Making Sense - Sam Harris - #401 — Christian Nationalism and the New Right

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if

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00:00:44.980 I am here with Catherine Stewart. Catherine, thanks for joining me.

00:00:48.460 It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

00:00:51.060 So I recently discovered you. You wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, which they titled

00:00:56.240 Now Will We Believe What Is Happening Right In Front of Us? And I want to talk about what's

00:01:02.780 happening right in front of us. But before we do, perhaps you can summarize your background

00:01:07.420 as a journalist.

00:01:09.380 Sure. I've been an investigative journalist and reporter. My new book, Money Lies in God,

00:01:14.620 Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, is my third book on the anti-democratic movement,

00:01:21.320 which involves the religious rite, the new rite, a number of kind of features,

00:01:27.860 different features, sometimes sort of, I would say, swimming in the same headwaters,

00:01:33.760 but often with kind of different contours, each group.

00:01:38.760 Yeah. So your book comes out next week, which is probably when we're dropping this. So I think

00:01:42.960 we're probably dropping this on your pub date. So your book, Money Lies in God, which I just got the

00:01:49.300 PDF of yesterday. So I must say I have not read every word of it, but I've read a lot of it and

00:01:54.900 we'll get into it, but we will by no means exhaust what is of interest in there. So let's find a way

00:01:59.860 into this, I guess, starting with the current moment politically, because it's genuinely confusing how

00:02:05.560 these reactionary forces in American politics are intersecting and supporting one another.

00:02:11.720 We have many allies of convenience, it seems. I mean, these people are not ideologically unified.

00:02:18.460 You have Christian nationalists, you have oligarchs, some of whom are Christian or nominally so,

00:02:26.300 some of whom believe not much of anything. Some are quite reactionary Catholics who have been

00:02:31.660 in the woodwork for many generations, it seems, and seem to be influential on the Supreme Court and

00:02:39.740 elsewhere. And it's a little strange to dissect all of this. It's also difficult to see how all of

00:02:47.560 the summates in the person of an orange monstrosity of Donald Trump. Let's start with your op-ed and then

00:02:54.180 we'll get into the book. What do you think is happening right in front of us that we should

00:03:00.000 be concerned about?

00:03:01.020 Well, I mean, they told us that they were going to dismantle the institutions of our democracy,

00:03:05.580 democracy. And that's exactly what they were doing now. You know, this is a movement that,

00:03:12.100 frankly, has been quite clear about what their aims are. They're not hiding. It's just that a lot

00:03:16.960 of people haven't been listening. You know, I get into the different features of the movement

00:03:22.480 in my book, Money, Lies, and God. I'd like to start with the title, if that's all right.

00:03:27.820 I mean, money, because money is a huge part of the story, the sort of vast concentrations

00:03:34.240 of wealth over the past decades have actually sort of at the tippy top of the economic spectrum

00:03:40.000 kind of destabilized the political system in a number of different ways. They've created

00:03:44.960 resentments among large, massive working people and empowered people at the very top to sort

00:03:52.660 of put their thumb on our politics in certain kinds of ways. Lies, because disinformation

00:03:59.200 and conspiracism is a huge piece of this. You know, it's how a lot of the rank and file have

00:04:06.100 been kind of separated from the facts in certain ways or had their resentments directed toward

00:04:13.320 targets that really perhaps don't deserve it quite as much as they get it. And then, of course,

00:04:19.780 God, because religious nationalism, I think, is the most important ideological framework for the

00:04:25.640 largest part of this movement. So in the book, I get into a group I call the funders. These are

00:04:32.120 the beneficiaries of those vast concentrations of wealth. And, you know, religiously, they're all

00:04:37.720 over the place. I'm thinking about people like the Corkeries or the Sky Foundation or Sean Filer

00:04:43.240 or Barry Side or the DeVos Prince family juggernaut, Wilkes Brothers, Tom Dunn, like some of them,

00:04:51.600 Tim Dunn, I'm sorry, some of them are like evangelical, some are Catholic, some are Protestant,

00:04:55.880 some are Jewish, some are frankly atheistic or nihilistic and don't seem to believe in anything more 1.00

00:05:00.660 than money. But they all agree on the need to sort of crush liberalism and investing a portion

00:05:08.100 of their fortunes on the destruction, on these anti-democratic projects. I also shine a bright

00:05:14.000 light on a group I call the thinkers. These, many of them are associated with a movement called the

00:05:19.460 New Right. A number of them, like Russell Vogt and Darren Beatty and others are now Michael Anton

00:05:27.300 occupying positions in the Trump administration or nominees. And I would say some of them are more

00:05:34.300 religious nationalist or Christian nationalist than others. Many of them also seem quite

00:05:39.720 nihilistic. Some of them actually derive a lot of inspiration from political theorists associated

00:05:45.880 with the Nazis. I kid you not. 0.92

00:05:48.660 Carl Schmitt.

