Interviews About the Corporate Poverty Complex Fleecing America's Poor and Senator Josh Hawley's Speech Declaring the United States Needs Christian Nationalism
Anne Kim discusses her book "Poverty for Profit: How Corporations Get Rich off America’s Poor" and Katherine Stewart & Frederick Clarkson explain the significance of our Christian Nationalist GOP.
Anne Kim is a writer, lawyer, and public policy expert with a long career in Washington, DC–based think tanks working in and around Capitol Hill. She is a contributing editor at Washington Monthly, where she was a senior writer. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Governing, TheAtlantic.com, the Wall Street Journal, Democracy, and numerous other publications. Anne joins Editor Cyril Mychalejko on the Bucks County Beacon's podcast The Signal to talk about her new book Poverty for Profit: How Corporations Get Rich off America’s Poor.
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Last week The Bucks County Beacon sent one of our reporters, Zach D. Roberts, to the National Conservatism Conference in DC. We were the first outlet with full video of his speech “The Christian Nationalism We Need.”
“And I'm sure some will say now that I am calling America a Christian nation. So I am. And some will say that I'm advocating Christian nationalism. And so I did,” said Hawley to the applauding audience’s delight, continuing, "The truth is Christian nationalism is not a threat to American democracy. Christian nationalism founded American democracy."
I published two pieces. First, Senator Josh Hawley: ‘Christian Nationalism Founded American Democracy’, includes analysis from Frederick Clarkson, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates and expert on the New Apostolic Reformation and the larger Christian Right.
“Hawley is taking a rhetorical sledgehammer to the foundations of democratic thought and institutions. Most people do not agree with Hawley and his ilk,” Clarkson told me. “It’s time for us to follow the lead of the French in their recent elections and stop this nascent American fascism in its tracks.”
I also spoke with Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, to help make sense of the significance of this Christian Nationalist moment and movement. Rob Reiner’s new documentary God & Country is actually based off of Katherine’s book.
“This is a big deal. A speech like this from a Republican senator would not have been possible 20 years ago. Hawley isn’t offering the old-school grievances of the religious right about a handful of social issues, like gay marriage and abortion,” Stewart told me. “He is talking about ending American democracy and instead imposing his preferred religion through the power of government. Christian nationalism has always been an anti-democratic, theocratic, and authoritarian movement at its core; Hawley is openly embracing the project.”
Stewart does a deep dive for me unpacking and dissecting the demagoguery and historical revisionism that littered Hawley’s speech.
Read it here: Q&A: Katherine Stewart Unpacks Senator Josh Hawley’s Speech – ‘The Christian Nationalism We Need’.