How a Christian School Kid in Indiana Saw the Fall of Democracies Coming
This week, we’re joined by the brilliant Chrissy Stroop, a scholar, writer, and all-around truth-teller. Chrissy is a leading voice in exposing the Christian nationalist movement, the exvangelical uprising, and the growing marriage between the American and Russian far-right. She also happens to be a trans woman with a PhD in Russian history and a wild journey that took her from a fundamentalist Christian school in Indiana to teaching in Moscow.
Chrissy and Andrea go way back to the early days of calling out Trump’s ties to Russia when doing so earned us hit pieces, smears, and even being called CIA agents or Russian spies, depending on who was yelling. In this episode, we dig into everything: Russia’s anti-gay propaganda laws (and why Trump proudly ignored the global boycott to host Miss Universe there in 2013), the dismantling of American public education, and why Christian nationalism is not just a domestic threat; it’s a global movement.
Chrissy breaks down how the Christian Right has long operated its own post-truth disinformation ecosystem and how the fear of hell was used as an emotional bludgeon to control kids like her, until her queer awakening in Russia at age 33. She’s living proof that you can deconstruct the indoctrination, with a little help of Ranger Rick, and build a life outside of it. From pledges to the Bible and the American flag to Putin’s regime and America’s culture wars, Chrissy’s story is a powerful testament to resilience, resistance, and reclaiming truth.
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Andrea Chalupa (00:02:32):
Our opening song was Sue Testimonial by the Los Angeles band Regime Noir, the lead singer Israel Ramirez, a Gaslit Nation listener, and an old friend from college submitted this statement:
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Testimonial was written in honor of my mom and her story of crossing the border with her five children while pregnant with me. It is a song sung in Spanish and it starts as a between her and I in the womb. It talks about what I imagine where feelings of fear and anxiety of leaving her home in Mexico and taking such a dangerous journey. I believe this experience left an imprint on my developing self. Even though it was written many years ago, it is still applicable and relevant to today's anti-immigrant climate. One line in the song states to love is to know that my children won't suffer my thirst. I believe this in some way drives the immigrant's desire to leave the native land they cherish and love. It by no means is an easy decision. Such desperate yearning is sometimes forgotten. While we debate the topic of immigration, the media tends to falsely label the immigrant as a hostile invader rather than focus on the individual human story. We all came from somewhere and we all deserve a chance at happiness.
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That was one of the most profound statements that anyone has ever shared or said on the show. Everyone can hear the full song of testimonial at the end of the episode by Regime Noir. Thank you so much, Israel. We're thinking of you, your family, and all the brave people standing up to Trump and Steven Miller's crimes against humanity, kidnapping people without due process and targeting protestors and journalists with violence.
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To hear more of Regime Noir's powerful music, we'll link to their songs in this week's show notes. And if you have music that captures the mood of this country, our hopes, our rage, our resilience, submit your songs using the link in the show notes.
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We always love hearing from you. We need our artists now more than ever. You are the defiant light that helps heal us all. We'll dive deeper into Trump's militarized crackdowns in this week's bonus show out Thursday for our Patreon supporters. Sign up at patreon.com/gaslit. Discounted annual memberships are available, and you can also give the gift of membership along with other fund perks. Join us this Monday at 4:00 PM Eastern for the Gaslit Nation Salon, where we'll be joined by Gabe Garbo Witt and Kira Havens of Citizens impeachment. We'll discuss how to hold this lawless, lawless, convicted felon accountable, and why a third impeachment of felon 47 matters. Look for the zoom link on Patreon. I want to warn everyone, this is the calm before the storm. Trump and Steven Miller are just getting started. Their concentration camp bill is now moving through Congress, allocating a staggering $160 billion to expand state terror and intensify their anti-immigrant crackdown.
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That includes $8 billion for ICE personnel, $15 billion for deportations, and $45 billion for building new detention facilities, otherwise known as concentration camps. For context, ICE's current budget is around $8 billion. Trump's big dangerous bill would increase ICE's power 20 fold. It's an unprecedented escalation of state terror under a lawless convicted felon. Trump's big, ugly Bill Trump's concentration Camp Bill is how MAGA plans to stay in power. If you think things are bad now they're preparing to take it to a whole new level. Our time is running out to stop the worst from happening. Show up this Saturday, June 14, felon 47th birthday for the No Kings March protest. Go to nokings.org to find a march near you or start one if there's not a march near you. We all need to show up because marching matters. Spread courage to reject their fear. Call Republican offices protest outside Republican offices.
