Special Episode: Militias, Mama Bears, and the New Apostolic Reformation

Brad Onishi: What's up y'all? Brad here with a special episode today. There was a rally/protest this weekend - Memorial Day - in Seattle. And if you saw some of the press, or if you read some of the headlines, you would have thought, "Well, this is kind of a normal thing now." A bunch of Christian extremists showed up. They were talking about how Jesus is the King of the United States, how the enemies of the United States are trans people and queer people, and they are here to take back the country. Folks who vehemently disagree with them showed up and counter-protested and/or staged a counter rally, however you'd like to put it.

But if you look below the surface, there's something far more wide-ranging and far more important happening with this rally. This was the coalescence of numerous streams within the Christian Right and Christian nationalist movement in the United States. You had Jenny Donnelly, the kind of leader of the Mama Bears who we talked about in Spirit and Power Season Two, Episode Three. You had Sean Feucht acolytes, who are really the leaders of the young Gen Z happy-clappy 20-something crowd who is set to take back California and the West Coast for Jesus. But you also had militia members, Proud Boys, and white nationalists - an explicitly militia-affiliated plank of the American Christian nationalist right. And they were all together in one space.

And so today I invited Kate Burns, a journalist who's been covering these things for a long time, and Matthew Taylor, who you all know from Charismatic Revival Fury and NAR Watch and so much of his appearances on the show, to explain how all of this comes straight from the New Apostolic Reformation. But it's startling in the sense that it has now recruited these openly violent, militia-affiliated communities to be part of this wider coalition of Christian nationalists and Christian supremacists trying to take back the country for God. We talk all about it and why the West Coast has become one of the primary targets for this movement. I'm Brad Onishi, and this is Straight White American Jesus.

Brad: Welcome to Straight White American Jesus. Great to be with you on this Monday. I'm Brad Onishi, here with two returned guests - two folks I really love. I mean, one of them is going to be super, super familiar to many of you, and is a super guest who some of you have been wondering, "Why hasn't he been around? And you know, what's your deal Brad? Call Matt please, because we need to hear from him." So Matt Taylor is here, the one and only. Hello Matt, how are you?

Matt Taylor: Hey Brad. I just had a baby about a month ago, so that's where I've been.

Brad: There's a new baby and there's - yeah, you have other babies, there's a new one. It's a whole thing. You've got a lot going on. So there's a good explainer, so people get off my back. It's not that I have not called Matt or that I'm ignoring him, okay?

And Kate Burns is here. Kate just does incredible work at Left Coast Watch and other places. How are you, Kate? Great to have you back.

Kate Burns: Thank you. I'm excited to be here. And yes, congrats on the baby again Matt. That's very exciting. Lots going on in the world at the moment.

Brad: There is, there is. All right y'all, we're here to talk about something that happened in Seattle over Memorial Day weekend - that was a May Day Rally protest gathering. And some of you might have seen reporting on this. Many of you probably did not. And you know, there's a write-up in the Seattle Times about the event, and I'll just read the very first paragraph:

"Protesters clashed with police at dueling rallies Saturday in Cal Anderson Park in Seattle. A crowd waving Transgender Pride flags and signs denouncing the quote 'Trump fascist regime' gathered around 1pm in protest of a May Day USA event, the fourth of five stops on a conservative Christian group's national tour under the banner 'Don't Mess with Our Kids.' Twenty-three arrests were made." There may have been more by now.

On the surface, Kate, this looks like old news. Oh, here's some Christians. They showed up in a big city, a liberal city, they did the whole thing of like "Don't mess with our kids." If you're gay, if you're trans, if you're lesbian, if you're just not a straight cis person, you're a groomer, you're a pervert. And people didn't like that, and they showed up too. There's so much more behind this story. There's so much decoding that needs to go on. There's so much interpreting that needs to go on.

Can you tell us, Kate, about the May Day Tour and who put it together, what the purpose is, and what cities they have decided to target?

Kate: Yeah, sure. So May Day is a project that's come together through Jenny Donnelly and Ross Johnston. So Jenny Donnelly - her history is she has "Don't Mess with Our Kids." She also has her ministries. So she has quite a lot going on there that falls under a brand that she has with her husband.

