Sam Goldman interviews Anne Nelson, author of Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right (get your paperback copy, updated after January 6th) and Research Scholar at Columbia University. Find more of her work at anne-nelson.com and follow her on Twitter at @anelsona. Her work investigating the Council for National Policy (CNP), which includes many well-known and not-so-well-known actors is essential for understanding the fascist movement in the US. Also see: “Religious Right Fuels National Attack On School Boards, Exploiting Parental Frustration Over Covid Restraints” in the Washington Spectator.

The conversation was rich with agreement as well as some disagreements, and we always appreciate the opportunity to dig into these substantive issues and the paths forward to solve the continuing crisis. Also mentioned in this episode: Inside Patriot Front: The Masked White Supremacists On A Nationwide Hate Crime Spree.

Right now: help organize for mobilizations this spring to demand abortion rights at riseup4abortionrights.org.

Connect with the movement at RefuseFascism.org and support:

Venmo: @Refuse-Fascism
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Web: donate.refusefascism.org

Music for this episode: Penny the Snitch by Ikebe Shakedown.

Episode 98

Sun, 2/13 6:14PM • 44:19

Anne Nelson 00:00

What’s happening in these states is them pursuing the mechanics to first put in their own people as election oversight officials… They can seize the mechanisms of our elections and impose their will and then continue to change electoral laws until they can install themselves in power for the foreseeable future… People need to inform themselves and educate themselves and they had to do it in a hurry because the next round is the 2022 elections… I think that the only hope we have is some kind of massive and very well informed civic action.

Sam Goldman 00:50

Welcome to Episode 98 of the Refuse Fascism podcast. This podcast is brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers and host of the show. Refuse Fascism exposes, analyzes, and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in this country. And I’m glad to be back. Thanks Mark for covering for me.

Sam Goldman 01:18

I have to start by sharing this incredibly sweet email I received. “Love your talk with Chelsea Ebin. I may be a 72 year-old white man, but it is your generation that I learn from and who inspires me. Way too many of my generation betrayed the ideals of the 1960s. You are not alone in our shared struggle for racial, gender and economic equality. We may be pessimists in our mind, but we always preserve optimism in our hearts. I wear your Refuse Fascism Cap proudly, also very warm in the Minneapolis winter. In solidarity, and keeping our hearts on the left. Harold, an old Midwestern socialist.”

Thanks Harold! Now go be like Harold. Go to RefuseFascism.org and get your hat, and go back and listen to “Male supremacy, Common Ground for Fascists.” By the way, Harold, what generation do you think I am? In today’s episode, we’re sharing a listener requested interview with Anne Nelson, author of The Shadow Network: Media Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right.

Sam Goldman 02:24

But first, let’s talk about some developments from this past week, as it relates to the rising fascist threat and the importance and impact of standing up against it. It seems that despite Rand Paul’s encouragement, the Super Bowl won’t be the site of a trucker insurrection. But the fascist convoys in Canada, on the border and now getting organized in the United States are not going away, and have seemingly been given direction and focus towards a convergence on Washington DC on March 5. This is not the expression of popular or legitimate grievances. Like the Tea Party and January 6th, these fascist movements are primed and funded from the top, projecting nightmarish visions of “freedom,” shifting the boundaries of what their suit-and-tie leadership can get away with.

The trucker “protests” are not just being coopted by fascists. At their core, they are anti-science, pro-virus movements lead from the top of the fascist hierarchy with explicit goals of ousting liberal leaders. Many of their online organizing spaces are simply anti-vax pro-Trump Facebook groups with new names. Their spokespeople are known white supremacists (and not just Tucker Carlson). Major backing is coming from the same people that have funded anti-vax actions from California to Washington DC. Many have pointed out that they aren’t being dissuaded as Democratic governors in the US and provinces in Canada are lifting mask mandates and easing restrictions. No matter how accommodating a “liberal” government is to their demands, or even how similar individual policies may be, these fascists will always see them as illegitimate. They aim to take January 6th to its bloody conclusion.

Sam Goldman 04:11

More and more information has been coming out this week about Trump’s looting and destruction of documents. What strikes me about this is how we now have clear public evidence of an entirely new set of crimes committed by the former president, and there doesn’t seem to be a flicker of a thought of actual prosecution. It’s been reduced to a scandal as though he wore an ugly suit.

