What you Need to Know Before the Election For Whatever Comes Next

Refuse Fascism Episode 224

Sun, Nov 03, 2024 1:21PM • 56:18

Robert P. Jones  00:00

There’s a kind of asymmetrical polarization in the country. I always get annoyed when people talk about polarization as the problem. It is not the division itself that’s the problem. It’s that we have a kind of dedicated group that is committed to this country being of by and for white Christians. We should be having divisions if we have a rising threat of fascism — that should, in fact, divide us. I mean, that’s a healthy response, right? We should have democratic antibodies in our system reacting to that fascist threat.

Sam Goldman  00:49

Welcome to episode 224, 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 Robert P. Jones, president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute, PRRI, and author of The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future. This interview was recorded earlier this week,October 28.

I promised more details on our next live event, so I want to let you know we’ve switched the date and time. We’ll be getting together on Friday, November 8, at 8 pm for a live discussion via zoom — join us as we respond to the 2024 election, come together as we discuss what happened, provide analysis of the aftermath and discuss what is needed from people of conscience. Please see the link in the show notes to register, or you will be able to watch live from our Youtube, Facebook or Instagram. Be sure to share with others.

Help us reach more listeners at a time when refusing fascism is needed more than ever. After you listen to today’s show, be sure to share it with others — click the Share button in your app to send this episode to a friend or ten, or let the world know why you listen by rating and reviewing on Apple podcasts or your listening platform of choice. Thanks to the patrons who helped make this show possible. Join the community for as little as $2 a month at patreon.com/RefuseFascism

Sam Goldman  02:42

Before the interview, we’ve got to talk about readying for after Tuesday.

Donald Trump  02:46

Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay. Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.

Sam Goldman  02:55

That was Trump speaking with Tucker Carlson about Liz Cheney. This is a leader with God-like status in the eyes of his tens of millions of followers; the leader of one of the only two major parties in this country talking about unleashing a firing squad to violently execute his opposition. The language of fascist violence, murderous retribution against political enemies, especially women, is only getting louder as the election is days away. This isn’t only rhetoric. It is rehearsal for a scenario where people are killed, where they kill people, and those deaths are celebrated by the mob. MAGA is readying for real world violence, and people need to get their head out of their ass quick.

Here we are, two days before the election goes down. Our goal is to help listeners and as many people as we can reach prepare for what is already in motion, and what we can see developing, even as we cannot predict what will actually go down over the next period of time, in order to refuse fascism in the name of humanity. It’s what we do every week; what we have done through hundreds of episodes. So, if you appreciate that, if you know more people need to be hearing this and joining this effort, please consider making a generous donation, becoming a patron or sharing this show with others.

There is the prospect that Trump wins outright and the Democrats pass the baton without a fight. It isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that, should Trump win, that the Democrats raise some legal challenges, or other maneuvers within the framework of politics as usual. Should he win, it is also not completely out of the realm of possibility that the fascists decide not to wait until January for their program of retribution. It could also be too close to call for some time, this election, probably at least in part, as a result of the fascist strategy of muddying the waters, opening the door to a whole new level of disinformation and violence — along with political and legal maneuvers to throw out votes to involve the Trump-stacked fascism, fascist-dominated Supreme Court or the House of Representatives. 

There’s the chance Harris wins in a close race, spawning a violent and potentially successful coup attempt, and also a real possibility that Harris wins by a significant margin, and we see a wave of grievance and delusion fueled MAGA violence. These are just some of the many scenarios that could unfold. Right now, it is not realistic to assume that this will be a normal election decided on election day, or soon after, without any upheaval. We need to prepare for after Tuesday, and do so not knowing exactly what will happen. It is our preparation, our asking ourselves: What are we prepared to do? What are you prepared to do? What will we do together? How will we use our voice, our bodies, our networks, our talents, our creativity, our conviction and our courage, our care for humanity? 

Because no matter what, we will all be called on to not only combat disinformation but this fascist menace. The key to being prepared is cutting through the fog of the election, cutting through the piles of bullshit inundating us through every medium to understand who and what we are actually confronting: A battle tested and firmly United fascist movement within a stone’s throw of the Oval Office in a moment of profound crisis for the American empire. Through confronting that reality, we can recognize where potential for stopping fascism actually exists. This week, Teddy Wilson, in his Radical Report Substack, provided a solid roundup of the fascist election subversion PR already in motion — from their powerful influencers denying legitimacy of the results in advance and preparing their base to commit atrocities, to spreading evidence free conspiracy theories of democratic election interference and supposed liberal and leftist plots aim to justify any fascist violence as self defense, and much more. 

Wilson also drew attention to a memo circulated from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security stating that: “Domestic violent extremists, DDEs, are reacting to the 2024 election season and prominent policy issues by engaging in illegal preparatory or violent activity that they link to the narrative of an impending Civil War, raising the risk of violence against government targets and ideological opponents.” The Supreme Court of the United States has already signed off on Virginia’s voter roll purge, which, by any reading, directly contradicted the relevant laws. The fascist movement has installed 2020 election deniers in key positions throughout the electoral infrastructure. A number of them have already taken actions to block certification: ballot drop off boxes have been set on fire in several locations across the country, unprecedented levels of violent threats have been leveled against election workers, fascist foot soldiers have been recruited as “poll watchers” in many battleground states. Amongst their more general threats against the election Trump himself and House Speaker Mike Johnson have dangled a “secret plan.” 