And then you have Ross Johnson, who is former California Will Be Saved. He had a partner, John Moch. Their movement, CA Will Be Saved, started in 2020 when both Joel and Ross went to a Sean Feucht open service. So that was the one down in Oceanside. They were then inspired by that to create their own movement for youth - Gen Z, basically.

Both Jenny and Ross were commissioned by Ché Ahn going back, I think it was late 2023. So they've both been identified in the movement as people that can push this narrative forward and push Christian supremacy forward. I think with Ross, you know, and Matt and I have discussed this at length - Ross's story is really something that has appealed to the likes of Ché and the NAR movement. Be it that he was born to two lesbian moms, artificial insemination. If you ever see him with a microphone, he's going to tell you that story. That is his story, and I think that that really plays into the culture wars. So you've got someone that has been brought up in this house and has found Jesus, and now he's saved. He's back. He has been preaching now for over five years alongside the Sean Feuchts of the world. He's regularly toured with Sean Feucht.

If you look at the style of protests that they've had this weekend, it's no mistake that they were where they were. There's still some debate - I know that the mayor's come back and said that he's looking into how they were given the go-ahead to have it at Cal Anderson Park, because in the past when California Will Be Saved had an event there, they were down in Pike Place. So there's a bit of back and forth on why they were there. But be it that it was in the home of CHOP, you know, downtown in the queer community - like this is a specific target.

If you looked at the images coming from Saturday, you would have seen face painting. They're giving away bikes, you know, they're doing free haircuts for kids. And so the aesthetics of that with their big pink and blue banner, and you've got them all dancing around. You've got women in dresses and like straw hats, and they're all joyful. If you tuned into any other of their content, any other day of the week, you're gonna see what they're about. They're anti-queer. They're anti-trans, specifically anti-trans. They, like you said, they believe that means that people are grooming.

Probably some of the most concerning stuff that I've seen since then is obviously the coverage has been terrible. Mainstream media doesn't have the want or the will to understand these really important movements, and so we get this "both sides," you know, play-by-play afterwards. I just think that what they've done with Sean and - so you had Joel and Ross. They joined Feucht for the March for Israel. And we saw, obviously, a lot of pushback on that, especially in Columbia. And they saw that they could get that reaction from the media, swings through into the right-wing media ecosystem. You get the ear of Trump. You get the ear of whoever - you know, Pam Bondi is now.

And I suppose my concern is all of this was happening before. They hadn't refined it to what they have now, but now that we are in the environment that we are in, and you have Trump in the background, and you have everyone lining up to push this - you know, that Christians are being persecuted, and we've got the task force and everything now - I'm really concerned that they have been organizing for years, and they know what works, and they know how to get a reaction, and we don't have any ecosystem to lay the record straight, you know. So this is just going to keep feeding and feeding. And these - like, I'm sure Matt can go into the theology of it all, but these are really dangerous people. These are true believers. They believe they are on God's path. They believe they're bringing on the Second Coming. They believe they're bringing on reformation. They believe that they're bringing on revival. So it's a really concerning time.

Brad: So let's just sum up. We have an event that is really the kind of love child, in the most grotesque way, of Sean Feucht, who really inspires two Gen Z folks a couple years ago to start their own Gen Z "We will save America, We will save California" kind of crusade. You then have Jenny Donnelly, who is really the kind of Mama Bear protector, at least one of them in the Christian Right ecosystem. And both of these - these Gen Z and Mama Bear kind of wings - have been commissioned by Ché Ahn, one of the mainstays of the New Apostolic Reformation. Yep, this is New Apostolic Reformation all over it, but it's branded in both the Mama Bear wing and in the Gen Z wing - the young hip, you know, kind of 24-year-old, and the mom who brought their kid to get their face painted. "Why are there police and protests?" That's really important to notice.

So if you watch some of the Instagram footage, you're going to see the women in dresses, you're going to see the kids getting their hair cut. You're going to see kids on bikes. And here's Matt Taylor saying on Bluesky: "This is one of the most disturbing videos I've ever seen." So Matt, tell us why this is so disturbing to you, who - if I know you pretty well, at least well enough to know you watch disturbing things all the time on the internet. It's kind of your job. Why is this so disturbing to you?

Matt: Let me do a little backstory, because I think we need backstory to explain why it's so disturbing. So I track the New Apostolic Reformation. We did Charismatic Revival Fury, and then my book, The Violent Take It By Force, all trying to trace, especially around January 6th, how the New Apostolic Reformation became the backbone of Christian Trumpism, provided the theology and the propaganda for Christians to embrace Donald Trump, and then really spurred a lot of people to get involved in the campaign to overturn the election and then in January 6th.

