Fascism has earned an ugly name over the last century, no question about it. Some religions lean into it, some look forward to a day when it can be openly celebrated, especially in monotheistic traditions. This week, we're exploring what it really means to be inside, to see fascism differently than what history has shown us. Straight out of the mouths of Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco, we examine the difficulty in defining fascism, and why some Christians are taking advantage of that obscurity.
We get a little help from Umberto Eco and Stanley Payne in our efforts to delineate the nature of the beast, but few organizations hit all the landmarks--watch out for the ones that do. Ultimately, when it comes to religious groups throwing their hats in with the fascists, as we see all around the world today, it's up to every good person to stand against these fundamentalist authoritarian parties while it's still safe to do so.
All this and more....
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Sinclair Lewis: “When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross”
[00:00:01] Katie Dooley: I felt like you were gonna inject something else there.
[00:00:18] Preston Meyer: We don't usually record this early.
[00:00:21] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I thought you were going to say something. You did.
[00:00:23] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:00:24] Katie Dooley: Yeah. No, we don't record this early. And you can tell on this episode of.
[00:00:31] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast
[00:00:35] Katie Dooley: Everyone can hear our morning voices.
[00:00:36] Preston Meyer: Yum, yum.
[00:00:39] Katie Dooley: We're ready to roll.
[00:00:40] Preston Meyer: We'll see.
[00:00:42] Katie Dooley: So last episode we talked about.
[00:00:45] Preston Meyer: Communism.
[00:00:45] Katie Dooley: Communism. Why are we talking about this episode?
[00:00:48] Preston Meyer: Today we're going to talk about fascism.
[00:00:50] Katie Dooley: The opposite.
[00:00:52] Preston Meyer: I mean, they're not opposites. They're on two different spectrums. Communism is an economic policy that leans into politics in other ways. A little bit. Fascism is a governmental style that occasionally includes economic policies. And just like last time when we talked about communism, we brought it around to validate its presence on our podcast. And fascism does a really good job of pushing its way into the religious sphere.
[00:01:28] Katie Dooley: I was gonna say it's like self-validating.
[00:01:31] Preston Meyer: Uh, the vast majority of Christians are patiently waiting for a world where everybody will kneel at the throne of a single God, one that is painted as darkly totalitarian in several Christian traditions. And this looks a little bit fascist in some situations. So before we get into what that looks like in the religious sphere, I think we do need to talk about fascism in general. And if we're not describing you personally, we're probably not talking about you. A lot of people get their heckles up about fascism. It's a word that gets used as a weird pejorative. An awful lot more than it should. Yeah, a lot of people just don't like the word fascism because, you know, the fascists were the enemies during the Second World War. And that's actually the only association that a lot of people have with the word is fascists are the bad guys without any understanding why. So very few.
[00:02:32] Katie Dooley: To the point where some people don't even realize that they themselves are a fascist.
[00:02:35] Preston Meyer: Correct. Because they don't understand the word. They don't recognize what it means.
[00:02:40] Katie Dooley: I think Steve Rogers would really be really upset with the state of America right now.
[00:02:44] Preston Meyer: That definitely played into his representation in the MCU that when we first see him, he's got the star on, he's got the stripes. His second movie, the Winter soldier. There's no red in his costume anymore, and the star disappears by the third costume, and he becomes a lot less Captain America and more Captain Rogers.
[00:03:07] Katie Dooley: The Cap.
[00:03:08] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:03:09] Katie Dooley: Interesting. Now I gotta go back and watch him. Yeah, I was thinking about that while I was researching.
[00:03:14] Preston Meyer: And he never introduces himself as Captain America.
[00:03:17] Katie Dooley: Ever?
[00:03:18] Preston Meyer: Ever.
[00:03:19] Katie Dooley: I believe it because Steve was a humble man.
[00:03:21] Preston Meyer: He really was.
[00:03:22] Katie Dooley: Anyway, I digress.
[00:03:26] Preston Meyer: Unfortunately. So this whole deal of fascism is just a label for the bad guys. It's a lot like communism. It's thrown around willy nilly, and it's it's kind of weird that a lot of people are comfortable with a lot of the ideas of fascism without liking the word for this reason, because ultimately it's like Caesar said in the new Planet of the Apes movies. Apes together strong. Really. You know, strength through unity. And if you've watched V for Vendetta, unity through faith is a big part of fascism.
[00:04:04] Katie Dooley: So the word as we know it today comes from Italy. In the heat of the First World War, built around the idea of strength through unity, as illustrated by the fasces, an axe in a bundle of rods or a bunch of arrows bundled together, like in Spain and the US. Italy and Spain turned away from fascism after the Second World War, but America continues to use the symbol and the rhetoric.
[00:04:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that bundle of arrows is still on American money as it's printed today.
[00:04:30] Katie Dooley: Interesting. I didn't even know I had to look up that symbol, and I didn't know it was on American money.
[00:04:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's not the exact same bundle of arrows that we saw in Spain, but it is a bundle of arrows.
[00:04:42] Katie Dooley: That's what it means. Yeah, cool. Germany didn't bother coming up with their own symbol for fascism, but they embodied it so well that Hitler's Third Reich is the only fascist entity most people can name today.
[00:04:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah. You talk about fascists. Almost nobody today thinks of Italy or Spain.
[00:04:58] Katie Dooley: Sometimes I think about Mussolini.
[00:05:01] Preston Meyer: Okay. That's good. You're. You're ahead of the curve.
[00:05:03] Katie Dooley: Thank you. I like to think so.
[00:05:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The tricky thing about fascism, like religion and communism, as we talked about before, is they're a little tricky to define. Political scientists, historians, policy analysts and sociologists are still having a hard time with this, even though it's been around for a hundred years. It's probably not a problem that's going to be quickly solved. Whoever wrote the Wikipedia entry summarized it as far right, authoritarian ultranationalism, which is kind of broad. That describes a lot of different things. There's some wiggle room there.
[00:05:39] Katie Dooley: Yeah, and there's always perspective, right? And I mean, hopefully without doxing ourselves, I think our listeners know we're in Alberta.
[00:05:46] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:05:47] Katie Dooley: And so our left wing National Democratic Party in Alberta is the farthest right national Democratic party in the country because we're in Alberta, and if they were any further left, they wouldn't get elected. They still barely get elected.
[00:06:01] Preston Meyer: One time.
[00:06:02] Katie Dooley: Like one time. Uh, and even seats they have like, what, ten? Right. So there's like spectrums within spectrums. So what one person thinks is right, someone will think is far right, which someone will think is center, because the NDP here should get called commies a lot. And like I said, they're as far right as an NDP party can be.
[00:06:19] Preston Meyer: What? Yeah. Calling them communists is.
[00:06:22] Katie Dooley: Incorrect.
[00:06:23] Preston Meyer: It's absolutely ridiculous if you actually understand what the word means.
[00:06:28] Katie Dooley: Well, yes, but that's for our upcoming political science podcast, which neither of us are qualified to talk about. Okay.
[00:06:37] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:06:38] Katie Dooley: That's not coming. Unless you want it to drop. Drop something in the discord.