And you can’t talk about the fascist threat without talking about the Supreme Court of the United States, last Monday with a five-four vote, the Supreme Court halted a lower court’s order that required Alabama to redraw its congressional map, which diluted Black votes in direct violation of the Voting Rights Act. This is a another major blow to the already battered Voting Rights Act that will likely preserve Alabama’s current racist gerrymander.

As Mark Joseph Stern of Slate makes clear, “Five justices saw fit to break their court’s rules to deprive Black voters of a hard-fought richly deserved victory. In doing so they effectively insulated racial gerrymanders in other states, including South Carolina and Louisiana from invalidation, and by extension, they handed Republicans more whitewashed seats in the House of Representatives. The court’s order is not merely partisan. It is a lawless assault on the one remaining provision of the VRA (Voting Rights Act), protecting Black Americans in red states from political oblivion.” The assault on voter rights that is sweeping the country is a key plank of the fascist strategy for eventual comeback, and we will be covering it more in depth in upcoming episodes.

Sam Goldman 05:50

As the possibility of war between U.S.- backed forces and Russia over Ukraine becomes more and more likely, I want to take a moment to share my personal perspective. We have the responsibility, first and foremost, for what our government does, and nothing short of a humanitarian nightmare, including the slaughter of civilians would come about from a war with Russia. We need to be paying attention to what is happening, and oppose all the threats of all imperialist actors. But in particular, in this country, we need to be clear that the rulers of the U.S. are not the good guys. They are not fundamentally doing anything different than Russia, seeking to advance their interests – imperialist – and risking more to do it.

So, I really want to share the interview that I did with Anne, but I want to talk first about something we disagree about. I know it’s weird that I’m talking about it before you listen to the interview, but, well, it just didn’t seem right to do it afterwards. Anne and I agree that disinformation is a huge problem, so I’d recommend that folks go back and listen to episodes of this podcast where we talk a lot about it. For starters, check out the episode with Federico Finkelstein about fascist lies. There’s also one with Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and another with Susan Neiman. That’s a good place to start.

But, the solution to that disinformation is confronting people with the truth – not just in one-on-one conversations, individually, but as a political force, not finding common ground with people who are part of a fascist movement, but setting different terms with the majority in this country who don’t actually want a fascist future setting those terms. The role of the masses of people getting in the streets in sustained action against fascism cannot be overstated. Action that is, yes, non-violent. Such action likely makes them and maybe you uncomfortable.

Take a moment and think about the integration of sports. Cities weren’t asked: Hey, do you want Black people on your team? No, they integrated sports because if it had been done differently, on the terms of: ‘do you want integration?’ Just think of what the response would have been in huge parts of this country. Meanwhile, it is overwhelmingly clear these fascists have declared a war, seeing the way things are as intolerable, and any government they don’t dominate as completely illegitimate. To be honest, it’s not anti-fascist protests that gives them ammo, but the lack of it that gives them a clear field to advance across.

I say in the discussion, that this isn’t about economic grievances. But don’t get me wrong, there are grievances aplenty; vicious resentment against any limitation on white supremacy, misogyny and American chauvinism. This is why on the show and in general Refuse Fascism has kept making the point that there can’t be reconciliation with this other than on the terms of these fascists. Trump and his supporters, remember, nearly succeeded in pulling off a coup that would have resulted in his remaining in power, in defiance of the outcome of an election, in defiance of the peaceful transfer of power. And things have moved. They’re continuing to rapidly move beyond the situation we were in, in 2020, during the election, and its immediate aftermath.

Let me be clear: It’s not in like some positive, not fascist, direction. At the same time, what can be rightly called, what we rightly call the decent people, who are opposed to these fascists, there’s way too much of this fairytale feeling that this will all work out, with experts and leaders constantly trying to dance this tightrope between sounding the alarm, but not so much that you have to do anything that makes a difference. I just feel like we can’t say there was a coup attempt and then say they don’t have a shot at doing it again. We keep hearing that the election system is under attack and in the same breath, that the elections are the only answer.