What has happened since January 6th is not really in that series, and is not really in my book, and that's what we're talking about today. What we've seen across so many of these Christian nationalist, Christian supremacist, far-right extremist Christian networks and groups in the aftermath of January 6th is all of this new cross-pollination and cross-fertilization, where, if you go back into my research and the data streams leading into January 6th, you had all these kind of distinct channels feeding into January 6th. You had the QAnon channel. You had the kind of militia Proud Boys and Oath Keepers channel. You had kind of the Christian charismatic channel. You had the mainstream "Stop the Steal" channel.

All those groups start to mingle around January 6th, and suddenly you start to see all these hybrids emerge after January 6th, in that period between the 2020 election and the 2024 election. And this all kind of spirals right before the 2024 election. The NAR and all these groups are out there. But what we've been watching, and Kate has been very, very helpful - there have been a number of journalists I've been in conversation with, especially on the West Coast - we've been watching this convergence, especially in that space where there is all this cross-pollination between far-right militia and neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups and these NAR networks.

And people who know the NAR would say that's very, very strange, because the NAR is very multi-ethnic and very, very Christian, and really is proud of how multi-ethnic they are. But here they are marching in lockstep with white supremacists and Proud Boys and all these kind of far-right groups. And where you start to see the Appeal to Heaven flag, this NAR symbol that they've branded, start showing up at all these other far-right neo-Nazi type protests.

And so that is what I've been tracking, trying to highlight, trying to articulate for a number of years. And the videos that have come out of this rally are the best crystallization I've seen of that convergence. And you can go watch - I posted one on Bluesky and on Twitter - you can watch a number of these. But they are overtly utilizing neo-Nazi styles of video editing and propaganda and aesthetics. The protesters being slammed to the ground as these worshipers are worshiping, and they're playing the worship music over that, and it's dramatic and it's confrontational, and they're trying to push this really hard.

And these folks - they have gotten very good at provoking a reaction and then capitalizing on that reaction in order to further their far-right ends, in order to gain national credibility. And I really worry that this is one thing in the environment leading up to the 2024 election, and it was very, very dangerous and harmful then. It's only more harmful now, as we have a second Trump administration, as we have these kind of umbrella forces over the nation that are pushing the agenda of Christian nationalism from that level, too.

Brad: Kate, I'm wondering if you can help us understand the particularly West Coast flavors of all of this. I talk on this show all the time, as a native Californian, about how I think people assume California is just this unscathed liberal bastion, and it's never been that. But as you know, following on Matt's comments, we have organizers who come out of California - people like Sean Feucht and Ché Ahn are towering California New Apostolic Reformation figures linking up with people in the Pacific Northwest who are not only affiliated with the NAR, but are increasingly, as Matt says, bringing in the militia and white nationalist tropes.

Would you help us understand some of the players, the tropes, and just the general outlines of what's happening?

Kate: Yeah, sure. And yeah, you're right Matt. You're right there, Brad, about the history. And you know, obviously we've discussed the history of California previously. You know, I think people just think, "Yeah, it's this blue bastion, and we're super liberal." You know, one in eight Americans live in California. There are so many people in California, so obviously we have real diversity through that. You know, the history of Focus on the Family and the John Birch Society, you know, obviously had a huge hub in California back in the days.

But one thing I think, you know, being obviously an outsider - I'm sure people have picked up my accent by now, I'm not originally from here - so coming in and seeing, you know, the hubs, especially anything south of Los Angeles, and then you've got, like, you know, further up north as well. You know, some of the biggest players is obviously Ché Ahn. You've got Jay Koopman also. So Jay Koopman is the head pastor of Ché's Harvest Rock campus, but he's also part of Let Us Worship with Sean Feucht, and he's also turned up at this May Day event, and he's in Seattle today, and he'll be going to the protest tonight. So he's involved.

Then you've got the likes of Awakened Church, who are tapped in heavily with Charlie Kirk. So they have all of that backing of TPUSA Faith. We have the likes of Rob McCoy. We also have, obviously, Sean moved to California and moved to SoCal in 2020, but he's made California his home, and he does a lot of work through California.