Elie Mystal, writing for The Nation, explains that, amongst other fascist machinations, this “secret plan” is probably a reference to the various ways that fascist dominated state governments and the fascist- dominated House of Representatives can force a “contingent election,” where the House of Representatives simply replaces the popular vote with a vote amongst their state delegations — of which Republicans control, 26 out of 50. For more resources on these developments — the attacks on the election, voting rights and fascist maneuvers to subvert the Election, including links to the pieces I mentioned from Elie Mystal and Teddy Wilson — see our show notes.

When we hear about threats of violence and other threats to the electoral system, like Trump and Johnson’s secret plan, we can deal with this information in different ways: If we buy into the American mythology that fascism couldn’t really happen here, that America and its institutions are immune to fascism, it is tempting to write these threats off as hyperbole, as a ruse to motivate their base as a distraction, or even as a sign of desperation from a losing campaign. 

But if we see the crises and necessity that this empire is facing, and the deep roots of fascism running through the history of this country, it becomes clear that the potential for significant violence and other subversions of the election process are very real, and this violence and subversion are not simply acts of an egomaniacal loon, or petty acts from a narcissist, but they are based in and geared toward a cruel and brutal vision for the future of a white Christian patriarchal America with immediate plans of violent retribution and unprecedented mass deportations — of the total subordination of women to men, of rigid imposition of the gender binary and the erasure of any threat to strict “traditional” gender roles, of re-energized empire dominating the globe through brute force. 

As real as the potential for violence is, the threat itself is also a key part of their strategy — calculated to scare you into submission, but very importantly, not to scare you into action. What do they need to carry out the seizure of power? Do they just need more votes than their competing candidate? the support of a majority of the populace? No, that’s not how American elections have ever worked. Do they just need more votes in the right states to tip the Electoral College in their favor? Getting closer, but still, no. They’re not leaving this up to an electorate which they blatantly lie is full of “illegal immigrants,” but which they very deeply believe is populated by subhumans who do not deserve a voice in the country which God gave exclusively to European Christians. 

What they need is a mobilized and heavily armed minority of true believers and a cowed, politically paralyzed, fearful majority. What they are counting on is the decent people in this country to be lulled into passivity by any combination of the beliefs that this horror could not come to pass and that it is simultaneously inevitable. They are counting on you to double down on the very institutions which they’ve either weaponized for their fascist aims, or which they don’t feel bound to. They are relying on the fact that their opposition will continue to channel all our hopes into the Democratic Party, which refuses to confront the threat of fascism, which is often more scared of people demanding justice than they are of the fascists, which has no answers to the crises the empire is facing, but is increasingly futilely grasping for a stability that is never coming back. 

The fascists thrive on the oxygen we give them, on their ability to wreak havoc unopposed. As recently as this past Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris said: “I don’t believe that people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I will give them a seat at the table. That’s what real leaders do. That’s what strong leaders do.” I’ve gotta ask: Is she really talking about giving a seat at the table to Palestinian Americans who her party refuse to even let speak at their convention? Is she really speaking about college students who have risked life and limb to oppose a genocide that she’s enabling? Or is it much more likely, as she has proven over decades, that she is exclusively talking about Republicans — the people who just a couple weeks ago, she almost said were fascists. 

This is not a so called purity test. This is a statement of fact that no matter how well funded their strategy, if we rely on the strategy that the Democrats are pursuing right now, we’re fucked. We cannot wish this away or desperately cling to an illusory common ground. There is going to be a fight for the future, and what that looks like, and what that means is still being shaped, including by our actions and our inaction. 

As friend of the show Paul Street recently wrote: “The silence on fighting back is deafening. The lack of faith in any notion of resistance is stunning.” We see and hear the fear from decent people everywhere we go, but right now, the prospect of the tens of millions — the majority — of people who do not want fascism, actually taking this fight upon themselves, taking responsibility to stop fascism, stepping onto the stage of history outside the official channels or approved process, all that has been written off, placed beyond the pale, and even demonized as irresponsible or potentially making things worse. This must change. It must change fast. We must change it. Hiding from the truth will not help anyone. 

When the Democratic Party leadership go into overdrive to paper over, reinterpret and distance themselves from Biden’s comment that the only garbage he sees is the Republican supporters. When they disavow comments like the infamous “basket of deplorables,” they are reinforcing the delusion that we are one nation undivided, the mythology of American exceptionalism, that America is and is always and inevitably, the good guy — that we’re all on the same team — that fascism couldn’t happen here. But if you actually acknowledge this fascism, its wide ranging base of support, its political power, its deep roots, you are indicting this country and shattering the mythology on which it stands. 

