It Could Happen Here - What’s The Matter With Texas? feat. Steven Monacelli & Dr. Michael Phillips

Episode Date: September 10, 2024

Steven Monacelli, a journalist in Texas focused on politics and extremism, and Dr. Michael Phillips, a historian of racism and eugenics in Texas, team up to explain the apocalyptic religious belief that shapes politics in Texas — and in turn, the nation and world.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.

That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. I'm Stephen Monticelli, a journalist in Dallas who covers political extremism in Texas. I'm Michael Phillips, an historian who wrote a history of racism in Dallas called White Metropolis. Both of us grew up in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, and for both of us, our home state has been a matter of both wonder and horrified fascination. In this episode of It Could Happen Here, we're going to try to explain Texas culture and politics and why the country and the world should care. Spoiler alert, what happens in Texas doesn't stay in Texas. The state has always had a disproportionate impact on national politics. The annexation of Texas in 1845 provoked the

Mexican-American War from 1846 to 1848. The United States grabbed two-thirds of Mexico's territory, and there was an ugly and bitter fight over the status of slavery and all that new land the United States acquired. That's going to turn out to be one of the major causes of the Civil War, a conflict that resulted in the liberation of 4 million African Americans from slavery, but also the death of three-quarters of a million Americans. Texas also was the epicenter of the populist movement, a leftist movement largely based in Texas that actually challenged the power of the Democratic Party in the South. And if the populist party had succeeded, everything else that happened in America in the 20th century in terms of Jim Crow, lynching, the Klan, et cetera, may have had a very

different outcome. Slavery didn't end in Texas until June 19th, 1865, months after it had ended in the rest of the country. It's a state that today is the second most populous state in the nation, and it's the eighth largest economy in the world. Two of the most consequential presidents over the last 60 years hailed from the Lone Star State. There was Democrat Lyndon Johnson, who brought the country not only Medicare and Medicaid, but the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, two issues that the right wing continue to fight against to this day. Those laws made African Americans perhaps the most important constituency in the Democratic Party. Racist backlash to Johnson's civil rights legislation, urban uprisings in places like the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles, and white flight generally led segregationists and their children in the South who had been

loyal Democratic voters to switch allegiance to the Republican Party over the next three decades. Another Texas president, Republican George W. Bush, he aggressively embraced homophobia, tightened the ties between the Republican Party and the most right-wing Christians in the country, and made denial of climate change strict GOP orthodoxy. Of course, the Bush family's oil wealth was central to their rise to power, and broadly speaking, the wealth of right-wing oil barons in Texas has helped push the Republican Party further and further to the right, in no small part due to a particular belief in a particular strain of Christianity, which we'll get to later in this episode. Bush's response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on

September 11th led to the rise of the modern surveillance state and the two longest wars in American history, both of them disastrous failures. The combination of white backlash to the LBJ-era civil rights initiatives, the intense religiosity of the Bush era and the Republican Party in that time period, and the sense that the United States was a declining power, unable to impose its will on Afghanistan and Iraq, opened the door to Donald Trump's ascendancy. In short, two Texas presidents played a major role in making the Democratic Party vastly more diverse, more urban-based, and more mainstream liberal, and the Republican Party more white, more right-wing, more isolationist,

and far more fundamentalist and skeptical of science. Texas has been in the national news frequently in recent years, and often for the worst reasons. It's become famous and infamous for its wide-open gun laws and several of the worst mass shootings in American history, including at an Army base in Killeen, a Walmart in El Paso, and an outlet mall in Allen. Walmart in El Paso, and an outlet mall in Allen. Draconian abortion laws allow complete strangers to sue women who go out of state and their pregnancy, and new laws are being considered to prevent women from traveling through particular counties on highways who, if they are seeking abortion, you know, they could be arrested for basically trying to leave the state to seek an abortion. In the last three years in this state, a group of teachers in the Southlake School District in the Dallas-Fort Worth

area were instructed to tell, quote, both sides of the Holocaust in order to not run afoul of the legislature's ban on critical race theory. A beloved teacher in Irving was fired for displaying a rainbow sticker in her classroom as a sign of support for LGBTQ students. The first ever African-American high school principal at Heritage High in yet another Dallas suburb, Colleyville, was forced from his job when he sent an email to his high school community after the murder of George Floyd that acknowledged the existence of systemic racism in the United States. that acknowledge the existence of systemic racism in the United States. So I think you could maybe pick up on a trend here in Texas that our fundamental rights like free speech are under threat, particularly if you run afoul of the orthodoxy that comes out of the Republican Party. And one target of that orthodoxy has been books. All across this nation, we've seen dust-ups over books in schools, books in libraries, and Texas has been one of the main flashpoints of this fight. reports that Texas and Florida lead the nation in book bans at public schools. With more than 1,500 books banned in the state of Texas, most of those books deal with issues like racism or

