The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1260: Minnesota Has Become Unlivable w/ Andrew Isker

Episode Date: August 31, 2025

63 MinutesSFWAndrew Isker is a pastor, co-author of Christian Nationalism with Andrew Torba, the author of The Boniface Option, and co-host of the Contra Mundum podcast.Andrew joins Pete to talk about his home state of Minnesota and how its native sons and their culture have been sacrificed on the altar of the post-war concensus.Contra Mundum Andrew's Books Andrew on TwitterPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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Everything's there. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekignano Show, returning. Andrew Isker. What's up, Andrew? Hey, Pete. Thanks for having me. Yeah, man. I wish I could say that it was, oh, I just thought of you, you know, you just came to mind.

And I thought, let's have Andrew back on the show. But no, yesterday was something happened. And, you know, with your historic ties to the state of Minnesota, I thought I'd have you on. I know probably a lot of people have, you know, seeing you on Tucker and talking about your background and everything. but can you do like a brief you know discuss you know a brief description of you know being from Minnesota and how long your family was there and why you left and yeah yeah um so i i grew up in in minnesota spent most of my life in minnesota my counting my children my family's been there for six generations uh in the same same small town um and so yeah we uh we made the decision to leave

last year or we ultimately moved last year. And the big driving force behind it is the major political shifts that have happened in that state in the last five years. And in particular, the biggest one was that on the trans issue. In 2022, the legislature finally went to the Democrats and they had a slim majority in both houses, and so they immediately proceeded to aggressively pursue the furthest left agenda they possibly could. And their first bill, bill number one, I went to speak at the state capital on it, was abortion up to birth and even in many cases after birth.

And the second bill was a trans bill of rights that included a provision for parents to lose custody of their children and if they profess to be transgender. And so we're like that, I mean, I don't have a huge degree of worry that my kids are going to go down that road, but I don't think anybody ever does. I don't think anybody's like,

oh, man, my kid's going to become trans. And so, like, you can't live in a state where you have no rights as a parent, where that's already in the backdrop. And so I'm like, we got to get, out of here. This is not a place where we can have children and having that in the back of your head that the state could come and take them if if, you know, my son started playing with dolls or something. Like that's, it's insane to be in a state like that. And so much, so much has happened

there. And it really is kind of a whirlwind when you take it all together collectively. I think I saw it best described. This is maybe like four or five years ago on Twitter. Second City bureaucrat described Minnesota as America's Ukraine. And it's like, oh man, like in a handful of words, that describes what has happened in our state. All the focus by left-wing NGOs on the state is particularly. intense and has been for for some time the resettlement of so-called refugees has has been happening for most of my lifetime when I was there and and only only really recently

only in the last 10 years did it go from this kind of purplish state a state that was competitive in presidential elections you know I mean George Bush campaigned there regularly in both of his presidential campaigns to this like solidly blue state. And that that was only only very recently, only in the last eight to ten years. And so I think it's been just this radical transformation that most people there really don't know how to understand what happened. All of a sudden, the state is just extremely liberal. And it's, yeah, I mean, I have a few theories about why that happened. I mean, it's similar to the discussion you had on your show about California and what took place in that state.

I think it's a very similar dynamic, although Minnesota, its changes politically are less. I mean, you look at California, it wasn't purely ideological that drove the transformation of the political machine, the capturing of the political machine there. Largely it's financial. I mean, there's so much corruption that has been for a long time. Whereas Minnesota, it's, I think, more intensely ideological of what happened there.

That's the primary focus is cultural and social engineering. Do you think that the fact that historically, the people who populated Minnesota are Northern Europeans, Scandinavians, high trust culture, that basically you can put your guard down and you're easily infiltrated? Absolutely. I think that's the primary mechanism they're able to capture the state is that, you know, it was like, I mean, everyone probably knows the cliche of Minnesota nice,

that people are very nice and friendly there. And it is true. It's very true. I've lived in other parts of of the country where I was shocked. Like, you know, being on the East Coast, I'm like, whoa, the people are not nice here at all. Minnesota, they are. I mean, all the cliches, like, you know, small towns where nobody locks their doors. And, you know, it's just common that people would help each other out, that any, any time any kind of disaster happened, people would just instinctively pitch in. You see someone on the side of the road. You help it.

You just, you have to help them out. That's what you do. Things, things like that. And so, yeah, it's, it's very much the, you know, the, you know, Scandinavian and German, you know, Northern European high trust society. I mean, you even see that where, I think it was an old, you know, Time magazine or Life magazine from the 1980s that the cover story was Minnesota is the best place to live in the entire country. And now it's just not. And that goes beyond just like the high level of taxation and bureaucratic regulation and so forth. It has been culturally changed significantly.