I’m so glad Anne and I connected and that you’ll get to hear this interview, and I hope you’ll read her book. These struggles about what we face and what’s needed are extremely precious, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Sam Goldman 09:59

Cheers to the more than 100 students that staged a walkout at Huntington High School in West Virginia after an assembly at their public school, which featured eight evangelical Christian preachers who told them they’d go to hell if they did not follow the Bible. Hey hey, ho ho, the fascist convoy has got to go! Cheers as well to those Ottawans counter-protesting and blocking the convoys. More of this as needed! The power of the people is in the streets. Stopping fascism can’t be done from the sidelines. Big salute to these courageous people who are not waiting for a savior from on high. Lastly, cheers to the women in Colombia schooling us on how to fight for abortion rights. Check out the video on our Instagram at RefuseFascism.org for what I’m talking about. Now, my interview with Anne Nelson.

Sam Goldman 10:46

Today we’re chatting with Anne Nelson, author of Red Orchestra: the Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends who Resisted Hitler, the author of Suzanne’s Children: a Daring Rescue in Nazi Paris. She’s a contributor to The Washington Spectator and The Times Literary Supplement. Anne is also a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. <

Anne Nelson 11:06

Hello, my title has now changed. It’s Research Scholar. I am now researching and writing full time but still with a valued connection to Columbia.

Sam Goldman 11:18

That’s beautiful, beautiful. Her latest book, and the topic of today’s conversation, is The Shadow Network: Media, Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right, an in-depth investigation into the network of fundamentalist organizations and the oil barons who have carried out a multi-generational undertaking to control all levers of the government in the United States and well beyond. This book, originally published in 2019, you can now get in paperback, and it has an update post the January 6th coup attempt. So, be sure after listening to check out the show notes, where a link to the book will be featured. Welcome, Anne, and thanks for joining us.

Anne Nelson 11:57

Thank you so much.

Sam Goldman 11:59

Let’s start with a simple, but really important question to begin with. Lots of people have never heard of the Council for National Policy, while much of their lives in many ways have been shaped by this organization. So, first of all, what is it? What is the Council for National Policy? And what do they do?

Anne Nelson 12:18

The Council for National Policy, also known as the CNP, is a coordinating organization. It’s not that it takes so many actions itself. What one of its prime members, Richard DeVos, Betsy DeVos’s father-in-law, said is that it brings together the donors and the doers. So, let’s take the DeVos family. They’re sitting on $6 billion of Amway money in Michigan. Betsy DeVos and the rest of the family have been all about undermining public schools, public school teachers unions, secular classrooms.

They’re all about promoting the idea of religion in the schools. They use their money to fund organizations such as the Family Research Council, which has activist wings of people who actually go in and work with pastors to try to get voters in the congregations to vote Republican. They have media wings. They coordinate with Salem Media, which has thousands of radio stations that use their content. They also have all kinds of digital platforms pushing out their messaging. They decide on basic campaigns where they can swing unengaged voters, or sometimes the swing voters in certain states, to go their way, which is always to the right wing of the Republican Party. They will take an issue that hasn’t been a particularly hot button issue in the community before, such as abortion, which is a big favorite of theirs, and they distort it.

So they say: ‘Oh, Democrats think that a woman should be nine months pregnant and walk in and say I changed my mind, abort the baby.’ Which is not true. You can’t do that legally anywhere in the United States, and nobody in office supports that idea in the Democratic Party and beyond. But they say they do. So they send out all kinds of mailings, do all kinds of messaging that say the Democrats want to execute newborn babies, and these lines have been repeated by everyone from Donald Trump to Ted Cruz, as well as in their media. That has been a pretty successful avenue for them over the last few decades.

Now they tried many maneuvers to bring Donald Trump to a second term in office. They were getting a lot of their court appointments followed through in the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, and a lot of decisions are coming down that reinforce their power and influence. Right now they’re on overdrive and one of their projects, which we see very visibly before us, is taking over school boards and disrupting public education on a local level. That’s why the title of my book is Media, Money and the Secret Hub. It’s not that the Council for National Policy says we are executing this action. They hold several meetings a year where people like Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, will chair sessions that say, ‘Okay, how do we manipulate electoral processes and election officials in these states? How do we get our partner organizations like the National Rifle Association to do deep canvassing door to door in the states we need to win?’ The interesting thing about it is that they are not the Republican National Committee. The RNC is one of the earliest organizations that they’ve taken over, and there are still a few of their traditional Republicans like Adam Kinzinger and Jeff Flake, etc, who say: ‘No, no, this is not what the Republican Party is about.’ But their answer is: ‘Well, it is now.’ It’s been a kind of viral takeover over four decades, I should add.

