Theory of Change Podcast With Matthew Sheffield

Mormonism occupies an important place in the conservative religious realm and its adherents exercise significant voting power in the Republican political coalition in states like Utah, Arizona, Idaho, and even California. In today’s political media environment, Mormons are influential both as content producers like Glenn Beck and as content consumers, where they share many similar tastes with White Evangelical Protestants.But the comparative closeness the two fundamentalist traditions have today is a departure from the past. While Mormonism and Evangelical Protestantism were born in roughly the same time period of the mid-19th century, they almost immediately grew apart for political reasons, eventually leading to the largest Mormon sect, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), moving to Utah, which was part of Mexico at the time.The shared dynamic began changing for the two faiths during the mid-20th century as Evangelicalism adopted many of Mormonism’s “end times” concerns and LDS Mormons became increasingly absorbed into right-wing political media.One person who saw this happening in real time is Pat Bagley, a veteran editorial cartoonist who has worked at the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper for more than 40 years. Once a devout illustrator of Mormon media, he now follows his own set of rules with regard to both religion and politics. Along the way, he’s become a fixture in Utah and LDS culture, whether they like it or not.This episode was previously released July 29, 2021. The video of the conversation is available. An automated transcript of the audio follows.TranscriptMATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Please join me in welcoming Pat Bagley.PAT BAGLEY: Hi Matthew.SHEFFIELD: So Pat, why don't we get started with you telling us a bit about how you got interested in cartooning.?BAGLEY: So I was attending BYU [Brigham Young University] and it was in this class that was personal finance and it was, just boring. It, was as do dirt. And I used to kind of scribble in my class notes and, do [00:01:00] caricatures and things like that.And so all of a sudden I had this idea about a talk that was current at BYU at the time. The Department of Justice was going to sue BYU because of its housing policy. And so all of a sudden I did this cartoon in the middle of my class notes, and I thought, that's not bad. So I took it to the Daily Universe, the BYU newspaper, and I thought that they were going to have their cartoonists take my idea and, draw it.But I showed it to the publisher, Nelson Wadsworth, and he said, do a finished copy and bring it back. So I did a finished copy of that cartoon, and I brought it back, and it ran next day in the Daily Universe. And when you see your stuff in print, it's pretty heady stuff, and I was kind of addicted after that.But a few weeks later, this is even better. A few weeks later, I was going to work at, I was working at a little graphics shop at BYU and I walk in and the secretary [00:02:00] says, congratulations on getting published in time magazine that what, and she described the cartoon. And as soon as I was off work, I went down and grabbed time magazine.Sure enough. The very first cartoon I ever did made it into Time Magazine, and since then it's been kind of downhill. But it's been pretty, pretty heady stuff.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, okay, and so, and that was what, the 1960s roughly was that?BAGLEY: So I've been doing this for 42 years, so 79?SHEFFIELD: 79. Okay. Oh, interesting. Okay. So I guess that was around the time when the church was, embroiled, the LDS Mormon church was embroiled in controversy, I guess they had just come out of it though, with regard to their treatment of people of African descent.BAGLEY: Blacks and the priesthood.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.BAGLEY: I was working at the Daily Universe. They actually hired me after I did that [00:03:00] cartoon, and I was working at the Daily Universe when they came out with their announcement. So, 79-80.I was born in Utah. And when I was 3 years old, family moved to California, so I grew up in Oceanside, California, went to school there, went to high school.SHEFFIELD: And Oceanside, just for those who are not familiar with Southern California, where is that?BAGLEY: It's just a little bit north of San Diego. But we'd always come back during Easter to visit family, and we had... lots of family here in Utah, and I thought Utah was kind of exotic. If you grew up in Southern California, the temperature is always the same. nothing ever changes. You don't have snowfall. You don't have leaves changing. And I've come to Utah and I've seen the leaves change and all this kind of stuff.And I thought that's pretty awesome. And so I was, I love the beach, but I also love, Utah.SHEFFIELD: And you've lived there since when did you move to Utah to go to BYU?BAGLEY: Yeah, so I went to BYU, went on a mission to Bolivia, got back, went straight back to [00:04:00] BYU, graduated, and worked a couple of graphics jobs before I got the job at the Salt Lake Tribune.SHEFFIELD: And you worked, and how long have you worked at the Tribune? When did you get hired on there?BAGLEY: So it's been, oh, geez, coming up at 42 years. I just, it was before the pandemic that we had this 40th celebration of me being at the Tribune. and it was kind of a big deal, and we had this thing at Rose Wagner, and, but that was 40 years, and that was almost two years ago.So it's been 42, 42 years I've been at the Salt Lake Tribune.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and in addition to doing editorial cartoons, you also in the 90s, in early 2000s, you were a bit of a Mormon publishing entrepreneur yourself. You're, why don't you hold up one of your books there for us so everybody can see it.BAGLEY: Okay, so, I wish I had.SHEFFIELD: But I've got what's and read the title for our [00:05:00] audio listeners here. Where have all the Nephites gone?BAGLEY: But the first book was Norman the Nephite.SHEFFIELD: And that's that little guy with the orange hair there.BAGLEY: Yeah, it's one of those search and find books where you have all these. It was like Waldo, Where's Waldo? Waldo was a big hit. And so this book came to me and they said, we want to do something kind of like Waldo. And we want to call it find the bishop. I said, nobody wants to find the Bishop, but it came up with this idea of Norman the Nephite, which is kind of a magical character because, nobody really knows what a Nephite looks like and I could go anywhere I wanted with it.And so they actually took me up on it and he came up with three books. There was Norman the Nephite, Where Have All the Nephites Gone? And the last one was A Nephite in the Works. So I did those books for Deseret Book in the early to mid nineties.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And so for people who aren't familiar with Mormon culture, tell us a little bit about the [00:06:00] whole Mormon industry.Like, it's pretty huge. Wouldn't you say?BAGLEY: You mean the Mormon industrial complex?SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, what, is it? What is it involved? Tell us, about it. What is it in there? You mentioned Deseret Book and some of the other companies? Who owns Deseret Book, how about that?BAGLEY: Deseret Book has got a captive audience, and I'm sure that you as a former Mormon heard that the only books that you should ever buy come from Deseret Book. If you can't get it at Deseret Book, then it's probably not okay. So it, they, practice a lot of control, through Deseret Book.SHEFFIELD: And the church owns the Deseret Book, isn't that right?BAGLEY: Oh, yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and that's something that's kind of interesting about Mormonism, although but not really though, because one thing a lot of people don't know is that a lot of the more, conservative or fundamentalist religions, they actually have these [00:07:00] publishing empires, lots of them do. So the Mormon church, so they've got the Deseret News newspaper. Then they've also got Deseret Book, but then they, and then they also have a whole host of publishing things affiliated with Brigham Young University. And do they have any others that, have or is that pretty much it?BAGLEY: Well, the KSL, you know, which--SHEFFIELD: Oh yeah, they own that too. Yeah. Which is a local television affiliate in Utah for those who don't know. And they, oh yeah. And they own Bonneville Communications.BAGLEY: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: How can I forget that? Bonneville Communications is a, radio and television station ownership group and it owns a bunch of stations around the world. Isn't it? Or is it just in the United States?BAGLEY: I mean, there's the Liahona, which goes out to South America and Mexico. And here's the thing though, you can be Mormon and never have to be exposed to anything that's not Mormon. they've got you covered, from being a kid.They've got books [00:08:00] introducing you to the Book of Mormon, when you're two years old and you don't have to be exposed to anything that's not LDS.SHEFFIELD: The LDS Mormons are not really exceptional in that regard, because there are like the Seventh-day Adventists, they have their newspapers. The Christian Science Monitor, and even more modern publications like the Falun Gong cult in China, they own the Epoch Times, which has become one of the most popular right wing Websites in America, and they've got one in Germany too, apparently.And it's all designed to promote the religion. But, I guess there are some lighter aspects to that. So, besides the Norman, the Nephite stuff, what else? What were some of the other books you've got? You've got a couple of the other ones there that you made.BAGLEY: Well, I was kind of on a roll. So, I recommended they do a Book of Mormon timeline. Because you read the Book of Mormon and you have different groups going off in different areas, and then they pop back up and you kind of wonder, well, [00:09:00] wait a minute, do I remember where they came from? And, so the Book of Mormon timeline actually kind of pulls it all together.We were talking earlier and you said that you can still refer to it because it's accurate because this book is actually pretty good.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, it was a guy on Amazon that he was like, wow, this is the most accurate Book of Mormon timeline I've ever read. And I still buy it. he was, giving you a plug there and you didn't know. And then you had another one, another timeline book too.BAGLEY: Church History Timeline. and I grew up in a family where, history is important and we like reading a lot of history. And my brother is the leading western trail historian in America. Yeah, he's in lots of books. There was one that was actually, that was reviewed in the Atlantic magazine and it's great stuff.He did a book called Blood of the Prophets, which was about Mountain Meadows. It is the best book about the Mountain Meadows Massacre. But the narrative, it's just compelling. It's great stuff. [00:10:00] So I'd recommend Blood of the Prophets if you're interested in Utah history.SHEFFIELD: Tell us about the, for people who are not familiar with Mormon history, what was the Mountain Meadows massacre? What was that?BAGLEY: So it was the largest white on white massacre in American history. There was a group of 120 to 130 Immigrants coming from Missouri, going through Utah to get to California. And there's a place outside of Cedar City that's called Mountain ,Meadows where they were camping and the Mormon militia in Southern Utah ambushed them.There was three days where they were shooting at each other. And then the Fanchers, which is the immigrant group decided they would surrender and they surrendered as they were being marched to Cedar city. The Mormon militia, murdered them. Just killed them all, men, women, children.SHEFFIELD: And what was the reason for that?BAGLEY: Well, this was when Mormons were [00:11:00] sure that the American government was coming out to, wage war on the Mormons. There was Johnson's army that was, marching to come to Utah to impose order. And so they thought they were... Under threat, and so they, they did the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and it was, they realized almost immediately it was really bad they had done that, and they covered it up.But at the same time, Mormons have been persecuted. They were run out of Illinois. They were run out of Missouri. They've had a history of persecution. So. If you have a persecute, persecution complex because you've been persecuted, that's understandable.SHEFFIELD: I think there is an interesting parallel perhaps now with the way that Mormons were feeling at that [00:12:00] time and how white evangelical Christian fundamentalists are feeling now.Do you think there's a parallel there at all? There seems to be a lot of persecution feelings, on, in that subgroup.BAGLEY: Oh, yeah. I mean, there's, no question that they feel under threat. They feel persecuted and, but it's just, crazy stuff. I mean, they're comparing wearing a mask to a genocide.They're comparing getting vaccinated to slavery. And it's just nonsense. But, you ask them about it and they feel it in their bones, they are under threat. This is existential.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And actually, that reminds me of a cartoon that you did recently. I'm going to put it up on the screen. So, can you describe it for the listeners, just so they can understand what you've written here?BAGLEY: Yeah. I mean, there's the grim reaper. And instead of having, the thing that, what is it called [00:13:00] the scythe? Yeah. Instead of a scythe, he's got a golf club and it says 99 percent of COVID deaths are among the unvaccinated. And they're set up on a tee is this golf ball and a red hat, which, automatically identifies them as a Trumper.And he's saying, no one's going to jab me. Well, he's going to be more than jabbed by COVID because COVID doesn't care what you believe. Believe crazy stuff and then, screw around and find out.SHEFFIELD: It is such a unfortunate and terrible mentality. I mean, as somebody who's been making cartoon commentary for 42 years. Is that something that you've seen develop over time in the American right? or some people seem to think that this just happened with Trump, but I don't think that's right.BAGLEY: No, I mean, this has been going on for quite a while and actually you can draw a bright line between the establishment [00:14:00] of Fox News in 1996 and the erosion of trust in the institutions that make us a nation. They came out and said, we are fair and balanced. Everybody else is not. They're telling you lies. and they undercut trust in, government. they say the government lies to you. They say the only people you can trust are us, Fox News. So you look at the erosion of what's happened, of where we got here, how we got here.It started earlier, with Gingrich and, all that, but it was amplified by Fox News. And over the years, they've just gotten crazier and crazier. They got us into a war in Iraq for no good reason. they, were saying in 2008 during the financial collapse, everything was fine. there was no collapse.It was just okay. they [00:15:00] got us, Donald Trump. And they amplified this whole lie about Obama being a Muslim.SHEFFIELD: Now, in regards to, I guess your own career trajectory, it is, have, so you're, now, on pre, on the progressive side of the aisle. is that where you started off initially or, have, And if so, we, what was that experience like being a progressive in, in, in Mormondom?BAGLEY: So I grew up a Republican and this is back in the day where you could be liberal and be a Republican. I mean, there was Rockefeller, there was Percy, there was Hatfield, I think, who wereSHEFFIELD: Eisenhower. Certainly.BAGLEY: Yeah. George Romney was pretty progressive. He was anti war. He was pro choice. He marched with Martin Luther King. That was back in the day [00:16:00] when both Republican and Democratic parties had left and right wings. People migrated so that the Republican party is completely right wing, reactionary right wing. The Republican party didn't, I didn't leave the Republican party. It left me, and, like, people like you, they ask, well, what was your politics?My politics is. Eisenhower republicanism, I believe in expanding education, I believe in infrastructure. there are a lot of good things that, oh, Eisenhower also expanded the social security net. So, I'm an Eisenhower republican.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and in that case, you deserve to be canceled, by conservatives. Which, isn't that, there, there isn't that just so hypocritical and ironic that they're constantly complaining that everyone wants to cancel them. But they cancel people like you guys decades and have continuously done it. [00:17:00]BAGLEY: Well, they came up with the term Rhino, Republican in name only. And that means that if you're identified as that, then you're kicked out. You're expunged. it sounds a lot like the communist party, where, you see, see who's on the top of Lenin's tomb and see who's been erased recently. So yeah, they're really into that whole cancel culture stuff. It's projection. It's just pure projection.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. now I guess within, I think, the same thing also is kind of happened in Mormonism as well. So in Utah in the 70s, and early 80s, it was not uncommon to have statewide officials who were Democrats. The governors were Democrats, for a bunch of years in the 60s and 70s. But so what do you think happened to Mormonism, over time? Something similar?BAGLEY: Oh, it was probably Ezra Taft Benson, who said,SHEFFIELD: And who was [00:18:00] Ezra Taft Benson?BAGLEY: Ezra Taft Benson eventually became the president of the LDS church, but he was famous for saying, I don't see, I don't see how you can be, how you can be a good Mormon and a Democrat.And the LDS church didn't used to be so in line with evangelicals, evangelicals hate Mormons, but they used to be kind of their own things. And now Republican ideology, Mormon political ideology follows in line with evangelical political ideology. They're, bedfellows right now. And I think it's bad for Christianity,by mixing politics and religion, they've done a disservice to both. It's, just debased both. the Christianity that it espouses is pretty awful. it used to be you would keep your politics and your religion [00:19:00] separate. I remember going to see Goldwater when I was a kid. My dad took me to see him on one of these train stops when he was campaigning.And... I remember thinking, wow, this is kind of cool. This guy could be president. And he was one of those people who said, you've got to maintain this. Division between religion and politics, and he said, if these TV pastors ever get ahold of the Republican Party, like they're trying to do, that's going to be really bad. And here we are.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, he was right. Although I guess you could argue that he kind of encouraged that and maybe that's why he said that later. He kind of regretted what happened.BAGLEY: Yeah, I mean, he was for his time. He's pretty far, right? But, you look back on him and he wasn't that bad. I mean, he was.Fine with gays in the military. He was fine with, choice, abortion choice. compared to the people we have now. He was kind of moderate.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it's interesting, you had mentioned [00:20:00] in Mormonism about abortion and positions on that, being more kind of up in the air or, on one side or the other that also happened within white evangelism as well.So, like, the Southern Baptist convention used to be pro choice and used to not think that abortion was a sin. And so, yeah, so a lot that's kind of become the story of the Republican party is how religion was used to get people to vote for them. Because, when you look at polls of Americans and even Republican voters, they don't agree with Republican economic.viewpoints, they don't want to cut social security. They don't want to privatize Medicare or things like that. And so they got to have a reason to vote for them. Seems like.BAGLEY: Well, the Republican party is really good at riling people up with the cultural wars so that they don't have to give people, anything, [00:21:00] I mean, I sometimes put this out there, what have the Republicans done for ordinary Americans over the last 40 years? And people really strained to find anything that the Republican Party is actually material, materially done to benefit ordinary Americans, over the past decades.Because they haven't, but they have given them this red meat culture war stuff, about abortion, about cancel culture, about, I mean, it's led to QAnon, complete crazy nonsense. But if you, like you're saying, if you do look at the policies that people like, it's actually pretty in line with today's Democratic Party.SHEFFIELD: And, this whole cancel culture stuff is so ridiculous. Somebody who I'm sure you probably know, Steve Benson, who worked for a long time for the Arizona Republic as a cartoonist and was also a member of the LDS faith, can you tell the audience a little bit about what happened with him and [00:22:00] why he eventually separated from Mormonism?BAGLEY: I've known him since BYU. When I was hired at the Daily Universe, he was the other cartoonist. They actually had two cartoonists. There's me and Steve Benson. And I got to know his family pretty well. I actually met Ezra Taft Benson once. He took me up to his apartment.SHEFFIELD: And he was Steve's grandfather.BAGLEY: Steve's grandfather. And he was the president of the LDS Church. He was very gracious, when he met me. And I could tell he was working on something. He, I said, what are you working on? And he said, I'm working on blah, blah, blah. And I said, well, I just read this article by Alexander Schultz Nissen about that very same thing.And he goes, I read that too, but I'm kind of worried that he's a plant. My mind went to the green leafy kind of plant, but he was actually talking about Alexander Solzhenitsyn being a Soviet agent. So Ezra Taft Benson was, what's the name of that [00:23:00] group? The Birch Society. he was definitely part of that.So Steve grew up in this family that was a very interesting family. he was the oldest son of the oldest son and was kind of the crown prince. They were looking to him to kind of, go into church leadership at some point, Steve had other ideas. He liked cartooning. And so he started cartooning and he got the job at the Daily Universe.but he was very right wing and he actually ratted out one of his political science professors because of political science professor bought, brought people in with different. And he actually brought a communist in to explain to the class about communism, which is what you do in college, you get exposed to different ideas.And I watched Steve's progression, from being very right wing to, questioning, to, wondering about things, to [00:24:00] coming out against the church and against what they did to his grandfather. The story that he tells is there was a general conference where Ezra Taft Benson was presiding, but he wasn't all there.He had dementia and was kind of losing it, but there was, they propped him up, in front of the masses. And there was somebody who actually behind the scenes took his arm. It did this so that it looked like he was waving to the, and Steve was behind the scenes and he saw that, he goes, that's it, I'm done.And so Steve, his journey has been from being very right wing to being pretty progressive and, it's hard on his family because family is very LDS and very, I don't know, but, it was brave of Steve to do what he did. It was courageous.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, there's that movie [00:25:00] Weekend at Bernie's that's basically what they were doing where they were propping up a person who could not You know do anything in function and pretending that he could and telling people that he was in charge. It was pretty-- and they never apologized or even admitted that they did it even though it's obvious Yeah, so at the same time, so, I mean, I mean, you've talked about the LDS church having become a lot more right wing because of and people in his orbit.But more recently, they've been going through a lot of changes as well, and I don't know fully what's going on. Why don't you tell us about some of these changes and whether you think they mean anything?BAGLEY: A couple of things that I've noticed that are kind of worrisome, because the LDS Church is kind of a moderating influence on the membership.They came out and they said it's okay to be a Democrat, you can be a Democrat or a Republican. You don't campaign in churches. They've said get vaccinated, [00:26:00] definitely get vaccinated, get, the vaccination. And so they've been pretty moderate. In fact, they're more moderate than the, Utah legislature.But the thing that I've seen recently that is worrisome is there are a lot of Mormons who watch Fox News every single day and they go to church once a week. And the influence that they are following is the Fox News stuff, and the counseling that they get from church leaders, they're starting to ignore it.it's pretty clear that the LDS church has told the membership to get vaccinated. But it's also clear that Mormons are the most vaccine hesitant group in the country. Even more than evangelicals. I think if I, recall right, they're 50% of Mormons who say, Nope, not going to get the vaccination, just won't do it.And that's [00:27:00] flying in the face of what they've been told from the pulpit. And I, like I say that, that's kind of troubling.SHEFFIELD: I've seen a lot of articles and TV segments recently about, oh, if Donald Trump will come out and say, to tell people to get vaccinated, then people will do it. And it's like.You don't know these people. Well, there's a reason that's the reason that Trump doesn't do it. because he thinks it would harm his brand if he were to do that.BAGLEY: I said earlier that you could be LDS and not have to be exposed to anything outside of LDS culture, you can watch your LDS news and get your LDS newspaper, you can get your LDS books and you're never exposed to anything outside of that.That's the same thing that's going on with evangelicalism. So even if. Trump came out and said, get vaccinated. And I think he has, yeah, People are living in these shells that are impermeable. You just can't get through to them. And, even though you [00:28:00] tell them something that's absolutely true, the vaccine is safe and it's effective.99 percent of people that were dying are unvaccinated facts. You can tell them that, and it makes no difference. That to me is kind of worrisome.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So as somebody who is stating inconvenient truths like this to the public, I mean, how does the Utah audience respond to you? Do you have a lot? You have a lot of fans who love you desperately and probably a lot of people who hate you as well, right?BAGLEY: Yeah. Yeah. it used to be that. I was tolerated because Mormons believe that, people have their callings and, my calling was to be, the bird in the saddle. and they were kind of okay with that. But the, sense I get of people out there now is that it's becoming incredibly radicalized and it is worrisome to me.I went to a [00:29:00] cartoon festival in France, I don't know, five years ago. Six years ago, and I met the, creators of this magazine, humor magazine, and this little humor magazine that was not doing very well, it's called Charlie Hebdo. And so I met these people and they're nice people and inoffensive.And then three months later, somebody breaks into their offices and murders five of them cartoonists and I used to go into work and not have to worry about any of that. Now I do worry for my personal safety that things are getting that bad. I mean, look what happened on January 6th. People attacked the Capitol.And had they got a hold of a Congress person, who knows what they would have done. they were out for blood.SHEFFIELD: In regards to Utah and the Intermountain West, there, and there definitely is a metastasizing radicalism or growing radicalism. [00:30:00] The Bundy family, who attracted national attention for, invading federal property and trying to occupy it, they're Mormons.And. They are some of the, as I understand it, I guess Ammon Bundy, who is named after a Book of Mormon character, is, says he wants to run for governor of Idaho. And, he's very anti vaccine and tells people not, and anti mask and. Are there any Mormons out there that you know, who have privately said to you, Pat, I used to think you were all, you were crazy, but now I'm wondering if maybe you were right.Has anybody ever said that to you?BAGLEY: No. Oh, wow. Congressional delegation said that, and I think we have some fairly good people. I think that Governor Cox is doing a fairly good job. But even he came out against right wing [00:31:00] media as far as vaccination goes. He says that, the reason people aren't getting vaccinated is because of the stuff they hear on.Fox News and OANN and, because you got to stop listening to that stuff, but he, no, he called me an idiot. So, no, he's not going to.SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, so now your, I guess, personal perspective on Mormonism has changed over the years. Can you talk about that a little bit as well?BAGLEY: Yeah, so my Odyssey out of the church quite a while and it was one thing after another until I realized I just don't believe these precepts anymore.But if you grow up LDS, it's in your blood, it's tribal. And when people ask if I'm a Mormon, depending on the circumstances, I'll say, yeah, because I was born Mormon. I was raised Mormon. Still know all this stuff from the Book of Mormon. I read the [00:32:00] Book of Mormon 25 times. I can say Mohenroi Moriankomer, then I have to trip over my tongue saying it.And the stuff that you learn young kind of stays with you. It's in my DNA, even though I don't practice the religion anymore, it certainly had a lot to do with how I turned out with, what a way with what it made me.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and to go back to something you said earlier, I think that, because it is an institution that actually does have to function around the globe and outside of.The pulpit with all their massive investments, they actually have to be more grounded in reality compared to, let's say the, Pentecostals or something like that.BAGLEY: They're just fairly good about the immigration and immigrants. they've put out statements saying that we should welcome these brothers and sisters and, the [00:33:00] fleeing.bad situations and, let's welcome them, let's be Christ like and welcome them. But that flies in the face of what you're getting from Fox News and right wing media, which is, these people are, what did Trump say, they're murderers and rapists and they're coming to take your jobs.So there are two messages there. One is fairly accepting from the church, and again, they have to be because they are an international church.SHEFFIELD: I guess it's, been kind of interesting. So I lived in Missouri for a number of years and the Mormon branch that, or the Mormon sect that is the biggest out there is the former reorganized church, or reorganized church of Latter day Saints.And now they call themselves the community of Christ. and they, it seems to some degree that the LDS are kind of making a slower version of. Of what happened with the humanity of Christ. Do you think that's true? [00:34:00]BAGLEY: Oh, the LDS church has been incredibly successful and the church is this big and this powerful with that much money, you usually have scandals like the Catholic church and the pedophile priests.And there've been minor scandals with the LDS church, but it's been able to avoid scandals and schism for a long time.SHEFFIELD: I mean in the sense that the Community of Christ, when we're gradually backing away from the Book of Mormon for a number of decades, and then finally formally came out and said, all right, yeah, our church historians don't believe that this was a real.Thing that, the Nephites didn't exist, sorry, Norman, and, they were, and they never existed in the Lamanites are not out there somewhere. and we think it was an inspired book, but it's not, a work of history and they formally said that.BAGLEY: Yeah, I don't, see the LDS church going that route. They're pretty committed to the Book of [00:35:00] Mormon and to Joseph Smith as a divine prophet although they have been a little more forthcoming about things like the peep stone and Joseph Smith being involved with women as young as 14 years old. But I don't see them really saying, Yeah, we're just going to do the New Testament because I think they're committed.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I mean, I think that's very possible. I think, yeah, organizationally, they probably never will, but they, the BYU actually just recently published a paper that noted how Joseph Smith had, basically plagiarized a lot from, this, Bible commentary by a guy named Adam Clark. And this was published in a BYU paper.They were saying that this is something that was done in the, In his Joseph Smith version of the Bible, and I don't think that's something that would have happened, like even, let's say, 20 years ago.BAGLEY: The church is kind of surprising. I [00:36:00] learned evolution at BYU, and the teacher was not having any of the stuff about, the earth being six thousand years old.He said, nope, you do that, you're going to fail this class. I remember going through the BYU bookstore and there was No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brody, the history of Joseph Smith, and it was being sold in the bookstore. So you do have these flashes of intellectual freedom that they still allow people to have in the church.But as far as-- I don't know what's going to happen to the church. I really don't. I think it's kind of interesting. I think these changes about how the membership views the leadership, is kind of big. And I don't know where that goes, though.SHEFFIELD: My thought is that they're headed for a schism in some sense. It seems that way because, although on the other hand, I mean, you look at the Roman Catholic Church, they've essentially managed to create parallel worlds within their realm [00:37:00] where if you're like a lot of people in the Jesuit orbit don't really believe a lot that's in the Bible.And they still identify as Catholic and nobody is able to do anything. The more rabid, traditionalist kind of Catholics are, they, they hate that. And they're constantly trying to go after them, but they can't do it. So I wonder if, to some extent, that It seems like something like that is happening within Mormonism, with some of their newer apologetic writers coming out and saying, yeah, Joseph Smith.Yeah, he wasn't a translator. There's this guy named, I think his name is, Terrell Givens came out and said, Joseph Smith was engaging in bricolage. which for those, not familiar with the R term, that's taking a bunch of stuff from places and gluing them all together. And that's what the Book of Mormon was. It wasn't really a translation. And this guy, he literally works for the church and he's saying that. Yeah.BAGLEY: But, the one [00:38:00] thing that Mormons can't ever get away with is questioning the leadership. I mean, the last thing that kind of fell away, for me, where I made the final break was deciding that I didn't want to be part of Bruce R. McConkie's militia. I wasn't going to be a follower.SHEFFIELD: And who was Bruce R. McConkie for those who don't know?BAGLEY: Bruce R. McConkie was an apostle who wrote some books that were-- it's called Mormon Doctrine, and he proposed to lay out the whole Mormon doctrine, and it's pretty toxic stuff.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it's incredibly racist, among other things.BAGLEY: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Well, and it's, and his faction did, they're, they took over the church, with Ezra Taft Benson, and, um, it's, yeah, it is, it, Mormonism is definitely in a very strange place right now.BAGLEY: Yeah, yeah, but it, it's the same authoritarianism, because you never question the prophet, follow the prophet, [00:39:00] kids sing songs about following the prophet.And that's the one thing that, that, I think is unchanging with the LDS church. And if they start to lose members who are listening to Glenn Beck rather than the prophet, that's, that, that's bad for the future of the church. I don't know where that goes.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, I guess maybe Glenn Beck can have a vision and see Jesus.that one's coming, Pat. All right. Well, so, some of the, over the years, let's talk about your cartoons a little bit more. what kind of, what are some of the cartoons you've done that have had the biggest responses nationally that you can think of, or that are memorable in that regard?BAGLEY: So I should have sent you this cartoon. There's a cartoon of Malala, the girl who the Taliban tried to assassinate in Pakistan. they shot her, but she recovered and she, the reason they wanted to kill her in the first place is because she was a proponent of education for [00:40:00] women and the Taliban doesn't believe that women should be educated and she was, I think, 14 at the time.And so they shot her, she recovered, it seemed to make her even more resolved to, promote education among women. She won the. Nobel Prize a couple of years ago for her activism, and I did this cartoon that shows her with a book and it says, see if I can remember the thing that religious fundamentalists hate more or fear more than American bombs and bullets and tanks is a girl with a book, and on the book, it says knowledge, and that got tremendous response.All of a sudden, it's showing up, they're sending me emails, and it's been translated into Italian, into Russian, into Arabic, and it went [00:41:00] all the way around the world. It went viral, as they say, and it probably was shown tens of millions of times. so that's been my biggest hit, was that one, cartoon.And when you do a cartoon, you have no idea. I had no idea that it was going to, people are going to respond to it like they did. but it took off. Other times you think, oh boy, this is really going to get so and so, or some, people are going to get upset about this, and you cricket, so you hear nothing.SHEFFIELD: So, you never know. the editorial cartooning industry itself has really been under a lot of negative pressure. talk about that.BAGLEY: You spoke to a couple of my colleagues. And I'm sure they've said the same thing. When I started doing this, one time ago, there were probably a couple hundred newspapers that had their own cartoonist.And now there are probably less than 20. So I'm kind of a dying breed. And it's not because, I get, [00:42:00] this from people all the time. So you guys are so left wing, that's why, newspapers are failing. That's absolutely not the reason. The reason newspapers are having a hard time is because it's advertising.Back in the day, the Salt Lake Tribune would come out seven days a week, and there'd be two, sometimes three sections of nothing but classifieds, and classifieds weren't cheap, but that was if we were printing money in it, and it was a good business model, but then along came the internet and things like ksl.com and Craigslist, and it's infinitely easier and better because it's free, reaches more people. And it undercut our entire business model. And so we started to lose it, we lost that overnight. And then we've slowly been losing advertisers. And so a lot of newspapers have folded, which is really bad for democracy.And it's bad for politics. there have been studies that show that communities that have lost their newspapers actually pay more because of [00:43:00] corruption. And if they had kept the newspaper, people have paid a subscription to keep it going in the solid. Tribune recently went to a nonprofit status that were the first paper in the country to do that.And they talked to the publisher. Paul has been a couple of weeks ago about it. And he seemed pretty upbeat. He seemed to think that things were going pretty well for us. So maybe that's a model. That will help other communities keep their newspapers.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I, yeah, I think that is the model of, it's the model that we pursue at Flux, the website that I just recently launched that, Theory of Change is part of the, podcast network.And the advertising as a, It is cancerous, on, quality journalism, in my opinion, because you constantly are having people being compromised by it, trying to get advertising or trying to pander to advertisers and, [00:44:00] it's, not good. And, I mean, you can see the ultimate. And for that type of thing, when you know, look at people like Steve Bannon, like on his pocket, this guy is constantly going around the world, desperately trying to find people dumb enough to give him money and, and he keeps embarrassing them and humiliating himself and, but he's always got to find finding another more ridiculous mark one after the other.But people, yeah, people need to understand that quality information, quality analysis has to be paid for because stuff that you pull out of your ass, well, that's free and it doesn't, and it belongs in the toilet.BAGLEY: Yeah, I mean, it's been pointed out that places like Fox News and OANN and, Breitbart and these other right wing sites, it's all free.It's all out there free, but if you want to read really good journalism, like the New York Times, Washington Post, Salt Lake Tribune, [00:45:00] there's a paywall. You have to pay to get good journalism and crap is free. And that's part of the problem with America right now, is that the disinformation and the lies. Oh, somebody said, maybe Mark Twain, the truth is barely putting on his pants.Well, a lie goes halfway around the world. that's, why lies are getting such press these days because it's exciting stuff.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it's--BAGLEY: It's going to be reinstated back in, in that. August. That's wow if true.SHEFFIELD: Well, and it's, it is comforting to believe lies. The QAnon movement got started, not related to elections or anything like that. It got started as a way of convincing gullible people that Donald Trump is secretly working with Jeff Sessions and Bob Mueller to take down pedophiles. He's actually in league with Mueller and the real point of this is not to [00:46:00] investigate Russia. No, it's to have a massive arrest of child abusers.BAGLEY: And, you, hit that button. You hit that button with people that, children are at risk. Children are being abused. Children are being sexually abused and sacrificed and eaten. And who wants that? Geez, nobody. And that's how they, draw these people in because they're trying to save the children.SHEFFIELD: I don't know if you remember, but in the 80s in Mormon culture, there was this obsession with satanic cults in the 80s. Do you remember that?BAGLEY: Yeah, there was some episode in, I think it was Lehigh or down in Utah Valley, where it was a preschool. And there were accusations of satanic, weird sexual stuff going on.And it's straight out of the Salem Witch Trial, where, stories start to get told, and they get embellished, and the community gets, upset, and worried, and frightened, and they do crazy stuff. [00:47:00] Yeah, I do remember that. I think it was Lehigh. I'll have to check on that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it was northern Utah County, because I remember, I, I was living in Pleasant Grove, and I was in, I think, third grade or something, and my parent, my, my mom was always telling me to be careful of the devil worshippers that were out there, and supposedly they had, they were kidnapping people. area cats and sacrificing them. Although we had a cat and nobody ever kidnapped our cat.BAGLEY: Yeah the satanists always get the cat!SHEFFIELD: Yeah. All right. Well, so I, yeah, this has been a treat for me, Pat. I, when I was a kid, I read your Norman, the Nephite books, and my mom bought those for us to look at during our church services instead of paying attention. Thanks. But, yeah, so you're, you are on Twitter at Pat Bagley. That's B A G L E Y and you are on the Salt Lake Tribune, [00:48:00] which is sltrib.com. Do you have any other online platforms that you're using nowadays? Or is that it?BAGLEY: So there's. Facebook, Twitter, that's most of it, so.SHEFFIELD: Okay, cool. Alright, well thanks so much for joining us today, Pat. And we'll look forward to continuing to see you producing work for the Tribune as long as you want to.BAGLEY: Well thanks for this, Matthew. This was a lot of fun.SHEFFIELD: Just as a bit of housekeeping for the audience here, Theory of Change is part, as I mentioned during the show, of the Flux. Community Network. And Flux is a website that is a non profit. We're working to bring deep coverage to the larger trends in politics and religion and technology and getting people to understand how they all intersect.So if you can be sure to visit the site, it's flux.community. And we also have a Patreon. If you like what we're doing here with Theory of Change, just go to patreon.com/discoverflux. I'm Matthew Sheffield, and I will see you guys next time. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theoryofchange.flux.community/subscribe This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Jonathan Taplin, a former journalism professor and a versatile collaborator with legends like Bob Dylan, dives into the troubling intersection of Silicon Valley and fascist ideologies. He argues that influential billionaires prioritize personal ambitions over societal welfare, likening their actions to historical fascism. The discussion highlights the perils of techno-libertarianism, critiques cryptocurrency's ethical dilemmas, and warns against the monopolization of power by a select few. Taplin emphasizes the urgent need for collective action to uphold democracy and address real-world challenges.