And yeah, I think part of it is, I mean, I remember being in junior high in the late 1990s when the first day of school and there's a couple of kids in my class. named Mohammed and, you know, a girl wearing like a scarf on her head. And when you're like 11 or 12 years old, you're like, that's kind of weird. Where did they come from? That's, that's strange. And it was like, it was like a handful, you know, one or two. And then the next year, it was 10. And then the next year it was 50. And all of the, all of the small just appeared one day. And the general attitude that everyone had, you know, whether they were, you know, liberal or conservative there was, oh, well, these are people suffering, you know, they're coming from a country that is at civil war and, you know, we just need to be kind to them and, and they're

here for a better life, you know, all of those kinds of ideas. Everyone just kind of implicitly held to that, oh, well, this, you know, it was all very high trust stuff. It was all this, this idea. This idea that well, we're nice to everybody and we want to help take care of people and so on and so forth. And that that attitude had been manipulated for decades, particularly when it comes to refugees, migrants, illegals, all of it is the very high trust society that exists, existed in Minnesota is used as this mechanism to force people into agreeing with, signing up for their own demographic displacement. And so now it isn't just the Twin Cities. It's really every larger town or city in Minnesota has significant Somali populations. There's preceding the influx of Somalis were the So if you've seen like the movie Grand Torino that was supposed to be based in St. Paul, but they, I think like for political reasons, they're like, oh, we don't, this kind of makes the Hmong look bad. And they actually do live here in St. Paul. So say that it's in Detroit. But the, there's a woman who wrote it. She was from the Twin Cities. She grew up in St. Paul. And she wrote this movie. And so the Hmong, you know, their issue, very different than the Somalis. but they have a tremendous amount of violence and mostly gang violence amongst themselves.

And I mean, there were entire neighborhoods in St. Paul completely overtaken by Mung in the 80s and 90s. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive by design. They move you even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range For Mentor, Leon and Terramar Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2000 euro Search Coopera and discover our latest offers

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Trump-Dunbeg. Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunbioghush Farage. And you sort of see it. You see, I mean, my wife grew up in St. Paul in, in, in, you know, what had been a pretty nice neighborhood. It was all Polish Catholic. Her grandpa and his brother and all of that side of the family went to St. Casmer's Church. And so you look at that neighborhood now. And it's all run down, bars on, you know, iron bars on like every window and houses. and it's just there's trash everywhere.

It's the storefronts in the main drag are all like, you know, vape shops and payday loans and things like that. And it was what had been a very nice residential neighborhood. Everyone just fled. Everyone went to the, you know, kind of the edge of the suburbs. The suburbs around St. Paul grew at a very, very fast rate in, in the 90s and early 2000s. And so it's the same,

I mean, it's the same kind of thing that you see with, with most American cities that just further and further out, everyone, everyone just leaves. And then the city becomes run down. And so this has been like a very long, ongoing process.

The, and the, the, the DFL, the Democratic Party in Minnesota has, it, It used to be, you know, sort of your populist, liberal types. You know, we had a senator, you know, Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash while he's campaigning.

And he would have been Bernie Sanders had he lived. I mean, he would have been senator for life. He was very popular and was very much a Bernie Sanders type. And that kind of, that was kind of the spectrum. It was, it was very, you know, moderate Democrats that wanted. their goals were mainly, oh, you know, funding schools and social programs and things like that, and they're okay with higher taxes, but it never was, never was the very insane cultural things. And I think one of the major pivot points when you kind of noticed something was going on with

Minnesota was in, it was 20, I believe, 2013 when there was a ballot amendment for the state regarding gay marriage to ban it. And these ballot amendments had passed in like every state in the country. And including California, it was very successful even there. And 2013, the ballot amendment comes up for a vote and it fails. It was the first one anywhere to ever fail. And so you noticed like, whoa, I thought Minnesota was somewhat like economically liberal, you know, soft-hearted Norwegians that like social welfare programs, but otherwise very culturally

conservative. And that changed dramatically at that point. And then after Obergefell, I think the floodgates opened on all manner of these things and has continued for 10 years. And so that was the the big one i mean i remember in in college um in minnesota you you i i sort of saw kind of the the future um as as you as you often do in college of what's going what what are things going to look like in like 10 or 15 years that um the the it was all this kind of what we now would call like woke stuff was was already there in like 2004 2005 and and it's been an intense program. The whole DFL was basically overhauled and lead heavily into wokeness by about 2018, the 2018 election when Tim Walls first became governor.

You saw a major change, of course, politically. and at the same time, that's when a lot of the Somali population was beginning to flex political muscles. And by 2022 is when we got Ilhan Omar. And so, you know, all of these things happened very rapidly. It wasn't like random. It was a deliberate strategy. and the strategy now, as I left, it was very much, all right, we've taken over the cities. Now it's time to start to take over the rural areas.