00:05:49.500 Right, Carl Schmitt. I mean, they are more, was a Nazi political theorist who, you know,

00:05:53.780 we can talk about him a little bit later and how his ideology has influenced this movement.

00:05:58.300 But they are actually more anti, I would say, hostile to the idea of democracy. And they've

00:06:04.720 been saying for a long time that they abhor democracy and its principles and institutions,

00:06:09.560 even as they claim to revere the founders and our founding principles. I also look at the rank and file,

00:06:16.440 the people who sort of tend to vote for candidates who are radically anti-democratic in their political

00:06:23.880 aims. And then I also look at the sort of cadre of very empowered political pastors and activists,

00:06:30.980 religious activists, groups I call the sergeants and the power players. And often they're the ones 0.92

00:06:38.000 kind of driving the agenda and playing a very important role in connecting with the rank and file.

00:06:42.700 Hmm. Well, let's start with the thinkers. There was this political talking point during the election

00:06:49.960 that was dismissed by all of Trump's fans and by Trump himself as just pure misinformation.

00:06:58.060 The Democratic Party was quite agitated over something called Project 2025, which is this massive

00:07:05.360 document put out by the Heritage Foundation, which seemed to be a plan, a fairly reactionary plan

00:07:12.100 for making some impressive changes in governance in America. As you know, Trump pretended

00:07:19.580 to know nothing about it. When he heard something about it, he said he wanted nothing to do with

00:07:24.100 it. I remember, you know, some, I have some friends, if you can imagine this, who voted for

00:07:29.120 Donald Trump. And I remember raising the specter of Project 2025 to them. And they assured me that

00:07:36.460 this was misinformation spun up by the left. This is just, it was not a thing. Some maniacs over at the

00:07:42.240 Heritage Foundation wrote something which Trump had never heard of. There's no coordination here.

00:07:46.880 But you've just mentioned some of the names that are now staffing the administration. And these are

00:07:52.720 some of the primary authors of Project 2025. Russell Vogt, director of the Office of Management and

00:07:58.240 Budget. He, I believe, is the primary author of the document. Brendan Carr, Peter Navarro, Tom Homan,

00:08:06.120 John Radcliffe, Michael Anton. You know, John Radcliffe is nominated to lead the CIA. This is Project 2025

00:08:12.540 in its implementation. And it's just, it's amazing to me that you hear that there's no mea culpa ever

00:08:21.040 uttered by any of the fans of Trump who wanted nothing to do with Project 2025 and were quite

00:08:28.720 happy to know that he knew nothing about it. None of them are now stepping in front of microphones

00:08:33.280 saying, you know, this is not really what I voted for, right? And so how do you perceive this?

00:08:39.120 Was this, if you can imagine, was Trump just lying when he said he knew nothing about Project 2025 and

00:08:45.900 wanted nothing to do with it? Or what's happening here?

00:08:49.380 Well, absolutely. I mean, Russell Vogt was caught on camera speaking with a potential funder of the

00:08:56.020 movement. It was a kind of a setup by a couple of British journalists, essentially saying that,

00:09:01.460 yeah, you know, this is, he's in on it and this is what's going to happen. The idea that this was

00:09:07.560 sort of a 900 page document that was never going to go anywhere is just total fiction. I mean,

00:09:14.140 many of the contributors to Project 2025 were former members of the Trump administration. And yes,

00:09:20.100 you're absolutely right. A number of contributors and architects of Project 2025 are now occupying key

00:09:27.600 institutions, you know, key positions within the new administration. And what we see in Project 2025

00:09:34.460 is a kind of marriage of the new right and the Christian right and the Christian nationalist movement.

00:09:41.280 That's kind of, those two influences comprise sort of, I would say, and call them the power couple of

00:09:48.040 the anti-democratic movement.