And you know, I will say he's been successful in activating California. You know, it's not just California Will Be Saved. We have United Revival. We have so many different versions of this - taking the church out into the streets. And they've seen a lot of success for that. You know, Sean went to CHOP, Sean went to Minneapolis, Sean went to - Sean has been to West Hollywood. And so they target these areas for this response.

I think what's different now is like when Sean first started, he did attract - it was a lot of men, and so definitely wasn't a lot of young moms. You know, there was some Gen Z mix through there. But he also attracted white militia, you know, especially I'm thinking about this one time in Portland. What they've done now is they've refined that. So they have refined that to bring in more youth, more happy-clapping youth. And then you've got Jenny, who has been working on this, you know, One Million Women program, and she had that big event in DC last year before the election, you know, tens of thousands of people.

So now they've got this perfect movement of kids, mums, they're just Jesus believers. And I think that, you know, with Ché Ahn and Lou Engle all part of this - you know, Lou Engle is like spiritual father to Jay Koopman and Sean Feucht and the like - they've really seen that the benefit of getting this media, getting this propaganda that they can cut, helps move the needle forward.

Obviously, all of these people have been involved in school board takeovers. They've been at anti-trans protests recently. They've been, you know, tracking down this one student that's been doing - Riverside County - yeah, so it's all of these same people, and they're touching on so many different things.

Probably the biggest shift I've seen with what happened in Seattle - like, I say it was like the perfect storm, all of the things came together on the right day, down to like, be it that media on Saturday wasn't covering any other massive, big protest that came out. So it was like the perfect storm. And the response we've seen since then has been disturbing. We had right-wing media that were there. Obviously, they pushed that out super quickly. We had TPUSA Day on frontlines there. They were recording and cutting propaganda really quickly as well. That was then picked up by Seattle Times, obviously, but we've seen ABC and NBC do an interview with Jenny and Ross.

The coverage I've seen as a whole is just totally missing the point. And now they're going to be holding a rally tonight on the Capitol steps in Seattle. Andy Ngo is going to be there. Jason Rantz - all of these really right-wing provocateurs that cover and run cover for the likes of the Proud Boys and Nazis in the past.

You know, Ross and Russell did a Twitter Live last night, and they were saying all kinds of outrageous things. One of them was that they had a 14-year-old boy testify that an Antifa member held a knife up to him and threatened him. I've heard, you know, and there's no - we get no proof of any of that. It's just vibes.

But one of the concerning things, you know, I've listened to all of their sermons over the weekend after Saturday, and you know, all of their content they've been putting out. Russell Johnston of Pursuit - he's the lead pastor of Pursuit - he has been sharing memes and cartoons that had, like, pro-Hamas people in there, and like Palestinian flags. And I'm worried that they understand the environment we're in. They understand the tools that are there for them to use, which, you know, is the Anti-Christian Bias Task Force. Apparently it's gotten up to the Assistant Attorney General. They have the Alliance Defending Freedom - they've already put their hat in the ring, and they're saying, "Yep, we're going after it. We're going after the mayor."

And I just worry how that's going to continue to play out, because obviously there's going to be a counter-protest that's out there that's apparently gonna be happening tonight. And I think, you know, I'm never gonna say don't protest these people. These people need to be protested. I just want everyone to be really mindful and have a think about these people and you know what their desires are, and how we can work with that. Yeah, and just to be safe, because we have the trans, the pro-trans activists and everyone - they have no one on their side.

Brad: Yeah, the point you make at the end there seems really important to me, which is protesting and countering is always a factor. How do you do that and win? How do you do that and not help them gain the upper hand? I mean, it almost seems as if they're strategizing around a response that will just strengthen their hand, politically, culturally, in the media, and so on.

Matt, tell us about the militia - like, you know, you maybe more than anyone know the ways the NAR has incorporated the militia, as you say, in a way that might be surprising to people. Why would Ché Ahn, an Asian American, be part of a movement that is actively courting Proud Boys and white nationalists?

Matt: Yeah, I think I've told this story in a couple of different places. I was at a conference a couple months back - an academic conference talking about Christian nationalism, sort of thing. And this guy comes up to me on one of the breaks after I present, and he introduces himself. He's a researcher into white supremacy. And he has a research methodology similar to my own. He wants to interview the leaders and get to know them, and rather than just kind of rely on their public-facing profiles.