[00:06:43] Preston Meyer: We'll see how that goes. So Thinking of how we can define fascism. It's a little tricky. Benito Mussolini, the first guy to use the word, is the leader of the Italian fascist movement, gave us a nice long speech to describe what he thought fascism should be. He said political doctrines pass. Nations remain. This is the century of authority, a century tending to the right, a fascist century. If the 19th century were the century of the liberal individual. This is the collective century, the century of the state. The fascist concept of the state is all embracing outside of the state. No human or spiritual values can exist. Thus understood, fascism is totalitarian and the fascist state, a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values, interprets, develops and potentiates the whole life of a people. Fascism is a religious conception in which man is seen in his imminent relationship with a superior law, and with an objective will that transcends the particular individual and raises him to conscious membership of a spiritual society. Whoever has seen in the religious politics of the fascist regime nothing but mere opportunism has not understood that fascism, besides being a system of government, is also, and above all, a system of thought. That's creepy.
[00:08:11] Katie Dooley: That sounds very 1984 George Orwell.
[00:08:14] Preston Meyer: Well, he beat George Orwell to it by many decades, right? But George Orwell in 1984 was describing the world that George Orwell saw existing. It wasn't a prophecy of the future. It was the world he knew.
[00:08:27] Katie Dooley: Fun fact that is all dystopian novels.
[00:08:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah pretty much yeah.
[00:08:31] Katie Dooley: No, that's actually they're literally just describing the worst parts of the current world. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, have fun reading your dystopian novels now, everyone.
[00:08:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. If if you can imagine it, there is somebody living it in some detail. I mean, if you want to talk about flying cars, we got a problem there.
[00:08:49] Katie Dooley: But that's not dystopian in and of itself.
[00:08:52] Preston Meyer: No.
[00:08:53] Katie Dooley: The problems in a dystopian novel, the dystopia of a dystopian novel.
[00:08:57] Preston Meyer: The societies that we see in any novel exist in real life in broad strokes. But like we said, fascism is hard to define. So I want to swing over to the next couple countries over. Spain had their own idea of fascism. Uh, Francisco Franco, famously the leader of the fascists over there.
[00:09:18] Katie Dooley: What a great name for a fascist. Fascist Francisco Franco
[00:09:22] Preston Meyer: right?
[00:09:22] Katie Dooley: Franco Francisco, the fascist Francisco Franco, the fascist. Said that wrong.
[00:09:29] Preston Meyer: You'll be alright.
[00:09:29] Katie Dooley: What a great name.
[00:09:31] Preston Meyer: Anyway, Frank.
[00:09:34] Katie Dooley: Frank.
[00:09:35] Preston Meyer: Frank said, wherever it manifests itself, fascism presents characteristics which are varied to the extent that countries and national temperaments vary, it is essentially a defensive reaction of the organism, a manifestation of the desire to live, of the desire not to die, which at certain times seizes a whole people. So each people reacts in its own way according to its conception of life. Our rising here has a Spanish meaning. So, like Franco explains. And it's not that his explanation is functionally useful. It does play well into our point that what we're talking about is really hard to pin down. Fascism is not wildly different every time we see it, but it varies a fair bit.
[00:10:21] Katie Dooley: Well, and I think this is the problem even in, you know, we see in Germany in the 30s and 40 is it's so hard to define it escapes detection.
[00:10:32] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:10:32] Katie Dooley: Before it's a problem.
[00:10:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's really hard to identify until it becomes an obvious threat to the population.
[00:10:40] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:10:41] Preston Meyer: Which is why you have so many people, apart from just ignorance, denying that there is fascism here in North America and that it's gaining it's roots because it's been here a while and tiny little steps are harder to recognize for a lot of people.
[00:10:57] Katie Dooley: It's like cult indoctrination, which we're going to talk about right away. Right? Where it sounds reasonable. And that was absolutely Hitler's politics, where it sounds reasonable, especially at a time of high inflation and national widespread poverty. It sounds reasonable. And then it becomes not reasonable butit's you can't see it anymore. I mean, I just read I Am Malala Malala's book. She was shot in the head by the Taliban.
[00:11:25] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:11:25] Katie Dooley: Probably a decade ago now. And she was like 14 when she was shot in the head. And that was a really interesting part of her story, is like she and her dad are like, is nobody else seeing this happen to Pakistan? And I was like, yay, the Taliban! And they're like, gahh. And then she got shot in the head, and now she's a super famous speaker and philanthropist. She survived.
[00:11:50] Preston Meyer: I have to assume that if she is.
[00:11:53] Katie Dooley: I read her book. Yeah, I read her book post... Yeah.
[00:11:57] Preston Meyer: Anyway, okay, that kind of sucks. Surviving a shot to the head.
[00:12:01] Katie Dooley: Uh, yeah. She said like, a dozen surgeries.
[00:12:03] Preston Meyer: So there's an Italian scholar named Umberto Eco. Uh, he gave us a pretty good list of things to watch out for back in 1995. So we've had this list for a while, and we're just not doing anything about it, apparently. But his checklist is actually really solid. So all these things are things that you can expect to be features of fascism, some to a greater extent than others, in different iterations of the phenomenon. The first is the cult of tradition. Umberto says that when all truth has already been revealed, no new learning can occur, only reinterpretation and refinement. This tends to include cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. And as you go, as we go through this list, I am thinking about how we see this in religion. I remember when I was 18 or 19, talking to a guy that I knew through the church and came up that I was reading other religious texts that weren't in our canon. And he was really stressed out about that. He was like, no, that's not okay. And there's there's a lot more good things out there than our short list of books, buddy.
[00:13:21] Katie Dooley: Well, and why is it not okay?
[00:13:23] Preston Meyer: Right? It's. He couldn't explain it.
[00:13:25] Katie Dooley: I love that argument because it's like, well, it'll take you away from the faith. That's often a reason. It's like, well, then our faith must not be very good. If a couple books can.
[00:13:33] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:13:34] Katie Dooley: Can change my mind.
[00:13:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:13:37] Katie Dooley: Or you're only a half assed believer if a couple, right? So either way.
[00:13:41] Preston Meyer: Right. Is it a loss?
[00:13:43] Katie Dooley: Yeah. If that's what's going to happen, then that's what's gonna. You're not preventing anything. I digress.
[00:13:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but this is a a serious phenomenon. That is a problem in some groups. I don't think I can I don't recognize this particular detail in a lot of fascist movements, but I guess Hitler was pretty stuck on the old ways.
[00:14:07] Katie Dooley: I mean, thinking about what's happening now. We had a conversation with family this week and they were saying some very, not very nice things about, you know, gender pronouns and, oh, some of that stuff. And they were. And this family member said, oh, and they were talking, we're in Canada. So, you know, Eskimo versus Inuit. And this family member said, are we just supposed to unlearn everything we learned in school? And I was like, yes, yes we are. When we get better information, yes. I'm like nodding furiously at this microphone, I was like, yes. When we learn new things, we throw out the things we no long leach people? Did you know that? Someone learned that in school.
[00:14:52] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Stop putting leeches on.
[00:14:55] Katie Dooley: Stop putting on leeches.
[00:14:55] Preston Meyer: People.
[00:14:57] Katie Dooley: So that's I guess that's sort of one example where perhaps the older generation is starting to feel attacked, air quotes and are leaning more into these traditions that, you know, is it we all we don't eat meat on Fridays. No, but it's some of these identity things.
[00:15:15] Preston Meyer: Well, even just the more obvious parts of science, it's we're learning more things. Stop repeating the things that are misleading or have obviously been disproven. And like, if we're teaching five-year-olds this new science that we've actually known for a couple of decades, and we've actually been able to simplify it so that we can teach it in kindergarten, because we were learning about planets in kindergarten back in the days of Galileo. That wasn't the thing that teenagers were talking about.