Sam Goldman 15:46

January 6th, for this movement that in Refuse Fascism we call fascists, really was a watershed moment for them. It was decades in the making, but it was a new point in the way they’ve previously operated. Can you tell us some of how the Council for National Policy was involved January 6th, and how it was not their necessarily first choice of actions but an action that they chose to take?

Anne Nelson 16:13

Yeah, and for people who really want to know the detail about this, I would refer them to my Washington Spectator piece. What that lays out is the M.O. of this organization. The way I describe it is Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, Plan D, on and on through the alphabet. I mean, they are indefatigable. Plan A was Trump wins the election, wins the popular vote, wins the Electoral College, takes office. Over a year before the 2020 elections, it became pretty clear that he was not going to win the popular vote and the Electoral College. All right, Plan B is he’ll lose the popular vote; he’ll win the Electoral College. Well, the election showed he didn’t take the Electoral College. It couldn’t depend on that.

Then they started, as they moved into November looking at different options. After the actual vote took place, you had Trump getting on the phone with Brad Raffensperger, the election official in Georgia, along with his Council for National Policy expert on election mechanics, Cleta Mitchell, who was on that call, where Trump told Raffensperger he needed to magically find 11,000 votes for him that didn’t exist. That was Plan C, but Raffensperger, although he was a Republican, said no, that would be unethical, those votes don’t exist, and I’m not going to fabricate them. Then they went on to Plan D. Plan D started to involve the protest on January 6th, and members of the Council for National Policy, including Ginni Thomas and Charlie Kirk from Turning Point USA, tweeted various kinds of support for the protests in advance. Jenny Beth Martin, who is another influential member, was present along with another member, Dr. Simone Gold, who runs their COVID disinformation process.

So they converged on January 6th on Capitol Hill. Simone Gold was actually in the Rotunda of the Capitol building speaking against vaccinations, by the way. I think there was the hope that the Electoral College ballots would be captured, destroyed or otherwise rendered inapplicable. So that failed, but there was a possibility of causing a degree of chaos, where it might have meant nullifying the elections and giving Trump another chance to claim office through different means.

As you mentioned earlier, I wrote a book about the Nazi period in Germany. You had this moment with the Reichstag fire, where Hitler had not actually won control of the entire German government, but with the Reichstag fire — and we still don’t know who set it — he declared a state of emergency where all civil liberties were suspended, elections were over, and he was able to seize power in that way. All of these plans to maintain Trump in office failed, and it’s pretty stunning to think how close we came. Biden won the popular vote by 7 million votes. He won the Electoral College votes by 44,000 votes in three states. Okay, that’s nothing. That is less than the population of my little hometown in Oklahoma. 44,000 votes in three states. That’s how the Electoral College was won.

Then you get to January 6th. We’re still pondering why Mike Pence decided not to follow through with the plan. I don’t know why. We also know that the Electoral College ballots were saved by a few courageous young congressional staff members who physically safeguarded our democracy, putting themselves at risk. Well, that’s a pretty narrow margin as well. Once those attempts were foiled, what happens now? I described January 6th as a dress rehearsal. What is happening now is that the member organizations and partners of the Council for National Policy are very, very busy at a state level. What people need to understand is that 30 of our state legislatures are controlled by Republicans. There is an obscure clause in our Constitution that says under certain circumstances, state legislatures can decide that an election is challenged, and they can dispense with their own electors chosen by the voters of their state and appoint their own. That is in the Constitution.

So, a lot of what’s happening in these states are them pursuing the mechanics to first put in their own people as election oversight officials, so they can challenge an election, even on spurious grounds; they can make things up. Once they do that and they throw it to the legislature, the legislature can say: Oh, well, we’ll choose electors that will choose our Republican candidate, regardless of what the popular vote is. That is a real and perilous possibility that is before us. If that happens, it doesn’t matter who votes for whoever in 2024. They can seize the mechanisms of our elections and impose their will and then continue to change electoral laws until they can install themselves in power for the foreseeable future.

