I have a quick sort of sheepish response to Egger's post (which is very good!). The non-sheepish part is that there's actually a much older history to the weird not-really-religious-but-kind-of-and-also-it's-happening-in-a-secular-context dynamic he's describing, it traces all the way back to the Cold War with various business-types secretly bankrolling people like Billy Graham (in the YouTube with Sam Stein Egger says something like, Billy G wouldn't have liked this, but actually, Billy G had been doing something very similar!). The sheepish part of the comment is that I know this because I wrote a whole book about it (an actual legit/academic book) (I'm an academic) called The Shadow Gospel which accounts for the history --again, all the way back to the Cold War-- of literally everything Egger is writing about, including the framing of Dems as demons (also in the YouTube the guys were a bit puzzled by Trump calling democrats evil but that is just liberal devil stuff that has been happening for decades and decades). The basic argument of the book is that the driver of a LOT of the religious right isn't love of God, it's hatred of the liberal devil ----something that drove a wedge within Christianity (between what we call theological and demonological elements) decades ago, the weird shadowy energies of which Trump has harnessed. Basically, what Trump is doing is a particular sort of shadow Christianity that might say the word God but it's talking about something else entirely (liberal/leftist evil). Just if anyone is interested! Sorry to self-promote!
This is a great point. It's funny--even as I said "Billy Graham" on the video the other day I was sort of wincing, because I don't know all that much about him specifically and wished I'd thought of a better example off the top of my head. My point was just to say that there's a major difference between a religious political power base that's centered on actual faith leaders and one that's centered on business people who consider themselves believers but are mostly just political hangers-on. Anyway, how do I find your book!!
Ah so nice to hear from you Andrew! Thanks for your response. I am a regular listener/reader and was jumping up and down wanting to join the conversation (The Bulwark has been my go-to place for sanity and perspective for ages and since January as I've been working on this follow-up book it's been an absolute lifeline). Billy Graham is such a slippery figure...one of the fascinating things about him (besides how much he railed against the liberal/communist devil in the 1950s) is that he actually started out as a pretty fringe figure, but through some amazing comms by the New Evangelicals --and their unbelievably aggressive campaign to paint Mainline Protestants as, you guessed it, the liberal devil (although "liberal" meant something different at the time, it was more aligned with the social gospel which the Evangelicals used to "prove" that Mainline churches were full of Communists)-- they, the Evangelicals, were able to self-mainstream, bringing their narrative about the liberal (Communist) devil with them! The history is totally bonkers and it draws in all kinds of weird overlaps between secular and religious elements, including huge injections of (under the radar) cash from these oil tycoons and other business-types (who were also funding organizations like the John Birch Society plus more respectable publications like the National Review and a host of other rightwing media, helping to further crystalize the figure of the liberal/leftist devil through incessant multi-channel repetition). At the time Billy Graham was like, er, thanks for all your money, Texas Oil Tycoons, but let's keep this between us because I don't want people to think I/the Evangelical movement as a whole is a corporate product, which it kind of was. Really wild stuff. But I'd be happy to send you a PDF of the book, just send something to my university email (wphilli2 [at] uoregon [dot] edu) and I'll zip it over! Thanks again for your comment!! And for all the work you and the team is doing.
When I started posting on Fox News after Trump won his first election...one of the first things I picked up from those posting was the absolutely blistering hatred they had of Hilary, Obama and Susan Rice. It wasn't just a "don't like their politics" thing...it was a deep-seeded hatred of the evil these demons brought upon our country. I might be exaggerating a little on that last statement, but the fact that I sensed the hatred being deeper than just differing political views isn't. It was palpable and notable to me back then so that's why I'm posting about it today. You're right...this has been building for decades...not just in the Trump era. I think that Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gringrich were key components that made it mainstream and Trump was the accelerant that made it take off like a rocket ship.
Look no further than the stories from last week describing how many Texan's wanted to decline Federal funds for the creation of an emergency alert system for major storms and flooding.