And he's interviewing a leader from The Base, which is this deeply anti-Semitic white supremacy group that was started during the first Trump administration. And this was just within the last few months. He's interviewing this leader, and in the middle of this interview, this leader from The Base name-checks Ché Ahn, this Korean American apostle. And it was not like, "Oh," like anything negative about Ché. He was saying, "Oh, isn't this great about Ché Ahn?"

And four years ago, when I started getting into this stuff, I would have been shocked by that. Today, that totally makes sense. If you watch who these people hang out with, if you watch who's showing up at these rallies, and from their perspective, from Sean Feucht's perspective or Ross Johnson's perspective, they're showing up in the cause of God to stand against these forces of godlessness. And hey, if the Proud Boys show up and want to help protect them or march alongside them, or if some guys with fashy haircuts show up and want to be on their side and maybe provide a little muscle, well, hey, they're enlisting in the cause of God.

And so you've started to see - and Kate and other journalists have been calling my attention to this as well - you've started to see more and more of these open white supremacist gang members participating in these charismatic revival events and getting baptized at them. You have churches that are holding services just to baptize Proud Boys now. And not like, "Oh, they're repenting of being Proud Boys in order to become Christians." No, they're being baptized as Proud Boys, and the pastor often is a Proud Boy.

And so what we're seeing is this melding together of the theology of dominion with the aesthetics and activity styles of the militia movement. And I don't think anyone better captures this than Matt Shea. Matt Shea - we've talked about this before, Brad, on this show, I'm sure. So I'll just give you the very quick refresher. If you want to understand Matt Shea, just go read the Wikipedia page - S-H-E-A, Shea - and you won't sleep well tonight, but you'll understand the man.

Matt Shea comes out of these same kind of charismatic ministry networks. He's also steeped in this militia culture. He was a legislator in the state of Washington until his own Republican caucus kicked him out of the caucus and referred him to the FBI for suspicion of domestic terrorism.

Brad: So he was kicked out because they discovered a manifesto where, among other things, it said if the males in the opposition will not become Christian, then, quote, "kill all males." So anyway, sorry to interrupt, but go ahead.

Matt: Yes, and that memo is also online. You can read it. And Matt Shea was speaking - there's video of him speaking from the stage at this quote-unquote "worship rally" in Seattle. And he was very involved. He's become very closely associated with some of these leaders in Ché Ahn's network. He may have formally joined Ché's network. I haven't seen evidence of that yet, but there's all these indications that he's hanging out with all the leaders from that network.

And this is a man who should have no business being anywhere near a mainstream Christian gathering. This is not your kind of "Oh, he's a very conservative pastor." We're not - this is not a John MacArthur type. This is not somebody that you're kind of like, "Oh, he has kind of distasteful views." He is an open militia member and Christian far-right extremist who his own colleagues were worried he was a domestic terrorist. And now he's up on stage with all these people that we're talking about, being platformed, being given kind of a high profile there.

And I think that he is just kind of the bleeding edge of this broader shift that we're seeing where all these forces on the far right - contradictory, it doesn't make any sense. Why are white supremacists marching with these multi-ethnic Christian supremacists? Why are they all targeting trans folks? Why are they adopting QAnon-adjacent language that doesn't quite make sense from any one of their individual perspectives? But it all fits around this: “Trump is the avatar of our supremacy movement, and we are working through him, because the windows are open right now, and we've got all this opportunity, and we're going to push as hard as we can and ignore and paper over some of our real differences in the midst of it.”

Brad: I want to ask both of you a question that I don't know if you'll have answers to, but it is on my mind. So if I summarize what I've heard today, this event was the perfect storm, as you called it Kate, because it includes the Mama Bear wing of the kind of "don't mess with our kids," "no groomers," book ban, school board takeover - if you think of any of those things, that was there. Jenny Donnelly and her people were at this May Day event in Seattle, cutting kids' hair, giving kids bikes, moms in long, flowing dresses being moms - the whole mom brand. And as we said before recording Kate, go ahead and try to criticize a mom. That's the hardest thing to do in the American public square.

Okay, then you have, as you call them, the happy, clappy young people - the 24-year-old, fresh-faced, baby-faced, still believe in things - you know, you see young people. I feel like an old man right now, but like you see a 22-year-old, and they still believe in things. They are there, they look like Gen Z, they look like college juniors. They're happy. They're clapping. Hands are up, they're smiling. They love Jesus. They love whatever.