Sam Goldman 21:05

I really appreciate your helping us step back to look at really what is the state of the landscape, so to speak, what has transpired, and people need to really take a sober look at where things stand. Amongst a lot of people, there was a sense of false relief that came — that it didn’t happen, that they weren’t able to consolidate power — without looking at how much they got away with and what trajectory they have now really committed to. The “they,” in case it wasn’t clear, is the GOP — yes, there are minor exceptions, but really, this is something that the GOP as a whole has undertaken. So I just want to express real appreciation for you taking a very clear-eyed look, and forcing people to look, at what it is we do face.

One of the things that looking now at how the Council for National Policy has adapted their, let’s say, election subversion plans, post January 6th. Part of looking at that, one thing that you’ve paid attention to, and others have pointed out, is some of what’s happening at the state level, including the focus on education and what happens in the schools. I was wondering if you see a connection between the anti-science disinformation movement around COVID and overlap between that and the anti-education movement — what I call the “anti-CRT movement.” Is there overlap? How do you see that? What should we understand about that relationship or lack thereof?

Anne Nelson 22:37

I think people need to understand a couple of separate things before we get to that question. One is that the future of our democracy happens to rest on a very few swing states. For example, I live in New York. New York goes Democrat, it’s going to go Democrat whether my neighbors go campaign on the corner or not. I have relatives in Nebraska, and it’s going to go Republican by the same token. But you have these states with incredibly narrow margins that I just talked about, where you have to pay acute attention to what’s going on in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, and if you like you can add Florida and Virginia to that list.

Virginia is the real bellwether of the story, because Virginia went for Biden in 2020, and Republican strategists of the right realized that they have lost a lot of white suburban women, partly because of Trump’s record in terms of issues having to do with male and female relations, shall we say. Women were not comfortable with Donald Trump. They went back and said: All right, what is the vulnerability of these people? Well, in order to win Virginia for Youngkin, they looked at the vote-rich suburbs of Washington, DC, and they said, Okay, these parents are exhausted from COVID, their nerves are frayed, their kids are in and out of school, and everybody’s nerves are frayed.

They also fear that their kids are getting displaced by affirmative action, and there are a lot of politics going on in schools that make them uncomfortable. So they picked up this term of Critical Race Theory and erroneously applied it to elementary and high schools, even though it doesn’t apply. It became a kind of label for anything that dealt with race relations in American history in less than a rosy fashion. They were able to organize around this. Sometimes they would cherry-pick incidents and sometimes they would just tell lies like: ‘Teachers are making children apologize for being white.’ I don’t think that’s really how teachers in our country function. If they’re teaching about slavery and kids feel bad that slavery happened, that is probably appropriate.

I did a lot of research on this and even one of the cases that they were citing was a teacher training in Rhode Island, where it talked about “unfortunate events” that happened in our history. Well, Rhode Island was the major business center of the slave trade. [It would be good to insert a link to smallstatebighistory.com here] It’s where ships were built and slaving voyages embarked. Either you can say that’s not true — but it is true — or you can say it’s not unfortunate — I think it’s unfortunate — or you should say kids shouldn’t have that basic knowledge. Of course, you don’t say to kids, that it’s your fault. You weren’t born then. But it is part of understanding human history. But these forces aren’t interested in the facts on that level. They’re interested in taking these frayed nerves and provoking emotions in the same way that they say Democrats like to murder newborn babies. That makes you emotional; it’s not true, but it makes you emotional.

So they set up trainings for people to go in and disrupt their school boards. It’s gotten really ugly. There are some school districts where the innocent school board member who’s there to advocate for math instruction finds dead vermin on their doorstep, and they get death threats on social media. Really ugly. They disrupt these communities. They disrupt these schools. They inject their own people on school boards, which are also a pipeline for local political office. Then they can go from school board to precinct chairman to local election official to state election official, and you can have all of these radically right-wing people moving through the pipeline into public office through this poorly defended entry point. Children and teachers and other parents are paying the price.