Episode SummaryIn previous episodes of our “Why I Left series,” we've heard the stories of people who have departed from various right wing political and religious traditions listening to the stories of individuals who have escaped these radical belief systems is important, but in this episode of the series, I want to put the pieces back together and look at the stories in the aggregate to see if we can find some broader trends.And to help with that discussion, we’re featuring Blake Chastain, host of the Exvangelical podcast where he has interviewed many different guests about their own experience of leaving evangelical religious beliefs.He's also publishing writing at the Post-Evangelical Post, which is a newsletter you can subscribe to on Substack as well.The video for this episode is availableTranscriptThe transcript is automatically generated from the audio and may not be entirely accurate. It is provided for convenience purposes only. Some podcast apps will cut off the text before the end.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Welcome to Theory of Change, Blake.BLAKE CHASTAIN: Thank you for having me.SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, so, but before we get too far into the weeds here, let's start off with talking about the Exvangelical podcast that you are doing and what you do with it and how long you've been doingCHASTAIN: Sure. So I have been producing the show Exvangelical since 2016. It is a show that's primarily focused on people's individual stories of why they have left evangelicalism, in particular, primarily white evangelicalism or white led evangelicalism. And really, my guests their stories sort of follow their biographical tracks with regards to starting in, say, like a three-act structure of starting in Act One.The types of environments that they may have grown up in, the, what particular denomination, what their original experiences were growing up in it or if they were introduced to it later in life, then what led them to start questioning evangelicalism. And what may have led to their break or what has over the last several years been the common language that's proliferated [00:03:00] online and elsewhere is deconstruction what led to their deconstruction, whether it was 1 catalyst or sort of single traumatic event or death by 1000 cuts sort of thing.And then finally, where they are now, I'm not. Primarily interest. I'm not interested in; I don't have a vested interest in people staying within the Christian faith or not. I'm just curious as to what led them to change their minds because that to me is the most fascinating thing. And there are so much individual and social consequence to making the choice to leave one of your faith of origin.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. I don't know how it was for you, but when I was in Mormonism, that perspective, it was almost hard to imagine for me. To the extent that I thought about and the people that I knew thought about, sort of former Mormons it would just.Just be interested in talking about it and not trying to de-convert people, just, having it kind of a neutral perspective letting people do what they want and not judge them for it. I mean, is that something that you came to over time yourself or?CHASTAIN: I think so. I think that's something that I've sort of grown into as I've continued to do the show.I do remember one particular instance. There used to be this phrase that I would say, regardless of what someone's perspective was or what, where they had currently landed, so to speak with regard to their relationship to religion or to[00:04:30] religious groups. And I used to say something like, if there is a God, I'm sure that they would appreciate it.Or respect your decision. And then there was a guest that I had on that had landed in a more non theistic or atheistic place who sort of pushed back very, very, very politely but they objected a little bit to that language and framing and then, I received that and have since sort of stopped using that because it did feel like I was trying to shoehorn people into, keeping an open mind with regards to things.And there are some people that for whom the continued engagement with religious or spiritual practices Is too traumatic for them to continue to try to access and for me to do that is unfair. So that is something that I have learned over time, but at the same time, I think it is utterly valuable to society at large to continue to talk to people who have disaffiliated because they have something to offer people who remain in religious groups.And also, they are valid. Allies and political arenas where the opposition is something like Christian nationalism.SHEFFIELD: Well it's also the case that, these Christian nationalist groups, they ally with groups that are secular as well, and they have no problem doing that. And I do think that is [00:06:00] something that the people who oppose Christian nationalism have got to kind of pick up on a little bit better that, you don't have to, you don't have to agree with everybody in 100 percent way in order to ally with them to go for a goal to preserve, I mean, to preserve freedom. That's really what we're trying to do here.CHASTAIN: Right.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, so, so you've been doing it since 2016. Have how much hate mail do you get nowadays? Is it less or has it decreased over time or has it remained kind of consistent?CHASTAIN: I, As far as hate mail, I mean, by and large I'm not as active on social media as I used to be my sort of extremely online phase began to peter out in 2019 or so.So., I have not been, as, as much a part of being, say, on the front lines of that and trying to either punch up to more powerful people within evangelical spheres as I once was. So I may be known to a lot of folks who have paid attention for a while, but there have been other voices and other people who have built larger platforms than myself in the intervening years, and they are likely probably more recipients of that because just because of.If you are building something off of one of the social platforms and build to hundreds of thousands of followers, then you will likely run into that more. I'm sure that people still within the evangelical fold see [00:07:30] me as someone that's maybe leading people astray or something like that.But oftentimes... Oftentimes, their critiques are, can be very nonspecific and not necessarily tied to a particular creator or commentator, but just, decrying this deconstruction movement or whatever else as something, but I mean, it is I think those comparisons comparing The online deconstruction movements and things like that to evangelicalism is not apples to apples.It is not a direct comparison because those groups have far more sway within our society and more resources and more organization.SHEFFIELD: Well, okay, so for people who haven't heard the term deconstruction, what does that mean?CHASTAIN: Yeah, so that essentially the way in which it has been used over the last several years is not necessarily the same way that you may have learned it within the context of say a philosophy class.It's not as specific as, as the way that, Derrida may have used it when or other French philosophers may have used it. What they are, how they are using that term is by essentially saying they're questioning the beliefs that they inherited from their faith of origin. So, and that can mean, say, within the context of someone who is evangelical or Mormon, and [00:09:00] I, you can absolutely speak to a Mormon experience.I think that is distinct enough that I don't really talk to ex Mormons on my show because I don't have that direct experience. But there just as a quick aside, #exmormon or #exmo is an even more popular hashtag on Twitter than #exvangelical is. By like, I think #exvangelical has around between 1 and 2 billion views and #exmormon has like over 5.So, but what deconstruction means is essentially you are questioning those beliefs, whether it's the teachings with regards to how you relate to society. About purity culture and sexuality or any other number of things, whether it's a theological question and then questioning those beliefs and then oftentimes realizing that you no longer affirm those beliefs and that can have significant consequences for someone's personal identity as well as how they relate to their faith group.SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Yeah. Well, and I think one of the other things that probably I would suspect the former Mormon and former evangelical experiences have in common is that there are a lot of practices of the various churches that people sort of come to view them as doctrines deriving from the scriptures or whatever. But in fact, they are just customs.And I think that discovering things in which you [00:10:30] might have had as a child placed extreme emphasis to you on that. 'This is very important. We're doing not doing this as a horrible sin.' And then you find out when you actually read the literature, it's not in there.CHASTAIN: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: So that is something that your guests have talked about pretty extensively a lot?CHASTAIN: Oh, absolutely. I mean. One of one of my early guests was a friend of mine from college. I went to a Christian college and one of, one of the ways that he described that experience of having been taught a particular thing and then.Learning from just living life after sort of leaving high school, college, these sort of protected places that often, would be called either the bubble or someone else called it a snow globe of sort of protecting people from the real world, so to speak, was that they were sold a false bill of goods and that they were The way in which they were taught to live did not function in any reasonable capacity once they were adults and say, married and doing and going about their lives.One example is also. Even learning just historical facts around things like the teaching of the rapture, those things can be presented as eternal as having been part of the Christian tradition from the beginning, [00:12:00] but in reality. That teaching is only about 150 years old. It came about in the 19th century but so much of 20th and 21st century American Christianity is based on this teaching of the rapture and that the world is supposed to get worse and worse and worse, and then Jesus comes back.So that de-emphasizes actually trying to make the world better. And that has a real impact on people's lives.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it really does. And you see it in a lot of different ways. But I think one of the most prominent recent ways that manifested was during the COVID 19 pandemic. I guess probably the most famous example of that was the governor of Mississippi, Tate Reeves, who had said that, we don't take this COVID stuff as seriously here in the South, because we're Christians and we believe in an afterlife and we believe that we're saved. And so if we die, we're actually going to somewhere better than the current place. So don't worry about it.CHASTAIN: And that's such a nihilistic take on this life that we have on this planet and.Even runs anathema to say the response to the Spanish flu from Christian groups in the early 20th century, those things were brought up by a number of commentators who were trying to push back on that sort of inherent nihilism. The other impact of this can [00:13:30] be people that are sensitive to these teachings develop severe anxiety and question whether they're saved and whether once the rapture does come.If they would be one of the people that would be spared it's something that, that several years ago was a trending topic on Twitter called rapture anxiety. And now as part of the, parlance and vocabulary that we use to discuss these things amongst former evangelicals, whether they use the term exvangelical or not to describe themselves.SHEFFIELD: Hmm. Yeah. Well, okay. So I guess you're saying then that people said that that was very common to have rapture anxiety.CHASTAIN: Yes. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: And not just as a kid, but also as an adult as well.CHASTAIN: Right. Right. Right. Because those things are essentially sincerely held beliefs or like, formative beliefs that, that formed when you were young and then as you are an adult and say, go about go about your life and you may be deconstructing purity culture and, or that sort of thing and engaging in adult sexual behaviors, and then have these thoughts that, oh my gosh, what if what I was taught when I was a child is true? And am I going to be am I going to be damned or something like that just because of the acting like a normal human? And so those things can crop up even if [00:15:00] you even if you cognitively no longer believe in those things.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and then of course it also crops up even if you, still do believe everything. Just the idea that you're not how do you really know that you're saved? Because I mean ultimately, there is no official standard that somebody can say, 'Oh, that's it. You did it. Here's your stamp.' And I think that in some ways, a lot of the evangelical intellectual theological culture in, in a lot of ways, it seems to me that it's kind of continually reinventing the wheel, and having to go through controversies that Christianity as a larger faith tradition went through thousands of years ago and already was like: 'Okay, you know what? We're done with this one. We don't have to think about it anymore.'I guess my thought example of that would be the idea of universal grace and salvation, that was a doctrine that developed out of this lack of surety with 'well, what does it mean to have been saved? And how can you really know?'And the answer that people eventually settled on was, well, actually, we can't know. So, Jesus died for everybody, regardless of whether they acknowledge him or not. And I don't know. I mean, do you think that some evangelicals are having to come around to that, that insight that, other people came to 500 years ago?CHASTAIN: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I mean, that is a that is something that can cause trouble for people in, in [00:16:30] those evangelical circles. One famous example from within evangelicalism is that Rob Bell, who was Considered a celebrity pastor in the early, late nineties, 2000s. And around 2010, he wrote a book called Love Wins, and that's essentially what he, what the book was about.It was about this idea that, that if God is loved and God saves everyone and pushes, push back on the idea of eternal judgment and hell and all of these things. And as a result. A number of the more conservative factions within evangelicalism pushed back and essentially tried to cancel him. That was not the terminology, that was not in our, our nomenclature at the time, but evangelicals have been doing things like this for a very long time.And what happened to Rob Bell is he eventually resigned from his church. He, and this was a church that was more sympathetic to his type of view, but he was also pressured by more conservative people within the same ecosystem, media and otherwise, like John Piper, who wrote a famous tweet called, that said, farewell, Rob Bell.And all of his books were pulled from. Christian bookstores, all of his books. So at Family Christian Stores, Lifeway, which is which was the retail bookstore chain managed by the Southern Baptist Convention, [00:18:00] they pulled all of his books and he was deprived of all those things and they've done it to a handful of other authors over time as well.When Jen Hatmaker affirmed queer people. Publicly all her books were pulled from those types of locations when Ray Bolts in the 90s early 2000s came out as gay, all of his all of his CDs and music were pulled from stations. So, the boundaries of evangelicalism around theology and what is acceptable is very heavily policed and enforced.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it really is. And it has to be said, and I've said this a few times on this show, that the Christian right invented cancelling people for their opinions. This was their idea, and now they constantly say that they're the ones who are the victim of it, but in fact, they do it the most, even now. They still do the most.CHASTAIN: Yeah. Yeah. There's a, there's even a there's even a, a book called The Radio Right, which looks at the rise of fundamentalist radio preachers in the sixties. And honestly, one of the first sort of consumer boycotts was around these hams that I forget, I think they might've been Polish hams or something like that.I don't, I don't remember the exact context, but one of the first consumer, broad consumer boycotts was pushed and organized by listeners [00:19:30] to a conservative fundamentalist radio shows. And that book, I mean, the book is actually written by Paul Matsko, who is part of, I believe the Cato Institute and has, more conservative convictions than I do for sure, but the, the way in which he describes this is, it is categorically one of the things, and one of, one of the social innovations of these groups is to, to punish these people through consumerism and capital.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it's also how they built themselves up. You mentioned Lifeway Christian stores being a owned and operated business of the Southern Baptist Convention.I mean, in a lot of ways, the non evangelical Christianity in the United States has been sort of colonized, if you will, by evangelicalism. Because they have the megachurches, because they have the Lifeway Christian stores, because they have the TV networks, so they have the infrastructure to kind of push out their views into everybody else, and so as a result, they basically managed to sort of rebuild the other Protestant traditions in their own image to some degree, or just drive people out of Protestantism altogether is what it seems like.CHASTAIN: Yes. Yes. And that's certainly true. A lot of 1 example from my own from my own sort of story is that I, I grew up going to United Methodist churches. And that is something that some folks would [00:21:00] consider. Okay. Okay. A mainline denomination, and it is in the historical sense. The one thing I do always say with regards to the experience is that it always takes on local flavor because it is broadly distributed across the country.And that means that if you go to a small. Church in small town, Indiana, like I did, it's going to probably be a little more conservative as opposed to if you went to the Methodist temple in downtown Chicago, which will likely be more liberal or progressive. And one at that same youth group at the, at the youth group, I was exposed to things like Josh Harris's, I can stay and goodbye and to purity culture and to a number of things.That are broadly evangelical and they were not necessarily tempered by the fact that I was in a supposedly more progressive denomination, one that does ordain women and things like that. And so that is absolutely the case that, that one of the ways in which they use soft power and influence is by generating materials that will be used by more progressive Protestants, and they may not they may not be as cognizant or were not at the time, so to speak to the types of messaging that is built into the material that they use.I think they have learned those lessons since then. And there are responses to that. But [00:22:30] these evangelical publishing houses started in the late 19th century. And so they have been developing for a long time and are well established in our country.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it is interesting for me to see, because when I was a Mormon, I was definitely aware that this was happening. Because we didn't have Mormon bookstores where we could go and buy stuff.And so, basically, if you wanted some Christian books, you had to go to one of these evangelical ones. And but on the other hand, if you're just some other flavor of Protestant and don't have these unique attachments and doctrines that Mormons do, it is harder to see that this is happening to you. I don't know if it was deliberate that they intended to do it this way either. What do you know about that?CHASTAIN: I would say, I mean, I do think that that's at least within evangelicalism. I don't know whether there was necessarily something nefarious, but and I can't ascribe, something nefarious to. To evangelicalism at large. I do think that these publishing houses were, we're meeting a demand. And then over time, they also helped to generate to generate a sense of like an imagined community or a public to which they could create a market.There's a book. By Daniel Vaca, who is a Brown University historian called Evangelicals Incorporated, and it actually looks directly at the evangelical book market and how it started in in the 19th century and developed [00:24:00] through to the present day and. He largely argues that that this sort of force did help to generate and codify the white evangelical culture.And, then those things permeate through things like the colleges that were built in the 1920s the Bible institutes that started a little bit before that. And on and on, as all of these alternative institutions were built. And then over time, yes, they did bleed into other more progressive spaces and those sorts of things but I don't, I don't know whether they were looking to try to temper the more progressive wings of American Christianity or other political parties in particular.Other geographical regions, or if they were just, pursuing these things because starting at around the time of the 1920s, they, these groups didn't really intermingle all that much like evangelicals. Isolated themselves in a lot of ways. And what I mean by that is there was the national council of churches and the parliament of world religions and all of these things that were started in the late 19th century, early 20th century.And whether, and a lot of evangelical groups or fundamentalist groups weren't really participants and then develop their own develop their, their own groups like the National Association of Evangelicals in the 1940s. So, [00:25:30] in a lot of ways, they stopped operating in ecumenical or interfaith spaces and just continued to cultivate their own sense of identity and culture.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and it's also interesting to the extent that evangelicalism has also been southernized because there were flavors of evangelicalism in every part of the country, but at this point, the other ones functionally do not really exist. Everything is a southern evangelical culture pretty much.And some people might dispute that, but it's like, well, where are your bookstores? Where are your mega churches? Where are your books that people are buying? They're just not there.CHASTAIN: Yeah. And even places like Orange County which is a stronghold of a lot of evangelical culture in California, a lot of those people were transplants from the South.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially Oklahoma in the Midwest. But actually I'm glad you mentioned Orange County, because of course there is a controversy with one of the biggest churches out there, Saddleback Church, just got kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Saddleback Church of Rick Warren, because, he was like, 'Well, look, it seems like there's nothing wrong with ordaining women, and so I'm going to do it.' And so they did and it's another example of evangelicals canceling people who disagree with them.CHASTAIN: Yeah, yeah, and there's a whole, there, there's absolutely a [00:27:00] whole well documented history of what within the Southern Baptist Convention is called the conservative resurgence in the 1980s and moving toward, forward to today, which is essentially people a number of recalcitrant I'm sorry, I was going to say recalcitrant, and I don't think that's the right word, but just very staunch conservatives who, who refuse to examine or question their, their theological convictions and believe that the, the only proper thing is to is to stand firm in their convictions, even if it means Thank You know, alienating women or people of color or queer people and disenfranchising them and blocking them from having authority in their faith community.And that was absolutely the response to, to prior movements like evangelical feminism, which was trying to make space for women in these spaces and they were told no. And that's the. To me, that is the reality of a lot of evangelical spaces is that they, they may decry deconstruction or people leaving or disaffiliating and those sorts of things, but.The reality is that people have been trying to make it work in these spaces for so long and they have been told no over and over for generations. And so now people are just deciding to [00:28:30] no longer participate. And that is a meaningful and valid choice when you have, are given no volition or control over your own fate in those places.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, and a similar thing is kind of happening in the LDS Mormon tradition as well. That people are trying to get the church to change its policies on same sex marriage or, or things like that, and continually being told no.And so now when you look at, and it's tough to say because the Mormon Church is different in that they count you as a member even if you don't go to their church, up until I think you're 120 I think is when they take you off the rolls. But when you look at polls, asking people, are they practicing Mormon or a former Mormon, there's actually more former Mormons than there are practicing when you ask people.But the response of the church has been pretty similar to, I think a lot of evangelical ones, which is that at first they denied that this was happening that people were walking away, and then eventually they started realizing: 'Oh, well, those, those communist academics weren't lying when they said this stuff. But you know what, it's okay because Jesus said that few there be that would find a way to the, to life. And so if that's how it is, well then, oh, well, I guess that's how it is.'It's an [00:30:00] interesting perspective, isn't it?CHASTAIN: Yes, absolutely.SHEFFIELD: But it just goes counter to the whole idea that your goal is to spread the gospel, but you also don't care if people are leaving your church, like it. Do they see the contradiction? Do they see that? What do you think?CHASTAIN: Well, I think you pointed out the way in which a number of these sort of worldviews can help discount the, essentially, the evidence to the contrary. So oftentimes, scriptures like that can be used as a validation of them standing firm, and so that, that can often be the case in these insular communities, is that they will I don't use the language of the remnant or that sort of thing to, to bat, to remain staunch in their in, in their convictions and to not question things because To do so, they fear may lead them along that, that terrible slippery slope that is, that is talked about in so many places instead of doing the more difficult work of trying to reform their own practices and beliefs, but many people are just in a, in a position where, where they would rather choose to affirm them, their fellow humans than to affirm the beliefs of a church.[00:31:30]SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and you certainly see that with the continual growth of the religious Nones, as they're often referred to, people who have none of the above religious affiliation.So while this perspective that we're talking about here, it certainly exists and is empowered to some degree, you look at some of the conferences that the Southern Baptist Convention every year has their big annual confab, and there still are a lot of people out there that are pushing for racial justice and reconciliation and things like that.And it's interesting to think about, because the other thing that I think the Christian right has become more aware of demographics than they used to be.Because they were growing largely at the expense of other Christian denominations. And now they're no longer growing. The Southern Baptist Convention keeps losing members. And it's become more political as they have lost members.And that seems to me that a lot of the people who are the biggest Trump fans, they tend to be people who don't go to church, but they still have the evangelical identity.CHASTAIN: Yes.SHEFFIELD: Do you agree with that?CHASTAIN: Yes, yes. And there have been some, some studies and unfortunately I can't rattle them off, off the top of my head. But one of, one of them that does come to mind is that some folks who. Who utilize or identify with the evangelical label now, especially [00:33:00] since the age of Trumpism since 2016 has increased, even if their church attendance is non existent, they may actually adopt or relate to an evangelical label, but it is not necessarily one that is That is attributed to that church attendance or to church membership, but rather a broader sort of cultural identity that is not necessarily tied to evangelical beliefs and that is something that has remained.A slippery and difficult part of using the term evangelical is that within academic circles, there's since the 80s, there's been this term the Bebbington quadrilateral, which is essentially four different aspects of evangelical theology. And David Bebbington was a historian or is rather a historian of.British evangelicalism, and he was using it for, for his purposes, for his academic purposes, but it's been used since then as a sort of way to, to Allied, it will remove problematic evangelicals from, from and a pro evangelical framing. And this is something that that was done, in the, in the pages of the New Yorker and in 2017 or so by Timothy Keller[00:34:30] utilizing the Bevington quadrilateral to say these people who are acting badly aren't evangelicals because they don't, their beliefs don't fall into these four academic buckets.Evangelicalism could be ascribed to more closely to what institutions are a part of. And now it's changing again because it's essentially a vibe. It's like, it's this identity that people ascribe to that isn't related directly to their church attendance or membership. So the, what the notion of what an evangelical is continues to change, which is fascinating.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, but and another way that that's happening is, is the QAnon movement. I think a lot of people who, who covered QAnon, even they don't realize that the entire thing is based on evangelical theology just straight up. The whole idea of spiritual warfare and the evil, nefarious world, the world running these secret plots against everyone.I mean, it's just, it is pure evangelical theology. But to that point though, this is another way that evangelicalism is sort of deteriorating because it is coming apart on the other side. So you got people who are leaving or saying, well, it doesn't work for me. I don't believe the ideas anymore, the doctrines, but then you got people coming out the other end who are [00:36:00] saying, I believe the ideas and in the identity, but it's just not as fun for me, so I'm going to go do QAnon instead.And I've seen a number of stories of pastors of evangelical churches becoming alarmed and saying, my congregation wants me to preach about satanic pedophiles eating babies.And to me, all of this kind of underlines the thesis of that book by Mark Knoll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. And the thesis being, of course, that there is no mind, was his point. I feel like some evangelicals are starting to realize that the critics were right, even though they may not be able to do anything about it. I don't know. What do you say?CHASTAIN: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is the this is the difficult thing about moderate evangelicals is that yes, they're they really do not Have a place anymore, and there are people that may, really, really wish for those types of things to exist and for there to be a happy medium.And I, I see that sort of in the, in the public career of Russell Moore. Russell Moore was. Got plotted in the, in the Wall Street Journal in the early 2010s for trying to be this, this new type of evangelical and even that language has been recycled several times new evangelicals as it was a term in the 1940s through the 1960s, people who were trying to resist the more [00:37:30] fundamentalist pole of these, of these groups, because the, but the history of evangelicalism is generally the history of the fundamentalists ousting the more moderate or progressive groups and being the ones that, that have most successfully held on to power within their groups.So Russell Moore during, during his tenure at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission really did try to be a moderating influence within, within the Southern Baptist Convention. But during that same time, it was also overlapping with the Trump administration and a push within the Southern Baptist convention to be very contrarian.And there were a number of black churches who were pushing to denounce white supremacy at as a statement of the Southern Baptist convention, which saw significant pushback, I believe in the 2017 convention and around within this same within this same timeframe, Russell, more famously resigned. And wrote a scathing letter that, that leaked to the, to the press that he wrote a scathing letter to the leadership of the Southern Baptist convention, talking about the sex abuse scandal, as well as the way in which it refused to refute white nationalism and other toxic aspects of their own faith [00:39:00] and their, and things that were prevalent within parts of the Southern Baptist convention.And he was forced to resign. He was, his role was continued, continued to be more sidelined and in favor of these more reactionary positions. And he's now ensconced at, at Christian Christianity today and is has a place of leadership there. His, the person that he, one of the people that he replaced Mark Galley. He was the, he was the editor in chief at the time and said that he before he resigned, wrote an editorial saying, Evangelicals don't have to vote for Trump, and he was lambasted for taking that stance and eventually converted to Catholicism. So this is the reality for a lot of moderates, is that, that they, they are driven out as well.And I wouldn't say that, that Moore is necessarily driven out, but his position is minimized. In comparison to those who may have more influence in this, in this present moment.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, the other thing, I guess the other sort of getting people away from evangelical denominations is the growth of Pentecostalism as well, which is another sort of de doctrinalizing [00:40:30] of Christianity. I mean, you watch a lot of these televangelist ministers, a lot of them almost don't even talk about Jesus.They certainly don't quote the Bible. And they don't have much to say other than stuff that you could find in a self help book at the airport. But at the same time, some of them also, while they may sort of dial back the theology, are very much still a hyper political and hyper partisan.And that basically became how Donald Trump managed to get a toehold among evangelicals. And I think people forget that, and it's important to note that, the sort of evangelical establishment, they wanted Ted Cruz and then it was only the Prosperity Gospel Pentecostal types who went for Donald Trump at first.CHASTAIN: Yeah. Paula White, Jerry Falwell Jr. Like those were the people who were his early ambassadors amongst evangelicals. And it was, you're right. It wasn't until around June of 2016 that the other leadership within. Powerful or elite evangelicals really started to fall in line on behind Trump after he made a number of promises.SHEFFIELD: And yeah. And, and to be honest, he kept a lot of those promises to them.You still see these articles about why are evangelicals are voting for Trump? And it's like, guys, did you pay attention that Trump did what he told them he would do? Like they were the only group that he ever told the truth to seems like [00:42:00] pretty much. And so, it obviously makes sense for them to do that.I mean, Trump is in many ways just like them in that. He's a guy who doesn't go to church. He's a guy who has a Christian identity rather than Christian beliefs. And I think that's probably going to be the future of evangelicalism in the United States and probably around the world.Can they do anything to stop that? I don't know, what do you think?CHASTAIN: It's a great question. And I think a lot of people are thinking about that. And I, I know that certainly 1 thing that that is, that is utilized in a very interesting way within, within evangelical circles is the reality that the majority of evangelicals people who identify as evangelical are in the global South now, or in other parts that are not the Traditionally considered the West, whether that's in the United States or Europe or elsewhere because of the rapid growth of either charismatic expressions of, of Christianity or of evangelicalism, which may, could be historically traced to the missionary work during, especially over the last couple of centuries, but has It's turned into a has become over time, a local type of faith.And also it's Christianity has been a global faith for millennia. So, but a number [00:43:30] getting back to how global evangelicalism is used to deflect from the criticism of Western or American in particular evangelicalism, I do think that that is a tactic to. To try to not look internally at the ways in which all of these types of things are continue to, to blossom and grow within our local Evan our, our context here in the United States and other parts of the West That essentially now is we, we talk about more in the terms of Christian nationalism and I would rather talk about Christian nationalism within.Particular context like evangelicalism, because I think that can oftentimes let, let these groups off the hook if they're not trying to push back against these things and saying that they are not part of their faith or their understanding of, of good faith. And even though to an outsider.Statements of declaring or stating that you're a Christian against Christian nationalism may seem like, may, may not seem very meaningful. It can be very meaningful to the people of faith within those communities to see those. Within their own ranks resist or reject those things.And I think that [00:45:00] a number, the sort of issues that these groups face often are the same that, that even sort of more broadly, I would say that the media faces or other parts of our society and that Even though more institutions, their institutions and their, their say, say, for example, comparing the mainstream media to the right wing media ecosystem.I don't again. I don't know that those are apples to apples to apples. And I'm, I'm. And I would love to hear your sort of take on that, given your experience within, within those ecosystems. Because I think some people think that, well, oh the right wing is pushing back against the mainstream, more progressive or liberal media, but the, the reach of these things areWhen you compare them, they're, they're not the same and, and they're not the same. In what way? They're not the, you mean by that? Well, what, I mean, like, I think people underestimate the reach of conservative media. People within, within progressive spaces may under Can routinely underestimate the reach and effect of the right wing media ecosystem.And I think sometimes it's people who have left one thing and moved to the other that have the insight that some people who've always stayed in one [00:46:30] particular ecosystem do not have.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, I think that's definitely true. Because a lot of people who had always been progressive and maybe, either in any tradition, faith tradition or non tradition, they look at things like the Daily Wire or they look at people like Andrew Tate or somebody like that, and they said: 'These people are idiots. They're stupid. They say nonsense. They have no idea what they're talking about.'And they're right to say that. It's true, you don't get good information from these people. But the reality is, millions of people do get information from these people. And you can mock them, you can deride them. You can say they're morons, but nonetheless, they have more influence than the Atlantic. They have more subscribers than, I don't know, the New Republic. And in many cases, they have more YouTube views than CNN even, a lot of these people.And that's just the reality. So a lot of people, it is hard for them, I think, to take it seriously because intellectually, it's not serious, but politically, it's deadly serious. And they can't see that because of that.I mean, there's that phrase, the banality of evil, and I think that that certainly applies in this case here, that authoritarianism often is idiotic at the same time. And certainly that's the case with Donald Trump.CHASTAIN: So yeah, I appreciate your comments [00:48:00] on that. because I do know that that is part of your experience as having been part of that media ecosystem and now operating in a different one.SHEFFIELD: Well, Yeah. And that is definitely a point that I do try to make to people is to get them to understand that. Look, you don't have to take it seriously, but lots of people do.CHASTAIN: Lots of people do, exactly.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And the same thing is true with these-- and I do, like I've seen similar tendencies in the religious realm, like when people look at someone like Ken Ham, the creationist activist or any of these other guys, the things they say are ridiculous and absurd, but millions of people love this guy and they want his stuff to be in public schools. They want it to be in public school.And so you have to take this stuff seriously. And you can see that also with some of the stuff that this evangelical college up in Michigan, Hillsdale College, they have created a program with Charlie Kirk and Turning Point Faith, and now there's Turning Point schools to get this explicitly Christian propagandist stuff in.And to be clear, it's also explicitly right wing evangelical flavored Christianity, it's against progressive Christianity and all that, and get it into public schools. And now they're in Oklahoma, they're in Florida, and I think one other state as well. And so this stuff, it really matters, even though the beliefs are ridiculous and not supported.[00:49:30]CHASTAIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I, and I mean that, that is absolutely the case is that that oftentimes we, that's how we view other people's beliefs, right?As, as absurd or as incredulous, but those, those beliefs you have to. Take another person's beliefs. You have to try to understand them. And I think doing that is, is valuable. And that's why I think try also understanding how people change their minds is So fascinating.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, speaking of that, though, now let's talk about your own journey, if we could for a little bit.CHASTAIN: Sure.SHEFFIELD: How did you get into the idea of leaving evangelicalism?CHASTAIN: I mean, I was. I was the sort of kid that was, that was all in, so I was, I was born and raised in, in, in Christianity and, and I mentioned earlier that the tradition, United Methodist tradition and, there were certain things that, that made questioning other parts of evangelicalism easier because of that one example being that the, the church Had always, or at least in my lifetime, had ordained women, and that is not something you mentioned earlier, that Saddleback was excommunicated or removed from the Southern Baptist Convention for the very same thing.So in some, in some traditions, that [00:51:00] is considered... Wrong or heretical or whatever sort of unorthodox, whatever type of adjective you want to use, but it's not something that is part of orthodox belief or practice. But I, I was all in, I was sort of just always a religiously oriented kid at in high school.Like I was. A 90s kid. So, 90s youth group culture was really powerful. I think in the 90s, like Newsweek had like a cover story about, Christian kids and their, their rock festivals and stuff and, and all of these things. So it was sort of a cultural moment at the time. And I was heavily invested and at the ripe old age of 17 felt a call to the ministry and chose my school as a result.So I went to Indiana Wesleyan and during my first full week of school is when 9 11 happened. And that really changed the tenor of a lot of my experience. I was a double major in history and biblical literature, and a lot of my initial. Faith crisis was around the fact that in my history class, I had essentially, I couldn't say this at the time but the, the head of the department was teaching a type of Christianity or Christian theology called Christian Reconstructionism that is really based on things like biblical worldviews and [00:52:30] all of these other aspects presuppositional thinking and, and all of these other things that are part of that And in my Bible classes, I was reading the Bible in Greek and learning about how the Bible was developed over centuries and also having, my first sort of independent political thoughts and during the run up to the war in Iraq I felt a lot of inner turmoil and had my first genuine crisis of faith over the fact that Well, this person that we're learning about is called the Prince of Peace and was killed by the state and all of these things, and here are a number of my colleagues and professors championing this this run up to war. And really trying to wrestle with, like, the just war theory from a custom and other things like that.And that is when I really started to feel a divide between myself and some others. And this is as a white guy. So, like. And as far as like the pyramid of privilege within evangelicalism, I was at the top just by virtue of, of birth and but I still felt like, like even voicing moderate leanings felt risky.And then when I voted for John Kerry in 2004, the first election I was, I was eligible to vote in, I had friends like praying for my soul and then [00:54:00] after that that's sort of, That sort of continued to develop and I, I felt a distance from evangelicalism and went through some period of time where I was after graduating where I was what people would call unchurched.I wasn't attending regularly. And then in grad school, I did get married fairly young. And then in grad school, I discovered a type of theology called Creation Care Theology, which is essentially looking at narratives of ecological stewardship and the biblical narrative and other parts of the Christian tradition, and really Had sort of revitalized my, my faith in a way that I wasn't expecting and I pursued that for, for a while at the same time, we also through circumstances of, of friends and other things ended up going to a ended up going to a fundamentalist sort of storefront church in Chicago and was there for several years and even though like we never became full members my family, because we were egalitarian and that became a sticking point eventually after we stayed for several years and we tried to talk it out with the pastoral leadership there and they wouldn't budge.They essentially agreed to having a number of discussions around the issue, and then those talks fell [00:55:30] apart, and we had to leave, and there was essentially, there's a term called holy ghosting, where, like, we left and we lost all of our local support group because we were no longer a part of that.And that was a lot of grief and that, that happened in 2014 and that's when I started to really consider. Why so many people that I knew from my school from my college had left evangelicalism, even people that I was only connected to online, that I saw the things they posted and they were not in alignment with evangelicalism, they were in alignment with a more progressive view of the world, a different type of view of the world.And that is when I started to explore the idea of having a show about it and, and at the time it felt like the right sort of medium to do that would be podcasting as opposed to say, like launching a blog in 2014, 2015, 2016, no one was really reading blogs anymore at that point. And so the idea was just that, that people could tell their story in their own words.And then over time. I could build a body of work that would show the various narratives or the various commonalities between all of these individual stories. And that's where my, my work really, really started. And then since then have [00:57:00] had, I have continued that work throughout the, the ensuing years.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. All right. Well I appreciate the background there. And I appreciate what you're doing. Having to talk about this stuff, it's exhausting for the people who have to live it, but it's probably even more exhausting for those of us who have to talk about it.And I don't say that very often, but I think it's worth pointing out everyone.CHASTAIN: Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure like I'm sure whenever you've had to talk about leaving Mormonism, like it, you're sort of picking at a wound in a lot of ways. Things that aren't easy and sometimes even holding space for other people's stories can be discouraging or difficult and have impacts on you in a way that you don't really anticipate.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and also just seeing people who are being harmed by their beliefs, but they can't see it because they're in the bubble. But I mean, we're both proof that people can leave the bubble. I mean, there's no guarantee, of course, that anyone will escape it, but people can, and you shouldn't necessarily give up on them, if you don't want to.CHASTAIN: Right, right. Yeah. Especially if you're in relationship, in relationship with them already. Sometimes they, they need time. Sometimes they need to see other people thriving in ways that they're not able to in their environment. You never know exactly what the catalyst might be.SHEFFIELD: [00:58:30] Yeah. And often, the best argument is a life well lived in many cases. Because according to these fundamentalist traditions, you can't have a good life. Your life will be miserable and horrible. I mean, that's part of the threat of keeping people in is saying that your whole life will be ruined if you're not succumbing to what we tell you to do.And then when seeing people who have a good life and are pleasant and that shows that that's not the case, that those are not valid arguments.CHASTAIN: Right, right. Absolutely.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. All right. Well, so Blake where can people find your stuff for people who want to keep up with you?CHASTAIN: The best place to go. Thank you Matthew for asking is post evangelical post. com. So that's my, my newsletter and it is hosted on Substack. Most of it's free. There is a paid tier as is often the case with Substack.But yeah, post evangelical post. com. I post every new episode of Exvangelical and other writing and, and everything else. I pretty much left Twitter or X or whatever we're calling it, so that's the best place to follow me. I'm dabbling in some of the other Twitter alternatives, but head over to Post Evangelical Post to keep up with my work.SHEFFIELD: Okay. Sounds good. Right. Well, thanks for being here then.CHASTAIN: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody for joining us for the discussion, and you can always [01:00:00] get more episodes if you go to theoryofchange.show. I've got the video, audio, and transcript of everything, and if you are a paid subscribing member, you get complete access to the archive, and I appreciate everybody who is supporting the show in that way. And if you are not able to do so, please do give us a nice review on your favorite podcast platform that is helpful to get more people to see the show and tell your favorite podcast about what we're doing here as well.That can be helpful as well. I'd love to do shows on other people's as well. And then of course, we are part of the flux.community network. So go to flux.community for more articles, podcasts about politics, religion, media, and technology, and how they all intersect. And I definitely do appreciate your support in that as well. So thank you very much. And I will see you next time. This is a public episode. 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SummaryIt's election season again, which means that public opinion surveys are constantly in the news. Trying to figure out what likely voters want is on the minds of everyone who works in politics or journalism. But what about the unlikely voters? What do they want?At first glance, it may seem a bit absurd to ask about the political views of people who aren't registered to vote, or who are registered but rarely do turn out to the polls. But the reality of American politics as it stands right now is that elections are often decided by such small margins that mobilizing non voters could be and likely has been crucial to winning elections, Barack Obama roused some of them in 2008 and 2012. Donald Trump appealed to them in 2016.When it comes to figuring out what unlikely voters think, there is no one more expert on the subject than David Paleologos. He's the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, which is known for its public opinion surveys, particularly a poll series they conduct of people who say they have no interest in voting.Timecodes02:01 — What is an "unlikely voter?"09:02 — Unlikely voters have moved toward Trump after preferring Obama11:45 — The difficulty of determining a correct poll sample is harder with unlikely voters15:23 — Non-voters seem to know less about politics than voters24:00 — Unlikely voters more negative toward Biden today than Trump in 201726:38 — How Republicans better utilize non-policy arguments than Democrats32:24 — Unlikely voters overwhelmingly uninterested in alternatives to Biden or Trump34:17 — Voting isn't too difficult, unlikely voters say42:12 — Could alternative voting methods increase public interest in voting?z46:50 — Trump's simpler messaging helps him with lower-knowledge citizens52:06 — Wrap-upTranscriptThis text is automatically generated from the audio and may not be entirely accurate. It is provided for convenience purposes only. Your podcast player program may cut it off before the end.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Thanks for being here today, David. Welcome to Theory of Change.DAVID PALEOLOGOS: Thank you. Great to be in Flux.SHEFFIELD: All right. [00:02:00] Excellent. Well, all right. So, let's before we get too deep into the subject here, let's define what is an unlikely voter. As you have done in these surveys here.PALEOLOGOS: So, an unlikely voter really falls into two categories: 1) People who are not registered to vote, obviously, they're not a vote if they're not registered to vote, and 2) people who are registered to vote, but who indicate on surveys that they're not likely to cast the ballot.So, normally posters will begin a survey and they'll say, how likely are you to vote in the upcoming election?Very likely somewhat, not very, not at all. If respondents indicate not at all or not likely, they get screened out. And in this survey, we did the exact opposite. If they said they were very or somewhat likely, we screened them out. And we proceeded with people who said that they were not likely or not at all likely to vote.SHEFFIELD: And how reliable are those indicators when people claim that they're not likely to vote? Tell us about the research about that particular [00:03:00] self-identification.PALEOLOGOS: So some people actually say it so that they will be disqualified from the survey and that they can hang up in a civil way.Some people genuinely are not likely to vote. And when we probe a little bit further in the survey, we get an idea about whether or not they voted in the past or whether or not they have a Democrat or Republican leaning preference. But when you look at the data that's from the U. S. Elections project. They do calculations based on voter eligible population for every state and nationally. And what we found is that it's not just a few million people that don't vote.It's a lot of people. We're expecting 90 million people who are eligible to vote in the United States in 2024 will not vote either because they're not registered to vote or they’re simply fed up and they won't vote. [00:04:00]And that's, that's a, an ominous number when you think about it, 90 million people.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. What's the percentage?PALEOLOGOS: Well, it's more votes than were cast for Joe Biden and Joe Biden set the record for most votes received by any presidential candidate in 2020. He was in the 80 million plus range and 90 million people exceeds that.90 million people are saying they're not going to vote even though they're eligible to vote. And that's a huge problem.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.PALEOLOGOS: So pollsters do these niche surveys, Democratic voters only, Republican voters only, caucus voters only. And these are very small subsets compared to the 90 million people who are Americans, they're citizens and they, they're just not going to vote. They're fed up.And so we thought back in 2012, why not pull them and figure out what's going on and then track [00:05:00] it. And we followed up with a survey in 2018 and now here in 2023, and there are some common threads in the data, but also some red flags and also some opportunities for candidates in terms of trying to convert those nonvoters into likely voters.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and I mean, again, we're talking about such a large pool of people here that there's no question that not even 20 percent of them could easily make the difference for any presidential candidate. And certainly for a lot of congressional, or gubernatorial or, whatever down the ballot. I think there's no question about that.And there has been some research that indicates that Donald Trump was able to do that to some degree in 2016 and that that was a big thing he was interested in doing in 2020 as well, trying to identify nonvoters, disengaged people who were sympathetic to him.So it's, yeah, like this is something that's already happening, and you guys kind of were [00:06:00] ahead of the curve in that regard.PALEOLOGOS: So, yeah, I, I think so. And I'm surprised that people didn't copy. Usually people copy some of the work. Pollsters scoop questions and poach questions and different things from each other. It really hasn't been done.I think I understand why it hasn't been done, because it's really expensive. I mean, we do live caller surveys and you can get in and out of a live caller survey in three nights, three days, four days max. Getting nonvoters is tougher. Because these are people who aren't used to being polled, they're tougher to reach, they're disproportionate minority, they're disproportionate young, lower educated they're also disproportionate disabled.There's a much higher population of disabled people who have just given up on politics, they're just trying to survive because of their own issue or disability or family disability. So they're a tougher population to reach, but we think [00:07:00] it is essential.And I do think that it helped Donald Trump in 2016. It also helped Barack Obama in 2012, if you remember. Back in 2012 we did the survey, I think in August, which is kind of the low point of Barack Obama's numbers. He was really suffering a lag effect after the big 2008 win, hope and change. And then a lot of people hadn't really seen it on him, but they didn't have the same intensity.And he figured out that if it was just a persuasion campaign, he was probably going to have a real challenge. And so I think he, the, the DNC, from what I understand, just like Trump did in 2016, used the data to go out and find non-persuadables, people they didn't even have to persuade to vote for Barack Obama.They felt that if they could get them just out to vote that a high percentage of them would vote for Barack Obama. And that's exactly what happened. [00:08:00]SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And in the 2012 poll that you guys did Obama was the-- I mean, he wasn't the majority candidate, but he was definitely the preferred candidate of these unlikely voters in the survey that you conducted at that point.Now, you guys found a kind of a partisan reversal, if you will. That Donald Trump got more support than Joe Biden did.PALEOLOGOS: 2023. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. And the exact opposite dynamic if you look at people who weren't registered to vote. It's about a two to one break for Donald Trump over Joe Biden.If you looked at people who were registered, but not likely to vote, it was a two and a half to one spread of Donald Trump over Joe Biden. And so what that suggests is the same advantage that Barack Obama had in 2012. Technically statistically Donald Trump has as an advantage, he needs to find those people and, having pulled it 3 times, it's tough to find the people, but if you do find the people, [00:09:00] again, he would not have to persuade as much.Unlikely voters have moved toward Trump after preferring ObamaSHEFFIELD: Now there were some other kind of interesting little splits when you looked at the numbers. So like women who were registered to vote in this sample, 32% of them said that they were in favor of Donald Trump. But only 11% said that they were in favor of Biden. But it was split evenly basically among men who were registered.But then by contrast, among unregistered men, they were much more likely to go to Trump. Whereas that dichotomy didn't exist so much for women who were unregistered.So these are small sample sizes though. So I don't know how much we can delve into it. But on the other hand, the disparity between these two different groups, is certainly higher than the margin of error, even for the smaller subsets. What's your take on all that is there anything to be gained from looking at these numbers?PALEOLOGOS: That's exactly the case. I mean, with smaller subsets, you're absolutely right. And your viewers should know that they take on a higher margin of error because they are [00:10:00] smaller sample sizes. So once you get to a subsample of 70, 80, 100 people, it's significantly higher margin of error than it is a subsample of 400 or 500.400 or 500 subsample, you're in the plus or minus. 4 percent range, or thereabouts 4, 4, 4 and a half percent range, but then when you get down to 100 subsample, you're plus or minus like 9%. So, yeah, I mean, you want to be careful looking at some of the subsets, but the common thread male or female registered or unregistered is a disappointment with both choices.I mean, to be fair, the polls generally show that a third-party candidate is the top choice, not Trump, not Biden. And in 2012, it was really all about a third-party candidate. And you've seen that not only in this poll, but in other polling data where people just don't want it to be a Trump-Biden matchup again.Whether [00:11:00] you're a Democrat, Republican, or independent voter or nonvoter, and you're seeing the same kind of dynamic here. Most people were opting for something else, a better choice than, than those. But if they had to choose between Biden or Trump. Trump was getting the plurality of support over Biden.And that speaks to a number of issues that are important to men and women registered or not registered. Be it the economy, immigration, parenting. You mentioned some of the female respondents for Trump. That's a big issue for a lot of people, independent as well, independent women. So a lot of these dynamics are in play here in 2023, as they were in the two previous surveys.The difficulty of determining a correct poll sample is harder with unlikely votersSHEFFIELD: Yeah, now with the sample, I mean, you had mentioned that it did take a lot longer to be in the field as the term goes in polling, how confident are you that this-- I mean, because statistically speaking, there is, there is the [00:12:00] concept of margin of error, but it's possible that the sample could be not quite accurate.I mean, like people have raised concerns about that with election polling that the percentage of people who answer the phone might be more inclined to have certain opinions or whatnot. And that's why the Pew Research Center and some others, and maybe you can talk about your own organization in that regard, has tried to make some adjustments to try to find people who might not be wanting to answer the phone or take a phone poll. I mean, let's maybe talk about methodology here, if we could.PALEOLOGOS: Yeah, sure. So for us, we wanted to go state by state and look at how many eligible voters didn't vote in the last two presidential elections. So we have real data on that. It's not subjective.We have data on how many vote-eligible adults in each state did not [00:13:00] vote. And what we did was we grouped those state by state into regions and made sure that those quotas reflected what the quotas reflected were actually for the last two presidential elections. So, in some states, obviously California has a lot of people who are transient, who are not registered.Some of them are just inhabitants. They're not legal citizens. Therefore they're not eligible. But we were only looking at people who were eligible to vote state by state that did not show historically high probability of voting. And you're right, it is tough to find those people, because people who are voters, people who take surveys, especially the super voters, the good voters, they're used to taking surveys. They're familiar with the question formats.People who aren't voters or who aren't registered. It's [00:14:00] really difficult, especially if you have a 15- to 20-minute study to keep them on the line and ask why they're not voting in many different ways or what would motivate them to vote. And it's very difficult to get all the way through to the end with respondents like that.So it does take a lot of time. It really is expensive when you're doing live calling. But one thing you asked about confidence. The one thing for sure is that we feel quite confident that the people that we reported in the survey were not voting, said to us that they were not voting either because they weren't registered or that they were not voting because they were done with the political system as it were.Some people could be motivated to vote and that's kind of what we talked about earlier. And the onus is on the campaigns to find those [00:15:00] people who might be on the fence who might be telling us in a survey. Yes, I'm registered, but no, I'm not voting next year.Those people might be persuadable to vote. But at this point, polls being a snapshot in time at the time that we did the field, they were not voting next year.Non-voters seem to know less about politics than votersSHEFFIELD: Yeah. All right. Well, so let's get further into the tables here and we'll have a link in the show notes for people who want to check out the complete results. So this is a population overall that seems to not know as much about politics as regular voters. You have a question in here about who is the vice president, and 70 percent of the respondents correctly gave the name Kamala Harris or some semblance of her identifying her, who she was.[00:16:00] And that was probably, that was higher than when, when you asked this poll in 2018, it was around 50 percent said Mike Pence.Now they also they also, there were, there were some interesting breakdowns, I thought, with their, with their ideologies. When you go through and you asked them to sort of place themselves on the ideological spectrum, 32 percent said they were moderate, 18 percent said liberal, and 16 percent said conservative. How do those match up with the voter samples you guys conduct?PALEOLOGOS: Yeah, so it's more of a perfect Bell Curve, right, in terms of sentiment with moderate being in the middle. And you would guess that, right?You would guess that of a people who don't have a leaning, don't have an interest in voting, they probably self-defined as being moderate. It's at it actually runs a little bit left of center for most polls. Most polls skew slightly conservative. Most national polls skew slightly conservative [00:17:00] where there will be a big chunk of moderate but slightly higher amount of people say conservative or very conservative than they do liberal or very liberal.So this poll is slightly left of that. And that kind of makes sense when you think about people who don't vote, who tend to be younger persons of color, lower income. And even a disproportionate amount of disabled Americans who have given up on the political system as well.SHEFFIELD: Okay. And then, but at the same time, you also did ask if you did vote in 2020, who did you vote for in it? And there was a slight plurality of the respondents said that they had voted for Donald Trump. Do you see a dichotomy there between people who are identifying themselves as left leaning, but are more likely to be supporting Donald Trump. Like what's, what's the deal with that?PALEOLOGOS: Yeah. So I think there were two separate questions and it's a great [00:18:00] question. And number one, and this was really one of the takeaways for me is that Trump's narrative that the system is rigged, it's not fair, government doesn't work, government is frozen, has actually turned off some of his own base. Which explains why slightly more people had said, not a lot, but slightly more people had said that they had previously voted for him and that's worked counter to his narrative, he's used it to motivate people to vote to say, you need to get out and vote.For me, because the system is rigged, because Washington D. C. doesn't work, because your vote is being thrown away by these corrupt Democrats or whatever his narrative is, but it's had the opposite effect according to this data. This data is suggesting that those people have actually listened to him and they aren't voting because they [00:19:00] don't think that He'll be allowed to be elected or that the system is rigged and that their vote really doesn't matter.And that they're very disillusioned about the system. And they have been convinced by Donald Trump and others that it's just a waste of time. And so people who may have previously supported him thinking the system was going to work when he got elected now believe there's no point.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, at the same time, I think you could also say that it is showing that Biden's message, that there may be some similarities that he's facing with that Hillary Clinton faced in 2016, in that the message of, things are fine, don't worry about it, the Democrats have got it under control, that's not persuasive to a lot of people. They feel like whether it's their own lives or, however they're coming to this opinion, they feel like [00:20:00] that the system has failed, and they're not interested in somebody telling them everything's fine, don't worry about it.PALEOLOGOS: They do believe that. And the reason really Biden prevailed was he was viewed as a calm, steady hand to lead the country from the omnipotent tweets of Donald Trump. Someone who was clean politically, and someone who could reach across the aisle.Now with this issue that we're dealing with where, we have a divided Congress. And we can't get consensus on a lot, even though, there was 1, 1, bipartisan bill that obviously that President Biden is talking about, those are all in question. Now, forget about his age and competency. That's been an overriding issue. It's worse now.But if he is seen to not be [00:21:00] squeaky clean, honest, by virtue of either the Hunter Biden issue or these allegations against Hunter Biden, and whether there's a connection with President Biden remains to be seen, if that is tainted and his ability to reach across the aisle and to make things happen, if that is tainted, you're taking away a couple of important legs from the table.That was a strong table for Joe Biden. And then you add into that, whether or not the immigration issue is going to become better or worse next year, and whether the economy is going to be better or worse next year, you've got a lot of variables in play that could potentially give him the kind of negatives that Hillary Clinton had in 2016.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And I guess one of the other things that's stands out for me in this sample in terms of their demographic differences from likely voters is where they look [00:22:00] for news from. In this sample, it was much more, they were much more internet driven. With social media websites 34 percent said that that's where they got their news from.That was tied with television and cable news networks. And that's, and then newspapers and magazines are, were only 10%. And then radio down to 4%. So, I mean, that's that seems like another big difference. Maybe that's a function of age of this sample or what, what do you think?PALEOLOGOS: Yeah, I think that's part of it, but I mean, it shows, tells me that you're in the right media doing podcasts because we're seeing a straight line down for TV.In the old days, everybody wanted to be on TV. It was like a big deal. But I mean, I have my two boys are in their early twenties. They are not TV watchers. My son is at U. S. C. He doesn't even have a TV in his room. He projects on the wall from his laptop.So if you're under [00:23:00] 35, TV is not your bag. You are watching podcasts and listening. You're getting your information from other sources and the, the whole TV presence is dying. It's not just among unlikely voters. It's among likely voters too. Viewership is dropping right across the board. Everybody's feeling it. MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, they're all dropping or trying to maintain that, that critical demographic that, the 25 to 54 demographic that everybody yearns for.But, it's just like staying afloat. Nobody's really growing an audience because everything is rotating to social media and this is why it's so important to get good information to listen and watch podcasts and so on and click on some of the links that you can see and do your own research because television is really an old person's game right now.[00:24:00]Unlikely voters more negative toward Biden today than Trump in 2017SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, definitely is. And to that point, one of the questions that you asked people in the pool here is what do you think of when you hear the name of the current president, Joe Biden?And the first answer that people gave was old, it was about 19% said that about Biden. How did that sort of thing compare to when Trump was president? When you guys did this in 2018, what did people have to say back then?PALEOLOGOS: Well, the, the, the words offered on Trump were more vulgar. But they weren't, they weren't as bad in, in terms of total, total responses.So, it wasn't just old, it was just, cognitive skills and so on. People are a little bit more civil. With Biden than they were with Trump. But the total amount of negative sentiment was pretty high against Joe, for which one for, for Joe.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, I'm saying with the negative with Trump, like what was the percentage with that?[00:25:00]PALEOLOGOS: It was about 10 or 15 percent total negative sentiment, lower. So I think it was like in the high 30s, if you, if you aggregated the negative comments, it was more like in the high 30s, then the negative sentiment towards Biden. So, and you can't do anything about age. I mean, you can do something about.Maybe competency and, a good political team can, can at least create the perception that he is sharp and that he's getting better and that he's making better decisions. But it's tough, it's tough because the age situation just doesn't go away. And it puts more pressure on 2 In line for the presidency, which is Kamala Harris and her numbers are bad among likely voters.And I think a lot of people, more people know who she is in this poll than Mike Pence was because Mike Pence really flew under the radar. Kamala Harris has been [00:26:00] thrust into the spotlight. In a positive way by left leaning media, but also been thrust into the spotlight by right leaning media, trying to show that she's not competent and not a good second choice.And I think the, the combination of both of those media sides, if you will, have, impacted people, even who are not likely voters to recognize who she is. That may not necessarily be a positive thing that more people recognize who she is. It's just that they do recognize who she is and it could be a factor among likely voters next year.How Republicans better utilize non-policy arguments than DemocratsSHEFFIELD: Yeah. And I would say that that's a real difference between the way that Democrats and Republicans conduct politics. Because when you look at presidential campaigns over the years the messaging from Republicans, it tends, they offer both political and non political reasons to, to go against the opponent.[00:27:00] Whereas Democrats tend to focus more on policy, generally speaking. So like for instance, you shouldn't vote for. Michael Dukakis because he looked funny in the tank, or you shouldn't vote for John Kerry because he went windsurfing and, he, he was French whereas the, on the, the Democrats generally, the only sort of non political thing they kind of offer is, well, they're stupid and they don't really focus on anything else, and the age thing actually is, really interesting as an attack line against Biden, because, I mean, as everybody knows, Trump is basically the same age as him.And so for them, but so for Democrats, if they were to say, well, look, Trump's old too, that doesn't help Joe Biden at all. Because you're basically saying, look, our guy's old also. And. So that's, it's, it's actually a really interesting and vulnerability for Biden in that regard.PALEOLOGOS: It's going to be an interesting year next year because and this is just a [00:28:00] sort of a sidebar to, to your original question, but I think it's important, when you look at Dianne Feinstein, Mitch McConnell, and they're all leaders in, in, in Congress as well, in addition to, to Joe Biden, and then you're going to see.The graphs of the average age of the U S senators and, and how few people are, under 40 years of age and so on. So, the, the aging competency is being weaved together against Joe Biden, whether it's fair or not fair. It it's it, it, and less so against Donald Trump. People acknowledge the years, that the, the age of Donald Trump, but It's a question of, do you think he can do the job?Do you think he, whether you like the job or not, the question of, do you think he can do the job is a different question and that's what, why I think it doesn't, it doesn't work to Biden's advantage to go down that road. I mean, Mick [00:29:00] Jagger is Joe Biden's age and people don't think Mick Jagger, falls short on, on, on a lot of different things singing, dancing or anything else at his age.And, so it's not strictly about his age. It's, it's about whether or not he's confident. I mean, the foes of Joe Biden are going too far in my opinion. They're basically, all they do is just point out gaps and his stuttered speech, or he turns the wrong way or whatever it is. And that's just, I mean, that's just cherry picking video to create a narrative.And it's just not fair. I mean, it's not fair to him. It's not fair to older people. Even though a lot of older people in the polling would prefer a younger candidate. Just on it's fair. It's just not fair.SHEFFIELD: Well, and that's an [00:30:00] interesting point you make there because, the, the Republican electorate is overwhelmingly over 50.Like the majority of them are, I, I think it was what in the last election, what was it? Like 57% I believe, of their electorate, maybe closer to 60 was over the age of 50.And so yeah, it's paradoxical because you're having people who perhaps might be younger than Joe Biden who are saying: 'Well, I feel like I am not what I used to be. So he can't be either.'And they really can't know that. I mean, people age in different ways. But you know, politics isn't fair, and it never has been, right?PALEOLOGOS: Yes. So I think Democrats, they, they have to, exactly kind of step back from what you said about policy only, and they can't run a policy campaign against Trump and or whoever the Republican nominee is.They have got to do some really in depth [00:31:00] polling focus groups and test a number of different, not only issues, but characteristics and try and piece together the coalitions that they need to piece together because right now, Joe Biden is pulling, I mean, his disapproval is in the fifties, high fifties, and even higher when it comes to immigration and The economy, and just based on those numbers, whether or not a 3rd party candidate runs or not doesn't really matter.If your disapproval is at 55. I think you almost want a 3rd party candidate in there to split up that disapproval of 55 because if it's a binary choice, the disapproval of 55 is going to go to. Whoever Biden's opponent is and if there's a third party candidate, maybe there's a buffer where they won't vote for the Republican, they can't vote for Biden who, based on how they feel, but they have a third party alternative.I mean, we've been [00:32:00] talking, the polling community has been talking about how a third party candidate could hurt the Democrats, but there could be an argument to be made that it. Third party candidate might, might hurt the Republicans if you give people two options among the people who disapprove of Biden instead of one.Unlikely voters overwhelmingly uninterested in alternatives to Biden or TrumpSHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, that's true. Although it was interesting that you guys did offer some various. potential candidates to the, to these people and, not, not Trump, not Biden but they weren't particularly interested in any of them. I mean, Bernie Sanders was 2%, Michelle Obama, 2% RFK, like 2 percent was the highest.Candidate choice. And, and overwhelmingly the answer was, so the question was, is there anyone you can think of who you would be certain to go to the polls for? If that person was running and [00:33:00] 48 percent said no. So, I mean, what does that, what does that say?PALEOLOGOS: Well, it, it says that there's a hardened group of people who aren't going to vote despite anybody. I mean, so they're telling us I'm not going to vote. I'm not going to vote. The system is rigged, all throughout the poll. Then we finally say, okay, look, is there anybody who would motivate you to go vote? And like, like you said, I mean, 2 percent here, 2 percent there, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama.I think we're on to Santa's got a point. Bernie Sanders, but not enough really to matter among people who aren't candidates. So that tells us that, nearly half of them, you could put. Maybe we should have named somebody else or maybe they should have thought of somebody else.I don't know who that might be. Maybe Taylor Swift or something. [00:34:00] I really don't know. But, but obviously the people that would immediately come to mind didn't come to mind.And that just gives you a, an idea of why this kind of polling is so important.Voting isn't too difficult, unlikely voters saySHEFFIELD: And, and of how alienated people feel yeah, and so, one of the other, one of the other questions that you guys ask that I think undermines a lot of the. A lot of, a lot of Democrats have this idea that people don't vote because it's too difficult for them to vote that voter registration requirements or photo ID or whatever, that they just are too scary to people.And, your poll overwhelmingly finds that that's not the case. So you ask them, the question of, do you think, That voting is easy to complete and can be done quickly. And the answer, 67 percent [00:35:00] said yes, and only 11 percent said it takes too much time. And then there was some unknown, don't know and not decided.But I mean, it's pretty overwhelming in this regard that people. They don't feel like it's too hard to participate. They just choose not to.PALEOLOGOS: Not to participate. And that's their choice. I mean, I heard, I, as I say, I monitored some of the calls the first couple of nights and people were actually saying, it's my right not to vote. So what do you say to that? I mean, hey, it's my right not to vote. So what are you going to say about that? And, and, and, and it wasn't about ease of registration. I mean, and by the way, that 67, that two thirds number has run through all three polls that we've done going back to 2012. Majority, a clear majority of people know that it's not that difficult to register and they just don't want to, they want to have nothing to do with it.Some people didn't want to vote because they didn't want to be on a jury list. They didn't want their name to pop [00:36:00] up. Some people, there were some people who were felons or who had criminal records. They didn't want to be on anybody's radar. I mean, there were a bunch of different reasons, but the overwhelming reasons were, they just don't believe the system works anymore.They don't believe the vote counts. It has nothing to do with registering to vote. It has to do with them just giving up on the system. And some of those people were Trump voters and they've given up.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. When that is the irony that so while Democrats believe that, more voting, like people are not voting, they're, they're wrong to think that people aren't voting because they, they don't know how to, or it's too hard.The Republicans are also wrong to think that non-voters. Are not interested in them. I, I think, your survey shows that, that they, at least on a certain level are willing to entertain them and maybe it is just Trump. I mean, like that's, I think that's kind of the wild card that, that we don't know yet [00:37:00] because the previous two surveys that you did, the, these non participant people, the unlikely voters, they didn't like the other Republicans before Trump.And so. That, that remains to be seen. And you kind of see that with the difficulty that all these other Republicans have had gaining traction. And I keep seeing that, more kind of like Republican consultants or, or commentators. They have this idea in their head that Donald Trump is the weakest of our major candidates in the general election. And I think the opposite is true that, he's got a lot of people who would never vote for Ron DeSantis, who would never vote for Nikki Haley because they strike them as, corporate overlord types who are repulsive.Whereas they see Trump as, kind of a vulgar guy that they can identify with on a certain level because he's not, he's not, he's not, he's not, hoity toity above it all kind of person. I mean, what [00:38:00] do you think?PALEOLOGOS: Yeah, I think he, I think he connects on a granular level with. lower income, lower educated voters, union households those have a trade or a vocational education. You're absolutely right. He's hitting bases that a lot of these other candidates like DeSantis, Nikki Haley are not hitting.You add to that the most recent polling that shows Donald Trump beating Joe Biden by nine points in the last, the latest ABC News, Washington Post poll. And even if it is an outlier, which they believe it is an outlier, but even it, if it is an outlier, the fact that he's leading or tied, he being Trump is leading or tied with Trump with all of his legal troubles in what's supposed to be a strong economy is going to be a concern and the polling does indicate you're absolutely right. The polling does indicate it's Trump or bust for a lot of these Trump voters. And we've asked the question, if Trump does not get the [00:39:00] nominate of among likely voters, if Trump doesn't get the nomination, what would you do?A considerable amount of people wouldn't vote. A considerable amount of people would vote third party. Some would even vote for Cornell West. A few would even vote for Joe Biden. They would not vote for the Republican nominee.So, I mean, in a way Trump has the Republican party hostage right now, because if he wins, he's going to be vulnerable in a general election on issues like abortion, which he's trying to moderate his position on and, and other issues. But if he loses his a piece of his following, it's just going to walk away. And that will set up a resounding victory for Biden or whoever the Democratic nominee is.SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Yeah. And what happens after him? I mean, one way or the other, in 2028 he's not going to be running. And so what Republicans do after that point, it's anybody's guess.But they're now at this [00:40:00] point where they've got probably, I mean, it depends on how you plumb the percentage, but you know, somewhere between 35 percent to 55 percent of the Trump voters don't like Republicans.PALEOLOGOS: That's a big problem. That's a big problem. And that's why we've had this debate about the third party and the No Labels candidate, is someone going to, fly in, run as a third party candidate, whoever that might be. And what's the impact going to be in the swing states and in the 2024 election?I mean, I guess the bench really for 2028 for the Republicans is Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Scott Youngkin. Maybe governor Sununu. And that's it. It's kind of a short bench on the Republican side, you've got the people who have run before, Elizabeth Warren, she also got Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris.And, some of the up and comers. Yeah. [00:41:00] Yeah, of course. And it, and there's a big void, but there's a big void on, on both sides. One of the, I. We haven't asked this question on, on our next I mean, on our previous polls, I'm considering asking it in the likely polls that we're going to be doing in the future, but you know, like who would Republicans like to see as a VP?Would they like to see Nikki Haley or whether or not that's even feasible or DeSantis or Scott because he has so many, he has so many detractors right now. And within the ranks that you know, and that might be an important decision that we really haven't factored in. Because if he would have picked somebody from a state that is purple or even blue that could flip to, to Trump, that changes the calculus a little bit.Or if he would have picked somebody like we haven't had anybody Hispanic on a ticket. If he, if he were to pick a Republican [00:42:00] who was Hispanic, what would the impact be, beyond what we know now in the likely voter pool? So still a lot of I mean, still a lot of variables that are out there.Could alternative voting methods increase public interest in voting?SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Well now in terms of the I mean, like thinking about third party candidates here, obviously the American political system is heavily-- it wasn't deliberately done this way to minimize the impact of third party candidates, but that is the effect of it. And, some localities have experimented with some other ways of doing elections.So like in California, where I live, there is a multi party primary election and everybody runs in the same primary. And then the top two candidates are in the general election. And then you got other states where they have multi party voting. So you can vote for more than one candidate if you want to.And then they have a runoff after that. And I mean, like, it seems like that that's, people want [00:43:00] alternative electoral systems but it is interesting that, when you, you mentioned No Labels, and then you've got Andrew Yang, who's got his Forward party. And what's interesting with all these, non Republican, non Democratic advocates, they're not focusing on alternative election systems.And the reality is you can't get anywhere as a third party unless the electoral system has changed. You're running a hopeless effort that maybe, you might get a particularly fantastic candidate or a rich candidate like a Ross Perot or something. But that's a flash in the pan. Like people he only knew who he was because he had a billion dollars and was throwing it all the, flushing it down the toilet on these TV specials that he was spending all this money on.Like that's how people knew who he was. But you guys did find there's a strong appetite for third party candidates.PALEOLOGOS: I actually remember the Perot election back, believe it or not, in, in 92, and he won two [00:44:00] of the three televised debates in post debate polling. So he had the money, but he also he simplified the country's problems in a way that mainstream Americans needed the issues to be articulated as.And so, you talk about alternative methods of voting. Look at rank choice voting. I mean, if there was a third party candidate that ran in 2024, what do you think would happen with rank choice voting? You've got Trump voters who would never vote for Biden, Biden voters who would never vote for Trump. But they probably would vote for a third party candidate. And if you had rank choice voting, a third party candidate would do quite well in a national election.And that's because it's the lesser of the two evils.SHEFFIELD: You're no longer in that position. Yeah.PALEOLOGOS: That's right. [00:45:00] I mean, and the evils are so polarized that, someone from the middle would have a better chance than either left or right. And if even if the no, I mean, in the column I wrote, I was talking about the comparable election in a poll.This poll in 2018 showed that. Only 9% were voting third party, and now it's three times that. And the 9%, I think translated to like a few percent of people in the 2000 in the in the, the 2012 election. And now in 2024, it's three times that. So is that going to be 8 or 9% of people voting third-party.If that's the case, it's going to really, really shift things in some of the states that matter like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, and Nevada.So, I mean, you've got a lot to think about. I mean, look at [00:46:00] Nevada's ballot. You're from you're from being from California. You're familiar with Nevada's ballot. Nevada has a ballot option. None of These Candidates. That's an actual ballot option. You can go to the polls and vote None of These Candidates.I think there were like 5 candidates or 4 or 5 candidates for president on the ballot in 2020 and still people were saying, imagine that you go to the polls, or you vote by absentee in Nevada and there are 5 candidates for president and you don't select any of them. You voted, but you voted None of These Candidates.And these are people who are likely voters. Forget online. These are people who actually went to the polls in Nevada in 2020 and selected None of These Candidates. It's crazy. Yeah, that's the kind of thinking that's out there.Trump's simpler messaging helps him with lower-knowledge citizensSHEFFIELD: and I guess we have to acknowledge that a lot of these unlikely voters, they don't know as much about politics. And maybe that's why they might not like candidates, [00:47:00] that's possible, right?And what it suggests, though, is that I think there's another possibility is that the major parties, they're not adequately explaining themselves or carrying the message to people who might actually like what they have to say. But they just think it's too difficult to understand them when they talk.I mean, you constantly hear Democrats say that Biden did all these things, and nobody knows that he did them, like about student loan forgiveness, or spending on infrastructure projects. And they're correct to point that out, that people don't know that stuff, but ultimately, the blame for that lies on them, not anyone else is responsible for that. If you don't carry your own message, who's going to do it for you?PALEOLOGOS: Absolutely. I mean, there is a messaging problem. There is a messaging problem. And part of it is, and Republicans do the same thing. There's a lot of infighting. There was a lot of infighting, in the Republican party, there still is. You'll see it, at the next Republican debate out in [00:48:00] California and there's infighting in the Democrat.We should be doing this. No, we should be doing that. We have to do more of this. And so when you're spinning your wheels like that, time goes by and the message never gets out. It's not, it's not a reinforced message. But, even with all of the good news, and there is a lot of good news in the government statistics that are being released on employment numbers.But even with all of that, I mean, the poll we released last week, which was a kitchen table poll on the economy we found that it, we gave people seven categories that people spend money on seven out of seven categories. People will make it under 50, 000 of cutting back. On basic stuff, food, groceries, clothing, their electricity, they're cutting back on 7 out of 7.Now, people make under 50, 000 is a good chunk of them that a Democratic voters. They're either students who are just starting out 1st job. They're not making 50, 000 right out of their [00:49:00] college, whether it's a. Good college, community college, or whatever, or older people who are on fixed incomes. They're getting social security, whatever they may be, taking in 30 grand or 40 grand.They may not have any debt, but that's all their income is 30, 40, 000. And they can't put food on their table. So, you could put out all the positive messaging you want policy wise. And that's great, but if people are stressed out at the end of the week because their credit card bills are through the roof or they can't pay their bills, how are people supposed to feel?SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, no, it's true. And I think Democrats, they missed the boat on gas prices and inflation with that. They didn't pay attention to it as early as they could have. And then Republicans, again, like Trump is, he is very different from a regular Republican in that he is so much better at, touting his own [00:50:00] accomplishments or at least claiming some, right?And so he's able to get a lot more people aware of him. And again, these are people that are, that would have probably been predisposed to him in any way. So, but he really understands communications a lot better than any other politician in the game right now, I feel like.PALEOLOGOS: Yeah, he does. And the good news for Democrats is they have time, they acknowledge they have a messaging problem. They acknowledge there's a vacuum there. And this is in October of 2024. It's a year, a year away plus, and they have time to figure that out. If Trump is the nominee, they're going to make the election about democracy.Here's a guy that tried to overthrow the country, the country and change an election. And they're going to do due diligence to try and make that happen.If Trump has any legal victories between now and then, even if it's-- not just court delays, but any legal victories, he's going to tell that as you see, I was innocent. They were coming after me and, [00:51:00] and all of that.So it's going to be a fabulous story month to month to see which of the forces prevail.On the one hand, if the economy rebounds and immigration, the immigration problem begins to have a delta that's going in the right direction, it's going to be hard to vote Biden out of office. If the economy continues to be on a tailspin and our poll, our kitchen table poll shows that people are really stressed out and spending less, which is going to impact corporate earnings, which is going to impact layoffs, interest rates are high. Capital is going to be tough. If that spiral continues into next year, it's going to be tough for people to vote for Joe Biden.Especially if the border issues aren't going in the right direction. So all of the cultural issues that you hear about and teaching, parental rights in schools and guns and opioids are all important issues, climate change abortion rights. But if people can't survive from week to week [00:52:00] in terms of their own kitchen tables, it's going to be a really difficult election.Wrap-upSHEFFIELD: Yeah, the other stuff doesn't matter nearly so much.Yeah, so let's maybe wrap on one topic that was not in the poll here, and hasn't been in the previous ones is religion. You did not ask people's religious opinions on that.And I think that that's, and I'll say as somebody who used to do polling when I was at The Hill, I've always tried to make it religious questions more of an issue because I think that people have wrongly used education as a proxy for worldview, and religion probably gets closer to that in terms of how often they're attending or what their beliefs are about religious fundamentalist viewpoints.So like, asking them, do you believe in evolution, humans evolved? Or do you believe the earth is 7, 000 years old? Like those, I believe are[00:53:00] probably the biggest predictors of what your vote's going to be on how you answer those questions. And so just want to put that in your, put that in your, in your ear, if I could at this juncture here. Do you have any thoughts on that?PALEOLOGOS: No, we did, we did ask questions about religion in earlier election cycles. We haven't. And I don't think it's just Suffolk. I think a lot of pollsters have kind of put those questions aside. I'd be happy to sort of revive that you have put it in my head and because I think it's something that hasn't been done a lot.Part of the reason is because people just it's like everything else, especially people who are not likely voters, they're certainly not devout anything. Especially those people who are at the end of their lives or disabled or, I mean, I believe that a lot of people have organized religion is [00:54:00] another one of those institutions that is really failing. And maybe it takes times like these and times of crisis to bring people back into that.SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, so, we've been talking today with David Paleologos. Your name literally means old word.PALEOLOGOS: That's right, "ancient word." Ancient word, right?SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yep. Okay. Well, thanks for being here, David. It's been a great discussion.PALEOLOGOS: Absolutely.SHEFFIELD: And so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody for joining us for the conversation. And of course, you can get more of this show at theoryofchange.show. You can get access to the video, audio, and transcripts of all the episodes. And we have both free and paid subscriptions to the show.If you have a paid subscription, you get access to a little bit more content, and I definitely appreciate your help with that. And if you are not able to support the show financially, I do definitely appreciate you leaving a nice [00:55:00] review on Apple podcasts or whatever other podcast platform you are using to listen to the show.And if you're on YouTube please be sure to like and subscribe to the show so you can get it sent to you whenever we come out with a new one. Thank you very much for that. And I will see you next time. [00:56:00] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode SummaryWilliam Faulkner’s line that “the past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past,” is certainly true in regards to today’s Republican Party, which, quite literally, is an outgrowth of a conspiracy revolution that began in the 1940s and fifties, and never really stopped.A key figure in the through-line of American reaction is Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, a conspiracy group that he founded in 1958, which still exists today.The John Birch Society has many interesting stories of its own. And we’ll discuss that in this episode, but Welch and his group  are also important in their placement relative to other Republicans. And also how people outside the GOP responded to them,  particularly Democratic and progressive elites.There’s a tendency among elite Democrats to think that the radicalization loop that the Republican Party has been stuck in is just somehow irrelevant, that people will automatically know that right-wing extremists are foolish and crazy, and so therefore, they don’t need to be countered. But as we’ve seen, this is a terrible error.Joining me for an in-depth discussion about all this is Edward H. Miller.  He is a teaching professor at Northeastern University and the author of A Conspiratorial Life: Robert Welch, the John Birch Society and the Revolution of American Conservatism, which just recently came out. He’s also the author of Nut Country: Right-Wing Dallas and the Birth of the Southern Strategy, which he published in 2015.(This episode of Theory of Change aired previously on December 10, 2021. The video of the conversation is also available.)TranscriptMATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Thanks for being here today, Ted.EDWARD H. MILLER: Oh, it’s a great pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for having me on your show.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, all right. So I guess before we get details of what we’re talking about here, tell us a little bit, how did you become interested in this material about right-wing extremism in 20th century America?MILLER: I attended Boston College for my PhD and I took a seminar with professor Seth Jacobs at Boston College. And it was a graduate seminar on from 1865 to the present, and I read Lisa McGirr’s book Suburban Warriors. It’s a classic, came out in 2001 and it explored the rise of the conservative movement and the suburban warriors of Southern California, looking at the grassroots and how they got involved initially in the early 1960s, and how they came to California and how they helped elect the Governor Reagan in 1966 and then pursued social issues throughout the seventies. And then finally supporting Reagan in 1980.They also were very much active in the (1964) Barry Goldwater campaign and having read, having read Suburban Warriors, I became interested in other epicenters of American conservatism. And I wondered if there were more. And she mentioned in her book that there were more in Atlanta which Kevin Kruse had explored in White Flight.And I came upon Dallas, Texas, and I looked at Dallas, Texas, and in very much the same way. I explored, I did a study of Dallas, Texas called Nut Country: Right-Wing Dallas and the Birth of the Southern Strategy that took a look at the individuals, the grassroots figures, as well as the elites, who led a movement for conservatism, getting involved in the Goldwater campaign, getting involved in the Reagan campaign in the 1980s, as well as 1976 when he ran against Gerald Ford for the nomination.So it was a great moment in my career to discover a topic that I became really fascinated with. And then the rest is history.I started to pursue that topic. And I had an advisor at the time who mentioned, instead of Dallas, instead of heading all the way down to Dallas to do your dissertation, why don’t you study the John Birch Society?And I said well, I’m not really, I’m not really sure I know enough about the John Birch Society. I looked at the archives at Brown University where they’re located. And at the time, I thought it was an organization that was not as important as it is. And I thought it would be an outlier and it would not help my professional career, to be honest, to study that.But I continued to heed his wisdom and pursued that as my next book. I’m looking at Robert Welch and I became interested in biography.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Okay. So the John Birch Society, I think you’re right that a lot of people haven’t heard about them. And there’s a lot of reasons for that. One of them being that sort of Republican elites tried to take attention away from them. And we’ll get into that. But it also kind of fits within this larger tendency among sort of centrist pundits, or, liberal, conventional, liberal professors to think that, right-wing extremism is just the fringe of the fringe. It’s not relevant to anything. And nobody cares about what they think. And this is a tendency that’s, unfortunately, very consistent in American history. And we keep seeing that over and over again.Even in terms of the history of American conservatism, writing it, for a long time, the only people who wrote about this movement that came along and literally took over a political party were the people who agreed with it. And there were no academics just writing a neutral history. There were a handful of progressive historians that were writing about it. Otherwise, it was just not something that historians were interested.They wanted to have the 50,000th book about Adolf Hitler and World War II. Because of course we need more of those, right? But something that happened in your own country, a party getting taken over by crazy people, ‘well, that’s not interesting.’ Would you agree that people kind of did that in historian academic world?MILLER: No, I think it’s absolutely true. The conservative movement, the narrative of the conservative movement was shaped significantly by one of its most important inventors, William F. Buckley, who was a prolific writer and there’s the phrase, “If you write the history, that’s how it’s remembered.” And he, that’s what he did.He continued to write a lot about the history, not in a monograph form, but in essays and articles. And he was very much a gatekeeper of American conservatism. And him and other folks like George Nash who explored the intellectual history of American conservatism, determined that there were three strands of American conservatism. An anticommunist strand, a traditionalist strand, as well as a libertarian strand.And both of those folks were very instrumental in determining what historians looked at. And so, a famous historian said in, I think it was the early 1990s, he said, ‘Well, how come we don’t have any books on American conservatism?’And there it began. And we started to see a plethora of historians exploring American conservatism, starting of course, with the McGirr book, which is probably the most famous.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And then of course we got Rick Pearlstein who has done a number of interesting books. But even once he got started, I still think there was this tendency of, you could just kind of ignore and only I would say, really in the the 2000s did things really get started in the academic world to try to look at this stuff.And there’s just so much material that really hasn’t been written about. And in your case with Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. And that ignorance, despite all these many great volumes that have come out, you still have David Brooks– the New York Times columnist, who now says he’s a moderate Democrat– he wrote a column this week that came out in which he lumped Dwight Eisenhower and Barry Goldwater and said that they were in the same tradition. Even though the entire point of the Barry Goldwater political career was that Dwight Eisenhower was, if not a commie, a sympathizer and a liberal.MILLER: Yeah, just to give you a rundown about their ideological background, Dwight Eisenhower expanded Social Security, he expanded education, he passed a scientific bill that would add more engineers in the United States. He built the interstate highway system.Goldwater, he wanted to take all those things apart. He he wanted to decrease the size of the government and introduce less regulation. He spoke of using nuclear weapons in Vietnam.And there were five times in 1954 that Dwight Eisenhower refused to use nuclear weapons, despite the fact that his Joint Chiefs of Staff and his vice-president were encouraging it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yep.MILLER: So there’s a dramatic difference.