Sarah Posner: The GOP’s Christian Supremacy Problem

Refuse Fascism Episode 133
Sarah Posner: The GOP’s Christian Supremacy Problem

Sun, Nov 06, 2022 12:12PM • 37:39

Sarah Posner 00:00

I think something that a lot of people aren’t grasping is how rapidly the Republican Party is radicalized. The Republican Party has become infused with, just blatant anti semites. To them, I think it became obvious that targeting the trans community, they could incite fear and disgust and panic. It’s very similar to the way they ginned up the panic about critical race theory. Trump modeled all of this for the next generation of fascists or wannabe fascists in his wake.

Sam Goldman 00:55

Welcome to Episode 133 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast 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 the United States. In today’s episode, we’re sharing an interview with journalist and author Sarah Posner. We’ll talk about key fronts in the Christian fascist movement, in particular antisemitism, Christian Zionism, and the targeting of trans folks. We’re glad to have Sarah back on the show.

Sam Goldman 01:35

But first, thanks to everyone who goes the extra step and rates and reviews on Apple podcasts, shares and comments on social media or YouTube. It helps us reach more listeners and we read every one. Here are a couple of messages from the last week, this time from folks on Instagram. @Zllabrave wrote: “The rise of the far right and fascism is awful. I can’t bear it.” And @AffinityGirl wrote: “Thank you, Teddy and Sam. You’re both amazing and we appreciate you.”

Well, @Zillabrave, we shouldn’t have to bear it. And to @AffinityGirl, we appreciate you. So after listening to today’s episode, go help us find more people who want to refuse fascism by rating and reviewing on Apple podcasts, and encouraging your friends and family who listen to do the same. Subscribe, follow so you never miss an episode, and of course, continue all that sharing and commenting on social media.

Sam Goldman 02:35

Before we get to the interview, we just gotta talk about Tuesday. No matter what happens Tuesday in the midterms, it is clear that the fight against fascism continues. Whether we see widespread fascist victories, which we cannot submit to, whether we continue singing under a stalemate of “balance” in Congress, whether violence erupts to affect the outcomes or the Fascists are constrained to threats, voter suppression and intimidation, in every one of those scenarios and any other that may arise, the onus remains on the people in our millions to act outside of politics as usual, to confront and defeat fascism.

It is going to take real political struggle, fierce struggle, blunt truth telling, and nonviolent mass opposition in the public square. We have a fight on our hands, and this fight needs you — listening to, discussing, debating, sharing and contributing to the show, and most importantly, the work of refusing fascism is vital. We know what has been falling short: trying to ignore the threat; retreating into our private lives; relying on voting alone; leaving it to tweeting scandalizing or “canceling.” On this podcast, we get deep into these issues of fascism, not just because we enjoy engaging discussions, not because fascism is interesting, but because fascism is an existential threat and stopping it is no superficial endeavor. This is not a matter of taste, but a matter of necessity. It is necessary to deeply understand and engage with these issues, not skim the surface. And it’s necessary to do that together with others, because that’s where our power lies.

On this show, we’ll continue to educate people on the roots, nature and trajectory of the real and present danger of fascism in the United States, to spotlight those rising up and to work together to understand and unite to stop an American fascist movement that imperils all of humanity. But we can’t do it alone. Donate generously, give whatever you can to support the show at RefuseFascism.org. Lend your skills, join the network by signing up at RefuseFascism.org, be sure to follow us on social media are @RefuseFascism, and most importantly, send us your thoughts and share your questions and how you are acting based on what you hear on the show. With that, here’s my interview with Sarah.

Sam Goldman 05:14

Today, I am so glad to welcome back Sarah Posner. She’s the author of Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Power the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind. She’s a reporting fellow with Type Investigations. Her investigative reporting and analysis on the religious right in Republican politics has appeared all over: Rolling Stone, The New Republic, Vice, HuffPo, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The American Prospect, Talking Points Memo, and I probably missed a bunch of other publications. She is a widely cited expert, a frequent commentator on religion and politics, and I’m so glad to welcome her back to the show. Welcome, Sarah.

Sarah Posner 06:00

Thanks for having me again, Sam.

Sam Goldman 06:01

Like many people, I have sadly been following Doug Mastriano and his campaigning. I know that you’ve been following as well. I just want to just start our conversation today on something that he said recently. I think a lot of people didn’t really understand how heavy it was. He was challenged on his antisemitism, and his wife interrupted, came up and responded. I’m not quoting word for word, her basic response was: “You will not find bigger supporters of Israel than the two of us.”