[00:15:44] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:15:45] Preston Meyer: Traditions. Umberto's next point is the rejection of modernism. He says the rationalistic development of Western culture since the enlightenment is seen as a descent into depravity, though fascist regimes show off their industrial might as proof of the virtue of their system as well. So there's some mixed messaging here. Technological modernism. Cool. Moral modernism. Bad.
[00:16:13] Katie Dooley: Which is funny because most moral modernism is just like ancient morals that we forgot about because of the church.
[00:16:19] Preston Meyer: In many cases that is the case. The next one is cult of action for action's sake. He says that the idea that action is a value in itself should be taken without intellectual reflection. Don't think about it, just act. This is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, which we have been seeing grow rapidly and dangerously in North America. And I'm sure in other parts of the world too. But my scope isn't over there right now.
[00:16:49] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Action for action's sake. That doesn't even sound productive. That sounds super culty.
[00:16:55] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:16:56] Katie Dooley: That is super culty not sound. It is super culty.
[00:16:58] Preston Meyer: Keep you busy so you're not thinking because we cannot afford to have you thinking about things. Anti-intellectualism is super important. We saw the fascists in Germany hunt down the Freemasons in addition to many other groups that they were abusing. This is a problem.
[00:17:14] Katie Dooley: Burning books, yeah.
[00:17:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Umberto also says that this also manifests in attacks on modern culture and science. Get rid of the good literature. Get rid of the the Jewish science, as the Nazis called it. Yeah. Problem. Next on his list. Umberto has disagreement is treason. The idea that you can't think independently. That is authoritarianism. We talked about this in our cults episode last year. Umberto says fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning because there are barriers to action, not because you might deviate and do the wrong action, but because thinking keeps you from doing the thing. Weird position to hold.
[00:18:02] Katie Dooley: That's actually that's one of those ones that, on the surface, sounds kind of reasonable, because we all have been in that moment where we're overthinking a decision, and at some point you're like, I should just pick something or...
[00:18:15] Preston Meyer: That's fair.
[00:18:16] Katie Dooley: You know, as a business owner, people who overplan and don't execute, right. I've known tons of I call them wantrepreneurs. Wantrepreneurs who plan and plan and plan and plan and plan their business but don't actually do anything to execute their business. So that's actually one where I'm like, oh, that kind of kind of makes sense.
[00:18:36] Preston Meyer: Until you take it to the extreme.
[00:18:37] Katie Dooley: Until you absolutely until you take it to the extreme where and they even say, like, if you're, you know, building habits, like just doing just do it and then everything else will come after.
[00:18:47] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:18:47] Katie Dooley: So anyway.
[00:18:49] Preston Meyer: I've definitely heard people talk about religion that way. Just just do it. You'll get it. You'll you'll start believe. That's a weird way to do it. Oh well. But there's a little bit more than this barrier to action. Umberto also describes it as a thing that's connected to fear, that you'll notice the contradictions that are part of this syncretistic new cultural faith. So it's a little bit of the other thing, but mostly that barrier to action. And the next point he brings up is the fear of difference. We have all seen xenophobia. That's a real issue. Fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants. And I've been doing a little bit of reading specifically in this field recently, and a lot of times growing up, it always sounded like Hitler hated the Jews because of their faith that they were singled out, because they weren't Christian, because he did lean into the Christian thing a little bit for a little while. No, he hated the Jews because of they were a different race in his perception, had nothing to do with what they believed about God or religion. It's just, I mean, either way, it's still othering, but it's kind of a weird little detail.
[00:20:15] Katie Dooley: There you go.
[00:20:16] Preston Meyer: Next on our list, we have an appeal to the frustrated middle class. I know too many people who I who think that they're super special, who are definitely in what we would call the middle class, the working class. And they are terrified of immigrants. And you can guess which way they vote. And their loyalty definitely bumps up against fascism. It's really creepy.
[00:20:49] Katie Dooley: I never understand sort of this white supremacy stuff where it's like, when's it gonna matter? You know what I mean? I remember watching a video on YouTube and someone was like, in whatever some dick white supremacist was like, well, I'm trying to keep America pure for my grandchildren. I'm like, you're gonna be dead. Who cares if she marries a BIPOC.
[00:21:12] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:21:13] Katie Dooley: You're not gonna know.
[00:21:14] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:21:14] Katie Dooley: How does that affect you?
[00:21:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that's the real question. Why does it matter?
[00:21:21] Katie Dooley: Anyway.
[00:21:22] Preston Meyer: What value does that have?
[00:21:24] Katie Dooley: It doesn't.
[00:21:26] Preston Meyer: Doesn't have any value. Oh no. Somebody's got a tan. If you were that worried about the whiteness of your skin, you wouldn't go outside.
[00:21:41] Katie Dooley: Uh oh. I don't go outside, but that's for other reasons. I have a desk job.
[00:21:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, another really interesting thing is the obsession with a plot. Umberto says this obsession with a plot and the hyped up threat of a looming and exaggerated enemy is a really important. This combines xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society, such as the German fear of the 1930s Jewish population. That there's always got to be this story that elevates my people. And obviously a good story has an antagonist. So there's somebody around us who's really holding us down and keeping us from progressing towards our goals. And that person is definitely local.
[00:22:30] Katie Dooley: Definitely a Jew. No. I'm kidding. Sorry.
[00:22:34] Preston Meyer: Ouch.
[00:22:35] Katie Dooley: It's not, it's not.
[00:22:36] Preston Meyer: It's really not.
[00:22:38] Katie Dooley: But it all. All conspiracy theories come back to that, though.
[00:22:41] Preston Meyer: I mean, the vast majority, I won't say all conspiracy theories go back to anti-Semitism, but.
[00:22:48] Katie Dooley: A lot of them.
[00:22:50] Preston Meyer: A distressing majority.
[00:22:54] Katie Dooley: This one, this next point, we were seeing so much in North America. And it drives me crazy. We see it all the time for Prime Minister Trudeau that he is both simultaneously incompetent and an evil mastermind, right?
[00:23:11] Preston Meyer: This is the worst dictator who can't.
[00:23:13] Katie Dooley: He's such a dictator, Covid's planned and he's so incompetent.
[00:23:18] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Like I don't love our our prime minister, but I have a much more realistic perspective.
[00:23:27] Katie Dooley: Yes, yes. So anyway, Fascism's enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.
[00:23:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:23:33] Katie Dooley: So please listen to your friends and family, talk about your political leaders and see what kind of rhetoric they're using. Because this is coming up a lot. Like a lot, a lot. On the one hand, fascists played the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.
[00:24:00] Preston Meyer: Those people there, they're so powerful but we'll overpower them. You can't have it both ways.
[00:24:08] Katie Dooley: Those Dungeons and Dragons players, they're so popular, they can't be kicked out.
[00:24:14] Preston Meyer: Uh, Dark Dungeons. What a ridiculous movie. I love it.
[00:24:21] Katie Dooley: Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy because life is permanent warfare.
[00:24:27] Preston Meyer: I mean, white supremacism, white supremacy. Yeah. White supremacism really leans into this. That if. What if you stop fighting against the others? Because I don't want to pick out one race. If you're not white, you're you're the other.
[00:24:42] Katie Dooley: Bipoc is a great term.
[00:24:44] Preston Meyer: Sure. It's, uh, I hate it. It's ridiculous.