And so you would see these NGOs begin to pop up. One popped up in my town of like 9,000 people. There's like lead for Minnesota or something. They always sound very innocuous and very nice. like, oh, we want to, we want to help people and make things better. And the entire goal is to take over the local political scene, get buy-in from, from, you know, business owners and leading figures in small towns and do the same thing, you know, on Main Street that they did in the corporate world and transformed it into a leading force for left-wing social engineering. And so that was happening, you know, by 2020, 2020. And so it's it's very much this battleground where they have successfully transformed this state in a very short period of time.

There was a lot there. Yeah, that's what I do. Well, one of the things I picked up on there is the fact that, for better for worse northern europeans white europeans naturally want to help they are they're willing to go out of their way and that's a weakness that is preyed upon oh you know we're just going to put these we're just going to you know we have 200 people here that are fleeing war torn place we'll put them there and you know the yeah no no we understand yeah we understand and basically they're they're taking advantage of a natural hospitality a

natural kindness and then as soon as those people that you know that the white European the northern European realizes what's happening to them and starts to you know say hey wait a minute this this is going to affect us in a negative way then all of a sudden they're evil. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That and that's that's really what happened. I mean, I remember during the 2016 election, Somali went to the mall in in St. Cloud, Minnesota with a machete and hacked up a bunch of people. That was, it was a big story. It was a couple weeks before the election. And Trump went to the St. Cloud Airport and held a, held a rally there. And it talked about the Somali problem. And I think he maybe even used that exact phrase. And of course, the local media

there freaked out, like, oh, he's horribly racist to the Somalis and so forth. But that was a moment at which people in Minnesota finally started to have a voice, right? Because if you expressed any any kind of concern about about the Somalis being being there you you're you're terrible horrible awful bad person and and that's it was that way for like 20 years if you're like hey yeah yeah I know there's a war and everything and they're they're fleeing but that's literally on the other side of the planet they don't have anywhere else they can go besides you know rural southern Minnesota and and people would look at you like like you just you just said the most evil thing that they ever could like they can't even process that

because it's our duty to help people and um i think the the major shift um in in opinion at least among at least among conservatives in Minnesota is, is when Ilhan Omar got elected. Her, her, her, like, pinned tweet during her campaign in,

in 2022 was that America is the most misogynistic, racist, evil country that has ever existed. And I remember talking to people, and I'd show people that post. And it's like, she came here from Somalia. And we,

we paid for her to come here. We paid for her housing, for her food, for all of her family, for her health care, for all of her education, her entire life. Everything, like we came out of our pockets. And my wife actually went to the same high school as her. And even the Somalis were kept in a separate wing because they would always get in fights with other people in the school. And so she never actually saw her. But she comes here and receives all these massive benefits and then has the gall to say, you're all horrible, terrible people.

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like up to 70 euro off one pair of designer glasses. Offer ends on 7th of December 2025. Conditions apply. Ask in store for details. that that finally caused a switch to flip in people's minds or it's like we've done nothing but bend over backwards to help you and and your people out and this is how you think of us right this is what this is how you treat us this is this is what you want to do and of course it's gotten worse since then because you know there's their videos of her or you know her campaign staffers or people or it was maybe it was like the the um you know president of Somalia or whatever it was it was some big campaign it was last year

where they're like yeah her goal is is to benefit the people of Somalia like that's the reason she's in Congress and and you hear that and you think right she's wait she's not her goal isn't to benefit like the people in her district or the people of the United States and and I mean it's a thing you could always assume like you always assume like that's that's what she's doing that's obviously what's going on but like even say it out loud, right? Even say that out loud. Like, we don't care about you at all.

Our only goal is to fleece you and send money back to Somalia. It infuriates you. And even when the question is raised, you know, what is an American, right? What is an American? Who's an American? And of course, you'll have, you know, leftoids will say, well, somebody has, you know, the right paperwork. if they if they pass the citizenship exam and has been granted citizenship well that's an american

and it's like does anyone any reasonable person consider ilhan omar an american right well well no like her entire goal is is to benefit the people of somalia and and you know whether whether or not a person has citizenship or not it's like like she's never going to be one like her kids are never going to be your grandkids are never going to be one like they they have uh incredibly high in-group preference and and that's not going away no matter how long they they're here or part of this uh this country there they care about their people first and and of course that's like very common all throughout the world uh is right you have a conscious understanding of who your people are and those are your people and you you're going to fight tooth and nail for them i mean you see this with the uh with the

Indian truck driver that killed three people in Florida after, after doing an illegal U-turn on the freeway. And something like, what was it, Pete, like 250,000 people in like 24 hours. I mean, all because India has internet access, you know, sign this petition. We really need to do something about that subcontinent having internet access. Right. I mean, I can, I can smell that petition. over the internet. It's so bad, man. And like you see it and it's like, oh, he did nothing wrong.