Sam Goldman 06:04

It was actually worse than that. I think it was something along the lines of “we’re bigger supporters of Israel than a lot of Jews are.”

Sam Goldman 06:32

Yes! Than a lot of Jews are. And I think it was directed at the person. Why…

Sarah Posner 06:56

Why would she say something like that?

Sam Goldman 06:58

Yeah.

Sarah Posner 06:59

So, Mastriano’s campaign has been infused from the beginning with what might be characterized as philo Semitism, but is actually anti semitism. So let’s unpack that a little bit. A lot of his campaign events, including the events at which he announced his candidacy for governor, have featured people who are not Jewish wearing talits, or people who are not Jewish blowing a shofar. So basically, like the appropriation of Jewish ritual objects for proving what a great Christian Patriot Doug Mastriano is. What’s happening here is two things at once.

One is Mastriano is running this Christian nationalist campaign. We’ve all read about it, we’ve all heard it talked about, we’ve all seen the evidence from his campaign stops, his events with Mike Flynn and Roger Stone and all of that. But he’s also infusing it with basically Messianic Judaism. Messianic Judaism is evangelical Christianity, that is injected with a like a heavy dose of: “We are getting back to our Jewish roots, the roots of Jesus Christ who was a rabbi,” by appropriating Jewish ritual, Jewish prayer, Hebrew words, that sort of thing. It’s very tied in with their views of the End Times, and what’s going to happen either in preparation for Jesus Christ’s return, or after his return.

So it’s all tangled up with a lot of eschatology and theology. But, it’s also tied up with the idea of what makes America a Christian nation. They’re Christian nationalists, so they believe that America is a Christian nation that it was founded as a Christian nation, and it should be governed as a Christian nation. But a key component of that is that America, the Christian nation, should “support Israel.” In their view, supporting Israel means supporting any right wing government of Israel, supporting the occupation, supporting the annexation of Palestinian land. So supporting Israel doesn’t mean: “Oh, we really like going to Israel and meeting people of diverse political viewpoints,” or “We really like going to Israel and going to Bethlehem and recognizing that Palestinians live there and live there under occupation.”

It’s not like that. It’s a very right wing, Zionist view of what Israel is or should be, and that’s what they mean by supporting Israel. In this ecosystem, there are good Jews and bad Jews, and the good Jews are the kind of Jews who support the right wing government of Israel. And the bad Jews are the ones who don’t, and who are against the occupation and against building more settlements and so on. That’s what’s happening here, and that’s what happened when Trump put that post on Truth Social where he said that Jews really needed to get their act together before it’s too late. That’s what this was about as well. He was saying in that post that the evangelicals who like me, they get it, and the Jews who don’t like me don’t get it, and they better get their act together. Better get their act together for what?

Because what these evangelicals who support Trump want is either to convert the Jews or, you know, maybe something bad will happen to them, particularly when Jesus comes back and if they don’t convert, they’ll perish like a brimstone. In Mastriano’s case, it’s both exemplifying this Christian nationalist fusion with Christian Zionism, but it’s also his campaign and his whole shtick really exemplifies this marriage of evangelical Christianity with this messianic evangelical attempt to make Judaism evangelical.

Sam Goldman 10:58

Yeah, and that I think, is extremely dangerous. A lot of people are unfortunately caught off guard when they conflate what they see as pro-Israel sentiment. People in this country, in the United States, who are Jewish heritage or identity, I don’t think that people see the danger of that and I think that your point, this good Jew versus bad Jew dichotomy is extremely important to pay attention to.

Sarah Posner 11:29

A lot of people don’t immediately recognize what is bound up in this statement of “I support Israel” because there are a lot of American Jews who are not necessarily fans of Bibi Netanyahu, they’re not necessarily fans of the settlements, but they still believe in the idea of a Jewish state and the idea of Israel. They just kind of wish that there could be a two-state solution, or they’re kind of in this middle zone. There are the right wing Zionist types and then there are the anti-occupation over on the other side, Jewish Voice for Peace, J Street, there’s a little spectrum.