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We cannot let them drag this country past the point of no return. And if you're looking for more ways to take action, stay tuned through the end of this episode where we'll share the newly updated gasoline nation action guide tailored for the fight we face right now. To introduce this week's guest, we're going to start with a disturbing Fox News interview Trump gave shortly before Putin's invasion of Ukraine all the way back in 2014. We played this on a very early episode of Gaslit Nation. As you'll hear, Trump spreads Kremlin propaganda and outlines his vision for America, a vision that tragically is now becoming reality. Trump laid it all out there and still people refuse to believe him. So believe him now Trump's big ugly bill Trump's concentration camp bill. Trump has sinister plans for all of us, and our time is running out to stop him.
Clayton (00:08:39):
Say they're Democrats, fine, you don't have to work. We're going to have a system that supports you to not even work anymore. Democrats, Republicans have to have an uphill slog on this too, right?
Donald Trump (00:08:48):
Well, Clayton, it is tough for the Republicans I think because a lot of people are in this category. You're talking about a big category, and if anybody comes out against it or if anybody goes against the new Democratic line of stuff, it's going to be hard in certain areas. Now, you know what solves it? When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell. And everything is a disaster, then you'll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great.
(00:09:16):
I think we should give the Russians a little bit of leeway here. They spent all of this money, and I think we should not be knocking them at this point. Then we wonder why they don't like us and why they're eating our lunch in every country that we are dealing with against them. I really think we should say, Hey, look, they're really out there doing a job. I mean, every time I turn on television, we're showing about a guy knocking down a door because his door locked didn't work with showing all of these things. And I will tell you something, if I'm Putin, I'm not happy about it, and I know for a fact he's not happy about it. When I went to Russia with a Miss Universe pageant, he contacted me and was so nice, and I mean the Russian people were so fantastic to us. I just say this, they are doing, they're outsmarting us at many turns as we all understand. I mean, their leaders are, whether you call 'em smarter or more cunning or whatever, but they're outsmarting us. If you look at Syria and other places, they're outsmarting us. I really think we should not be knocking that country with all of the money and all of the guts they put into it.
Andrea Chalupa (00:10:20):
On the show. With us this week is the great Chrissy Stroop, an analyst on global affairs as well as the American Ex-vangelical Movement, as well as Christian Nationalism and Russia. She's an advocate for religious deconstruction, LGBTQ+ rights and social justice. During a particularly difficult time in my life, Chrissy went out of her way to defend me from hit pieces in the early years when I dared to point out that Trump was very much aligned with Russia and for the love of Goddess. Could someone do something about it? So thank you so much for that Chrissy Stroop and welcome to Gaslit Nation.
Chrissy Stroop (00:11:03):
Well, you're very welcome, Andre, and thanks so much for having me on Gaslit Nation and yeah, that's a weird number of things to claim to have expertise in, but as I'm sure we'll get into, I came by it all, quite honestly, through just a very strange life trajectory.
Andrea Chalupa (00:11:16):
Being from Indiana first and foremost.
Chrissy Stroop (00:11:19):
Yeah, yeah.
Andrea Chalupa (00:11:20):
First of all, how are you doing in this hellscape?
Chrissy Stroop (00:11:24):
Yeah, it's not great. There's my people coming out.
Andrea Chalupa (00:11:29):
You were right. We're vindicated unfortunately all those years ago, and I were part of the CIA funded cabal Illuminati. I'm just kidding. No, those are the accusations people made against us.
Chrissy Stroop (00:11:40):
Either that or Russian spies.
Andrea Chalupa (00:11:41):
Yeah, we're Russian spies depending on who you asked, but we were very early on social media having backgrounds and researching Soviet history and just obviously seeing the signs of Russia trying to hijack our democracy from within. So we were screaming about this and amplifying each other and other experts and really paying the price for that very early on, and now here we are. So how have you been coping?