LGBTQ experience. And one deputy constable in Granbury, a suburb near Dallas-Fort Worth, even spent two years investigating three librarians on alleged felony charges of providing so-called harmful materials to minors, simply because they allowed minors to access acclaimed books like The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. According to an investigation by NBC News, the law enforcement officer, Scott London, was a member of the extremist Oath Keepers organization. He subpoenaed names of young readers who checked out supposedly objectable material, and he harmful materials was 824 pages long and no charges were ever filed. But nonetheless, a lot of people's lives were made difficult and a bunch of books have been taken off the shelves.

I've been taken off the shelves. So as we mentioned, Texas has been on the cutting edge of right-wing politics in America on issues like abortion, the treatment of trans children, and on immigration in particular. Texas has modeled the Republican attitude on newcomers and migrants and policies towards them. The state's governor, Greg Abbott, essentially tried to establish his own independent border policy, even though the Constitution makes that the responsibility of the federal government. Texas so far has built 34 miles of a wall. Abbott vows will eventually extend along the entirety of Texas' 1,254-mile international border with Mexico. One estimate says that project, if it were completed, would take 30 years and cost $20 billion. The state of Texas has placed buoys entangled with razor wire in the Rio Grande River near Eagle Pass, a border town that's a major crossing point for migrants fleeing the violence and economic hardship in Central arrests, but it's also cost $11 billion. And it's unclear what it's really done in terms of making the state safer. Texas insists through

statements from people like Greg Abbott that immigrants are dangerous and that they are flooding our streets with crime. Nevermind the fact that studies indicate that immigrants are far less likely to commit crimes on average. These initiatives have been deadly. In August 2023, a buoy trapped a 20-year-old Honduran and a small child, causing them both to drown. The Texas Border Patrol's El Paso sector has become one of the deadliest areas of the border here, with 149 immigrants dying over a 12-month period between 2022 and 2023. Recently on a podcast, Abbott expressed regret that Texas has been unable to shoot immigrants who are attempting to enter Texas by crossing the Rio Grande, and has complained that the Biden administration

might file murder charges against border agents if such lethal force was used. The only thing that we're not doing is we're not shooting people who come across the border because, of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder. One of the issues about immigration is a panic amongst the Anglos living in the state that white people will become a shrinking and less politically powerful minority. And this connects to the issue of abortion. Throughout the history of abortion laws in Texas, there's been a discussion of whether or not white Texans were committing what they said in the early 20th century was so-called race suicide, a real panic that black and brown people would eventually outnumber whites and would seize political

control of the state. And this is tied to the abortion issue because throughout the history of abortion laws in America and in Texas, there's been a concern that white women are having abortions. And that really fuels some of the extremism in how Texas has approached this issue. 2022, the state legislature passed a law that would allow a third party to sue anyone who helped a woman getting an abortion, although the courts have so far blocked enforcement of that law called Senate Bill 8. have so far blocked enforcement of that law called Senate Bill 8. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, meanwhile, has addressed another issue dealing with trans children. And again, trans children, if they're white, would be out of the reproductive demographic race that panics white racists in the state. He has tried to force doctors in other states to provide medical

information on young people receiving gender-affirming care outside of Texas, and the parents of trans children in Texas have been investigated for child abuse. In each case, these extreme laws have been discussed and in some cases imitated in other red states. and in some cases imitated in other red states. So on the one hand, we've got anxieties about immigrants allegedly replacing the white race rhetoric that has been repeated by people as high up as Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who has said that immigrants are trying to take over our country without firing a shot. This is something that people like the Hitler admirer, Nick Fuentes, who has met with a high ranking and influential Republican consultant who works for one of the