[00:24:48] Katie Dooley: So there must always be an enemy to fight. You touched on this. The principle leads to a fundamental contradiction with, in fact, within fascism, the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war. So, and this is great... Question mark. Um, they're always othering someone. So even if they've taken care of, then they'll just find someone else and they'll find someone else and they'll find someone else until they come for you.
[00:25:13] Preston Meyer: Absolutely. Yeah. There. We don't know who was going to be the next race on Hitler's terrible list, but luckily, we didn't get that far.
[00:25:24] Katie Dooley: Thanks, Captain America. See how I've brought the episode full circle?
[00:25:31] Preston Meyer: Very nice.
[00:25:32] Katie Dooley: Thank you.
[00:25:35] Preston Meyer: Uh, Batman did some Hitler punching, too, yeah.
[00:25:38] Katie Dooley: Nice to keep up with Captain America.
[00:25:41] Preston Meyer: I don't know who did it first, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was Captain America. I don't know. Back in the good old days, popular comics had everybody fighting the national enemy. It just makes sense.
[00:25:55] Katie Dooley: Great, I love it. The next point is contempt for the weak, which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic, popular elitism in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. They encourage leaders to despise their underlings up to the ultimate leader who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force. That's creepy.
[00:26:19] Preston Meyer: A little bit, yeah. I don't know. It's. Fascism sucks.
[00:26:23] Katie Dooley: It's very aggressive.
[00:26:24] Preston Meyer: Yes.
[00:26:26] Katie Dooley: Everybody is educated to become a hero. Which leads to the nationalist cult of death. The hero is impatient to die in his. In his impatience, he sends other people to death. So we see this with the Taliban and al Qaeda suicide bombers. Even Japan a little bit.
[00:26:41] Preston Meyer: I mean, this is it's a little bit of a problem here in Canada.
[00:26:45] Katie Dooley: I mean, I was.
[00:26:46] Preston Meyer: Going to say American armed forces.
[00:26:48] Katie Dooley: I was going to say the American Army is very like.
[00:26:51] Preston Meyer: This is their cult.
[00:26:52] Katie Dooley: If I don't know where you're tuning in from, but a lot of people think Canada and the US are similar. We are so different. Once you know, and the US and pageantry is like the biggest difference, like it always surprises me when I'm flying a US airline when they're like military, please board first. We do not do that in Canada or on Canadian airlines.
[00:27:14] Preston Meyer: I don't know what this obsession with getting on the plane first is, but I love watching Americans fight for this right. And then you just sit there and wait in a different in a different, tighter tube than the hotel open space. Not the hotel, the airport open space. And then people push past you and bump you while they get to their seats. How is that desirable?
[00:27:38] Katie Dooley: Also, because I've had so much luck flying, being stuck on an airplane that is not moving is the worst.
[00:27:46] Preston Meyer: It sucks.
[00:27:46] Katie Dooley: So you absolutely want to be the last person on the plane.
[00:27:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:27:50] Katie Dooley: I have been just like I've sat on the tarmac for hours before and they don't blow any air because the plane's off. One time they let us disembark because it was going to be hours. But yeah, if I know the plane's just going to sit there forever, I absolutely want be the last one on the plane.
[00:28:07] Preston Meyer: Right? The only advantage that I see is the knowledge that you're not going to miss your flight.
[00:28:15] Katie Dooley: Or if you're a window seat, because then I won't want people climbing over me. Or sorry, if you're an aisle seat, I wouldn't want people climbing. No, if you're an aisle seat going last, or if you're a window seat going first.
[00:28:25] Preston Meyer: I don't know if I'm going on last and if I have to climb over people. Sure, it might be a little awkward, but at least I'm not the one with the ass in my face.
[00:28:31] Katie Dooley: That's true. It's your ass in their face.
[00:28:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Go on last. It's win-win. If you are the policy makers for airlines, make some changes. Wow. Expanding on this idea of everybody is educated to become the hero. There's the idea of machismo. Yeah.
[00:28:54] Katie Dooley: Whuh!
[00:28:57] Preston Meyer: Machismo brings the work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists, then have only intolerance and condemnation for nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality. Anything that's not strong heterosexual male style.
[00:29:16] Katie Dooley: Missionary style!
[00:29:16] Preston Meyer: I mean probably definitely no Amazon position for these guys. So that's all of this added to a actual serious hatred for women. And I mean, I've watched enough Trump rally footage to see that the women who show up to these often hate women. It's very messed up.
[00:29:39] Katie Dooley: Mhm.
[00:29:40] Preston Meyer: It's you know, it's so girly that even that that's an idea that is really endorsed in this movement.
[00:29:49] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:29:50] Preston Meyer: It's ridiculous.
[00:29:52] Katie Dooley: Then we have selective populism. The people conceived monolithically have a common will distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, The leader declares himself to be the interpreter of the popular will, so he must stand in as a dictator. Fascists used this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions. They accuse of no longer representing the voice of the people.
[00:30:17] Preston Meyer: Kind of like the Capitol riots on January 6th last year.
[00:30:22] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Where we thought this was faked, and I'm pretty sure it was not.
[00:30:28] Preston Meyer: What a disaster.
[00:30:30] Katie Dooley: Right. Newspeak. This comes straight from 1984.
[00:30:34] Preston Meyer: It does.
[00:30:35] Katie Dooley: Newspeak. Fascism. Fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.
[00:30:42] Preston Meyer: Mhm. And I've heard people argue that being politically correct is Newspeak. Let's go through that. That description, how he describes Newspeak again employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning. If we ask you to you to stop saying Negroes and start describing people more individually, more faithful to their origins, more faithful to their real identity.
[00:31:14] Katie Dooley: How they would like to be called.
[00:31:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that's not an impoverished vocabulary. And, I mean, we can come up with all kinds of extra words to replace the words that we're trying to get rid of. But if they're not the words that people want, why are you doing it?
[00:31:31] Katie Dooley: This goes back to the family conversation we had last week in pronouns. And, you know, we're a little bit, you know, transgender people changing their names. And this comment of like, why are we calling people all these different things? I was like, well, we don't call you fat white lady. We call you by the name you want to be called.
[00:31:49] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Yep. It's that simple.
[00:31:53] Katie Dooley: I saw a great meme. It was basically like people get all their hackles all up about having to Having to use different pronouns for people. And it's like you think misgendering someone isn't important until you call a straight white man a she. And then then they get it.
[00:32:10] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:32:14] Katie Dooley: God. Excuse me.
[00:32:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah. Address the bouncer at the club who's obviously roided out of his mind, ma'am. And see what happens.
[00:32:23] Katie Dooley: Have a good night, ma'am. You will die.
[00:32:27] Preston Meyer: Uh, trans or not, you're gonna have a real hard conversation. That's not just gonna be words. So Umberto was talking about fascism, but hopefully, as we went through this list, you can see how some of these principles are really well espoused by churches.
[00:32:47] Katie Dooley: I mean, the tradition Newspeak, every I mean, every group has their own lingo.
[00:32:53] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Which is different.
[00:32:54] Katie Dooley: It is. There is a point where it hits into the BITE model of speaking.
[00:32:59] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:33:00] Katie Dooley: Yeah. No, I mean there's a lot that it's very easy to see an extremist religion groups.