All the comments on there. Oh, set it free. It was their, why don't we see the camera? It's probably their fault, another driver's fault. And it's like, yeah, the amount of in-group preference that people from the third world have is massive, whereas Americans have none, right? We have so little. We can't even openly say, all right, this person's an American. this person's not, you know, we have a duty to Americans first before foreign people.

It's like, that's a radical, radical statement to make when for all of human history, it wasn't. It was like, of course, right? It was as anodyne as could be is, oh, of course you have a preference for your people over the rest of the world. And so, and what that is, I think is largely, again, back to the high trust. you know open-hearted people that that populate America it inverts the order of Morris right it inverts ordered loves which is just a fixed part of the created order that you know you you should care about like your family first and your immediate neighbors first and then your your nation as a whole over you know people

on the other side of the planet and and that That doesn't exist. It has been socially engineered out of people. And the higher trust society a place is, the easier that that game works, the easier it is to manipulate. And that's why I think Minnesota was targeted the way that it was. What's interesting is a lot of people have probably heard of the famous. speech that enoch pal gave in britain called rivers of blood speech do you know do you remember

from that speech what his worry was the amount of people coming in every year oh i can't remember the details of it it's been so long since i had to listen to it in college for my british history class and of course oh eda powell is so terrible so awful and i remember listening to it and thinking uh that's he's describing what's happening here i'm I remember being sympathetic. This is like 20 years ago hearing it. But what was the percentage? He was worried about 5,000 a year.

Oh, goodness. Oh, my goodness. As of 2023, if these numbers are even correct, there's 86,000 Somalis in Minnesota. Yeah, that's the alleged number. But if you, you know, one of the, I think the first things everybody does when they've visit Minnesota is goes to the Mall of America. And you go there. And if you went there, you would assume there had to be a million Somalis in Minnesota. They are, it seems like everywhere. And they're on vacation. Okay. So I've, so I lived in Fort Lauderdale for a long time. And

Fort Lauderdale is a tourist destination. Yeah. And it's obvious. when people are on vacation, they're out. They're out and they're, you know, they're not in their hotel room. They're, that's the way I look at it is that's the way these groups who come here, the reason why they're filling the mall of America and they go is because they almost have a feeling like they're on vacation. Like they're somewhere else. Like there are someplace where if they do things, they're not going to suffer the consequences. You know, people have have a tendency to go on vacation and they'll act, they'll act in ways they wouldn't act at home. Yeah. It's almost like a vague. It's almost like these people have a vacation kind of

mentality when they come here, even if they've been here for years and years, even if they're second generation. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I knew and and I mean, digging even into some of the cultural things and why why they tend to be a problem, um, You know, I knew, I've known, you know, several Somali people, you know, one of them was quite close to who converted to Christianity. And, and even after he converted, and it's, he's been a Christian for quite some time as genuine. Even after he converted, he still didn't really have a concept of personal property where he would, he would take people's stuff and, and then like, like, how. it in front in front of them and they'd be like hey that's my man that's my shirt you're wearing and he's like it doesn't even fit him it's like oh really yeah oh oh sorry uh like he would

he would just steal stuff all the time because that that was not a thing in in their culture right within their their society is if something is out and can be taken well then you take it right it's finders keepers right and and it was it was shocking right to like experience that firsthand that that it just did not compute that this is someone's stuff i don't touch it uh and and it's like okay if that's like a one-off thing if that's just like one guy but what if it's everyone right what if it's all 86 000 have no concept of personal property and they just take just take things right just just steal things take things whatever um that's that's a people that's like not compatible with with the population that's already there and and you know we you know uh maybe a normie would

look at this and be like oh that's odd that's strange uh but if you look at it from the engineers of our society it's not random or accidental it's like there's a reason why you took like the lowest trust people on planet earth and put them in the highest trust place on planet earth and the highest trust place in in the united states right there's a reason they did that right there's a reason they didn't put them in like the lowest trust place in in the united states which would you know i don't know Memphis tennessee or something uh like or Detroit like there there's a reason why they put them in Minnesota it's it's because they want to introduce that conflict right they and and the conflict doesn't even really exist because

the, you know, normal, regular people in Minnesota will just write it off. There's like, oh, well, they're, they don't understand whatever. They'll, they'll do their high trust thing. And it's, it's almost like this humiliation ritual that they put the people of Minnesota through. And all of that is, all of that has gone on for, yeah, 20, almost 30 years now. and it's radically changed the entire landscape of the state. And a lot of people are just like on even like liberals are on like pins and needles about it. Like they they don't want to talk about the elephant in the room.