I think that there are a lot of people in this kind of fuzzy middle, who, for a multitude of reasons, aren’t really comfortable getting into the politics of it, but they’re also not really comfortable with the occupation, and their identity isn’t necessarily bound up with “supporting Israel.” but they would still not want to be accused of not supporting Israel. I think what’s dangerous is it’s very insulting to claim that you as a Christian can identify who are the “right Jews” and “not right Jews;” it makes a lot of Jews very uncomfortable. I think a lot of Jews are uncomfortable with criticizing the evangelical “support for Israel” because they just have sort of a general — I think this is just kind of a trope that is embedded in a lot of people’s thinking that like — oh, you know, Israel has so many enemies and so it should take all the friends that it can get, even if these friends thinks that we’re all going to die at the end. It’s very complicated like that. But I think it’s a really dangerous thing.

Another thing that I was thinking about when I wrote a piece recently for Moment Magazine, where I talked about the Republican Party’s Christian supremacy problem. By setting themselves up as the arbiters of what is a good Jew, this is another dangerous element of Christian nationalism, where Christian nationalists are not only saying we’re a Christian nation, we should be governed as a Christian nation, and we love the Jews, as long as they’re the right kind of Jews who agree with us on Israel and that sort of thing. And the rest of the Jews, they really need to convert, they really need to get on the bandwagon here. This is classic antisemitism. Saying that Jews need to find Jesus, then they will be okay. Or Jews need to agree with our political view of the world or of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. This is also antisemitic.

This view of Jews and their role in Jesus and Jesus coming back is so embedded in American Evangelical Christianity. Now, I don’t know if you saw a story the other day about this Republican who’s running for Congress in Texas, he’s the author of a fictionalized retelling of the Anne Frank story in which both Anne Frank and her father eventually come to accept Jesus. There’s no storyline or no topic that they won’t infuse with this idea that Jews have to find Jesus.

Sam Goldman 14:38

I think that that’s really, really helpful. We were talking earlier before we started recording about how right now we’re in a situation where there’s almost an antiisemitic Olympics going on, where each candidate or person of influence seems to be trying to outdo each other in their cruelty and just the absolute outrageousness of what they’re saying. Now, some of it in the case of Mastriano, and Trump is almost identical, saying “I’m gonna say we probably love Israel more than a lot of Jews do” is pretty identical to “no president has done more for Israel than I have.” Those are almost identical.

But there’s a litany of examples of people vying for positions of political power — also just people of prominence, not necessarily vying for political power — utilizing the most disgusting rule — I don’t have another word for it — language. To me, I don’t know how widespread this feeling is amongst other people who were raised Jewish, but it seems like it doesn’t even make a news story. It will be kind of mentioned, but it’s: “Oh, that’s just talk.” I feel that that talk matters.

Sarah Posner 15:58

Absolutely. I think something that a lot of people aren’t grasping is how rapidly the Republican Party is radicalizing. What we saw over the past, let’s say seven years, is that Trump comes on the scene. And the national political press just sort of sees him as a businessman, reality star. “isn’t this interesting that this businessman, it’s real estate mogul and reality star is running for president.” What the far right sees — white supremacists, neo-Nazis — is somebody who’s speaking their language, is somebody who is representing their interests.

You saw that over the course of his primary campaign, when he was getting support of people like David Duke, and he would be asked about it in the national media, and he would dance around it. In the past, candidates would have to say: I denounce antisemitism, David Duke does not represent me, I do not want David Duke’s support, he should go away and go back to the hole he crawled out of. That used to be what the politicians would have to say if David Duke supported them, and so I think that Trump changed this game that’s played by the political press, where the candidate has the support of some really extreme outrageous person, the press goes to the candidate and says “will you denounce this person?”

Trump perfected this game where he would just do this little dance, “very fine people on both sides,” et cetera, and then finally, the press would give up. Then it just becomes part of who Trump is. Trump modeled all of this for the next generation of fascists or wannabe fascists in his wake. The press is never going to get an answer from Doug Mastriano or Marjorie Taylor Greene about why Marjorie Taylor Greene went to a conference with Hitler-admiring Nick Fuentes. You’re not going to get an answer from Doug Mastriano, about why he’s hanging out with Christian nationalists and espousing Christian nationalism and hanging out with antisemites. They’re never going to get those answers, and so after a while, I think the impulse for the political press is just retreat to business as usual. Because doing that doesn’t get them the thing that they were used to getting, if that makes sense.