Matt, you just outlined that Matt Shea was there, and Matt Shea represents this just unnerving inclusion of violent militia Christian extremism. I've written about Matt Shea in my book. The more you dig into Matt Shea, the worse it gets. There's just no - he's not - we're a long way from Rick Warren. Everyone, you may hate Rick Warren. You think Rick Warren's like - we're - Rick Warren looks like, you know, John Kerry at this point, compared to Matt Shea.

When they move up to this Pacific Northwest, in particular, they're in Seattle. They've been in Portland. There were people at this May Day Rally who were pastors from Wenatchee, Central Washington, and central places where they've had some of the most weird and gross men's retreat, violent war game, militia-like things that I've seen, at least.

Does it get more white and more white nationalist as they move up to that region? Because that is one of the whitest regions in the country. Like when you move out of California and the LA area, the San Diego area, the Inland Empire, the Orange County area, you're going to get way less Asian folks, way less Latino folks, and you're just going to get these populations that are 75% and 80% white. Is that part of the explanation, or is that just too on the nose? Am I just being too naive?

Kate: I think, you know, as I was talking about earlier, and you know, Matt was talking about, they've done a lot of work on polishing up their events to get this perfect aesthetic. And what we saw in the lead-up to the election last year, obviously, with their work in California and trying to flip the state, one of the things that Sean did, the same as CA Will Be Saved, Pursuit, they started having translators and people that could preach in Spanish and different, all of these different languages. And so they've opened up and had a real focus to really embrace as many people as they have.

The one thing that you'll probably see, and we definitely saw in Seattle, is that they have a lineup of speakers that you know, anything from, you know, black male pastors to Spanish-speaking pastors to women pastors. So they really made a conscious effort to make the aesthetics of who they are. And so I think when they go further up north, sure, the people that are attending, majority-wise, yeah, you're going to have more white folks, but they have people on tour with them that fit these marginalized groups, so they'll take them with them.

So even if the crowd is like 90% white, what the visuals are being recorded and everything back to you is going to be this faux-inclusive kind of thing. And you know these pastors, they're speaking the same horrid views and this same Christian nationalism supremacy into it. So again, that's part of them refining their playbook, and they've done a really good job on it.

Matt: I think many of us have this impression that because so much of Trump's rhetoric is racist, white supremacist, and because so much of the support that he gets comes from white supremacists and racists, that therefore all of the people who support him are white. But the reality is way more complicated than that. I mean, just look at the results of this last election. Trump increased his margins in just about every demographic group, and especially among Hispanic or Latino Protestants, who are mostly charismatic and evangelical. He got majority support.

And so I think we need to recognize that MAGA is way more multi-ethnic than a lot of us would get the impression of just from watching or reading national news. I have not been on the ground on a lot of these California or West Coast or Washington State events, so I can't speak to the demographics of those particular crowds. From the videos - and as Kate said, these videos are just straight-up propaganda. So when you watch them, don't assume that this is an accurate rendering of the event. They have these creative camera angles. They want to highlight certain people. They look very multi-ethnic.

I did attend the big gathering that they had in October on the National Mall - this Million Women March, or the Esther March. It was one of the most multi-ethnic Christian spaces I've ever been in. Tens of thousands of people, incredibly multi-ethnic, drawn from all over the country. So they really do have reach into a lot of these Christian communities of color.

But they are also then - and this is the contradictory part - because these folks are united around Trump and around this theology of Christian dominion, a lot of people are willing to kind of check some of their concerns about their particular partners and the people who are there and say, "Hey look, I might not agree with those people on all these things, but at least we're aligned on this and we're going to keep moving forward."

And that is part of the brilliance of the history of the religious right - papering over the real disagreements in order to make a public display of unity in order to advance a political agenda, and they have really mastered it.

Brad: I know we need to sign off here and let y'all go on with your day. I did an episode a couple of weeks ago where I expounded at length upon a quote from the French Jesuit Cardinal Jean Daniélou, who - and this is, I know you're like "Brad, why are you talking about that?" But the reason I'm talking about that, I promise, is he has this great quote. Great is the wrong word, but he has this quote where he says, "Look, Christianity was best during Christendom, when Christianity was a people." And it's because then everyone was baptized and gathered in the net. All the fish were gathered in the net, and it's for angels and God to decide who are the good fish and who are the bad fish in the net. The church's job is to get everybody into the net.