And one of the worst, one of the worst aspects of it is like churches, conservative churches. is if you discuss the issues regarding the Somalis, people will get mad at you. They'll say, no, no, they've been brought here to be a mission field. And isn't it so great? The Great Commission is being fulfilled. We can disciple these people. And of course, the people that usually say that live very far away.

They don't have Somalis living next door, right? They live very far away from them. But if you encounter them every single day and the problems, there's this cognitive dissonance that happens. And all of that, I mean, you take that across the entire state, that that is the cultural backdrop that is taking place. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items all reduced. to clear.

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Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Discover five-star luxury at Trump Dunebeg. Unwind in our luxurious spa. savour sumptuous farm-fresh dining, relax in our exquisite accommodations.

Step outside and be captivated by the wild Atlantic surrounds. Your five-star getaway, where every detail is designed with you in mind. Give the gift of a unique experience this Christmas with vouchers from Trump-Dunbeg. Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Doonbiog, Kush Farage. And you have just this almost, you know, psychological or psychological or spiritual malaise that develops there because of this conflict. And it makes it people easier to conquer politically.

I think that's the biggest thing. It isn't even just like the demographics. It's the psychological warfare of the conflict just beats people into submission. And the conservatives, at least until very recently, the conservative, the so-called conservatives in Minnesota were the weakest. and wimpiest. And part of that, part of that is the culture of Minnesota is, you need to be nice, right? You can't ever fight, right? You can't, you don't, if you don't have something nice to say about somebody, you don't say anything at all. Like, that is, that is the golden rule of life in

Minnesota. And so if you're going to do, you know, political or cultural warfare and, and fight back, your hands are already tied behind your back. And so anybody who, who, like, speaks bold, everybody who actually says what things are is treated like a pariah and and so you'd see this like when Tim Walls somehow was selected as the vice presidential candidate um it was it was really strange and a lot of people asked me about that um and about him in particular and he he is you know everyone discovered a really weird guy, very strange man, and also very angry. It's just always constantly bubbling below the surface. But when he ran for governor in 2018, it was, this is like your uncle.

This is the nicest guy. He's so sweet and wonderful. Like, that's the persona they gave him. And they had to craft that way in order to get elected into statewide office in Minnesota. But under the surface, the guy just nasty, nasty human beings. and it made it incredibly difficult to fight this guy because, I mean, after 2020, in the 2022 election, the candidate, the GOP put forward was really weak, right? I mean, here's a guy that kept the state locked down almost longer than any other governor

in the entire country. He had caused untold damage with his handling of the rock. riots, not just in this state, but throughout the country, right? If he would have acted decisively, and obviously we know why he didn't. Like his, his goal was to let it happen, right? But the destruction that he caused in 2020 made him incredibly unpopular, but the GOP candidate was so uninspiring. He was able to have one debate with him and never, never once went after him. never once went after him for his handling of the riots, never once went after him for his,

his handling of the lockdowns. And as a result, right, he easily was reelected because there was no real opposition to him at all. And so that, I think, is also part of it is they're able to do these things. They keep the people in this sort of psychological submission, the people that would otherwise resist. it and and they can advance whatever policies they want and you're a bad person if you object to it. And that's that's, I mean, that's part of the reason why we also had to leave too.

Like we knew that. We knew that they're the odds of political transformation, the odds of anyone standing up and actually fighting and that gaining widespread currency in the state, state was was very, very low and still is. I mean, even after this, even after the, this shooting where, I mean, you see, you see the pictures of walls with, you know, Leah, whatever the guy's name is in a dress that's in the state senate, you know, clapping for her and gesticulating like he does. And or his lieutenant governor with the protect trans kids shirt with a knife on it. I mean, literally like the same like rhetoric. that the shooter used in the manifesto and things like that.

And I hate to do a Ben Shapiroism of like, imagine if the other side did this. Like I remember when Gabby Giffords got shot by some MK Ultra Dwacko, and you remember this when people started going after like Sarah Palin for having a mailer that had like a target on her. And it's like, clearly she caused that. Like anytime there's any kind of political violence, they'll, they'll like stretch for the most tangential way they can connect it to Republican rhetoric or to something Trump said or something like that. But then here you have like these people using really violent rhetoric regarding the trans issue.