[00:33:05] Preston Meyer: Mhm. So yeah. So 1995 Umberto Eco gave us this great list. And the same year Stanley G. Payne gives us a much shorter guide to identifying fascism. He gives us the idea of fascist negations. Basically there's a handful of things fascists definitely are not. So fascists are, generally speaking, anti-liberal. The liberals are too individualistic, which is, I don't know. When I think of liberals, I usually think of people who are, you know, looking for a better society, but they're all are also after their individual rights.
[00:33:44] Katie Dooley: It's they're coming for a better society. But I definitely see what he means by this and that. Like, people want their own pronouns and their own. Yeah. So there's.
[00:33:55] Preston Meyer: Individual freedom.
[00:33:56] Katie Dooley: Right? Exactly. So, yeah, you know, we talk about this romantic spectrum and the sexual spectrum and a gender spectrum. So yeah, we're breaking starting to break this binary. I was like, there's A or B and that's I mean, even 15 years ago you were straight or you were gay. Nothing in between. You were a man. You're a woman. Nothing in between. So, yeah, there is this sort of individualism of, yeah, you know, you can be a she/they you can be a they/them, you can be a he/they you can.
[00:34:22] Preston Meyer: You got options.
[00:34:23] Katie Dooley: Yeah. You got lots of options. So that I can see from the individual listing perspective.
[00:34:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Fascists are famously anti-communist. Communism is too egalitarian. And fascism sometimes will talk a little bit about egalitarianism for a short time. It is mostly a recruiting technique.
[00:34:45] Katie Dooley: I was going to say it's like this weird like group thing. Right? So in that, in that way you'd think or, you know, strength through unity, so it kind of kind of leans into this egalitarian idea but...
[00:34:56] Preston Meyer: Communism is where the community owns everything together.
[00:35:00] Katie Dooley: Exactly.
[00:35:00] Preston Meyer: It's not socialism. Not so much. And fascism is very seriously opposed to this idea. So when you describe somebody who's pretty close to center as communist as a pejorative, you are announcing yourself to be at least leaning into fascism, if not fully committed. Mhm. But fascism is also pretty anti-conservatism because the conservatives aren't right enough. They see themselves as separate and obviously far superior.
[00:35:40] Katie Dooley: We're starting to see this.
[00:35:42] Preston Meyer: Oh yeah. Yeah. If anybody's telling you that you're Conservative Party, whatever name it goes under isn't far right enough.
[00:35:53] Katie Dooley: Red Flags! Ding ding ding. Ding ding ding ding.
[00:35:57] Preston Meyer: But there are some specific fascist goals that are maybe a little bit more helpful. The creation of a nationalist dictatorship. Big red flag. If you've gotten that far. It's already too late.
[00:36:09] Katie Dooley: Start organizing underground.
[00:36:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Usually this is to regulate economic structure for the fascist governments that we have seen actually leading a country. Usually it's controlling the economic structure, which is different than socialism. In a few important ways. But the the socialist part of the national socialist movement, that was Nazism, they were socialists to the point that they had a good war engine going and that's it. Their war machine was the only socialist feature of the entire program, apart from let's let's help Germany and help the German people by, you know, destroying the non-Germans in the nation. That's not socialism.
[00:37:02] Katie Dooley: No.
[00:37:04] Preston Meyer: Uh, I once had a guy tell me that socialism was what made the Nazis bad. Not fascism, not nationalism. It was their socialism. I was just like, you have no idea what you're talking about. And you clearly reject reality to the point that we cannot continue this conversation.
[00:37:22] Katie Dooley: Sir, can you please define socialism for me?
[00:37:26] Preston Meyer: It's it was a ridiculous conversation, and I'm glad it was short-lived. This dictatorship that we see in the fascist goal also is intended to transform social relations with a modern, self-determined culture. Favoring a single race is usually the deal, and it is a feature, not a bug, That if you really want to have united people, you need to start looking the same. According to this ideology, some parts of Canada and some parts of the United States do a really good job of being united where hey don't look all the same, and that's cool. Other parts of the world do it much better than we do.
[00:38:09] Katie Dooley: Oh boy.
[00:38:10] Preston Meyer: Which just proves that this idea is fallacious. And then the last fascist goal that I have here on Stanley's list is that the conversion of the nation into an empire is super important. Usually this includes ideas of expansion. Mussolini really wanted to rebuild the Roman Empire. Hitler wanted to control all of Europe. And I had an interesting conversation with a friend this week that if things had gone just a little bit differently, if if peons hadn't made a couple of false steps, maybe the axis powers could have actually ruled the entire Eurasian continent. That would be bad news. And I'm glad things went the way they did in the Second World War. Mostly there are some things that are pretty shameful, but for the most part, it turned out.
[00:39:03] Katie Dooley: Turned out okay.
[00:39:04] Preston Meyer: Well for us in Canada anyway. And then Stanley talks about fascist style, that a political esthetic of romantic symbolism and political liturgy is really important. The pageantry you were talking about in America very much resembles what we see here. Mass military mobilization. Big problem. And I mean, if you want to overpower your political enemies, this is a good way to do it. Positive view of violence like we talked about that. Well, Umberto mentioned this, and Stanley has this really succinct statement, positive view of violence.
[00:39:44] Katie Dooley: There's a lot.
[00:39:45] Preston Meyer: It feels gross to say.
[00:39:47] Katie Dooley: But Catholic Church, the Taliban, gun control in the United States. That's right, I said it. Yeah.
[00:39:54] Preston Meyer: Well, just the number of times you hear the phrase 'you want to fight', I mean, these people are looking for violence. It's not that everybody who says that is a fascist, but this idea is really valuable to fascists. And of course, that machismo, that promotion of masculinity, but also the idea that youth is super important is really, I don't know. Yes, we're we're pretty ageist all over the place.
[00:40:21] Katie Dooley: I was just reading a stat that ageism is the most, like, air quote acceptable form of discrimination.
[00:40:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah pretty much.
[00:40:29] Katie Dooley: And it's terrible.
[00:40:30] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:40:31] Katie Dooley: Anyway
[00:40:32] Preston Meyer: And of course charismatic authoritarian leadership is the fascist style.
[00:40:38] Katie Dooley: There's definitely overlap between fascism and cults. And then obviously that heads into religion.
[00:40:43] Preston Meyer: And authoritarianism is the thing that binds that all together. But it's a real problem.
[00:40:50] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Well, we don't have a singular definition for fascism for everybody that that we agree on. We have a solid checklist of things to help us when we see it. And this is the same with religion. We can't really define religion. But there's a few key characteristics that if you follow, you're probably a religion. Or you're probably a fascist.
[00:41:11] Preston Meyer: Those things that if you've been paying attention, you can you can recognize it when you see it.
[00:41:16] Katie Dooley: Yeah. It looks like a turtle and smells like a turtle. It's a fascist dictator.
[00:41:22] Preston Meyer: I like it.
[00:41:22] Katie Dooley: Thank you. I don't know why I picked on turtles. I'm so sorry. To our turtle listeners.
[00:41:27] Preston Meyer: Well, there's a merch idea.
[00:41:29] Katie Dooley: Well, I have a little mustache. I mean, saluting.
[00:41:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:41:36] Katie Dooley: Turtle heil. That's terrible. I can't make that. You can't have people walking around with that one.
[00:41:45] Preston Meyer: No, that would be a problem. That would be a problem. I don't think that would sell.
[00:41:49] Katie Dooley: No, we'd get kicked of Spreadshirt.