00:09:49.360 I think the power couple being Christian nationalism and the new right.

00:09:53.120 And the new right, absolutely.

00:09:54.100 Yeah. What is Christian nationalism in your view? Because it's not synonymous with

00:10:01.040 the evangelical movement. I mean, I'm sure there's an impressive overlap there, but

00:10:05.440 how would you differentiate it from the various flavors of Christianity we have in America?

00:10:11.320 Yeah, thank you. You know, Christian nationalism is not Christianity. It's not a religion.

00:10:15.800 It's both an ideology, like an also a kind of political movement. I think of it as like

00:10:21.400 a mindset and a machine. So the mindset draws on this ideology that says America was founded

00:10:30.340 as a Christian nation, according to a very particular understanding of the Christian faith,

00:10:36.780 and our laws should be based on reactionary interpretation of the Bible. And it's a sort

00:10:42.580 of exploitation of this ideology for politics and power. And when we're talking about the machine,

00:10:47.960 it's a political movement. The movement is leadership driven, and it's also organization

00:10:53.580 driven. And we can sort of divide those, you know, the agenda is not set by the rank and file. I mean,

00:11:00.600 let's really be clear about that. So the organizations can be divided into categories. There are

00:11:06.780 right-wing policy groups. There are advocacy, legal advocacy groups. There are very sophisticated

00:11:13.820 data initiatives. There are legislative initiatives. There are networking organizations,

00:11:19.600 like the Council for National Policy, which gets different factions of the leadership on the same

00:11:24.620 page. And, you know, the movement is, there's a vast kind of messaging sphere that goes out and

00:11:31.880 reaches the rank and file. There are these pastoral networks, groups like Watchmen on the Wall and Faith

00:11:38.100 Wins and Church United and the Courage Tour, these initiatives that draw pastors into networks. And

00:11:44.740 then movement leaders will do presentations with them and give them materials. They get them to turn

00:11:50.760 out to their congregations to turn out to vote for the sort of hard right candidates that the movement

00:11:57.860 favors. And those pastoral networks play a really important role in election cycles because,

00:12:04.440 listen, sort of the rank and file of this movement represent a minority of the population. And

00:12:10.880 frankly, I think even many, if most American Christians, object to Christian nationalism. A

00:12:16.840 number of organizations like Christians Against Christian Nationalism and the New Evangelicals and

00:12:22.440 Vote Common Good, I mean, the Baptist Joint Committee, there are so many others object to Christian

00:12:27.360 nationalism. But this is a group...

00:12:29.580 Does anyone answer to the name Christian nationalist happily, or is that a phrase that is used by those

00:12:35.600 outside the movement to describe it pejoratively?

00:12:39.040 Some do. Like Russell Vogt, I think, has self-identified as Christian nationalist. We know Marjorie Taylor

00:12:44.500 Green and some others have. You know, I just want to say, return for a moment to that infrastructure.

00:12:50.300 The strength of the movement is in that dense organizational infrastructure, and they turn out their

00:12:54.460 vote in disproportionate numbers. But, you know, Christian nationalism, I think of it like

00:12:59.100 authoritarianism. It's a political dynamic that affects a political system, not just a set of

00:13:05.660 attitudes embraced by the rank and file. So let's say, you know, when a person decides they're going

00:13:12.360 to vote their values on abortion, say, or they're voting to protect the American family as they think

00:13:20.020 they're doing, you know, as the movement has told them to do, they may not necessarily be arguing for

00:13:27.700 major changes in the way our government is run. They're just kind of making a statement about their

00:13:32.380 identity and what they value in themselves. So we might not call them a Christian nationalist,

00:13:37.820 but what they are doing is lending support to a Christian nationalist agenda. Does that make sense to

00:13:43.240 you? It's like authoritarianism. It doesn't just start off as like a political program that everybody

00:13:49.840 endorses. It's just like various dynamics and sort of interests act to sort of promote a kind of

00:13:56.940 authoritarian agenda.

00:13:59.300 But what is the overlap, would you say, between Christian nationalism and what we would call, you know,

00:14:06.120 the white supremacist movement in the U.S.?