And like they just get a pass. Like nobody can. Oh, oh, well, they there's it's a, it's a minimal. group, you know, that's badly oppressed and, and they're standing up for those people. Like, that's, that's the narrative that's pushed there. And it remains to be seen if, if this latest, this latest event, the shooting will start to change anything in Minnesota, particularly regarding the trans issue, that I don't know how much more often this kind of thing has to happen. Yeah, there it is. Right there.

um you know for for them to be like no that this is insane that they they've doubled down on on in that particular issue on the trans issue in minnesota when it seems like everywhere else they're they're trying to tamp down the wokeness like you see the uh the talking points that that got leaked uh how how any democrat is not supposed to use all these woke terms any longer uh that's not the case in Minnesota at all. Yeah, the immediately, you know what's funny is there's there's this contingent online that says that Jewish power over the centuries has used Christianity to basically Christianity's a sci-op. Yeah, the first yet the first thing Jacob Fry did was to about how thoughts and prayers aren't going to solve this. He just he just basically immediately

started attacking Christianity. And then when you, you know, when you point out, well, they attack, well, they're they don't need it anymore. So now they're trying to destroy. Okay. Yeah. Look, there's no one there there's no Jewish group in Texas right now protesting 110 foot tall demon statue. Yeah, you know, Hindu demon statue. you try to put up some 10 commandments somewhere which is from allegedly from their book try to put that up somewhere i mean this is just no you know and you know i will say because i'm i know my history and i know my history and i study a lot Minnesota and minneapolis st paul in particular is one of the oldest jewish communities in the country yeah i mean they have they have the old the

oldest daily Jewish newspaper is from Minneapolis. Yeah. And to see this is just, you know, it's more noticing. It's just like, okay, how did, first of all, how did this guy get elected? Well, if you know the history, you get an idea of everything. But it's just, this is the same playbook over and over again. Something happens to Christians. And I don't know if you also saw this.

Apparently this, this trainee was all over the place. and like had anti-Christian stuff, anti-Jewish stuff. And like, there are Jewish activists making this about them, even though it's, even though it's dead Christians. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think, you know, clearly like he was some kind of Antifa, you know, lefty. And, you know, part of their, part of their thing is, is, you know, freeing Palestine and Gaza and so forth. And so yeah, on one of the magazines, I think had had something about that. And yeah, you see,

it's like, oh, it's actually about us, right? It's, it's, it's like, it's sick. And Frye, um, saying that, right? Because that, I mean, that's their kind of standard rhetoric that you see now, every time there's, there's some kind of mass shooting that, that makes the news is, you know, leap your thoughts and prayers. Like, they, they want to, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, They still sort of think that being crude and blunt is the thing that makes people like Trump. And so, and they're wrong about that. Like that's for most people that, you know, at best is like an added benefit, at least for me or others. It's like they don't like it and they like him otherwise.

But they think, yeah, being really crude and vulgar is the reason for his appeal. And so we're going to be these like these Reddit millennials that, you know, drop F bombs, every other word and think that that will gain us mass appeal. So that's part of the reason they do that, I think. But also, like, there's an obvious visceral hatred of Christianity among the left, right? You see, I mean, I mean, how much content have you done on the Spanish Civil War, right? Where what did they attack? Right.

They attacked the church. they attack priests and nuns and so forth and and murdered thousands of them and that that's the same it's the same playbook right they they know that that christianity is the enemy and it has to be destroyed and so when christians get attacked right they make it about gun control or they make it about um you know any any other issue other than the obvious thing like the new york time story today was, well, we have no idea what the motive could possibly have been when it's like, no, I mean, it's the same, it's the same, you know, here in Tennessee with Nashville, with the Covenant School shooting with Audrey Hale. Obviously, she targeted that school because they're Christians. They're very conservative Christians at that school. And they opposed, you know, her whole gender ideology. And it's the same thing. This guy sees a conservative, you know,

you know, Catholic school and wants to murder their children. Why? Because these are the people that won't affirm what he thinks he is. And, and he wants them dead. He wants their kids dead. It's, it's insane. I mean, I don't know if you saw the thing from his journal where it's him looking at a mirror and the other side of the mirror is like a demon looking back to you.

Did you see that? Oh, I have, I have an episode. coming out tonight on spiritual warfare i use that as a thumbnail yeah yeah it's uh dude that's that's what this stuff is um you see all these people are like oh it's like it's a it's a serious mental health thing and it's like well yeah obviously it's a serious mental health thing what's the cause right the cause of it is spiritual uh that this is this is demonic and i mean that that word gets thrown out all the time and and sort of loses his currency i think but ultimately that's that's what it is that's i think all of this stuff in Minnesota is is is a spiritual attack on on on on Christianity and on

the Christian faith like why would you bring in um you know probably over 100,000 Somalis or more to to that place it's because you know you had you had sweet nice Christian people like sweet old Lutheran grandmas everywhere and and that still is very much part of the the culture there is is it steeped in in sort of a Christian ethic even even if the people aren't aren't themselves highly religiously engaged or or themselves like have any any positive profession of of the Christian faith right it's it's in their bones it's in the DNA of of the people there and they want to destroy it right that's it's obvious it's obvious everywhere and and that's I think you know I mean that's one of the things