[00:41:51] Preston Meyer: Not to the people that we want to be making money from anyway. Anyway, fascist movements are usually born from despair, often caused by increased disparity and the disappearance of the middle class. Make that middle class fight back and really claim their spot. And so that they don't, of course, disappear into poverty. And this is what we saw in Italy. That's what we saw in Spain. That's what we saw in Germany. That's what we're seeing in North America today.
[00:42:20] Katie Dooley: So then, of course, I came off. I came upon the term theocracy in our research. And so we can probably do a whole episode on theocracy. So theocracy is a system of government in which priests or religious leaders rule in the name of God or and in God or other gods. That's weird. I know it's just weird and weird because I copied from Oxford English Dictionary.
[00:42:45] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:42:47] Katie Dooley: That makes it sounds like there's only one God in the name of a god. So while not all theocracies will necessarily be fascists, it's pretty fertile ground for a fascist movement. They gave some examples when I was researching of theocracies that aren't fascists, but there's not very many. And then again, you don't need to be a theocracy to be fascist. So, Mussolini.
[00:43:15] Preston Meyer: [00:43:15]Yeah. Theocracy. [00:43:17]
[00:43:17] Katie Dooley: Hitler wasn't a theocracy.
[00:43:18] Preston Meyer: The short definition that's maybe a little too broad, but fits nicely. Is that authoritarian nationalism. Theocracy, authoritarianism, very important if you're ruling with a religious power. That power is super important to you. That authority needs to be respected and obeyed. And if you have this national religion, nationalism comes way too easily.
[00:43:49] Katie Dooley: So like we said earlier in the episode, religions can look fascist, especially the monotheistic religion. So most Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians see the world ending with some sort of God acknowledging unity among all nations.
[00:44:04] Preston Meyer: Most religious people see the social progress made in the last 500 years as a bad thing, that the world has gone soft on sin.
[00:44:13] Katie Dooley: You know what the best part about this is? Is that the revolving 500 years in the next 500 years, they'll think the last 500 years were shit.
[00:44:22] Preston Meyer: Probably.
[00:44:24] Katie Dooley: Many religious people, regardless of religious denomination, fear formal education and science.
[00:44:30] Preston Meyer: I have heard way too often, why? Why you go to college with all those all those sectarian teachers and the the secularists.
[00:44:41] Katie Dooley: I actually I was on YouTube just scrolling and I found a, a video from a lady who was part of the same group as the Duggars, which name escapes me right now. Bill Gothard, his school of thought. And her story was actually very similar to Sarah's, who we had on the podcast a long time ago where she was allowed to go to college and all of her friends were like, what the fuck? And so now she's since left and...
[00:45:08] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:45:09] Katie Dooley: So I thought that was really interesting. And I mean, I guess rightly so, that they fear it because this is what happens. People go, that's not normal to be tied to your sister, because that's what happened in this YouTube video.
[00:45:20] Preston Meyer: Wow.
[00:45:21] Katie Dooley: Or you can go back to Sarah's story, listen to some things that aren't supposed to happen in your childhood.
[00:45:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Formal education is good, depending on the source. I suppose that's the trick, but also just becoming more aware of what's out there is a good thing.
[00:45:39] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I think I mean, that's why interacting with other people is so great, because it kind of I mean, it moderates everything, right? If you're only in this group of people, whatever their sort of fascist group or religious group or a cult or whatever, and you don't realize your beliefs are way out there and maybe someone you meet, their beliefs will be way out there in the opposite direction. But the more people you meet, the more you go, oh, this is where we need to be to all get along.
[00:46:05] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Many churches push their members to actively proselytize for its own sake. Just the act of getting out there. You tried. That's what matters. Rather than teaching them go and practice love. Go and be a good person. Like Jesus said, don't be a dick.
[00:46:28] Katie Dooley: Phallatians six nine. Many churches discourage congregants from questioning leaders traditions or passages of Scripture.
[00:46:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah, trust my authority. Trust the book. Don't think about it too hard. Gross.
[00:46:44] Katie Dooley: Yep.
[00:46:45] Preston Meyer: Many religious traditions include guidance against marrying or even socializing outside of the group. Seen that plenty.
[00:46:52] Katie Dooley: Yeah, this is where we get again, going to talk about Sarah's interview. The worldly be of the world but not in the world. In the world, not of the world?
[00:47:01] Preston Meyer: In the world, not of the world. Yeah. Which, like we mentioned, has been interpreted. Interpreted a couple of different ways.
[00:47:07] Katie Dooley: Oh, absolutely. Everything from, like, sort of normal to terrible.
[00:47:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:47:14] Katie Dooley: Many religious groups treat members poorly because they are seen as less faithful for any number of differences of opinion or practice.
[00:47:21] Preston Meyer: Yep. Can't hang out with Doctor Beck because he's a weirdo?
[00:47:26] Katie Dooley: Uh, you see this sometimes in Islam where they're there, encouraged to pray five times a day. So if you pray anything less, then people can see you as not as good of a Muslim.
[00:47:36] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Uh, I remember when I was in Jersey. Good times. A lot of fun experiences there. And one day we were walking down the street in Newark, and we saw a couple of guys in their front yard on their prayer mats facing northeast. So you're supposed to pray facing Mecca. That's the rule. And I just don't think there's anywhere in new Jersey where Mecca is northeast. But I suppose I'm looking at maps of the paths that airplanes take, maybe the shortest way from there to Mecca, angles that way. I don't think many people have ever worried about the actual shortest path around the globe when deciding which direction they pray. But now I need to look into that more.
[00:48:32] Katie Dooley: I feel like you're overthinking this. Just do, Preston.
[00:48:36] Preston Meyer: Which is Anti-fascist.
[00:48:37] Katie Dooley: I was going to say just do, Preston. Christians like to paint Satan as too strong to be allowed into the gates, but too weak to reverse one's claims on salvation. That you must always wear the armor of God against him.
[00:48:54] Preston Meyer: That constant war with an enemy that is both too weak and too strong, but with whom there is a promised victory. There's a couple of features and feels a little bit weird. It's presented differently in different groups, but some Christians are fertile ground for fascism.
[00:49:13] Katie Dooley: Oh, we'll get to that.
[00:49:15] Preston Meyer: Most Christian groups and many other traditions insist that unless you're obedient to the man in charge, you will suffer eternal torment. Authoritarianism can be extremely dangerous and even in the best cases is still not good.
[00:49:34] Katie Dooley: Yep.
[00:49:35] Preston Meyer: And of course, we can get more specific. We can find more issues that line up with the criteria that we've been given by Umberto Eco and Stanley Payne, all kinds of things, and see them in a lot of religions, especially with the danger cults.
[00:49:50] Katie Dooley: Danger cult and then yeah, extremism as well. Like you said, you see it a lot with the Taliban. And then there's some Christian groups popping up that are getting scary.
[00:49:57] Preston Meyer: Are you trying to tell me they're not danger cults?
[00:50:00] Katie Dooley: I would say, I guess there's a) we've had this discussion about how to define a cult. I think the Taliban is probably too big to be considered a cult. Right? Kind of cult in my brain are like a small interest group.
[00:50:14] Preston Meyer: Because we haven't got a great definition for cult. I just accept you're right.
[00:50:19] Katie Dooley: When you say cult, I think of like Jonestown and Peoples Temple, which absolutely falls under this. But then the Taliban that has such a broad spread across the Middle East is a lot bigger than that. And then there, I'm based and we're going to get this into Islam, a bigger religion. Oh, we don't have a great definition for cults either, so this is one of those episodes where we just kind of talk around the issue.