That may be scary, but what’s much scarier is clean to delusions that will carry us over the precipice to a fully consolidated nuclear armed fascism in the most powerful, most dangerous country in the world. So while there is much that we do not know about what will happen on Tuesday and going forward, we do know this: Fascism is never legitimate. No election fair or fraudulent can legitimize a fascist regime. If Trump wins, it is essential that there be an immediate mass public denunciation that this is illegitimate; a program of ethnic cleansing: illegitimate; white supremacy: illegitimate; theocracy: illegitimate. Don’t wait for permission, be in the streets. We need to be prepared to put our bodies on the line to defend people, especially our immigrant siblings. We mustn’t wait for the brutality and cruelty to unfold. We mustn’t allow ourselves to accept the unacceptable or normalize the unthinkable. We mustn’t waste our time relying on or defending institutions that abet fascism. As many have noted, Hitler himself came to power through the process of elections and established legal procedures. We can see in retrospect, the profound and terrible error of those who hoped it would blow over, who believed that Hitler would expose himself and fall from power on his own, who had faith that the “wise leaders” of the system would somehow intervene, or even those who can find their resistance to helping others survive until the regime would somehow collapse without intervention. 

We also need to be in the streets against any attempts of a coup to stop a fascist takeover. While things are different, because the fascists do not have the White House this time, their base and their party are far more cohered. They have the Supreme Court, and they have a media apparatus, including social media, that they didn’t have before. While there are differences and the Democratic Party being in power alters the terrain, there are still lessons we can learn from Trump’s last coup attempt. In short: It matters to be in the streets to oppose any and all of Trump and the Republi-fascist attempts to try to subvert the election. It matters to not cede the streets to MAGA nazis. It matters that we don’t obey in advance. It matters that we refuse fascism. Now, here’s my interview with Robert P Jones.

Today I’m speaking with Robert P Jones, president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute, PRI, and a leading scholar and a New York Times best selling author. His latest book is The New York Times bestseller, ‘The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future.’ It was published September 5, 2023. Welcome Robert. Thanks for joining me.

Robert P. Jones  17:03

Hello. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Sam Goldman  17:06

I feel like we have to start by talking about last night. We are recording this October 28th, and last night there was basically, a Nazi rally, reviving the worst of American history. What was spewed was grotesque and vile, from people who we know have said grotesque and vile things. It was beyond the normal scope in terms of the demonization of so many peoples, and the crassness of some of it, was even beyond what they usually allow — not just Trump, but the milieu of other speakers that they had up there.

Many said, right in the aftermath, while it was going on, and some of the commentary right after, that: Well, you know, he shot himself in the foot, Trump. There he was making gains with getting the Latino vote or getting the Black male vote, and this was going to do him harm. I felt like that, while may or may not be true, wasn’t really what he was going after, the Trump campaign, with the event. I just wanted to get your take on what we witnessed. What were they going for, and what impact do you see them having?

Robert P. Jones  18:18

I think this has brought back to light, I think, an episode that many people either didn’t know about or kind of tried not to think about too much. We had an actual Nazi rally in 1939 in that space, in Madison Square Garden, in 1939. 20,000 Americans turned out to celebrate the rise of the Nazi Party. There’s no doubt in my mind that this was on the radar of people. So, we get these kind of symbolic things from Trump’s campaign. He began his campaign in Waco, Texas, which is another place that is a kind of nod to the militia movement in the U.S. And this, I think, was another kind of wink, wink, nod, nod to the fascist movement in the U.S. There’s just no doubt there’s this echo. 

We’re down on the home stretch of the election, we’re just over a week away, and New York is not a battleground state. There’s no logical reason for him to be doing anything in New York. He should’ve been doing what the Harris campaign was in Pennsylvania or Michigan or Wisconsin — any of the seven swing states. It’s very clear he was after a symbolic event, and for just, like, the base of his base. You’re right, just in terms of decency, it was appalling. 

We used to talk about racist dog whistles, but this was just outright bald racism against entire groups of people — talking about Puerto Rico as a floating trash heap. These are American citizens he’s talking about. People who live in Puerto Rico cannot vote in the presidential election, so there may be some mitigated risk, but Puerto Ricans who live in the U.S. can vote, and there’s considerable numbers of them in swing states. It just made no sense other than as a kind of authoritarian fascist, kind of nod to his most rabid racist supporters. It was just really appalling.

Sam Goldman  20:05

I agree, it was really appalling, even though we’re not shocked. I feel like there’s very little that they could say at this point that I couldn’t believe he would say that, but it’s still outrageous, and I worry that we’re starting to lose, in some ways, the ability to be appalled or outraged. You spoke about it being a message to, like, the real, true base — the most loyal, the most aggrieved, the most violent. I worry that the grouping that surrounds that solid core, if you will, of the MAGA movement is, in many ways, becoming much more accommodating to the most rapid base, the most — what I would say — fascist base, where: Oh, that’s not really what they mean — the apologizing, and then they can say something even more xenophobic, even more racist, even more antisemitic, even more anti-woman, even more anti-trans folks, and it just becomes more and more acceptable each round they have, and that ripples out to the rest of society, where it’s just: Oh, another Trump thing, they’re just putting on a spectacle. They’re just putting on circus, and it’s not real. I worry that that’s becoming more of a phenomenon, where people are are just more thinking that this isn’t real.

Robert P. Jones  21:27

I think that’s a real danger and a real worry, that it’s just political theater with no reality behind it. But this is the way these things get off the ground, as you’re noting, that there is a kind of ramping up. I’ll just give you a couple examples: Even in his 2020 campaign, which was full of anti-Muslim rhetoric and full of anti-immigrant rhetoric — some of that stuff was straight up racist — but we were not hearing about immigrants poisoning the blood of the country. That’s another bright line. So where does that language come from? That language comes straight out of Mein Kampf. You can literally quote it from Adolf Hitler’s Mind Kampf. Mein Kampf uses references to, kind of, the purity of the blood over 150 times — it’s a central trope of that kind of fascist Nazi way of thinking. We’ve gotta take that seriously. 

