Who's the one that believes in cancel culture?
I mean, all we hear about is cancel culture.
You can't can't, right?
So Ilhan Omar has a set of statements and tweets widely considered hurtful to the Jewish community, apologizes in public.
Uh, apologizes in private and is working to do better.
Now, it's not great.
I mean, I wish, I wish that never happened.
I'm sure Ilan Omar wishes that happened.
Never happened.
I'm sure so many folks in the Jewish community in Minnesota and beyond wish that didn't happen, but it did.
The reaction was, repentance, apology, try to do better.
Okay?
So, who believes in cancel culture now?
That's the question, Uncle Ron.
Okay?
Second, Dean Phillips gets up yesterday, and he's a representative from Minnesota, he's a Jewish man, and says, look, Ilhan Omar apologized, we've talked about it, we've had really good and honest discussions.
There are times we disagree about policy, but I have all the confidence in the world of Ilhan Omar being on congressional committees as a representative.
He then goes to point out, and this is Dean Phillips, she has never posted a video depicting herself decapitating and killing fellow members of Congress.
He's referencing Paul Gosar, who does have a committee assignment, this term, and who is still in Congress after posting an image of him decapitating other folks in Congress.
Gosar has a seat on the House Committee on Natural Resources and so on.
So he's on committee and yet this man posted an image Of himself, or at least a depiction of himself, decapitating fellow American leaders.
Phillips goes on to say, she doesn't question whether a plane really crashed into the Pentagon on 9-11.
Who did that?
Marjorie Taylor Greene.
She does not wonder if school shootings are staged.
Who does that?
Marjorie Taylor Greene, when it comes to Parkland.
She used to harass David Hogg and follow him around before she was a congressperson.
Does not think that Jewish people created lasers.
that caused California wildfires.
Who does that?
Marjorie Taylor Greene does not reference QAnon conspiracies.
Here's the point, Dan, is not only are those just outrageous, you know, it's an outrageous list of things that Marjorie Taylor Greene has done, but there is no, as you just already said it, I'll say it again, there's no repentance, there's no apology, there's no backing down, right?
It's just keep fighting until everyone is tired of listening to you because that's what Marjorie Taylor Greene does.
And yet, right, as the Guardian reports this week, okay, Marjorie Taylor Greene has done nothing but rise the ranks in the contemporary GOP.
Right?
Nothing.
Okay?
All of the things I just talked about.
And yet, The Guardian says, quote, in 2023, Greene is now firmly on her way to becoming one of the senior figures in the Republican Party.
She's a favorite and an ally of Kevin McCarthy, the new House Speaker, and is preparing to take up assignments on some of Congress's most prominent committees.
We talk about it all the time, Dan.
I had students ask me the other day about being conservative and Republican, and I was like, you know, When I look at the Republican Party, the new Speaker of the House, one of his closest allies is Marjorie Taylor Greene.
And here is the Speaker working with his cohorts to vote Ilhan Omar, Adam Schiff, others off of committees in just a pure act of revenge.
That's it, right?
So anyway, I agree with everything you said.
Ilhan Omar is made in a lab to scare the white Christian nationalists.
If this is the future of the United States, Ilhan Omar, then they are scared out of their boots because it signals to them the exact kind of wrong person having authority and having power in the country.
Black woman, Muslim, not Christian, not submitting to a kind of Christian patriarchy, progressive, outspoken, and just totally unafraid, right, of staring, you know, white Christian patriarchs in the face. you know, white Christian patriarchs in the face.
If this is the future of the country, so many of us are like, wow, a stunning display of diversity and persistence, a refugee, someone coming from overwhelmingly harrowing circumstances, and the white Christian nationalist is like, If this person is allowed to be the future of America, we are all doomed.
Anyway, final thoughts on this one, Dan, before we kind of talk about some other stuff.
Just a couple.
One is if the GOP believe their own mythology about sort of the pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, all that sort of stuff, like this would be a success story.
Omar would be a success story.
Yep.
Great point.
She's not.
People want to know what, who are the real Americans for the contemporary GOP.
All you have to do is, as you say, look, look how they treat Omar or the rest of the quote unquote, the squad, right?
