Antifascist Dad Podcast 20: Fascist Pipeline, Evangelical Pipeline w/ Brad Onishi
Welcoming friend and colleague and fellow dad Brad Onishi (Straight White American Jesus, Preparing for War), to explore the parallels between evangelical conversion and fascist recruitment. Brad was a convert to evangelicalism at 14 and shares how teenage anxiety, alienation, and the search for belonging made him vulnerable to a worldview that offered refuge, certainty, and an enemy to fight.
Bottom line: both fundamentalist religion and far-right movements promise clarity in chaotic times—binary thinking, moral urgency, and cosmic stakes.
At the top: I trace the historical roots of the Satanic Panic and connect it to the current flood of conspiratorial reactions to the Epstein files. If we're parenting or mentoring, we have to recognize spiritual warfare narratives when they resurface on social media. They only confuse things.
Part 2 now up on Patreon.
Brad Onishi is a social commentator, scholar, and co-host of the Straight White American Jesus (SWAJ) podcast. He founded Axis Mundi Media in 2023 in order to provide a platform for research-based podcasts focused on safeguarding democracy from the threats of extremism and authoritarianism. His writing has appeared at the New York Times, Politico, Rolling Stone, NBC News, HuffPost, and many other outlets. Onishi is a frequent guest on national radio, podcast, and television outlets, including “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross and MSNBC. His podcast, SWAJ, ranks in the top 50 of Politics shows on Apple’s podcast charts – ahead of programs from NPR, the NYT, and other national outlets. His book, Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism – And What Comes Next is available now.
CORRECTION: In the intro, I said that Paul 23 presided over Vatican 2. It was actually John 23.
Notes:
Satanic Panic archive on Conspirituality.
The Devil You Know — Sarah Marshall
All theme music by the amazing www.kalliemarie.com.
Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times (North Atlantic Books, April 2026).
Preorder: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/807656/antifascist-dad-by-matthew-remski/
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Bluesky: @matthewremski.bsky.social (Bluesky Social)