By Political Research Associates
Political Research Associates is joined by experts to discuss the most significant contemporary threats to democracy from the mainstream and Far Right. Join host Koki Mendis twice a month so that y
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The podcast currently has 25 episodes available.
In this first episode of Season 3, we are back with a conversation about the origins, unlikely intersections, and influence of the contemporary anti-immigration movement. Ethan provides us with a fascinating overview of how this movement developed, from its White Nationalist origins, with significant bipartisan and centrist support. We discuss John Tanton’s network of organizations, funding sources for the anti-immigrant movement, significant legislation impacting the immigration landscape, intersections with other movements (not all right-wing) like the environmental movement and Christian nationalism, and Project 2025’s vision for immigration policy in the U.S. We end on a high note, discussing local resistance strategies to fight back.
Ethan Fauré is a Senior Research Analyst at PRA, with over a decade of experience focusing on movements promoting anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and White nationalist ideologies. Ethan works closely with other researchers, journalists, national organizations, and grassroots activists to deepen their understanding of these forces, informing resistance efforts, and their work building power across the country.
Episode Resources
Episode Keywords
Anti-immigration, anti-immigrant, John Tanton, Project 2025, Immigration Justice, Fight the Right
Uncover the disturbing realities of racial capitalism and state violence with host Koki Mendis and Saqib Bhatti, co-executive Director of the Action Center on Race and Economy (ACRE). Bhatti’s insights illuminate the distressing crossroads where austerity programs, mass incarceration, and a negligent police state meet. Throughout the conversation, Bhatti exposes the dangerous influence of corporations on public services and their contribution to the rise of a racialized policing system. We discuss ways in which over policing and mass incarceration uphold racist wealth and inequality and strategies available to us on the left to contest power and advance redistribution. We explore how austerity programs that reduce social safety nets and inflated budgets for incarceration and policing have created a relationship of criminalizing people instead of providing support and care. Technologies like ShotSpotter, which claims to detect gunshots accurately, are not only rife with inaccuracies, but also operate on the myth that more policing leads to flourishing and safer communities.
The second part of our conversation pivots to the ways rideshare giants, Uber and Lyft, have upended the taxi industry, including how these corporations avoid responsibility for drivers’ employment conditions, and the consequent fallout for the predominantly immigrant workers who previously made their living as full-time taxi drivers. We further examine the related trend of companies being bought out by private equity firms, which can lead to workers losing their pensions and benefits while shareholders profit. Bhatti provides unique insights into the ensuing destabilization and the worrying trend of private equity firms buying failing corporations and profiting from their debt.
We also explore how organizing labor, renter, and debtor unions can help build worker power and solidarity across economically marginalized groups. Finally, we consider the role of non-traditional unions in amassing and aggregating collective power to fight against corporations.
EPISODE RESOURCES
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Racial Capitalism, State Violence, Austerity Programs, Mass Incarceration, Policing System, ShotSpotter, Uber, Lyft, Taxi Industry, Private Equity Firms, Anti-CRT, Critical Race Theory, Labor Unions, Renter Unions, Debtor Unions, Economic Interests, Collective Power, Wealthy Corporations.
Who are the abortion abolitionists? What drives them, and how do their tactics overlap with those of other far-right movements? Join host, Koki Mendis, and PRA Senior Research Analyst, Cloee Cooper, as we uncover the differences between the broader pro-life movement and the abortion abolitionist movement.
The abortion abolitionists are a nationwide network of militant anti-abortion far-right activists who want to eradicate all abortion. They would like to see the death penalty for those involved in abortion. They draw on the militant anti-abortion movement from the 1990s that was responsible for violence against abortion clinics and providers. We discuss how the pro-life movement is more interested in working within the US legal system for reforms that further restrict access to abortion, while the abortion abolitionists want to abolish abortion in all instances.
We explore the influence of Christian Reconstructionism on the anti-abortion movement, and how its vision for a theocratic society has had a significant impact on the abortion abolitionist movement today. We examine the overlap between the abortion abolitionist movement, militias, and other far-right movements, including the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection.