00:14:09.240 I mean, we have to really look at a Venn diagram. There's some overlap, but it's not

00:14:14.340 the same thing, you know. But, you know, what's very interesting is that there are a group like

00:14:20.060 the Proud Boys. When they first started, they didn't really particularly have a religious identity.

00:14:25.860 But as the Christian nationalist movement has gained power, and as these different identity movements,

00:14:32.580 by the way, somewhat of these white nationalist groups have had, I mean, just want to be very clear,

00:14:39.040 some of them have had a religious identity from the start, others have not. So there's differences

00:14:44.900 among them, but as the movement has gained in strength, and as their leaders have been able to

00:14:50.400 sort of see the power that the ideology and the movement sort of is able to marshal, some have

00:14:57.460 adopted, like the Proud Boys, for instance, has adopted more of a religious identity more overtly.

00:15:03.560 So there is some variation in the different sort of militia groups and white nationalist groups.

00:15:09.860 So there are obviously many ways into this. I mean, there are people who are just racist and

00:15:13.520 afraid of immigration, and then they get some religious inspiration in their politics,

00:15:21.740 and they find themselves somewhere standing somewhere near a sincere Christian who finds that their

00:15:30.620 politics is also bent around by scenes of chaos at the southern border and wants to get a handle on

00:15:38.580 that and can't figure out why anyone left of center is confused about why we would want a defensible

00:15:43.300 border. And you have people who are associated with an institute like the Claremont Institute,

00:15:49.020 where, you know, you have intellectuals or Aristotle intellectuals. I think in your book,

00:15:54.940 you detail how that institution has undergone some considerable devolution in terms of its

00:16:00.860 scholarly integrity. But you have people there who I think would never answer to the name of white 0.97

00:16:07.180 supremacist and would, at least in their own minds, consciously disavow racism, but nonetheless have

00:16:14.440 time for, you know, Nazi writers like the one we named Carl Schmitt and people he's influenced.

00:16:21.480 Again, I'm trying to figure out how to talk about a fairly complex Venn diagram that is clearly in the

00:16:30.420 real world deranging our politics at this moment. You have, you know, the oligarchs, you know, many of

00:16:35.740 whom we'll talk about, many of whom I know personally, some of whom I know not to be religious at all,

00:16:40.980 some of whom I know are religious in a strange way that probably has as much to do with Burning Man

00:16:46.180 as the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But, you know, these are people who are influenced, you know,

00:16:51.940 will admit to being influenced by rather iconoclastic and free associative, and I would even say

00:16:58.600 confabulatory thinkers like Curtis Yarvin.

00:17:00.940 Curtis Yarvin.

00:17:01.420 You know, so it's just a mess, ideologically, out there, and yet they're having a good old time

00:17:08.700 at Mar-a-Lago now, seeming to get everything they want out of the world, I think, to the obvious

00:17:14.800 detriment of our democracy and American values. What strand of this do you want to pick up first?

00:17:21.620 Oh my gosh, so much to talk about. I mean, when we're talking about the oligarchs, I mean,

00:17:25.660 let's be clear, it's not all of the very rich people in this country that are supporting this,

00:17:31.740 it's a sector, right, who are supporting it. And I think that, I mean, something that comes to mind

00:17:37.840 when you talk about these guys going to Mar-a-Lago and sort of, you know, having a grand old time,

00:17:42.280 I think a lot of people don't appreciate the degree to which a lot of these very rich people

00:17:46.680 live in almost like islands, right? They're surrounded by people who say nice things to them,

00:17:51.880 they, you know, have the sense that they can sort of, you know, deserve every penny that they

00:17:58.280 earned every penny where they have with their bare hands. Many of them, by the way, you know,

00:18:02.980 they want policies that benefit their businesses. They want deregulatory environments so that they

00:18:09.440 can engage in, some of them are in polluting practices and others just in, you know, they run

00:18:15.880 monopolistic businesses and they want an absence of regulation in ways that are going to assist those

00:18:21.340 businesses. But at the same time, they also want, I would say, protective policies. You know, they

00:18:26.360 want often privileged contracts or they want, in some instances, I'm looking at you, Mr. Musk,

00:18:32.920 tax privileges, tax subsidies, and things like this. But they're also living on these islands and they,

00:18:39.720 you know, in the last couple of decades, we've seen a massive concentration of wealth at the very

00:18:44.640 tippy top. But we've also seen life become so much harder for people, I would say, in the bottom 90%