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. There’s this tendency, I think for a lot of elite centrists or liberals that the only Republicans that they know are well-groomed articulate people like David Brooks or like William F. Buckley and so, to their minds, they don’t think that these people could have any radical ideas because: ‘Well, look, they know how to use a salad fork. They eat soup with a spoon.’They keep doing it. Like they did this with David Duke when he was a young activist, ‘I’m against the KKK. I’m a former KKK member, but then look, I can wear a suit and I look nice on TV.” And they were putting him out there all the time.And then they did this with successive far-right figures over the decades. And more recently with some of these alt-right people. I remember there was this Mother Jones story, which I think will live in infamy in which the lead of the story was about how this white nationalist, he knew how to use chopsticks to eat togarashi tuna. And that was the lead of the story!MILLER: Their culinary habits may have been different, but their statements weren’t obviously different. William F. Buckley said that the white race was the advanced race in a National Review article. And that would be something that would be abhorrent today. He argued that he was for paving over voting rights rather than opening them up. So he was very open to this idea of limiting democracy. There was also other statements he said that the 14th and 15th amendment were inorganic accretions to the Constitution. Those are important amendments that provided voting rights for African-Americans as well as equal rights to African-Americans, at least in theory.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And then his first book, God and Man at Yale, was quite literally him urging Christian conservatives to cancel professors at Yale University. It was just this long litany of: ‘Professor So-and-So doesn’t believe in the resurrection, Professor So-and-So said this thing about John the Baptist , Professor So-and-So might be an atheist, Professor So-and-So is a communist.’Just this endless attempt to cancel people. And then at the same time, going around and saying that they are the oppressed ones. That’s just this consistent behavior, and Donald Trump, for all the terrible things he did, one thing he did was that he showed people that there is this tradition in Republican far right politics to, try to oppress everyone else, while saying that you are the victim.MILLER: Yeah, no, I agree. I think that it is at least given us an opportunity and we’re seeing that today, there are a number of studies that are coming out. John Huntington’s work, my work on Robert Welch, there are other historians who are exploring the far right, that are going to be on the shelves very soon.And also the global far right. We’re starting to combine what was going on around the world to what was going on in the United States. We’re starting to see it as a global movement. So I think that’s an important step we’re starting to see figures embrace what Kim Phillips-Fein called the “baroque strangeness” of American conservatism and the charlatans. And the quote losers, the people who we thought lost, ultimately have turned out to be the winners in politics.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. That’s a great segue into talking about your book here. So, Robert Welch. Who was Robert Welch? The John Birch Society still exists today. So what is the John Birch Society and who was Robert Welch?MILLER: Robert Welch was born in North Carolina in 1899 was first a candy manufacturer and a very precocious individual. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at the age of 16. He actually started to attend there at age 12. And before a brief career in the news business, he decided to attend Harvard Law School, dropped out of Harvard Law School because he was unhappy with Felix Frankfurt’s political philosophy. And then became a very successful candy manufacturer. He created such childhood favorites is the Sugar Daddy, Junior Mints, the Sugar Babies. And there were other types of candies and he did very well in his own career. After that, his business failed due to the crash in 1929.And then he went to work for his brother. After many successful years, his brother was even better at business in the booming 1950s as he was in the 1920s, Welch decided to get involved in politics.He had, he always had a an interest in politics. He ran for lieutenant governor and lost, came in second for the Republican nomination in 1950. But what he did was, he started an organization called the John Birch Society, which was a far right organization that pursued free markets and single issue goals such as ending the career of Earl Warren, impeaching Earl Warren, prohibiting fluoride, getting the United States out of the UN.SHEFFIELD: So his first book, let’s talk about that, tell the audience about his first book is I think that’s another key to understanding him.MILLER: Yeah he was always interested in, he was an intellectual. He was very upset by the the firing of (Gen. Douglas) MacArthur by Truman. And he wrote a book called May God Forgive Us.And this book posited that it was Stalin, not Truman, who fired MacArthur. It was a conspiracy. It was a conspiracy of the State Department to lose the Korean War. And it was a conspiracy among the State Department to lose China. This is really a book about China. He is a member of a group that is fascinated with China and Formosa [Taiwan].SHEFFIELD: And that idea, sort of has come back again, this obsession with China now.MILLER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: And that’s one thing I do want to emphasize to people in this episode is that so many of the ideas of Robert Welch, of his conspiracy theories, his targets of his theories, just the general ideas of them, like the fluoride, that was the precursor to being concerned about vaccines that we see today. And the obsession with communists and now we’re seeing that with critical race theory and antifa obsessions.Basically, I think the easy way to understand the career of Robert Welch is that he was a proto-Alex Jones in a lot of ways, but a smarter version of him. Would you say that’s an accurate summation of him ?MILLER: I think that, if you take a look at the styles that Alex Jones has, Robert Welch is not, does not have that animated, pumped up style. Robert Welch would drone on about that the fluoride is going to get into your system and it’s going to enervate the vigor of the American public. And we’re going to turn to communism and that we’re on a slippery slope to losing the sovereignty of the United States, but he would do so in a way that was not that is not as histrionic. That’s not as dramatic. If you look at his films, they are a lot more calm, and he would present himself in a way that– it was just a different style than Alex Jones. He wouldn’t be dressed up in a frog suit.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Okay. Well, I guess I should clarify, not in terms of their personal style, but in terms of their entrepreneurship, their conspiracy factories. Alex Jones has made multiple films, so did Robert Welch. They both made multiple films. They both had multiple publications. And they both were actively, constantly trying to get into Republican politics and align themselves with candidates. Alex Jones was Ron Paul, he was endlessly flacking for him for decades before he started working for Donald TrumpMILLER: I’ll use a line from The Wire. ‘Everything has to fit together in the mind of Robert Welch, everything kind of connects.’ And this connects to that. He has a worldview in which there are elites who make the decisions, first it’s the communists, and then it’s the insiders who are establishment folks who live on the East Coast and are financiers. And then it’s the Illuminati because it changes from being communist conspiracy and it turns into something bigger than a communist conspiracy. It turns into a very much like the Bilderbergers, as Alex Jones would say.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And I think, and there’s another parallel besides in the QAnon movement also, it has this fantastic, gigantic conspiracies that no one ever can really see. And the reason that they’re real is that you can’t see them.MILLER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: So yeah. All right. So Welch was obsessed with Dwight Eisenhower and so his first book, it was attacking him and then he kept doing that throughout his career. And that was the topic of his next book. Can you talk to you about that one?MILLER: What happens is Welch gets involved in the Taft campaign in 1952–SHEFFIELD: Tell everybody who that was.MILLER: Robert Taft was an Ohio senator, very very conservative. He was called Mr. Republican. Just a little bit to the left of Joseph McCarthy. And a little bit more logical than Joseph McCarthy, although Taft sort of embodies the same attitudes of Joseph McCarthy without the ridiculousness of Joseph McCarthy. And certainly without the alcohol that Joseph McCarthy imbibed every day.But Welch gets involved in the 1952 election for Republican president, the nomination for the Republican presidency. And he notices something about what’s going on, because he’s always thinking in sort of conspiratorial terms. And he’s always thinking about: It’s not right, he says the folks who are associating with the Eisenhower people. He comes to the conclusion that Eisenhower is a– Welch comes to the conclusion and he writes a letter about this. It’s just a personal letter to a friend and then it grows into a larger letter and he basically says that it’s my opinion, it’s my belief that if you take all these things together, it’s beyond a reasonable doubt that Eisenhower is a communist. And he backs it up with all this evidence that ‘where did they find this individual in the Army? Where did they where did this individual come out of all of a sudden to win a nomination that was very clearly in the hands of Robert Taft before Eisenhower pulled it away from him. And then what happened in Texas with the switch of the delegates — I explain it more in the book, but there’s a switch in among delegates in Texas.Welch says that basically that the election was stolen from Robert Taft by Eisenhower, with the assistance.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And as a theory, it’s totally absurd. The idea that the chief general of the United States, the Supreme Commander of the entire armed forces who won World War II isn’t going to be a popular guy. It is an asinine idea that he would have to steal an election.MILLER: Or again, that he’s a communist at all. Eisenhower is a patriot. Is a devoted patriot, probably the most, one of the most devoted patriots in the history of the country. It’s Dwight Eisenhower.SHEFFIELD: And this is another parallel with today though, with the idea that Joe Biden stole the election from Donald Trump, even though Donald Trump was literally the most unpopular American president in modern history, since the invention of opinion polls, he is the most unpopular president ever.And so the fact that he lost an election, is not a conspiracy . You can’t really challenge that on any credible grounds, but they did.MILLER: And Taft was an aloof politician. He was a very good politician. He was elected. He did well in Ohio. He was from Ohio, but he certainly was not a popular general with a with a national backing. He didn’t have the support ofSHEFFIELD: And universal name recognition.MILLER: He didn’t have the name recognition. He had the support of the McCormick newspapers in Chicago. He had the backing of folks in the Midwest, but Eisenhower had the East the Northeast, which was very important at the time. He had the newspapers in the East. He had the backing of the rank and file. And he was this smiling gregarious– anybody who came near him, saw that he had a innate ability to lead. And Taft was not like that Taft was dour. And he looked like a professor, and he didn’t have the the charisma of an Eisenhower.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. But this was such an explosive thesis, that Welch actually kind of tried to circulate the book in secret, to a large degree initially. But eventually, it got out and he kept trying to whip people up against Eisenhower, Republicans, and it never worked.But at the same time, it kind of laid a groundwork of resentment against Eisenhower among a certain set of Republicans. And so that led, I would say, not directly, but it kind of that metastasized to some degree, into the founding of National Review, which came out a couple of years later, I think it was 1955. And the point of National Review was that Dwight Eisenhower is a liberal and he’s a RINO [Republican in Name Only], and he needs to be drummed out of the Republican party. That was the point of National Review in the beginning, right? Buckley hated Eisenhower, he just didn’t think he was a communist.MILLER: Oh yes. He was concerned with– the masthead of National Review said: ‘Stop, we’re trying to get history to stop. We don’t want any more Social Security legislation. We don’t need anything else. No more New Deal legislation. We don’t need any more countries taken over by Stalin.SHEFFIELD: Roll back. We have to rollMILLER: It back. Yes. Liberation. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: And so, but, and that’s why he (Buckley) got the letter, I would say that–MILLER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Eisenhower was because he was seen as somebody who had hated him. Even though initially, Buckley and Welch were kind of going for the same goals to oppose Eisenhower and roll back the welfare state and engage in nuclear war with the Soviet Union, they eventually came to hate each other. Can you talk about that relationship? Because its very complicated, and this is probably the biggest area where the media bias of conservative historians has incorrectly described in a lot of people’s minds about how that, that transpired the events between the two of them.MILLER: Yeah, well, as I said before, Buckley was a gatekeeper and he supported Nixon. Wasn’t probably his first choice in 1960, but Buckley was with Nixon. As time passed, Buckley, his goal became to elect a conservative Republican in 1964. There was a a moment in 1960 at the Republican National Convention in which Goldwater got up on stage and said if we want to take this party back, and I believe we can, we’ve got to work together, but Nixon’s your man.So Buckley, in roughly 1961 comes to the conclusion that Welch is a problem. This idea of conspiracy encroaching into the conservative movement is problematic. So he suggests, initially rather gently that, that Welch step aside to the editing room not– he doesn’t condemn the Society or anything like that.SHEFFIELD: And that’s a critical point, I think to note, because there is this false narrative that right-wing historians have put out there to claim that he was against the whole Society. But he wasn’t.MILLER: No.SHEFFIELD: He was specifically, and this was something that Barry Goldwater also was working with him to try to, they wanted the Bircher votes and they wanted their loyalty, but they wanted to control them.MILLER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: And to be the ones that controlled the conspiracy theories. And so–MILLER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: That’s what the attacks against Welch personally were about, but I’m sorry, go ahead.MILLER: Barry Goldwater said, these are pretty good guys. I know these guys. I have some guys on my staff, they’re on my staff. They’re part of the the John Birch Society. This is not a bad group of people. It’s their leader that’s the problem. It’s Welch who is ultimately, the person who should be. The smoking typewriter as Buckley puts it, has to be extinguished.And he doesn’t succeed with that despite the fact that there is a myth, I would say, that Welch is drummed out of the conservative movement. And that’s the argument. That’s essentially the argument of my book. That’s the argument of A Conspiratorial Life, that despite the fact that there’s an effort to move him aside, it didn’t happen.He (Buckley) tried to make that case, but as time has passed, we’ve realized that, hey, well, they didn’t go away.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and the John Birch Society still exists.MILLER: It still exists.SHEFFIELD: Continuously. Yeah, and in fact, Glen Youngkin, who just won the gubernatorial election in Virginia, he campaigned at an event that was held by the John Birch Society. So that just gives you an idea of the influence that they have.MILLER: I make an argument in the book that the Reagan revolution was in part created by the John Birch Society. Now you say: ‘Whoa, that’s a provocative statement.’ But I took a look at the evidence. It was the most surprising aspect of all my research. When I went back and I took a look at the issues that Reagan ran on: abortion, against the ERA, tax cuts. These were all driven by the John Birch Society prior to these organizations being driven by the Republican Party. People like the Moral Majority. These cultural, and these social issues, and these economic issues that really, that put Reagan over the top in 1980.SHEFFIELD: One thing about Welch, I think that he has in common with a lot of these other early conservative movement figures is that he was a southerner. If you look at almost all of these organizations that popped up in the forties and the fifties, they were headed by southerners.And that’s an aspect of the history, and of the personal history of American conservatism that I think hasn’t really been picked up a lot.MILLER: Yeah. Excuse me. So I think my voice is I’ve lost my voice a little bit, but yeah. He’s from North Carolina growing up in a section of North Carolina and he almost has a Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer life growing up. He cavorts on this old Southern mansion with his brothers and sisters, and he’s the favorite child because he’s the brilliant, studious one who doesn’t have to do the chores.But at the same time, he’s encouraged to pursue his studies, and his parents give him a great opportunity to see the South. At the age of 10, he’s sent off to Elizabeth City in North Carolina– on his own, by the way– which is a fascinating town of hobos and vagabonds and all these. It was a bustling community and he gets to see this at a young age.And he experiences all this via himself in this hotel. His parents pick them up for the weekend, bring him back to his home. So he really is a child of the South. He is a child of the South, but he becomes a Northern transplant in his late teens, 19, moves to Boston. But his family, his ancestors owned slaves and they were highly successful farmers. He is very much in the Southern tradition.SHEFFIELD: And not just him, though. So Buckley was from Texas–MILLER: That’s right.SHEFFIELD: And Mexico. And a lot of these other, like Clarence Manion, where was he from? Tell us a little bit about him.MILLER: Well, Clarence Manion was the Dean of Notre Dame and his great influence on– this is sort of an interesting this is an interesting thing. He has a tremendous influence on Welch. He opposes the war.SHEFFIELD: Well, he wasn’t just an academic. He was a talk radio host.MILLER: That’s right. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And that’s important because, again, most people’s understanding of early American conservatism is filtered through this idea that National Review was the only right-wing media outlet that existed.MILLER: Oh yeah.SHEFFIELD: And that wasn’t true at all.MILLER: No, no.SHEFFIELD: Clarence Manion was just massively popular–MILLER: Oh yeah.SHEFFIELD: — as a radio host. He was in a lot of ways, kind of a mixture, he would mix in religious stuff with political stuff and was very integral. And then it’s an aspect of things– like there’s an attempt now, people like David Brooks that are trying to claim that these early, far right figures were not Christian nationalists or were not interested in Christian supremacy and things like that, opposing, atheists or feminism. But the reality is they were, they hated those things. But I’m sorry, you were telling a story about Clarence Manion there.MILLER: It got me thinking about the importance of Clarence Manion to the movement. Welch was a member of the America First Committee.And Trump of course, ran on this concept of America First, a nationalism. And what Manion says is that he’s against the war. Primarily because if we go to war in Europe–SHEFFIELD: World War II, you’re talking about.MILLER: –we will be influenced by Europe. We don’t want to be influenced by Germany. We don’t want to be influenced by France. Because we are different. We are in the British tradition, we are in a tradition before the French Revolution, he says is critical because in the French Revolution, it was a key moment in the history of civilization, because they’re basically saying that rights come from man, not from God. And in the American Revolution, rights come from God, which the conservatives argue is still the case in the United States and in England.So it’s a key point that Manion convinces Welch to be true. And Welch embraces this concept. I think it’s the key point that Manion brings to the conservative movement.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, that’s an interesting observation, and it definitely is relevant to today. Because if you listen to pretty much any Republican speech, they almost all say that line.MILLER: We don’t want to be part of old Europe. That was kind of part of the attitudes of 20th century Republicanism. And these folks are also Asia firsters. They believe that as we had talked about before that China is critical to the future of the world. They see the American mission as a continuation of that westward expansion, starting in the 13 Colonies, and moving westward. Moving into the Pacific. In the Spanish American War, we acquired Guam in 1898. We acquired Hawaii, the Philippines from the Spanish American war. Then in 1946, we gave back the Philippines.But this idea of Formosa or Taiwan is critical. And many of the people of Welch’s ilk, including William Knowland, who was known as the Senator from Formosa, are fascinated with– they think the future of the 21st century is the East. And that’s part of the themes that we see today.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. That’s true.So Barry Goldwater and his activists were able to sort of foist him onto the Republican party in 1964. And what was the role that the John Birch Society played during that campaign and the general election?MILLER: The John Birch Society was critical. They were the grassroots leaders. It was kind of a unspoken rule, among the Goldwater folks, that you don’t want to advertise too much that you’re a member of the John Birch Society. You don’t want to advertise that you’re a member of the John Birch Society, but they are the folks who really get the Goldwater campaign moving. They’re the folks who really are pushing the campaign against Lyndon Johnson. And even before President Kennedy was assassinated, they thought that they were running, they were going to be running against President Kennedy in 1964. They are very much involved in the efforts to support Barry Goldwater.And interesting ly enough, Robert Welch was not an individual who particularly supported candidates. The John Birch Society was primarily an educational organization. And I can’t remember a letter in which Robert Welch says that he wants a particular president to be president, but he does so when it comes to Barry Goldwater, he says that, ‘I like Barry Goldwater. I hope he becomes president someday.’ And his word carries a lot of weight. So a lot of his supporters are going to go wild about Barry because of that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Okay. And then what was the reaction that they had after Goldwater got crushed so badly?MILLER: They’re disappointed. And there’s this sense that, there’s a narrative that that’s it for the John Birch Society, that they’re a thing of the past. But Welch is savvy. That was actually his nickname in college because it was, he was so great at math.And what he does is, he comes up with all these– he re-invigorates the John Birch Society. He says, all right, we’ve got to refashion this, he’s a salesman. And he says, what we’re going to do is we’re going to develop these ad hoc committees.The John Birch Society, he says, has a bad reputation. He’s not that hopeful to get more members joining, but he establishes these ad hoc committees, like MOTOREDE (Movement to Restore Decency) or Support Your Local Police, SYLP, which is kind of a “Blue Lives Matter” organization. There are other acronyms that he comes up with, TRIM, Tax Relief Immediately. And what these ad hoc groups are, they’re led by members of the John Birch Society, but you don’t have to become a member of the John Birch Society to join it.So, if you’re interested in tax reform, sure. You’re going to sign up with TRIM. If you don’t like what’s going on as far as the teaching of sex education in your kids’ schools, you’re going to sign up with MOTOREDE.SHEFFIELD: And it was an antecedent of this anti critical race theory stuff, where they were encouraging–MILLER: Yes.SHEFFIELD: –people to show up at their school boardsMILLER: And that’s exactly one of the first things he says, you have to get involved in your PTA. It’s critical. You have to become a member of the school board. Actually, Welch is an elected member of the Belmont school board. It’s the only elected position he ever holds. He’s elected in Belmont.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Where is Belmont?MILLER: Oh, well, Belmont is, Belmont is close to Arlington. It is in Massachusetts. It is right outside of Cambridge, Massachusetts, kind of the greater Boston area, very affluent community.SHEFFIELD: Okay. And he was also very big in Southern California. The biggest area for the John Birch Society was in particular Orange County, California.MILLER: Yep.SHEFFIELD: What was the reason do you think that they got so big in Orange County, California?MILLER: Oh, that’s a good question. It’s a complicated answer. Because there’s so many different things that are going on in Southern California at the time. You have, first of all, aerospace is growing. You have a significant military presence. You also have some liberal elite that conservatives are not happy with. A lot of these folks who are coming into California are from Texas and the South.SHEFFIELD: And the Republican Party that was here in California was a more moderate organization.MILLER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Than they were used to, and that they preferred. They were kind of the locus of Ronald Reagan’s gubernatorial victory as well.MILLER: Yeah. Yeah. Welch doesn’t support Reagan because interestingly Reagan supports the most liberal abortion bill in the country in 1967 now Welch says he’s not a conservative after that. This shows how far ahead the John Birch Society was, as far as these issues, think about it today. That Ronald Reagan was not conservative enough for them. They were ahead on the abortion issue. They were ahead of the the Moral Majority. Folks like W.A. Criswell, who is the pastor of the largest Baptist church, was pro-choice in the late sixties.Now the John Birch Society is comprised about 50% Catholic. What happens is, Bill Buckley’s brother, James Buckley, is elected senator from New York. Buckley wins in ’70, Nixon sees this and says: ‘I can win in 72 by being pro-life.’All of a sudden the switch begins in 72. And along with that switch among Nixon, is the switch among the Protestant evangelicals. They become pro-life, along with the conservative Catholics, but conservative Catholics, like John McManus, who was Robert Welch’s right-hand man, was a strong supporter of pro-life policies as early as the sixties, mid sixties.SHEFFIELD: And by that time Welch was, he was starting to get up there in age. And he didn’t really there was a question within the organization of who was going to take it over from him. But he kind of– like a lot of authoritarian personalities or leaders– was against having anybody that was too close to him in the minds of the membership.So he didn’t really push a lot of that. What, what happened after he basically passed away what happened after he passed away? Was there a power struggle within the John Birch Society or,MILLER: Yeah, there’s a significant power struggle. That’s the advantage of doing a biography, I didn’t follow the continuation really of the John Birch Society, but there is a significant power struggle.Larry McDonald becomes the president of the John Birch Society for a brief period after Welch is no longer president. But there continues to be a power struggle. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, and one of the other crucial figures that was in the same group with Welch was Billy James Hargus. Tell us a little bit about him.MILLER: Well, Billy James Hargis was interesting figure of the Christian Crusade, and he was one of the first, one of the first Southern Baptists who really gets involved in politics. And Welch and Billy James Hargis kind of back each other together, Welch reprints some of his material, and especially his material concerning sex education, and the other issues concerning morality.It’s kind of a precursor to the Moral Majority.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and he was one of the first televangelists.MILLER: Televangelist, yeah. Now Welch, he writes a really important letter. It’s called the Roemer letter, and he basically said I’m not a fundamentalist. I grew up as a fundament. But I don’t adhere to a fundamentalist philosophy. And this is important, because this is able to attract people like Tim LaHaye, and you can see Tim LaHaye in some John Birch Society videos, a young Tim LaHaye in the 1960s.SHEFFIELD: Although but Tim LaHaye was a fundamentalist.MILLER: Yeah, he is. Yes but what happens is Welch, even though he’s not a fundamentalist, Tim LaHaye says: ‘I usually don’t go into ecumenical organizations, but I will make an exception because of this Roemer letter. Welch is saying that I’m not a fundamentalist, but he’s coming clean. He says, he believes in Jesus, he believes in as long as people live a life of morality, that’s all it matters. And LeHaye is very interested in this.And that’s why about 50% of the John Birch Society members wind up being Protestant. So LaHaye is able to join this and signs up as well as Billy James Hargis.SHEFFIELD: And Hargis specifically, he was also working with, he was also involved with a lot of these traveling revival things which the John Birch Society integrated itself into them in different ways. One of the things they would do is that they would have a core of national speakers and then they would bring in local pastors and clergy. And they kind of eventually tried to sort of use that as a recruiting base for political candidates to also try to bring them in as well.MILLER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: And one of the people that they were pushing heavily, which is kind of interesting in retrospect, was Ezra Taft Benson who was Dwight Eisenhower’s Secretary of agriculture.MILLER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Welch, a number of times tried to get him to run for president. And actually he did one time very early on. It was an abortive campaign.MILLER: He was Mormon.SHEFFIELD: And he was Mormon. Yeah. And they kept pushing around the margins with other different candidates. What was the relationship with Welch and the American Independent Party? Have you looked at that at all?MILLER: I haven’t really looked at that. I didn’t explore that enough to comment on that.SHEFFIELD: Oh, okay. All right.Well, what about in terms of race where was Robert Welch in terms of segregation and civil rights?MILLER: That’s a great question. He believed that the civil rights movement was driven by the communists. And for instance, during the Birmingham in 1963 when those terrible pictures of where the policemen are hitting the children, and the African-Americans who are in the streets, and there are dogs. Welch comes up with this rather preposterous theory that what occurred was, there was a agitator who hit a dog, and that this caused the whole melee.And then, the photo was taken. I think most people have seen the photo, the terrible photo of a German shepherd one of Bull Connor’s German Shepherd’s attacking an individual. But Welch comes to this preposterous conclusion.Now it really disappoints me. He could have been so much more human, on the issue of race. Because he grew up in a majority African-American community. And it was one of the things that it’s very clear on. There were also some instances where he would he would use a dialect in front of African-American individuals. He would try to mimic African-Americans in front of their presence.But there were members of the John Birch Society who were African-American, they were like Manning Johnson wrote Color, Communism, and Common Sense . And Manning Johnson basically said, he said that he was a former communist. He was trained and learned in his training that there was going to be an all-black part of the South. And Welch believed this.And he promoted Manning Johnson’s work. Manning Johnson was killed in a car accident, which led to, as you can imagine, more conspiracy theories about what happened to Manning Johnson. But it’s highly likely that there was no wrongdoing, but it’s one of those situations where, in my book and how I interpret it, I think he could have been better. And certainly he was more like Eisenhower when it came to those issues.SHEFFIELD: But I guess that’s not what the people who were in his movement wanted. Even before his famous vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Barry Goldwater.MILLER: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: That the American right was against civil rights.MILLER: Mm-hmm. And remember he’s also, Welch attends the 1956 state’s rights convention and speaks at it, where T. Coleman Andrews is the nominee. T Coleman Andrews only got a small percentage of the vote. But to be honest, the statements that I have seen that Welch made are less vicious than anything that William F. Buckley said. Buckley said decolonization should be something that we should pursue when Africans stopped eating each other. That’s terrible. I’ve never heard that. I’ve never seen that in, in something that Robert Welch said. Not that I’m justifying anything where he stands, but, in the comparative lens of these things, also, when it came to, he had a lot of Jewish friends.So it’s complicated, very complicated. But then there are some statements that are problematic, but it’s very complicated to make judgments on these as an historian. Because you hear things from people in a comparative light that are worse, it’s still disappointing to hear.And it’s one of the, one of the hard parts about writing a book about somebody who lived throughout the 20th century. It’s it’s it’s heavy, that’s a heavy, that’s a heavy load. And I had there was, there were some moments where it is difficult. History can be hard to write.I think that’s something that It has to be considered cause it’s, it’s wrong, it’s morally, it’s against my values and that’s something that’s hard to see.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, that’s true.So let’s maybe end with one of your last chapters, I guess it’s the last one I think, is about.MILLER: And actually I wanted to say, this came, I just, one other thing that a lot of these issues with race and the antisemitism came late because I discovered it in another archives later on in the process. And it was tough to find these things after you’ve got a book and you don’t see– I’ll tell you that the archivist that has the greatest material of far right. It’s Ernie Lazar in his archives. It’s just incredible what he has. But this came late in the process of this discovery, so I just wanted to point that out.SHEFFIELD: Okay. So, and we touched on this a little bit, toward the end of his life, Welch, your last chapter on it is “Making Morning in America,” so the relationship between the Birch Society, Welch, and Ronald Reagan. Maybe just walk us through a short summary of that chapter a bit, if you don’t mind.MILLER: Take the issues of tax cuts. Welch had the TRIM committees. He was active in the propositions in California to lower the property tax. Birchers were heavily involved in that. Take the ERA. Much ink has been written about Phyllis Schlafly and her role in the ERA, but I would argue that Welch and the Birch Society were equally involved in stopping ERA. These are the issues. Take abortion, as I explained before. That was a big part of getting the Moral Majority. Of getting the folks like James Robison on the stage there in Dallas, when Reagan was invited to Dallas at the end of his campaign, when he said, ‘I know you can’t endorse me, but I, I can endorse you.’ All those issues are pursued by the John Birch Society in the 1970s, a time when the John Birch Society was the traditional narrative, is it was moribund. So it completely changes the perspective of this organization as ineffective by late 1960s, as I, saw it.SHEFFIELD: So did he change, Welch, change his perspective on Reagan ever?MILLER: I think it was just the issues. He wasn’t active in electing candidates, he was just pushing the issues. It was tax reform through TRIM. It was ERA. He was just creating the infrastructure for these issues that Reagan latched upon and the individuals of the Birch Society, and these ad hoc committees naturally gravitated towards the candidate who embraced them.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. All right, how were, what were in his final years, Welch’s? What was that like for him? The Society itself, he had created multiple different organizations but the JBS kind of started hitting some financial hard times because of the way he had structured things. And that was kind of a preoccupation of his latter part of his life, right?MILLER: Yeah. It’s also some of the most interesting, I think it’s probably the most interesting part of the book, because in comes a, kind of a, this big burly, Texas billionaire by the name of Bunker Hunt, H.L. Hunt’s son, who is a fascinating character who deserves a book by himself. He’s, he tries to corner the silver market and it’s, there’s, I devote a whole chapter to it.And basically, he provides the money for the John Birch Society to survive into the 1970s. And as Welch dies in 1985. He has a stroke 83, and he’s kind of– by the end, he’s in decline, but the organization is like a conglomerate. They have a magazine. They have the bulletin. They have the speakers bureau. They have the other organizations, many corporations. And he’s, he is, he’s still the president of the organization, and he speaks at the organizations, and it’s his job to kind of go down and talk to Bunker who is, he’s all into the Illuminati and the Bilderbergers, and he’s got all these theories about– He’s ultimately bailed out by the federal government after his problem with trying to take over the silver market, which American taxpayers pay for.SHEFFIELD: So much for being against socialism, right? (laughs)MILLER: No No. And by 1984, everybody’s meeting at Bunker’s house in Dallas, because that’s where the convention is. So there’s this big barbecue at Bunker’s palatial mansion in Dallas in 1984 for the renomination of the president.SHEFFIELD: Okay. All right. And JBS is still around today. Have you, did you, I know you didn’t write about it, but they seem to have increased their influence in recent years. Would you say that?MILLER: I, I haven’t really followed the present. I’ve always been interested in the past and I’m interested in the the history of how things develop, but, it’s, I always say that it takes about 50 years to figure out how organizations influence. And I think, whether it’s the JBS, or another organization, we talked about Alex Jones. We talked about QAnon. We talked about other organizations.SHEFFIELD: And actually, speaking of Jones specifically, he has actually said that his worldview was formed directly by Birch and–MILLER: Yeah. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: –material, but he said that,MILLER: Or people involved in Taiwan, people who are fascinated with Taiwan, they might’ve read Robert Welch’s book on John Birch. And, I think that there’s a lot of different roads from it. It’s not just the John Birch Society. Today it can be some level of Republican politics and that, that sparked an interest.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, so just a last question here. And I’ve mentioned this earlier, at the top of the show I think that there is a tendency among establishment centrist, or liberals to kind of just ignore this stuff. And did you see that in materials about Robert Welch and the John Birch Society during his lifetime, when in your research, did you see that at all that tendency?MILLER: There, there are a number of new works that are coming out that are on the far right. It’s kind of the, it’s going to be a cottage industry.SHEFFIELD: Oh, no, I’m saying just specifically, why do you think it didn’t wasn’tMILLER: Why did it not? Well, that’s a good question. I think that the Well, there have been some. But I think it goes back to the gatekeepers.This is William F. Buckley is the primary gatekeeper and he is the person who determines how things shape out. And generally, I think there’s been a movement, maybe not culturally, but economically, but politically, if we take a look at the courts today where there’s been a significant shift to the right. And the right has been more successful in making sure that their version, it gets out there.Look at the Dinesh D’Souza books. They sell much more, much better than my books will sell. The books of Bill O’Reilly. These are history books that he’s writing. I wouldn’t consider them the greatest history books, but these are a lot more popular. And these are the books that people are buying, and this is the perception that people have.Historians, maybe we have to do a better job in getting the word out there and getting these books more accessible, and getting the, in getting the truth out there to more people to a greater audience.I try in my research to reach a general audience, not just academia. This is a book that can be read by historians, but maybe we have to do a better job in presenting our past to a broader audience. Some people have tried, but we’ve got our work cut out for us, I think in explaining it.SHEFFIELD: Well, I, yeah, I think that’s a good remark to end on there. We could probably go on all day.MILLER: Absolutely.SHEFFIELD: So, but I don’t want to do that to everybody. So, but yes I do appreciate you coming on today, Ted. So you’re you’re on Twitter, you’re eh_miller. And then your book is called A Conspiratorial Life: Robert Welch, the John Birch Society, and the Revolution of American Conservatism. So thanks for being here today, Ted.MILLER: Matthew, thank you very much for having me on. And it’s been a real pleasure. I’ve enjoyed it.SHEFFIELD: Well, so that is our show for today, everyone. I appreciate you guys for tuning in, and of course this will be available in audio version over at Flux.community. And this show is one of several podcasts you can get over there. We’re a nonprofit media organization that focuses on in-depth coverage of politics, of religion, of media, and society, and understanding how they all fit together.The mainstream media doesn’t understand a lot of the history and understand how it all kind of fits together. And that’s important in understanding what’s going on today. So please do check that out.And please do tell your friends or your family about the show, if you like it. We’ve started up production again this year, and so far we’ve gotten thousands and thousands of views and listens.But we need a lot more because this is just such a big topic to fight for pluralism and try to preserve and understand how things are in the country, and how we can best push back against authoritarianism. So, with that I appreciate everybody joining me and I will see you next time. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theoryofchange.flux.community/subscribe This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode SummaryWhile it’s easy to believe that Donald Trump unleashed the radical forces that threaten American democracy today, the truth is that they have been present within our system for more than 50 years. And in many cases, some of the same people like Roger Stone or Karl Rove who were active on the student right in the 1960s and 1970s are still active today.Although the mid-20th century is known as a time of left-wing activism and political change, the time period was also when today’s far-right began coalescing as well—and in a much more professionalized fashion that has managed to outlast many of their institutional former rivals on the left.There are many areas where this trend can be observed, but one of the easiest to see is in the constant discussion about the term “cancel culture” in mainstream political discourse. The phrase has been repeated so often that it means almost nothing to most people, but it does seem to have a vague meaning when used by Republicans to imply that they are the victims of some sort of censorship and persecution campaign.But in truth, the history of political cancellations really got started by the right wing. It's a history that is important to note and to discuss, especially because not only did reactionary college students invent the entire concept of getting people fired or reprimanded for their political opinions, they invented many of the tools of political consulting along the way as they battled the anti-Vietnam War and civil rights movements.Joining in this episode to talk about all this is Lauren Lassabe Shepherd. She is the author of a new book that is coming out called Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America.Due to some production difficulties, you may notice occasional glitches in the audio of this episode. The video of the conversation is available. Continue scrolling for audio time code chapters and an auto-generated transcript of the audio.Audio Chapters02:50 — While the left grew dramatically during the 1960s, so did the far right07:53 — How far-right activists practically invented political consulting despite getting little attention from historians15:39 — Reactionaries have been building fake student groups for 60 years20:45 — How right-wing activists then and now use student athletes to build control on campus30:07 — Today's far-right isn't conservative, and its creators didn't call themselves conservative37:55 — How libertarianism provided rhetorical cover through "fusionism" to the Christian right47:47 — More on fake student groups54:56 — How right-wing students in the 1960s teamed up with campus police57:31 — Reactionaries invented getting people fired for political views, but they falsely blame the left for it01:02:32 — Left-wing groups and donors spend almost nothing compared to right-wing youth groups01:13:28 — Many of today's far-right actors have been operating continuously since the 1970sAudio TranscriptMATTHEW SHEFFIELD: It's really great to have you here today, Lauren.LAUREN LASAABE SHEPHERD: Thanks, yeah, thank you for, thank you for the invitation.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Alright, so let's start with kind of a synopsis of your book is covering what time period is it covering here that, in your focus here?SHEPHERD: A very short period, just three years, 1967 to 1970.SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. And why those particular three years?SHEPHERD: So, so the book is about, I guess it's easier to understand what the book is is about. So, I'm writing about the campus wars, so American higher education in the 1960s. And there's sort of this [00:03:00] misconception when people think of college campuses in the sixties that, they're radical hotbeds of activism and progressivism. We think of the anti-war movement. We think of the black power movement as it developed on college campuses. We think of Berkeley in 1964.So that's kind of the common understanding of what's going on in American higher ed in those years. But my book pushes back on that and says, yes, it's true. All of those things are of course there, but there's also a smaller group of students on the right, but even though they're smaller, they have sort of an outsized importance in the way that these campus wars develop.So, typically, we understand the war as being between left wing students, especially students associated with the new left and organizations like students for democratic society, or the student nonviolent coordinating committee SNCC and. What I'm suggesting is that the war is [00:04:00] actually a little bit more between students on the right and students on the left.So, yeah, so 1967 to 1970 is the question of why these are the years that I cover is because this is like the intensity, this is when the battles seem to be most consequential and certainly most dramatic. And so there's in terms of the narrative, it's just more interesting to look at those 3 years.This is the height of the Vietnam war. This is when the black power movement really starts to take shape. And we see a movement, at least among civil rights organizers, to step away from, this long tradition of nonviolence and to become a little bit more radical, a little bit more militant.And so I'm looking at how students on the right really push back against that.SHEFFIELD: And so, in this time period, it's, it is critical as a, sort of a formation for later decades in politics that came afterward. But I guess, to understand it fully, we have to maybe rewind it a little bit even [00:05:00] further to before your time period, especially to understand the figures that are involved here.So as you noted the 1960s were a big organizing and foundational period for American reactionary politics. And there were several people who were involved in creating different organizations and groups. Why don't you discuss some of those people in the groups that they had founded, please?SHEPHERD: Sure. Okay. So, some of the former students of the 60s whose names we might recognize today include people who have been very, very active in politics on the right. So, people like Newt Gingrich, Jeff Sessions, Bill Barr, David Duke, Pat Buchanan. Who am I missing out? David Keene, who is a one-time president of the National Rifle Association. Karl Rove. Gosh, I can't believe I forgot Karl Rove.So these names are, if you're familiar with more like late 20th century, American political history, we recognize [00:06:00] them as either activists or politicians some of whom have run for president or have held high office. Dan Quayle, for example, was a member of Young Americans for Freedom. And I'm sure we'll talk a lot about YAF today. He eventually went on to become the vice president of the United States.And of course, Sessions and Barr both have been American attorneys general. So, yeah. I introduced them to you as 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds before their national careers really took shape. They were still political activists. They were just college students really cutting their teeth for the first time in learning about what it means to be an activist or what it means to be an intellectual on the right.Or what it means to be a partisan. For example I can start with Karl Rove, if you like. Rove was extremely important and the College Republicans at the time, and he actually did not even graduate from college. He went to school in Utah, before his senior year, he dropped out [00:07:00] to work full time for the GOP.So College Republicans and YAF, other groups that, that we can talk about today, ISI is the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. It's the intellectual group for students on the right. They're all feeder organizations. And so through these organizations, the students learn the skills that they'll use for the rest of their personal and political lives.And I use them as examples, but the story is about American higher ed entirely. As policy and precedent, the legislation that these men, and they were mostly men, shape and design that affects higher ed.I mean, it's again, this is not just a personal story about them. It's something that affects all college students and faculty and alum and administrators. I mean, they've had quite a wide reach, and maybe they don't get enough credit for that for better or for worse.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah.How far-right activists practically invented political consulting despite getting little attention from historiansSHEFFIELD: I think you're definitely right that people tend to, some of these 501c3 [00:08:00] organizations, they don't get a lot of press coverage or even historian discussion too much. And it is unfortunate as an analytical point, because these people basically invented political consulting. I mean, the way that it's currently known.SHEPHERD: Their style. Absolutely. Yes.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And created the idea of the permanent campaign, the permanent interest political interest group, like these things did not really, I mean, you could argue that there were, like some special case organizations. So like, the NAACP, for instance obviously, is a very, one of the earliest ones.But these were organizations for people who were not oppressed and trying to attain the same rights as everybody else. They were people who were solely dedicated to influencing policies and electing people.And it was just not a thing until these guys invented it. Why do you think they don't get as much attention, these organizations?SHEPHERD: Oh, [00:09:00] well, they do get a lot of attention. I think they just, the starting points maybe are less familiar to people. So yeah, if you'd like, we can talk about those individual groups and their functions. So, you mentioned these 501c3s, that's what many of them are, especially I. S. I. It's a nonprofit. And that nonprofit model, that educational model allows right wing benefactors ideologues to donate to it tax exempt. And then that money trickles down to students in classrooms.One of the one of the bigger projects Of, so I need to move back even a little bit further. The larger post war conservative movement as it's developing across the country, the story that I'm telling this is the campus-based version of it. So many of the people that I talk about, so like Rove or Sessions all of the others, they're influenced by elders in that conservative movement.So, like the William F. Buckleys, the Marvin Liebmans, the Richard Vigueries, other writers at conservative magazines, so [00:10:00] not just National Review, but also magazines like Modern Age and Human Events and Commentary, and a list of others. So the 501 C3 model really helps those older mentors recruit donors, people who can write big checks. And of course, you don't even need many of them, depending on how large the check is. And you can put that money inside these little shell organizations, and then go on to give that money to the students to help them stay on the college campus. So one of the big projects of ISI was literally investing in individual students to make sure that they go through graduate school, that they become lawyers or they become academics themselves and they stay in higher ed. It's this whole concept of balancing the academy. That's the terminology that they used and the idea is to like, let's start with Buckley. Buckley's big criticism of the academy is that it's too less left wing.It's too socialist. It's hostile to Christians. And so what, it's [00:11:00] what Buckley has in mind when he founds Young Americans for Freedom in 1960 is he'll create an activist organization on the right to counterbalance other groups like the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. So we've got ISI that does that. We have YAF that does that.And then of course we can't credit Buckley or even the post war right with College Republicans, because that's an organization that existed before. But certainly, YAF and ISI had a lot of influence on College Republicans in the 1960s. And then we'll drive it further to the right beyond that time.So, yeah, so those are the organizations, and we talked about them being a training ground just a second ago. Groups like YAF have an age cap, right? You age out of it at 30 years old. So once you've finished college and then even if you decide to go on to graduate school, once you finish that.You can't be a member anymore, but there is the next step and that is the American Conservative Union, the ACU, which we do know more about today. That's [00:12:00] probably known among your listeners. And also the national political, sorry, CPAC. We don't call it national anymore, but CPAC is still like a large.Right wing organization that works for right wing causes. So, even to bring it back to the college campuses college campus, these smaller groups, they all have their own purpose. So, right? We've said, I've said multiple times that is like the intellectual organization that train students to stay in the academy and influence higher ed from some intellectual.Direct in some intellectual direction. YAF is really more partisan or more ideological. So, they're willing to work across the aisle, right? So more nonpartisan, I should say. They're willing to work with say Southern Democrats, right? There were plenty of Southern Democrats like Strom Thurmond who were on YAF's board at the time.And then the other organization, College Republicans is the partisan organization. So it's not. As [00:13:00] ideological as YAF, it certainly doesn't have as many of the YAF fire brands. So like we, I use Karl Rove as an example of a college Republican. If you want a good example of a YAFer, that would be someone like Pat Buchanan the presidential, the failed presidential candidate in the late eighties and nineties.But nevertheless, Buchanan still had a long career in Washington and along influence on the right, an outsized influence for sure. So yeah, these groups, they serve their individual functions, but they all work together too. And that's actually, the working together is a thing that doesn't really even develop until about 1968.So, my book is divided into two parts. And in the first part I explain what these groups do, who funds them, who the members are the demographics of the different organizations purposes. But I also talk about the antagonisms between them. So kind of an interesting feature of all these groups, since they have different purposes, they don't their goals don't always align.[00:14:00]So. We know today your viewers may be familiar with different, like, ideological camps on the right, like, traditionalists or libertarians. The, all of those differences were still there. So, there were antagonisms between the groups that prevented them from working together, and they were already such a small force.Anyway, that being divided was not helpful. It was not helping them. Conquer the campus left in the way that they would have liked. So after 1968, after the spring demonstrations at Columbia, and we can talk about those if you like the elders, the Buckley's and others on national board. Sort of got the students all together and said, like, look, we there's strength in numbers since we literally can't agree on anything that has to do with like politics or ideology.Why don't we just find the least common denominator among all of us? And that is we all hate the left, right? We all hate SDS. We all hate the black power movement on campus and the strikers and the sit ins and the peace Knicks and the hippies and the marijuana [00:15:00] smokers. So let's just. Let's just channel all of that energy, all that negative energy towards stopping them.And so one of the larger theses in my book is that's today. I mean, the expression of owning the libs didn't exist, of course, in the sixties, but that really was what was happening. It's if you put all of these minds on the right together and have them sit down in the conversation, they'll just tear each other apart because they all have really strong convictions and they can't seem to get them in alignment, but what they can do is turn against a common enemy. And so that's really where this whole owning the left comes from.Reactionaries have been building fake student groups for 60 yearsSHEFFIELD: Yeah. It's basically that's when the sort of messaging model for Republican politics, which has never changed ever since that point, and basically it gave birth, it was not just that they couldn't agree, it was also that they understood that they themselves, the [00:16:00] policies that they wanted were not popular. And so, so let's maybe talk about that, that they saw them, that they realized that they were not representing a majority of young people but they didn't want to ever publicly admit that so they've not quite like that at all.SHEPHERD: Yeah. Okay. So, let's talk about this concept called the majority coalition. So after the Columbia demonstration Columbia is just such a perfect example. So in the spring of 1968 if viewers aren't familiar with this story, that the short story is at Columbia university and New York, there were a group of mostly white left wing students of.The new left members of students for a democratic society who were opposed to the university's affiliation with the Department of defense, and they wanted to shut down all university research that would in some way. Continue American involvement in Vietnam. So these are anti war students again, mostly white.There are [00:17:00] there's another issue at Columbia at the same time. And that is that the university is trying to expand the campus into Harlem. The black neighborhood of New York and this expansion project is the construction of a new gym that would take over Harlem's morning side park.So this is a recreational area. This is an important space for the black community that lives there. And so. Many of the black students on campus are organizing to protest the construction of what they call Jim Crow because it was literally segregated members of Harlem. People who lived in that community would have access to the gym, but they would literally have to enter on a downstairs.Freeway downstairs door in the back, as opposed to like this spectacular main entrance that was up higher that Columbia students would use. And so it was it was really a matter of like territorial encroachment that was also extremely racist in literally the physical design. So we have two, two [00:18:00] left groups that are all going against Columbia administration.So at the time there are four separate. Right wing groups at Columbia that are all opposed to the left. They're not working together. They're all their individual clubs. Of yeah, there's a students for a free campus. There's 2 others. And then they're really not all conservative. Some of them are the jocks, like the athletes, the football team.And so why Columbia is so important is because for the 1st time, students on the right are able to get. All four of those groups to kind of work together under what they call a majority coalition. It was a majority of students on the right, but it wasn't the majority of the campus. But that's kind of the way that it was marketed or described.And so anyway they fought back against the, they fought back against the SDS and the Harlem protest, and they themselves were actually Pretty inconsequential, right? They didn't have anything to do with [00:19:00] ending the sit ins and the protests that took place that was, those were ended by New York city police and also campus police at Columbia, but nevertheless, it was an important moment for the conservative students because they realized, oh, okay, we can we can help the powers that be by.Sort of parading around on campus in our suits and praising administrators and presenting ourselves as clean cut squares saying we're the majority. We want to go to class. We don't. We've already paid tuition for our classes for the semester and these. Nihilist strikers are just trying to shut down the campus because they don't want to go to school or they're communist dupes or, whatever the reason was it was a way for them to kind of stick together.So it was unsuccessful technically, but for their playbook, it was like, look, why don't we create more. Majority coalitions. So from that point forward, Young Americans for Freedom, its national board sits down and creates an action manual for organizing. And every year [00:20:00] it redistributes this manual out to every single chapter in the country.Yes, has like 15, 000 members. So it's, I mean, it's not huge, but it is, there is a presence nationwide. We can say that. And so it's a gas job to Locate even moderate students on campus to start recruiting athletes or members of the student government, or just anybody who wants to go to class and doesn't want to see the campus shut down.And that's their way of kind of pulling people into the right. And so it's also the way that can market itself as. The student silent majority. So again, this is 1968. This is throughout Nixon's campaign for presidency when he's talking about being representing a silent majority, they're just borrowing that language.How right-wing activists then and now use student athletes to build control on campusSHEFFIELD: Yeah. And actually I did want to kind of highlight something you just mentioned with the idea of bringing in athletes into their coalition. It's something that actually you can see in the present day now as well. Like [00:21:00] Republicans have really focused on this in the past roughly five years or so through like, overtly elevating sports commentators to be Republican commentators also.So like they've got this guy named Clay Travis, who is just a sports core guy. But now he is a regular political commentator. He inherited Rush Limbaugh's time slot and through the company that was syndicating him. Along with another guy and the two of the, and the weekday co host of Fox News their morning program Fox and Friends.Ryan Kilmeade is a former sports reporter and then their weekend reporter I forget what his name is. They've got another guy over there who is also a sports commentator Will something or other. I forget his name. But yeah, and then.SHEPHERD: Limbaugh too came out of the sports world, right?SHEFFIELD: That's true. Well, that's true. Yeah, he was a Kansas City Royals announcer, for a number of years and so there's always been a [00:22:00] very strong connection just culturally perhaps with right wing politics and sports media which is interesting because they're also On the flip side there were a number of black athletes, in the, in your time period also who were linked to more, left wing political causes, Muhammad Ali being probably the most prominent, but certainly far from the only.SHEPHERD: So, wow, there, there's so much to unpack there, but I can tell you, at least for the sixties, part of the reason that the right wanted to recruit athletes is it had to do with pushing back against the peace movement? So, just to give you an example at the University of Southern California.So big football school. The new left was protesting at football games because they decided the violence of football was just a proxy for the Vietnam war, right? It's just another symbol of Americans glorifying violence for entertainment. And so they would protest outside of football games.They would try to get football games. Canceled.[00:23:00] Not in the way that we use cancel culture now, but actually maybe so maybe that is you could draw a straight line there. Anyway, so, so, yeah, so the right was very big on like recruiting athletes to say, like, look, these. Hippies, these peaceniks, they're against you.They hate you. And you've done nothing wrong. Like, you are a star representative of this campus, right? You pull in alumni dollars and right, you enhance the school's spirit and its traditions. And so that was a really easy segue to get sort of the jock crowd to join some right wing causes, even if they weren't explicitly, understood to be right wing when those athletes joined.And then I mean, if you want to go back even further to the right and athletics, you could talk about in this sort of, like, almost Christian nationalist tradition. There's this long history of, like, Christian manhood and, like, just, sort of an obsession with strength and virality that goes back at least to like Teddy Roosevelt, right?At [00:24:00] least to the beginning of the 20th century. And I'm sure probably earlier than that, I'm just not familiar with the literature there, but I know if, Any viewers are interested Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne spends a lot of time talking about in the front part of her book, talking about the visions of Christian manhood and strength.And it's, that's actually the reason for the creation of groups like the YMCA is to connect Christianity and athleticism and fitness.SHEFFIELD: Well, and it was, yeah, I know I was going to say, and that's, I mean, the name originally was the Young Men's Christian Association. And so, for sure, it's that.And, but and I guess another present day, maybe direct comparison to what you're talking about is that in Florida Ron DeSantis, the governor there has hired this far-right Christian nationalist named Christopher Rufo to oversee the rebuilding of a campus there called New College, and [00:25:00] one of the keys to his attempt to tear it down and rebuild it in their image is that they're bringing in a massive amount of athletes into the school and significantly expanding the budget allocated toward athletics, even though nobody at the school asked for that, none of the students or the alumni asked for it.SHEPHERD: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I could talk for days about the New College situation. And I just, to start, I think it's an easy target. New College is a public campus. And so in that way, the state can have direct control over what goes on there. And also because it doesn't have an athletics program, like you can't, if you take a look at what DeSantis or what Rufo and others are doing at New College.You that could never happen at the University of Florida, right? They can never happen with a larger state institution that has a major alumni donor base and a long sports history and long traditions like that. I mean, you [00:26:00] would never. People would not, the alumni would not be okay with their alma mater being taken over and just unpacked from the inside out.But with New College, like I said, it's an easy target. It's much smaller. It doesn't have— it's alumni are, a little bit more hippie. They're softer. They're not going to throw hard punches and send nasty emails, although I hope they do. And I encourage anyone to do things like that in the name of saving new college from what it's always been.But, I mean, this you're talking about a campus that was literally founded. By hippies, students used to go to class barefoot and shirtless. I mean, that was not an uncommon thing. It's kind of part of the lore of the institution. And so, yeah, I mean, it's just very clear that it's an easy target, but if we can hang out on the topic of fitness for a little while, I think that's so fascinating.So, like, what comes to my mind is, have you seen the viral video of RFK doing pushups? Or just shirtless, right? [00:27:00] It's kind of striking to see someone of his age because he is more mature. He's older with like abs or biceps and, doing pushups. And I've read a lot of pretty hateful Twitter commentary about his form and about how strong is he, or he must be doping.He must be taking like human growth hormone or testosterone or whatever. Maybe he is, who knows? I'm sure. And he claims not to, yeah. Yeah. Right. And so whatever they, I don't, I can't, I'm not a medical doctor. I can't pass any judgment on that, but I just think it's interesting when we see like, the RFKs or even like right wing CrossFitters, right.The the couple, I think it was a husband, wife, or boyfriend, girlfriend, couple that, that started the first CrossFit box. And then now the whole movement. But I mean, we really saw them come out during the pandemic as being anti masks. anti maskers and anti vaxxers. And even, it's just so interesting to me, like, I usually associate, like, crunchy, whole, holistic [00:28:00] fitness and medicine with the left.But we've really almost seen that kind of horseshoe become a circle on the topic of health and fitness, because there are a lot of right wingers who. Have suddenly they're not even vaccinating their dogs anymore. That was an article that I read recently as people are because of political ideologies are bringing their dogs to the vet and saying, why are we getting these shots?Why is my infant being immunized for MMR? But it's just interesting though, when we see people like RFK. They promote fitness as such an individual thing, like such a personal responsibility. I have yet to see anybody, RFK or otherwise on the right say, you know what, as part of my platform, as part of my campaign, I'm going to expand public access to fitness.I'm going to invest in like recreational spaces and parks and communities. Or overhaul the American like way of eating, right? You just don't hear people on the right. If they're so concerned about health and [00:29:00] fitness and vitality they're not interested in making that something that's available to everyone.SHEFFIELD: Well, and certainly if you're concerned about people being healthy, you would probably want to support national healthSHEPHERD: care. You would think that would be the very first one to start.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And and you don't know this, but actually this episode is actually going to be released right after an episode that explicitly talks about health and fitness with a very interesting historian named Natalia Petrzela.SHEPHERD: Oh, gosh. I can't wait to hear that. I love Natalia. She, so like me, she is also an ed historian. And like me, we are also fitness instructors outside of our part of work in academia. I love Natalia. I didn't realize that. That's exciting.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, her stuff's really great and and there actually is a through line though in what we're talking about here with this fitness of sort of politicization of fitness and that is that and again, this is [00:30:00] before your time period, but and we keep doing that, but I promise the audience here, we will talk more about your time period.Today's far-right isn't conservative, and its creators didn't call themselves conservativeSHEFFIELD: Like when William F. Buckley first got started with his, God and Man at Yale book and YAF was getting started in ISI in the 1950s. They didn't call themselves conservatives. And that is a point that is really, really important, I think. They called themselves individualists.That's what they call themselves. And, and it's important to understand because, like, these guys, they're not conservative. Like that's something that I think everybody needs to realize is that what calls itself conservatism in the United States is, it's like, it's sort of a, an imposter version of it.It's a, it is a reactionary ideology of. Which is individualism. That's what this is. And so, and it filters down into everything that they say [00:31:00] rhetorically, but also in their policy desires. So that, that poverty exists because of individual. failure and immorality.And, that's why they're so concerned about regulating people's sex lives and regulating their access to birth control or health care. And then, and then you see it, further in terms of the idea of collective action. And it's part of why they themselves have such problems creating an affirmative, policy goal, other than we want to destroy this stuff.So why don't you talk a little bit more about it?SHEPHERD: That's like the fitness topic. I mean, I could take this so many different ways. So yes when I, when Buckley himself, he was the first president of ISI at Yale in 1953, when he founded ISI, it was initially called the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists.And then one of Buckley's own mentors said, you can't call yourself an individualist. You sound like you're creating like a colony of nudists. And so, it changed, they still kept the ISI acronym, but it became in [00:32:00] the oh my gosh, what is ISI saying for now? Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Thank you. And so, so yeah, that's, but the whole individualism, I mean, we, you really see that now in kind of the libertarian camp and like the extreme right. But I mean traditionalists don't really ever— I mean, to me, I see, at least on the populist right or the traditionalist especially the Christian right the individualist thing is not there so much because they do seem to understand the power of the state.It's just that they want to wield it for themselves. And I'll give you an example of that. Bringing this directly back to colleges. So, like, in Buckley's time in any of Buckley's writing and in all of the things that he had influence over with these college organizations, never did he say we need to dismantle the university as it exists.Instead, he was worrying about he, he was concerned about subverting it. So, putting in. Agents of the right, like,[00:33:00] I, one of my chapter titles is called eggheads for the right. So he wanted the university structure to still exist as it was. He just wanted this, like, parallel or almost like interior compliment that would balance the academy as opposed to what you see today at new college and even in West Virginia.Instead, it's like, no, we're just going to dismantle the whole thing. We're going to defund higher education. We're going to forget the humanities, forget the liberal arts. These are not important things. What are you ever going to do with an art history major? It's not helpful for the workforce, right?And college is about workforce training, not classical education. And so we need to invest in STEM and like business, programs. And so that's just to me, that's like a 180 from Buckley. And I don't mean to sound like I'm being too complimentary of Buckley. I certainly am not, but I can see that there's a clear distinction between what the right wants with the academy today and what maybe, a couple of generations ago, the [00:34:00] right was calling forSHEFFIELD: Yeah, it's, I mean, there, he was still, I mean, he did have a strong anti intellectual streak to himself as well. I mean, like he was constantly talking about how he would rather be governed by the first 500 names in the phone book than by the faculty of--SHEPHERD: The Boston phone book.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So, it was always there for him but that tension has always existed on within the American right especially because it's so linked to the Christian right and American Protestantism of the fundamentalist variety. I mean, Buckley was more of a fundamentalist, I mean, he was a fundamentalist Catholic rather than a Protestant, but there was still this idea of what cognitive psychologists call intuitive reasoning rather than deliberative or reflective reasoning.And so what those concepts mean just for people who haven't heard of them is that intuitive reasoning, basically it doesn't use [00:35:00] facts or observation to reach conclusions. It uses feelings.SHEPHERD: Vibes?SHEFFIELD: And so yeah, vibes and like we all use this type of thinking in our, regular lives and, like you, you'll be like, walking down the street, I don't know and think, oh, I have to be careful over here there's some creepy guys that. hang out here sometimes. And, maybe you had only seen them there once. But, it's possible they might be there, at some other point, right? And so that type of thinking it's not, it can be helpful in your regular life, but when it comes to evaluating, whether COVID vaccines are safe or, whether cutting taxes increases revenues for the government, that's not a good way to understand cause and effect.SHEPHERD: These are testable things, yes.SHEFFIELD: That's right. You can know whether the taxes bring in cutting them brings in moroni and spoiler alert it does not That's right andso but like but it's it's [00:36:00] also the way that fundamentalist religion works as well because if you believe that the Bible is literally true Yeah, I mean, and I can say this having, been a I was born and raised as a Mormon fundamentalist. And so I literally did believe that the Book of Mormon, that First Nations people are, ancient, are the descendants of ancient Hebrews.Like, I believed that. But I knew that I couldn't prove that. So if you were to challenge me on that, I would have been like, well, there's these ideas about this and that and. But I ultimately, I would have had to conclude, yeah, I don't have any proof for that. AndSHEPHERD: so... If you were honest enough to do so.Because I've heard people say, well, that's why we have faith, right? And that the, like, the concept of faith is, you can't prove this, but--SHEFFIELD: Yeah. But like, and so like, basically, yeah, you're right. But that's what they've done is that the political ideology of American reactionism is a faith based ideology, both in [00:37:00] terms of that it's built in for many of them on literal religion.But it's also built on that their secular ideas are of faith, like, I mean, you look at some of the very influential right wing economists like, that they, were very big on and even to this day, like, Ludwig, von Mises, like he had this entire rejection of We don't need evidence to have our theories economic theories like that's That and he came up with this idea that everything, you can understand economics through common sense and he had no idea that is literally a Fallacy, in, in Logic 101, the appeal to common sense is a fallacy, and it's the argument for mean credulity.SHEPHERD: So, while we're on.SHEFFIELD: I know we went on for a while there, I'm sorry.SHEPHERD: No, no, no, no, it's great.How libertarianism provided rhetorical cover through "fusionism" to the Christian rightSHEPHERD: And while we're on this topic, I mean, I think that's really why the traditionalist [00:38:00] right needs the libertarian right. So, this is one of the things we're talking about in the book, but this is not my original idea.There's this long, long pattern history of discussion of fusionisms. This is Frank Meyer's concept that the, Oh,SHEFFIELD: definitely. I want to get into that. Yeah. Traditionalism. Yeah. Talk about that. Yeah.SHEPHERD: Yeah. And so the reason is because traditionalism, I mean, it's, it. Is based on just the past and just like, some preference for a hierarchy that in the right estimate they benefit from right?So, whatever it is, if it's patriarchy, if it's white supremacy, whatever it is, the way things have been in the past benefit people. Who think this way and that's why they don't want to change them, but they can't explain it that way. Right. And not because they in some cases, maybe they don't have the words, but in other cases, you can't just come right out and say, well, I'm racist.I'm a white supremacist. I'm misogynist, right? None of that sounds good. And you're not going to be taken seriously, butSHEFFIELD: I'm rich. Therefore I should keep my money. [00:39:00]SHEPHERD: If you have some ideological justification, like some libertarian free market principles, small government principles, that's actually coherent.A lot of times the traditionalists borrow that language from libertarians, even though they don't like all of their ideas. But they borrow their language when it's necessary. And actually tell a story about this in the book too. This is a quick story. In the summer of 1969, YAF has its national convention in St.Louis, Missouri. And there's a lot of tension at the convention because there's a libertarian camp. So the libertarians are the minorities in YAF. But the libertarians are really starting to find common cause with the new left when it comes to Vietnam. They don't want to be drafted, right? They call the draft, the selective slavery system and a violation of the 13th amendment.And that, that doesn't sit well with the traditionalists who are very pro war, very interested [00:40:00] in American hegemony abroad. And they're anti communist, right? They don't want to see South Vietnam fall to communist North or to China or to Russia or, whoever, USSR, whoever they're afraid of.And so there's some other things like the libertarians are okay with drug decriminalization. They're okay with marijuana use and LSD usage and they find common cause with the hippies on things like that. And they don't think that the state. Police should be brought in to restrict these liberties from people, right?So it shouldn't be a crime to smoke weed if you want to and the traditionalist, right, just can't have that. So at the at this convention in 1969, there are literal fistfights between traditionalists and libertarians. After one libertarian student gets on the stage at this convention and he holds up a copy of his draft card and he takes a cigarette lighter to it and he burns it and that's symbolic, not just that he's burning his draft card because that's, of course, what the new left does, but it's also symbolic because yas. own emblem is the torch of [00:41:00] liberty. So he's, it's kind of a double entendre there and it's offensive to traditionalists in both ways.And so, yeah, this huge fight breaks out and they're punching each other. And then even once the fight settles the national board takes away the credentials of the libertarians so they can't come back to the conference. And when they try to come in there's more fights about that.And then the night that that Instance occurs they all meet under this is in Saint Louis. So they meet under the Gateway Arch, and they listen to speeches by Buckley who they boo the libertarians boo. And that's like, you can't do that. Buckley is a God. You cannot insult the master. And then they also there are speeches by Murray Rothbard, who if viewers aren't familiar, he's an archcapitalist. He is an arch-libertarian. I think he even sometimes calls himself an anarcho-capitalist. But anyway, he's a writer, a thinker. He's an extreme libertarian. And so, yeah there's more fights. There's more tussles. They make their way back that night to the hotel [00:42:00] room. You have students beating each other up in the halls calling for the death of the other of the other side.And yeah, it's Extremely dramatic, but as I show in the book, even after that 1969 convention, when all of these libertarians are expelled, and then they go on to create students for individual liberty, which eventually becomes the libertarian party of the United States in 1972 or 73. Even though they've been exiled from YAF, it doesn't stop YAFers from using their arguments.So it's a fascinating thing that these pro war traditionalists they're all for the war in Vietnam, but they themselves don't want to be drafted and so they get pressed on that all the time. The chicken hawk question. If you're so pro war, why won't you serve yourself? What are you doing?Sitting in a college classroom? If the college campus is so liberal and so terrible, go out and be a soldier, man, go fight. And then they come up, with all of these excuses, like, well, after I graduate, I'll go enlist. I'm just here because I want to be an officer rather than an enlisted man.And they have all these reasons, but they. Borrow lots of [00:43:00] arguments from the libertarians. And of course they need to because their own ideas aren't coherent or consistent to be defensible.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And you did see some of that also with the women who, the few women who did come up in that environment tended to, talk praise and they still, and they've done it ever since, like Laura Ingram is childless, has never been married or actually, sorry, she adopted children.And as a someone who had never been married and, a lot of these right wing women, all kind of do not practice what they preach. Oh, yeah.SHEPHERD: Interesting. For sure. And yeah, it's a weird right wing feminism. It's very, it tends to be very high feminism. Like Laura Ingram, of course is, considered by many accounts to beautiful, right? She adheres to like modern beauty standards. Michelle Malkin's another really good example, but even going back to like, like Phyllis Schlafly, like, of course, Phyllis Schlafly was she was married and she [00:44:00] did have several children. I can't remember how many she had, but she just jet set across the country all the time on these speaking on these stop ERA speaking tours with nannies, right? While preaching about the importance of women staying at home and being homemakers and at holding to this Christian traditionalist view of what women should do and be.But yeah, that's another good example of someone who is pretty hypocritical there. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah so, oh, absolutely. And on the sort of the reactionary slash libertarian feuding, I'm interested to hear what you think, because I do feel like that especially when the sixties, that there were a bunch of people outside of political movements, like they weren't activists who had a libertarian sensibility and they were not liberal or progressive. But. The issues that they were interested in [00:45:00] did align them temporarily with the political left. And so when we had those issues resolved as a society in favor of the left, so drug legalization, because it was a felony and imprisonment, you could be imprisoned for just engaging in same sex sexual relations. So like legalizing sodomy, legalizing same sex marriage marijuana, decriminalization reforms to the draft, et cetera.These are all things that the libertarian. People as you said agreed with the progressive left on and then once those issues were sort of taken off the table because everyone agreed Oh, okay, the left was right about this Now those people who had those libertarian inclinations are now like any Elon Musk. It's a great example of this and you know that they never understood what [00:46:00] Politics was about and they never understood where they were themselves. Like they thought they were on the left and then they're waking up all of a sudden and realizing, Oh, wait a second.These issues I was concerned about, now we're talking about different issues and what's wrong with the left now. I don't know what's your thought?SHEPHERD: Yeah. I don't know if I would say that Musk would wherever on the left, but certainly a liberal.SHEFFIELD: No, no, that they think they were,SHEPHERD: That's what I'm saying, or BillSHEFFIELD: Maher, another example.SHEPHERD: Yeah, I put Elon Musk or even Vivek Ramaswamy, like, who we have seen recently in the Republican debate. I can't predict the future, but it seems to me like he'll probably have a long career on the right. I don't know. We'll see. That those to me represent like a tech bro kind of personality who are interested in grift, and it seems like it's very, very easy to, become an overnight star on the [00:47:00] right and get a lot of celebrity and attention and money in ways that you can't do on the left. So, for example, like, Musk, right? He's, he makes a name for himself in developing, like, green energy vehicles, but now he's this right wing troll on Twitter, but it seems like he has found an audience there, right?He gets attention that he likes. And so his views over time don't have to be consistent. It's. It's more opportunistic to me and that's what. I don't know. That's what I see. I'm sure someone else has probably more fully developed thoughts on that. But I mean, there's, there's just a lot of grift on the right, especially in like, conspiratorial thinking, which Musk seems to constantly be elevating on his website.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, we certainly does love that. Well, okay.More on fake student groupsSHEFFIELD: So, let's then maybe go back to the idea of creating the sort of AstroTurf group because that strategy really did kind of solidify during your time period. You talk about it quite extensively [00:48:00] in your book and one of the things that they did with that was that, and Buckley did this earlier, but this generation that you're talking about also did is that they were, very.They went very hard after some students and some professors who said things that they didn't like. And so they tried to get them fired. I mean, tell us maybe one or two of those stories of how they went after specific things like that. If you could.SHEPHERD: Sure, so well, with the AstroTurf thing that's so the right is trying to, or claiming to represent a campus silent majority, but being very self conscious that they don't.So, in order to make themselves look like an actual grassroots, truly popular movement they can't use the banner of YAF because by. The late 1960s, you have had already earned a reputation as an extremist group, and a lot of people didn't really take them very seriously. But they started creating front groups, [00:49:00] so they would create a new campus organization and they would call it something completely different, like students for responsible university or, and this is that majority coalition model we talked about earlier. They would take their entire same roster, add 2 or 3 more new names and create a new group. Right? And so suddenly it's like, look, we have not only offers on campus, but we also have this other group that thinks like, yeah, well, of course they do.It's the same group. It's just their facsimiles. So that's where the AstroTurf comes in and another sort of dimension to that. Yeah. Astroturf implying that it's not grassroots is that they have all of these major funders. So, in 1 instance this is again at the University of Southern California.There's an underground right wing campus newspaper. Called the true Trojan and it's funded entirely by 1 member of the USC board who's. Maybe I did not get permission to use but, yeah this board member cut checks that would cover the cost of an [00:50:00] entire an entire print run for the magazine.And it would be coded as an alumni subscription. So just 1 alum subscription would pay for the whole thing. So that's another example of this astroturf nature. And then also the fact that yes, board members would create these annual, action kits and like manuals to, to teach all of their students how to work, how to hold certain events or how to invite speakers to campus, how to literally give them scripts of words to use to go knock around door to door in the case of like college Republicans asking for campaign donations.So, yeah, I mean, that's that goes back to the AstroTurf thing in terms of, like, pushing back against faculties, there were, there's a number of instances in the book. 1 of the big ones that appears early on is students claiming that they were penalized for their grades. So, 1 student whose name I will use James Courtney talked about being in a macro economics course at the University of Washington or Washington University.One or the other. [00:51:00] Anyways, in his, he said that he got a B in his back row course, because the instructor did not like the fact that he was a conservative. He was turning in papers with, a free market analysis, and then he got a B instead of an A. And so there was no, there's no way for me to test that, right?That's a claim. And I don't have that student's records. I. Don't know how to get in touch with your professor who's probably been dead for decades at this point. So to sort of triangulate that and try to figure out, is this true or not? I asked that same question to other students. Did you ever feel like your professors graded you more harshly because you, because of your politics, because your politics were different than theirs and a lot of times what I heard from students is like, oh, no, they always graded fair.If I got a bad grade, it's because I turned in some half baked analysis. And so, but that's an example of students like claiming, my professor is just brainwashing everyone and if you don't agree with him, he's going to penalize you.SHEFFIELD: Well, and they also went [00:52:00] after students fellow students to try to get them expelled if they were engaging in left wing activism.Can you talk about that?SHEPHERD: Sure. So, I mean, there's instances of students literally beating up activists. So, an example is that Cornell in 1969 in the spring there was a black women's, co op, like a dormitory residence hall or house. And 1 morning, 1 night a burning cross appeared in the front yard.And so after that, at the different black students on campus were organizing, they were protesting this. They were trying, they were demanding a black studies program. They wanted more black students to be enrolled. They wanted to see more black. People on the faculty and so members of a fraternity, which 1 was it?I think Delta up salon. Anyway, when a fraternity members literally went and beat black students up who were occupying a campus building. And so that, I mean, that's 1 example. There's [00:53:00] so many examples of fistfights. Another 1 where no 1 got hurt. Another example had to do with Jane Fonda. So Jane Fonda.Anti Vietnam War celebrity she would go around on her press junket advertising whatever big, headlining movie she had coming out and yaffers would show up and they would have these big giant signs and they'd stand behind her to make sure that they were on camera and their signs would read things like Hanoi or the title of HanoiSHEFFIELD: Jane.Yeah. Well, they called her. I hadHanoi Jane .SHEPHERD: Yes. But one of the signs I'm specifically thinking of they're holding it up and it says movie title bombed. Why can't we? So meaning like, why can't we bomb Laos in Cambodia and north Vietnam? Or just heckle her at events. I mean, oftentimes her bodyguards would have to have them removed.So I mean, they were, they were rowdy. And, and after 1969, Young Americans for Freedom, the advisory board literally started in its in its communication to its campus chapters said, you can use violence, right? [00:54:00] Especially if you see the left beating up police, get in there and start crashing skulls.That's not a direct quote, but that's the, that was the vibe that they were encouraging. Then to do they would also like explicit directions. They would say, okay, if a building is being occupied by, let's say the black student union, let's say that they're holding a sit in go cordon off the building.So, let's get a group of, a majority coalition students to lock arms and not let anyone come out. If these people want to occupy the building, we're literally going to starve them. We're not going to let reinforcements come in and bring them bread or bring them, food or anything to eat.They're going to sit in there for 567 days. Until, they have an agreement with the administration to come out, so they would do things like that. And then they would be very specific about what that cordon would look like. They would say, okay, everyone should lock arms. There needs to be a girl every 2 or 3 people because, no one's going to attack a girl.How right-wing students in the 1960s teamed up with campus policeSHEPHERD: But if someone does start, start fighting back, start screaming [00:55:00] like, leftist violence oftentimes when campus police were called by administrators to. To shut down a sit in or to solve some, issue on campus students on the right would deputize themselves. They would act as if they were members of the police too.And they would wear these little badges or, they would have code words like freedom that they would whisper to the cops to say, Hey, like, we're the good guys. We're on your side. We're here to help you. Just, stuff like that. But oftentimes they would identify themselves with blue buttons. So when the antiwar movement started wearing, like, it's black armbands they would wear blue buttons.It was just like the, the counter symbol to let people know, like, Oh, we're here. We're on the administrator side. And then addition to physical violence, they would also threaten legal violence. I mean, yeah. There are several instances, especially after 1969, and then just exploding after 1970, after the Kent State Massacre, where students on the right sued their trustees, or they sued the president, or they sued [00:56:00] other students who were involved in strikes because they were claiming Like, we've already paid tuition, right?You can't, you can't shut down the campus. You can't end the semester. Which was the case at many campuses after after the massacre at Kent State, you can't just stop the normal order of events when we've paid tuition. And so those, those suits weren't always successful, but in a number of cases 1, 1 instances at George Washington University where the injunction was, was ordered, right? A judge said, yes, you must keep the campus open. You must have normal class time operations. It doesn't matter that students are striking. And and that's important too, because even even the threat of suing a college president directly, like, like the individual person is can be enough to to make some sort of action occur to make them take some steps because they don't want to face the court system or whatever it is.So that's something that you have to use all the time and continues to use. If any of your listeners are [00:57:00] familiar with the podcast, know your enemy. It's produced by dissent magazine. They're at two guys, Matt and Sam, they do deep dives on the right all the time on their Patreon page, the, the base level, I think like.5 a month subscription to their podcast and, and the stuff they produce it's called a Young Americans for Freedom subscription. And yeah, YAF actually sued them. This was a month or two ago. And I think the, I think the suit got dropped, but I mean, it's, it's, it's a tactic that they're, they're still weaponizing all the time today.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Reactionaries invented getting people fired for political views, but they falsely blame the left for itSHEFFIELD: Well, and it's, and it's important, really important because conventional political reporters, or local news reporters, they don't know this history at all, and essentially who kind of created political cancellations.I mean, the entire purpose of National Review was because they hated Dwight Eisenhower and they wanted to get rid of him because he was conservative, basically, and they were not. They were, reactionary.Let's talk about [00:58:00] that, that they moved into the Republican party and took it over and, systemically or systematically decided to bump off people who they did not find to be obedient to them. You want to talk about some of that?SHEPHERD: I mean, that's a that is a direct parallel of what happened at that summer convention to me. Like, I mean, I've, I've view these things in those terms.Mm-hmm. Of course, because it's my research. But yeah. I mean, so to, to me, canceling someone or, or this. Concept of cancel culture. It's just a boycott. So I don't know that we can give the right credit for the concept of boycotts because that I mean, that goes back. I don't know how long it goes back, but it goes back certainly before the post war movement in the United States on the right.But yeah, I mean. But ISHEFFIELD: guess as a they use, oh no, I was gonna say like they use it as a way of trying to claim that there's this, large group victimization of people with a, with a, an ideological, agenda. That is, they're trying to, I enforce it on us. And [00:59:00] we have no choice. No one everyone's trying to silence us.I've been really, they're the ones that, I mean, like, and I can say that, having been a former Republican political consultant in media entrepreneur, like, I, I was not somebody who was ever on board with the Christian right in my political career, but, and I'll give you an example of what I mean by that, but like, so when I first moved to D. C. to start up my career in political consulting and media. I, this was around when Facebook was very early on and, and I put on my religious affiliation, I put agnostic atheist. And I had several friends of mine say to me, Matt, That's probably not a good idea for you to do that people aren't going to like that.And, and, and at the time I, I thought, well, whatever, I don't want to work with those people if they hate that I don't believe in, their, their religious views. But in retrospect, they were a hundred percent right. Like I, I saw that people once they learned about what I [01:00:00] actually thought about things.They came after me to try to get me fired from jobs or try to like there was a fellowship program that I was directly encouraged to apply for by the guy who was running it. And he was very excited about this book I was going to write, and then I never got the book and it turned out that.Pretty much everybody on the judge's board was a Christian nationalist. And my book was about, here's how Republicans can sort of reconcile between irreligion and religion. That was the purpose of the book. And you can't do that. We can't have that according to them.SHEPHERD: What was the press? If you don't mind,SHEFFIELD: It was the Phillips fellowship journalism fellowship.SHEPHERD: Oh, fellowship. Okay. Yes. Yeah. I mean, the rights really great. I got to say, I got to hand it to him. They're excellent about funding scholars. Or, where other. Other people who have ideas that might that might benefit the right. And it's really interesting. [01:01:00] At a time when funding for scholars from the traditional sources, like Ford foundation, or or even even federal grants when that's.Going by the wayside, I mean, funding for the humanities for history for my discipline is almost entirely gone. I don't I don't know where someone would turn to today to get a grant for a historical project. I'm sure it would be extremely competitive. Yeah. So the right's very good about throwing cash at people or investing in their.Their projects, but, yeah, you asked about, like, National Review and its function. So, yeah, I mean, it really was about trying to convince its readers, that they are a minority a political minority and that they are. Actively being ostracized by the liberal media by, New England elites and trying to convince readers that this is a product for you that appreciates you and that will give you the tools, like the conceptual tools and that language and the understanding that [01:02:00] you need to push back against all of that and National Review.I had a had a major influence, the writers at National Review, so Buckley and others on the campus, right? I mean, they would, they would show them how to create a newsletter. And like the example I gave earlier, they would even fund them. So, and, and for your students who are headed for careers in the academy, that is, or for careers in journalism, CV.Like I was the editor of the campus newspaper. Let's just ignore the fact that it was an unofficial newspaper. ButLeft-wing groups and donors spend almost nothing compared to right-wing youth groupsSHEFFIELD: Yeah, it's true. And and it really is like that. That is the fundamentals of operational distinction between the contemporary American left and right is that the American left tends to try to see politics as something that should be organically developed.And so they don't. Yeah, they don't fund a lot of student activism and don't, I mean, yeah, like literally, we're at the point [01:03:00] now where you've got, turning point USA, you still got Young Americans for Freedom, you still got college Republicans, you've got young Americans for liberty, you've got And God, there's probably like two or three other ones.I can't think of right now. AndSHEPHERD: Sorry, I was gonna give you a couple more examples, but yeah, yeah,SHEFFIELD: Go for it. Yeah, but but no, I was going to say, but like, basically the only analog is College Democrats, that's it, for the most part.SHEPHERD: Yeah, somebody asked me this question recently too, and I was trying to think, like, who, who would be the 2023 version of, like, say, SDS?Or, or even, like, the, the Black Panthers or some, or the Black Student Union, or the WEB Du Bois Club and I can't, I couldn't come up with an example, but I think maybe the closest thing, and this is not a, a one to one comparison, but, like, some Bernie Bros. Like, I don't know, like, there's no but they stillSHEFFIELD: don't have an organization.Like, that's the thing.SHEPHERD: Yeah. Yeah. So it would be ad hoc, like, during a political campaign season. But, but now I'm thinking, I mean, I [01:04:00] really am seeing, especially among graduate students and among non tenure track faculty, postdocs visiting assistant professors. I mean, there's, there's a labor movement afoot, which is really exciting to me to watch unfold.And so, so maybe that might come something in the near future. I hope maybe that could parallel a, a new left group. Similar to like, what we saw in the 60s even, even like BLM, the BLM movement doesn't that I'm aware of have a campus base. I don't know. I don't know.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and, and it is like, and I'll say, like as somebody who has been on the inside of the right and left the right understands at a central, in a central way that giving people a way to have a career in advocacy.Is important if you want to have it and, and, and like, [01:05:00] and it extends in terms of not just, donors, showering things with money, but it also extends to like media appearances, like Fox News will, they'll put on, any random person. who has an idea that they are interested in like that Oliver Anthony guy is a great exampleSHEPHERD: of that.The debate. Yes. Oliver Anthony is a perfect example. Even the the Republican debate, there was a question from a yaffer. I don't know if anyone caught that. I mean, it certainly jumped out to me. From young America's foundation, how they call it, but it's still it's the same organization as Young Americans for Freedom was.Yeah, there was not runSHEFFIELD: by anyone who is young though,SHEPHERD: right? Yes. Yeah. And like you mentioned campus reform and turning point USA, all these groups. I mean, like Charlie Kirk is like 30. I mean, he's not a college student and never was. So yeah, Candace Owen, another example of a 30 something shock job, but who, who [01:06:00] speaks on college campuses, that's, that's literally her, one of her main duties.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, well, and at the same time though, like, in her case, he was just a random. Low audience YouTuber who was making basically racist comments against black people. And that was how she got picked up. But like, I mean, you, you see that over and over that the right is very like, and I'll give you an example of somebody that I know, like he, he's a, has a pseudonymous Twitter account, doesn't run it under his own name.But one day he was making fun of some New Jersey Republican, local Republican. And. He got contacted within the week by another New Jersey Republican who didn't like that same guy and was like, repping one of his rivals. He got contacted within the week, an anonymous Twitter account, whereas on the left.Like, you can't even get these big podcasts to even post people on their show. Like, they always host the same guests [01:07:00] all the time and it's just like there is this complete freeze out of new voices on the, on the sort of established left. And maybe it, maybe it's a function of that there's not as much money available to them.But it is an interesting dynamic, I have to say as somebody who's seen things from the inside on both sides. Yeah,SHEPHERD: yeah, that goes back to what we were saying earlier about grift and opportunity with, Elon Musk and so many others, like, it's just easy to just become a right wing troll and then quickly get showered with attention and Oliver Anthony is another good example.And I know he's come out recently and say, like, after the, after the debate, he said, these are actually the people I was making fun of, but I mean, you can, I think he was funded by some. Some right wing producer like discovered and paid for his music and paid for the music video, like the outdoor video where he's playing his guitar at a concert.And it seems to be recorded live. It's it's not it's professionally recordedbut I do know that that song was produced by somebody who had an [01:08:00] interest in this sort of like, right wing populism that they could hear and conspiratorial sort of, through line that was in the lyrics of that song. So yeah, it's easy to just. To just rise up to stardom really quickly. Oh Oh my gosh.Why can I not think of his name? The Kenosha shooter. Young guy, Kyle Rittenhouse. Yes. He's another example of someone who just happened to be in front of cameras and do something that the right light. And then he's quickly elevated to fame. And I think he's been at Republican events ever since then.SHEFFIELD: Yeah and there's another guy who had just recently passed away Joe the Plumber, aka Joel Wurzelbacher, he was just a guy who asked a question to Barack Obama in 2008 and became an overnight right wing celebrity. And obviously there are some bad things about just elevating random people into your political discourse. Like the Republicans over the years, [01:09:00] several times have promoted people who are just outright fascist or a secretly a Nazi activists or things like that, but on the other hand it really gives them-- this elevation of new voices and willingness to put new people forward-- it gives a dynamism to the right wing that the left in the current day and age doesn't really have I would say.SHEPHERD: Yeah, I mean, there's this what is the saying about the left always eating its young. Yeah, I mean, there's so much like infighting and. Again, this is going back to some of the things that I talk about my research is what we saw on the right to before someone that in a leadership position and an inspirational position said, you know what y'all, stop and work together.And then they did but, yeah, that's that has yet to materialize on the left.. I guess what I see is like the left fighting liberals and liberals fighting the left rather than to me, liberals are our centrist, I, I kind of think of them that way and I know everybody does. But on the [01:10:00] spectrum, my understanding is that a liberal is probably more towards the center. And so there's like, the center to left, like, in fighting that it's just like, if all of that could be redirected to fighting against like this bubbling American fascism that is so apparent to me we can probably really do something about it.SHEFFIELD: I do think there is. There is also a New York DC problem with the left, much more than the right and like they, they don't want to include people who don't live in the "Acela Corridor" as it's commonly called. This is like a larger left problem that if you can't come to their office every day, then you're not going to get a job at a progressive organization because they want you to be in DC, even though basically what that attitude means is that they're totally cut off from understanding how to talk to people outside of their little bubble. And so [01:11:00] basically they become overly reliant on public polling. And public polling is, and I used to be a pollster so I can say this, is that it actually distorts your thinking if you don't understand how to use it.And the right is much better at understanding what polls are for because they basically invented it as a campaign tactic. But polls are for understanding how to say your message. They're not for determining what your message is.And that's the real difference between the left and the right in terms of how they use polls. The right will look at polls and say, this is how we need to talk about what we want to do. Whereas the left will look at a poll and say, oh, this idea is unpopular, which we want, so therefore, we're not going to talk about it. And we're not going to take action about it. And I have interviewed a number of very early same-sex marriage advocates and they all have uniformally told me that the Democratic party, [01:12:00] as a public matter, refused to do anything for them. And that they had to push for everything on their own. And in some cases were actually opposed by a prominent Democrats in their particular areas, even though privately they believed in, and Barack Obama was an example, Joe Biden actually was the first national left politician, to come out and he was, he was alone in being in favor of, it was actually courageous of him to do that.Most of them, they wouldn't touch it.SHEPHERD: That, that makes me think about like the, the right and it's relationship with the gay community. There's a really, I'm so excited about this, a really fascinating book that will come out next spring about gay Republicans. And it'll be written by Neil J. Young, University of Chicago. Yeah. I've gotten to read two chapters and they're both really fascinating. But yeah, that's, that's another thing too, is like watching, and also many closeted [01:13:00] Republicans.There are a lot of leadership a lot of members of the leadership on the right that were closeted over the years.SHEFFIELD: Absolutely. Well, let's, maybe get back to some of your book stuff. So you have some kind of fun messaging details that I thought are not commonly known about, like what YAF was doing against the Richard Nixon supporters, you want to talk about some of that? They're kind of funny and just weird. Let's talk about that.SHEPHERD: Yeah.Many of today's far-right actors have been operating continuously since the 1970sSHEPHERD: So in preparation for 1968, Young Americans for Freedom were recycling all of the things that they used in a 64 campaign.So, They would have like banners that would say apple pie mother and Nixon or they would dress up as cowgirls and call themselves. Yeah. Fats and they would pass out different campaign materials and just really make over the top sort of over the top sort of like. They would come out and over the top sort of [01:14:00] ways to where they're stunts.Absolutely. So, leading up to 1968, so there are a couple of different candidates that the right supports. And one of them is George Wallace. So I actually opened the book with a story about George Wallace coming to Dartmouth in 1968. And he, this is a speaking engagement. He is invited to campus.He comes up on the stage and he says all sorts of provocative things. But even before he gets there, there's already a mass of students outside who are ready to protest his appearance. And if somebody has said about the book before the way that that little vignette opens, that's actually something we would see today as students protesting conservative speakers on campus.So this, this thing, has a long history. But anyway, so, Wallace is there. There's Literally 1400 seats in the stadium or in the the room where he's speaking. And they're all full and there's an overflow crowd on the outside. There's campus police and [01:15:00] security to to take care of the hecklers.And as he's speaking, a group of students just flush through the barricade and they. Dorm inside and they run down the center aisle and they are trying to take Wallace off the stage but they're not successful. Wallace has his security. He literally has a getaway car already running and waiting for him and they take him out to the car as quick as they can.The mob of students follow him out to the car. They start beating in the top of the car and just, making a big ruckus. And I argue that all of that is purposeful. The students, of course, want to create a spectacle of their dissent. They want to show, like, we don't appreciate this guy who's out here saying, segregation today, tomorrow, forever.They don't want this person speaking on campus. Wallace, on the other hand, Loves that, right? That's catnip for him because then he can say things like, see, this is academic freedom. That's actually a direct quote. He says, this type of academic freedom will get you killed.[01:16:00] And so it's a, it's a good, that whole spectacle is a useful tool for both sides to talk about the intolerance of the other, so that's that's 1 Wallace story that appears in there. And, of course, in the 1968 campaign, there are lots of lots of students that try to get him nominated. There is, we were speaking about grift earlier. There's a lot of grift behind that. There's an unofficial youth for Wallace organization that uses Wallace's mass head is banner head for, for All of this stuff and they're soliciting campaign donations, but it's coming to the, the guy that's behind it.His name is his name is Joseph accord. And so accord is taking all of this money. He has no official affiliation with Wallace. Wallace literally his campaign headquarters in Montgomery literally sends the sky like a cease and desist. That says we're not affiliated with you.SHEFFIELD: Just like today. Just like today with all these people using Trump's name to raise money for themselves.SHEPHERD: Yeah. So, so that's another thing. And then [01:17:00] that group actually goes on. So Wallace will not get the Republican nomination. Of course that goes to Nixon, but he'll still go on to run as an independent and then he'll lose in the general election in 68, but he promises that he's going to run again in 72.So that Youth for Wallace group, so, not only is Accord behind it, there's a couple of other, like, extreme far right, white supremacists let's see, who else is there? But they, anyway, they all--SHEFFIELD: Well, Richard Viguerie is there also.SHEPHERD: Yeah, Viguerie, Viguerie is in my story, he, he's kind of in the background as like this advisor. I don't talk about him too specifically except for, to, to talk about his ability to help fundraise. But this group goes on and it becomes the National Youth Alliance, the NYA, and it's a white, literally it's a white supremacist college group, like, its whole function is to attack black students.They sell pepper spray as they use the slur, [01:18:00] but as basically control equipment is what they call it. And yeah, they just produce all sorts of horrible literature. David Duke is affiliated with this group. He has a chapter at LSU. There's an infamous image of Duke. I, I didn't include this in the book.Plenty of people might be familiar with this picture, but it's Duke, not at LSU. He's at Tulane in New Orleans. And he is protesting the, the trial of the Chicago defendants, he's, he's carrying the sign that says gas, the Chicago seven and then on the reverse side of the sign, it says something in relation to like communist Jews.And he's referring to members of the new left who are on trial, not all of whom were Jewish but, but some big name players like Abby Hoffman where and then also their defense attorney was Jewish. So anyway, they're anti Semitic, they're anti black. They're just. Scary people, but they're affiliated with Wallace and then the N. Y. A. Later changes names again. And it becomes like a neo [01:19:00] Nazi organization. That's still around today. Well, it's cartoons and another another name that sponsors the organization. Okay, so that's that's Wallace. There are a sizable group of YAFers who are behind Reagan. Reagan, again, like Wallace, loses in the general and he won't become president for a long time.But, when Reagan does become president, a lot of his former, like, YAF students will have positions in his administration. And for Nixon, the Yaffers do not love Nixon but they have to come around when he's the GOP candidate because they're certainly not going to support the, the Democrats anti war candidate.So, yeah, they campaigned for Nixon. He wins the nomination or he wins the election, and then they expect that he will keep this war going and that we will win the war. And then when Nixon starts doing things, just a few months into his role as president, when he starts doing things like Making the draft more equitable.Yeah. Other things that they don't like, [01:20:00] suddenly they turn on him and they literally, I mean, there's one of my archival trips was to the Nixon administration. And as I'm looking through like his college files they're all these nasty letters from Yafers, like demanding that he changed course on Vietnam and that he, that he stops Vietnamization and that he.Makes, he escalates the war. And then after Kent State in May 1970 for, for viewers who aren't familiar with this story, there's an anti war protest and the National Guard is sent in. The, the guards members shoot just a volley of bullets into a crowd of students and onlookers, not all of them were students almost a dozen people are injured, four people die.And Yaffe. Has just a sort of come to Jesus moment about how do we respond to something like this? The Kent State Massacre, by the way, that protest was in response to the United States invading neutral Cambodia. So on one hand, yeah, it's like, yeah, this is exactly what we want an escalation of the war into other territories, right?They're [01:21:00] concerned about this domino effect of communism. So they're. They want to get into Southeast Asia and just like take over everywhere. So they're excited about that. But then there are national guards been executing college students on campus. And again, like we said, not, not all of these people who were killed that day or shot and injured that day were even students at Kent State.Some were just literally passers by. The bullets extended 700 feet and beyond. I mean, there's literally a volley up into the air and over. So, but some students said, you know what, they deserve this. They shouldn't have been at the protest. They shouldn't have been around. And so,SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and again, that's, you see that same type of attitude today, with the, oh, it's okay to run over protesters and, or, we support we support Kyle that, I mean, you see all that stuff as well.Yeah, that's right. And, sometimes I think there's a temptation on the center to left to think that Donald Trump did this to the Republican Party [01:22:00] and your book, your book shows that that's really not true at all.And all these tendencies that people see, now it, fascistic tendencies religious discrimination, racial discrimination. I mean, you've got it all right there. And. And it was done by people who nowadays are seen as sort of, perceived as anti Trump, stayed reliable conservatives.And that's not the case at all.SHEPHERD: No, that's not the case. And I, and I also, I, I don't want to overstate. My intervention here, like, that that argument is not one that only I have made. I mean, there are other scholars, John S Huntington in his book, far right vanguard, argue something really similar. I'm extremely excited about David Walsh.He's, he's a postdoc at Yale right now, but he's working on a book on the, on the far right. And he'll, he'll argue the same thing that, and even if you, if you look into like studies of the John Birch Society Edward Ted Miller [01:23:00] has two really good books, Nut Country.SHEFFIELD: I've actually had him on my show. Yeah. He's great.SHEPHERD: Oh, perfect. Okay. Yes. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, I don't want to overstate my, my contribution to this. I mean, there's certainly other scholars that would say the same thing. I'm not breaking anything around here.SHEFFIELD: You did a good job. That's what I'm saying.SHEPHERD: Thank you. I, I appreciate that. But yeah, I mean, these, these tendencies have been there for a long time and you're right there, there is a, some nostalgia, especially from like Never Trumpers from the Charlie Sikes of the world or from the Bill Crystals to say something's been lost since 2016. It hasn't. It's been there all along. It's maybe it's bubbled to the surface and maybe it's more transparent. You can see it now, but Trump didn't bring this in, he just fanned the flames.SHEFFIELD: Well, I think that is a great summary there.So we've been speaking today with Lauren Lassabe Shepherd. She is the author of a great new book that I encourage you to check out. It's called Resistance from the Right. [01:24:00] Thanks for being here, Lauren.SHEPHERD: Thank you, Matt. I appreciate it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it's been a great conversation. So where can people who want to stay in touch with what you're up to follow you on social media?SHEPHERD: I'm still on Twitter. I know it's a sinking ship, but I'm there for now. So.SHEFFIELD: What's your username on there for people who want to follow you?SHEPHERD: Oh, yes. So if you want to follow me on the social media site formerly known as Twitter, you can find me @LLassabe. That's L L A S S A B E. I'm also on Bluesky, but I'm not super active there. I'm very active on Instagram and my handle across all these platforms is at LLassabe.SHEFFIELD: Okay. Awesome. All right.Well, I encourage everybody to check that out and definitely get your book if you want to know the true history of the right wing of the 1960s.SHEPHERD: Thank you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

SummaryDonald Trump has been the dominant figure in Republican politics for nearly 8 years now, and yet if you read the opinion columns in the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Atlantic, the disgraced ex-president is on the verge of being shoved out of the Republican Party.None of this is true, however. Despite constant hype from anti-Trump supporters of Ron DeSantis, the Florida Governor’s presidential campaign has completely failed to launch. No matter what Washington-based Republican consultants want to believe, their party is over. The MAGA side has control of the Republican party.Accepting that has proven difficult for a lot of people, and it’s why trying to figure out how to defeat far-right extremism in the Republican Party has not really yet begun.As part of our ongoing “Why I Left” series, I’m joined today by Rich Logis, he’s the founder of “Perfect Our Union” and also a former Republican activist.You can watch the video of this episode here.Automated Audio TranscriptMATTHEW SHEFFIELD: As part of our ongoing, Why I Left series, I'm joined today by Rich Logis. He is the founder of Perfect Hour Union and also a former Republican activist.And we're going to be talking about all this and, why are so many people reluctant to accept the full truth about the Republican party, but before we do let's get into your own experience, Rich. Tell us about [00:03:00] your time as a Republican activist.RICH LOGIS: Well, first off, thank you, Matt. Really appreciate it to be here. Thank you for doing this show, Theory of Change. I'm confident that there are actually many more of us out there than we might realize. And my start in the MAGA world actually I have to go back all the way to the year 2000.I was living in New York. I was 23 years old and I was very much a Ralph Nader voter. And supported him. And the reason I actually supported him first and foremost, more than any other reason, was because I figured out pretty quickly on that the two parties both disliked him. And even though the Democrats were more opposed to him, it seemed that both parties saw him as a threat and disliked him.And so when I realized that it was very easy to support him. And I voted for him a few other times throughout the years. Now that was 23 years ago. Now, fast forward [00:04:00] all the way to 2015. And something I figured out pretty quickly about Trump, and I'm not going to say I was one of these guys who supported him as soon as he came down the elevator.That's not true, but I did support him pretty early on. And the primary reason I supported him is actually the same reason I supported Nader. It's because I figured out that both parties were against him. And so more and more, I just very quickly and easily started to come to A lot of the political campaign rhetoric that Trump was espousing namely, but not limited to this could be America's last free election Hillary Clinton and the democratic party were existential threats to our country.I very quickly bought into that and we'll get into, I think some of the reasons why that happens to many people and why it happened to [00:05:00] myself. But once I got very full into my support. Even when I would hear him make statements, even when I would hear him present policy ideas, as much as I sometimes may have wondered and raised an eyebrow wondering what it was that he was actually getting at or trying to say, it, it didn't ultimately matter because.I saw the 2016 election as the, the pinnacle and the realization that I thought the democratic party was after, which was to win power at the presidency and never ever lose again. So I, I call it, I call MAGA and what has happened with the Republican party politically what their product is, is a product of political trauma.Now I was in that world starting in 2015. I very much ardently supported Trump even [00:06:00] going, not only in 2016, but going into 2020, even though, even though I knew that his handling, even then of the pandemic I knew was very indifferent to the death and the illness that we were seeing all around us, but it didn't, it didn't ultimately again matter because I view 2020 just like I did 2016, another year.This could be the last free election. Joe Biden, like Hillary Clinton, the Democrats with Biden, another existential threat, we had to do whatever was necessary to stop them. So I wound up staying in the Republican world until about the mid midway point of 2021. So that, that gives me about six years as an activist.Now, it's very common to hear people say, Oh, I was a Republican for 30 years. I was a Goldwater adherent. I was a, I was a Reagan conservative. I was in George H. W. Bush [00:07:00] conservative. That was not my life, actually. I was very anti the two party system. It's why I supported Nader. It's why I came to support Trump, even though he was running under a major party.And so once I left that world in the summer. 21 which i'll get into some of the specific reasons why Yes, I was only an activist for six years, but i'm going to tell you matt that those six years I was so active. I was around so many other MAGA voters and activists that it probably was really more of the equivalent of 10 to 15 years of activism given just how Devout I was to the, to the MAGA world and something that is very underestimated and I think we'll get into this as well is even though it is a, a world, a reality that is dramatic and paranoid and really just rife with hysteria, MAGA does [00:08:00] provide a community and I think people do inherently yearn for wanting to it.To be in civic communal environments. And MAGA did do that. I think you see that really at the, at the rallies in particular, there is, we might say it's cult like and make the jokes about Jonestown and Jim Jones. The flip side with the flip side with the MAGA world is that people do feel like they're in a community and they feel like they're around like minded people and very much it's, it's a, it's a MAGA safe space. It's where people feel like they can be themselves and they can, they can share in all of the existential enemies that they're all working together in tandem to defeat in this political, and for many of Then this holy war, spiritual war that we are engaged in.So if you, if you think about this, [00:09:00] Matt, if you step back for a moment and think about political trauma and paranoia and hysteria and the opposing party is not just wrong on policy. They're just not wrong on ideology. They are bona fide enemies of the country and of the Republican conservative way of life.If, if, if someone thinks that they will support anyone. Or anything. And that's a, that is a point, you mentioned the press at the outset. I was a former journalist many years ago. I was not someone who covered local or excuse me who covered national politics, but I was a local reporter. And so I don't think I've ever really lost the that that part of the journalist side of me, even though it was probably suspended for those six years that I was in the MAGA world.But to address that point, because it's one we've talked about a lot, I've I've published stories, which are at my site, perfect. Our union. us,Why the mainstream media is so delusional about "saving" the Republican partyLOGIS: I wrote a piece [00:10:00] for salon in which I said that the mainstream national media, the centrist center left press, New York times, Washington post, the Atlantic. They have this well intended but delusional yearning to save the Republican Party, that, that there's going to be some, there's going to be some political savior who's going to come in and save us from Trump and is going to restore the Republican Party back to this era of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, and Thank you.I, I have a sense of why they do it. I think that the press and part of it, to be fair about this point, part of it is that most, most of those in the national press have not lived a MAGA existence. I have. So when they're looking at Trump and what's happened in the Republican party, they are looking at it from more in an abstract point of view.They're really into intellectualizing. And they look at wanting [00:11:00] to save the Republican party because they feel like it's their journalistic duty to try to to, to ensure that we have a, a relatively healthy two party system and that, and that somehow we're going to, enough, enough Republicans are going to, are going to awaken from this MAGA slumber.And they're going to say enough. And I think that what the indictments have shown all of them. The New York, the federal to federal in Georgia. My view is that these only strengthen him and I and while I am a little bit low to prognosticate, I would be much, much more surprised if he is not the nominee than if he is for next year.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Me, yeah, me too. And in terms of these non Republicans that, are, believe the Republican party is going to sort of organically dethrone Trump I think, I think for a lot of people who have that viewpoint, it [00:12:00] seems like, because for them, the Republicans that they know, so, like Uh, having formerly been a DC based Republican political consultant.In my, I was not religious. I was yeah, I supported same sex marriage. I supported abortion rights. I was, I did not like the Christian right. So like, if you were a journalist covering politics, like people had no problem dealing with me and talking to me about things.And, I think for some of them, they really thought that people like how I used to be were in control of the Republican party, that that's who was the. the base of the party. And, and it's just not true in most of the places. Now it is, it is the case that there are, still even now a pretty large number of people who vote Republican kind of habitually or, they, they just are like, well, I, I like low taxes and low regulation.And I [00:13:00] don't. I don't believe in this Christian fundamentalist stuff. So I just ignore it and those people are not relevant to me. And so, that's how they rationalize things and they don't really pay attention to politics. The extent they might pay attention to anything political is listen to Joe Rogan.And that's it like for, they don't watch cable news. They don't watch Fox. All of that is just. nonsense in their opinion. And so they don't really have an idea over what's happening in the party and who's controlling it, I think. So like that's kind of the, in my view, how the, these non MAGA Republicans and the, non Republican journalists, that's, I think that's how they're, they're kind of seeing things to some degree.I don't know, tell me what you think.LOGIS: I, I think that also this point on the, with the, with the press in particular, that it does seem to me it's relatively obvious to me that from column to column and op ed to op ed that [00:14:00] most, I don't think many in the press realize that the vast, vast majority of American voters, to your point, are actually not political and because they're not political, They're not consuming all of the news that we do.They're not, they don't know all of the names that we do. They're not aware of a lot of the conspiracies that have permeated all across MAGA and are, whether it's overtly or silence is content that are accepted and supported. By the actual Republican party apparatus. It's to your point, they may, they may have voted.I was, they were a Ronald Reagan voter and then they were a Bush voter and they're not, they're not maybe extreme partisans, but their voting habits are to typically just vote are down the, down the ballot. And they're Democrats like that too. We know that there are there, those are generally the people come out.And I always voted in the primary when I was in the, in the [00:15:00] MAGA Republican world, because we felt an obligation to ensure that we got the best candidate to, to stop this, this whomever it was on the democratic side was, was a threat to us. It didn't matter. The other person's policy didn't matter about the person's character.Didn't matter about the Democrat. Kennedy integrity, whether they were an incumbent or not, it just was, they're part of the enemy party. We have to do whatever we have to do to stop them and we'll nominate the person we think is best to defeat them. And so we do, we do forget, and I'm not saying we, you and I necessarily, but collectively, it is easily forgotten that most people aren't political.Now, those types of Republicans you're mentioning, something that I've written about, and I will continue to, to argue this point is that throughout our history, And there are numerous examples, whether it's the American Revolution, whether it's the abolitionist movement, whether the Civil War itself, when Abe Lincoln sides with the Union against [00:16:00] other Americans at the, within the Confederacy, they were still Americans, but they were still, Abe Lincoln still sided against them to try to win this war and preserve the Union, whether it was the United States aligning with the Soviet Union in World War II, Republicans aligning with Lyndon B.Johnson. There's other examples. Like. I could cite but with all of those examples, what underlines all of them and what ties them together inextricably is that they were very, they were very much what we saw historically were unlikely, but necessary alliances, and those Republicans who, who, who, If they, if they're not really aware, it's not such an easy task to make them aware, but I don't think that they're motivated by policy.I don't think they're necessarily motivated by ideology, but if there's one topic that I do think the midterm show that even nonpolitical, [00:17:00] apolitical voters can get motivated over. It is democracy. It is democratic institutions and those republicans who may not be partisans, they, they have to be invited into the fold and welcomed to, to maybe side with those whom they might disagree with on policy to policy.But this moment in history, I think, demands that these unlikely but necessary alliances really be formed. And I would, that's the kind of topic that I would like to see in the columns and the op eds of the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Atlantic and some other sites and publications that maybe are similar.And we don't really see a lot of that. I think if the press spent the next year plus talking about how history demands in this moment, these unlikely but necessary alliances to, to continue moving the country forward, to continue on building on the ideals of our founding, to continue the perfection of our [00:18:00] union, I think that topic can resonate with people.I think the midterm showed it. Typically the turnouts lower Democrats overall did very, very well in the midterms. It says to me that the topic of the perfection of the union, preserving democracy, strengthening democracy that can get through in the new and, and the major center centrist and center left press outlets can, can lead on that if they want to.But I just think there's still, they're still stuck in the mud a little bit. They're still stuck on neutral. They're, they're just, Oh, this is it. I could just, I just imagine, some of the editorial meetings saying, Oh, yeah. With this indictment in Georgia, this, this is, this is finally it.This is fine. This is the Charlie Brown Loosey moment. She's going to finally hold the football for him. He's going to kick it. And what they're going to discover, the press is going to discover is that that's not going to happen. That, that it's not, it's not going to happen the way they think.How Republicans use psychological trauma to bind voters to the partySHEFFIELD: Well, you had mentioned this idea of political trauma in, in your writing and also [00:19:00] in our discussions before today. Let's talk about that a little bit more here. So, a lot of, as you correctly noted, a lot of Trump supporters do have this idea of Democrats as, a threat to the entire existence of the United States.And some of that, and, and on this show, we've talked a lot about. The religious aspects of that for, for many people that that's, that's why they think this, but it isn't only about religion for, for some people who have this viewpoint tell us about how you saw that when you were, when you had that opinion and, and why did you have that belief?LOGIS: Yeah, and I think that the, I would refer to it as the Christian theocracy that is, that is part of the traumatic MAGA world. But to your point, it's not the only aspect of it. Something that does exist and I think is [00:20:00] actually promulgated and sold very, very well in right wing politics and in their media apparatus is,there is, there are, There are mythologies that exist on the right that, as part of a lengthier discussion, I would argue actually date. All the way back to the beginning of our country, and those mythologies are centered on race. They're centered on sex. They're centered on gender religion. If you look at right now, the mythologies of of MAGA in particular, and I should say Matt, when I say MAGA, I'm also thinking the Republican Party to me, they're interchangeable.And, and I, I think it's even more accurate to refer to them as, as MAGA, even more so than the Republican Party. If you look at the mythologies right now, they're, they're really based on this. It's about gays, sex, marriage, and Christian [00:21:00] theocracy and guns as these holy war weapons. And there's this, there's a lot of this racial animus and hysteria and paranoia.President Obama is, is part of that. I call him the grim reaper because to this day, I think Barack Obama is actually the most lucrative figure in the history of the Republican party. He has, he has fundraised and brought ratings and all of that combined much more so than, than Ronald Reagan ever did. So I think it's just a side note that president Obama is the most lucrative figure.I'm writing this book right now, I just started about Obama and Trump to juxtapose their leadership styles. I think that they are the most polar opposite success of president that we've ever seen in the history of America, but that's just a little bit of a, of a side note. So when I, when I was in, when I was in, in that, in that traumatic MAGA world, what, what is hammered over the head [00:22:00] of the adherence in the MAGA world is that a less white, less Christian and less heterosexual America. Is a nation in decline make america great again did not start with trump. It was actually Ronald reagan said it even president bill clinton said it at the time So when we think about make america great again the way that people internalize this the way that they construe What that make america great again?What that that ethos really meant I think that to some extent some people can can interpret it on a case by case basis and for some They were, they were probably the ones I was around. They were, they were motivated by second amendment mythologies, the idea that, that the, the framers constructed that amendment to, to me, to what it meant was unfettered, unregulated [00:23:00] access to firearms.And while I'm didn't quite get. That deep in the rabbit hole with them on that, I, I broadly speaking, did concur with, with that idea. There were other times where I would be in, I would, I would congregate, break bread with those in the MAGA world, and they would, they would talk about these other isms that have been mythologized on the right.Communism. Socialism. Marxism is one that I think is relatively recent, and my My joke with Marxism is always, that I always ask, what did what did, let me see if I remember these, what did Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, and Gumo ever do to the Republican Party to incur such ire against them as, as, as the Marx Brothers.So that's one that's real, that is relatively recent. There's another that it would be, it was actually a relatively common discussion to talk about in America's racial history, [00:24:00] the discussion of, well, Yes, there was slavery, and yes, blacks were not treated very well, but that was hundreds of years ago, and why can't we just move on and get over that?And And at the time, yeah, I would say, yeah, why don't we just get over it? Post racial america all of that. So that was always a part of it There was another part where we talked about there would be discussions about you mentioned same sex marriage it would be oh, yeah, gay americans.They you know, they've got their right to vote You know what? What more do they want? Why do they have to flaunt it? Why do they have to show it and broadly speaking for the most part I bought into the mythology that we shouldn't look at anything through race. We shouldn't look at anything through, through class.We wouldn't. We shouldn't look at anything through economics. Everything about the democratic party is you're a victim. You're a victim. You're a victim vote for me, support me. I'm going to come in and be your savior and then keep them as victims, create [00:25:00] this, this permanent underclass especially in minority communities.And those Democrats who, who are, who talk a lot about equality and they talk about fair share and all of the, really what they're doing is just. Porting all the riches for themselves, giving some crumbs to others and keeping everybody coming back to keep voting for them. If you think about what I just said, Matt, right there, I cannot imagine something more insulting to the intelligence of tens and tens and tens of millions of Americans.And that is a lot of what I thought it, what motivated me. And there is this inherent part of our nature of us versus them. It's just, it's in us, it's in our nature. That the challenge is trying to resist that. But something that that MAGA, the MAGA traumatic community also provides is it provides this, this really warped form of identity [00:26:00] politics.And that identity politics is that America was built by. By by Caucasians that we were, we were a better country in the 1950s and 60s when America reached her apogee of of perfection and greatness. And that that part of that identity politics, there was this unison that we are the actual patriots.There's more of us and we're going to conquer the democratic party. And we're going to We're going to do to them what they actually want to do to us. For those listening out there, they might sit back and think, is this, is this true? I mean, did people really think that? And the answer is yes. And they still do.Yeah. In fact, I would, I would argue that the, I would argue that the, the the sycophancy of these, of adhering to these mythologies has actually only intensified since the 2020 election. Because remember, as Trump says, it wasn't that he was defrauded. It's that you MAGA [00:27:00] voters, you were defrauded. Wasn't that he was, you were, it's not that I'm indicted, you're indicted.And that generally is the, and that, that's a tie that binds that, that, that keeps the, the abuse. I call the traumatized the abused. And unfortunately there is something again in our nature where the abuse tends to come back to the abuser. And I think that Trump voters, which again, I was one, I don't think that all of their reasons for voting for Trump were.were invalid. These feelings of howling out of communities, jobs going overseas, feeling left behind and unheard by politicians. I think those are actually very real concerns. I mean, those are concerns that even President Obama had concurred with in the lead up to 2016. Now, unfortunately, with Trump, though, it's not simply to highlight those problems.[00:28:00]Then present ideas, innovation to try to start to ameliorate some of those ills. What Trump did is he took those valid fears and exploited them. And I will continue to say that to a large degree, MAGA voters, even though I'm not defending ignorance, they have been victimized through this trauma of MAGA, and it keeps them coming back.For a variety of reasons, I think, and I think not the least of which is the reason I went through, which is that it's really, really hard to admit when one is when one was mistaken. Because again, that's not in our nature to do that. It's not in our nature to say I was wrong. And when I decided to to publish my mea culpa I was ambivalent about doing it not because I was ambivalent about the the conclusion I came to But when I was thinking about penning these mea culpas, I was thinking You know, is anyone going to really care about this, but I felt like I needed [00:29:00] some closure And I'll get into the reasons why I left MAGA, but I needed some closure, and I felt like the way to do that was to announce to the world that I was wrong.It shows that people can change their minds, and while it's not painless, it is really liberating, and it is possible. MmSHEFFIELD: hmm. Yeah.Despite his many lies, Donald Trump often tells the truth about how little Republican elites value their votersSHEFFIELD: And, one of the other things about the trauma of the, the Republican voter is constantly experiencing is that, so Trump told the truth about the Republican party in 2015 and 2016.And so, like when you, when I, when I go and read various right wing discussion boards and, and forums and Twitter accounts, there, there is an overwhelming sense that. They don't like the Republican party. They only like [00:30:00] Trump and like that really is the key to, I think, to his hold on these voters that a lot of these, professional political class doesn't get is that.They, Trump correctly pointed out to them and routinely points out to them that, the Republican party that sold itself as the representatives for rural America, for, blue collar white people, for Christians for, people who work with their hands the Republican party said, we are the party for you and then proceeded to.Systematically betray them on every single level, whether it was, outsourcing their jobs, whether it was deregulating the companies that they work for whether it was rolling back the taking away their health care, whether it was, even, even making it taking no action on abortion other than, like, in terms of [00:31:00] popular support, they're, they decided, well, we're just going to do this through the courts.We're not going to try to persuade people on abortion to agree with our viewpoint. And so, and then, and then. And they politicized their religion so much that it actually made their religious viewpoints less popular over time. And so literally everything that they told their electorate they were going to do for them.They did the opposite for them, and, they took all the money that, should have been spent on infrastructure in various states, and, didn't spend any of that, and said they went and, started gigantic foreign wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and sorry, and Iraq. And... So Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate in 2015 to actually admit that that had happened.Something that, in retrospect now, no one denies that this happened if you're a Republican. They admit that this happened. Like, a lot of [00:32:00] Republicans now, probably, I haven't seen any polling on it recently, but you know, if you ask, I would bet that a majority of Republicans now disapprove of George W.Bush, have a negative viewpoint of him. And so, like that's, that's the thing that these, DC political Republicans don't understand is that their voters hate them. They hate them. And so you can't, you can't win them back with more of the same telling them you're going to make things the way they were before Trump.No one wants that.LOGIS: I, I would, so I'm, I'm actually publishing an article probably this week at the new republic. And one of the points that I make in it is very much in alignment with what you just said. It was very common. I mean, not once in a while common to be at MAGA events, Trump clubs with those with whom again, I would break bread, congregate, go to their homes.We'd celebrate holidays [00:33:00] together. It was very, very common. To have discussions about how much we loathed the establishment Republican Party so much so that even with some, they, they disdained some of the so called rhinos, Republican in name only, they disdained rhinos for some of them, even more than they did the Democrats, the Democratic Party itself.And there, there's this, so I have this hypothesis that. Whenever there's an indictment or there's some, there's some legal problem that, that Trump has, and he's going to be in and out of court probably in next year in the campaign. I have this hypothesis that privately, I think the Republican party is ecstatic about that.I, I, I think that they look at it as, wow, we can actually have truly the best of two worlds here. The first is we could have Trump go away. Because they're still, party still has a little bit [00:34:00] of that delusion also, which I guess is somewhat ironic that they have that sense as the, as the center left centrist press does.So there's this first part of, oh, we could finally, finally be, be done with this guy, do away with him. But then there's that other side, that other side of the word, which is, but, He's still lucrative to us. We can still fundraise off of him. We can still say that Merrick Garland and Joe Biden are persecuting him and thus persecuting other Republicans and conservatives, weaponizing the law against them just because of what they think or what they say.So I think that the, the, the MAGA world, like the Republican party, I have spent so much time. In retrospect, since leaving the MAGA world in 2021, that when I look back on a lot of the, I had these discussions about, well, the Republican Party was a certain way at one time, or conservatism [00:35:00] was a certain way at one time, and I think that there is, there's a workshop test that happened when Trump started to bring you.Yeah. To the forefront of national politics, which is trickled all the way down to state trickled all the way down to local that there's this workshop test where people view him as this and Maga as a as an ethos where they look at him and Maga and say, This is what I've been waiting for my entire life.I mean, how many people, Matt, think about this, back in your circles. How many people do you know who said, depending on their age, they might have said, Wow, George W. Bush is exactly the guy represents exactly what I've been waiting my whole life for. Or people who said, Oh, John McCain, rest in peace, he's exactly what I've been waiting for.And then Mitt Romney said, Oh, he's, he's boy, Mitt Romney, he's, he's, he's the guy to do he, I've been waiting my whole life for another guy like that, like another Ronald [00:36:00] Reagan. And then all of a sudden here came a guy. And that, that, that gravitational pull for people. I think that a lot of people, Matt, they didn't, they didn't realize.And for some, they probably still don't, they don't, they didn't realize at the time that because of that. Years long experience and exposure that so many had to right wing politics, that they were low hanging fruit. They were, they were traumatized, whether they knew it or not. And, and they had the, they had the perfect outlet, which was MAGA.And what MAGA does for them is it Affirms, it validates what they believe, what they think about America, what they think about, about the world, about how rhinos and Democrats and globalists conspire to erode our freedoms and usurp our rights. [00:37:00] And try to buy, buy fiat or some surreptitious way, take away our constitutional rights.And in the MAGA world, you're, you're around people who think that. And, and so you don't just have, you don't just have the energy of, of one person who thinks that. You have the energy of millions of people. And for me personally...SHEFFIELD: Yeah, you're, you're part of something. That is much bigger than yourselfLOGIS: and I don't and again, I don't think your point I just don't think that the the the DC the DC press the national press the coastal press You had a term for it.I'm blanking on it. The what's the railway called up and down the up and down. Yeah, right. The Acela quarter, right? The Acela, the Acela conservative movement of, no, no, no, we're, we're, we're people who value integrity and we're people who value character, right? And evangelicals who, who, you know, they, they, they, [00:38:00] they they, they value, family support the rule of law.Yeah. All right, the rule of law, high, high morality. We support high morality. And then all of a sudden there's this very fair question to evangelicals, Christian theocrats. And I'm not saying that all evangelicals are, I don't like to make blanket statements, but the evangelicals, the Christian theocrats who do support Trump and MAGA, that we can, we can make an exception, a lot of exceptions that have been made over the last many, many years by millions of people.Well, we can make exceptions because. If, if this is God's will, if, if he, if he commands that this flawed conduit of righteousness is the man to save us from these demonic secular Democrats, then so be it. And. I think for many of them, they, they, they deep down in their heart of hearts. Those are sincerely held beliefs and I think you see, I think you see this [00:39:00] every single day in a lot of the way, whether it's a social media boards or the comments within, within that, within the right wing apparatus on those message boards, you see it really, it shows itself.It manifests itself very clearly.The moral relativism of Christian fundamentalismSHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, well, yeah. And it's interesting because. When you look at a lot of the rhetoric the more highfalutin rhetoric out of Trump Trumpist commentators, they have this idea, like Jenna Ellis, Donald Trump's recently indicted former lawyer.She, she believes that Republicans and, Trump supporters, they believe in moral absolutes. Like they, they constantly are saying that they're against moral relativism. And so for them, like they don't. They don't see it as inconsistent to support Trump because for them, they are thinking systematically, in other words, that, they believe that their viewpoints are the [00:40:00] absolute truth and they have no knowledge of the history of, of fundamentalism and how it actually was just kind of invented.In the 19th and early 20th centuries actually in response to science it's basically a science of the Bible. Like that's what Christian fundamentalism is. And it completely collapsed under its own weight because, basically once people realized that, you can put all these chronologies in the Bible and, go back and calculate the, the age of the earth according to the Bible, you can do that.But that's assuming that, the, the, that it's a literal document and you cannot prove that in any way whatsoever. And so, like, and then, but they, but they base it all on a moral philosophical standpoint called divine command theory, which basically says that, What God, that God alone is the determiner of moral morality and right conduct.But of course, since there is [00:41:00] no, giant billboard with coming down from heaven saying, this is what God thinks about X, Y, and Z. Anybody can claim that they have God's authority. And in fact, that is, what a lot of the, especially on the Protestant side of things that they believe that.And so. It is the height of moral relativism to have these viewpoints because they have no basis for determining what God says authentically and then they have no basis of authority. So really, it just comes down to, well, this is what I believe and what I believe is true because I believe it.LOGIS: I'm going to make a bit of a general statement here.And that statement is that, When we look at how the two parties, we were talking earlier about apolitical voters, primary voters. So my general statement is that if you look at the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, MAGA, the Republican Party is really essentially [00:42:00] solely a primary party. And I think the Democratic Party, not going to say that they don't have some aspect of that, but I do think that the Democratic Party is more of a general election minded party, the GOP is not, and what the really highly traumatic figures on the right, what they really understand well, is they, they understand what A lot of that trauma is that's experienced amongst their voters, the hysteria, the paranoia, the wake up in the middle of the night, sweating fears.And Christian theocracy is really a very important mythology for them because we know that probably most likely, right? We know that the United States is, is a, is a nation that. Has fewer [00:43:00] churchgoers. And, and there's a variety of reasons that people can debate as to, as to why that is, but as we, as we diversify over time, of course, there are people who are, are Christians who may be as part of our growing diversity, but there's also those who, who are not, whether they share in other religious beliefs whether it's another Abrahamic religion or some other religion, or maybe they're just more secular mind.And so. No one's actual First Amendment right to freedom of worship is being infringed. No one's rights are being infringed. Those who want to express their religious views however they want to are able to do that. But for the politicians and the pundits on the right who recognize that there's this, this constant, always growing, always expanding, Hysteria and paranoia on the amongst the MAGA voters [00:44:00] that we are, we are becoming and have been becoming over time a less Christian nation.And thus, to your point about morality and relativism, if we're becoming a less Christian nation, That means we're becoming a more secular nation, and as we become more of a secular nation, then we become more of a communist and socialist and Marxist nation. And again, Matt, I have to emphasize this point amongst the, amongst the primary voters who think that they genuinely believe that.But I'm going to say this, the politicians who espouse that b******t, they don't believe that stuff. They don't think that. I mean, I, part of the reason I left MAGA, if I, if I can mention this, because I, I, I want to give the reasons why. It was actually Rhonda Sanchez, who was the impetus for my eventual egress out of MAGA.Republican politicians' abrupt change on Covid made Rich question the partyLOGIS: So I've lived in Florida for many years, and [00:45:00] here, here when the, when the pandemic started in 2020, we, we, right, high, very highly populated senior citizen state. So I think that. Overall, I want to try to be fair on this point. I think overall, from when the pandemic started until about spring 2021, I thought that Governor DeSantis actually handled the pandemic relatively well.Based on what was known based on how data was changing. We know that that was all happening, but what he was more than anything that I was most pleased about if he was very, very staunchly pro vaccine, he was touting the vaccine. He was taught he helped develop a system here in the state. So senior citizens could be the first ones vaccinated.I was impressed. I was relieved. And I remember when and where it really started for me. Mhm. Is when, if you recall the, the Delta surge started in the summer of 2021. Now, at the time [00:46:00] I had two young kids, I wasn't overly concerned about them getting sick. But what I started to see, and especially in the local press, is I started to see that Delta with kids were, were, were becoming ill from COVID.And there were even, sadly, the occasional stories about children dying from COVID. And we didn't really see that in the alpha stage. We, we started to see it more with Delta. And I remember talking with Floridians here and, and even, even actually pro vaccine Trump voters, because I do think that I should mention that they're, they are out there and I knew some of them.And I remember conversing with them that and saying, when kids started getting sick, very explicitly, saying Governor DeSantis is going to divorce himself from the anti vaccine crowd. He has to. I'm not saying that seniors getting sick and dying was not tragic. It was, I think, though, that when kids start getting sick, and I'm not a scientist, I'm not an immunologist, I'm not an infectious disease [00:47:00] doctor.So I do not speak about topics I don't know about. But I think that once kids started getting sick, it showed that COVID had become more contagious, had become deadlier. And I just remember We're thinking this is the Santa. He's going to, he's going to sever ties. And actually the exact opposite happened.And seemingly overnight he went from an advocate for the vaccine to an anti vaccine Republican. And I, and I, I just, I think, I don't, I don't mean that in a literal sense, but in somewhat of a figurative sense and somewhat, I guess, of a literal sense also, he, he became anti vaccine overnight. And that was a shock.And a jolt because even as a MAGA person, I was not anti vaccine. I didn't think that COVID was some Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates bioweapon. As a side note, which I'll get to in a moment, I also didn't believe that the 2020 election was [00:48:00] stolen. So when I saw DeSantis do that, when I saw him become ardently in in opposition, the vaccine.It shocked me and jolted me to the point where pretty quickly I started to doubt my support for him because of that topic. And the reason is because I just think that there are certain topics, there are certain issues rather that when there's a line of demarcation, if that line of demarcation is crossed, I don't think there's any coming back from it.And I think with, with the vaccine and COVID, I think the line of demarcation that the Santa's crossed and subsequently so many other Republicans in the party that what, and of course many of their voters, the line of demarcation that was crossed was he went. From pro vaccine to someone who then said, even though he may not have literally said these words, but he said that it was that avoidable death and suffering were [00:49:00] acceptable when that line is crossed.You cannot come back from that. Yeah, you cannot realize.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And you realize that he was doing this deliberately that, because he saw a political advantage. Into becoming anti vaccine and it wasn't, and I don't want to put words in your mouth. So you tell me what you thought, but, it's like you realize that this was not sincere, like his motivations were purely.Calculating and not based on altruism, not based on leadership, just based on, well, this will get me more Republican support. So I'm going to do it.LOGIS: There started to be an uptick in, in notoriety with Trump getting booed at his rallies over the vaccine. Very clearly there [00:50:00] was information and knowledge that the Santas had that the, the MAGA, because you can't win a primary without MAGA.It's new. It's mathematically impossible. I mean, right now it's mathematically impossible. There's not enough time to go and get those apolitical Republicans to vote in primaries. So mathematically right in the here and now it is statistically impossible. I mean, 0 percent chance of winning a primary when you're talking about statewide or, or, or, or even in certain cases, certain even local state seats, local seats, it's not possible.So he very clearly saw that shift. And he just immediately adapted his rhetoric. I did not believe then that and I do not believe right now to this day that Rhonda Sanchez, that he believes that that the covid vaccine is what is what he says it is that there that there were these. [00:51:00] unmarked adverse effects, that it was some bio weapon biome.He calls it the bio medical state, that it was some form of tyranny to oppress us. And then he hires a a surgeon general for our state who in any reasonable context would be left out of a hospital, left out of a medical school classroom. Deep down, I know that Ron DeSantis doesn't believe what he says about the vaccine.I know that he doesn't believe What he says about how, how, how kindergartners and elementary school and all kids of all different ages are being indoctrinated to be, to being made gay and being made transgender. I mean, I know teachers, okay. They, they're so busy. Like they don't have any time to make kids gay.I mean, even if they wanted to, they're just, they don't have the time or the, neither the time nor the energy to do it. I know that deep down, he does not believe this. [00:52:00] And as I started to see that. Insincerity unfold. I mean, it's one thing for a politician to change his stance, flip flop and lie, because we almost expect that, right, of a lot of politicians.But again, I'm going to come back to this point, because it was the first prong, the two prong reason that I, that I left MAGA, because I always say with my MAGA egress, to paraphrase Hemingway, it happened gradually and then suddenly all at once. Once I started to realize with the Sanchez and then subsequently later on the Republican party, even Trump himself, because he, he kind of waivers right on the vaccine.Sometimes he's proud of it. Sometimes he doesn't want to talk about it. I saw that line of demarcation being that the Republican party said that it, that, that avoidable death and suffering. are acceptable. And I think there's other topics that I will add to that. For example, firearm related deaths.That's that's another area where where Maga and and and by extension, the [00:53:00] Republican Party, they've adopted a stance that avoidable death and suffering. It's okay. It's acceptable. It's acceptable to do that of all ages, not just Children of all ages. I don't believe you. I don't believe you can come back from that.And then the other two prong, the second prong of this, Matt, was that when January six happened, okay, for many, many months, I was in the, well, it wasn't good, but what's the big deal camp? That was some, some idiots who went and rioted. They were a bunch of idiots. They were dopes. They, most of the people there were peaceful.Why are we still talking about this? Okay. Why are we still mentioning all this? Just move on from it. And this was happening right around the time when DeSantis made his, made his flip on the vaccine, summer 21, the continued stolen election rhetoric of Trump. I started to more and more realize just how, and again, to use this adjective, how traumatic it really was [00:54:00] for the country, for MAGA voters.So I decided to do something which was to question and challenge my own understanding of what really led to January 6th. And so I decided to delve deep into some of those, some of the conspiracies that have since... permeated across MAGA, but are overtly and publicly endorsed by Trump himself, whether it's QAnon or Oath Keepers or Three Percenters or Proud Boys.Once I started to get into the rabbit hole of these organizations, these conspiracies, it started to make a lot more sense why January 6th happened. So I had. I had this road to Damascus moment where I had to make one of two choices. I either continue to support this, the support of acceptable [00:55:00] deaths, the support of acceptable suffering, the support of this trauma based on, on conspiracies and hysteria and paranoia that have resulted in loss of life, that have resulted in Widows that have resolved resulted in permanently injured police officers.I had to, I came to, I came to the line and I made, I had to make one or two choices, thankfully. And I give thanks for this, Matt, every day I give gratitude for this. I didn't cross over that line because I often think to myself, I often think about this, what if Trump had won in 2020? I don't. Really want to think about.I have thought about and I don't have a pretty picture of how I would have continued to think about all of these traumatic [00:56:00] mythologies. I think it's extremely unlikely that I would have had this political and personal epiphany had trump won in 2020. I think I would have simply Carried on with as bad as everything that Trump might've said, or the Republican Party does, or how much I can't stand the establishment Republicans and the RINOs, I, I dislike them almost as much as the Democratic Party.However, having said all that, if I, if Trump wins and I'm still in that world, which I think almost certainly I remain in that world, I'm still unified against the never ending existential threat. And I think a lot of people, Matt, I can't say this for certain, but I have a, I've got a pretty strong inkling about this that I think some people came to their own line.Some decided not to cross it, but unfortunately and sadly, some did. And democratically, that's the first step [00:57:00] to. And I'm going to use this, put in kind of quotes, defeating MAGA, because I don't, I don't really think that ideologies can be defeated in the way we think about simple wins, simple losses. But democratically is the first way to do it.I'll come back to the point about unlikely, but necessary alliances. I believe that MAGA is going to be democratically defeated next year. I think that the Republican Party knows that their party is terminally ill. I believe that the Republican Party is expecting, they are preparing, they're, they're building the bunker, so to speak, going to the mattresses to quote the Godfather, that they are expecting massive, even perhaps historic electoral losses up and down the ballot next year.If that happens, which I believe that it will, it's, it's what my wish is, because even though I am not registered with any political party, I am registered to vote. I, I cannot, I, I, I must support Democrat [00:58:00] candidates next year, whatever my reservations or qualms about some of what I think about the Democratic party and some of their candidates and some of their activism, I don't really see a choice, I mean, theoretically we have a choice, but I don't really see a choice and I will support Democrats up and down the ballot.And once the Republican Party, I believe is in its current form, once it is mercy killed, now there's another challenge. And that challenge is a really uncomfortable one. And that uncomfortable challenge is those who decided to form those unlikely but necessary alliances are going to have to be the ones who lead the national reconciliation.With the MAGA voters who, who will, I, I, I do think some are going to come to the conclusion that they have to leave behind that world. Maybe that sounds naively optimistic. I don't mean for it to sound utopian. I don't mean for it to sound Pollyannish in [00:59:00] any kind of way, but I, I really do think that it's going to happen.And I'm not making an exact comparison between the Confederacy and MAGA. But. After the Civil War in postbellum America, it was, it was the goal of Abe Lincoln, who was assassinated three days after the surrendered Appomattox, and sadly, it's one of history's saddest urges that Lincoln did not get to see some of the fruits of his labor reconciled, and, but two presidents later, we had U.S. C. 's S. Grant, and even right after the war ended, and then as president, U. S. Grant led the reconciliation reconciliation. amongst the Northern Union residents and former soldiers and the Confederate soldiers. And that was really hard for Lincoln. I mean, I can only imagine how difficult it was, how difficult it was for Lincoln, for, for Grant.And I'm telling you, Matt, I think we are in that moment right now. I, for as much as people will talk about, make these comparisons about the Civil War and right now, I actually think the better comparison [01:00:00] Is what happened after the Civil War and what I believe will and has to happen after democratically MAGA is defeated next year, and I know a lot of Maybe Democrats or Trump loathing Republicans who hear that.That's probably, they're probably not going to really like how that sounds. Right. They're going to say, screw them. They, they made the bed when I'm lying in it. It's not our responsibility to reconcile with them. I understand those points. And I'm not saying that there aren't some similarities between right now and antebellum America in the lead up.to the Civil War. But there is going to be a necessary reconciliation because you're talking about tens and tens of millions of Americans. And our democracy, we, we cannot keep moving forward in the perfection of this union with tens upon tens upon tens of millions of Americans who are living in a balance of reality.We can have disagreements about policy. We can have disagreements about approach. We can, we can argue data and studies [01:01:00] and America is a big place. We have a lot of room for beliefs and opinions and facts and data, but we have to come to a place in the country where there are more of us who agree on basic sets of facts, and that's going to be really, really hard.But I, I, I, and I, I think that the idea of saving is again, well intended, but I think it's one of the more Sisyphean delusional endeavors of mankind, the idea that we can save someone or save something. But having said that, I think that MAGA voters need to be saved from themselves because what that, that, what that world, what that, what that world has done to them, both pre MAGA and during it.What that world has done to, they, they have harmed themselves. They have, they have, they have, they have harmed their, their communities. And I'm trying to say this without casting aspersions [01:02:00] or judgment, but they've, they've harmed their own lives. And as a result of that, the country has been harmed. And as someone who was a former MAGA voter, I am imploring those out there who are going to hear this.And I guarantee Matt, they're going to know someone, probably close to them. And they're going to say, I can't get through to my, to my mother. I can't get through to my dad. I can't get through to my wife. I can't get through to my, my, my son. I don't invite my daughter anymore to, to Thanksgiving. That is trauma, and it's not going to be easy, can be healed.Democratically is the first step. After that, now we're going to need leaders on the side of reconciliation. And that's going to be, again, that's going to be a really arduous task, but anything that is worth it in the long run typically is arduous, right? It, it, it's, it's going to be, and we, and [01:03:00] we are gonna need to have innovative ways of figuring out how to rebuild and, and mend again, these civic and communal ties.We're going to need to, we're going to need to do that. And just one other point, man, I think this is very important to note this. When I write these, whenever written, these mea culpas, I, I, I, I'd be remiss if, if I, if I omit that there is some trauma on the Democrat side because it's, it's not that uncommon.It doesn't happen a lot, but it isn't. That rare where I'll receive a comment from someone who identifies as either a democrat or some anti trump voter And they will say to me rich, I You know, I just go away you you voted twice for this guy Actually, I voted four times for trump because it was twice in the primary also, I voted two hampton's primary in general election.I did not vote for him in last year's election I'll have democrats or those traumatized from trump. Tell me just stop talking. Shut up Go away. You're, you're a, [01:04:00] you're a Nazi in sheep's clothing. I had a, someone say that to me and, and these are people who right now I'm, I'm aligned with them broadly speaking on, on the, on the importance of strengthening our democracy and our democratic lowercase d institutions.So it exists not there too. It's not absent on the side of the world. Left where, where, where there is this trauma, and I think some of those individuals as well, I want to be invitational to them to invite them back into, in, in, into, into more of that mending that civic tie because I think there's gonna be some reconciliation needed with those who, no matter how many times I, I'm remorseful and say I was wrong, some of the anti-Trump voters are, are, are gonna say to me, I don't care.What you did was unforgivable. We have to somehow move on from that too. It's going to be hard, but we need to figure out ways to do it. Yeah,Why Democrats are trying to divide MAGA from RepublicansSHEFFIELD: And it is interesting when you look at [01:05:00] some of the political strategizing from Joe Biden during the 2020 election. That he did, make it a point to differentiate between what he called the ultra mega.Republicans and, just kind of the habitual ones. And that is, it is, it is an important thing to, to note. And but another thing that's going to have to be part of this reconciliation is that, people who live outside of the right wing media ecosystem.And it's, it's got to be pierced in many different ways because, if, and I, and I, I agree that, it seems likely that Trump is not going to prevail in 2024, but you never know. I mean, Biden could have some physical ailment or who knows what. And, but let's say that happens, the, the right wing media media [01:06:00] ecosystem is going to go into overdrive after that moment to try to blame, to, to cast aspersions on the rest of America, because I mean, it's important to note here that basically, these far right media outlets like Fox news or daily wire or gateway pundit or any of these other ones.Yeah. , their goal is to get their audience to hate America. That is what their goal is.They want you, if you believe the things that they say are true, they are telling you not only is Satan controlling the Democrats, But America is a fallen nation. It is a nation that is communist. It is a nation that is godless. It's a nation that is, dominated by insert whatever group you are terrified of the most here.And, people who are outside of that, they can, it's I, I do think that it's [01:07:00] probably the biggest difficulty that they face in trying to oppose this mega extremism is to understand, it's totalizing, this is something that, they, it is brainwashing. That is what is going on here.And if you're a leader. Or you have access to funding or whatever, like you need to reallocate what you're doing because, throwing some TV ads out there about how Trump is bad or whatever, like all of that's over once the election's gone, all that money you spent. Is flushed down the toilet nothing lasts from that and, you haven't really accomplished the goal if, if that's what your objective is, is to defeat this extremism.It has to be a lasting project.LOGIS: Well, just as Matt, just as I think that MAGA voters. Either don't realize or do realize and don't care just as MAGA voters don't realize or [01:08:00] don't care that the politicians they listen to do not believe what they're saying. I mean, whether you want to talk about, I mean, maybe Trump believes that he really.Lost the election. I, I vacillate a little bit on that. Sometimes I think he does, sometimes I think he doesn't, but everything else that he talks about, whether it's, transgender ideology, or we're gonna, what was the one idea he had? We're gonna, we're gonna build cities, like this, like, this brave new world, Huxleyan idea, like, he doesn't believe any of this stuff.He's a, he's a, He's a pro abortion rights, pro abortion access guy, but,SHEFFIELD: but, supported same sex marriage.LOGIS: Absolutely. He's, he's, he's on saying, he said, Oh yeah, I'd let a transgender person participate in my, in my pageants. But if you don't know, or you don't care, you're not realizing that, that, that these politicians are, if you're MAGA, you don't realize, or don't care that they're lying to you.[01:09:00] They mock you in private. They are insulting your intelligence. They are, They are exploiting you, both your, your spirit and your soul and your money and your wallet. And I, I think the other side of this too, and I'm glad you brought this up with Fox because my hot take on this is I think that Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch are the two most traumatizing figures in the history of American media.Some might argue, Rush Limbaugh, some might argue and Andrew Breitbart they're certainly. Their legacies are certainly traumatic, but I think Ailes and Murdoch are the, are the, are the ones who stand atop that very traumatic mountain and look at the Fox pundits. I mean, look at these, Sean Hannity does not believe what he said.Laura Ingram does not believe what she says. Jesse Waters, they do not believe. And people watching that, you, you, you wonder. [01:10:00] One of the reasons that they are watching this, even if some of them think, well, I don't, yeah, that's probably not true, or, well, that might be an exaggeration, or, but again, it's the feeling of validation.It's the feeling of, we're a, we're a, we're a browning and darkening nation. We're a diversifying nation. White Americans are projected to be a minority. in the year 2040 based on what we know about population and census demographics. And so that stuff is, is just, it's like the Ludovico technique from A Clockwork Orange, right?Where the eyelids are sewn open and the character is Labarge, right? I think was his name. He's just, he's being indoctrinated and propagandized with the film in front of him and his eyes are open. He can't close them. So he's seeing that. That is what. happens and what is done and continues to be done on the right wing media apparatus side.[01:11:00] And when I was, when I was in MAGA, especially near the end of it, I was a Fox viewer pretty much every night, watch Tucker Carlson and think, wow, that's. That's awful. Or that never thinking, wow, that really happened. We're listening to a Laura Ingraham and think, and then all of a sudden coming out of that world turned Fox right off.And once it turned off, I'm telling you that it started to clear some of the fog of my own mental state. The brain fog that I had, it started to go away. And so we can't, we cannot overlook that. I, I won't, I don't want to overlook the fact that a lot of this media that's on the right wing side, these are people who don't believe this.They simply, they, they, they have the proverbial finger on the pulse. They, they know what is lucrative. They know what will drive. The audience and keep the audience because it's important. Retention is very, very important in media because of of of the of [01:12:00] the fleeting attention span that we is our homo sapiens species just has right.So getting the getting them to tune in is one getting to read is one. But then there's the other about retaining them. And I think that the center center left press there, they're coming. They're trying to approach us more as actual journalists. Thank you. And I don't want their news stories to be biased.Okay. I want them to be as unbiased as possible. And I'm not saying that the center left and centrist pressed are the only savior there. It's not that they're going to save the day. I don't think that it's fair to put all of that, the onus on them entirely. But if we start now piecing together some of these topics we've been talking about, like Defeating MAGA democratically, unlikely, but necessary alliances a media, an adult media, I call adult media, national media, national media apparatus, who is, is not just engaging in group group think, [01:13:00] but their columnists and their op eds are, are very much clear and explicit that.We are in a state right now where we do not have a healthy two party system and whatever my, whatever my dislike of the two party system, because I think dislike of the two party system is probably a commonly, it's probably an issue that actually binds a political and very political people right in this kind of way.So whatever we've always been a two party system that we're always going to be, but we are not a healthy two party system right now. I don't say vote Democrat because I want one party rule, but the only way that we're going to develop a healthier two party system is we must mercy kill this current iteration of the Republican party.And then after that happens, then the more serious considerate Republicans, whether we're talking a Mitt Romney type, or we're talking about someone like a Brian Fitzpatrick, who's in Pennsylvania. [01:14:00] He's a, he's a congressman, maybe a guy like a Spencer Cox in Utah, the governor. I saw him speak recently.Again, don't agree with his, a lot of us don't agree with some of his policy approaches, but he's, he's an adult, right? He's sensible. Okay. I can sit down at a table and talk with a person like this, those more responsible Republicans. They're going to have a big decision to make also. Because they're going to need to figure out where do we go once this MAGA Republican party has splintered?Because I think that's what happens after next year, Matt. I think you have a further splintering of the GOP. You have the MAGA side. You have the, more of the Mitt Romney McCain side. And then you have what I'm going to call, quote unquote, more liberal Republicans. And these are going to be Republicans whose policies are very much a purple shade of red.So if you think about what I just said right there, that you're, you still got all these factions who are, who are still going to have to compete for the attention span of primary [01:15:00] voters. You're going to still see that. Yeah.How multi-party voting can help disaffected people from getting seduced by reactionismSHEFFIELD: Well, and, and some of what's got to happen is that people need to be going, pushing for rank choice voting to make.third parties easier to win because, cause the reality is that there are a lot of people who may not like, some Trumpist Republican who ends up with a nomination. But they don't feel like there, that there is an alternative. And so, but you know, when you look at where ranked choice voting has been.put into place, it actually has helped to defuse some of this right wing extremism. So like in Alaska, for instance, where they put in ranked choice voting for the general election and, and for their primaries that, Sarah Palin was the, was the leading Republican candidate up there, but she ended up not winning the, the general election because a lot of the supporters of the other Republican.[01:16:00]They just couldn't stomach somebody like her. And they didn't have to, like, that's the beauty of ranked choice voting is that you can say, I don't like the Democrats but you also don't have to like who the Republicans put in front of you either. And that's the beauty of that. And, and it's, and it's really going to be something that's a really important goal.And then the other thing is that, is getting people to accept that, you don't. Let's say, let's say you don't want to vote for the Democrats. Just don't vote for Trump or, the people that he puts forward. Like that is a thing that people are also moving to. Like when you look at, especially like in Georgia, for instance in 2020, Donald Trump got, and he got, at least I think 70, 000 fewer votes.than the other down ballot Republicans did. And, and we saw the same thing in Arizona where Carrie Lake, when she was running for the governor's seat there, [01:17:00] she got, at least a hundred thousand fewer votes than the other Republicans did. And some of whom actually ended up winning their race.And that's, that is something that, that people should really be thinking about as well. And, you may not be able to bring yourself to go and vote for a Democrat. And, no party's entitled to your vote. No one's entitled to get your vote, I don't think. But, at least do yourself and the country a favor and don't.Go out and support people who want to destroy the country and have a dictatorshipLOGIS: That that's part of the logic why I've remained a. We call it in Florida, an NPA, no party affiliated voter. And I feel exactly the same way. And going all the way back to the outset of our conversation today, Ralph Nader, running as the green party.And there was this feeling, we, and of course being in New York at the time, I realized even back then, well, [01:18:00] Al Gore was going to win the votes anyway. So it was a risk free vote for me, but there also was this feeling with, with the rate with the excuse me, the Nader. Campaign where, we were really sticking it to, to, to al Gore in particular.We were, we were sticking it to 'em and, and, and we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna show them no. No one is owed our vote. You have to earn it. You have to work for it. And that's why I've decided to keep this NPA status. And one contradiction I want to underscore is that you've heard this talking point recently that The place to really quote unquote, indict Donald Trump is not in the courtroom.It's at the ballot box. And I, I'd like to underscore the, the the contradictory hypocrisy of that statement because the Republican party prides itself on saying that we're a Republican, not a democracy, which actually isn't true. We're actually both. And that's a whole other conversation [01:19:00] about how the framers quite ingeniously devised a.Complex majority rule, democratic, lowercase d republic. So when they, when I hear the GOP or MAGA or otherwise talk about we're a republic, not a democracy, I find it, I find it contradictory. And they note that it is that that same party who says we're a republic, not a democracy, wants a democratic resolution to, to, to Trump.And so, again, I don't, I think it just comes back to as part of my. As part of my remorse, as part of the feeling of the mistake that I made, where I want to try to get through to MAGA voters is, is to say to them that, number one, I don't think, I think that most MAGA voters deep down are good people. I was at an event recently and met many MAGA voters whom I did not know, met them for the first time.[01:20:00]And honest to God, Matt, I mean, the people I met, if I, if I were on the side of the These are people who would have pulled over in the rain, helped me change a flat tire, and wanting to take in money to do it. There is a goodness in them. There, there, there, there is a decency. And While it's going to be really difficult, we are gonna and and the right wing apparatus, we have to go up against, we're gonna have to go up against those conglomerates.We're gonna need to go up that go against that force field, but with this good and decency that that are in them as human beings, we have to find ways of appealing to the better and braver angels of our nature, because I know that deep down that so many of them are good people. And when I've had discussions with them, I haven't tried to change their mind.I think that's another futile endeavor, the idea of changing minds. But what I've, what I've said to them eye to eye, just like we're talking now, as I said, I don't want to, I don't want to [01:21:00] try to persuade you to change your mind, but I want, I want to ask you this question for you to think about. Is it possible that some of your, just like I thought, is it possible that some of your sincerely held beliefs, your opinions are mistaken, that they are incomplete?That maybe they lack nuance. Maybe they're too black and white. And let me tell you what I discovered. Even though it was a small sampling size, granted, wasn't hundreds, it was not even dozens. It was a handful. Let me tell you what I discovered when I asked that question of MAGA loaders at an event I attended recently.There was a little bit of silence and they said, it's possible. Yeah, it's possible. So right there, the door creaked open just a bit because it's, it's, it's not. It's not go even for me. It didn't happen [01:22:00] overnight. Yes, I joke it was it happened gradually and then suddenly all at once. It's going to take time because once the door once the doors open, that's where we appeal to them as fellow human beings as fellow Americans.They are never ever to your point that you made earlier. They are never ever going to get that from most of the politicians they listen to whom they vote for to the pundits they listen to. For the most part, Matt, these are you. These are rhetorical performers and whatever, whatever my, whatever my strong, I've had strong feelings about this.How disinformation gives permission for extremismLOGIS: I hope that that's come through here, but whatever my feelings about some differences of opinion policy, I might have with the Democratic Party. I see their party mostly comprised of people who I think see government as a way of improving people's lives. It doesn't mean that it always, it always [01:23:00] get it right.It doesn't mean that we're not going to disagree with how they, how they may have came, came to an outcome. But the, but the way that MAGA looks at government is they want government to be retaliatory. That's what this entire Disney episode was about here in Florida with the Santas. And the reason that they want this retaliatory government, the reason that they are, they are, they are willing to abdicate.Some of their own freedoms into some light version of authoritarianism is because some light version of a dictatorial type government is because that's what they see the Democrats as. So they're, they're willing to, to vote for this, for this, for the MAGA side. Even if it, even if it means being mocked, having their intelligence insulted, having rights taken away, [01:24:00] especially ones that have existed for decades, like the right to abortion access.They see the Democrats as that authoritarian dictatorial party. And so because they see the Democrats that way, they're willing to accept it on their side because they see, they see right wing retaliatory government as superior and preferable to a left wing one. And All throughout this conversation today, I think what runs consistent through it all is that there was a, there is a lot of trauma in the country and, Trump was able to capture the lightning in a bottle, so to speak, he figured out pretty quickly what These MAGA or MAGA in the making voters want it to be, it's like you said earlier about the feeling of, of, of losing their country.Our, our, our culture is being eroded. Our values are being eroded. And it comes right back to the slogan, make America great again. [01:25:00] Restore America to this constitutional mythological place where Children prayed in public schools and we kept our doors unlocked at night. Down the street from where the kids prayed and where you kept your doors unlocked were black Americans who crossed over the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma to Montgomery to ask, to ask not for preferential treatment and rights, but equal treatment and rights.So we tend to forget the fire hosing of blacks or the stones and the pellets thrown at a Ruby Bridges or George Wallace standing in front of the school or. fill in the blank of, of, of, of gender discrimination and discrimination based on sexual orientation. So America was great for many people in that mythological epoch of the 50s and the 60s.Sure it was for many, [01:26:00] but it wasn't for everyone. And that perfection of the union I think President Obama, speak so eloquently about this history doesn't move in a straight line. It zigs and it dags. It's uneven. We make progress. Then we take a step back. We make progress. We take a step back. If you look at the founding of America and the constitution itself, bill of rights, yes, it's a complicated document because our founding was complicated.Our framers were complicated, but if you actually look at the constitution, the bill of rights, it's very much a. a progressive, meaning progress, they are compromised progress documents. They are documents that, that establish that the country over time is going to be best when there is more equal protection and equal right to quality under the law.The constitution of framing and the framers documents do, there is, there's, there's a, there might be a Conservatism side too, but I would argue it's really more of a [01:27:00] conservation than conservative because I have a, I have, what shall we say? I love, hate with conservatism. Even when I was in the MAGA world, I actually had a little bit of a love, hate with conservatism because I think that conservatism writ large, it's not that all of the tenants of it are, are bad.It's not that some of them aren't aspirational, but the biggest problem with conservatism over the years is that. The messengers of conservatism are Ideologically, they're malleable. They're, they're whatever that they need to be. So if conservatism is about your one is principled, no matter what one support speech, even when we don't like it, we uphold the rule of law, even if we don't like who's indicted or convicted.If someone is a, says he or she is a conservative and stays true and consistent to that, fine, that's a message you're all listening to. But let's be honest about this. Let's be candid. If you look at the most prominent conservatives over the years, they do not, they do not follow [01:28:00] this supposed principled position that they, that they claim that they adhere to.Yeah. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Well, and, and I mean, ultimately, those disempowered conservatives who, are actual believers in the rule of law. They have to accept and understand that MAGA is not conservative. It is reaction, reactionism. It is, a hatred for, because the, the point of conservatism is supposed to be sort of a way of tempering the changes demanded by.Liberalism or, social democracy. It's supposed to say, Hey, I'm not against change. I just want to make sure we do it right. And we do it in a safe way. That's what conservatism is supposed to be. Conservatism isn't supposed to say. I want to go back to the way things were. And that's something that Dwight Eisenhower really tried to get the Republican party to [01:29:00] understand in the 1950s.And, and ultimately, a Republican, for the Republican party to be. Become, again, a part of the American political experiment in a successful and, and healthy manner, they have to, to go back to that Eisenhower perspective and understand that the biggest threat to conservatism is reactionism, that they are coming for you first, and so you need to come for them.LOGIS: Well, I think that's why social issues have always been so effectively traumatic for the right way. Because they are reflective of changes that we see, we see more men marrying men, more women marrying women, we see more diversity around our lives, our communities, businesses, we frequent, frequent, excuse me, our workplaces those are, those are, [01:30:00] those are, those are visuals.And so when people start to feel like, well, this is not the, this is not the America I grew up in. And now, of course, that that way of thinking has trickled down into the right wing youth movements, right, with Turning Point, where we see that, where there's, there's young, young men and women, late teens in their 20s, who are, are basically growing up and probably the best time ever to be young, right, but they're being told.Well, let me tell you how America used to be, let me tell you what it was like in the 60s. Let me tell you what it was like in the 50s. Boy, if we get, we get back to that, that's, that's the America I know, the Chevrolet, apple pie and baseball America, right? That's the, that's the, that's how we're, and, and so young people, right, are, are, are hearing this and thinking, yeah, I want to go back to this America, but.They're not really asked, but you never really lived in that America. So, how, how do you know, how do you know about [01:31:00] what it really was? And you mentioned earlier a point about, the less densely populated areas of MAGA, maybe, and I think this is another blind spot with the, with the press, the centrist center left national press is that there's, there is this, I think there is this underlying.Maybe even almost, it's maybe a bit taboo, but there's this underlying sentiment of a lot of MAGA voters being uneducated and uncouth. I'm going to tell you something, Matt, the MAGA voters, a lot of MAGA voters I was around were anything but. They were affluent in some cases, successful. They were professionals who worked in highly regulated industries.They were credentialed. They were educated. And they did not fit that stereotype, if you will, about who the quote unquote typical MAGA voter is. And so if the press is not even really [01:32:00] understanding the population of, of the, of the movement that they're talking about, like who actually is comprised demographically, it's going to be very hard.If you don't even really recognize that, it's going to be really hard to kind of burrow in and, and ask why, why, why is this persist. Why does it have this appeal? Because I mentioned again the point about just like it's just like the confederacy. The confederacy was not, it was defeated. But the ideology, the lost cause of it remains to this day.Now what's happened over time And I, I give credit to activists on this and educators what's happened over time is that there have been there have been increasingly fewer and fewer adherence to the confederacy. And I think that over time. That's a worthy goal. That's an aspirational goal that over time, as we democratically defeat them as we work toward reconciliation as we put that work in that necessary work of strengthening democracy and [01:33:00] democratic institutions.I do believe, and again, maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part, but I don't think it is, I do think we'll start to see fewer and fewer adherence to MAGA over time. We have to have a sense of urgency, but we have to be patient about it. But, if MAGA is not democratically defeated, and while I generally don't like guilt by association, I don't see how we avoid it with Republican candidates and MAGA this election cycle. I'm not, I'm not really sure we can, at this point and moment in time in our history, I'm not sure we can really separate it. Not all the Confederate soldiers supported slavery. Some of them joined up to make money or help their family and they just got into a war because it was a, it was a, it was a, a financial endeavor for them.But having said that, Lincoln and U. S. Grant didn't. Differentiate between those who were like that and those who [01:34:00] wanted slavery, not only in place, but wanted to expand it. I see that as the moment right now and Unfortunately, Matt, not to contradict myself on this, but the flip side of this conversely is that what I'm saying to you right then and there about, having to defeat MAGA and, and guilt by association.This is, this is potentially fatal for democracy. This is not, this is not, this is a sign of a dysfunctional democracy. And, and I do, I do think. That America's democracy is stronger than weaker, but we also have to acknowledge, and I think this can come from that on those unlikely alliances. We have to acknowledge that there are always forces who are seeking to weaken it because the Republican party writ large as a party apparatus does, does not believe in as much accessibility.to the franchise as they could. They are, they are, they are a party who sees democracy as [01:35:00] adverse. They see democracy as that, as the mechanism by which to bring in that change. And the more people, Matt, the more people who say, okay, these changes are good for the country. They don't harm me. They don't harm my livelihood.The more people start to think about that, the more the grip of the Republican party weakens. But having said that, It is still a very, very strong grip. It is still a strong grip.