We examine the broader pro-life bills that have been introduced in various states, and we compare these bills with the ones that the abolitionists are advocating for, which would criminalize anyone who has an abortion and grant legal protection to fertilized eggs. We also look at the role of Bradley Pierce, the attorney behind many of the abortion abolitionist bills, and how his Foundation to Abolish Abortion is connected to the right-wing homeschooling movement. We explore the concept of the Overton window, and how the abortion abolitionist movement is pushing for their extreme ideas to become accepted as common sense.
Finally, we discuss how the abortion abolitionist movement is shifting its tactics to become more mainstream and to influence change. We assess the need to understand the strategies of the abortion abolitionist movement and to build coalitions to establish movement strategies rooted in communities and movements on the ground.
EPISODE RESOURCES
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Abortion Abolitionists, Christian Right, Christian Reconstructionism, RJ Rushdoony, Capitol Insurrection, Anti-Abortion Legislation, Homeschooling Movement, Overton Window, Pro-Choice Religious Community, Movement Strategies, Collective Power for Reproductive Justice
In this conversation with Lauren Jacobs from PowerSwitch Action, the discussion focuses on the role of worker power in combating authoritarianism. Lauren and host Koki Mendis explore the allure of reactionary anti-state narratives in explaining worker precarity and how labor organizing can present counter-narratives and options for reducing worker suffering. They also discuss the barriers to unionization posed by corporations, the relationship between worker organizing and the presidential administrations, and the impact of municipal and county governing structures on worker power formation.
EPISODE RESOURCES:
EPISODE KEYWORDS:
Worker Power, Labor Organizing, Labor Strikes, National Labor Relations Act, Community Organizing, Unions, Corporations, Union Busting, Capitalism, Authoritarianism.
In this eye-opening interview, Dr. Chrissy Stroop peels back the layers of Christian dominionism, and explains how this ideology is deeply woven into the fabric of Christian homeschooling.
Dr. Chrissy Stroop is both a former insider and an expert scholar. She has long written and shared candid stories of growing up in a Christian educational environment. Here, she recounts the ways in which evangelical ideology was deeply woven into her own educational experiences. Her experiences are a prism for a deep exploration into the world of Christian homeschooling and its dominionist influence throughout the country. As Dr. Stroop explains, the pervasiveness of Seven Mountains Dominionism in homeschooling spaces should not be underestimated. More than an implicit ideology, it is often central to the curricula adopted by homeschooling parents.
We discuss the organizations, institutions, and ideologies behind Christian (home)schooling. We explore the role of the John Birch Society and the Council for National Policy in the grassroots development of the public school exit initiative. We discuss far-right movements that are supported by the DeVos family's school choice agenda.
We also explore resistance, including the influential work of activists like R.L. Stollar and Torah Bontrager, as well as the importance of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. We consider the strategic defense against these movements and how to promote true separation of church and state, as well as religious pluralism.
Dr. Stroop also considers the valid reasons for pulling kids out of public schools in order to homeschool them, the difficulties of finding non-right-wing Christian co-ops and curricula, and explores how homeschooling families that do not support the right-wing Christian agenda often end up allying themselves with the Right, unintentionally.
In this episode, Koki reads “The Spirit of January 6th: The Theology of This Seldom Discussed Movement Animates the Growing Threat to U.S. Democracy” by Frederick Clarkson and André Gagné, the third in our new From the Archives series. From the Archives features those must read and, now, must listen to pieces from PRA's more than 40 years of publishing.
In this article, Clarkson and Gagné offer a peek into a shadowy, dramatic, and hugely influential corner of the Christian right. The New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, is populated by modern day apostles, prophets, and demons, and is a key Christian nationalist movement quickly gaining power and influence best exemplified by the recent election of Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. This piece provides timely insights into the key players, texts, and organizing tenets of this influential and increasingly global movement. You can read the article online at our sibling site religiondispatches.org.