The other piece of this is that he’s not just kind of using empty language. When he’s talking now about rounding up immigrants and putting them into militarized encampments, he’s talking about internment camps on U.S. soil, and using the U.S. military to do that, and he’s thought it through enough that he’s citing the alien enemies Act, which was, in fact, the legal basis where the last time we had internment camps on U.S. soil, during World War Two for Japanese and other Americans, it was citing that act. This is not empty rhetoric, he’s actually saying: Not only am I citing mine comp, but I am giving you a signal that I actually know the legal basis on which I could actually go set about doing some of these things should I be reelected.

Sam Goldman  22:59

Yeah, and I think it also speaks to this whole network that he has this time, including a much more educated legal and conservative infrastructure that he’s able to rely on, that he didn’t really have the last two go arounds. Not only does he have more loyalty that people point out, correctly so, that he’s able to get people to just treat him with a god like status, but also he’s able to bring in people who, before, were not going along — who were still watching the Trumpist movement to see how it played out, and now they’re throwing all in. 

Every major conservative think tank, every major conservative law firm, is going all in on this. You had mentioned something that I think we’ve talked some about on the show over the past four or five years now, and that’s the history of this country, and people understanding the ways that things that were a part of our history are being revived in the most violent ways. One of the challenges for a lot of people is seeing the threat as something that’s external; fascism or authoritarianism as outside of American history, or even still, in 2024 like white supremacy is outside of our history — we’re the good guys, always. 

When it comes to the very question of whether immigrants are full human beings or not, that is where it gets really, really sharp. Some of the research that PRI was part of, I found incredibly striking, deeply troubling, around American beliefs on immigrants. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but you know, when it came to the rounding up of undocumented people living in the United States, one in three Americans believed, “We should round up immigrants who are in the country illegally, even if it takes setting up encampments guarded by the military.” That’s one in three Americans, overall, and then two thirds of Republicans believe this. 

I find it staggering — like, I’m at a loss of words. I was wondering why we didn’t see any type of visible resistance, really, in a major way, when some of these egregious statements about the people of the Haitian community in Springfield, or the people of Aurora Colorado came out, that calls for mass deportation now that we didn’t see like a mass denunciation of that. Then I read your study, and it gave some answers as to why. And what and what about the 1/3 Republicans that don’t? Where are they? I just wanted to get your thoughts on how you interpret this data, what lessons you think we should glean from it?

Robert P. Jones  25:51

There’s clearly a set of findings from our last round of surveying. We just released it two weeks ago. This is a survey we do every fall called the American Values Survey that we do in partnership with the Brookings Institution every year. So, we’ve done this for 15 years straight, and increasingly, what I’m finding is that there are questions that we’re having to write that as a social scientist, I just never thought I’d have to write about our country. I mean, before we even get to the results, it’s kind of stunning that we even need to know the answer to whether Americans want to round up people and put them in internment camps? I mean, this is stunning, right? 

We should just know the answer that that is not what Americans do. That’s not what a democracy does to people inside of its borders. Political violence, “Poisoning the blood of the country.” I remember we were having discussions as we were writing these questions, like: Oh my God. Like, where are we in the country that we need to know how many Americans support these things? As you say, it’s the minority, but it’s not a negligible number of Americans. And the pattern that we see over and over on all these questions, whether it’s political violence or racism or xenophobia or support for fascism, you see this pattern, it’s about three in ten Americans, but it’s a super majority of Republicans, and it’s a super majority of white evangelical Protestant Christians that are supporting. So there’s a kind of asymmetrical polarization in the country. 

I always get annoyed when people talk about polarization as the problem in the country, as if there’s just two sides and we’re just divided, and it’s the division itself that is the problem. It is not the division itself that’s the problem. It’s that we have a kind of dedicated group that is committed to this country, being of by and for white Christians, and that everybody else can be here as kind of second class citizens. That’s the vision. I want to go back to that 1939 rally: If you looked at the banners that were hanging on the wall at that rally. There were America First phrases around that rally, and in that case, it was directed at Jews, but it was like: End the Jewish domination of American Christians. That was the messaging in 1939. 

While we’re talking, Trump has kind of twisted this into more about immigrants instead of Jews. What is he protecting? It is this vision of a kind of white Christian country that’s being protected across all these questions. So this is where we are, the challenge is that because we only have two political parties in this country, that view that’s really about a third of the country has found a megaphone by taking over one of our two political parties, and that gives it a very outsized voice in the country. If there’s any silver lining here is it is that it’s not 50% of the country that believes these things, but it has taken over the apparatus of one of our two political parties, which gives it inordinate power.

Sam Goldman  28:36

And their social base is much more organized and vocal and passionate, unfortunately. It’s a negative polarization in that way, because they’re all in and those, I would say, people of conscience, the decent people, in many ways, keep it quiet — sometimes, I think to avoid any larger confrontation, or thinking that it will de-escalate that way. But we’ve seen, in my opinion, that they’re not going to stop, unless they are stopped. For a good section of them, they believe that they’re doing God’s work with this, and if you believe that you are on a godly mission, and this is the final battle, what wouldn’t you do? So I think that creates a different sense of obligation, I guess.

