Mike Johnson is not a “culture warrior” — he’s an enemy of democracy

Republicans in the House of Representatives removed Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., from his position as speaker because he was viewed as too weak by Donald Trump’s MAGA loyalists. McCarthy’s successor, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., who was unanimously elected by his Republican colleagues – which includes the so-called “moderates” who blocked three other candidates before, is a Trump loyalist. He supported the criminal traitor ex-president’s coup attempt on Jan. 6 and the ongoing attempts to end American democracy by the MAGA movement. So while Trump may not have been elected speaker as some Republicans in the lower chamber had hoped for, he is still effectively their leader.

Ultimately, and much to the consternation of the mainstream news media and respectable political class — which are in a state of willful denial of this reality and its implications for the country — Trump and Trumpism are a symbol and a movement that are much greater than any one person. Trumpism and American neofascism will survive long past whatever may happen to the Dear Leader. Trump is a type of prototype for the future of American fascism.

And as speaker of the House, Mike Johnson will do Trump’s bidding. In his new role, Johnson is not just a “culture warrior,” he is a leader. Literally two heartbeats away from the presidency, Johnson is a general in Trump’s and the neofascist movement’s war to end America’s multiracial pluralistic democracy.

The best way to understand Speaker Mike Johnson and what his rise to power represents is to ask some basic questions.

What does Johnson believe?

How has he behaved?

What would life be like in America if Johnson and others of his ilk were to get their way?

Here are some answers.

Johnson rejects the Constitution’s separation of church and state. He is a “Christian Nationalist” who wants America to be a white Christofascist plutocracy and not a pluralistic democracy. In an excellent interview at Politico, historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of  “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation“, explains how Johnson rejects real democracy in America:

I’ve noticed also in listening to his speeches that he is explicit about describing this country as a republic and not as a democracy. Inside these conservative Christian nationalist spaces, that is par for the course: that this is a republic, and it is a republic, again, founded in this biblical worldview, and that it’s not a democratic free-for-all. And so again, this is Christian supremacy.

If you align with this value system, then yes, you have the authority to shape our laws. If you do not, you have no business shaping our laws. He once said: “We don’t live in a democracy, because democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what’s for dinner.” Meaning, the country is not just majority rule; it’s a constitutional republic. And the founders set that up because they followed the biblical admonition on what a civil society is supposed to look like.

I think that’s really important here: His commitment is not to democracy. He’s not committed to majority rule; he seems to be saying he’s committed to minority rule, if that’s what it takes to ensure that we stay on the Christian foundation that the founders have set up….

For Christian nationalists, this is God’s country, and all authority comes through God. And the only legitimate use of that authority is to further God’s plan for this country. So what that means is any of their political enemies are illegitimate in a sense, and those enemies’ power is illegitimate, and they need to be stripped of that power. And it’s really been kind of shocking for me to have observed these spaces in the last handful of years, where conservative evangelicals are much more comfortable in just making that plain and no longer feeling a need to pay lip service to democracy or voting rights or those sorts of things.

Johnson believes that gays and lesbians are sick monstrous deviants whose humanity and behavior should be criminalized. He is so homophobic that he has convinced himself that “gay sex” somehow destroyed the Roman Empire. 

Johnson wants abortion to be banned everywhere in America because women should not have the freedom to make decisions about their own bodies and lives. This conclusion is a function of his belief that women are de facto chattel and the property of their husbands and other men.

Johnson is a biblical literalist who rejects science. He also believes the fiction-lie that America was founded on “biblical principles” as a “Christian Nation”; these beliefs are central to his approach to government, policy, and society.  

Johnson has used stochastic terrorism and eliminationist language against Democrats, liberals, and others who do not share his Christofascist ideology, a group he believes are collectively responsible for the ills of American society.

Of course, this is all dangerous bovine scatology.

Johnson also believes there should be a religious test for public office in America, which the United States Constitution expressly forbids. Johnson does not believe in the right to privacy, free speech, and other constitutionally guaranteed civil rights and freedoms.

At Mother Jones, David Corn further explains Johnson’s worldview:

The Johnsons are diehard fundamentalists who believe every religion other than their brand of Christianity is false and that whatever is written in the Bible should dictate all conduct, rules, policies, and laws. As I reported earlier, Mike Johnson in 2016 exclaimed, “We’re living in a completely amoral society.” The only way out, according to him and Kelly, is to abide by the Bible.

This is a lot to absorb. We’re often uncomfortable discussing a politician’s faith. But in this case, Johnson acknowledges that his fundamentalism determines his politics and policy positions. As he said during a Fox interview, “I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘It’s curious, people are curious: What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.’”…

This remark came after Kelly and Mike had repeatedly asserted that the Christian fundamentalist worldview—based entirely on what appears in the Old and New Testaments—is the only legitimate worldview.

Johnson was telling the folks in the pews that the only political candidates deserving support are those who share this worldview and who embrace the notion that the United States has been a Christian nation. This smacks of Christian nationalism and appears to be a religious test for politics.

In her newsletter, historian Heather Cox Richardson connects Johnson’s rise to power to the global right, white supremacy, Christofascism, and the American right’s many decades-long project to end social democracy in this country:

Like other adherents of Christian nationalism, Johnson appears to reject the central premise of democracy: that we have a right to be treated equally before the law. And while his wife, Kelly, noted last year on a podcast that only about 4% of Americans “still adhere to a Biblical worldview,” they appear to reject the idea we have the right to a say in our government. In 2021, Johnson was a key player in the congressional attempt to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election. 

In his rejection of democracy, Johnson echoes authoritarian leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, both of whom have the loyal support of America’s far right. Such leaders claim that the multiculturalism at the heart of democracy ruins nations. The welcoming of various races and ethnicities through immigration or affirmative action undermines national purity, they say, while the equality of LGBTQ+ individuals and women undermines morality. Johnson has direct ties to these regimes: his 2018 campaign accepted money from a group of Russian nationals, and he has said he does not support additional funding for Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression. 

The rejection of democracy in favor of Christian authoritarianism at the highest levels of our government is an astonishing outcome of the attempt to prevent another Great Depression by creating a government that worked for ordinary Americans rather than a few wealthy men. 

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The American news media and the country’s other political elites need to discard the “culture war” narrative as it applies to both Mike Johnson, specifically, and American politics, more generally, in this moment of democracy crisis and ascendant neofascism. “Culture war” and its related language is imprecise, distracting, diminutive, and in total obfuscates and minimizes the real dangers embodied by the right-wing’s revolutionary plans to end multiracial pluralistic democracy in America.

Instead, the mainstream news media and other political elites need to emphasize in plain and direct terms what will happen to everyday people in America if the Christofascists like Mike Johnson are able to achieve their goals.

In that new American dystopia, the lives of the average American will be shorter, more miserable, less free, even less economically prosperous and more precarious, sicker, and where basic decisions about their private lives and those of their families will be made by a small number of rich white men (and women) who believe that their personal God gave them special superpowers and magical insights that they can use to rule over other people. And if you are a woman, a black or brown person, gay or lesbian or transgender, an atheist, a Jew, a Muslim, or some other faith that is not state-approved, or a member of some other marginalized community life will be even worse as you will basically be made into a second- or third-class citizen – or lower – as your basic civic and human rights are systematically taken away from you.

Ultimately, the world that Johnson and the other Christofascists would like to impose on the American people will be hell for most it will actually be a paradise and heaven for them.