They called it "Biden Money" and it was therefore evil.
The money was finally accepted, but they used it for other things.
Yeah in the Shadow Gospel book we spend a LOT of time talking about the various precursors to all of this...in the 90s you see an interesting shift from Evangelicalism being the hub of a lot of the liberal/leftist/Dem devil talk (and it was very very literal in those networks, with all kinds of overlap with talk of the actual apocalypse) to what we call the Church of Fox News, where the evil liberal becomes a good television character. It's all so enormously strange but does account for the fervor you see that goes so far beyond disagreement over policy! We talk about it as quasi-religion, but it's not God that's at the center of the discourse...
I bought and read y'all's book, and it was great! Thank you for writing it; it's really colored my thinking on how evangelical Republicans view Democrats after decades of their demonization in rightwing circles. It's pretty bleak as far as the prospects of Democrats ever winning over people like that, but your book offered me a lot of insight as to why it's so bleak.
Oh that's really cool! Thanks Don. We're actually in the (rather frenzied) process of finalizing and submitting the manuscript of the follow up book, which focuses on the broadening popularity of demonology (talk about bleak) during the first 6 months of Trump 2.0. It's much more focused on the underlying myth/legend/storytelling element (the chapters are titled: Myth, Legend, Ritual, Exorcism, Combat, Hell), with history still (the first two chapters compares MAGA storytelling to stories told by the First and Second Klans), but a lot more contemporary analysis, including a ton of rhetorical analysis of things like the Hegseth hearings and Bukele/Zelenskyy WH meetings and various Trump speeches etc. Initially when we were planning the SG book we expected it would mostly focus on the Trump Era; we figured we'd write a chapter or two about the history, then pivot into the present moment. But by the time we got to chapter 5 and realized um we're still in the 1990s, we had to reassess: our one book was going to be two books. Needless to say, it's been terrible to write!
I bet the sequel has been Hell to write. It's all very depressing stuff, and being contemporary rather than historical probably makes it even harder to get through. I'll beer you both strength to get through to the finish line, because I know how depressing it must get.
The new book sounds fascinating though, and I'll keep an eye out for it, and make sure not to read near any upper story windows. Judging from the chapter titles, assuming they're in order, things just get worse and worse by the end of the book. The rhetoric you see from these people is so over the top and disgusting, but man a lot of people are convinced by it. And with the modern media environment, where things get wings online, and people live in these bespoke little realities rather than actual reality, and with AI propaganda popping up and seeping in, more trouble is ahead. Much more trouble.
Oh, and maybe when y'all are a little less busy Tim should have you as guests for the pod.
It really has been such a strange process to work on this follow up book. Luckily (luckily?) I have some experience with the pace and overwhelm and also the existential panic that goes into writing an academic study of hellscapes--- my PhD dissertation in 2012 (which was the basis of my first book in 2015) was on trolling on 4chan, which of course quickly moved into the political/Trumpy realm, and since then the MAGA-trolling cusp has been my primary research focus. So I kind of knew what to expect when we dove into the project in January, but it was still completely gutting, a different level of gutting than anything I'd experienced until then. It did help me process things, at least. But there was never an escape from the granularity of what was happening.
As for the media side of things, the book talks a lot about the trolling element and the ways that the information environment created permission and incentive --really, selected-- for Trump and everything we're seeing now. So the conversations are huge and unwieldy and there are so many reasons beyond Trump that we have Trump. Which is why the only reasonable expectation for the foreseeable future is indeed trouble and much more trouble. All the more reason to try to make sense of it all, I think...anyway thanks again for reading the book and kind words, I hope you're finding a healthy balance in all of this! (i.e. appropriate worry and also still living life).