Frederick Clarkson is a Senior Research Analyst at Political Research Associates. He has written about politics and religion for four decades. His work has appeared in a wide range of publications from Mother Jones, Church & State, and Ms. Magazine to The Christian Science Monitor and Salon.com. He has also worked as an investigative editor at Planned Parenthood Federation of America; Communications Director at the Institute for Democracy Studies; and co-founded the group blog, Talk to Action. He is the author, co-author or editor of several books including Dispatches from the Religious Left and Eternal Hostility.
André Gagné is Full Professor and Chair of the Department of Theological Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. His teaching and scholarship focus on political theology, religion and violence, and the interpretation and reception of Scripture. Dr. Gagné has published eight books, multiple academic articles, and his work has been featured over 350 times in media outlets. His most recent book is entitled: American Evangelical for Trump: Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and the End Times (Routledge, 2024).
EPISODE RESOURCES
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7M, 7 Mountains Mandate, Apostles, C. Peter Wagner, Charismatics, Christian Nationalism, Christian Right, Demons, Dominionism, Dutch Sheets, End Times, Five Fold Mandate, Lance Wallnau, Michael Flynn, Mike Johnson, New Apostolic Reformation, Pentecostals, Prophet, Religious Right, Seven Mountains, Seven Mountains Mandate, Spiritual Warfare, Trump
In this episode, Koki interviews Laura Pulido, Collins Chair and Professor of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies and Geography at the University of Oregon, who studies race, environmental justice, and cultural memory. They discuss the intersection of racial and climate denialism, and how these realms of politics, understanding, and identity buttress one another. Laura and Koki dig into some of the key insights from Pulido's work, an invaluable vocabulary with which to parse the salience of emotion, identity, and belonging in crystallizing and simultaneously mobilizing oppressive political ideologies and practice in the face of environmental injustice.
EPISODE RESOURCES
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Climate Denial, Climate Denialism, Environmental Justice, Environmental Racism, Historic Sites, Memorialization, Memorials, Oregon, Racial Denial, Racial Denialism, Rural Community, Rural-Identified Community, Surplus of White Nationalism, White Nation, White Nationalism, Wildfires
In this episode, Koki sits down with Shane Burley to discuss some of the most peculiar, and—at times, most influential—corners of the Far Right, capturing a spectrum of White nationalist, misogynist organizing that spans the neopaganist Wolves of Vinland to the multiracial, hypermasculine Proud Boys to the highly suspect community of so-called Formers.
Shane also provides timely updates on his seminal pieces written for PRA on these movements and we discuss their significance for the broader landscape of White nationalist organizing. He also shares a clear-eyed defensive, preventative strategy for disrupting the continued growth of the Far Right, leaving us with a navigable path forward.
Episode Resources
Keywords
Far Right, Formers, Multi Level Marketing, Proud Boys, Shane Burley, White Nationalism, White Nationalists, Wolves of Vinland
In this episode of Inform Your Resistance, Koki reads “Total Life Reform: The Real Consequences of the Far Right’s Self-Help Grift” by Shane Burley, the second in our new From the Archives series. From the Archives features those must read and, now, must listen to pieces from PRA’s more than 40 years of publishing. This article was published in the Fall 2020 issue of The Public Eye magazine, and you can read the article here.
In this episode, Koki is joined by Aidan Orly, one of a handful of U.S.-based researchers writing and speaking about Christian Zionism: the right-wing domestic and international movements that use a Christian biblical interpretation to promote and endorse Jewish nationalism. Christian Zionism forms the largest political base of support for the state of Israel in the U.S. Koki and Aidan focus on the authoritarian nature of Christian Zionist movements, and discuss their key leaders, organizations, and financial and cultural engines (including tourism and popular media). They also speak to the ways the Left can both unintentionally spread Christian Zionist policies and actions and also how the Left can identify and call those out, and thus push back against the broader Christian Right’s efforts. Orly is a writer, researcher, and fundraiser at Political Research Associates.
EPISODE RESOURCES
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Anti-Muslim, Christian Nationalism, Christian Zionism, Israel, Jerry Falwell, Jerry Falwell Jr., Jewish State, Jewish Zionism, The Late Great Planet Earth, Left Behind Series, Mike Huckabee, Zionism
The podcast currently has 25 episodes available.
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