And when I think about what you just said, Matt, I think about a religious right in the 70s and 80s that was like, "Hey, we're gonna get Catholics and Protestants together." For the most part - so don't email me - for the most part, though, the Civil Rights Movement had made it such that open white supremacy and alliance building - if Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich had gone to build, you know, their alliance with the likes of the KKK, it wouldn't have worked. Okay, now don't get me wrong. Was that stuff happening? Yes. I know the history of the John Birch Society. I know the history of Jerry Falwell Segregation Academy. All that.

Here's my point: the alliance building now, the co-belligerence, the co-warfare, has now reached a point where it's like, "Yeah, we've got the Mama Bears, we've got the happy, clappy young people. We've also got open militia members, Proud Boys, neo-Nazis, white nationalists, gang members."

And I think just to close here, I'd just love if both of you briefly could expound upon - the greatest fear for me, and maybe I have it wrong, is that, as you say Kate, these events happen. Pam Bondi swoops in and stomps on any counter-protester and makes an example of them. This is, "Oh, you wanted to put J-Sixers in jail? You're gonna get 10 years for counter-protesting at that Seattle event." Here comes the ADL with their tens of millions of dollars. Here comes TPUSA with their tens of millions of dollars, and if you even set foot as a counter-protester in these places, if they even sniff you as somebody who did anything - threw a cup of Coke at a cop or stepped over a barrier - you're going to be turned into an example of the worst kind of anti-family, anti-Christian, anti-God, anti-country symbol, and we're going to stomp on you with the full force of the Attorney General, the law, white-glove law firms, and so on.

Is that your greatest fear? Or, you know, let's close on that. What do you think happens here, now that we are in a state where Trump has weaponized the government to the extent that he has?

Kate: Well, I think - great question. Look, I think that, like going back to that perfect storm, we are in that moment, and I think, you know, we are in a place where we've got allies, you know, and nuance in government. Not only is Trump on his revenge tour, so is this movement, right? And that's what it's about. It's about revenge. They believe that society has groomed their children and all of this kind of stuff. So it's a revenge tour.

And you know, if you do go back and watch the videos from the weekend, the propaganda that they cut, you know, Matt did a really good job of explaining that in the thread, it's this, you know, that we're the joyful ones. And you know, they're getting [attacked] because they're possessed by the devil. And it's really that language about that good versus evil, and they're really playing into that. And you know, the counter-protesters manifest as that. It's proof. So it only, you know, for the people that were there, that only reinforces that, you know, we're up against it. And, you know, we have to keep pushing. And that's kind of the language that they're using for this rally in Seattle that's tonight - to stand up for it.

I think, yeah, my concern is like Project Esther, you know, we've obviously heard you guys cover that. And for me, seeing that Russell throwing in there that there were some, you know, pro-Palestinian folks in there, I worry that that's going to be like a catch-all, you know. And I think we don't know what they can do, because yes, there's laws in America. We haven't seen law being enforced in this country for a long time. They're making up laws as they go along.

So I just urge folks - be really careful. We're in a really unstable and unsafe time. They have the power. They are not only in power in government, but they have the numbers. They have the media landscape. They have everything on their side right now. And, you know, yeah, it's frustrating. They're saying that they're persecuted, you know, like - Russell was speaking yesterday, and he was saying how they're persecuted, and, you know, all those kinds of things. Russell was in the White House two weeks ago. Like, please give me strength. Like, you know, these are people that have access all the way to the top. So them saying that they're persecuted - they will play that. And they're very good at media. You know, you've seen the change, you know, from Sean Feucht to what they do now, the propaganda that they're able to cut. They are clued in. Jenny is the multi-level marketer, you know, from the history, so she's got marketing background in her.

So I think, yeah, my real concern is that people are going to get swept up in this. And, you know, just seeing what Trump 2.0 has been about, I have a feeling they're going to pounce on this.

Matt: Yeah, I'll just echo a lot of what Kate said there. I think the national environment is very, very concerning, where you have the federal government looking for excuses to go after people, looking for ways to categorize and castigate their enemies. And this thing with populist authoritarian movements and governments is they preach a message of unity. And if you listen to an interview with JD Vance, he's talking about, "How do we maintain national cohesion and national unity?" And they practice polarization.