In fact, a lot of Republicans are paying the price. A lot of Republicans are people who’ve simply voted for the Republican Party over the years are not party to this. In many cases, they have no idea that people who supported the insurrection on January 6th are running for office to oversee our future elections. If they did know they probably wouldn’t like it. Part of what needs to be done is: A) Focus on the states that are going to be the levers of power. B) Focus on the swing voters and the inactive voters who are going to make a difference, and let people know what’s at stake. Do you really want an insurrectionist to be calling the shots in your election? I don’t think so. You want people who follow the rules, not the people who are trying to attack your entire community and our public life through criminal means.

Sam Goldman 27:24

Thanks for that, Anne. One of the things I’ve kind of been able to follow, but not nearly as much as I’m sure you have been able to, given your expertise, is what’s happening in Canada. With fascist henchmen along with some truckers, really not that large of a group, have seemingly shut down the city of Ottawa and border crossings between Canada and the US. Now rumors about this — I’m gonna put this in quotes intentionally — “protests” spreading to the US with, in my opinion, Fox News fanning the flames. If you could talk about what you think’s going on here? What is this about? And how should we understand the role of, as your book title speaks to, that shadow network behind it.

Anne Nelson 28:09

This is a totally orchestrated event. The reporting is still in its early stages because this is a relatively recent news story. But the indications are that once these organizations have been challenged on Facebook and Twitter, many of them have moved on to a platform called Telegram. A lot of the organization is going on through Telegram. A lot of the local sources that are funding the Canadians are coming out of the United States. There are even suggestions that some of them are coming from Russia. There needs to be more investigation into that angle, but certainly the ones from the United States are being documented.

Let’s think about the truckers. I used to work for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the CBC, and I have a lot of friends in Canada. I really have strong interest in it. Canada is 80% vaccinated. Canada has a history of, let’s say, when there’s a protest, you can have half a million peaceful protesters marching against war or marching for the environment. That’s what Canadian protest has looked like in the past.

Here, what they have figured out is that you don’t need many people to get into trucks to make a big theatrical moment. They don’t have numbers, but they have large vehicles, and they can cause all kinds of damage and chaos and disruption. For example, the Ottawa city authorities just tweeted that these forces are jamming the 911 service right now. They’re spamming it so people with heart attacks can’t call an ambulance. That’s the kind of civic conscience they’re showing. They’re causing all kinds of disruption and it seems to be, again, the dress rehearsal for similar actions in the United States. They’re blocking the border between Canada and Michigan. There are signs that there may be something brewing in Ohio. There’s an indication that it’s going to be apparent in the United States fairly soon, maybe even before this podcast comes up.

Again, the money and the social media platforms that are organizing it are highly coordinated. Some people want to cause chaos. I recommend that people read my book, because the architects of this whole movement say that they want to bring this culture down, and they have to destroy it in order to create the culture they want, which is to elevate their right-wing fundamentalist Christian religion and their right-wing economics, to eliminate taxation for corporations and high net worth individuals wherever possible, and to do away with social programs and public services for everyone else. That’s their goal, and they don’t seem to care how much human damage they wreak along the way.

Sam Goldman 30:46

I really appreciate that, both in terms of helping us understand what this is about, but also what this isn’t about, and what their goals are. Because I think a lot of times, it’s very — and I’m not blaming journalists here, I want to make sure that listeners are clear on this. There is a focus in the United States that has gone on for too long on economic grievances, and that the roots of so much of this is the grievances of the working class. It’s just not true. We have repeatedly been able to show evidence that is so contrary to that. People have to break out of thinking that, and to help you do that, check out Anne’s book.

Anne Nelson 31:27

I’d like to mention that I think that people pulling the strings are people of wealth, and in many cases great wealth, but I do feel that they have manipulated people without means. I find it vicious, because it is possible to get people who have very little information and little quality education to tell them they’re voting for freedom. What that freedom actually means is that corporations are free to deposit toxic waste dumps in their community and to poison their water supply. They call it freedom, and those are the end results. They don’t have the education and the information to defend themselves. They can be persuaded to vote against their own children’s education, their own children’s health care, their own health care. You’ve seen it.