Chrissy Stroop (00:12:09):
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely unpleasant and uncomfortable to see a lot of things that you were predicting or saying could happen if we didn't get our shit together.
Andrea Chalupa (00:12:18):
No one got their shit together. The institutions were like, money, money, money. Let's do this.
Chrissy Stroop (00:12:24):
I mean, yeah, we're facing pretty severe institutional failure now. I remember back in the first Trump term, all the institutionalists being like, oh, our checks and balances are going to hold. I'm like, I don't know. I think they're shaken pretty hard and now they're just being decimated
Andrea Chalupa (00:12:39):
That American exceptionalism will swoop in and save us.
Chrissy Stroop (00:12:44):
In summer of 2019, I moved to Portland, Oregon, just kind of in time to try to get to know the town a little bit before the pandemic hit. So that wasn't great. But I've been out here, so I feel a lot safer here than Indiana or Florida where I was before. I mean, I've kind of been all over the place, but I have a PhD in modern Russian history from Stanford. I got that in 2012. I taught actually at the of all places, the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow for three years, 2012 to 2015. And I ended up there because there were no tenure track jobs in my field in the United States or very, very few, and I couldn't get one.
Andrea Chalupa (00:13:27):
And that's also how we got here. Because all of the Russian experts, Ukraine experts were being iced out and there weren't financial opportunities for them to be ensconced in government at leading think tanks.
Chrissy Stroop (00:13:40):
Good point. After the end of the Cold War, I mean, I think in retrospect, we could possibly revise whether the Cold War ended in 1991, but there was a lot of defunding of Russian studies and Russian language education that happened. A lot of universities dropped the major because students weren't majoring in it. And meanwhile, you got all these major macroeconomic changes, which are also caused, universities are turning into corporations, they're losing their state funding, they're operating more like businesses. They're paying executives or well administrators, but basically executives ridiculous amounts of money. And the administration bloats, the faculty lose power and everything's about.
Andrea Chalupa (00:14:21):
It's a massive grip now because what happens...
Chrissy Stroop (00:14:23):
It's good to make money.
Andrea Chalupa (00:14:24):
And what happens to these universities is that they attract these slimy sleezeball executives who just want to go in with their fancy pedigree having worked at these Goldman Sachs or whatever, and they want to just cash in, don't care about their legacy, and then cash out.
Chrissy Stroop (00:14:41):
I mean, I wouldn't call university education a massive grift at this point, but it is definitely not worth what most people would pay for an undergraduate education. And it's definitely getting, I mean, it's getting worse in many ways depending on where you are, because the extent to which a state is doing trumpish things or complying with them, or you look at Florida and Texas, they were in some ways laboratories for what Republicans are trying to do to the entire country. Now. I mean, in Florida, I would call this American gly sheltering. They are making sure all the universities, all the institutions are absolutely in line with the state ideology. That's what obviously the Nazis did when they came to power, and they called it ggl Shing. That's why I'm using this German word. It means to make everything sort of the same on the same page.
Andrea Chalupa (00:15:27):
That's exactly the language that the wrestling executive McMahon. Right. The Secretary of Education, she said, we're just trying to make sure everyone's on the same page.
Chrissy Stroop (00:15:36):
Oh, yeah. I didn't quite make that connection off the top of my head, but yeah, McMahon is such a funny choice for Secretary of Education. Trump's base is still very much primarily the Christian Right and especially white evangelical Protestant Christians. And sure a lot of those people get into pro wrestling. Some are too holy for pro wrestling, but some are not. But Betsy DeVos was kind of more of a typical pick, I think that you'd see for this. But McMahon is going to do exactly, or trying to do exactly what they want too, which is basically to dismantle public education so that they can control it. You want to funnel kids into Christian education through either homeschooling, which is a vehicle and a not hashtag, not all homeschooling. Okay, don't scream at me. Don't at me. But homeschooling is a widely used vehicle for radicalization of families and children into the Christian of indoctrination of children.
(00:16:30):
And sometimes parents start with perfectly good intentions, but who's offering them curricula? Who's offering them resources, who's offering them to become a part of a co-op, these radical right wing Christians, and so they kind of get sucked in. So it's a vehicle for that. And then there's Christian schools as well, which through the Supreme Court and Republican policies over the last couple decades, we're seeing more and more abilities for those schools to get state funding. And that's still being fought out at the Supreme Court. And if they dismantle public education, they're going to try to direct as many people into those types of education as possible. And I grew up, I'm a Christian educated kid. I went to Christian schools radical evangelical schools, but that's kind of a whole other story.
