Ahead in 2024? Abortion, Violence, and the Global Far-Right + Bonus Content
In the first part of this episode, Brad talks with journalist Annika Brockschmidt about what under reported or under the radar things she is watching in 2024. Annika walks through a number of court cases on reproductive rights and what they will mean for access to the abortion pill. She also analyzes the violent rhetoric Trump and MAGA Nation have been employing over the last month through the lens of the history of fascism. Finally, she details how the far-right is organizing around the world - even in her home country of Germany where secret meetings and handshake deals are setting off alarms about fascist impulses in the German public square.
In the bonus content for subscribers, Brad spends 30 minutes dissecting Josh Hawley's Christian nationalist manifesto - explaining why the senator's argument and conclusions are un-American and fearfully puny.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus, My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Today we have a two-part episode.
On the first part, I'm going to be joined by journalist Annika Brockschmidt to talk about some key issues in 2024.
And then on our bonus content, I'm going to be talking about Josh Hawley's Christian Nationalist Manifesto.
Which he published at First Things a couple of days ago, and just dissect it point by point as best as I can.
Before we get going, I just want to say thank you to a bunch of people, those who have signed on to be subscribers and join us in the Discord.
It's really fun to see all the new folks popping up in our Discord server and the discussions and comments and memes and everything going back and forth.
So great to see you all there.
I want to thank Scott Loman for helping me out in Minneapolis when I was there about a week ago and for all of his hospitality and just going above and beyond what anyone could have imagined.
Dan and I love doing live events and visiting various parts of the country to talk to humanist groups, church groups, and anyone else who's concerned about Christian nationalism, the religious right, and all the issues we talk here.
So, if you're a group out there and you're thinking about an event like that and would be interested in having us reach out, because it is just something we love to do and we really think is important to safeguard our democracy.
All right, y'all, let's get into it.
I'm joined now by my friend and colleague, Annika Brockschmidt, also my co-author, somebody whose work I admire.
Many of you are familiar with Annika.
Annika is a German journalist and historian who writes often, not only for the German media, but also for English media, and has written extensively for religion dispatches, NBC News, and other outlets on this side of the world.
Annika is also someone who I just appreciate because her perspective is one of someone coming from beyond the United States.
And thus, she has an interesting lens with which to dissect our current political moment.
So first, let me just say, Annika, thanks for being here.
Hi, Brad.
Thank you so much for having me.
So I gave you some homework and I wanted you to talk to me about some things that are on your horizon in 2024 that perhaps we're not talking about yet or we're talking not talking about enough and when we spoke about it you mentioned some abortion cases that are coming up and I think reproductive rights are on people's minds.
I think the Biden campaign is Foreshadowing a big push on reproductive rights and its messaging.
This has obviously been a really foregrounded issue since the fall of Roe.
However, I think there's some things about these cases and reproductive rights at stake in the country in general that maybe are being overlooked and you pointed some of those out to me.
So if you can talk to us about some court cases that are coming up and what they mean for reproductive rights in the United States going forward.
Technically, it's actually four cases that will decide two questions.
On the 5th of January this year, the Supreme Court ruled that Idaho is allowed to deny women life-saving abortions for now.
They have agreed to hear two very similar cases that both deal with this question.
One is called Muriel Mike et al.
versus the United States.
The other Idaho versus the United States and oral arguments are set for April and we can expect a ruling this summer.
As Ian Millhiser writes in Vox, both cases present similar issues but the Idaho case was brought to SCOTUS by Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador, a GOP politician, While the Moyle case was brought by the state's GOP-controlled legislature.
And terrifically, in the meantime, Idaho is allowed to violate the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, a federal law which states that patients must be given life-saving and stabilizing care in emergency rooms.
And this is the case until the Supreme Court makes its decision this summer.
Now let's be very clear what this means.
SCOTUS blocked a lower court order which would have enforced a federal law that protects patients who require medically necessary abortions.
This will kill pregnant people even before we get a ruling from the Supreme Court in the summer.
Recently the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had also handed down yet another horrific decision.
In which it granted Texas the right to violate that specific law that I just talked about and of course they don't phrase it that way.
Their argument was essentially that abortions are not part of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act and therefore refusing a pregnant person an abortion in an emergency room is not in violation of this law.
Which is, of course, absolute insanity.
The other two cases that will be incredibly important that the Supreme Court will hear this year are FDA et al.
versus Alliance Hippocratic Medicine et al.
and Danko Laboratories LLC versus Alliance of Hippocratic Medicine et al.
