Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / “Charlie Kirk’s Secret Plan to Take Over America” with Dr Matthew Boedy

Transcript

“Charlie Kirk’s Secret Plan to Take Over America” with Dr Matthew Boedy · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Good day, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. Here's a doozy for you.
• 0:11
  Is the United States of America a Christian nation? Was it founded as a Christian nation?
• 0:16
  And should it someday become a truly Christian nation? That is a question that in recent
• 0:23
  decades has gone from being on the periphery of the National American conversation limited
• 0:28
  to a few lunatics on the far Christian right to a mainstream way of thinking on the American
• 0:34
  right. They may not call themselves Christian nationalists, which sounds a bit pejorative,
• 0:39
  but that is basically what they are and they comprise a significant minority of Americans today.
• 0:45
  One of the most influential people in mainstreaming this idea was none other than Charlie Cook,
• 0:50
  who I've learned a lot more about since his assassination. And whilst I'm inclined to respect
• 0:56
  Charlie for the fact that he did politics the right way and so far as he used language and
• 1:01
  conversations and trying to convince people that he was right rather than violence and
• 1:06
  whining and lobbying and campaigning, nonetheless what he was actually pushing for was a vision of
• 1:12
  America that is completely antithetical to liberal ideals and is infused with a level of Christianity
• 1:17
  that many secular Americans would find discomforting. Into this fray enters today's guest. Dr. Matthew
• 1:23
  Bodhi, he is an assistant professor at the University of North Georgia, but he used to be a journalist
• 1:28
  and in his academic work he focuses on the rhetoric of religion and specifically how religious
• 1:34
  people talk about evil and how this kind of mythology has emerged on the American right that the
• 1:41
  entirety of America, all of its institutions from the government to entertainment, to media,
• 1:46
  to the courts, to family, to business have been co-opted essentially by demonic progressive
• 1:52
  forces, the forces of sinfulness, the forces of gainess, the forces that want to destroy the family
• 1:58
  and virtue and everything made America great. That is no longer a fringe opinion and there is a
• 2:04
  significant proportion of the American population who seem enthusiastic about resurrecting a vision of
• 2:09
  the United States that is much more theocratic than you might imagine. The terminology that this
• 2:15
  cohort used for such an idea is the seven mountains. Each of these seven mountains represent a
• 2:21
  different aspect of American life, which they believe has been taken over by irreligiosity and
• 2:26
  depravity and which needs to be resurrected in a better, more virtuous Christian form. Those seven
• 2:31
  mountains just so you across this conversation are education, government, religion, family, business,
• 2:39
  media and entertainment. It's fascinating to actually dig into what Charlie Kurtz aspirations were,
• 2:47
  what the goals of turning point USA, his organization still are, and why the wind is currently at their
• 2:54
  back. I hope you enjoy as much as I did the one the only doctor Matthew Boehm.
• 3:04
  So my sense, like I guess a lot of people after Charlie Kurtz assassination was,
• 3:13
  I guess the same sort of sentiment that Ezra Klein wrote in the New York Times, which was that
• 3:18
  I didn't know the guy very well, but he seemed to be doing politics the right way. He was trying to
• 3:24
  persuade people. He was convincing people. He was a sunny, cheerful, young guy just trying to
• 3:31
  push the values that he thought were correct. And then I read your book.
• 3:36
  I felt like, maybe in our zeal to not besmirch the dead, we raised something. What is the
• 3:47
  agenda that he was pushing? I mean, Charlie and turning point were out to win the culture war.
• 3:54
  So these debates on campus were not debates he never lost. They were fodder for the culture
• 4:01
  work because he invited people who disagree with him up to the microphone and often made them
• 4:05
  look silly at times and would put that on the video. So I think the mission of turning point in
• 4:11
  Charlie was to win the culture war, to silence, embarrass, defeat the other side, and that side has
• 4:20
  many political and cultural words to it or label what you could add to it. But that was their idea.