Andrea Chalupa (00:17:16):
In Indiana, which I've driven through. And it seems straight out of a Mike Judge film like giant Jesus crosses on the side of the highway,
Chrissy Stroop (00:17:26):
American Jesus baby Indiana. And then for a brief stint in Colorado Springs, which when it was kind of being turned into the crazy evangelical center that it is today.
Andrea Chalupa (00:17:38):
Right? It's sort of like a preparing for the rapture compound of a...
Chrissy Stroop (00:17:43):
Pretty much, I was there from 1993 to 1995 in middle school in the same kind of Christian school there.
Andrea Chalupa (00:17:51):
So what was that like? Because the experience you had is now being revved up across this country with the force of the federal government behind it.
Chrissy Stroop (00:18:02):
Oh yeah. Since I got back here from Moscow, and I was in Florida then teaching at the University of South Florida, which I was able to do for three years on a postdoc and then a visiting instructor thing, but then it didn't last. I kept thinking the whole country seems to be turning into a Christian school. That is the thought that it had many times when Trump was elected for the first time with evangelical backing, massive evangelical backing, and then with the kind of policies that he pursued. And I think because a lot of political scientists and also foreign policy analysts, international relations people, they downplay the importance of religion to national politics and also geopolitics. I don't think they always see how influential this stuff is. I think we're starting to really discuss it now, and we have been for maybe a decade with the term Christian nationalism.
(00:18:54):
But yeah, I mean, growing up in those schools, you say at least through the elementary years, you say three pledges a day, not just one. You pledge to the American flag, the Christian flag and the Bible, and it's very anti plural list. So you get the idea immediately that we are trying to bring this country back around to its Christian roots or whatever. It's a very Christian nationalist project in a typical evangelical school, one of the halls in my elementary school was emblazoned with this Bible verse, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. And because we were constantly being told that liberals are evil, they're killing babies. We have to stop abortion. And when you get a little older, also, we have to stop these gay people who want special rights. You know what that means? That means that sometimes it's spelled out for you, your foundation. If a country disobeys God, it will be punished. If it does god's, will it flourish. So we were trying to change the political system to be in line with God's will, which means you got to overturn Roe v. Wade, you got to ban abortion everywhere. Keep the queers at bay. That is how you have a country that will be blessed.
Andrea Chalupa (00:20:02):
And if you don't do that, you are basically setting your country up for eternal damnation.
Chrissy Stroop (00:20:11):
Yeah. And if you look at sometimes when disasters happen, certain Christian right leaders say some awful things and then maybe they try to walk them back a little bit. But if you remember after nine 11, Jerry Falwell Sr. Blamed that on basically homosexuality and abortion and stuff like that. And he got some pushback. He kind of tried to walk it back a little, but not too much. Pat Robertson very similar. They're both dead now, but their ideas are not dead. And I mean, pat Robertson's TV network, the Christian Broadcasting Network still reaches millions of people. It was reaching millions of people before Fox News became a thing. And now Fox News reaches many, many more,
Andrea Chalupa (00:20:54):
And then Sinclair and One American Network and Epic Times and on and on the list goes, it just keeps multiplying.
Chrissy Stroop (00:21:03):
But yeah, the Evangelical Christians were doing the whole authoritarian post-truth media ecosystem first in their own sort of little niche area, their parallel world. And I grew up in that parallel world.
Andrea Chalupa (00:21:18):
And now you're a trans woman in Portland, Oregon. So how did you get out?
Chrissy Stroop (00:21:24):
Yeah, it's a long story. I, so I didn't even realize I was queer for a very long time. I've always been very cerebral. I've lived in my head, I've had problems with embodiment, and spatial reasoning is not my strong suit. I have a terrible sense of direction. And I think it's partly because I was driven to live in my head as a kid, and I was a very verbal kid because I always just felt different and off a little bit, which made me kind of more of an observer than a participant sometimes even in my own life. But I couldn't put my finger on what that was. And in school, I would get teased for not being masculine enough or whatever, but I always was attracted to girls. And so I thought, well, I guess I'm just a weird straight guy. But also I identified with girls, women looked to strong women leaders for inspiration identified with female protagonists in literature.