00:18:51.080 of our country, where the working and middle classes are struggling, you know, and making it hard,

00:18:58.800 it's making it harder for those families to succeed. And so people at the top in their islands are sort of

00:19:05.740 protected, but they can hear from like far, like over the walls, they can hear, you know, critics saying,

00:19:12.380 well, you know, what you're doing is really not okay, you should be paying your taxes and perhaps

00:19:16.440 treating your workforce a little better. And maybe not killing off all those mom and pops or smaller 0.86

00:19:22.540 organizations with your, you know, monopolistic businesses, and they don't like that makes them

00:19:26.940 very defensive. And I think that that contributes to this sense of, you know, the sense that, like,

00:19:35.200 I think they're afraid of the people coming after them with proverbial pitchforks.

00:19:39.440 And I think that actually contributes that sense of defensiveness to some of their activities in

00:19:46.700 supporting this movement. I mean, we can't know what's in people's hearts, obviously, and I'm sure

00:19:52.380 there's different variants. I think the Wilkes brothers are very different from Jeff Yass, for instance,

00:19:59.500 and their orientation in every way, or Peter Thiel. But at the same time, again, they have embraced

00:20:07.680 these people like Curtis Yarvin and his fellow travelers at the Claremont Institute who are

00:20:14.400 basically arguing that we need more monarchical form of rule, that democracy is not sufficient to

00:20:21.440 solve all of our problems because we're facing an absolute apocalypse because of the woke cancelers 1.00

00:20:29.080 or whatever. It's like, well, who's really trying to cancel stuff here? I mean, I'm sure you,

00:20:34.460 like I, saw that list of words that these sort of funded national institutes of health studies are

00:20:42.360 not allowed to include, including the word woman. Yeah. I mean, talk about cancellation. 0.98

00:20:47.140 Socioeconomic. I know.

00:20:49.160 They're basically, just for people who don't know what's happening there, they circulated a,

00:20:53.940 I believe I saw it as an Excel spreadsheet of keywords that were now going to be screened for

00:21:00.980 in any scientific grant at the National Science Foundation. And if you take the complete set of

00:21:05.780 words, I mean, some were obviously red flags for DEI inflected work, but I mean, the complete set

00:21:12.960 seemed to rule out more or less all of the social sciences. I mean, if a word like woman and

00:21:17.480 socioeconomic is going to get you flagged, then it's, we're really just talking about physics in the end.

00:21:23.840 Yeah. Okay. So, well, you, you mentioned the woke stuff. I, this is, this is one place where I think

00:21:31.300 you and I might disagree. Maybe, maybe not. It'll be interesting to figure out why we disagree if we

00:21:36.520 in fact disagree, but in reading your book and in reading, I think I, you know, since it was given

00:21:42.020 to me as a PDF, I had the advantage of being able to find every use of the word woke and wokeness in

00:21:46.700 it. Just so I, I'm, I'm pretty sure I understand what you said about it in your book. You seem to

00:21:52.160 think that it's basically a non-issue and, and insofar as, as the people on the right.

00:21:58.380 Did I say that in my book?

00:22:00.240 Well, no, feel free to correct me again. I'm, I'm, uh, I'm throwing myself on your mercy because I, I,

00:22:06.280 I did not read your whole book, but, um, I did read much of it. Uh, but you seem to think,

00:22:12.580 the impression I've gotten, however, uh, haphazardly is that you think that the right

00:22:18.280 has made a demon out of this idea that the left is engaged in a kind of, you know, quasi-Marxist,

00:22:28.400 uh, you know, and certainly post-modernist takeover of all elite institutions. And there's a-

00:22:34.400 Well, I think you should perhaps read the section I write about the far left.

00:22:38.120 Okay.

00:22:38.480 So, um, I do take aim at that as well. 1.00

00:22:40.960 Let me, let me put all these, these, these dumb ideas in your, in your, in your mouth and you 1.00

00:22:44.560 can, you can spit them out. You seem to think that this is either, these fears are not sincerely 0.99

00:22:50.100 held or if held, they're exaggerated. And there's, there's much less of a problem on the left than

00:22:56.520 is made out by people like Christopher Rufo or James Lindsay or any of these other activists on,

00:23:02.820 in the new right who stand up in front of adoring crowds and say the, you know, the woke mind virus

00:23:08.000 is coming for you and your kids. Your kids' schools are trying to, to make them trans, 1.00

00:23:12.640 et cetera. This is obviously something that Elon Musk has spoken about. And, um, you know,

00:23:17.840 insofar as I, I know his mind at all anymore, I believe, you know, he's, he, along with many

00:23:24.140 millions of other people in this country is sincere in saying that he is, one of his major concerns is

00:23:32.140 this far left trans activists centered ideology. Yeah. I think you should actually read.

00:23:39.860 Sorry. I don't have to read it. You're going to give it to me right now.

00:23:42.980 I mean, I think it's very clear that a far, the far left is frankly, there's on that sector

00:23:49.220 of the far left, there is the amplification of some very divisive stuff that frankly redounds to

00:23:54.960 the benefit of the far right. Yeah. Because what it often does it's, and we saw it like the labs at

00:24:02.280 MIT media lab, for instance, analyze this as did, I think it was a sector of, it was like a Harvard

00:24:08.160 lab that collaborated on some of this stuff where they found some of these extremist ideas being

00:24:14.180 amplified by Russia and other hostile foreign actors in order to divide, you know, some of these 0.59

00:24:19.920 ideas are incredibly divisive. And one of the things that this does is it sort of makes people

00:24:27.400 think, well, well, the, like the moderate liberal, you know, progressive left, they sort of throw all 0.96

00:24:35.100 of it into that sort of woke communist bucket, which is ridiculous. I mean, the people who are 0.88

00:24:40.080 talking about these issues constantly are people on the right. You know, I was recently at America

00:24:45.420 Fest. It's an annual gathering held by Turning Point USA. It took place in Phoenix, Arizona. There

00:24:52.740 were 20,000 sort of hardcore MAGA. Every single speaker had to talk about transgender women in

00:24:59.720 sports. This is like, you're right, they're making a boogeyman out of this issue. Now, whatever you or I

00:25:06.240 may think about these issues, and, you know, we'll probably find a lot of agreement on this particular

00:25:11.720 topic. We have 11.4 million children living in poverty. Gun violence is the number one cause of

00:25:18.980 death among children and teenagers in our country. Those kinds of issues can, and many DEI programs as

00:25:28.100 well, can and should be examined. And are there excesses in some of the DEI programs? Of course there

00:25:33.420 are. But is this the major problem facing our country? When you bring up James Lindsay and Rufo and

00:25:40.820 Musk even, you know, Lindsay at least I saw speak at Moms for Liberty conference where he's going on

00:25:48.780 and on about how, you know, the Democratic parties like Communist China, those extremist voices are not

00:25:55.080 normalized. They're not like widespread within, I would say, Democratic Party politics. It's the right

00:26:01.500 that talks about them all the time. It's a massive distraction. I mean, I think we have to, you know,

00:26:06.660 whatever you or I may think about those issues, we have to acknowledge that they are being used as a

00:26:11.740 massive distraction from the real problems facing our country, bread and butter issues. You know,

00:26:17.400 this is a movement that claims to stand for the American family, but they're endorsing politicians

00:26:23.600 whose policies are making it so much harder for so many Americans to succeed. And, you know, why would

00:26:30.480 they talk about these issues constantly? Well, it's like, you ever see a laser pointer or a cat toy

00:26:36.520 where there's this red little thing that goes all over the floor and the cat jumps at it and jumps at it?

00:26:41.320 Well, if you're focused on that, like identity issue that involves sex and sexuality, which distracts

00:26:46.860 everybody, all of a sudden you're not looking at the real problems in your community. You're not

00:26:51.400 looking at the source of the problems. You're not understanding why the cost of groceries is too high

00:26:57.660 and the cost of housing is impossible and why you're like a couple with, you know,

00:27:02.480 two parents and four jobs and you're still struggling to make it work.

00:27:06.040 Well, I agree with that, that it's been a massive distraction that has been leveraged quite artfully

00:27:13.060 and cynically by the far right. But it was also a massive distraction for on the left for the Democratic

00:27:21.340 Party. And all of the elite institutions, the mainstream media and scientific journals and

00:27:27.880 universities and Hollywood, all of them got captured to a degree that I think the far right perceived to

00:27:36.540 be and rightly perceived to be a problem and a massive political vulnerability. So it's not just

00:27:43.060 the laser pointer, this tiny little dot that should be meaningless, but is captivating everyone.