largest political donors in the country, he believes that sort of rhetoric and pushes it. On the other hand, we've got the issue with LGBTQ issues in general. We've seen books being taken off the shelves, as we previously mentioned. We've seen rights taken away from students with regard to their access to bathrooms. We have seen, as Dr. Phillips mentioned, the targeting of parents. And a lot of this comes from this anxiety that students are being groomed into becoming LGBTQ in public schools, in public libraries, and other settings. The idea being that, yes, they're trying to turn your kids gay. That's what they're saying. be extremely upset about any shrinking demographic numbers among the white population or a growing acceptance of queerness or people being transgender. And so much of that is rooted in

religious belief. But all of this, it matters in a bigger perspective. And I think we can understand why some of this is so prevalent in Texas through the lens of Texas's importance to national politics. Texas counts for 40 of 270 votes needed to win the Electoral College. Only California has more Electoral College votes. And the Republican Party has been able to rely on winning every single presidential election in this state since 1980. If Texas should ever flip politically, it'd be hard to see how the Republicans could ever win the White House again. And it always seems like Texas is just on the verge of flipping blue.

seems like Texas is just on the verge of flipping blue. Right. There's been a lot of talk for a long time about this pending demographic revolution, the idea that eventually the numbers are just baked in and that Republicans will no longer control the state. So let's look at some of those numbers. So Tejanos, or people of Latino-Hispanic descent, make up more than 40% of the state's population. So they're the largest single population group. Non-whites account for 60% of all Texans. And as a group, they vote mostly for Democrats. They control most of the state's largest cities in terms of political dominance, but because of low voter turnout among people of color, laws that intentionally make registering to vote harder making voting itself even more difficult gerrymandering and the general feebleness of the democratic party in the state the state has remained in control of a

very conservative very white republican minority for three decades in texas every major city is blue except for one. And that's Fort Worth, which is in a place called Tarrant County. And I think it is not a coincidence that the largest flashiest conflicts have often been in Tarrant County when it comes to things like schools, when it comes to things like books. Colleyville, as we previously mentioned, is in Tarrant County. If you've ever heard of the name Southlake, that's a town in Tarrant County. There are numerous national articles about issues that have emerged from this one single stronghold of Republican power in the state, which, if it were to fall, would pretend great changes, not just for the politics in the state of Texas, but perhaps even the nation.

It's been remarkable because school board meetings used to be really dull. You used to talk about boundaries for particular campuses, what students are going to attend which class. But now, over the last few years, very often, they've been scenes of screaming matches, threats, and so on. Texas, in many ways, has become a laboratory of autocracy. And again, it's a model for other states that have a right-wing political leadership. For instance, the Texas Republican Party platform adopted this year called for changes in the way statewide officials like governor

would be elected, and essentially the Republican Party called for creating a local version of the Electoral College. Under these proposed changes, a candidate for governor, lieutenant governor, all the down-ballot statewide offices could win the popular vote and still lose the election unless they carry a majority of the 254 counties in the state, most of which are very white, very conservative, very fundamentalist. If this became law, the proposal would guarantee permanent Republican rule in the state. As I said, other Republican states are looking at this proposal. It hasn't been proposed as legislation, but that would really end any pretense of democracy because most people in Texas live in cities like the rest of the United States. Another way that Republicans have maintained their grip on the state is by waging a never-ending culture war centered on matters of faith.

So if you really want to understand Texas, its culture, and its politics, you can't avoid a discussion of religion. You have to dive into one particular type of Christianity we've already referred to. This interpretation of the Bible motivates right-wing voters in the vast rural sections of the state and the outer suburbs of the major cities. and the outer suburbs of the major cities. It's disproportionately molded the state's laws and attitudes towards African-Americans, immigrants, and the people we've talked about, women, gay and trans people, and also non-Christians like Jews and Muslims. If you track the sort of issues that are being discussed by the Republican Party of Texas, and you look back, say, to the

