20: Fascist Pipeline, Evangelical Pipeline w/ Brad Onishi

Episode 20: Evangelical Pipeline, Fascist Pipeline Matthew Remski in conversation with Brad Onishi --- **Matthew Remski:** Hello everyone. My name is Matthew Remski. This is Episode 20 of *Antifascist Dad Podcast*: The Fascist Pipeline and the Evangelical Pipeline, with Brad Onishi. You can find me on Bluesky and Instagram under my name, and I’m on YouTube and TikTok as AntiFascistDad. The Patreon for this show is ntifascistdadpodcast, where subscribers get early access to every Part Two of these main feed episodes, including this one. I also want to direct you to the link to preorder a book that’s coming out on April 26. It’s by me. It’s called *Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times*. I’m told that preordering helps with visibility and ratings and algorithmic stuff and so on. So please consider that. I’m really happy to talk with Professor Brad Onishi today, whom I first came across through his excellent podcast with Professor Dan Miller. It’s called *Straight White American Jesus*. Brad and Dan are both evangelical ministers who became professors of religion and have really done God’s work — that’s a dad joke — in examining the prophetic and morbid roles played by far-right forms of American Christianity in the age of Trump. Highly recommended podcast. But before I roll the interview, I want to flag a related issue for parents, mentors, and caregivers that points back to remarks I’ve made on how to talk to kids about the Epstein files while keeping the eye on target. This issue digs into many of the themes Brad and Dan study: right-wing politics presenting itself as spiritual warfare, anxieties about women gaining control over their reproductive lives, and obsessions with purity culture. I’m talking about how the Epstein files have now triggered a new wave of Satanic Panic content across Instagram and TikTok. I’m not sure to what extent this material will filter down to Gen Alpha or in what fragmentary subgroups it will show up. I don’t know whether it will be digested and dispersed into meme format only. Nonetheless, I think folks should be prepared for what this stuff does by getting clear on what it is and being able to articulate a direct response to it. So here’s the bare-bones review. The postwar Catholic Church in the Global North, along with the rest of the American sphere of influence, devoted itself to anti-communism not only because Marxist analysis threatened Christian theories of history, but because communists had identified the Catholic Church as a reactionary arm of colonial capitalism. During and after the Russian Revolution and during Spain’s Second Republic and Civil War, priests and bishops who supported monarchies were repressed, jailed, sometimes executed. The postwar Church wasn’t going to allow that to happen again. So major Catholic influencers at the time, including Fulton Sheen in the U.S., dedicated their platforms to anti-communist propaganda. At the same time, younger generations of Catholics weren’t entirely buying it. Sheen and other sclerotic squares couldn’t compete with the culture of the 1960s. Foreseeing declines in attendance and vocations — and realizing that the traditional Latin Mass wasn’t going to cut it in an age of increasingly intimate popular media — the Church under Pope John XXIII initiated systemic reform called Vatican II. Traditionalists associated signs of liberalization — colloquial language for the Mass, guitar music, the celebrant facing the congregation — with decline in belief and the creep of communist influence. One backlash wave came in 1972, when Pope Paul VI asserted that “Satan’s smoke has made its way into the temple of God through some crack.” Historian Bernard Doherty notes this became emblematic of anxieties about Vatican II. Around this same time, awareness was growing within Catholic ranks — and in other denominations — that the Church had a systemic problem with priests committing child sexual abuse and being shielded from prosecution. It would take until the mid-1980s for those stories to break into mainstream news. I believe a contradiction became intolerable: on one hand, longing for traditional certainty saw Vatican II as existential threat. On the other, there was semi-conscious awareness that the Church harbored abusive priests. In 1980 came *Michelle Remembers*, transcripts from psychiatric sessions between Dr. Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith in Victoria, B.C. Under hypnosis, Smith described elaborate satanic ritual abuse — impossible events, uncorroborated claims, missing middle fingers among cultists. School records contradicted her story. Her family said it never happened. Yet the book, partially funded by the Catholic Church and endorsed by a diocesan archbishop, sold millions. It fueled the Satanic Panic. Pazder and Smith became expert witnesses in cases like the Martinsville daycare trial. Why was this sticky? In my view, Catholic anti-communism set the stage. But the panic also responded to changing gender roles. As women entered the workforce and daycare became necessary, its collectivist logic was framed as an attack on heteropatriarchy. Daycare workers and public school teachers became early targets. Fast forward. As far as evidence shows, no verified Epstein survivor has accused him of satanic ritual abuse. Survivors described rape and trafficking — not ritual Satanism. Yet millennial and Gen Z influencers are recycling Satanic Panic language to sensationalize Epstein. My concern is that, like Pazder, they will persuade a new generation to believe impossible things that are politically useless and harmful. Here are themes to watch for: First, inverted Catholicism — Catholic ritual turned grotesque. Second, vast clandestine networks — cultists hiding in plain sight. Third, animal and human sacrifice imagery. Fourth, survivors as prophetic witnesses in cosmic warfare. Many empathetic young people will want to believe every survivor narrative. That speaks to their goodness. But strategically, ask: Who mobilizes spiritual warfare explanations? Who benefits? Who gets targeted? Has blaming Satanism ever solved a material catastrophe? Now, to Brad. Brad Onishi is co-host of *Straight White American Jesus* and founder of Axis Mundi Media. He’s appeared on Fresh Air and MSNBC. His book is *Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism — and What Comes Next*. In our conversation, we discuss Brad’s conversion to evangelicalism at 14, the parallels between fundamentalist religion and fascist recruitment, teenage anxiety, belonging, refuge from complexity, pseudo-certainty, and enemies to fight. Here’s our conversation. --- **Matthew Remski:** Brad Onishi, welcome to Antifascist Dad Podcast. **Brad Onishi:** I’m so excited to be here. You and I have talked so much in the past, but I’ve been looking forward to this. Thank you for being the antifascist dad. **Matthew Remski:** I hear you’ve just moved to the Pacific Northwest. Have you met any antifascist dads yet? **Brad Onishi:** We’re Portland-adjacent. I don’t want to insult anyone by claiming Portland. But yes, there are antifascists here, and I’m excited to connect. **Matthew Remski:** I want to start with this double proposition: nobody is born fascist, and nobody is born evangelical Christian. These are views into which kids are trained. You converted at 14. What conditions made you vulnerable? **Brad Onishi:** I wasn’t born into a religious home. I converted in eighth grade — right when many people are lured into ideologies. By 20, I was a full-time minister and married. Five years from nonreligious to minister. Outwardly, I didn’t fit the stereotype. Good grades, sports, friends. I did drugs and rock and roll earlier than most. I went to church because my girlfriend invited me. I thought it was a great strategy to make out on Wednesday night. But I found belonging. Young adults welcomed me into a community that felt solid compared to teenage chaos. I came from a divorced family — loving parents, but lots of change. Church felt like peace. And I was — and still am — highly anxious. Anxiety runs in my family. As high school approached, life felt big and scary. Church became refuge. And what I’ll add to my evangelical experience — and then make the comparison to the fascist pipeline that lures young boys, 13-year-old boys, 16-year-old boys, 19-year-old men — is this: When I became an evangelical, I had a refuge from certain aspects of life, but I also had an enemy to fight. And it felt great. It was like, oh, my life is meaningful. Instead of going behind the movie theater and smoking pot and doing that teenage stuff, I am saving people from hell. I am fighting the devil. I am fighting the forces trying to take over the world and destroy it. **Matthew Remski:** So is that there from the outset? Within the first couple of meetings, are you told that the reason you might feel alienated is that there are enemies out there, and you can build meaning by taking on a mission against them? **Brad Onishi:** That was one of the things that drew me in from the very beginning. And this is where I think fundamentalist religion and fascism can legitimately be compared. Both promise to solve you. They’re going to show you who hurt you. They’re going to give you tools to fight those forces. They’re going to explain why you feel empty, anxious, alienated. That was clear from the start. The turnaround from my first church attendance to walking the boardwalk in Huntington Beach asking strangers if they knew Jesus because