Previously, the Fifth Circuit had ruled that easier access to mifepristone, an abortion drug, which had been made possible in 2016, should be stopped.
The question that will be answered in these two cases is until what time in a pregnancy mifepristone can be administered and how easy it will be to get access to said drug.
So, for example, whether it needs to be handed out in person.
So, since the Supreme Court refused to hear another case which would have challenged the FDA's approval of Mifidprostone, this is not about that, but about access to it.
Which is still bad news, but probably basically as good as it gets in post-Roe America with this Supreme Court.
Because, as Chris Geidner explained for all of us non-lawyers at Law Dog, and I quote, if the court had not taken up the DOJ and Danko requests, the eased access would have been ended.
If the court had taken up the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine's request, the case would have put overall approval in question.
Given Wednesday's news, Miffy Pristone will remain approved.
The only question at this point is on what terms it will be available." And of course, unsurprisingly, the Alliance Defending Freedom is involved.
They brought the latter case to the court and they also represent Idaho in their case against the Biden administration.
So these are the cases supporters of abortion rights need to keep their eye on in 2024.
All right.
So thanks for breaking that down, Annika.
I really appreciate the clarity there, because it seems that there's a little bit of good news in the sense that it's not a matter of the drug's approval, but there is a sense of access to it.
And of course, approving a drug is of no use if somebody can't obtain it.
So there's a lot at stake there, as you outline, and there's also a lot at stake in Idaho.
We talk about Idaho a lot on this show.
And I think people will be familiar with the politics there as we've talked about it.
Now, I want to move on from reproductive rights to rhetoric.
One of the things I really appreciate about your work, Anika, is that you pay attention to language very carefully.
You're a historian of fascism and authoritarianism and somebody who has You've taken great pains to understand how propaganda works.
And you, I think, have some thoughts on the way that Trump is tying together a desire for violence, a promise for retribution against his enemies, and kind of commingling that with all of his legal troubles.
And so, you know, I'm wondering now, as you look ahead to 2024, What are you paying attention to when it comes to language and rhetoric and discourse?
Trump has escalated his attacks on those who could hold him accountable for his crimes recently.
Now, don't get me wrong, he has always liked to threaten and intimidate his political enemies and those who have accused him of crimes.
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, he was happy to let his fans run amok to threaten the lives and livelihoods of election officials.
I think we all remember the harrowing testimonies of Wondria Shea Moss, former Elections Department employee in Fulton County, and her mother, Georgia election worker, Ruby Freeman.
But in the last year alone, Trump has amped up his threats towards those who have been tasked by the justice system with holding him accountable, with prosecuting him.
He has made threats to have people like special counsel Jack Smith institutionalized in a mental institution.
And meanwhile, he has kept pushing his own victimization narrative, one that has always been at the core of the far right, but the temperature, so to speak, has been turned up in the recent months.
In a speech in Iowa on December 19th, for example, Trump pledged, quote, as soon as I get back in the Oval Office, I'll also immediately end the war on Christians.
I don't know if you feel it.
You have a war.
There's a war.
End quote.
He has tied the old narrative of the war against Christians.
He didn't invent that one.
Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and all of the others were pushing that one long before Trump ever came close to smelling distance at the presidency.
But he has tied this narrative to his own legal troubles and to his own person.
He has, as Pat Buchanan by the way did before him, framed himself as the one that they, the deep state, the Democrats, whoever he means by they, are actually after.
He's framed himself as the only one who can protect the quote-unquote real Americans.
And in the same speech in Iowa that I just mentioned, he also promised to basically institutionalize the persecution of his and his base's political enemies once in office.
He said, and I quote again, But it's not just Trump. But it's not just Trump.
Just days ago, Elise Stefanik, head of the House Republican Conference, called those who serve prison sentences for their attack on the Capitol on January 6th, hostages, with no pushback from NBC's Kristen Welker.
And what all of those narratives have in common is that they reframe possible violence from the MAGA base As defensive, if not necessary, preventative violence.
And this is something that I believe we talked about when Marjorie Taylor Greene was making comments about alleged killing squads that she said were murdering conservatives.
Genocide scholars call this sort of lie and accusation in a mirror.
It serves to create a permission structure for potentially deadly violence.
Now, depending on how quickly Trump's court cases progress, there are various scenarios which could serve as potential pressure points that could lead to an eruption of violence amongst his supporters.