time of George H.W. Bush, and you look to now, it will be very clear to you that the topics have changed. The sort of things that they talk about, it's less about low taxes. It's less about being business friendly. It's less about letting you do what you want in your personal life. And it is much more about imposing a particular religious viewpoint on others through policy. And the most vocal, perhaps one of the most highly organized and certainly flush with funds sect of Christianity that is driving this is this group of Christian fundamentalists that religious scholars broadly describe as dispensationalists. So what's a dispensationalist? It's a fancy word for someone who believes that we are living in the end times. The end times being this idea that at any moment now, all true Christians will be whisked up into the clouds in an event called

the rapture, that an embodiment of Satan called the Antichrist will take over the world and try to destroy Israel. And all of this is presaging the final judgment, the day when the Lord, Jesus comes down and he basically decides who's done well and who's done bad, and that settles it for all eternity. This particular strain of fundamentalism in Texas culture and politics has a profound impact on global politics. The dispensationalists are certain World War III is going to consume the planet. They believe there's going to be a final battle between good and evil called the Battle of Armageddon. And they believe this, and this is significant, they believe that Jesus Christ will come back specifically to stop World War III for a particular purpose.

He's going to come to prevent the destruction of all remaining Jewish people on the planet. And they believe that millions of Jewish people are going to die. Those who survive are going to convert to Christianity. And when Jesus returns, he will establish what's essentially a divine dictatorship that will be a time of perfect peace and harmony called the millennium. Texans have played a major role in popularizing dispensationalism and its doomsday theology, both in modern times but also historically. One Texas writer named Michael Ennis once called the city of Dallas the Athens of the apocalypse. And in the late 20th century, predicting the end of the world was a lucrative business. So there was a theological center here in Dallas that was one of the most influential groups when it came to originating and promoting this idea of the end times. And it also has to do with one gentleman named Cyrus Schofield.

But before we talk about Cyrus Schofield, a quick ad break. Hey, I'm Jack B. Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Thank you. Explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars,

from actors and artists to musicians and creators sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season

digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

What happened was there's this member, a convert to the Congregationalist Church who came from Kansas. He had been a politician in Kansas who had to leave office because he was accused of accepting bribes. He later said he was struggling with alcoholism at the time. His name is Cyrus Schofield. And he converts to Christianity, and he's invited to head this Congregationalist church that has a tiny congregation in Dallas, Texas. And when he gets here, he brings this dispensationalism he's learned from other evangelists. And he's a modernizer. He has adult education classes. He correspondence courses on the Bible, and eventually he produces something published in 1909 called the Schofield Reference Bible. called the Schofield Reference Bible that basically is the King James Bible with footnotes that he and his co-editors have put together where they say these strange verses in the book of Daniel, in the book of Revelation, that refer to beasts with seven heads and ten horns and these other strange creatures,

and this highly symbolic language has a very literal, obvious meaning, and that is the return of Jewish people to the state of Israel and how that marks the beginning of the end. how that marks the beginning of the end. So the Schofield Reference Bible, extremely popular when it comes out. It was so popular, didn't it save effectively the Oxford University Press from going under? Yeah, during the Great Depression,

that was very much a possibility that Oxford University Press would go under. And Schofield was lucky in some ways, if you could put it that way, such a possibility that Oxford University Press would go under. And Schofield was lucky in some ways, if you could put it that way, because the reference Bible comes out in 1909. And four years later, what was at that point the most catastrophic war in human history, World War I breaks out with a level of death and technology that was unprecedented in its destructiveness. Then the Depression happens.

You have the rise of these fascist dictators, and there's a sense that the world as we knew it was collapsing. Capitalism might collapse. You might have communists take over. You might have fascists take over you might have fascists take over and then of course world war ii and then finally the thing that really makes uh schofield seem like he was on to something in terms of his biblical interpretation and this particular interpretation had been around in certain variants for centuries and centuries but it always been a minority view but what really made it seem like scofield was onto something was 1948 when the state of israel is established the modern modern state of israel uh because he had been

saying this would happen this would be the sign of the end. It becomes the point where a lot of churches' ministers are measured by the degree to which they promote Schofieldism. And Protestant churches' ministers get fired if they don't begin to talk about the end times. Schofield kind of won the lottery with timing. And you could imagine a world maybe where the Schofield Bible didn't take off because it hadn't come out at that time that it did. Now, one of Schofield's acolytes, separated by several decades, Schofield had been dead for a long time.