I have a quick sort of sheepish response to Egger's post (which is very good!). The non-sheepish part is that there's actually a much older history to the weird not-really-religious-but-kind-of-and-also-it's-happening-in-a-secular-context dynamic he's describing, it traces all the way back to the Cold War with various business-types secretly bankrolling people like Billy Graham (in the YouTube with Sam Stein Egger says something like, Billy G wouldn't have liked this, but actually, Billy G had been doing something very similar!). The sheepish part of the comment is that I know this because I wrote a whole book about it (an actual legit/academic book) (I'm an academic) called The Shadow Gospel which accounts for the history --again, all the way back to the Cold War-- of literally everything Egger is writing about, including the framing of Dems as demons (also in the YouTube the guys were a bit puzzled by Trump calling democrats evil but that is just liberal devil stuff that has been happening for decades and decades). The basic argument of the book is that the driver of a LOT of the religious right isn't love of God, it's hatred of the liberal devil ----something that drove a wedge within Christianity (between what we call theological and demonological elements) decades ago, the weird shadowy energies of which Trump has harnessed. Basically, what Trump is doing is a particular sort of shadow Christianity that might say the word God but it's talking about something else entirely (liberal/leftist evil). Just if anyone is interested! Sorry to self-promote!
This is a great point. It's funny--even as I said "Billy Graham" on the video the other day I was sort of wincing, because I don't know all that much about him specifically and wished I'd thought of a better example off the top of my head. My point was just to say that there's a major difference between a religious political power base that's centered on actual faith leaders and one that's centered on business people who consider themselves believers but are mostly just political hangers-on. Anyway, how do I find your book!!
Ah so nice to hear from you Andrew! Thanks for your response. I am a regular listener/reader and was jumping up and down wanting to join the conversation (The Bulwark has been my go-to place for sanity and perspective for ages and since January as I've been working on this follow-up book it's been an absolute lifeline). Billy Graham is such a slippery figure...one of the fascinating things about him (besides how much he railed against the liberal/communist devil in the 1950s) is that he actually started out as a pretty fringe figure, but through some amazing comms by the New Evangelicals --and their unbelievably aggressive campaign to paint Mainline Protestants as, you guessed it, the liberal devil (although "liberal" meant something different at the time, it was more aligned with the social gospel which the Evangelicals used to "prove" that Mainline churches were full of Communists)-- they, the Evangelicals, were able to self-mainstream, bringing their narrative about the liberal (Communist) devil with them! The history is totally bonkers and it draws in all kinds of weird overlaps between secular and religious elements, including huge injections of (under the radar) cash from these oil tycoons and other business-types (who were also funding organizations like the John Birch Society plus more respectable publications like the National Review and a host of other rightwing media, helping to further crystalize the figure of the liberal/leftist devil through incessant multi-channel repetition). At the time Billy Graham was like, er, thanks for all your money, Texas Oil Tycoons, but let's keep this between us because I don't want people to think I/the Evangelical movement as a whole is a corporate product, which it kind of was. Really wild stuff. But I'd be happy to send you a PDF of the book, just send something to my university email (wphilli2 [at] uoregon [dot] edu) and I'll zip it over! Thanks again for your comment!! And for all the work you and the team is doing.
When I started posting on Fox News after Trump won his first election...one of the first things I picked up from those posting was the absolutely blistering hatred they had of Hilary, Obama and Susan Rice. It wasn't just a "don't like their politics" thing...it was a deep-seeded hatred of the evil these demons brought upon our country. I might be exaggerating a little on that last statement, but the fact that I sensed the hatred being deeper than just differing political views isn't. It was palpable and notable to me back then so that's why I'm posting about it today. You're right...this has been building for decades...not just in the Trump era. I think that Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gringrich were key components that made it mainstream and Trump was the accelerant that made it take off like a rocket ship.
"Demoncrats," and they're serious as a heart attack.
Look no further than the stories from last week describing how many Texan's wanted to decline Federal funds for the creation of an emergency alert system for major storms and flooding.
They called it "Biden Money" and it was therefore evil.
The money was finally accepted, but they used it for other things.