I think what we’re seeing is that a kind of laziness kind of sets in. You just kind of wonder, okay, what’s the point of going back to these people time and time again when they’re not going to give a straight answer, or they’re just going to yell at me or just say fake news, or whatever the answer of the day is? Then we see all kinds of different examples, the candidate who wrote the book about Anne Frank and wrote the novel about Anne Frank, at this point, what it tells you is the GOP has become like a cesspool of extremism. But it also tells you that there is so much of it happening, that it’s almost impossible to really keep up with it, and I think that then, on top of the political press, letting it go, then it just is a factor of it’s so overwhelming to stay on top of all of it, that it’s just become sort of impossible. It’s a very sad state of affairs.

Sam Goldman 19:01

Yes. I was thinking, as you talked about this cesspool of extremism, and we’ve been talking about the anti semitism that is rampant within the GOP people, either in political power already or vying for it. One of the things that you had mentioned in the article that you had referenced was: This is a party that is at least in word, ends and begins with this religious freedom. They’re the people that care about religious freedom. That’s on the one hand, and on the other hand, their absolute incessant attack on American Jews. Is it more than hypocrisy? Is it something else?

Sarah Posner 19:46

There are two things going on right now with the Republican Party and this question. One is that the Republican Party has become infused with just blatant antisemites. The candidate in Oklahoma, who was just a blatant antisemite. Kari Lake is running for governor of Arizona. For some strange reason she endorses this candidate in Oklahoma, why? He said the most horrible, blatantly antisemitic things, and then the local Jewish community organization in Arizona calls her out for it. She says: Okay, I retract the endorsement. But that begs the question of why was it important for you to endorse him in the first place?

On the one hand, there’s this blatant antisemitism and these candidates who are dancing around it like her. And then there’s the strong strain of Christian Zionism and Christian nationalism, where they would never say “Hitler was right” or something like that. They know that that line is not one to be crossed, but they still believe that America is a Christian nation, and everybody should be Christian. It’s their duty to evangelize the Jews and the Jews won’t be right until they find Jesus, that there’s the right kind of Jew who loves Israel, there’s the wrong kind of Jew who doesn’t love Israel.

Both of these things are happening at once, and everybody is pretending like the Christian Zionists should continue to get away with not calling out these blatant antisemitic Hitler-loving types in their own party. I really feel like there was a time, pre-Trump, when if there was a blatantly Hitler loving person, the Christian Zionist who claimed to love the Jews in Israel would have said, “that person is unacceptable, we don’t want that person in our party.” But that is not happening right now, because what you’re seeing is somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene — I hate to keep bringing her up, but she’s just the perfect example and she’s also the person of the future in the Republican Party.

So on the one hand, she’ll go to Nick Fuentes’ conference and speak at it, and then on the other hand, claim to be a great supporter of Israel. She doesn’t get any pushback from the Christian Zionist groups or the other Christian right groups who claim to love Israel. And so she gets to exist in both of these worlds, and not suffer any intra-party consequences. That is definitely something new. Obviously, Christian Zionism is antisemitic, but the debate was: Is it okay because they somehow support Israel? And is it a question of, do they really want to convert the Jews? Those were the things that were debated. It wasn’t debated whether they were actually in bed with people in their party who want to kill Jews and think Hitler was right.

Sam Goldman 22:23

And now the situation is not only do they coexist, but they support each other.

Sarah Posner 22:29

Right. You won’t see major figures on the Christian right, like the political power players condemning Marjorie Taylor Greene for having gone to speak at the Fuentes conference. You won’t see anybody condemning Kari Lake, or even Doug Mastriano. The Republican Jewish Committee, which called on Mastriano to cut ties with Andrew Torba, the Christian nationalist antisemitic CEO of the social media company Gab. They called on him to cut ties with Torba, but they acted like that was Mastriano’s only transgression. And every day, they’re sending out email alerts, basically trying to gin up people’s outrage about pro-Palestinian Jewish students at colleges, as if that’s the greatest antisemitic threat in America. If you only got their emails, you would think that. They never mentioned the rampant antisemitism in their own party. It’s just really astonishing.

Sam Goldman 23:20

Yeah. Or that in LA, on the highway overpass, signs reading “Kanye was right.” That this is just what happens in 2022. I think that there’s the normalization that sets in. There’s the not mentioning it, let alone calling it out.

Sarah Posner 23:38

They’re acting like it’s not happening.