Robert P. Jones  29:19

I think that’s right. That is the other thing that’s wrapped up in this, is this view of Christian nationalism. It’s that same pattern, three in ten Americans are qualified as Christian nationalism adherents or sympathizers, and it is that view that God has granted these lands to be a kind of promised land for European Christians. That’s the view, if you really do believe that the creator of everything that is in the universe has granted these lands for your exclusive use, then the ends justify the means assumes a very powerful appeal, and the means become kind of immaterial, really, if the ends are dictated by god, at the end of the day. 

That’s why this is really dangerous. It’s just so antithetical to the kind of humility that democracy required. We could all be passionate about our beliefs and think we’re right, and we can argue and we can make the case for it, but at the end of the day, in a functioning democracy, we’ve all got to be willing to believe that we might just be wrong about something, even if we, by our best lights, we think we’re not. But you lose that completely when you kind of think that God is on your side and that’s just a kind of divinely ordained mandate. So it’s just fundamentally dangerous from the get go. 

There’s no part of me that thinks that Trump has enough theological conviction to actually believe that himself, but he’s well aware of the power of that belief. When he’s talking to white evangelical audiences, he will say things like: We’re not going to let in the people who hate our religion — as if our religion is something that everybody just implicitly understands. But in that room, it’s a very homogeneous room. And I should say the other dangerous thing for our country is that the two political parties over the last 50 years have sorted themselves along lines of race and religion. 

So our country today is very, very diverse. If you take what used to be the old WASPy majority — the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Christian majority — even if you take all white Christians in the country today, it’s only 41% of the country today. But the Republican Party is 70% white and Christian in a country that’s 41% white and Christian. So these things about our country, our religion, there is this way in which it really is appealing, really only to this white Christian majority who feels a real sense of divine entitlement to the country.

Sam Goldman  29:38

That’s super helpful, to remember that. You’ve written about how white Christian nationalism raises the stakes of political contests; how Christian nationalists view their opposition as literally, agents of Satan. I’m wondering: what should this tell us about potential scenarios in this upcoming election, in a little over a week, based on folks understanding and the plane in which they’re operating? How do you see that impacting, I guess, interpretation of results and then, their response?

Robert P. Jones  32:08

We should all be really clear that we can no longer say that in the United States, we have a clear and clean track record of always having a peaceful transition of power. We used to brag about that as a kind of hallmark of American democracy; that we set an example to the world, we would have a peaceful transition of power. But in the last election, Donald Trump refused to concede and incited an insurrection — people died. We’re in new territory, we’ve gotta remember that. 

We’ve been asking, since then — again, you know, the fact that we have to ask serious questions about political violence is something quite new in the country, but  — we’ve been asking about that since 2021. What we’re finding is that, for example, our question is: Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save the country. Now, when we ask that question, it’s less than a quarter of Americans who say they agree with that question, but it goes up to nearly three in ten Republicans who say they agree with that question. It’s only 8% of Democrats. So this is definitely not on both sides kind of problem. 

So, you think of it that for a minute again, it’s not a majority of Republicans. It’s only three in ten, but it doesn’t take that many to get us actual violence on the ground and three in ten members of one of our two political parties is not a small number saying that they can imagine that political violence might be justified. The other question that we asked is actually support for a straight up coup in the election, that if your candidate loses, do you think that he should just declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume his rightful place as president? And there we find that it’s 19% of Republicans. 

One in five Republicans just say: Yeah, even if he loses, and even if we kind of acknowledge that he loses, he should just try to do whatever he can. And those with a favorable view of Trump, it’s all it’s 23% so almost a quarter saying that. So, when you’ve got that kind of political imagining and moral imagining, even ahead of the game, in the heat of the moment, you can imagine that’s a number of people who will be angry, enough, fearful enough, desperate enough to try to take matters into their own hands, especially if they have a leader like Donald Trump sending them the signal that this is what they should do.

Sam Goldman  34:20

He’s not the only one sending them the signal. In some cases, it’s their very religious leader. Yes, has Trump become, in a way, a religious leader unto himself? Absolutely, but if your preacher, your pastor, is inculcating that as a pillar of your faith, now, it’s hard to imagine that people within that congregation would go against it.

Robert P. Jones  34:42

Yeah, there’s been a rise of this sort of militant language inside of the white evangelical world. It’s always been there in some ways, but it’s been even further politicized. If you go to January 6th and you like, read transcripts of people who are doing interviews, if you pay attention to the kinds of songs that were being sung by the insurrectionists, there were a lot of Christian kind of songs that are like worship songs, but they have language in them that refer to, like, the army of Christ, and kind of in prayers that were like: We claim this demon/demonic stronghold in the name of Jesus. We pray the blood ofJesus over the demons that are here.

So this sense that there’s a spiritual warfare — that entire worldview and understanding of things — is very much a reality inside many of these white evangelical [congregations]. So there, from kind of talking about spiritual warfare to actual political violence, is a very, very short step.