"stupid is as stupid does"
Yeah in the Shadow Gospel book we spend a LOT of time talking about the various precursors to all of this...in the 90s you see an interesting shift from Evangelicalism being the hub of a lot of the liberal/leftist/Dem devil talk (and it was very very literal in those networks, with all kinds of overlap with talk of the actual apocalypse) to what we call the Church of Fox News, where the evil liberal becomes a good television character. It's all so enormously strange but does account for the fervor you see that goes so far beyond disagreement over policy! We talk about it as quasi-religion, but it's not God that's at the center of the discourse...
I bought and read y'all's book, and it was great! Thank you for writing it; it's really colored my thinking on how evangelical Republicans view Democrats after decades of their demonization in rightwing circles. It's pretty bleak as far as the prospects of Democrats ever winning over people like that, but your book offered me a lot of insight as to why it's so bleak.
Oh that's really cool! Thanks Don. We're actually in the (rather frenzied) process of finalizing and submitting the manuscript of the follow up book, which focuses on the broadening popularity of demonology (talk about bleak) during the first 6 months of Trump 2.0. It's much more focused on the underlying myth/legend/storytelling element (the chapters are titled: Myth, Legend, Ritual, Exorcism, Combat, Hell), with history still (the first two chapters compares MAGA storytelling to stories told by the First and Second Klans), but a lot more contemporary analysis, including a ton of rhetorical analysis of things like the Hegseth hearings and Bukele/Zelenskyy WH meetings and various Trump speeches etc. Initially when we were planning the SG book we expected it would mostly focus on the Trump Era; we figured we'd write a chapter or two about the history, then pivot into the present moment. But by the time we got to chapter 5 and realized um we're still in the 1990s, we had to reassess: our one book was going to be two books. Needless to say, it's been terrible to write!
I bet the sequel has been Hell to write. It's all very depressing stuff, and being contemporary rather than historical probably makes it even harder to get through. I'll beer you both strength to get through to the finish line, because I know how depressing it must get.
The new book sounds fascinating though, and I'll keep an eye out for it, and make sure not to read near any upper story windows. Judging from the chapter titles, assuming they're in order, things just get worse and worse by the end of the book. The rhetoric you see from these people is so over the top and disgusting, but man a lot of people are convinced by it. And with the modern media environment, where things get wings online, and people live in these bespoke little realities rather than actual reality, and with AI propaganda popping up and seeping in, more trouble is ahead. Much more trouble.
Oh, and maybe when y'all are a little less busy Tim should have you as guests for the pod.
It really has been such a strange process to work on this follow up book. Luckily (luckily?) I have some experience with the pace and overwhelm and also the existential panic that goes into writing an academic study of hellscapes--- my PhD dissertation in 2012 (which was the basis of my first book in 2015) was on trolling on 4chan, which of course quickly moved into the political/Trumpy realm, and since then the MAGA-trolling cusp has been my primary research focus. So I kind of knew what to expect when we dove into the project in January, but it was still completely gutting, a different level of gutting than anything I'd experienced until then. It did help me process things, at least. But there was never an escape from the granularity of what was happening.
As for the media side of things, the book talks a lot about the trolling element and the ways that the information environment created permission and incentive --really, selected-- for Trump and everything we're seeing now. So the conversations are huge and unwieldy and there are so many reasons beyond Trump that we have Trump. Which is why the only reasonable expectation for the foreseeable future is indeed trouble and much more trouble. All the more reason to try to make sense of it all, I think...anyway thanks again for reading the book and kind words, I hope you're finding a healthy balance in all of this! (i.e. appropriate worry and also still living life).
That sounds like it’s going to be a fascinating book,
Thank you Linda! It's the strangest thing I've ever worked on...
The Shadow Gospel is now on my must-read list, so I'll be ready for the follow-up!
Thank you! I'd love to know what you think!
I will check this out!!
Awesome and if you do I'd love to hear your thoughts!