• 4:24
  That makes it sound more innocent than what it feels like you are sort of depicting
• 4:33
  though in the sense that when I hear culture war, people are squabbling on Twitter and
• 4:39
  woke us up and he's saying no drag time story hour in the libraries. America is a big complicated
• 4:49
  country. It has room for a lot of voices and he's allowed to object if he wants to.
• 4:53
  What is shocking to me when I actually learn about the Christian nationalist movement is how ambitious
• 5:00
  the goal is, it's not about owning lives on social or living. When the culture war,
• 5:08
  man, that's their mission in life. So they have raised the culture war stakes from the 80s and
• 5:14
  the 90s into something that God is on their side and as the president said at the Medal of Freedom
• 5:21
  ceremony, the left is following the devil's ideology. So you can't get much higher stakes than that.
• 5:28
  So when I say win the culture war in the eye, I don't mean just being fighting online. They're
• 5:32
  doing actions to change, dominate, take back the culture as my book points out. Yeah, they have
• 5:41
  a wide range of activities that they're doing in all the cultural institutions. They want a Christian
• 5:46
  culture by democracy or not. What is a Christian culture, man? Well, for them it is a kind of
• 5:54
  consensus culture within Protestantism that you would have leaders who are Christian. You would have
• 6:00
  cultural institutions that are following cultural codes whether it is the family or business
• 6:06
  and education. You're teaching a very certain type of American history and American patriotism
• 6:13
  and you're putting God back into the life. So in all the seven areas, it's probably different for
• 6:18
  each area. But the idea is that you should have a Christian culture where you can feel the
• 6:23
  Christianity if you want to say that. You can see it in the way people operate. But I also want to
• 6:30
  point out for them a Christian culture is a minority position. They're in the minority and they
• 6:36
  believe they may stay that way. So it is not about converting the masses to Christianity or you can
• 6:42
  say that we have a Christian nation because we have the majority of people that identify
• 6:45
  Christian. They're not interested in that. So a Christian culture is imposing their specific
• 6:50
  version of Christianity on the rest of us. I'm always mindful of when we talk about us and them
• 6:56
  and I think part of the problem with the culture wars at the moment is that it's so divisive and we
• 7:00
  think of ourselves as being in tribal camps. So when you say they don't want this, what I hear and
• 7:06
  what maybe many listeners who aren't as informed as you might hear is, yeah, of course, there's a
• 7:12
  ramp of crazy evangelicals in America. Like we know that there are, and there are, there's a KKK,
• 7:19
  there's the Christchurch shooter, there are people, there are fascists, but this is a vanishingly
• 7:25
  small minority of people. The vast majority of Americans are like living in a secular democratic
• 7:31
  state, but you have some alarming claims about as much as like a third of Americans in Poles agreeing
• 7:40
  with what precisely? Well, there's been different Poles, but Christian nationalism is a broad swath
• 7:45
  of beliefs and some people believe more than others, but the idea is that we were once a Christian
• 7:51
  nation that the founding of the country was a Christian nation and that the founding fathers were
• 7:56
  Bible believing are very agreed upon Christianity, which is not true. And then second,
• 8:01
  that we have somehow lost that through perhaps culture changing mainly in the 60s, but the idea is
• 8:09
  that of the minority, they're okay with, and some mayors being in the minority because they're
• 8:17
  the true believers, they're the most pure things you can think of there, but I also think that
• 8:22
  the minority position and believing that God is on their side means that they're willing to do
• 8:27
  anything to go to be victory. So all the things you just mentioned are all true, they're all fringe,
• 8:33
  but now as you point out, 30% of Americans are agreeing with tenants of Christian nationalism,
• 8:38
  which is Americans of Christian nation, some of them want a strong man to break the rules to impose
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  a Christian culture and specifically on the Seven Mountains mandate, that is, should we have a
• 8:49
  Christian culture based upon these sevens? Again, 30% of Americans, that's a lot of Christians to
• 8:54
  begin with, but the more people see perhaps how democracy doesn't work for them, the more they're
• 9:00
  willing to elect someone like Donald Trump to fix it. And I think that it's not fringe anymore
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  if they're both a minority position and they're getting into our cultural institutions. Yes,
• 9:11
  they're crazy if you want to say that, but they're crazy for God and so they will not stop until
• 9:16
  they believe they're gotten victory. Yeah, I mean, to be clear, I wasn't calling the 30% crazy,
• 9:22
  I was saying that it's easy to dismiss the 30% by looking at the crazies and thinking, well,
• 9:28
  surely they're not, they can't all be like that, but I guess it's their ability to convince and
• 9:33
  persuade a demographic of America that feels like it's been left behind, right? Multiculturalism
• 9:40
  and progressivism and feminism and gay rights and whatever, that it's worth tolerating a bit of
• 9:46
  crazy in order to resurrect America's rightful culture and resurrect America in its rightful role
• 9:51
  in the world. Yeah, so this was, this is basically the turning point USA. Rule book or guide book
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  is it? I mean, what is an ideal universe? What is an ideal America from the point of view of
• 10:09
  the odd and foot soldiers of turning point USA? Well, if you take these seven areas, they also,
• 10:15
  you know, want to dominate or take back these areas. So we have Christian leaders,
• 10:19
  Mike Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson and obviously Donald Trump are seven mountains advocates.
