AMA: Ich bin Reporterin bei Mother Jones und berichte über das Mainstreaming von Rechtsextremismus. Fragen Sie mich etwas.

How do we stop them?

Hi! Thanks for doing this AMA. My question is the following:

What do you think the source of these beliefs are? Are they legitimate ideals, or some type of continued edgy rebellion against a dying-but-still-breathing liberal superculture? It’s hard to believe that anyone would actually want to restore public flogging and abolishing the 19th amendment would require support of women who I imagine wouldn’t actually want to lose their voting power.

In other words, what have you found to be the real meat and potatoes about what’s going on when you look under the hood of these far-right movements?

What was the vibe like interviewing wilson over brunch? feels like that’d be a surreal mix of polite small talk and deeply unsettling beliefs

I’m a Catholic survivor and I know — I lived it — that then MO AGs and now U.S. Senators Josh Hawley & Eric Schmitt, as MO AGs, protected the Catholic Church and not the people of Missouri.

Both the NBC and CBS affiliates got Schmitt on tape throwing me out of his presser — for just standing there, wanting to hear it to my face — but spiked the story.

Why would people be afraid of reporting this story?

Any sense why the far right is so indifferent towards abuse?

My pet theory is that they believe that only Big Religion — Catholic Church, SBC — can save America, so Big Religion must be protected.

Which echoes why I/we were abused; because „the (Catholic) Church does so much GOOD!“ as my principal confessed to me when explaining why she kept her mouth shut about my/our abuse by Father LeRoy Valentine at Immacolata in St. Louis.

P.S. My story does implicate Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who is an apologist for the right.

P.P.S. I’m a (more, classical) conservative. So I think child sexual abuse is bad, not something to be excused.

Do the religious factions actually believe Trump is actually a religious person?

Where do you think the far right movement goes for representation after Trump is gone?

Hey Keira, good timing. I just posted a comment about how inorganic so much of the mainstreaming of the far-right is. We saw Rod Dreher leave Hungary post election, the Daily Wire did layoffs, turns out that Tucker Carlson has only ~7,000 subscribers.

Have you dug into the sources of funding for these obvious vanity projects of wealthy fascists?

Doug Wilson’s debate against Christopher Hitchens from about fifteen years ago was incredible entertainment. Hitchens constantly dog walked him into contradictions and hypocrisy. And Doug was seemingly blind to this as he was smugly confident in spewing his nationalist BS about how the US is actually a theocratic country, based on some cherry picked quotes and sign-offs.

Question to OP – there’s a lot of pressure to sane-wash what this regime is doing and normalize corruption and cruelty. Do you ever feel the weight of that as reporting honestly often gets deemed as „political hit pieces“.

What is your current end goal?

Have you met people that fell into the right wing extremist camp then got disillusioned with it?

You mentioned Pete Hegseth is associated with Christian nationalist right wing extremism. In the past we’ve seen white nationalist groups using US military explicitly to train their members. Given Hegseth’s association, and his recent use of prayers and Christian phrasing addressing troops, is there evidence that Christian nationalists, similar to white nationalists, are now using the US military to train members?

As a Canadian, it is deeply concerning that an ally continues to verbalize intentions of annexing my country. This is a standard play from the fascism play book.

What is the appetite in America for a war against Canada, it’s civilians, and the potential decades of instability to the region it would cause?

What is up with so many news outlets not calling out extremist or illegal actions for what they are? The soft language used seems to normalize the actions.

How do we compromise with a political faction that is foaming at the mouth to kill their opponents in the streets?

Is there no path forward other than the inevitable civil war?

Working for Mother Jones, what is your take on your fellow reporters / journalists working for „liberal“ media outlets sane-washing this administration?

Hi Kiera, thank you for taking the time to do this.

A very common thing I have noticed online is seeing bad faith social media accounts pretend to be sensible moderates, politically homeless, or apolitical while steadily dropping false statistics, misleading info, selective and edited clips, and distorted historical claims into regular comment sections and public threads. They use the appearance of neutrality to make extreme positions look like standard common sense.

In your reporting on these extremists, have you investigated how these groups coordinate that kind of stealth presence online? Are they encouraged by leadership to engage in bad faith campaigns like this?

Why is the geography of white supremacists so rarely discussed? You traveled to which state to interview the Christian nationalist? White supremacists from which state attacked Portland protesters in 2016 in incidents that led Fox News to dub the protesters as antifa? When Amon Bundy & cronies held a federal wildlife refuge in a standoff with the federal government, he had to travel from his home in which state to do it?