[00:50:45] Preston Meyer: Well, we penetrate through it without telling you what the wall looks like. That's the trick.
[00:50:52] Katie Dooley: So generally, people don't complain about fascism as long as they're in the in-group. But fascism is especially appealing to most religious conservatives and extremists and fundamentalists.
[00:51:02] Preston Meyer: Yeah, even the Catholic Church was a fan of fascism until they saw the damage it was doing. In 1929, the Catholic Church signed the Lateran Treaty, being friendly with the Italian fascists. They did get some nice little benefits out of this. The papacy gained state sovereignty because the the Italian regime before that wasn't that kind of friendly. Uh, the church actually finally got paid for lands that had been taken by the previous regime before the fascists took over. So that was nice for them. You know, this is before the terrible Saint Teresa of Calcutta made them a whole bunch of money.
[00:51:41] Katie Dooley: Oh, good. Good. Ew.
[00:51:45] Preston Meyer: But of course, this Amity only lasted about two years before things went sour. The church denounced the idolatry of the state and all of the obviously hateful violence. It's like, oh, turns out this fascist government is really terrible.
[00:52:01] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:52:02] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Espousing some fascist ideas is different than saying yay, fascism! But it's still dangerous.
[00:52:11] Katie Dooley: Just like, you know what a great real world example of this is the board game Secret Hitler. Sometimes putting down a fascist policy helps your cause.
[00:52:20] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:52:20] Katie Dooley: But.
[00:52:21] Preston Meyer: It's the only way to kill Hitler.
[00:52:22] Katie Dooley: Super dangerous.
[00:52:23] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:52:24] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Wow.
[00:52:27] Preston Meyer: If you're into board games like Secret Hitler.
[00:52:30] Katie Dooley: Highly recommend.
[00:52:31] Preston Meyer: I once played a game of Secret Hitler with some friends as a few years back.
[00:52:36] Katie Dooley: Was I there?
[00:52:36] Preston Meyer: I've actually played it a lot. You weren't there this time.
[00:52:38] Katie Dooley: Where was I?
[00:52:38] Preston Meyer: I don't know. I had some friends over that I hadn't seen in a little while. And this friend had married a girl from the States.
[00:52:46] Katie Dooley: I know this story.
[00:52:47] Preston Meyer: I told you before.
[00:52:48] Katie Dooley: Okay, but tell it for our audience. It's so good.
[00:52:51] Preston Meyer: And nice lady. Good guy. And so I'm explaining the rules to them. She, as an American, got really, really uptight, I guess she was offended by the idea that there was a dichotomy between the liberals and the fascists that you. That somehow the two parties in the game mirror this real world principle that you have to be either a liberal or a fascist. That was a really weird conversation to have.
[00:53:28] Katie Dooley: How did it end?
[00:53:29] Preston Meyer: I was just like, it's a role-playing game. And in this role-playing game there are two parties. And please, whichever side you end up on, try to win.
[00:53:42] Katie Dooley: This is make-believe, ma'am.
[00:53:43] Preston Meyer: Right? It was an interesting conversation.
[00:53:47] Katie Dooley: Oh, boy. So now we're going to wrap up this episode with getting to some specific examples of religious fascism that we've seen or are seeing, unfortunately. Again, this is mostly with the monotheistic traditions, the Abrahamic traditions. So we're going to start with good Ole Christianity. Christian fascism has been a long time coming, unfortunately. Sinclair Lewis, the novelist from the 1910s to about the 1930s, said when fascism comes to comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
[00:54:20] Preston Meyer: With the number of pictures I've seen and videos that I've had to listen to of people saying Trump represents God. I mean, one, if you know anything about this man's personal life, you know that's ridiculous. Yeah, this this does not jive well at all with the Christian view of God in any religion that I've ever dealt with. I know it's very weird.
[00:54:50] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And actually I didn't put it in the notes, but one article I read was from 2007 on Christian fascism, which is why I didn't quote it, because it was quite old. But the lady writing it was writing about her professor, who 20 years prior had said it's coming.
[00:55:07] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:55:08] Katie Dooley: So in the 80s he was like, it's here, it's here. Um, so Christian fascism is becoming more prominent in the United States and Canada, and I'm sure elsewhere in the world but we feel here. So the goal is to create a Christian theocracy as opposed to the current secular model. With this freedom of religion and where we don't make decisions off of people's religion.
[00:55:27] Preston Meyer: Right? I mean, I have heard so often, even in my family, people talking about fears of with all these Muslims moving into our country, we're going to have to live under Sharia law.
[00:55:38] Katie Dooley: Or we're already under a religious law, but it's not Sharia.
[00:55:43] Preston Meyer: Right? How is it different? It's so weird. I feel like we've had this.
[00:55:47] Katie Dooley: We have a bonus episode on abortion and Sharia law. Obviously there's problems with it, but there's places where it's better than Christian law Sharia law allows abortion so...
[00:56:01] Preston Meyer: Which for most Christians is not Good news. Well, not most Christians, but an awful lot of vocal Christians. So there's a problem with the evangelical movement. The basis of the movement encourages a close and personal relationship with Jesus. So far, that sounds okay. If you want to be friends with a guy who is very deeply socialist, that's okay. But the problem comes in when you basically convince yourself that anything that you can create your own echo chamber and just ignore the socialist, gouge your own eyes out, Jesus. Just cherry pick the bits that you like.
[00:56:43] Katie Dooley: Yeah, you get to make him the friend you want to have.
[00:56:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah, which makes sense. But know that if you're making something up, you've just created a fiction.
[00:56:54] Katie Dooley: Yes.
[00:56:56] Preston Meyer: And that is not different from the idol worship that your religion tells you to avoid.
[00:57:03] Katie Dooley: So with the standard of to be a good evangelical Christian, you just need a close personal relationship with God. So you are a good Christian. Good Christian. Air quotes. Without actually having to do anything that benefits the wider community. As long as Jesus is your best friend, you're golden. And I don't know about you and your best friend, but me and my best friend are pretty terrible people together.
[00:57:26] Preston Meyer: I feel like I've said this before, that there's a difference between being in love with somebody and loving somebody. You can be obsessed with somebody that's basically being in love. And if you actually love that person, you're going to pay more attention.
[00:57:44] Katie Dooley: To what he wants from you.
[00:57:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And we got an awful lot of Christians who were in love with Jesus that do not love Jesus.
[00:57:54] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And with evangelicalism, there's no public theology or standard that these evangelical groups live by. You're. Yeah. You're sweet. As long as as...
[00:58:06] Preston Meyer: As long as you tell people that you're in love with Jesus, everything's fine. Gross.
[00:58:12] Katie Dooley: He's probably like, why are you so obsessed with me? Ew, go give to the poor instead. Mhm.
[00:58:21] Preston Meyer: Christian fascism loves a very specific type of Christian as well. Specifically the evangelical Protestant, conservative, white American/Canadian-born Christian. Man, that's awfully precise.
[00:58:36] Katie Dooley: Yep. It is not the everyman's Christianity like somebody preached. I don't do you know who might have preached in every man's Christianity? Any names like Jesus..?
[00:58:49] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:58:50] Katie Dooley: You know anyone who might have said it's for everyone.
[00:58:54] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:58:55] Katie Dooley: Maybe like Peter?