00:27:49.080 Well, I would say the right is really good at getting, I mean, they're in way more tactical.

00:27:54.880 They're really good at setting traps for people to walk into.

00:27:57.900 But there was no reason to walk into them.

00:28:00.280 There was no reason for Kamala Harris or anyone else in the Democratic Party to walk into those

00:28:05.380 traps if they had their head screwed on straight around how fringe some of the, and insane some of

00:28:12.460 these concerns actually are on the far left. I mean, we had during, I'll take you back to the golden

00:28:18.180 years of woke derangement, you know, to somewhere around 2020. I mean, you literally had NPR publishing

00:28:24.680 an editorial in defense of looting, right? We had just seen lots of looting and rioting in major

00:28:32.020 cities associated with the George Floyd protest.

00:28:33.680 Oh, I mean, that's appalling. But that was also just one fringe idea in like the free marketplace

00:28:40.960 of ideas. And you see a lot of crazy ideas on the right as well. And I'm not familiar with the

00:28:46.680 editorial, but it sounds appalling.

00:28:48.600 That's the thing that's, but there's, there's, perhaps this is something you have an idea about

00:28:53.180 how to fix. There is, many of us have noticed a pervasive asymmetry here where the left or anyone

00:29:01.800 left of center, any mainstream institution, the New York Times say, gets one thing wrong and it is

00:29:08.320 devastating for its reputation. Right. And the right amplifies it over and over.

00:29:14.100 And the right will seize upon that error as a sign that there's really, there is no distinction

00:29:21.580 between the New York Times and, you know, the Epoch Times or Breitbart or Fox News, right? We're all

00:29:29.280 just in the business of smearing everyone all day long for political reasons. The right gets things

00:29:34.780 wrong. And there's just, since they're continuously playing tennis without the net over there,

00:29:40.000 it never matters. And there's nothing to be made of it left of center, because of course we know that

00:29:45.800 Fox News and Breitbart and they're not, they're really not in the business of journalism. They're

00:29:50.220 going, you know, they're misinformation factories. So there's this profound asymmetry here, which is that

00:29:55.760 left of center in elite institutions, we are trying to hold ourselves to journalistic and academic

00:30:03.500 standards and we succeed or fail at that, uh, and police ourselves and are policed from the outside

00:30:10.880 by, you know, cynical people who want no part of the standards and the norms we're trying to defend,

00:30:16.960 but will hold us to those standards and norms and reveal us in every moment of hypocrisy that can be

00:30:24.520 detected. Right. And so it is a kind of, you know, this is like, again, it's asymmetric warfare of the

00:30:30.780 sort that you see when you have a major army that's trying to follow the rules of the Geneva

00:30:35.820 convention, uh, fighting an insurgency that is using IEDs and human shields and, you know, putting

00:30:43.180 it's the barrels of his rifles on the shoulders of children. And it's very hard to know how to

00:30:48.700 navigate this rhetorically, right? Because every time you admit, yes, okay. That's that, that, uh,

00:30:54.920 the deplatforming of the New York posts on Twitter in response to the Hunter Biden laptop. Yes. In

00:31:01.400 retrospect, that looked like a bad idea. Yes. Those former intelligence chiefs who signed a letter

00:31:07.080 saying that it looks like Russian disinformation. Well, yeah, they, they do have egg on their face

00:31:11.040 now because it wasn't, wasn't Russian disinformation, but that does not obviate all of the concerns about

00:31:17.800 Russian disinformation that, that sane journalists had in mind, you know, the previous week. And it

00:31:24.120 does not make Rudy Giuliani foisting an October surprise with the Hunter Biden laptop, somehow

00:31:30.040 an honest broker of information at this point. And it's, it becomes impossible to make these

00:31:35.420 distinctions because again, there's this profound asymmetry. One error on your side destroys your

00:31:42.080 reputation. The other side plays by no rules at all. That's true. And I think, I think one of the

00:31:48.360 most dangerous consequences of this movement is an assault on the idea of truth itself, the idea that

00:31:57.920 truth doesn't matter. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to

00:32:02.940 subscribe at samharris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to all full length episodes of the Making

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - February 18, 2025

#401 — Christian Nationalism and the New Right

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