As opposed to how they treat Marjorie Taylor green.
If somebody looks at me, I just said, well, I'll just say, what, what is the GOP value?
Who to them is the real American is what that should look like.
It's Marjorie Taylor Greene.
And the last point that I'll make is somebody could say, well, you know, there was some resistance to this within the GOP.
There were a lot of people who didn't want to vote her off of that.
But at the end of the day, what happened?
They were able to whip them, whip the votes.
And get her removed, which means the GOP fell in line.
So where I'm going with all of this is I'm still done with the whole.
This isn't really what the GOP is.
This isn't really what American conservatism is in all the places that matters and the mechanisms of power and the levers of authority and so forth.
This is the contemporary GOP and we see it on full display.
You know, Dan, we've said it so many times, and I think sometimes people think we're exaggerating, or sometimes even I am like, well, you know, is all of that actually this exaggerated reality true?
And then you see these actions and you're like, you cannot have a functioning democracy that has only two parties, where one party has no intention of engaging in good faith when it comes to public debate.
It's just, you can't do it.
And you see that here.
You see it on display.
And I just wanna, I'll just say one more thing about this, and that is that if you remember the feeling of like just helplessness and like feeling distraught during the Trump administration, of just like seeing American norms and processes overrun time and time again,
If there's anything that good can come out of these things, the Omar and Schiff and Swalwell being thrown off committees, I think it's just remember what this feels like.
And this should encourage you.
What are you going to do in 2023 to contribute?
To organize?
To be part of something?
A campaign?
An issue?
Reproductive rights?
Voting rights?
What is it going to be?
Because this is just a really good reminder of what's ahead.
If someone like Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump is president, if the Senate flips, if your local municipalities, mayors, governors, and so on, right?
Whatever the situation is where you live, just remember that this is a really good reminder of what is ahead.
People ask me all the time.
I'm doing all these book events, Dan.
They're like, you know, J6 hasn't happened again.
Is Christian nationalism over?
And I'm like, look at what's happening in the House.
This Does it look like it's gone away?
Does it look like that like revenge and resentment has like subsided somehow?
Because it does not to me.
So anyway.
All right.
Let's take a break.
We'll come back and just we'll just keep the good times rolling, Dan.
We'll just keep the good times rolling with the Neo-Nazi Homeschool Network in Ohio.
Be right back.
Dan, do you feel like some days like some days there's some levity kind of in this podcast, maybe a little?
It feels like there's no levity right now.
I don't know.
I mean, it's minus 50 where you live.
Are you wearing cargo shorts?
The people want to know what's going on.
You know what I mean?
Are you wearing the cargo shorts in the minus 50?
The cool look of the cargo shorts with like thermals underneath.
Cause it's just, it's a winning look.
I like that.
I'm nothing, I'm nothing but style.
Birkenstocks?
Birkenstocks?
The flip flops.
I mean, there are socks for me, but you know.
Yeah, there are white dudes who wear shorts when it's like 45 degrees.
But I want I want you to be the white dude who wears cargo shorts when it's minus 45 degrees.
Yeah.
And like instead of a coat, I wear like 12 flannels.
So.
Yeah.
Yeah.
OK.
All right.
Well, there we go.
OK.
Well, let's just do it.
I don't know.
I mean, we could sit here and pretend we're not going to do it, but it's all going to be, you know, it's all going to be what it is.
So here's from The Guardian.
An alleged Nazi homeschooling group based in Ohio has been widely condemned.
This was found out this week and discovered.
And it's a group run by a couple calling themselves Mr. and Mrs. Saxon, which is not an accident, Anglo-Saxon.
They established what they call the Dissonant Homeschool Channel on Telegram in 2021.
And it has 2,500 subscribers, Dan.
They distribute ready-made lesson plans that include history lessons, which praise the Confederate flag and Robert E. Lee.
They talk about Robert E. Lee as a grand role model for young white men.
They denigrate Martin Luther King Jr.
There are lessons on Adolf Hitler and learning some of his teachings and speeches and things like this.
So, here's the thing, and there's a lot to talk about here, but This is absolutely terrifying, and it's just one of those moments where it's like, you know, we don't have to decode this, Dan.