I, CJ and I talk about often is, is you have like the leaders of Christian institutions, or the big names that go on TV or get published all the time, the seminary professors and the pastors of big churches and people like that, that either are completely clueless as to this dynamic or complicit in it. And lay people, like they are sheep without shepherds, right? They have no one leading them to fight back on these things. And fighting back doesn't mean even necessarily some kind of political action that they could take, although there are many. Fighting back just means like telling the truth about things, right, saying that this is what's going on, right? Saying that, no, this is an attempt.

on Christianity, an attack on the Christian faith, they hate us because of who we are and what we believe. And I mean, you see the pictures that he had of going to the range and putting a picture of Christ on the target. Like, how much more obvious can it get that this was, that's what this was, right? That that's what took place. And it's sickening, especially in Minnesota, I mean, this is, that's the heart of like ELCA Lutheranism. This is where, like, it was Amy Klobuchar's church in, in Minneapolis or Edina, where you probably saw it a few years ago, the Sparkle Creed that was, uh, uh, being said in these churches

where the, the lady pastors were in a rainbow stole. And, um, and the, the most disgusting thing about that, uh, ELCA church is like, most of the people that go to these kinds of churches just they they grew up Lutheran they don't know anybody they have no idea what their churches believed usually and they think it's all just normal they think it's all just fine and and that they're they're good people for for flying a rainbow flag in front of their church and and it happens it's like this two-pronged assault on on christianity where there's this overt conflict that sometimes because violent like it did the other day And, but then inwardly just avert it from the inside as well, right?

When you, when you see people like Tim Walls, you know, in the debate, start referencing Bible verses and things, things like that. And it's like this, this sick, disgusting freak has, has the stones to claim Christ and claim the Christian faith, do the evil things that he's doing. And people, they don't know any better. they they buy it they eat it up and um i don't i don't know the future i don't know what what is going to change or or where things will go but i think there there definitely is um a a longing a desire among christian people to have to have leaders to have leadership that that is much more bolder

that takes stands that's willing to fight these things and And it will be those leaders that rise and replace the ones that have failed. If people are honest with themselves, they have to understand. We can preach individuality all we want. But most people just don't either they're too busy. They have too much going on with their lives to, govern themselves completely. I mean, I think we're both of us were libertarians at one point. We believe that if people just, you know, if people were just given the opportunity to have liberty,

you know, they, they would seize upon it. That's not what they do. No. Once you get past that, you understand that people want and desire political leadership. They want, they want and desire leadership in their personal lives. But they especially, and you see it with how many, with how weak a lot of churches have become and how just that people are looking for, I think the reason why like a lot of people went to orthodoxy, like in 2020, went to the Orthodox Church, the Eastern Church, is because they're leaders. Their people are leaders. There are people like, yes, we have the truth here.

We have the truth here. And I believe that's why a lot of people are going back to apostolic churches, for better or for worse. And I think it's a reason why a lot of people are just going back to church is because everything, when everything becomes so deracinated that there is no truth, that everything becomes completely, for lack of a better term, postmodern. People are looking for the truth, even if it isn't the truth, but somebody's saying, look, I have the truth here, and this is a way to ground them. And people just want to be grounded.

That's all they want. Yeah. Yeah, they want to have contact with reality. I think that's part of it, too, is that everything is so fake, right? You have no way of knowing what's real. And so they, you if you have, especially the churches where they're just, they're much more bolder in their presentation, because that's part of evangelicalism, certainly over the last 20 or 30 years, was sort of the Tim Kellerite, well, you know,

you're like dealing with postmodern, well, you know, we believe, you know, like when he talks about homosexuality, it's not so good for human flourishing, but you know, whatever. And it's very weak and wimpy. it doesn't say, no, this is the truth. This is what matters. This is what's real. The Bible is true.

And take it or leave it. And that's what people are after. That's what they want. They want is someone to just say, yeah, this is what I believe. And yeah, it's out of step with what the rest of this world believes. But the rest of the world's insane. Who cares? Who cares what they think, if they think I'm crazy.

And like people want that. right people people want to be around other people that that have contact with reality have contact with with previous generations um that that weren't so crazy they weren't so insane uh to be able to go back to these things and and yeah i think i i mean my own my own tradition um you know reformed protestantism um it's it's sort of interesting the a lot of a lot of the the larger institutions you know denominations that are reformed to protestant are all are pretty weak and wimpy and but the the one that i was in um and and might might be in again uh the c r c c is it really stands apart and is much bolder in in proclaiming you know making truth claims and proclaiming things uh and just saying it like it is And in the last five years, they had significant, significant growth. And they, within five or ten years might be larger than the OPE, if they aren't already, actually, larger than the OPC.