In my home state of Oklahoma, you can see it quite vividly. If you look at a map of the United States, such as the one that was published this past week of life expectancy in the United States, you can see that the states where this culture and this political culture are dominant, have a life expectancy that’s five years less than the states that have a higher degree of information and education and a different approach to the freedom to breathe, and the freedom to drink clean water, and the freedom to have a quality public education. It’s divided — in the United States, I do blame the news media. I support the professional journalists, but I also feel they’ve had so many blind spots. To some extent, if you look at these poorer states and the states that have been so manipulated, like my home state of Oklahoma, they’ve been neglected by the Democrats and by the major news media, and they’ve been exploited by the other side. So, as Americans, I think that we should object to both of those elements.

Sam Goldman 33:09

To switch gears a bit as we start to wrap up, I want to move the conversation to something that we’ve been talking on our show a lot about. On the one hand, we keep having really important conversations with folks like yourself, Jeff Sharlet, who wrote about The Family and C Street, and Dr. Anthea Butler and Sarah Posner, who wrote about the history of these Christian fascists that now have solid representation throughout the legislator and the courts. This movement that we’ve been discussing is dead-set on seizing power and holding it by hook or by crook and have proven it again and again and again. On the other hand, a few months back, Biden said he didn’t anticipate that the GOP would prioritize stopping him from doing anything, and that’s reflected in the Democratic strategy. I was wondering, how do you make sense of that? Is it just refusal to see the evidence, or is it something else?

Anne Nelson 33:59

I don’t think there’s a single Democratic strategy. In terms of Biden, he’s walking quite a tightrope. I don’t know that even with all the powers invested in the President of the United States, either he or the Democratic Party can be the instruments to get us out of this pickle.

I think the only hope we have is some kind of massive and very well informed civic action. What we need is a way to double down and find ways to radically engage with voters who feel threatened and uncertain and challenged, and don’t have access to the kind of information they need. A lot of that will have to be done with one-to-one communication, especially to the states that matter on the electoral map, and it will also take civic engagement where people say: All right, I don’t have much time, I don’t have much energy, but I need to not only run for the school board and run for the precinct chairmanship of the local Republican Party, but to do it from an ethical standpoint and fight the former for democracy.

Part of what’s happened is that this other side is very energized and very coordinated. They have leadership training, they have recruiting mechanisms, they have all kinds of incentives for people. The response on the other side has been passivity and hand-wringing. All I can say is that not only have I written two books about the Nazi period in Europe, I was a journalist living and working in countries in Latin America and beyond that were dictatorships, that were military dictatorships, where people were jailed for dissent, where the press was totally censored, where people couldn’t vote their will because of the controls that were imposed on them, where people were killed for their beliefs. So, I really believe that as flawed as American democracy is, it’s worth fighting for. But it has to be fought for intelligently and strategically. People need to inform themselves and educate themselves. And they have to do it in a hurry, because the next round is the 2022 elections.

Sam Goldman 35:56

There is a lot in what you’re saying that I wholeheartedly agree with. I agree completely that this is a moment for the alarm to be ringing in such a way that no one can ignore it, no one can put their head in the sand, no one can keep going on pretending that it’s not happening, because we really do have on our hands a danger that would not just up-end people in this country’s life as they know it, but really around the world. I think this is something for people to be really saying it and following that to its logical conclusion.

But the part where I do have some disagreement and questioning is that we have Trump and his fascist movement, which includes people within power throughout the country, throughout state legislatures, throughout the judiciary, who’ve really torn up the norms and thrown out the rulebook. At the same time, we have a situation where the outrage and pull of people who we like to call the decent people, the people on the side of justice, keep getting diverted into the very channels that this movement is eviscerating and doing away with, and away from the deep mass society-wide struggle that I feel is needed. To that end, I do think that the Democratic Party in many ways has led people into inaction and passivity.

There is a moment where we do have to have these conversations about what is it that we can do, because if the elections are being subverted and people are being told to just vote harder, then this is a serious — conundrum doesn’t even capture it. If election officials are being threatened, if they’re changing who even the electors can be so that the election can be overturned. If this is the situation that we’re facing, then we do have to step out of the norms. I’m not saying that it’s only going to be protests on the streets. In some ways I personally think we may have gone past that moment, I’m not sure. But I do think it’s a situation where every institution is going to have to take a stand.