• 10:23
  But in terms of the broader culture, it is about erasing or removing or delegitimizing
• 10:31
  things that they don't agree with. So we have a tax upon sports athletes that Neo, we have a
• 10:35
  tax upon professors in higher education. We have a tax upon people who don't meet their
• 10:41
  standards of gender or family. So what they're doing is trying to suggest to those people that you
• 10:46
  are not welcome or also that you should not speak. And so I guess the ideal world is where they have
• 10:52
  the cultural power to say what is or is not American and what is is not Christian. And speaking of
• 11:01
  pointing out professors who they don't agree with, you're on a blacklist. What is the process of
• 11:08
  getting on a turning point USA blacklist? At this point at least you may not know. Yeah, I know,
• 11:16
  so they're early on when they started this list, they collected a bunch of opinions they didn't like.
• 11:20
  My opinion happened to be printed in a newspaper advocating against allowing concealed weapons
• 11:26
  on college campuses. And there are other opinions that people have collected and people wrote books
• 11:30
  and they attack people for what's in their classes or what's on their reading list. But mainly
• 11:36
  mine was a public opinion that I share. And so you're on this list and really it is your name,
• 11:41
  your contact information because they want to know what other people to know who you are. But really
• 11:46
  they've added to my profile over the years for negative things I've said about turning point. So
• 11:52
  this list is expanded from 100 so to 800 so and they have other lists. So this is a ready-made target.
• 11:58
  Now I get I get terrible emails at times. Some of my colleagues who are female or black or into more
• 12:06
  controversial areas get more harassment. We had a professor run out of the country recently from
• 12:11
  Rutgers. So it is a way in which to suggest they're watching us and we should not speak out. And
• 12:17
  then too if we do they're going to bring not just the online mob but they're going to bring the
• 12:23
  the way to their cultural power against us. That's what it feels like to be on the list.
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  What does it mean for the professor who was run out of the country to be run out of the country?
• 12:31
  What happened? Well see at Rutgers there was a professor who researched and wrote about the
• 12:37
  anti-fascist movement and was labeled as being a leader in that movement or being a finance
• 12:45
  seer. One of the turning point people used that word. So the turning point chapter at his
• 12:50
  university put out a petition to get him fired and that got on Fox News and that got him many death
• 12:57
  threats and so much that he personally in the middle of the semester had to move his family to
• 13:02
  Spain. His name is Mark Bray because of the threats against him. I mean that's a pretty swift
• 13:11
  example that is it from a petition to get you fired to moving out of the country within a week.
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  That just shows you the power of what turning point can do. They are both a cultural force.
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  Charlie was a kingmaker politically but turning point now just has so much damage it can do.
• 13:30
  So I mean it is no one will fail to notice the irony of a movement that got a lot of
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  its mojo in recent years by pushing back against cancel culture from the left and pushing back
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  against censorious historical outrage mongering by students on college campuses that now the
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  the tables are turned and the censorship is running the other way. But an analysis of this as merely
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  a backlash to the social justice reckoning or the great awakening or whatever you want to call it
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  is would not be sufficient because you can trace this. I mean this goes back at least a half
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  century and you look at the origins of this movement. There have been people. There has been a
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  large sway of Americans who are supportive of turning America into a Christian nationalist.