This is Nazis running a whole homeschool movement in Ohio and spreading their, you know, these lesson plans to all over the place via the social media network Telegram.
They're just like, what do we need to decode?
This is terrible, okay?
What I do think we need to talk about, okay, is the way that homeschooling is regulated or not regulated.
I will say I have learned a lot about this from Ryan Stoller, R.L.
Stoller, who's writing a book on child liberation theology and runs a blog that is incredibly informative.
So I'll come to Ryan's work in a minute, okay?
But here's what the Guardian piece says.
The emergence of the group has led to calls for a revision of the way Ohio oversees homeschooling.
HuffPost reported that parents planning to homeschool must submit a brief outline of the intended curriculum and a list of teaching materials to the local public school superintendent.
Then, if the home education plan meets the basic requirements of state law, the superintendent must excuse the child from public school attendance, HuffPost wrote.
But even in states with these types of requirements, there's little to no enforcement mechanism to ensure that parents are actually teaching the curriculum they submitted.
So, Dan, you can submit whatever you want.
No one is coming to check.
No one is coming to see what you're up to.
No one is going to be visiting the classroom, so to speak.
And there is just incredibly little oversight.
Now, that is where Christian nationalism and evangelicalism really comes into play here.
If you all have listened to me, interview Ryan Stoller, if you have listened to the Orange Wave and heard the history of homeschooling in the last 40 years, you know that there is an organization called the Homeschool Legal Defense Association.
It was started in 1983 by Michael Ferris.
This was really an outgrowth of the Christian nationalist desire to be able to homeschool kids away from public schools.
There's a lot of reasons.
This goes back to the resistance of segregation all the way back to the 50s and 60s.
It also goes back to the resistance of teaching Certain aspects of American history.
It also goes back to the resistance of teaching certain aspects of sex ed and health and so on.
So let me read a little bit from a post by Ryan Stoller on this, okay?
The Homeschool Legal Defense Association, the leading organization of the homeschool lobby here in America, is the leading homeschool lobby here in America.
But the HSLDA isn't just an insurance program for homeschoolers.
It's dedicated to advancing a white evangelical Christian nationalist worldview.
Founded in 1983 by Michael Ferris, an activist lawyer who cut his teeth successfully opposing the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in Washington State.
So, right, everyone, just stop for a minute.
The guy who started this organization made a name for himself opposing the ERA.
The HSLDA has the successful push to deregulate homeschooling across the United States.
Because of the HLDSA's efforts, it is legal in 48 states for convicted child abusers to homeschool their children.
But HSLDA is not content with their victories domestically.
For years now, they've turned their attention to international law.
With fears that it could undermine parental rights in the USA, HSLDA decided to go on the offensive.
to transform their leaders, especially Ferris and HSLDA director of global relations, Mike Donnelly, into international law experts.
So Dan, they've really kind of exported the idea of homeschooling and this conservative Christian worldview all over the place.
Okay.
And it's not limited.
There is a whole kind of network of all of this happening across the globe.
In the journal Global Networks, researchers Julia Mireya-Promoze and Christina Stoeckle describe the organization, this global network, as an advocacy coalition that is composed of highly conservative actors generally associated with an anti-rights agenda.
Anti-gay, anti-women, anti-children.
It was founded in 2012 by Gerald Huebner, a conservative evangelical Christian from Canada, who is on the board of the HSLDA's Canada branch.
Dan, I say all that from Ryan because I want people to see that there is just an immense amount of talk about protecting children.
There's an immense amount of talk about not introducing children to dangerous material.
But if you actually do the history, The deregulation of homeschooling, and a lot of homeschoolers, not all, but the majority of homeschoolers are conservative Christians.
They have worked to deregulate the industry such that there's no oversight.
You can be a convicted child abuser and be a homeschool teacher.
There is almost no oversight when it comes to lesson plans.
You can be somebody who has not graduated from high school and teach.
So, when we have the emergence of a Nazi homeschooling network, I automatically make the connection.
And I'm like, if you cared about kids, you would regulate homeschooling such that kids could not be in danger, violated, abused, or just being taught in a way that is at best insufficient and at worst incredibly harmful.