Anne Nelson 38:01

Yeah, but taking a stand. These forces are counting on generating more conflict. They delight in protests. They find one image of any violence whatsoever. They play it across their social media platforms to say, ‘Be afraid of these people. Be afraid of Black Lives Matter. Be afraid of progressive school teachers.’ And they drive their voters to the polls in the states they need to win. So, that is playing into their hands. That’s what they want, what they want with the truckers in Canada and the ones that follow in their path in the United States is for Canada and the U.S. officials to crack down on them and have images that they can play as the “repression of their free speech,” which is why restraint at this moment has been a very interesting tactic. So, if your goal is to get out of this crisis peacefully — and by the way, they’ve got the guns.

Sam Goldman 38:54

Right.

Anne Nelson 38:54

So if it’s not peaceful, you’re at a disadvantage, right? But peacefully, they haven’t subverted our elections yet. There have been some safeguards that have barely, barely held. You know, Brad Raffensperger in Georgia, a Republican official. Well, there are these various states where it’s underway to change these mechanics, but it’s not a done deal yet. You’ve got Mark Elias, who is a lawyer who is heroically challenging these election laws in state after state after state, and he’s got this project that has had some losses and has also had a lot of wins. You’ve had a project called Working America, which does deep canvassing of blue-collar voters and really establishes a dialogue with them, and it’s an important initiative. You’ve got the American Values Coalition, which is an organization that tries to break through the disinformation on a state level among evangelicals– the COVID disinformation and everything else. You’ve got these initiatives that are about connection rather than confrontation. I’ve seen political conflict. I’ve seen war. I don’t like it. If there’s a way to solve it through civic duty and civil courage, one hopes it can go that way. I’m not at a point of giving up yet, but it is a time where it’s all hands on deck.

Sam Goldman

I do really agree that it is time for all hands on deck, and I think that is a really important way to wrap up our conversation. I will say that all hands on deck to me means that we don’t cede the conversation. We don’t cede public discourse and the public square to those who want to take away people’s most foundational rights, who seek to decimate the rule of law and civil liberties. I want to extend again, my appreciation for you sharing your expertise with us, your perspective, your time. It’s really valued, and I’m glad our listeners will get to hear this. We’re gonna place a link to your latest about the paperback in the Show Notes. How else can people read more from you?

Anne Nelson
I’ve published a series of updates from the book in The Washington Spectator, and a friend of mine, Jonathan Winer, has also published an analysis of the state legislature strategy in The Washington Spectator, which is very important. You also have articles in The Washington Spectator about the role of the militias and military veterans by George Black. So, I think that the Washington Spectator is good one-stop shopping to get chapter and verse on a lot of these issues. Also, I update my research quite a lot on Twitter as @ANelsona.

Sam Goldman 41:33

Well, thank you so much. Take care.

Anne Nelson 41:35

You too.

Sam Goldman 41:36

All out for Tuesday, March 8, International Women’s Day. Take to the streets to declare: We refuse to allow the Supreme Court to deny women’s humanity and decimate their rights! Abortion on demand and Without Apology! In New York City 3:00 pm at Union Square. Find a protest near you, organize one, learn more, volunteer, visit RiseUp4AbortionRights.org.

Sam Goldman 42:01

I have two suggestions for recommended reading for this week. The first is a excellent essay by Christopher Mathias and Allie Winston that is published at Huffington Post and is titled Inside Patriot Front: The Masked White Supremacists On A Nationwide Hate Crime Spree. I would also recommend that people check out As a Service, Abortion Funds Have Some Value. As a “Strategy,” They Are Deadly! by Sunsara Taylor. That is at RevCom.us. Those are recommended readings. I’ll be trying to do more of those.

Thanks for listening to Refuse Fascism. I want to hear from you. Share your thoughts, questions, ideas for topics or guests, or lend a skill. Tweet me @SamBGoldman. Or you can drop me a line at [email protected] or leave a voicemail by calling (917)426-7582 You can also record a voice message by going to anchor.fm/Refuse-Fascism and clicking the button there.

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Thanks to Richie Marini, Lina Thorne, and Mark Tinkleman for helping produce this episode. Thanks to incredible volunteers, we have transcripts available for each episode, so be sure to visit RefuseFascism.org and sign up to get them in your inbox each week. Again, thanks for listening. We’ll be back next week. Until then, in the name of humanity we refuse to accept of fascist America!