(00:22:15):
But I didn't know what any of that meant. I think maybe when I was 14 or 15, I had my first understanding of what a trans person would be. But I had this idea of the transvestite in my head who is super, super femme and only attracted to men. So that was not me. And I had so many other kinds of existential crises going on because the older I got to, the more doubts I had about this faith and then the politics that were an integral part of it. And so I actually didn't have my own queer awakening until I was 33 and living in Moscow.
Andrea Chalupa (00:22:51):
The age of Jesus. Sorry, go ahead.
Chrissy Stroop (00:22:53):
Well, no, no, there you go, right? Resurrection time. Sometimes you just need a little distance. And maybe I think underneath it, my kind of almost endless crisis of faith that was so protracted and painful for many years, typical eldest child, conscientious, cautious. I didn't know what would happen if I really openly broke with my family, and I was afraid of that. But also I was just afraid to hurt them. At a certain point, I felt like an impossible person who shouldn't exist, and I felt like I didn't know if I was kind of hiding certain things to protect my family or to protect myself. And that went on for years and years. I mean, certainly when I was in grad school, I was feeling that way because I knew I couldn't really believe the things anymore. But I tried to keep going to church, and I actually got confirmed Episcopalian in 2012.
(00:23:46):
So I'm an atheist now, but I guess I'm still Episcopalian on paper. I don't really excommunicate people, and I'm not going to bother them about that. It's just doesn't matter that much to me. But when I got to Moscow to start my teaching job, and the reason I went there was that, so the Stanford and Moscow Study abroad program used to be held at, that's the acronym that we use in English in Russia, and the acronym is S for which I like to say, because, well, let's just say this, gives people some good understanding of why Soviets and then Russians love acronyms. So anyway, I am like, I'm going to go to the Anglican Church, which I'd been to it a couple of times. There's one Anglican church in Moscow, and it's kind of like in that neighborhood where there's a bunch of embassies and consulates, and for that reason, there's no metro station nearby.
(00:24:45):
You have to take a 20 minute walk to get there. And every Sunday I'm like, I'm so tired. I'm going to go to church next Sunday. And I keep doing that for several weeks. And then I think roundabout October at this point of 2012, I'm like, you know what? I don't really want to go to church anymore, and I'm fine with that. Fast forward a little bit, and I start hanging out with more queer people and then start realizing I'm queer myself. And when I have that awakening like, oh God, I've always actually wanted to be a woman. I don't even really been that much, hashtag not all, but I've never really wanted to be a man that's like these concepts of masculinity that we have and made sense for Meina that were never a good fit. I mean, they make no sense to me. People are always trying to put me in boxes that don't work for me. Certainly in dating, for example, that happened so many times and at that moment still, I didn't believe in hell at that point. I hadn't believed in hell for like 15, 16, 17 years.
Andrea Chalupa (00:25:42):
Well, we're living it, Chrissy.
Chrissy Stroop (00:25:43):
Well, yeah, something
Andrea Chalupa (00:25:44):
Like, so believe your eyes with your ears, but go on.
Chrissy Stroop (00:25:47):
But the thing is hell is like eternal conscious torment on another plane. I had stopped believing in it, but I was still afraid of it. Sometimes the fear was less, but it would come back, this visceral fear because that fear was just drilled into me as a kid, as a teeny tiny kid, I mean from the cradle. But as soon as I realized I was queer, that fear of hell just disappeared. So obviously these things were all interconnected, and when you are a trans person and you don't see it yourself, I mean, a lot of trans people don't have the typical, oh, I just always knew from my earliest childhood that I wanted to not be the gender that I was assigned at birth. When you don't have that typical story, you sometimes have this period that people refer to as egging, right? You're like an egg, and then you're going to hatch as the baby trans. So that's my weird egging story.
Andrea Chalupa (00:26:33):
That all happened in Russia.