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right, well, so, I think yeah, it's been a, it's been a great discussion here, Rich. Let's put up your Twitter info on the screen here.Yeah, thank you. So you are at... Perfect our union on Twitter. And then your website address is remind me of that one again.LOGIS: Yeah. So website you can contact me there. My writings are there as well. They're all open, no paywall to perfect our union. us and I'll just make a quick public service announcement here, Matt, if I may, anyone who's listening, who's watching this, [01:36:00] if, if they feel like they, if, if they're, if they're in a situation where they want to try to get through to a MAGA voter.They are, they are welcome to contact me at any time. And however, whatever public service I can give here to complete strangers or those I know, I'm happy to do it. So anyone out there listening and watching I don't want you to hesitate to contact me. If you feel like my story here can, can help in how you're trying to get through and maybe reconcile in your own household or your own family or your own community with some MAGA voters.We remember that they are, most of them are good people deep down, but they've been led astray and they've been failed and exploited. And we can change that. I do really believe that we can reverse that. So anyone out there, you are welcome to contact me at any time. You can communicate with me on my site, perfectourunion.us.SHEFFIELD: Okay, all right. Well, I [01:37:00] think that'll do it for us today then. It's been a great discussion. Thanks for being here.LOGIS: My pleasure, Matt. Thank you. Anytime.SHEFFIELD: So that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody for watching or listening or reading. Please do encourage your friends and family to know about the show as well.Just go ahead and direct them to theoryofchange. show. Thank you very much for your support and I will see you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode SummaryAs American conservatism is rotting out from the inside, it is slowly being replaced by both reactionism and fascism. It is a horrifying story to see, but there are also a lot of interesting things to notice as conservatism is decaying. One of those things that fascism is just as much an aesthetic as it is an ideology.While it's become much more radical and obsessed with imaginary stories of national doom, the American far right has also become dramatically more interested in fitness and on looking good as they define it, with an additional focus by many on ancient Greek and Roman people who are known for their statues and philosophy.That such a rapid interest in fitness would coincide with the political career of the obese ex-president Donald Trump is more than a little bit ironic. Nonetheless, some journalists and media outlets appear to be overstating the degree to which fitness may be associated with fascism.This episode's guest is Natalia Mehlman Petrzela. She is the author of a new book called Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America's Exercise Obsession and a previous one called Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture.The video version of this episode is available on YouTube.Audio Chapters02:26 — Today's classroom battles began in the 1960s08:11 — How Donald Trump supercharged the macho reactionary tradition12:37 — Fitness culture is cross-political and fascists are discovering their own athletic history18:22 — Wellness culture is far older than you think22:00 — Folk medicine, religious fundamentalism, and skepticism of doctors25:58 — Homoeroticism and the fascistic aesthetic31:38 — Media sensationalism about fascist gym people38:44 — Right-wing activists using fitness and health advice to radicalize teen boysAutomated TranscriptMATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Welcome to Theory of Change, Natalia.NATALIA MEHLMAN PETRZELA: Thanks for having me. Glad to take this conversation from Twitter to the screen. So glad to be here.SHEFFIELD: That's right. Yes. Cool. All right. Well, so, you have written two books. Fit Nation is your second book. Your first one is very relevant to the present moment as well. So let's maybe talk about the first one and before we get into today's subject as well.PETRZELA: Sure. So my first book was Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture. And it's one of these things, I guess, that I should be very grateful for where it came out in 2015. And honestly, my choice of topic, which was connecting curricular battles over race and sex at the time, people [00:03:00] were like, wait, why are you connecting these things? And now, as we see these battles over CRT and so-called gender ideology flaring up everywhere, now I'm like doing media for that book again. So I'm sorry that the political culture has taken that turn, but I was glad to have done a decade of historical research to help understand its origins.SHEFFIELD: And for people who may not have heard the term gender ideology, what does that mean?PETRZELA: Yeah, so that's a term and I say it sort of with air quotes that the right uses right now to talk about what they consider to be the kind of imposition of an ideological perspective on gender and what they define that as is this notion that gender is socially constructed, that the binary of maleness and femaleness is not real, that children can choose different gender identities, and then a close kind of addendum to that is that parents don't have a right to know [00:04:00] about to know or to dictate their children's gender.And I think a big part of it is also the notion that gender is disconnected from sex, from biological sex. So they, they say that that constitutes gender ideology and that is being imposed on children at schools often without the knowledge or against the will of their parents. And that is a very powerful talking point right now.SHEFFIELD: It is. Yeah. Yeah. And especially in regard to transgender people as well that, that you see a lot of people particularly predominantly, but not exclusively on the, on the Christian right who have, they have really, really believe that this is a religion an alternative religion that is trying to establish itself.And they speak of it as such.PETRZELA: Yeah. And that actually, the real historical origins there, like my book, I'm a historian and I was talking about the sixties and the seventies and a little bit, the 1980s. Similar moment to today, but obviously different issues. Nobody was talking about [00:05:00] transgender rights back then, but they were talking about this kind of new liberal or progressive approach talking about sexuality with kids as itself a religion.And they called it secular humanism. And what you heard all the time was that the secular humanists have this new religion and it's softening kids up for communist takeover basically. And they're using sex to do that. And so, I guess jumping right into the somewhat salacious content here, but something that you would hear all the time was that sex education is kind of priming kids to let go of any kind of sense that this is inappropriate, or this is immoral or this is private. It has kids kind of talking about and indulging in their desires, and this will allow children to basically be so caught up in like a frenzy of sexual ecstasy or distraction that they are ripe for being taken over by communists because, there are loyalties have kind of been taken away from their family and from, [00:06:00] from God and country and family, really.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and they kind of, and, and that conspiracy theory kind of, I mean, it, it circulated somewhat widely on the political right, certainly within the John Birch Society, especially and that was one of the focuses of your book. Book as well. Because the John Bridge Society was founded out here in California, where I live, Southern California.And really had, a huge amount of success out here. And in a lot of different ways, I mean, it's, I, the, and when we were talking a little bit before the show about how. The, the, the historiography of, of the American right tended to be mostly focusing on kind of these New York Manhattan nights, like William F.Buckley, right? And the reality was that Buckley and his friends. just figureheads. They were people that were marching ahead of the parade and pretending to lead it.PETRZELA: Right. And they also, I mean, a book like Buckley's God and Man at Yale, right? [00:07:00] That is a very particular kind of conservative intellectual tradition, like the John Birch society.And some of these folks that I'm talking about who are organizing in churches and coffee clutches, they're circulating like these. pamphlets. Is the schoolhouse the place to teach raw sex? This is not emanating from a kind of, I don't know, elite intellectual culture at all. It's really a kind of much more grassroots effort.And it's one, yeah, that the historical tradition, the historical profession had largely ignored. So as we were saying before, 2002. And in response, in some part to this 1994, I think, essay that Alan Brinkley had written in the American Historical Review where he said we need to pay attention to his two conservatives.There was just this raft of new literature that was looking at grassroots conservatism. I kind of came into college, by the way, I grew up in a very liberal place. So to me, like conservatism was this, like, have I ever met one kind of thing? I'm not proud of my parochialism, but there really [00:08:00] was a lot of intellectual interest, including my own in understanding this phenomenon better.And there wasn't really much work at all done on schools. And so that's kind of how I got interested in this as a dissertation topic at that time.How Donald Trump supercharged the macho reactionary traditionSHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and you, and your current book I think also you, you took the that you, you got ahead of the crowd as well, once again. So congratulations on that FITNATION and now, especially I think with Donald Trump, the, the rise of Donald Trump, it, it kind of reoriented the American right away from this sort of anti-government, we're going to limit the government, that we're going to obsess over economics and, and things like that. And, and Trump with his just flagrantly anti-intellectual and, Mussolini-esque mien, it, it made them, a lot of their people decide that well, maybe, maybe We were wrong to focus on that. And our voters don't really like that.PETRZELA: Right. And there's more of this embodied kind of like red blooded version of, of [00:09:00] conservatism. That's what you're talking about. Right.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And so like for Trump, like he doesn't have a coherent ideology really, he's doesn't have a consistent viewpoint of taxes, he's promised five or six different versions of healthcare, including saying that Canada's and the UK's healthcare systems are great. And the, and the national health service, socialist healthcare in the UK is great according to Trump, but then Obamacare is bad.PETRZELA: Yeah. No, I think that that's right. And so that, as you're saying, created this reorientation.And so, the reason that I came on here and that you and I were talking on Twitter is because there has been this kind of raft of, I think, deserved attention to this phenomenon that there's all this kind of like fitness culture activity, which is coded very right wing, right? This kind of building muscularity and brawn and cultivating pure bodies and kind of elevating an ideology of [00:10:00] unsparing individualism through the gym. And I do agree with you that the Trump, the Trumpian rupture has something to do to with the rise of that kind of conservatism at the same time. It is so funny that Donald Trump would have. anything to do with the resurgence of any kind of fitness, anything, because one of the things that was remarkable about him is that unlike any of his modern predecessors on the right or on the left, he hates exercise.Like you have George Bush, you have Clinton, you have Obama, you have all of these presidents across the aisle who, are constantly saying oh, look at me jogging, or I like to lift weights, or Reagan is posing on a Nautilus machine at the gym. It's uncontroversial because everybody in America thinks exercise is good for you and believes in some way that someone who exercises is disciplined and has their head on straight.Trump breaks with all of that, and he embraces a much older kind of Version of what like a [00:11:00] powerful leader should look like he actually espouses this kind of 19th century idea about energy bodily energy where he's like, you're only born with basically like a battery and like, why would you use any of that energy exercising every day?He'd say like, I have friends who do try out bonds. They're crazy. Like I would never waste my energy that way because he believed it was a finite amount and he and so he, he really derides all of that. He talks about, he's. Donnie two scoops or whatever with his double ice cream cones, his big red stakes, much more that image of the kind of fat cat as the power broker rather than the, jacked very capable kind of fit guy that you're seeing being promoted right now on shows like Rogan or otherwise.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah. No, it is. There, there is a tremendous irony. And, and I mean, that's, it's, I mean, that's the thing about Trump and his movement is that everything is a hypocrisy and irony simultaneously, like here you have a guy who's [00:12:00] talking about toughness and being strong and yet Constantly whining about everything.He cannot shut up about how people are unfair and mean to him and complaining aboutPETRZELA: them. I know. And it's funny though, that right now, he's in this pissing match with Chris Christie and what's his big insult for Christie, Chris Christie, like you're so fat, they like trade these things back and forth.Whereas that's never really been a problem in terms of what Donald Trump thinks is inappropriate. Figure for our leader to cut.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and certainly he's no statuesque figure himself. So, yeah, it's true.Fitness culture is cross-political, and fascists are discovering their own athletic historySHEFFIELD: So it's interesting though, that this kind of obsession with fitness, it isn't coming necessarily from the base, not coming from Trump himself, but it's, it's kind of the, this refashioning that's happened in the right-wing intelligentsia, such as it is, and that's really who's doing this. And I guess probably the biggest proponent of all this is [00:13:00] this guy who's been writing under the name Bronze Age pervert. And people who knew who. For quite a while. His name is Costin Al Maru, and I'm sure I'm saying that wrong.But he's I guess a Jewish Hungarian he got his PhD somewhere. I forget where it was. M.I.T.PETRZELA: M.I.T. And went to my high school.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.PETRZELA: I had no idea. How crazy is that?Yeah. Sorry if I--SHEFFIELD: You didn't know him though.PETRZELA: If I was outing that, that you were going to save that, but yeah, I was shocked.I read, I read that Atlantic article just because it's interesting. And I was really surprised to learn that I didn't know him. I think he's younger than I am, but not that much. We were there at the same time.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and what's interesting though, about this, this vibe that, I mean, he's really kind of just sort of a recycling of the aesthetic that people like Richard Spencer and some of these, alt right people, as they called themselves, were pushing earlier that this I mean, this idea that they're somehow the inheritors [00:14:00] and must be the defenders of the white race. And therefore they not only have to know the culture from which they came and take credit for, but they also have to defend it.And part of that includes apparently being physically fit.PETRZELA: I mean that tradition goes back a long way. Like I think that the current version of it that you see in some of these alt right, well, they're not really called all right anymore, but some of these like far right, exercise environments is much more kind of Marshall than the people in the early 20th century.One of the things I discovered in my research, like long before this was like on CNN, every era in the Atlantic. was that early enthusiasts of strength training and of exercise often presented it very much as this way to preserve the white race. Less we have to be strong to go to war. But what's interesting about what they were saying is they this was a time when nobody went to the gym.So they were kind of freak shows for spending this time [00:15:00] lifting weights and, kind of caring what they looked like and really suspicious. Like you must. And then gyms were horrible places. I mean, they wouldn't even count as gyms.SHEFFIELD: Filled with disease.PETRZELA: Yeah, like that. And they were considered to be places that gay men hung out.So also like really unsavory. And so these early enthusiasts, lucky for this historian here, had to like, really articulate well, why would you do this? Why would you lift weights? Like, why is this good? And so often what they talked about was strengthening the white race. Think that this is a time.When there's enormous immigration to the United States from Southern Eastern Europe and our kind of racial typology of that time saw those as inferior races, right? Semites and so forth. And enslavement had ended just a couple of decades before us. You also had all these free blacks.And you had the expansion of the white-collar economy. So all of the so called like best men are sitting all day at work in these clerk offices. And you should see the panic about this. They're talking about, Oh, the slope [00:16:00] shoulders and the paunch and the sallow faces. And so there emerged these boosters who are like, this is a real problem for the perpetuation of the race.And they talk about it just like that. And so you've got to go and get strong so that you can have more babies. And one of the things that was really remarkable as a historian, and I'm not the only one to write about it, but I couldn't believe how explicit it was in some sources was that you saw these guys and some women talking about.Women need to cast off their corsets, which were popular among white, relatively affluent women. They need to pick up weights. They need to get strong. I'm reading this and I'm like, wow, how progressive and how feminist and all this. And then they say it's because we need fertile women. And these women of the so-called darker races are popping out babies at higher rates.And if you want to preserve the white race, women have got to strengthen themselves to do so. And the way to do that is by weight training, et cetera. And that's really remarkable. And they talk also a lot about the distinction [00:17:00] between deliberate strength training versus manual labor, because that was like a real, as I was saying, a real assumption that they come up with came up against you're just essentially meatheads, not the word that they use.the time. No, no, no, no. I'm not a mere breaker of stones, like just having brute force. I deliberately train for a kind of civilized superior body. So that's in like the early 1900s. And I think we see a version of that today in some of these communities that you're talking about. Although I agree, it's less the fertility angle and more the kind of we've got to prepare for a potential, a potential race war.And also, I think we've got to preserve and embody a kind of traditional kind of masculinity when all these gender roles are in flux. I think that's a big part of it too.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think so. And I mean, in, in the case of the current people, some of that is also kind of, inflected through Germanic fascism, which kind of [00:18:00] imported a lot of yoga traditions and physical fitness and which it was also hypocritical as well because Mussolini was obese and yet was constantly walking around with his shirt off.So, but, like, there's that consistency or inconsistency. The inconsistency is the only consistency.PETRZELA: That's a good, a good role for writing history. Yeah.Wellness culture is far older than you thinkSHEFFIELD: Well, so at the same time, like there, there was also a focus, there's another kind of aspect of all this, that you know, what people now kind of call wellness or focus on nutrition or what they think is nutrition.And in terms of like herbal supplements and whatnot, I mean, that's, that's a tradition that's been around in the United States for, since the very beginning. Why don't you talk about that aspect of things as well? Yeah.PETRZELA: So that's a big kind of through line in my book. And what I'm trying to explain is how fitness, how exercise went from this strange subculture.To being a social [00:19:00] imperative where the majority of Americans do not work out, but pretty much everyone agrees exercise is good for you and kind of feels bad. They don't exercise enough. Like I'm generalizing, but that's true. How did that happen? And the argument that I make is that fitness exercise went from being considered narrowly physical and therefore kind of suspicious to being subsumed in a larger wellness ideology where working on your body was seen as imperative to being a kind of full person.So by the time it really kind of starts like after World War II, where I argue that we start to worry we start to define health. As less the absence of disease and more a kind of overall thriving that is psychological, spiritual emotional and involves working on your body and your mind and people across the political spectrum really glom on to that, like this idea of this holistic interconnectedness, and also the idea that it's up to you to take control of your health.And that's very powerful among [00:20:00] certain activist groups on the left who are like, yeah, self-determination. I'm not waiting for some doctor in a white coat to tell me I don't understand my body. Like I can do this, but it's also very, very compelling on the right when you have, where you have people who are espousing kind of this.Traditional conservative ideology, personal responsibility, and picking yourself up by your bootstraps--SHEFFIELD: Rugged individualism.PETRZELA: Yeah, rugged individualism. And don't wait, don't be lazy and wait for some pill or wait for universal health care. You just need to get outside and go for a run. So, come on.And so that's really, really powerful kind of across the board. So I would say that wellness ideology becomes so powerful because it has that kind of reverberation and traction across the political spectrum. But wait, so you asked me like, how did we get, Oh yeah. And part of that in terms of like junk science and sort of like you said, nutrition with a kind of smirk because a lot of this advice is not so great.Within that ideology, also across the political spectrum, is a [00:21:00] deep kind of skepticism of institutions, of received expertise, of the government, and so you see people coming out of places like John Birch, talking about, like, there's, we got to get the fluoride out of the water, and like, the government's trying to, they, they, I don't know if John Birch was against polio vaccines, but there were some who were there's that kind of, like, anti vax sentiment, but then you also have like feminists who, honestly, I totally understand, are like, you can't trust big pharma.These are the people who greenlit drugs that gave us cervical cancer, right? And so you have this embrace of like natural solutions and all of these anti counterculture solutions, which have a varying degree of effectiveness and scientific kind of veracity.But I think that's been brewing for decades but really, I mean, we saw in the pandemic that, that really blow up, but I would say yeah, that, that stuff has had appeal across the political spectrum for a long time. [00:22:00]Folk medicine, religious fundamentalism, and skepticism of doctorsSHEFFIELD: Yeah, it has. And one of the interesting things for me that I personally had had some contact with is that, I was born and raised as a very strict Mormon and Mormonism, it literally spiritualized 19th century health viewpoints through what they call the word of wisdom.Which was basically a distillation of conventional beliefs among educated people in those days. One of which was that drinking hot liquid was bad for your body and you shouldn't do it. And so therefore the only thing you should drink, like it was like the, it was like temperance up past several inches.So they were not, you weren't just going to not drink wine or spirits, but also you were not going to drink. Tea or even anything hot chocolate, even in the, in the original interpretation of that. And, and then there were, I mean, I think to some degree people know about the, the origin of graham crackers and as a, as a way to, to stop people [00:23:00] from, from masturbating.So like there's this, this connection between religious viewpoints and, and health viewpoints. It's always been there. And both in this country and, and, much older than this one as well.PETRZELA: Right. Well, if you think about it, it makes an intuitive kind of sense, right? What you put in your body is very intimate and very powerful.And so it comes to kind of take on the belief system that you're living in. And I think, it's not this kind of this is more about kind ofAnd I ask, I get asked questions of like, how do you like sort this stuff out and figure it out? And it is really, really hard because like I was saying with the idea of the feminist health advocates questioning big pharma. There are good reasons to question big pharma, like the big food industry really is trying to poison you, right?On the other hand is the answer to, or I shouldn't say trying to poison you, but they are trying to get you addicted to foods that do not serve your best health. I feel very [00:24:00] comfortable saying that, right? I completely understand why there are some people who take that and go like screaming in the other direction.We've got to plant our own food, etc. Like it actually kind of makes sense. And I don't, I haven't figured out exactly how to navigate that or at least give useful advice beyond like, check your sources, look at various look at various news sources, like talk to actual people, not people on the internet.But I think one of the really unfortunate things of the past several years has been the weaponization of this notion of do your research, right? Do your own research that QAnon has totally taken over and it's been used as a way only to undermine any, any information really. rather than I think to create new information.And I think that's really hard as a historian, what I always used to say to my students, and I still do, but now I have all these kind of caveats. It's like, let's go to the primary sources. Let's read, let's not take their word for it. Now I'm like, do I sound like QAnon, and so I think it really is [00:25:00] hard to figure that out.And I think though that acknowledging that difficulty though. is kind of helpful because you understand that there are people like Bronze Age Pervert who I don't have a lot of empathy for, but I think there are a lot of people, especially like during COVID who were really trying to figure out how to just like live a good life and not get sick and protect their families.And a lot of this information is really primed to like. Get right in there in that uncertainty, with like very apparently certain answers.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. And one thing I tell people is that it's fine to be skeptical of institutions, but you need to be skeptical of the skeptics also, because ultimately, they're trying to sell you something.even more often than, a government, a government office is not trying to sell you something. Right, right. They get their paycheck regardless of what you do or don't do.PETRZELA: Yeah, that's a good point.Homoeroticism and the fascistic aestheticSHEFFIELD: So, but so I guess [00:26:00] one of the other things that's kind of interesting with this kind of right wing focus on fitness is that there's in some regards there, there is a there's always been an undercurrent of, homoeroticism in fascism.And, you certainly have seen that with Bronze Age pervert, but also who, many people have accused of being gay. But people have said that Richard Spencer is gay and a number of these and some of these, white nationalist activists are gay. Like there, there's a guy named Greg Johnson who is a publisher of books and he's, a, a gay atheist man.And so like in, in some regards, it's, it's almost like this is, It's the only way that some gay right-wing men feel like they can express themselves in a permissible way in this subculture. I don't know. It's weird.PETRZELA: That is interesting. So, I am not a gay right-wing man. So like I am, I can't say I completely understand the mindset, but I [00:27:00] do think it's important to realize something that is often forgotten in these current depictions of like Big muscular men who train all the time is like the alpha male.I think one thing that's really important to realize is that for so long, like well into Arnold Schwarzenegger as celebrity, as a bodybuilder in the 1970s and onward to be a man who was that built and spent that much time on his body automatically made you suspicious for being gay. Like automatically, like when Arnold Schwarzenegger is doing promotion around pumping iron in the like mid, I can't remember if it's 76 or 77.He says to a journalist and pardon my French, he says, I, I'm paraphrasing, but this is the slur he used. He goes, guys, people have got to know that just because a guy wants his body to look nice doesn't mean he's a fag. And he goes on to basically say like how that's his goal to dispel this.And that really was the dominant idea. If you care that much, what you look like, if you spend your time. building your muscles, hanging out with other sweaty men, looking at those [00:28:00] magazines, spray tanning yourself. That's girl stuff, right? Men are supposed to be interested in the mind. And I think that we forget that now because one, there's really been a mainstreaming of kind of a stent attention to aesthetics among straight men in the past, like 30 years.No question about that. So it's considered less inherently sort of suspicious or just positive of homosexuality. But that's existed, I think, for a really, really long time and, again, I don't know so much about these subcultures, but there is a lot of homophobia, of course. And so I think that the fact that this kind of bodybuilding is so much about building masculine strength at a moment when so called gender ideology is like saying, well, what is a man anyway?And toxic masculinity is bad. traditionally gay male space actually becomes a lot more acceptable, right? Like, because what we're getting strong and we're getting jacked and like that kind of eliminates some of what we're considered the like more suspicious or [00:29:00] subversive aspects or, or associations with it, but it's complicated.SHEFFIELD: It is. Yeah. And it's, it's almost, like the. See like, the, the guy who was married to Arianna Huffington Michael Huffington, he was a, a, a gay Republican. He didn't, for a long time he refused to be called gay because he said that he was, he was masculine and so therefore he could not be gay.And, and it's like, like, this is a, this is kind of an undercurrent of. Far right, homosexuality throughout history is that they've always wanted to not believe that you could, that there was another way of being, having that as your orientation.PETRZELA: Yeah. Well, you should talk to my friend and colleague, Neil J.Young was this great book coming out on gay Republicans next year. So he's the man to talk about this for sure. And he's actually a gay man too. But yeah, I think that that's right. And I think that is associated with the fact that, of course in the United States for a long time to have an out gay identity was [00:30:00] very much connected with the identity politics of the left, right?So that was less acceptable if you identify as a conservative, but something that's really interesting that's come through in Neil's work and also in a great book by Clay Howard about the Bay Area and kind of the politics of privacy is, there are. Quite a few gay male Republicans who are all about small government getting the hell out of our bedroom.Right. And especially as those men have gained more economic power, that small government sensibility like works great for taxes too, and so it's not, I think it's like a, not that you're saying this, but it's a simplistic view when people are like, okay, Republican, how is that possible? And I understand where that comes from, but the notion. The gay masculinity is immediately coded as left wing, I think is really, really misguided. And I should also say like, there were theorists in the nineties who were writing about body fascism among gay men in the gym. And they weren't talking necessarily about political fascism, but they were talking about this [00:31:00] kind of like unsparing unforgiving hierarchy of kind of the bodily aesthetic of gay men.And that, that, and, and like, that was, we talked about that. Talk about that a lot with women, but the gay man had like just as much, if not more of a hierarchy in that regard. That also has a lot of things to do with the HIV AIDS epidemic and the fact that gyms were real community centers for men, but also beyond that displaying a really fit muscular body in that period meant you weren't sick.Right. So that kind of aesthetic was like re-layered on regardless of politics, but as a matter of almost displaying survival.Media sensationalism about fascist gym peopleSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Well, so lately there have seemed to be, it's almost like every other month or so, articles coming out in publications saying working out is fascist now, and you need to realize that.I think it is a disturbingly common article and I, [00:32:00] it's odd that it keeps getting written. I mean, what, what's your take on that?PETRZELA: Oh my God. Well, I don't know if you know this, but you know, I was a victim of like a major clickbait drama around exactly this issue where I had Donnie Trump Jr. like screaming about me saying, do you know this or not? Oh, I don't know that. No. Oh, I was like, are you soft peddling this story? Cause you think I might run screaming. Oh my gosh.So let me tell you because I think it's relevant. So I write this book fit nation. It's slated to be published very early January coincide with the gym rush.I got this really good journalist at, at a time magazine who was interviewing me about the book. She interviewed me about the book. One of the questions is like, what's a surprise when you had, when you were researching this, the surprise was the story that I told you about how strident some of these early 20th century strength enthusiasts were about women lifting weights in order to make more white babies.So that was like something I mentioned in there. The interview was very long. I talked about many, many other things. The headline that they give it was the white supremacist origins [00:33:00] of exercise in America and like six other facts or something. It comes out December 8th, sorry, December 28th. So it's like right in the middle of Christmas and New Year's.I was actually in Egypt. I see like, I didn't even see the article first, but I see my alerts like pinging and it's all of the like far right, like the blaze daily wire, like all of those kinds of sites. And the, what's the idea? The idea is, Oh, everything's racist. Now woke professor says you can't even go to the gym anymore without it being racist, which was so not the point.And in the interview I had said. I kept, I first thought, you go girl, women lifting weights. And then I kept reading and it's important to keep reading. But this thing took on a life of its own. Hannity was calling me, my brother's watching Fox and friends in some waiting room. He's like, they're talking about you on Fox and friends.God felt like it was nonstop, including Donnie Jr. So some of it, I was getting death threats. The president of my university was getting contacted. The Daily [00:34:00] Mail wrote full articles, New York Post, it was crazy. Donnie Jr. gets wind of it, and thank God he didn't mention me by name, but it was easy to find.And he's screaming about this, like, woke professor, everything's racist now, they want you to be obese typical feminist, lazy feminist. So yeah, so that happened. This is relevant to your question, I think, because I do think that some of what is driving this like exercise is white supremacy. And you need to know this is just like this click bait media culture that we're in.I mean, that headline was so stupid and I hope you're listening time magazine and I tried to get them to change it. It was so stupid, so disconnected from the nuance that I tried to impart with this book and so clearly meant to drive outrage. And I think the clicks of honestly, some not so reflective people on the left who like love that stuff too.And yeah, so I think that that's part of it. On the other hand, I do think that, in a very positive and helpful way, we are looking much more thoughtfully at. [00:35:00] The way is that like really noxious ideologies show up in apparently innocuous aspects of our everyday lives. The gym is one of them. I mean, I'm glad that this conversation is happening.One of the main things that got me interested in writing this book like a decade ago was basically the concept that I had in my mind of like, Guys, it's not just the gym, like this place you go every day and spend a lot of money and sweat and everything is not just about physical exercise. There's a philosophical, emotional, ideological component to that.And I didn't really know it at the time, but part of that community building, which was happening there. Was for some folks absolutely about resurrecting this kind of early modern version of masculinity and strength to resist what they see as the kind of decline of civilization, the weakening of masculinity and the increasing, I think, impurity of the body.And we're seeing that [00:36:00] resurging. And I think. Interest in it both comes from a really good place of wanting to understand our world better and a totally awful clickbait-y place that is, I, I'm sorry to be caught up in, unfortunately.SHEFFIELD: And people need to realize that just because you're learning about, certain aspects of history of a thing, it doesn't mean anything necessarily about how it is now or how it was in some other time period. These are just at the, everything is like a. These are just like threads that you're pulling and it's okay to pull a thread.PETRZELA: Yeah. And like, this is interesting stuff, but like one of the things I often ask my students is like, especially because white supremacy has now become such a kind of buzz phrase is when they're like, well, that's white supremacy culture. I'm like, okay, how, you know what I mean? And I'm like, it's often not wrong, but like, it's not enough to just like dismiss it out of hand, or like to.Yeah, to call something white supremacy culture just out of hand and not go beyond that. And I think that that's unfortunately what the tone of some of these articles [00:37:00] are at the same time giving, attention to something really important.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, I mean, and by that logic, Going to college is wrong because colleges, were owned slaves and they were started as Christian supremacist indoctrination propaganda centers.So therefore you shouldn't go to college, right? If that's what you believe.PETRZELA: Right, right. But these are like ridiculous perspectives, right? Like these aren't perspectives. These are such sort of purist, ideologically driven perspectives that nobody really lives by. These are the kind of things people say on Twitter and then they go to class or go to the gym or whatever.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and, and I think, a healthy aspect of things for the left versus the right is that, people on the left might pop off and say something like that, but it doesn't really have any heft behind it, the people at the top aren't saying, you know what, that's a good idea there.Yeah. On the right, they'll go and make a book out of that or a Fox News rant about that.PETRZELA: Yeah. I [00:38:00] will say that one of the things that keeps me on the left is that there are these studies that show that like left wing media, et cetera, tends to just like have more evidence behind it. Like there's a higher evidentiary standard and like that to me means a lot.So yeah, I think that that, I think that's absolutely right.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, okay. So. Now, do you see this physicality based right wing viewpoint as, I mean, is it really going to go anywhere? I don't, I don't know that it's going to.PETRZELA: Look, I'm a little scared. I mean, I hope that this is just this extreme perspective and set of people that's going to kind of, that we're maybe paying outsized attention to and that it's maybe not going to go anywhere and these guys are just going to like, start running marathons or lift weights for fun or something.Right-wing activists using fitness and health advice to radicalize teen boysPETRZELA: That being said, like, I think we're remiss to ignore it too much. Look, I'm the mom of a 13 year old boy. It's really hard to grow up as a boy right now. One of the things that I think is so disturbing when you start paying attention to this kind of manosphere [00:39:00] and what's being directed at young guys is that there is this real mixture of like misogyny.And like just really awful racism, et cetera. It's often bound up with semi sound advice about the gym. Like Andrew Tate is someone people write about a lot. And like, I try not to listen or watch too much and thank God my son doesn't watch. Or if he does, he doesn't seem to care for him at all. But like one of the things that's so noxious about this guy, who's literally serving time for trafficking and is like a known pimp who has raped women and like promotes this horrific misogynistic perspective.He says things that are like. Get off your butts and go work out. Come on. Like you're going to feel so much better if you put down your phone and you hit the gym, you know what, that's actually good advice, but what's really hard to disaggregate is the way that that gets tied up with this totally noxious stuff.And I think like, this is not the whole answer. But I do think I'm sometimes a little more critical [00:40:00] or, or, yeah, I guess a little more critical of the left because that's kind of like where I live. It's the educational environments that I'm in. I do think, it's important for people on the left, especially educators, to kind of reckon a little bit more honestly or fully with like, What it means to be a young man and what it means to like, want to be strong.And what it means to, inhabit a kind of like cis hetero identity is something more than just toxic. And like, if you can, like, if someone with a really wonderful, enlightened perspective around gender equality and these educators. Absolutely exist are like, yeah, guys, like you should go lift weights.Like that's awesome. Right. You don't hear that as much. And I think that that's unfortunate because there's really wholesome, wonderful stuff that comes from building bodily strength for boys, for girls. Like we should not see this to the right. That's really bad.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. No, that, that is a great point. I feel like at some point the left understood this a lot better when, with this slogan, the personal is political, which was very popular, in the [00:41:00] the so called new left of the 70s.But now, this idea of. In, seeing your, your lifestyle through your politics and integrating them. That's, it's almost kind of, kind of regarded as dumb or day class A among people on the left to do that, I think.PETRZELA: Oh, like it's superficial, like, because it's consumerism, is that what you mean?SHEFFIELD: To some degree, yeah. And I don't think it's wrong to say that. Because, obviously you've got people like Gwyneth Paltrow selling all kinds of crap to people. So being progressive isn't something you can reduce to buying stuff, or being gay is not about buying rainbow s**t. Or being a woman is not about doing X or Y, none of those things are true.But at the same time, if you can't speak to cultural issues and you think it's beneath you, then you're leaving a lot of people behind.PETRZELA: That's absolutely true. But I would say the earlier [00:42:00] iteration of the personal is political, which was about like, we need to talk about domestic violence and leave for pregnancy and birth control.And like all of those issues of the body, which were considered like, Oh, that's like. Home stuff like that's not the realm of politics. You deal with that privately that no, we need actual policies to address that. I think that's still really, really salient. And then I think what you're talking about, yeah, that's interesting.That's sort of like chapter two of the personals. political in the 1970s and the kind of consumer culture of like the me generation and retreats in organic food and, yoga and all of that. And seeing those kinds of embodied individualistic practices as a form of politics. Yeah, I think those do get that we cast aspersions on those honestly often on the left, but I've resisted that because I think honestly casting aspersions on that as political action tends to serve to like, say, women's consumerism is silly. Like that's often what those critiques come down [00:43:00] to. And I don't necessarily think that's true. And I think that even though capitalism, yes, is deeply problematic and we should like criticize it endlessly fine, but within that we're not just kind of capitalist dupes, like we make meaning in these environments.And some of the first writing I did about fitness was about how these fitness communities, yes, they were exclusive by dint of the fact that you have to pay into them, et cetera. But at the same time, they at the same time they were places when people kind of like really reconstituted their sense of community, their sense of themselves, et cetera.So, yeah, I'm, let's keep the personals political around certainly as Roe is reversed and we have all of these like. Very, child marriage is back like we need it. We need that. But I think also this consumerist dimension to it. It's still really relevant.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's a great point. And hopefully people will remember that. And think about that more because yeah, you can't cede lifestyle advice to the, the fascists. You, [00:44:00] you can't do that?PETRZELA: Absolutely not. Absolutely not.SHEFFIELD: Okay. Cool. All right, well, it's been a great discussion here today.PETRZELA: Thank you.SHEFFIELD: So where can people find you on Twitter and elsewhere?PETRZELA: So I'm on x slash Twitter and Instagram at @NataliaPetrzela, and I have a podcast Past Present, my book, Fit Nation.Yeah. Or nataliapetrzela.com.SHEFFIELD: Okay. And spell your name for everybody who's listening?PETRZELA: Oh right. Not everyone's looking. Natalia, N-A-T-A-L-I-A. Petrzela, P-E-T-R-Z-E-L-A.SHEFFIELD: Okay, cool. All right. Well, it's been great. I appreciate you joining me today.PETRZELA: Well, thank you so much. I look forward to this coming out and thanks for reaching out. It's really nice when a Twitter friend, transfers into a more engaged conversation.SHEFFIELD: All right. So that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody for joining us and you can always get more at flux.community. This show is a part of the Flux Media Network, and we have lots more podcasts and articles about [00:45:00] politics, religion, media, and society. And of course you can go to theoryofchange.show to go to the section of Flux where we have all the previous episodes of this program.And you can subscribe as well on Patreon or Substack, so I encourage everybody to do that, and thank you very much to those who are paid subscribers. I really appreciate your help. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.communityWe live in a world of unprecedented convenience. Many of us can do our jobs entirely remotely. We use our smartphones to do a million different things. Electric cars are commonplace. And you can pretty much get anything delivered in a matter of days, if not hours. There's no doubt that when it comes to commerce and communications, things have never been easier.But outside of those areas, particularly when it comes to personal relationships, many people are finding modern day life to be anything but convenient. Some people have struggled with making friends or even realizing that they need them. And in many cases, the organizations that used to help us build relationships, like churches and community organizations, are no longer relevant to many [00:02:00] of us.On the romantic side of things, modern day media, whether explicit or not, has enabled us to know what we find attractive in others, but there's absolutely no guarantee that we can get what we seek. Sure, dating websites and apps have made looking for that special someone easier than ever before, but actually finding relationships that are lasting and meaningful is often very difficult.I hope you've enjoyed the previous two episodes in this miniseries, and I'm pleased to wrap it up with a conversation featuring Nyomi Banks, a woman who's seen firsthand many of these trends I've just described throughout a very multifaceted public life which began in adult entertainment but has since taken her into a new career as a life coach and personal advice podcaster through her new program, Ask Nyomi: Bridging the Gap.In order to keep Theory of Change sustainable, the full audio, video, and transcript for this episode are available to subscribers only. The free version runs 30:12 while the paid subscriber version is 1:07:34.The deep conversations we bring you about politics, religion, technology, and media take great time and care to produce. Your subscriptions make Theory of Change possible and we’re very grateful for your help. Please subscribe via Substack or Patreon to get unlimited access.Audio Chapters (Full Episode)02:57 — Ask Nyomi: Bridging the Gap's unusual audience11:53 — Being spiritual while working in adult film15:48 — Entering a new career to help her father26:21 — A brief brush with racism in the porn business34:29 — Why didn't she see as much racism as others have noted?38:46 — On "gay for pay" in adult media40:42 — Has porn made it any easier for regular people to be non-heterosexual?43:25 — On being spiritual but not Christian or religious44:31 — Starting and stopping an OnlyFans account50:48 — Continuing her fan relationships as a lifestyle podcaster57:33 — Why anti-porn attacks are about social control01:00:17 — Why you have to love yourself before you can do anything else This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Tasha Reign, an adult entertainer, discusses sex work, consent, and companionship. The podcast covers topics such as the challenges faced by sex workers, the speaker's journey from being a reality TV show participant to a porn star, and the surprising support received from conservative women.