Sam Goldman  35:35

Yes, and I’ve noticed there’s been somewhat of an uptick, in a similar way to what we saw prior to January 6th, of the events that have that character. On the show, we’ve covered a lot of the activism and preparation on the part of the so called fringe, but large and influential Christian movements, such as the New Apostolic Reformation, to support Trump, including in the streets, and potentially with violence. While your work chronicles the long standing ways all churches, including mainstream northern branches, perpetuated segregation and discrimination historically. I was hoping you could maybe recap what you’re noticing some more of the mainstream churches are doing right now. In the lead up to the election.

Robert P. Jones  36:21

We’ve been talking mostly about the groups that have become susceptible, or kind of sucked into this Christian nationalist worldview. That’s certainly not the whole story, thankfully. There are a fair amount of groups that are… I mean, I just had to come across my desk today, for example, a book that’s been put together by the Episcopal Church that is calling Christian nationalism a Christian sin, and really calling [it] out as something not only anti-democratic, but opposed to true Christian faith. So there’s groups like that, here is a group sponsored by a group called the Baptist Joint Committee, called Christians Against Christian Nationalism, that’s got tens of thousands of signatories on it now. 

This problem has been recognized inside of many, particularly white Christian churches where the problem is most acute. I’ve been kind of on the road a bit, and probably over the last three years, have been in 200 predominantly white Christian churches that have asked me to come in and have this conversation, because they’re realizing that it has made inroads, and they’re realizing that it’s a dangerous thing, and that in predominantly white Christian spaces — that’s the place that has a responsibility to kind of stand up and provide an alternative vision.

Samatha Goldman  37:00

I was wondering where right now is the Southern Baptist Convention? What role are they playing right now?

Robert P. Jones  37:35

All signs are they’re all in for Trump. In the previous election cycles, particularly 2016, there were sizable number of fairly prominent white evangelicals that stood up and said: Oh no, no, no, no, we’ve been kind of making such a big deal out of and branding ourselves as values voters. Gotta think back, this was the brand in 2004. Following the Southern Baptist and white evangelicals, we were Values Voters. 

I’m thinking of someone like Russell Moore, who, at the time, was the head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty commission at the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the lobbying arm. So he was pretty prominent person. People like Beth Moore (they’re not related),  kind of prominent evangelical woman, kind of Bible teacher and celebrity, really, inside the Southern Baptist world. Tthey’ve both been purged. They both left since then. Just like there’s been a purging inside the Republican Party, there’s been a purge that’s happened inside Southern Baptist and broader white evangelical circles. 

Those strong voices that were saying: “We cannot support this kind of racism, we cannot support this kind of xenophobia” — they’re largely gone. So they’re outside the space. The last numbers we have — we don’t have specific numbers on Southern Baptists, but we do have numbers on white evangelicals, where they are the largest denomination — we see absolutely no movement this election cycle. So our latest numbers have white evangelicals supporting Trump at 83%, which is essentially right where they’ve been in the last two election cycles.

Samantha Goldman  37:35

How about the United Methodists?

Robert P. Jones  39:07

United Methodists are interesting. Again, we don’t have specific election data on them. They are a mainline Protestant denomination, and the largest mainline Protestant, which means they’re technically no-Evangelical, although they do have a heavy presence in the South. But it’s worth remembering that that group, the closest proxy we have is to where United Methodists are, is where all non-evangelical white Protestants are the kind of mainline churches. It’s worth remembering that the number that everybody can kind of maybe cite off the top of their head is that eight in ten white evangelicals supported Trump.

But in both election cycles where Trump has been on the ballot, it has also been true that six in ten white mainline Protestants have supported Trump. I think that’s a surprise to many folks, but it’s still true that if you want to characterize the American religious landscape and voting patterns since 1980, it’s really simple. White Christians of all stripes, white evangelicals, white non-evangelical Protestants, and white Catholics have voted solid majorities for Republican candidates no matter who they have been. Trump did not change that pattern at all, which I think also tells you this is not a circumstance that Trump created. It’s one that he has exploited, and that’s different. There was a kind of xenophobic, white supremacist and kind of racism there, operating in those spaces. He’s just been very skillful at knowing how to kind of operationalize those for his campaign.

Samatha Goldman 40:30

Thanks for underscoring that. You had mentioned some of the groups that brought you out, some that are self organizing to sound the alarm on the threat. I was wondering whether there were any groups in other congregations that are attempting to fight against this that you think it’s important that people be aware of.

Robert P. Jones  40:50

There are, and I think there may be in unlikely spaces. In some cases, they are a kind of lonely voice in their communities, particularly in the South, which is so dominated by kind of white evangelicals. But I’ll just give you a couple: In the last few weeks, two places that have hosted sort of me and number of my colleagues, Kristen Dumais, who wrote Jesus and John Wayne, Jimar Tisby, who wrote The Color of Compromise, and Diana Butler Bass, who has written a dozen books, and most recent being a book called Freeing Jesus.

But the First Baptist Church of Greensboro, North Carolina, hosted us for a Faith in Democracy forum with music and all of us speaking — an evening with folks. And then we were in Dayspring United Methodist Church in Tempe, Arizona, actually, last Sunday as well. These are hundreds of people turning out, but it’s not the typical thing they end up with in many of their communities.

Sam Goldman  41:44

I wanted to shift gears a little bit to one of the things that I took away from your latest book. You’ve written three books that excavate the white supremacy that underlies one of the bedrock institutions in American society, the Christian church. One of the important themes of your most recent book is the “Doctrine of Discovery,” which was the moral and legal argument justifying the genocide of the indigenous people in the U.S., and the theft of their land. I wanted you to tell us a little bit about this critical doctrine and the way it continues to influence and impact our world today.