they were going to hell — that was probably four months. **Matthew Remski:** That’s quick. There’s clearly a parallel here in terms of vulnerability at a particular age and the offering of a kind of pseudo-certainty that’s quite aggressive. What began to break that spell for you? Because you have relief from anxiety by joining this community, but eventually that must backfire — especially if the enemy is everywhere. **Brad Onishi:** It creates pressure that isn’t sustainable. If I actually believe that when a person dies they go to hell, then I shouldn’t be doing anything except convincing as many people as possible to avoid eternal damnation. I would walk around school at lunch asking people if they knew Jesus. I used to pray every Friday in front of the flagpole for our nation and our school. People would ask what I was doing, and I’d say, “I’m glad you asked.” It’s bizarrely similar to political recruiting. But here’s the thing. I became the nuisance. I took it seriously. You gave me the worldview. You gave me moral clarity. I’m all in. Sixteen-year-old me was the most ferociously binary thinker imaginable. This is right. This is wrong. I’d go to the pastors and say, “You taught me this. You’re not living it. You’re hypocrites.” Why are you buying boats? People are dying and going to hell. I became that guy. **Matthew Remski:** So there’s this pileup of anxious tasks and missions. And you can’t actually complete it. You can’t convert everyone. The world is limitless. Eventually that has to crash. **Brad Onishi:** Exactly. That anxious pileup forces you into a reckoning. Either you relax it enough to live with yourself — become the grown-up who compromises — or you conclude everyone around you is a coward or hypocrite. For me, it led to reading everything I could get my hands on. I thought, I’ll figure out how we’re supposed to live, and when I’m old enough, I’ll do it properly. But that process eventually leads to realizing the worldview collapses in on itself. Fundamentalist religions and fascist ideologies promise final solutions. They promise to close vulnerability and threat completely. That’s why they’re alluring. If someone stands up and says, “I will fix this country entirely,” people want that. What I’ve learned is different. The goal isn’t finality. It’s fighting for a world that looks more like justice and equality — locally, incrementally, provisionally. Not cosmic solutions. Historical contingencies. In this place, at this time, we won’t allow that injustice to happen. That’s different from promising to solve everything. **Matthew Remski:** It reminds me of what Mark Bray says about antifascist action — that you often don’t know how well it worked because when the threat dissipates, the group dissolves. The certainty recedes when the crisis recedes. Whereas fascism promises permanence. **Brad Onishi:** Yes. It’s like a partnership. You don’t solve your marriage once and for all. You work continually at better ways of living together. The retreat doesn’t fix everything forever. That’s maturity. And that’s something young people especially are vulnerable to missing, because romanticism feels powerful. Finality feels powerful. **Matthew Remski:** You mentioned earlier that reading and exposure broke the spell. What happened? **Brad Onishi:** I went to graduate school in England. I was around Christians I’d been told my entire life were dangerous. Gay Anglican priests. Baptists who drank beer. Unitarians. And they were pursuing truth, beauty, love, and the divine in ways that inspired me. They became my friends and intellectual partners. Everything I’d been told to fear turned out to contain more beauty and care than the hyper-binary spiritual warfare community I had left. That sealed it. Relationship with the “other” destabilizes extremism. That familiarity — that actual human contact — undermines the fear narrative. I know we’re all looking for ways to deradicalize people. It’s hard. But it does seem to me that genuine relationship with those outside the ideological bubble is one of the most reliable pathways out. --- **Matthew Remski:** Now in Part Two — which is up on Patreon — we talk about how multicultural and multiethnic communities inoculate against fascism. Brad talks about his diverse Japanese American family and what he calls a kind of masala culture, contrasted with whiteness as the obliteration of difference and history. We critique reductionist religious systems that divide the world into us and them, as opposed to traditions that invite complexity and mystery. We also talk about how fascism restricts masculinity to a narrow register of anger, whereas healthier spiritual paths embrace a fuller spectrum of emotion. That’s it for this week, folks. Thank you for listening. And take care of each other.