When you have a student at the Dallas Theological Seminary named Hal Lindsey, who had been a tugboat captain, is attending this particular school, Dallas Theological Seminary had actually been established in the 1920s by allies, associates of Cyrus Schofield. It had been a center of the study of biblical prophecy. And basically, Lindsay's a student, and a lot of his peers said basically he took his class notes and turned it into a book. And his real effort, he had been a leader in the Campus Crusade for Christ, which was an evangelical

group that was trying to fight the counterculture, hippies, LSD, and so on. And so he had that experience, and he brought it into the writing of a best-selling book called The Late Great Planet Earth. And The Late Great Planet Earth is written in the language of the time. He tries to use hippie type of lingo to catch on with the youth culture. And his timing, just like Schofield's, is great. This is a time where there's an obsession with hidden knowledge. You have really popular books selling about the lost continent of Atlantis, UFOs uh the phenomena supposedly a spontaneous human combustion uh did ancient aliens build the pyramids and if you went to a convenience store or a uh or a uh store yeah a department store you might find racks of paper books with all this hidden knowledge and

people believed that there was something hidden because of Watergate and because of Vietnam. And so this became a phenomenal seller. It was the best-selling quote-unquote nonfiction book of the 1970s. It later got made into a pseudo-documentary that was narrated by the movie star Orson Welles. Yeah. I mean, it was so successful that it was like 28 million copies by 1990 had been sold. And if you've got Orson Welles' buttery voice narrating it as if it has some real import, certainly many, many, many people were exposed to the ideas of Hal Lindsey. Man is faced by unprecedented perils.

Threatened to send him crashing and extinction now from hal lindsey's incredible best-selling book comes the film which explores the terrifying prophecies of the revelations is our planet truly in mortal peril the late great planet earth featuring orson welles but it didn't stop there lindsey's book inspired um some other guys who you may have heard of these two right-wing political activists and christian evangelicals named tim lahaye and jerry b jenkins and they are the creators of the left behind series now if you don't know the left behind series, you may have been living under a rock or maybe you weren't born yet and that's not your fault.

But it is this publishing empire at this point. Retail giants like Walmart stocked the books. They sold 80 million copies, warehouses full of merch, sequels, prequels, graphic novels, audio books, calendars, greeting cards, a shoot-em-up computer game based on the books. All of this stuff was centrally talking about the rapture, the end times. That's what the Left Behind series was about. And those who are left behind are those who were not raptured. And these films center on the chaos that breaks out right after the rapture. Really, really popular stuff. We'll play a quick clip so you can get a sense of what that's like. He took them to protect them. From what? From the darkest time in the history of this world.

Persecution, war, and seven years of darkness, he took them to heaven. Persecution, war, and seven years of darkness he took them to heaven. The Left Behind books, they basically depict Jesus not as a source of love and forgiveness, but as this source of vengeance and bloodshed. One person we spoke to in the preparation of this episode described him as a sort of Rambo Jesus, to be compared to Mr. Rogers' Jesus, you could say. And what's particularly dangerous is sometimes believers in this interpretation of the Bible try to make the end times happen sooner rather than later. Yeah, I can mention two cases, one better known than the other. You had a father-son evangelical team called Garner Ted Armstrong. His father was named Herbert W. Armstrong. They had a radio broadcasting empire. The program was called The World Tomorrow.

And they had college campuses in California and in Big Sandy, Texas. Unaccredited college. Unaccredited college. Unaccredited college, absolutely. And one person who had listened to the Armstrongs on the radio, and it was an Australian named Michael Dennis Rohan on August 21, 1969, actually travels to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem because he believes that's a key focal point of where Armageddon is going to take place. And he actually starts a fire in that mosque,

and it's revered one of those holy sites in Islam. And there was a time where there was a diplomatic crisis caused by this believer in dispensationalism um then of course we have what had happened in waco uh where you had a sect very much obsessed with end times and with dispensationalism led by a man named david koresh 1993 he led his followers on this 51-day standoff with federal and state officials over the illegal weapons

that this group, the Branch Davidians, held. Eventually, you have an exchange of gunfire between the agents and the Branch Davidians, and then on April 19th, the feds decide to charge in. And there's a fire, and 76 people die, including 25 children. In the modern day, we've got two hugely influential people who promote end times theology. Now, one of them is the biggest political donor in the entire state of Texas, more money donated than anyone else. And his name is Tim Dunn. And we'll talk about him in a second. But first, I want to talk about