We have seen multiple hoax bomb threats emerge as a favoured tactic by radicalised right-wingers.
They are used to target healthcare clinics, libraries and recently even government buildings.
To basically foster an atmosphere of fear amongst those who in any way offend right-wing Christian sensibilities.
It doesn't take much imagination, as experts on white supremacist violence like Kathleen Below, for example, have warned, to see this powder keg potentially blow up this year.
It's unclear if we're ever going to see another January 6th.
What I'd say is more likely this year are isolated acts of terrorism.
Hi, my name is Peter and I'm a prophet.
In the new novel, American Prophet.
I was the one who dreamed about the natural disaster just before it happened.
Oh, and the pandemic.
And that crazy election.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not bragging.
It's not like I asked for the job.
Actually, no one would ask for this job.
At least half the people will hate whatever I say and almost everyone thinks I'm a little crazy.
Getting a date is next to impossible.
I've got a radio host who is making up conspiracies about me, a dude actually shooting at me, and an unhinged president threatening me.
But the job isn't all that bad.
I've gotten to see the country, and meet some really interesting people, and hopefully do some good along the way.
You can find my story on Amazon, Audible, or iTunes.
Just look for American Profit by Jeff Fulmer.
That's American Profit by Jeff Fulmer.
I agree.
I do think that kind of violence is very possible, and when I get asked about this in interviews and other places, I always try to mention, as you've done, the kind of little fires everywhere and the ways that there's kindling that could lead to an explosion, as you say.
One of the things that I think people are always wondering is, okay, so what are possible scenarios?
Like, what does it look like on the ground in terms of like a potential way that this could all play out?
So, for example, if Trump is actually convicted, that would be one of the possible scenarios where I'd be extremely concerned about violence from his supporters, since he's been whipping them into even more of a frenzy than usual, which is really saying something.
And then we also can't forget the sort of classic white supremacist scene.
That could use this environment for attacks as well.
A white supremacist from Florida was recently arrested for allegedly planning a mass casualty event.
But really, the closer the election looms, the bigger the danger of violent incidents perpetrated by Trump supporters and by white supremacists who want to tap into this anger.
And if some of this already sounds familiar, that's no coincidence.
Trump has long flirted with and endorsed political violence.
He and the MAGA movement have long moved beyond mere flirtation.
They are now basically calling for the heads of their opponents and everyone who's standing in their way.
And onto question number three.
Well, Trump made headlines in the recent months with his fascist rhetoric.
And his consistency when it comes to repeating it, despite the public outcry and pushback, gives us a good idea as to where his campaign and a possible Trump administration will likely be headed this year.
At the conference on white Christian nationalism that we both attended and spoke at together in late 2022 at Yale, sociologist Sam Perry gave a talk where he spoke about the misleading framework of polarisation and how it implies a similar radicalisation on both sides.
And he showed us data that he had collected and that laid out that while Democrats had been continually expanding their coalition to become more diverse, the GOP had gone in the opposite direction.
And Sam told us that what he was seeing in the data led him to predict that Republicans would continue purging their own ranks, increasingly becoming more and more focused on, I think he called it ideological purity, sliding even further to the right.
Because, essentially, ideologically speaking, there is no off-ramp for them.
If you've told your electorate for decades that the political opponent is not just that, a political opponent who you disagree with, but a mortal enemy who is in league with the forces of evil, there is no way to tone down that rhetoric in a believable way to your base, at least not if you want to remain in office.
This being the key if here.
So I can already hear someone at home saying, well, sure, but Trump's always kind of been focused on retribution and violence and getting rid of those who don't follow him.
So, you know, we're used to it.
Should we think that this is going to be any different in 2024?
Trump's always been somewhat obsessed with blood.
Maybe you guys remember the Islamophobic pig's blood bullet story he liked to tell for a while?
Or his comments about good genes?
And now he has escalated to the claim, and I know you and Dan have already discussed this on the podcast, that immigrants are, quote, poisoning the blood of the country.
Something that, to quote Jason Stanley, is textbook Mein Kampf.
We've also seen the development of a sort of Marga Marta cult of sorts, especially surrounding those who were convicted for partaking in the insurrection.
I just mentioned what Elise Stefanik said about them.
But ahead of the Iowa primaries, Trump said something else that, in connection to these other points and developments, made my ears sort of prick up.
He told his voters that even if they were, quote, sick as a dog, they should brace the Iowa blizzards to caucus.