There's only the ability for a Nazi homeschool network because Christian nationalists have worked so hard to make sure that the government has no oversight over their homeschool networks.
And I will not back down from that claim, even if it sounds a bit controversial.
What are your thoughts on this one?
I guess mine is, you know, people hear this and they're shocked and surprised.
And I'm not.
Until I read this, I did not know that there was like a neo-Nazi homeschool group in Ohio.
But when I hear that there is, I'm like, yeah, there will be somewhere.
Why?
Because it's just the flip side of everything we hear from, and I'm sorry to bring them up again, the DeSantis's of the world, or now the Trump's of the world, or others, all the stuff about the AP course and whatever, the whole teaching about, you know, anti-black racism or queer studies or whatever.
It's all part of a woke agenda to transform American higher ed or something like that.
Folks, if people are busy Being militant against a so-called woke agenda?
Guess what it means?
It means that somewhere there is a well-wrought, far-extreme opposite of that agenda that is being prepared and is being taught.
And what is it?
If you flip the logic on everything that these people oppose, It's fascism, right?
And guess what?
That's what neo-nazism is.
It's fascism.
And fascism is built, it's a comprehensive way of viewing reality.
It is built on notions of what normative gender is, what normative sexuality is, normative notions of race and nation and culture and religion and everything else.
All of which is just to say that for me, this was like, It's like an empty space and you're just waiting for the thing to emerge that fills it, right?
The weird analogy I was thinking of the other day is when like chemists and others, you know, the periodic table, all of us had to learn that at some point and there used to be like gaps.
And it's because people who study this are like, there's going to be some element that fits in there.
That's how they work.
That's how this was.
You're like, somewhere, there is some ring of people who is saying the quiet parts out loud, that's not speaking in coded language anymore, that just comes right out and says it.
Hey, you know what?
The exemplars we need in America, it's not MLK.
No, it's Robert E. Lee.
Uh, it's not, uh, you know, an inclusive E Pluribus Unum model of America.
No, it's the Confederacy, uh, and everything that it stood for.
So for me, uh, obviously I get worked up and, and, and sort of angry about it.
But for me, the anger lies in the fact that it's not surprising given both that and everything you just said about the way that the homeschool industry works, the All right, y'all.
Well, we lost Dan, and I suspect that this has happened several times today.
We tried to record, and I suspect that it is because of the weather in his region.
And so he didn't get to finish his thought, but he was just sort of finishing his idea about what's happening in The homeschool networks and the lack of oversight.
He just texted me.
Live updates, everybody.
This is very exciting.
We're usually not this dynamic of a show, but he just lost power.
So, he has no Wi-Fi and therefore he's off our recording here.
So, I want to take a minute while I have it just to say that my book Preparing for War came out A month ago today, and I've just been overwhelmed by the support, and I just want to say thank you to everyone.
Everyone who listens to the show, everyone who's bought the book, all the colleagues who have supported me and really told folks to check it out.
It's been an overwhelming month.
I've done a lot of interviews and showed up on a lot of podcasts.
Generally kind of woken up every day, ready to kind of talk about the book for hours and hours.
And I'm pretty tired, I'm not going to lie.
But I'm also just really grateful.
I've had a chance to meet so many people, had a chance to shake hands with folks who listen to this show and have incredible stories from Seattle to Orange County to You know, all over the place.
And so I look forward to doing more of that.
And just look forward to getting to meet and hear from a bunch of you going forward.
So thanks to everyone for that.
I'm really, really, really grateful.
All right, we'll be back next week.
But for now, let me say we could really use your support on Patreon and PayPal.
You can also Venmo us now at Straight White JC.
And we have a Venmo and that is at Straight White JC.
I'll also say that if you'd like to advertise on the show, Please email us at straightwhiteamericanjesus at gmail.com.
We advertise with podcasters, with booksellers, publishers, authors, nonprofits, think tanks, and so on.
So if you'd like to advertise on the show, please reach out, and we'll definitely see if we can't partner.
Find us at Straight White JC.
Find me at Bradley Onishi.
We'll be back next week with It's in the Code with a great interview on evangelical entrepreneurs and the weekly roundup.
Thanks for being here.
We'll catch you next time.
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