[00:58:57] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:58:58] Katie Dooley: Would he have said that? Yeah. Yeah yeah.
[00:59:01] Preston Meyer: Paul was pretty vocal of hey, just be good. Have faith in God that everything is going to be okay. You don't have to cut off bits of your body to have a good time with the Christian church.
[00:59:13] Katie Dooley: Oh yeah, it's like nobody's ever heard of this before.
[00:59:16] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Yeah. Anyway, Christianity is great source material for the disenchanted. It promises uetopia. The I'll spell this with a e.
[00:59:31] Katie Dooley: I was like did I spell it wrong?
[00:59:33] Preston Meyer: There's.
[00:59:33] Katie Dooley: You went in.
[00:59:34] Preston Meyer: Utopia, the Good place as opposed to the Nowhere Place. We talked about this before.
[00:59:39] Katie Dooley: No I know.
[00:59:39] Preston Meyer: What was his name now? Why has it gone from my head?
[00:59:43] Katie Dooley: Thomas More!
[00:59:43] Preston Meyer: Yes, it was Thomas More.
[00:59:44] Katie Dooley: He wrote Utopia.
[00:59:45] Preston Meyer: Yeah he did. Because people do struggle to make ends meet. And politics are getting more divisive. And it feels like the whole world is going to hell. And unfortunately, this is the sort of garden that grows fascist plants. Mhm.
[01:00:02] Katie Dooley: So red flags that we're seeing as per her lovely list of what fascism is, particularly in America. But we're starting to see this in Canada is anti-immigration in the States, specifically the repealing of Roe v Wade, creationism in schools. We don't see that too much here but...
[01:00:19] Preston Meyer: Yeah, like in Catholic schools, sure. And other Christian schools, it makes sense. Don't teach creationism in science class.
[01:00:28] Katie Dooley: Which the states are.
[01:00:30] Preston Meyer: In your theology class or your religious studies class? Yeah, that makes sense. Creationism doesn't have a whole lot of scientific evidence backing it up.
[01:00:42] Katie Dooley: And then anti-LGBTQ+ and racism. Yeah. Um, definitely feels like it's growing so...
[01:00:49] Preston Meyer: Anti-women. Anti-immigration policies. I mean, yeah, there's lots of things to let you know. Hey, we got a problem with the system.
[01:00:59] Katie Dooley: So a study was done, and I thought this was super interesting. It was a was a 2017 Baylor University Religion survey. And I guess like makes sense. But the more in favor you are of a Christian theocracy, the less actually religious you are. So defining religious as, um, actively praying, worshiping, attending church, paying tithing. Uh, the less likely you are to do that, but the more you want a Christian theocracy. Uh, and again, we're going to talk about Islam. It mirrors this very well. The Taliban is a great example of that. And like I said, I read I Am Malala and the Taliban sweeps through her home in Pakistan, and they're quoting the Quran, and they're like, that's not clearly no one here has read their Quran because this is wrong. Um, and anyway, yeah. So the less exactly mirrors it pretty great. The more in you're into Al-Qaeda or ISIS the less Muslim you are.
[01:02:01] Preston Meyer: Right. It's it's interesting that we can see this in North America, that when you're taking the opportunity to shout once or twice a week about how great it would be if our nation was a faithful nation, the there's so many people take that as an opportunity to not have to worry about it in their own personal life, because they look good for shouting it once or twice a week somewhere outside.
[01:02:30] Katie Dooley: Yeah, so they didn't actually find a lot of unique notes on Islam. It mirrors the Christian nationalism, national Christian fascism, very much.
[01:02:41] Preston Meyer: Like the groups that we've already mentioned.
[01:02:42] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So it's just geographically different. But the process is pretty similar. They're getting yeah, they're getting more fundamental in their beliefs, and then they're getting more violent and thinking that an Islamic theocracy is a great idea.
[01:02:56] Preston Meyer: Gross.
[01:02:57] Katie Dooley: But then I was looking into Zionism.
[01:03:01] Preston Meyer: A thing that deserves its own episode. We'll get to this year.
[01:03:03] Katie Dooley: We'll touch on it just briefly today with our episode that's already well over an hour. And Zionism is so interesting because the Jewish community was so affected by fascism in World War Two. And now if you're in Israel, you're basically doing the same thing to Palestine. This idea of creating Zion, getting a Jewish, the establishment of a Jewish homeland is very much a Jewish theocracy.
[01:03:30] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's it's kind of rough. And it does have roots back to before even the First World War, which we'll get into later. But it's it's caused some serious problems. The ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict is a I'm not 100% sure I want to call it fascism, but it definitely does have a lot of the red flags we've talked about today.
[01:03:53] Katie Dooley: Well, and I saw.
[01:03:54] Preston Meyer: Decide more later as we.
[01:03:55] Katie Dooley: As we when we actually dive into Zionism. Uh, I saw a saw a news article not that long ago and I wish I could find it, but, uh, I think it was the Israeli military was disrupting a Palestinian funeral. Like the guy was already gone. And so the comments were like, this is so beyond religion at this point. So again, reflecting back to the more you want to create this religious nation, the less religious you actually are, because a good Jewish person, a good Christian person, a good Muslim person would never interrupt the funeral of... A good person, period, would never interrupt a funeral of a deceased person, whether you agree with them or not.
[01:04:36] Preston Meyer: Zionism isn't just popular for Jews though. Christians also actually really like Zionism, because if we can get the Jewish people to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, a lot of Christians see that as a very good thing that will help trigger the end of the world. And I mean, there's an awful lot of firepower backing up the opponents to that movement that maybe if the Jewish people, the Israel, the state of Israel were to take back the the temple grounds, they would potentially start a war that would be catastrophic for huge chunks of the world.
[01:05:16] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And so this is in the Israeli-Palestine issue. They get a lot of backing, Israel gets a lot of backing from American evangelicals. Yeah. There's a lot of firepower and a lot of money in the States.
[01:05:27] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[01:05:28] Katie Dooley: It's quite terrifying. If you get too far down that rabbit hole.
[01:05:32] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[01:05:33] Katie Dooley: Well. So everyone, while it's important to know what's happening. Please protect your mental health.
[01:05:38] Preston Meyer: Right? Yeah. Religion and fascism, what a weird marriage.
[01:05:42] Katie Dooley: Yes and no. Right. Like we said, there's a lot of...
[01:05:46] Preston Meyer: Bad news.
[01:05:46] Katie Dooley: It is? Oh, it's absolutely bad news. But it's without good leaders in place. It's not a far step right to get there.
[01:05:53] Preston Meyer: Absolutely.
[01:05:54] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Well, that's happy for a Saturday morning recording. Wow.
[01:06:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So we can obviously continue the this conversation and explore it a lot more on our discord.
[01:06:06] Katie Dooley: Yes. Join us on our discord. We are growing pretty steadily. I've been quite happy that we are also on Facebook and Instagram.
[01:06:16] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[01:06:18] Katie Dooley: If you want to support this podcast so we can do more great episodes, perhaps more frequently, you can check out our Patreon where we have some bonus episodes that have been released recently.
[01:06:27] Preston Meyer: And we've got merch on our Spreadshop.
[01:06:29] Katie Dooley: Yes. And we have again two a couple new pieces on Spreadshirt, so at least go check them out and maybe put something in that shopping cart.
[01:06:40] Preston Meyer: Thanks for joining us.
[01:06:41] Both Speakers: Peace be with you.