Chrissy Stroop (00:26:36):
Yeah, I had some interesting friends in Moscow, and I also knew a lot of people who turned out to disappoint me, but I have a long history of going to Russia. It's weird because I've spent far and away the longest periods of my life have been spent and the United States, of course, by a long shot. But Russia and the United States are the two countries where I've spent significant chunks of my adult life, and they have both profoundly disappointed me. And I started studying those intersections between nationalists, Putin, Russians, and right-wing Americans, then also the European, and I started publishing stuff on that. The first piece I published was a much narrower piece, just about one event, this kind of fake sociologist anti L-G-B-T-Q, sociologist Paul Cameron going to Moscow and addressing the Kremlin in 2013, obviously this is when Putin was taking that far right wing populist turn and passing the anti-gay propaganda law and all that stuff. I was there for that. And so using this American scientist to give them an infour of legitimacy, that was still happening back then. That kind of stuff. And then it led me to this whole bigger puzzle that I started unpacking
Andrea Chalupa (00:27:56):
The marriage between the American far right and rising Russian totalitarianism joining forces together to undermine democracies worldwide. And you're right, it was Putin's laws in 2013 that were a pivotal moment in this global, the fascist global war against democracy. And guess what happened when Madonna and so many superstars around the world started boycotting Russia in response to Putin's anti-gay laws? Guess who ignored that global boycott? And through one of his pageants in Moscow, and that was of course Trump in 2013, Trump was like, I'll be your friend, Russia, I've got your back. I know you have mine because all my businesses depend on you and all Russian opinion
Chrissy Stroop (00:28:46):
Him after all his failed casinos by that point.
Andrea Chalupa (00:28:49):
Exactly. So Trump standing by Russia's side in 2013 with his what Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. And that's also where Christopher Steele, who used to run the Russia desk for British intelligence, where he believes that the Russians collected dirt on him. He was having some golden shower party in the Moscow Hotel. It is the work in theory of all of us internet weirdos. But yeah, so Christopher Steele basically in a steel report was like, yeah, something happened when Trump was over there for his universe and
Chrissy Stroop (00:29:24):
Actually have a hard time imagining Trump enjoying golden showers, though. He's such a germophobe.
Andrea Chalupa (00:29:29):
Yeah, there's something is probably underage.
Chrissy Stroop (00:29:33):
Oh, that's probably it. I mean, we all know Trump was buddy buddy with Epstein and you know.
Andrea Chalupa (00:29:38):
Yeah, really close, really spending a lot of time together. And so 2013, that was that big turning point. And Russia's invasion of Ukraine happened a year later. And then Russia brings Trump to power illegally in 2016. So really 2013 was the year that the war kicks off globally,
Chrissy Stroop (00:29:58):
And I was there. I stayed there until the end of the 2014, 2015 academic year when I got a job at the University of South Florida in Tampa. It was a very weird time.
Andrea Chalupa (00:30:13):
You witnessed Russia basically stabbing itself in the face repeatedly, right, with the anti-gay laws and then the violence that they were fueling behind the scenes with Jankovich, right? There's Russian special forces there, and Yankovich is fiery sniper filled war against protesters. And then Russia in reaction to that ceases Crimea and then invades Juba in the east, and then the sanctions start hitting
Chrissy Stroop (00:30:38):
The sanctions. The counter sanctions, which I wasn't the first to frame it this way, but basically Russia sanctioning itself and lots of people in Moscow, lots of Mosca Icees were like, man, our stores are running out of the good French cheese. Russian cheese sucks. I went to Spain for a while when that was happening and came back and I brought some manchego and some good Spanish Jesus, and people were so happy.
Andrea Chalupa (00:31:06):
You could have made a lot of money,
Chrissy Stroop (00:31:08):
But that wasn't about that. I mean, I guess I could.
Andrea Chalupa (00:31:11):
And that's why you're in academia. Just kidding, right?
Chrissy Stroop (00:31:14):
No, for real, though. I definitely could have used it because all of these horrible things that Russia was doing and that happened, they severely ord devalued my rubal denominated salary. That was bad. I was trying to pay off debt in dollars that I had.
Andrea Chalupa (00:31:30):
What was the attitude of everyday Russians around you towards what was going on? Were they just like, we're going to get the hell out?