Robert P. Jones  42:20

It’s tightly connected to our conversation we’ve already been having about Christian nationalism. One question is: Okay, well, we have this thing we’re experiencing now and describing as Christian nationalism. Again, it’s just this basic idea that this country was given by god to European Christians as a kind of divinely ordained promised land. It’s a very old idea. And so part of what I was up to in my book, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy, was trying to trace it back. How far back does this idea go? And maybe where’s the most kind of closest proximate cause? Where and how did it land on these shores?

And then: How does it come to fruition today? In doing that work, you know, I had to go back, like 500 years to kind of trace it back. So there is this set of Christian doctrines that have come to be known as the doctrines of Christian discovery, that really are about the church wrestling with the question of, what are Europeans/Christians responsibilities toward all these people that were so called discovered and the 15th century? There were lands that nobody knew about and people nobody knew about. It creates a theological crisis in a way. These people are literally not on the conceptual map or the theological map that Europeans were using. So the question got posed back to the church, which at the time, was the closest thing to international law that existed — it was the kind of moral and legal kind of thing that linked together all of Europe. The question was put to them: What rights do these people have that we are bound to respect as Christians? And the way that the theology worked, it essentially answered that question with a question.

Now it’s very sophisticated and all of its reasoning, but essentially it boils down to this: The threshold question was: Well, are these people Christian? Of course, they knew the answer to that. Of course not. They’re not Christian. And if they were not Christian, then there was a preconceived category that they fell into, and that category was enemies of Christ. So that’s how the theology worked. If they weren’t Christian, they were considered to be enemies of Christ until which time, if they were willing to convert, they could get out of that category of enemies of Christ and come join the church. But if they were unwilling to convert, then that’s the kind of enemy category that they were in.

Then it followed if they were unable to convert, then the church explicitly spelled out well, then you could take their goods, you could take their land, and it even said in black and white in these church documents, you could submit their persons to perpetual slavery. This is all spelled out and justified with Christian theological doctrine. If we take that seriously, that this is the version of Christianity that lands on these shores from Europe — this is it. It predates the Republic, predates the British colonies, it’s very, very old. So all those paintings that we’re actually quite familiar with — we see some Conquistador and their kind of armor, on their horse, and they’re planting a flag on the shore, and they’re usually raising a cross in these [paintings].

Sometimes, I think, before I had a firm grip on this history, I maybe thought: Oh, well, that’s just them. They’re about to have a little thankful worship service, you know, for the safe journey across. But no, it was actually a legal claim to the land that they were enacting with the authority of that cross going up and the flag being planted. These were claims to dominion and entitlement to the lands. It was not metaphorical. It was it was actually legal here. So that’s what we’re dealing with. And that doctrine of discovery, you know, came to be the legal basis on which our laws around land were actually created in this country.

Sam Goldman  45:46

I was wondering whether anything has shifted since some of what you wrote was written in your book, ‘The End of White Christian America,’ which came out in 2016. You had talked about the demographic crisis for white Christians, as they’re shifting from being the largest demographic in the country to just a plurality. I’m wondering A) why are they so afraid of this change, and has that fear changed? Or do you think that the texture of it, or anything from the time that you wrote it to now has changed. And maybe [B)] what you’ve discovered that people who are experiencing that sort of fear are capable of that maybe you thought they were capable of before, maybe you didn’t?

Robert P. Jones  46:33

I appreciate you kind of going back there. So the book did come out in 2016 which, of course, everybody associates with Trump’s rise to the presidency, but, the way books work, the book was completely wrapped before Trump was even on the scene at all. He wasn’t the Republican nominee yet. He was just kind of a has been reality TV star and real estate mogul in New York. That’s who he was when I wrote the book. So I didn’t have the benefit of seeing that rise, but I still think it sets the stage for what happened with Trump. It’s called The End of White Christian America, and I was describing the decline of these white Christian institutions, and then the anxiety that that had set off.

At the time, and I was describing what I, only half jokingly, sometimes called the Great White Christian freak out moment that we are experiencing, and what’s underneath that? What’s underneath it is the demographic change in the country that has happened, really, since 2000, so it’s a bit fairly recent. Just the last 20 years, we’ve undergone a fairly dramatic change in the racial and religious identity of the country. For example, if we think back about the other big change we had, of course, was the election of our first African American president in 2008, right prior to that.

But if we kind of compare demographics to that event in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected president, the country was still a majority white Christian country. We were 54% white and Christian. If you kind of add all white Christians — Protestant, Catholic, non denominational, etc. — together, the country was still a majority, 54% white and Christian. By the time he gets out of office, just eight years later, we had crossed this threshold from being a majority white Christian country to the one that was no longer a majority white Christian country.

We had gone from 54% to 47% just across that eight years. I think the juxtaposition of our first African American president and that symbolic change combined with the actual demographic shift on the ground, and for white Christians, realizing: Oh, we are no longer the demographic majority in the country at the same time, they’re seeing this symbolic representation of the change in the country, I think that did set off this freak out moment. At the end of ‘White Christian America,’ I actually talk about/borrow these references from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ book, Stages of Grief to describe the kind of process that I thought white Christians, and particularly white evangelicals, who are like saw themselves as kind of the most entitled, and the kind of recipients of this promised land theology — what were they experiencing? Kubler-Ross talks about people who are dying and trying to come to grips with kind of an individual death, but I think it’s applicable for a social kind of shift too.