someone who is also pretty influential, maybe not as wealthy as Tim Dunn, who I should mention got his money through oil. But this is a man named John Hagee. He is the pastor of a 22,000 member church in Texas called Cornerstone Church. And I think he has a global audience as large as 100 million people. So back in the day as a 28-year-old young man, he took part in the Wallace Youth, which is an organization devoted to supporting the presidential candidacy of white supremacist Alabama governor George Wallace in 1968. Yeah, let's just hear from Wallace real quick. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever. So, since then, in his 58 years as a non-denominational pastor, Hagee has proven to be as much of a lightning rod as Wallace. When Hurricane Katrina killed nearly 1,400 people in New Orleans in 2005, Hagee insisted the superstorm represented God's wrath

at a planned gay pride parade. I can't even believe that that's real. Yeah. So, he really said, oh, you celebrated the gays and so God killed a bunch of you with a hurricane. He really said that. He's also called the Catholic Church a false cult and has falsely claimed that Muslims are commanded by the Quran to kill Christians and Jews. So he's a really moderate guy when he comes to his word choice and his rhetoric. Hagee, for instance, believes that Jewish people are still God's chosen, and he often quotes a line from Genesis 12, 3, 12th chapter, 3rd verse, in which God says to Abraham, I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.

And he interprets that to mean that if the United States ever fails to support the state of Israel in any of its policies, or if it attempts to encourage Israel to trade land for peace, to set aside land for the Palestinians to establish their own nation, that that leader is violating a divine commandment to, quote, not divide my land, and there will be terrible consequences. So one dispensationalist pastor basically said that the United States has economic problems whenever it fails to support Israel. Hagee in 2014 said that a small outbreak of the Ebola virus in the United States was God's vengeance against President Barack Obama for supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state. And of course, when that is a big attitude amongst a really significant block of voters, that makes the United States really have problems when it

tries to mediate in that conflict. We'll talk a little bit more about John Hagee right after this ad break. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant

writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, música, películas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you.

We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories.

Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things

better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. You might be asking, who cares about this guy john haggie like why does his interpretation of the bible matter at all why does what he say have anything to do with my life and it there's a number of reasons uh why it matters um so i mean he could be considered the most important leader of the Christian Zionist movement, for starters. He formed an to right-wing extremists in Israel, specifically ones that have sponsored settlers to move to the occupied West Bank in violation of international law. And he's pushed Congress to take a hard line on the issue of Palestinian statehood. He has the ear of elected officials in Texas. So state-level politicians like Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick have been seen with him at campaign events, have featured him at campaign

events. Hagee has tried to influence a number of issues and has had success. He was sought as someone whose endorsement mattered in the presidential elections of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. He was an early supporter of Donald Trump, and he influences other major pastors as well. And so it's hard to say that people like this don't matter, particularly whenever they have been invited to speak during big events like the March for Israel in 2023, which drew tens of thousands of people to Washington, D.C. And who was there? John Hagee. And here's one of the paradoxes of this movement. When Hagee was invited to speak at this pro-Israel event after the October 7th Hamas

attacks near Israeli kibbutz, Hagee was invited and a lot of Jewish people were horrified because he really does capture one of the central paradoxes of dispensationalism. And that is, someone can be inflexibly pro-Israel and anti-Semitic at the same time. And so John Hagee has promoted a very old anti-Semitic myth that rich Jewish people control the world's finances. He talks about the Rothschild family, which has always been an obsession of anti-Semites, the secret puppet masters of the world who rob the average person of money to gain wealth. They cause wars to enrich themselves. He actually described Hitler, based on nothing, as a half-breed Jew,

and he said that Hitler was sent by God himself. So Hitler was an emissary of God as a hunter to persecute Jews in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, specifically for the purpose of forcing them to leave Europe and settle in Palestine. And he said that this was all part of the divine plan. Nazism was part of the divine plan. Yeah, but don't just take our word for it. You can listen to him say something along these lines right now. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said, my top priority for the Jewish people