And if they died afterwards, it would have all been worth it because they died for a good cause.
So I think we'll be likely seeing an even more intense focus on purity from the GOP, be it racial or ideological purity, from the right-wing leaders of the GOP, because it appears that the base is responding, as they always have so far, positively to this from Trump.
All right.
So one of the questions I get a lot, and I actually got this just about a week ago when I gave a talk in Minneapolis, is whether or not the kinds of fascist elements we are seeing take root in the United States are isolated, or whether or not they're things we can see in other parts of the world.
And what I said in response to that question at my talk was, Well, we definitely can see a kind of global phenomenon here.
We can see it in Bolsonaro's Brazil, even though he barely lost his election just a while ago.
We could see it in Hungary.
We can see it in Russia, of course.
But we can also point to places and recent histories in places like Poland, or Italy, or even in Northern Europe.
You're German, you're German-based, and you're a scholar of right-wing movements.
And I think as we finish today, you want to tell us a little bit about what's happening in Germany and the kind of good and bad news there.
So, what's going on?
So because 2024 wanted to tell us right off the bat that it will suck from the get-go, and I know that you'd like some distraction from your own fascist hellscape, let me delight you, and yes, I am being sarcastic as a coping mechanism, with the German variant of what sounds like basically unhinged right-wing madlips, the news that Germany started this new year with, at a secret meeting
In the hotel Landhaus Adlon at Lenitzsee near Potsdam, where members of the Identitarian Movement, a right-wing extremist ethnic nationalist group, neo-Nazis, AfD politicians, the AfD is Germany's far-right party, and their allies from the business world,
financed in part by the now former head of a popular German burger chain, forged a secret, quote-unquote, master plan that would lead to the deportation of millions of people from Germany.
I know this is not an episode drawn from history, but reality in January 2024.
The guest list of this secret meeting, which an investigative journalist group named Correctiv, German for Correctiv, initially reported on, included doctors, lawyers, politicians, rich businessmen and donors side by side with members of the neo-Nazi scene, AFD members, and rich businessmen and donors side by side with members of the neo-Nazi scene, AFD members, and yes, a few members
And according to research from corrective journalists, the deportation plans included three groups, asylum seekers, foreigners with a residency permit, and what they called, quote, unassimilated citizens.
Now this would also include the deportation of people with immigration history who have a German passport to an unspecified African country.
The idea that citizenship alone is not enough to be considered a legitimate citizen of a country is deeply rooted in what is called Furkish thinking.
The belief that there are biological and ideological parameters according to which the individual's belonging and membership to the quote-unquote national body, the Volkskörper, is assessed upon.
It is a deeply fascist conception of who is a quote-unquote true German.
Some of this might sound familiar to you.
And that's because right-wing extremists are pursuing similar plans in other countries.
In the US, Glenn Elmas, a fellow at the Claremont Institute, right-wing think tank which sort of styles itself as the intellectual head of margination and is quite influential in conservative circles, wrote in its online magazine in March 2021 that, quote, most people who live in the United States today, certainly more than half, are not Americans in the true sense of the word."
He explicitly didn't mean illegal immigrants by this.
He instead made it very clear in his article that he also included those with US citizenship who were not going along with MAGA ideology.
The true Americans, for Elmas at least, are Trump voters.
He writes, I am referring to the 75 million people who voted in the last election against the senile figurehead of a party that stands for mob violence, ruthless censorship and racial grievances, not to mention bureaucratic despotism and Kurd.
And by that, he means Biden, not Trump, of course.
And in line with this folkish fascist ideology, ideology, Donald Trump and his team have announced in the current presidential election campaign that they're planning mass deportations of millions of "undocumented immigrants", keeping them in camps, and the end of birthright citizenship.
Because, according to them, US citizenship isn't enough to make you a "true American".
In his article, Elmer writes, quote, I'm really referring to the many native-born people, some of whose families have been here since the Mayflower, who may technically be citizens of the United States, but are no longer, if they ever were Americans.
They do not believe in, live by or even like the principles, traditions and ideals that until recently defined America as a nation and as a people.
It is not obvious what we should call these citizen aliens, these non-American Americans, but they are something else.
A similar ethnic understanding of citizenship, of what constitutes a true American, a true German, could be found amongst the German and Austrian right-wing extremists who met in Potsdam, according to the research of the investigative journalists of Correctiv.
And that's because fascist ideologies, even though they do have several national differences, share this understanding Of who belongs to the national body at their core.