And part of the way that they go about that polarizing practice is they want the far left to be their foil. They want the most extreme version of Antifa or trans activists, kind of however they can categorize it, so that it looks crazy to the average viewer or your aunt or uncle on social media. That's what they want. They don't want moderates showing up. They don't want people peacefully protesting. They want the foil. They want to be able to contrast something and say, "We're going after these people. These are the internal enemies inside of our country, and we're taking them down."

And all the propaganda that all these this crew is generating is doing that work. It's syncing up with this kind of federal government - the Anti-Christian Bias Task Force, these initiatives out of the Trump administration - in order to create that perfect category of enemies who can then be the targets and the scapegoats for the authoritarian government.

So I would just echo Kate. If you're thinking about protesting this thing, be very, very careful. Be very, very aware, because it really is - it's a briar patch. It's a trap to get you to come in so that they can then use you as their foil. So I'm not saying don't protest. Follow your conscience on that, but be very, very aware that this is a propaganda ploy.

And I'll just end with this. Our country looks fairly placid right now, but if you watch what is happening underneath the surface in the far left and in the far right, the far left is very, very angry for very good reasons, at the way that Trump and his people are operating and the way that they are creating this kind of authoritarian state. And the far right wants a fight. They want to defend Trump. They want to pick a fight, and Trump loves to keep provoking and pushing and pushing and pushing the wedge in between those groups.

And I'm really worried that we could have a repeat of some of what we saw in the summer of 2020, where you have these staged protests, these staged battles between the far left and the far right, especially in places like Portland and Seattle, where you have this kind of very active, far-left kind of protester culture and community. And that's why they target these cities, because they want that reaction, they want to have that fight, and then it becomes symbolic capital for them to advance their own political agenda and to get the federal government to crack down on their enemies.

And so we just really, really need to be paying close attention to these folks, calling attention to it accurately and highlighting the ways that this is all part of the strategy and the goal. This is not accidental. This is what they want to happen.

Kate: 100%. This is in their playbook. This is why they do all these things - to get this end result, to get the propaganda, to get the response, and it's terrifying, and they've mastered it. And, like Matt said, they target these regions because they know where these big bodies of protesters are.

Just finally on May Day - like, obviously, May is coming to an end. Their last protest of this weekend, they're going to be in Hollywood. Be it that this was just like sort of a three-month, like building on this May Day, I know that they're going to flip this into their next tour, which this was sort of like the test in the waters, see where they can, you know, get that. And that's going to now flip into this. I have a feeling they're going to stick in Seattle. There's going to be a whole lot of West Coast action all throughout the summer, no doubt.

Brad: You know, Project 2025 has basically a vision for two enemies of the United States. One of them is China. One of them are progressives, who are the domestic enemy, as Matt, you know, you just outlined really well. They need that foil. Without that foil, this falls apart, and it begs a kind of strategic reflection point from those who - those of us who are many and who are varied, who see this as a dire threat to our public square.

We're gonna have to leave it there for now. Want to thank both of you. Kate, where can people find you and your work?

Kate: You can find me on Bluesky at Kate R Q Burns, and I do have a Twitter account, but I put all of my new content on Bluesky. And you can also find my work at Left Coast Watch, and I have a background of all of these folks over a few different articles. And yeah, reach out if you have any questions.

Brad: How about you, Matt?

Matt: There are a lot of Matthew Taylors in the world, so I use my middle initial D, just to help people find me. So if you just Google Matthew D. Taylor, I'm on Twitter, Bluesky, Substack - all the above, and I welcome people's interaction.

Brad: If you haven't read The Violent Take It By Force - Matt's book - you should. If you haven't listened to Charismatic Revival Fury, it is one of the, if not the best things we've ever done here. And it's 89% Matt's fault that it's that good. So maybe 91%. I don't know. So you should really listen to that. If you want to know anything about the New Apostolic Reformation.

We'll be back later this week with "It's in the Code" and the weekly roundup. But for now, I'll just say thanks for being here. If you have not thought about supporting us, it'd be a great day to do that. We are an indie network and indie show, and you subscribers make this happen. It costs less than a latte - that latte you bought on the way to work today - and it means we can keep our flag up and do this work and this research. Thanks for being here. We'll catch you next time.