is to get them to come back to the land of Israel. Today, Israel is back in the land, and they are at Ezekiel 37 and 8. They're physically alive, but they're not spiritually alive. Now, how is God going to cause the Jewish people to come spiritually alive and say the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he is God? So yeah, you know, Hagee has predicted that the Antichrist will be a half-breed gay Jew and will rule the planet on behalf of Satan. Those are the kinds of things that he believes and he spreads. And in spite of statements like these, several Israeli governments have welcomed the support of right-wing and times

pastors like Hagee. I mean, they don't have any issue with working with someone like Hagee. And obviously that relationship is cynical because people like Hagee are able to help bring material resources to Israel and further solidify the relationship that Israel has with the state of Texas. And there's a real interesting synthesis between the far right in Texas and the very right-wing government that rules Israel now. Israel depends on Texas oil. Many of the weapons Israel is using in its war in Gaza are manufactured in Texas, including in the Dallas-Fort Worth area

where Steve and I are having this conversation. You have some of the wealthiest American supporters of Israel, like hyper-conservatives, such as the widow of the casino magnate Sheldon Addison, who have spent quite a bit of money flying Texas politicians like Governor Greg Abbott, the Agricultural Commissioner Sid Miller, members of the state legislature to Israel to promote close business ties and ensure that weapons manufactured in Texas and that Texas oil flows to that state. In the background of all of this is the money, the money backing these politicians. And the largest and most powerful political donor in Texas is someone who we have mentioned already, billionaire oil man, Tim Dunn. So Tim Dunn, who is he? What's his deal? He's a pastor. He's based in Midland, which is in West Texas. And over the last decade, Dunn has dumped tens of millions of dollars into the campaign coffers of far-right politicians and political action committees that promote incendiary messages, including the one group that I previously mentioned was caught meeting with a self-admitted Hitler fan, Nick Fuentes. Nevertheless, Dunn is named alongside Hagee on the annual list of Israel's top 50 Christian allies published by the Israel Allies Foundation, of which Dunn, incidentally, is the donor who has his thumb on the scales all across the state, he too is an end times prophecy believer.

And he's not just a believer. He preaches it at his own church in Midland where he's a pastor. God is a consuming fire, taking vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The word obey means listen to. So we're talking here about unbelievers. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power. And, you know, it's completely changed the nature of the Republican Party, his influence. They were already conservative and already religious to begin with, but the sort of wave of politicians

that have been supported by Dunn has taken that to a new level. And it's resulted in, I think, a real assault on free speech in the state of Texas. We have religious groups like Christians United for Israel and the Texas Eagle Forum lobbying the state legislature and persuading politicians like Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick, like Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick, who are sympathetic to their agenda, to pass laws that limit the way people who oppose Israeli policies can protest. So for instance, 2017, Texas passed House Bill 89, a law that banned the state from doing any business with any company or individual contractors who participate in the boycott of Israel that many activists have participated in. And on March 27th of this year, when you began to have a wave of protests across the nation and in Texas,

and there were major protests at the UT Austin campus, at the University of Texas at Dallas, which is in a suburb called Richardson, another one at the University of Texas at Dallas, which is in a suburb called Richardson, another one at the University of North Texas, UT Arlington, University of Texas at San Antonio. Abbott responded to these protests by issuing an executive order that defined a common slogan chanted by supporters of Palestinian statehood, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, as anti-Semitic. And it required public colleges and universities to review their free speech policies and to punish what the state regards as anti-Semitic speech by faculty and students.

And it targeted two specific groups, two student groups, the Palestine Solidarity Committee and Students for Justice in Palestine, to be disciplined for violating these policies. The state of Texas is saying these words are forbidden. Indeed, and despite the fact that the University of Texas at Austin had issued a video celebrating their so-called free speech week, I think it was just a matter of months before they arrested 136 pro-Palestinian demonstrators at the University of Texas at Austin. All across the state, we've seen pro-Palestinian protests,

or what you could call anti-genocide protests, or calls for divestment at these various universities. And arrests have happened at least three different universities. I mentioned earlier a paradox in dispensationalism, and that is that some of the people who have absolute devotion to promoting the state of Israel are at the same time anti-Semitic. And another paradox is that Schofield himself, Cyrus Schofield himself, said that Jesus wasn't into politics. He said that when Jesus was alive, slavery, inequality of wealth, all these political oppression were all at their worst, and Jesus and his apostles didn't address any of that. They focused on salvation, that Christianity is not about changing this world because this world