And this new story has a particularly chilling historical echo when it comes to these fascist fantasies of racial purity.
Because in 1940 the Nazis came up with the so-called Madagascar Plan, which would have involved forcefully deporting four million German Jews to the island of Madagascar.
They couldn't implement this plan, it was too complicated.
And so, two years later, in 1942, a mere 8 kilometres, that's about 4.9 miles, from where the secret meeting happened this year.
In a villa at Lake Wannsee, they plotted the genocide of European Jews.
Now, if some of you follow German politics a bit, you might correctly say, but it's no secret that the AFD wants to deport migrants.
That's true.
AFD politicians have proclaimed this, even in their official 2021 platform.
Where they use the right-wing euphemism of, quote-unquote, re-migration, which is simply another word for forceful deportation.
These plans would involve violence, something which Björn Höcke, the leader of the AfD in the state of Thüringen, and someone who you, according to a German court, are officially allowed to call a fascist without being in violation of Germany's strict libel laws, has said so openly, calling what he wants, quote, well-tempered cruelty, human hardship and unpleasant scenes, end quote.
Now some parts of the AFD have tried to backtrack on the deportation plans of German passport holders since the news of this secret meeting broke.
But that is a neither credible nor be the point.
Because the plans clearly would violate German law.
But as Natascha Strobl, my Austrian colleague and political scientist who's an expert ...on right-wing extremism pointed out the question of whether or not this could be achieved legally is only one part of it.
The other is to alienate, to threaten, to ostracize, to show exactly who would and would not be allowed to be a part of the society that these people imagine.
Why am I telling you this, you might ask yourself.
I'm not telling you this to bum you out, even though it might, but I'm telling you this to emphasize that this is a phenomenon that's not only affecting the US.
Fascism is on the rise globally and we need to call it what it is and to stand firm against it.
Now, in Germany, there have been demonstrations against the AfD ever since the news of the secret meeting broke.
There's been loud criticism.
There have been calls to ban the party, which is something that's difficult but possible under German law.
But that's a whole other conversation.
But the thing is, people noticed and people are listening.
Well, and I think on that note, we've seen just here in recent days, mass demonstrations in major German cities with millions and millions of Germans coming out to protest against the AFD and this whole secret meeting and the threat of some sort of fascist element in Germany.
So, you know, we do Reasons for Hope on Friday, but I think this is a pretty good...
Reason for hope right now.
And it is also, I think for me, at least as an American, an example of ways you can preemptively protest that, uh, we don't have to wait until it happens.
You know, there's, there's a chance to go out and organize now.
And I think that's part of why we do this show and we do everything we do is to sort of say, Hey, let's, let's get together now and ring every alarm bell with everyone we can, because these threats are in our midst.
So anyway.
All right, Annika, thank you for your time.
Thanks for all the work you do.
I'm so thankful that you are here and just it's great to catch up and hear your insights and your warnings for 2024.
Thanks for all of the hard work that you do, Brad.
I have honestly no idea if you ever sleep.
I highly doubt it.
I don't sleep very much, but I sleep when I can.
So, but I do appreciate just, you know, not only your work, but I think that the global perspective you bring to it, because it makes me feel like we are not kind of fighting this alone, even if it's discouraging to see these elements pop up across the world.
We are all in this together and that kind of makes me hopeful in spite of everything.
Makes me hopeful too.
And so does all the dog pictures on your Instagram.
So that's always just like, you know, if I need to pick me up, I just go look at your Instagram and the dog pictures and the walks and the beautiful places that the dog goes.
And I feel better.
And I think that dog has a pretty good life.
All right.
Anika, thanks for being here.
Friends, follow Anika on X, on all the social media.
You can find her at Ardent Historian, and she will enlighten you in ways that you don't expect.
We're going to turn now to my take on Josh Hawley's Christian Manifesto, and it's really, in my mind, just shoddy work that deserves to be dissected, and I'm going to do that.
So, if you are a subscriber, if you're somebody who signed up for our premium feed, just hang out for a minute and you're going to hear that.
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You'll also get a premium episode that we do once a month with me and Dan and that's a two hour long episode and that's coming out...
Later this week.
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And nonetheless, thankful for all of you for being here, for listening.
We'll be back on Wednesday with It's in the Code and Friday with the Weekly Roundup.
But for now, I'm going to talk about Josh Hawley, for those of you who are subscribers.
And stay tuned because it's going to be a wild ride.
Thanks for listening today, y'all.
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