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  I don't want to say theocracy but something that would look like a theocracy to a secular person.
• 14:23
  Yeah. Since what fall well before. Well fall well was in the 80s. This list of seven
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  areas came from 1975 you know and fall well the preacher from Virginia. It wasn't into culture wars
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  before you know early 80s. So the two people that made this list together were two college
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  campus ministry organization founders. Bill Brite who founded campus crusade and a guy named Lauren
• 14:47
  Cunningham who founded a group called youth with a mission. And they saw what had happened to
• 14:53
  college campuses or what they think happened to college campuses in the 60s and said we want to
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  have our alumni the people we train to go out into the world to be missionaries to also
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  not just spread the gospel but influence these areas. And I want to emphasize that word
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  influence because in the beginning it was about Christians spreading the gospel and being Christians
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  in these areas over the years though because of the raising of the stakes of the culture war
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  because of the addition of this kind of spiritual language it is not really the goal of the seven
• 15:24
  mountains mandate to influence they want to take back to dominate. So if you think about the
• 15:29
  where the movement has gone from it they continue to have lost they continue to lose
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  different movements have come and gone like fall well's movement. And so Charlie Kirk is the
• 15:38
  third generation of this movement and he's not interested in losing anymore. So he's raising the
• 15:43
  stakes of good versus evil. He's raising the stakes of politics so that the history of the movement
• 15:50
  reads as you know all the way up to this point but it has changed over the years
• 15:57
  in what ways. I mean there's the influence to to to domination but also I think that
• 16:04
  the metaphor of the mountains didn't come around until about 2000 when I got him Lance Wall now
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  who is sort of a prophet in the movement came up with this metaphor and the people around him
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  really gravitated toward this. And to be honest with you it was fringe in the charismatic
• 16:19
  churches and charismatic believers for a while but what I think what moved it from the
• 16:24
  friends to mainstream Christianity was governor Sarah Sarah Palin running his vice president
• 16:30
  in 2008 she's an advocate of this. And then of course what Donald Trump did in 2016 was collect all
• 16:35
  these fringe charismatic instead of the run of the middle Christian leaders. He went with these
• 16:42
  people as his spiritual advisors and they went out and found voters for him. So I think that once
• 16:47
  they saw that they could they could use Donald Trump and he could use them that changed the
• 16:52
  movement and of course the seven mountains mandate and the energy behind Christian nationalism was
• 16:57
  that the spiritual energy behind the the insurrection on January 6 so you can see they continue to
• 17:06
  not want to lose and when they lose they raise the stakes even more to fight the culture war.
• 17:13
  When you say January 6 does that mean that you know shirtless Viking headed guy would have
• 17:19
  known what the hell I was talking about if I'd said to him seven mountains or would he have said
• 17:23
  it? No no I think you certainly would have understood that America you know is a Christian nation
• 17:28
  and I think that part of the stop the steel movement many of the leaders who went to the rallies
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  on the day of the six and the day before the fifth were leaders in the seven mountains mandate. They
• 17:37
  prayed you know full Congress to do the right thing and they prayed for the president some of them
• 17:42
  participated in January 6 but yes the the run of the mail January 6 insurrectionists understood that
• 17:49
  the election was stolen to them and that God God's plan for the country had been you know taken away
• 17:55
  and I think that's really important the the level of knowledge about Christian nationalism people
• 17:59
  who identify themselves of that and not often many do they just called themselves patriotic
• 18:04
  kind of varies but they understand that that God placed Donald Trump into office and when he was
• 18:09
  removed that that was against God's plan one of the people I write about in the book is a youth
• 18:14
  pastor trained in seven mountains a Christian nationalist and he goes to January 6 he goes to the
• 18:19
  end of the election gets arrested and sent to prison for it but one of the ways he talks about
• 18:24
  in a video from the capital for that day is how Christians should fight back should literally
• 18:30
  use physical force if necessary to take back their country. Pauling all veterans
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  I don't care how old you are or how young you are for this cause for this time in history
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  of our nation this is why you're alive to create armed militias to defend our businesses
• 18:57
  to defend our churches to defend our statues to defend our monuments and to defend our heritage
• 19:06
  this is why you're alive. For the elections being stolen what is it going to take?