And so, and I think that, that sort of shows, you know, what is happening is that that people actually do want that. They want, they're not afraid of their pastor, you know, being a controversial figure and being someone who stands up and tells the truth. And they actually want that, right? They don't want a pastor who's wimpy and afraid to offend anyone. They would rather have good leaders. And yeah, I think, I think you're right about that, that in a time of just sheer chaos, that's what people are after. Well, this would be the point where I'd ask you to plug the podcast and everything, but why don't I want to ask you a question about something that you're doing on the podcast. You're going over a book by Peter Lightheart called Against Christianity. Yes. Why in the world, Andrew, would you be covering a book called Against Christianity on your show with CJ Engel? That's right. It's not because we are against the Christian faith or the Christian religion or whatever you would want to call it the author.

and the author himself is a conservative uh conservative reform pastor um actually he's he's in the c r e now the domination i was in and so he's not he's very much not against uh the christian faith he uses christianity sort of a short term uh shorthand a term for uh for uh what christianity has become how it's adapted to to modernism it's um yeah it's almost like um using the term as a shorthand for managerial Christianity. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, very much so that it's accommodated its beliefs to liberal democracy, to egalitarianism,

to, you know, every, every pathology, really, of modern life and has allowed itself to be subverted. and so the book is is contrasting historical Christianity with with what exists presently and it's it's like over 20 years old i remember first reading it about 20 years ago and was shocked by it was shocked by oh wow he's describing the kind of Christianity i grew up with that that really is it bears very little resemblance to historic Christian faith, right? Or even the kind of faith that you see in the pages of the New Testament, it is, it bears so little resemblance to it. And so many of these things are so obvious, right?

And that's kind of how it is for a lot of things, where it's like, once you're exposed to something, once you see it, then you see it everywhere, right? Then you see, and you can't, like, you can't unsee it now. It's there. And, and so, yeah, that book is, it has been great. It's been great to go through. And, and, you know, I've gotten a lot of really good feedback from people about it. And it's funny because there's a lot of people that really don't like Peter, that don't like Peter Lightart. And, but even so, it's like, oh, you know, he actually makes a really good point there. So I've kind of force fed it to our audience.

And they've, I think they've really enjoyed it. And yeah, I think the most noticeable thing from going over this book is how idolatrous modern Christianity is, where there are so many things you can, where you can do. I always put it this way, where if someone came to your church and, and said, I don't believe the Trinity is real, or I don't believe in the Virgin birth, or they deny some essential aspect of Christianity. Most of the pastors or people in the church would bend over backwards to accommodate them,

to help them, to talk with them about it, or whatever. But if you deny one of the pieties of modern, contemporary social or political life, If you have, if you say, hey, I don't think this amendment or that amendment to the U.S. Constitution was good. Or if you say, hey, I read Christopher Caldwell's book, Age of Entitlement. And I have some skepticism about the Civil Rights Act, right? Or any manner of other things, right? You'll be marched out of the church immediately.

Right. And so you can deny the Christian faith, and you're welcome there. but if you deny modern liberalism if you deny modern democracy if you deny any of these tenants of the actual faith that people have you're gone we can't have you here you're you're done and and so once you see that it's like oh wow that's is it really christianity that they're they're practicing what yeah what what what what must what must i believe about the civil rights era in order to be saved yeah yeah it's it's wild it's it's it's it's really, it is eye-opening when you realize that, no, like modern Christianity has,

much of it is accommodated itself entirely and remade itself into an entirely different religion. All right. So, podcast, Contramundum, anything else you got there? No, that's about it. Yeah, check us out. I think we're going live tomorrow. We usually go live every Friday, Friday afternoon. And so, yeah, drop in. If you, if you are coming for Pete's show, let us know. Then it'll come on Peace Show more often. Andrew, thank you very much. Couldn't, you know, with everything that happened yesterday, I had to have a Minnesota expert, especially someone with the background and how you've, you know, you felt like you were forced to leave. And I know how much, I know how, I know how hard that was for you.

Yeah, it was it was difficult. It was hard. I mean, going back and visiting, it's kind of painful to go there and see the things that you're missing, the people that you're missing. But when events like that, you know, yesterday happened, I'm thinking like, okay, I've sort of gained some prominence. And my church would have been a target, you know, of people like this or I would have been or my kids or something like that. Like getting away from these people is, um, is an absolute necessity. And it's painful feeling like an exile, uh, living like an exile from, from a place you know and love. I appreciate Andrew.

Until the next time. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks.