Know Your Enemy
patreon
The Prayers and Prophecies of Pat Robertson
🕑 Added 2023-06-17 16:50:24 +0000 UTCLast week, televangelist, businessman, conspiracy theorist, and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson died at the age of 93. Though mostly known today for his deranged comments about homosexuality, abortion, feminism, and other "sins" causing everything from natural disasters to 9-11, Robertson had a major influence on the evolution of the Republican Party and the religious right. Where did Robertson come from, and what was distinctive about Robertson's theological and political views? What were the innovations of the Christian Coalition, the group he founded in 1987, in organizing conservative believers for the GOP? How did he respond to the end of the Cold War and adapt his message for the 1990s and the supposed advent of a "New World Order"?
In this episode, Matt and Sam take up these questions and more, plus offer a discussion of James G. Watt, Ronald Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior, who died in late May. An evangelical Christian known for railing against the Beach Boys, his offensive comments about Native Americans and others, and using the supposed imminent return of Christ to justify destroying the environment.
Sources:
Pat Robertson obituaries: NYT, Washington Post
James G. Watt obituaries: NYT, Washington Post
Daniel Schlozman, When Movements Anchor Parties: Electoral Alignments in American History (2016)
Jacob Heilbrunn, "His Anti-Semitic Sources," New York Review of Books, April 20, 1995
Pat Robertson, The New World Order (1991)
James Conaway, "James Watt, In the Right with the Lord," Washington Post, April 27, 1983
John Taylor "Pat Robertson’s God, Inc." Esquire, Nov 1994.
Comments
J 0
Not really related but I’d love to hear you guys cover Rorty’s Achieving Our Country. Ganz wrote a few good substacks about it - made an interesting connection to Sorel and myth. I was discussing AOC a month before Ganz wrote that and my friend brought up Sorel. I absolutely adore Rorty but find that book questionable for a number of reasons..but still compelling. Rorty isn’t an enemy but certainly took anti-communism seriously and had some intelligent criticisms of Marxism & feminist standpoint theory. The latter is really important for me because I think of all the appeals to lived experience that have become leftwing orthodoxy. AND because lived experience is a favorite tool of conservatives and a constant in generational conflict - “Wait until you pay taxes”, see Condoleezza Rice on race. Oh yeah - hell - y’all need a Condi Rice episode. Rice, Angela Davis, and Nina Simone all heard the 3rd street church bombing in Birmingham and were subject to campaigns of racial terror as children. Yet - how could Rice’s view of race in modern America differ more from either of them!?
Know Your Enemy
You're right about that, Ben—I meant to bring up the way Christian speculation about the End Times can be shot through with anti-semitism, especially the versions that require Israel to be "gathered" again in preparation for a final showdown. It's an important point, and I just didn't get to it in real time. (Matt)
Benjamin Pletcher
The Magnificast did a good episode focusing on Robertson’s relationship with Guatemalan dictator Rios Mont: https://overcast.fm/+Ind3WefLQ
Marshall McCutchen
The Bugle is such a great podcast.
Kyle
The Bugle Podcast called tributes like this a “fuckeulogy.”
Kent Andrade
Guys! Great ep. The talk about the charismatics vs the mainliners was particularly enlightening. Can we get a Paul Harvey episode? He had incredible reach, did terrible damage. Now I have to Google Pat and Scotland.
Ryeman
A true Ghoul of the Right. Great episode!
Ben Rhiger
For a fun rabbit hole look up the history of speculation about the biblical “Gog and Magog” and their role in the apocalypse. At some time in the Middle Ages the story of the “unclean nations” of Gog and Magog, which were sealed behind a wall by Alexander the Great, gets conflated with the story of the lost ten tribes of Israel. During the apocalypse the Antichrist will tear down the wall and lead the ten tribes/gog&magog in battle against Christendom.
Ben Rhiger
I didn’t know about Pat Robertsons NWO book, but it absolutely makes sense that the End Times speculation and conspiracy theory go so well together: Antisemitic conspiracy theory and apocalypse watching have gone together in Christendom since at least the Middle Ages (for instance when the bubonic plague was blamed on Jews poisoning wells.)
Mark K
As a Virginian I wonder why this state is so prone to religious blowhards, being both Robertson‘s and Falwell‘s base of operations (not to mention Pat Buchanan). Virginia Beach was home to famous new age clairvoyant Edgar Cayce as well, that must be where the gullible fools hang out. Regent and Liberty U both continue their growth to the dismay of educators everywhere. You hate to see it. Wake up, Virginia!
Quin Adams
I feel like in the wake of Pat Robertson's death, nobody is talking about his putting Voltes V and Honey Honey on American television, the one unambiguously good thing he ever did in his long, cursed life.
Cailleach
Speaking as a fairly recent convert to Christianity, this sort of thing enrages me way more than it used to. I used to be upset about the political implications of these people, which I still am, but fucking hell the horrendous theology, the butchering of the message of Christ. It feels personally insulting, almost. It does not surprise me that Pat was not a church-goer in the slightest.
David in Brooklyn
Hello. I appreciate your podcasts very much and am glad to be a supporter. May I bring up a technical issue? You post your episodes on Patreon as mp3 files, a type of compressed audio file. When creating such files, you have a choice about the "bit rate" that you will use, which is ultimately related to audio fidelity. The bit rate that you seem to choose is very high--320 kbps--a rate suitable for the near-ultimate in audiophile listening. The high bit rate that you're using causes your mp3 files to be enormous, slow to download, and difficult to access when one is traveling and wifi connections may not be reliable. Could you consider using less bandwidth, please? Generally, most podcasts that are primarily made of speech use much lower bit rates, such as 96 or 80 even 64 kbps. I don't think anyone would notice any loss of sound quality at all if you would set your bit rate to 96 kbps, for example, and your files would then be less than 1/3 the size they are now. Many thanks!
J P 3
Exceptional episode!
Adam Lewis
This week I stumbled upon a passage in a letter from some guy in some prison, which came to mind while listening: "The foundations are being pulled out from under all that 'Christianity' has previously been for us, and the only people among whom we might end up in terms of 'religion' are 'the last of the knights' or a few intellectually dishonest people. Are these supposed to be the chosen few? Are we supposed to fall all over precisely this dubious lot of people in our zeal or disappointment or woe and try to peddle our wares to them?"