• 19:12
  Is it going to take people just talking about it? I'm probably going to lose my job as a pastor after this but
• 19:20
  what is it going to take? I assume that he was pardoned. Who's one of the many people that was
• 19:25
  most pardoned? Yeah he was like what he's been doing now. Some of them have been re-arrested
• 19:31
  some of the January 6 people have been re-arrested some of them have sued the government for reimbursement
• 19:37
  for the money they paid and fines. This particular person that I mentioned he's I think back in
• 19:43
  Texas but he's not a youth minister anymore he's sort of his own ministry website trying to talk about
• 19:50
  collecting January 6 offenders together to help them spread the gospel. Got it. So the seven
• 19:57
  areas we've talked about the government obviously they and so let's just start with let's just
• 20:02
  dig a little bit deeper into the government. What is the ideal form of government from
• 20:07
  the perspective of a devotee of this way of thinking? I mean again it's certainly electing people
• 20:12
  to high federal office but also want to point out is not just about the federal government is not
• 20:17
  just about DC it is about state governments and school districts and city councils all of them
• 20:24
  and some men are run by Christians are run by people who agree with the Christianity
• 20:28
  of people like turning point so it's certainly speaker them House Mike Johnson and the presidents
• 20:32
  are good examples of that there are other people in Congress and while they elected democratically
• 20:38
  at all these levels what they do is when once they get into power they tend to use their power to
• 20:42
  push a particular agenda that are not necessarily agreed upon by the majority. So if you think about
• 20:48
  just Oklahoma for example we have the superintendent of education who recently left his job
• 20:54
  pushing the Trump Bible on his students mandating there would be a turning point chapter at every
• 20:59
  high school and also implementing more Christian based curricula so you can see just in that one
• 21:04
  area the government the elected leaders have much power to do what they want. What's the Trump Bible?
• 21:11
  The Trump Bible is a is a product that the Trump you know administration made it is it is a
• 21:17
  Bible I think it's a King James version of the Bible but it also has the Constitution and the
• 21:22
  Declaration of Independence at the end and then it has the lyrics I believe to Lee Greenwood's
• 21:26
  famous god bless America song and he sells that to people for $35 I think and so what this
• 21:32
  was going to be in schools yeah this was going to be given to every student in Oklahoma yeah
• 21:37
  is that legal is that Constitution well you know uh you can give a Bible to someone whether
• 21:43
  you can teach it in class is a different they weren't exciting it as a text but they were going
• 21:47
  to give it to them which is a they're all donated so they weren't using government dollars but
• 21:52
  you can see where that can go. Right and on the staying on education for a moment and using
• 21:57
  the power of the state to uh Christian nationalize the country this is also one of the big pushes that
• 22:03
  this movement is in favor of is uh defunding public education and opting for a voucher system where
• 22:10
  families would be able to use uh you know a small grant from the state to send their kids to
• 22:16
  independent schools where they could be taught a religious Christian education or I mean any
• 22:22
  education you know all right their intention is a Christian one yeah yeah and and that's certainly
• 22:28
  true there are big huge voucher programs in many states and many states are having to struggle to
• 22:33
  to fund other parts of the government because of so many so much money going to these voucher
• 22:38
  programs and that is certainly defunding public schools but what they're also doing is going back
• 22:42
  into the public schools through the state superintendents or other school districts and and changing
• 22:47
  the curriculum so that it's more patriotic in in history and inserting training videos for teachers
• 22:54
  about how to put more Christianity into their curriculum like for example in Ohio one lawmaker has
• 23:00
  proposed a bill that would allow teachers to talk about the direct relationship between Christianity
• 23:06
  and uh the American founding now uh the the guy that they rely upon the Seven Mountains mandate
• 23:13
  uh that they rely upon is the guy named David Barton he has a discredited historian and all the
• 23:17
  books he's written have really been flawed in many ways but he is the guy they turn to to write