Sam Goldman 23:41

Even though it is throughout campaigns, and now it leaks into other aspects of popular culture and society and people rising who shouldn’t have a platform.

Sarah Posner 23:50

Right. I mean, the fact that Kanye and Kyrie Irving and you’re seeing all these very popular artists, musicians, sports figures. I think that figures in the Republican Party have lined up the supporters and the enemies, and the supporters will never be condemned for anything that they do, and the enemies will constantly be vilified for whatever they do.

Sam Goldman 24:15

Speaking of the enemy-making, what we refer to on the show, as the Republi-facist Party has done, you can’t help but notice a focus a honing in on a new enemy. That, in my opinion, would be the targeting of the trans community — in particular and most concerning, of trans youth. I know that this has been something that you’ve done some some serious writing on and I just wanted to start with: Why do you think that this fascist movement is focused so much hatred, and targeted, so much rage against the trans community?

Sarah Posner 25:02

Well, it actually started around 2014/2015, in the lead up to Obergefell, the Supreme Court decision legalizing same sex marriage, and in the aftermath of Obergefell. So basically, what the right was seeing was the realization that gay people and same sex families and all of it was culturally accepted by the Supreme Court, and they look at Obergefell as their new Roe. To them, they will aim to eventually overturn Obergefell, just like they this year, overturned Roe, nearly 50 years on. So they’re willing to wait that long.

Think of all the things they did in the interim, before they got Dobbs; trap laws, abortion restrictions, all of that stuff. That is the playbook that they’re going to use against Obergefell. So why trans kids? Why trans people, and in particular trans kids? Well, to them, I think it became obvious that targeting the trans community, they could incite fear and discuss and panic, not just among their followers, but among people who might otherwise be perfectly fine with Obergefell and marriage equality and all of that. It’s very similar to the way they ginned up the panic about critical race theory. They knew they could get their own base to freak out about it, but they thought maybe they could get other people to freak out about it, too.

And see how it always centers on kids. It always centers on the idea that public schools, or weird doctors, or academics are trying to twist your child’s brain and recruit them into something that’s dangerous and scary and unAmerican, or whatever. That’s kind of the model. So you take something that your base is really ginned up about, but you think maybe you can get other people on board too, and I think that that was precisely the strategy with their long anti trans efforts. I was in Texas in 2014/15, reporting on their efforts to have one of these bathroom bills that require trans people to use the bathroom associated with the gender on their birth certificate. They started with that, because they thought like people would be really scared that trans women would go into bathrooms; that they would rape your innocent wife or daughter. But I think they then began to think of other ways to scare parents about trans youth.

So then they moved on to sports: Oh, your daughter might not win the track championship, because there’s a trans girl on the opposing team. All of these things are sort of targeted, not at the Christian right base, but other constituencies. I think that’s what they’re trying with these anti-trans healthcare bans. I recently wrote a piece about a bill that became law in Arkansas that bans all gender affirming care for trans people under the age of 18. A court held it for a preliminary injunction, held it unconstitutional, and now there’s a trial going on to determine its constitutionality. But it’s all based on lies about what the medical establishment has determined about gender affirming care; that it’s life saving care for trans kids.

It’s not just that they’re trying to scare parents, but that they’re about trans adults grooming their children or something like that, which was like the bathroom argument. They’re basically trying to say that the medical establishment has it wrong, that, in fact, puberty blockers are bad for you, or hormone replacement therapy is bad for you, and these are just experimental, and they’re performing experiments on your children. It’s all just lies, but they sew enough little doubts for people, like they did with the critical race theory panic: “Oh maybe this this really terrible thing that’s being injected into public schools. Maybe this is really bad for my kids.” And it’s maddening for the medical community because they say: “We know. This has been the standard of care for years.” It’s a combination of targeting the most vulnerable, but also targeting them in such a way that you could potentially expand the reach of your very ugly arguments.

Sam Goldman 29:32

Yeah, I think that it’s twofold: Expanding who you can onboard into the attack, and also consistently expanding the group that you’re targeting; gradually, or not so gradually, in certain areas, expanding the target.

Sarah Posner 29:46

That’s a really good point. Talking about expanding the target, Arkansas starts with basically declaring gender affirming care illegal, and basically it prevents healthcare providers from providing it. Then In Texas decides we’re going to call it child abuse and we’re going to investigate parents for child abuse who take their kids to the doctor for gender affirming care. Can you think of another example where you take your kid to the doctor for the health care that the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, and all of them, say is the standard of care and you get investigated for child abuse? It’s beyond the pale.