She describes the first two stages of coming to terms with the idea that you’ve gotten a terminal diagnosis are denial and anger. I think that’s a pretty apt description of where we’ve been with white evangelicals. That first it’s denial — nope, it’s not happening — but then as the numbers and the statistics and the changes in the country become undeniable, the next thing is anger — like: We are going to fight tooth and nail against it with everything we have. If we go down the line, the other things are: bargaining — like we’re going to bargain with god: If you give me, two more weeks, I’ll donate money to charity — like those kinds of things in the individual context. I think the grandest bargain evangelicals have ever been willing to make is with Donald J. Trump.

That kind of shotgun marriage between white evangelicals and Trump was all a kind of desperate move to kind of stave off these changes. And Donald Trump was more than willing to say: Yeah, if you elect me, I’m going to bring power back to the white Christian churches. That’s what I’m going to do. Nobody else is gonna do that. It was just kind of a straightforward appeal to that kind of white Christian self interest and fear. One last thing is that, you know, the word ‘Again,’ in his slogan, I think, is by far the most powerful word. This sense of nostalgia, we’re going to bring it back to the 1950s when white Christians were, you know, the undisputed majority in the country, both politically and culturally. That’s the vision, and that sense of nostalgia and fear that we’ve lost that is the most powerful thing, kind of holding Trump and white evangelicals together still today.

Sam Goldman  50:32

As we start to close out the conversation, I’m wondering: Knowing what you know about the history of this country and the precipice we are on now, what is it going to take for this country to truly reckon with its white supremacist roots and to actually undo the continuing legacy of violence and inequality? I know you call for reparations and restitution, but I’m wondering how you reconcile that with the opposition to these demands. What would it take?

Robert P. Jones  51:00

I’m becoming more and more convinced that it’s going to take some active resistance. It has taken us a long time —  I’ve been kind of on this journey too. Can we talk about what we’re seeing now? I know we’re on the Refuse Fascism podcast here. Can we use that word, ‘fascism’? Can we use the word ‘Nazi’ to describe what we’re seeing? It’s taken the public a long, long time to get to where mainstream newspapers now are finally using the word ‘fascist’. We’ve got one of Trump’s former chiefs of staff using the word ‘fascist,’ a general, marine, four star general using that term is not someone who would use that term lightly, nor misunderstand what it means. 

This is all really important, so we have to name it. But I also think we’ve got to stop just talking about our problems as polarization and division. Those things are symptoms, and they are perhaps lamentable and make life difficult, but the they’re not the problem. We should be having divisions if we have a rising threat of fascism in the country — that should, in fact, divide us. That’s a healthy response. We should have democratic antibodies in our system reacting to that fascist threat, and I think we are seeing some of that reactivity. 

I’m reminded, though, just kind of bring it back to where we started, at that rally in 1939: There were thousands and thousands of protesters outside Madison Square Garden saying: Hell No! Not here in our country, not here. I think we haven’t quite seen that yet, but I think we’re going to have to see that; a kind of collective and unequivocal No! To name it and then say no. We can have all kinds of disagreements about conservative versus liberal policies and what the role of government is, and, you know, even good, honest disagreements over things like abortion, but we have to be able to say a collective no to fascism in order to have a system where we can even have those other debates.

Sam Goldman  51:00

I agree. Even thinking and looking at the bravery that was on display by Isadore Greenbaum — I remember that he was a plumber and that he was from Brooklyn, and during that 1939 rally, he stormed the stage and was brutalized and arrested, but he shouted “Down with Hitler.” Tere was no disruption, really, to what we saw at the Garden this time. There were some protesters outside, but there wasn’t it that type of mass response.

I wanted to thank you so much, Robert for taking the time to talk to me, to share your expertise, your insight, your perspective. It’s so needed in this moment. Besides reading your books and checking out PRRI, where else do you want to direct people to go to connect with you and your work? Should it be your Substack?

Robert P. Jones  53:46

Thank you for that. You can find all of our data and stats at PRRI.org, but I’m also writing a weekly free newsletter up on Substack that you can find at www.whitetoolong.net, and then I mentioned my colleagues, Kristen DuMez and Jamar Tisby and Diana Butler Bass. We are doing also a joint podcast. We have a YouTube channel called The Convocation Unscripted. That is convocation unscripted. We’re up every week with new content. We also have a Substack, a YouTube channel and a podcast. So whatever your preference is, you can find us: The Convocation Unscripted.

Sam Goldman  54:22

Wonderful. Thanks so much. I hope you’ll join us this Friday, November 8, at 5 p.m. Pacific Time, 8 p.m. Eastern Time, via Zoom or live on our YouTube channel or on our Instagram or Facebook,as we respond to the 2024 election, see the show notes to register. Thanks for listening to Refuse Fascism, as always.

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Thanks to Mark Tinkleman, Richie Marini and Lina Thorne for helping produce this episode. Thanks to incredible volunteers, we have transcripts available for each show, so be sure to visit RefuseFascism.org and sign up to get them in your inbox. Until next Sunday, In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America.