• 23:23
  these curriculums for these public schools now also with public schools you have sort of
• 23:31
  this character education thing and trying to teach character where they want to change that
• 23:34
  directly to not just kind of secular character education but religious-based
• 23:39
  character education teaching the Bible in schools not just as a history doctor but as a religious text
• 23:43
  so they're quietly step-by-step changing public schools but also sending money outside of it
• 23:51
  there is nothing obviously wrong with people wanting uh there to be represented by people
• 23:57
  of faith if they have deeply held beliefs right and you know Jimmy Carter was religious and
• 24:03
  you know the mayor of London's a Muslim I mean it you know really should be neither here nor
• 24:07
  there whether people are religious or not religious the question becomes are they going to try to
• 24:13
  pervert the secularism of the state through their own religious dogma like what's sort of weird
• 24:21
  about the Trump moment and its relationship to the Christian nationalism that you're talking about
• 24:26
  is everyone who's not a Trump supporter and not a Christian nationalist can see that this man
• 24:32
  is one of the least Christian people on the planet I mean you know you read Jesus's teachings
• 24:41
  and then you look at the behavior of the president the money-grubbing the self-importance the
• 24:47
  showmanship the infidelity the lying that I mean it's this is not an exemplar of any Christianity
• 24:54
  that would be recognizable and yet so can you just reconcile for me the I guess the pragmatism
• 25:01
  in the mind set of this movement that is capable of co-opting someone like that well I think
• 25:08
  it is not just a day taught where they each use each other that they have come up with the seven
• 25:13
  mountains and Christian nationalism have come up with with justification religious justification
• 25:17
  for who Trump is so I mentioned Lance Walnut before and he wrote several books about how Trump
• 25:23
  is this epitome of this king from the Old Testament times he was flawed he may not even be Christian
• 25:30
  but he was the person that brings the the Old Testament Jews back from Babylon or he's the one
• 25:37
  that establishes Israel there's many Israeli you know kings in the Old Testament that were
• 25:43
  hugely flawed so that's one way they do it but secondly it is about not just seeing the one
• 25:51
  person as flawed of course the leader of it and he can fix and all that but it is about the
• 25:56
  government being at this consensus Christianity I don't want to mention you know you heard at
• 26:01
  Charlie Kirk's Memorial you heard Erica's Kirk's famous you know rather a powerful I forgive the
• 26:07
  the murderer of my husband's speech but then right after that you heard the president say you know
• 26:11
  I don't I don't I hate my enemies I don't forgive them too quite opposite versions of Christianity if
• 26:16
  you will he did not hate his opponents he wanted the best for them that's where I disagreed with
• 26:23
  Charlie I hate my opponent and I don't want the best for them I'm sorry I am sorry Erica
• 26:32
  but I think what the president offers to them is this power that they didn't have before and
• 26:37
  and so when when Biden was in office they were against the regime and they were you know
• 26:42
  rebelling but now when Trump's in office they're winning the culture war so I think that wherever
• 26:46
  it is its power and then you have people like Mike Johnson who is seven mountains out to get
• 26:52
  clearly a Christian but also at the same time willing to let someone like the president do
• 26:58
  whatever he wants and so it is I think it goes back to something I mentioned in the book especially
• 27:03
  with the prophets and the apostles there's this really powerful sense of God's anointing
• 27:08
  on certain people and it doesn't have to be because of their behavior or because of their
• 27:12
  Christianity it because that God has anointed them and that happens with pastors in local churches
• 27:18
  but that also happens with presidents
• 27:48
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  better conversations a freer more freewheeling attitude towards the things that we can talk about
• 28:23
  a way to steal man our opponents and to take the most gracious approach towards disagreement
• 28:29
  that is what you're voting for when you vote for uncomfortable conversations by going into your
• 28:33
  Apple podcasts and clicking subscribe I love you if you don't do that that's fine and I'll
• 28:39
  see you the next free episode I guess take care