Sam Goldman 30:26

Each time this goes down without a complete uproar, and people refusing it and resisting in all the ways that they can, it spreads. I think that that is exactly what they’re banking on. Going back to your point of this being something that there’s enough confusion around, or enough seeds of doubt, that leads people to not stand up and fight against it. Even if people aren’t for it, they’re not actively opposing it, and that complicity then works in their favor. It combines the flooding the zone, if you will…

Sarah Posner 31:02

That’s the effect of basically creating a panic.

Sam Goldman 31:06

Working off of entrenched patriarchy and traditional gender norms, and this being the same country that’s polling at 45%, saying we’re a Christian nation. So, there’s things that they’re working on; it’s not a blank field. Those of us who care, which are many, many people, and I don’t want to discount the the people that do care about reality, science and compassion, should be not silent; should be very loud. A lot of what you brought forward gives people the language to do just that, so I appreciate your insight and break down.

As we close out our conversation. We are talking eight days before the midterms, and I wanted to get your thoughts on what are you thinking about in this moment in relation to the — if you want to think about it as the Christian nationalist threat, or the GOP more broadly — what do you think we need to pay attention to?

Sarah Posner 32:11

Well, I think there are two things that we need to pay attention to November 8. One is the multitude of local races for attorney general, election officer, secretary of state whatever the top election official is in a state or county, and to what extent are we going to be facing a situation where there’s going to be a top election official who won’t certify an election that’s not in favor of a Republican, and how widespread that is going to be. Because it’s not like there’s just going to be one thing that happens, there’s going to be races where that the election denier wins and races that the election denier loses. But I think we have to pay attention to all of those, and in particular, to the top races for governor, secretary of state, in states where the candidates have been really upfront about their views on that, like Pennsylvania and Mastriano, or Arizona, Kari Lake, as pretty prominent examples there.

We have to be prepared for the possibility — some of the pollsters would say the probability — that the Republicans will retake the House of Representatives. Not only will that be spun by the political press as evidence that the policies and views of the Republican Party are favored by the American public, which I don’t think is true, but we will also have to contend with somebody like Jim Jordan, being the chair of the Judiciary Committee, and having to go through sort of insane, ridiculous fact-free investigations of Merrick Garland or Anthony Fauci or whatever, they gin up; Benghazi on steroids.

We have to be very aware of how that gets covered by the national press, and to talk about it and point out in any way that we can win the national press kind of both-sides these kinds of things like: Well, you know, the Democrats impeach Trump… Well, okay, right, you know, because Trump was the most criminal president in American history, that’s why they impeached him. So there’s gonna be a lot of gaslighting and both-sides-ing if they take control of the House. And if they could take control of the Senate too, which I hope is unlikely, but I think a lot of these races are on a knife’s edge, that’s [gasps], all bets are off then. But I think that the possibility of the Republicans retaking the House puts us in a position where it’s going to be very important to contest these kinds of both-sides-ing of their show trial kinds of investigations that they’ve already signaled that they’re going to do.

Sam Goldman 34:43

Thank you, Sarah, for coming on, for sharing your perspective, your expertise, your insight with us and of course, your time. In the shownotes. You’ll be able to find links to some of the articles that we mentioned and there’s Twitter as well. Thanks so much.

Sarah Posner 35:02

Thank you. Take care.

Sam Goldman 35:04

For more on Doug Mastriano and the threat of theocracy, check out Christopher Mathias’ latest up on HuffPost. He writes: “If polls, not prophecies are to be believed, Mastriano will be clobbered by his Democratic opponent, Josh Shapiro in Tuesday’s election, but his likely to be shouldn’t distract from what Mastriano represents: The ongoing radicalization of the Republican Party into a sect that sees its victory as inevitable and predestined from above, and which paints its opponents as the little incarnations of the devil in need of vanquishing. In this view, democracy is merely a roadblock in a divine quest for domination.” See Doug Mastriano’s Prophets in Pennsylvania in the show notes to read it in full. For more on the Christian right’s role in voter suppression, I recommend checking out on Annika Brockschmidt’s piece on Open Democracy, also linked in the show notes.

Sam Goldman 35:59

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