is doomed, and the only person who's going to fix anything is Jesus himself. But nevertheless, these dispensationalists at the same time are very happy to be involved in politics that's not involved in social reform. They don't want you to, you know, Schofield was living at a time of progressive movement when they were trying to end child labor trying to make workplaces safer and so on today we're dealing with issues of wealth any inequality and so on the dispensationalists will say believing that humans can fix those problems is satanic but nevertheless you should be involved in politics if it involves denying women sovereignty over their bodies. It involves banning people from gender-affirming care and so on.

But that politics is okay. And we see this with this activism in trying to suppress a particular side of the Israel-Palestine debate. Right. And I think that if that strain of dispensationalism that Schofield represented, that sort of apolitical dispensationalism, if it still exists, it is certainly no longer dominant. Because today, we're seeing this end times theology, this belief in this theory around the end times, it's increasingly overlapping with other sort of distinct trends in Christianity. So, on the one hand, there's things like the prosperity gospel, which is best represented by Kenneth Copeland. He's the richest pastor in all of the United States. And his whole thing is, yeah, if you give, you get. And so you give me your money and you prove

that you're a holy person, you will be rewarded in turn. You will be healed. All of your things will be solved. And then the other thing that it's overlapping with, this end times theology belief, is what we might just call the seven mountains dominionist trend or dominionism, broadly speaking, which you may or may not be familiar with, but it really just breaks down to this idea that Christians should be at the top of all of the mountains of society. And these are just basically stand-ins for the segments of society they think are important. So education, media, politics, what have you. This is a really growing idea.

It's a sort of meme in right-wing Christianity in these sort of non-denominational churches, which are the fastest growing and largest segment of churches I think we're talking about. And those dominionists are the ones who are taking over these school boards that are adopting the anti-trans policies and also banning the books. That's right. And it is a very active form of Christianity, very politically active. And so through people like Hagee and people like Tim Dunn, we see that embodied in what they do, the sort of advocacy that John Hagee takes part in, and the millions and millions of dollars that Tim Dunn dumps into the state of Texas. You could almost characterize the Republican Party in Texas, which is one of the most important state wings of the Republican Party in the United States, as a wholly owned Dunn subsidiary.

You know, he really, many of the most infamous Texas politicians in this era, such as Ken Paxton, are generously supported by Dunn. And so I think if we kind of wrap this up, I think that we could say that the disdain from activism that dispensationalists claim is a ruse, that activism is bad if it advances any attempt to create equal opportunity, reduce income inequality, and dispensationalists vote. And with Texas as one of the major bases for dispensationalism, they are a hugely influential voting bloc. 39% of Americans have told pollsters that they believe we're living in the end times. And the simple fact is, if you think the world's going to end, you're not going to invest much time in making the world better, making it a more just place.

You're not going to try to clean the water, clean the air. Half of evangelical Protestants in the United States believe that supporting Israel is absolutely essential to fulfilling Bible prophecy. And that group constitutes a third of all adult Texans. believe that if they push Israel to annex the West Bank, to take the most aggressive stand towards Palestinians, that will provoke the wrath of the Antichrist, which will lead to Armageddon. And they're willing to make that sacrifice. They're willing to fight for the second coming to happen down to the last Jewish person. And this is creating instability for the world and putting the United States in a very difficult place on the world stage. And the chain of events leading to our position currently, vis-a-vis the Middle East, can be drawn back to this state.

That's right. And I think one thing that I really want to emphasize that we haven't dived into as much as we could have is that this sort of belief system tends towards dehumanization. So if you believe that your opponents are in league with the devil or are satanic or are doing the bidding of evil and that you are on the side of good unequivocally and you are doing the Lord's work, it is easy to treat your opponents as inhuman, less than human, to see them as other than someone who has equal rights and equal standing. And if you're wondering if it could happen here, it meaning fascism,

in many ways, it's happened in Texas already. And we have a large population here. As they wait for the end, they're building walls around the lives of more than 30 million people who live in this state. I'm Stephen Monacelli. I'm Michael Phillips. Thank you for listening.

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. and Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.

But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from.