Chrissy Stroop (00:31:37):
There are a lot of people in Moscow who were opposed, but again, I knew a lot of people who I was surprised that they were just happily going along with it. I mean, including some really shitty American expats who were just going to follow the Russian nationalist lion and the kind of people who would work for RT or something. Or maybe they weren't even smart enough to work for rt, but there were some shitty people. So I don't know. I think your average Russian, and I haven't looked back at public polling data, which is also always iffy from Russia. A lot of people were very in the cream NA camp, just
Andrea Chalupa (00:32:13):
The Crimea's ours.
Chrissy Stroop (00:32:15):
Just going along with it. And I knew some people who, of course, who weren't. A lot of people in the university now, a lot of the scholars in the university, the professors, some of them wanted to get out. I was using this framework because social science framework that I won't go deeply into of post secularism, but basically the idea that there's this resurgent religion in the world challenging the secularization thesis, the kind of classic that with modernity, people get more secular, less religious, religion loses social significance, is how sociologists put that. Well, obviously religion currently has a lot of social significance. So what project actually did was trace these networks around Russia, Moscow, the Russian Orthodox Church to global conservatism. It was mapping that and publishing a lot of research related to that, who is a sociologist was a part of that. Some other really interesting Russians were a part of that and got to spend some time in central or western Europe as a result. I've lost track of a lot of my colleagues from back then, but yeah, I mean, they are not your average Russian on the street. And of course, I mean in these low trust authoritarian societies, you're going to have most people at least officially go along with the regime. You go along to get along. You don't want to be the tallest blade of grass that gets cut down first.
Andrea Chalupa (00:33:37):
Right? Exactly. Like the Nazis. And Secretary of Education, McMahon have said everyone needs to be on the same page.
Chrissy Stroop (00:33:47):
And that's certainly Putin's view of the world as well. And in Russia for many years now, people can have been able to get arrested for liking the wrong thing on social media or for saying on social media that Crimea is Ukraine.
Andrea Chalupa (00:34:00):
Or sending $50 to Razom for Ukraine, which landed one Russian woman in prison and she was recently released or on her way to being released in a prisoner swap with Russia.
Chrissy Stroop (00:34:12):
We're going to see this now in the United States when people are being, and right now they're targeting immigrants, but it won't be only immigrants or children of immigrants forever. You say the wrong thing in a university op-ed, you say, not that like, Hey, Hamas is great and Israel is terrible. You say Israel is doing a bad thing, and Palestinians should have civil rights, and you're a Turkish student on a student visa and they arrest you.
Andrea Chalupa (00:34:39):
And they're definitely trying to Christian nationalize the universities.
Chrissy Stroop (00:34:44):
And K through 12 schools. And again, that has also been a state by state patchwork thing for quite some time now. But what I failed to say earlier when talking about education is to the extent that they cannot funnel everyone into explicitly Christian education, they're going to try to christianize the public education that's left, which will also be as bad as they can make it because they don't think it should exist.
Andrea Chalupa (00:35:04):
Well, the Supreme Court surprisingly struck down a really key case for that, so that's good news.
Chrissy Stroop (00:35:11):
Yeah, I was surprised.
Andrea Chalupa (00:35:12):
Well, that was Amy Coney Barrett actually, who was the swing boat on that, and the far right has their Brooks Brothers khaki pants and their tiki torches out for her.
Chrissy Stroop (00:35:21):
Yeah, no, it's really funny. She has surprised me a couple times now, and as much as she really does seem to be dedicated to trying to interpret the law and the constitution as best she can, and I didn't think she would be like that, which means that even most of her decisions are going to still go right wing. There are some places she just can't go because it's so obviously unconstitutional, and she actually turns out to be a conscientious legal interpreter. I didn't see that coming.
Andrea Chalupa (00:35:52):
And that's what they get for shoving her through. But yeah, I mean that's their worst nightmare. The reason why they've had to hijack our democracy, stripping us of their voting rights ushering in Citizens United and getting the VRA is because too many of their own have been unreliable when it counted Mike Pence.
Chrissy Stroop (00:36:15):
Yeah, I mean, look, he's not a hero. Okay. Course you do. Not any circumstances. Got to hand it to Mike Pence from my home state of Indiana for single-handedly caused an AIDS outbreak there by ending needle exchange programs. Yeah. He did at least would not go along with overturning the 2020 election results. I do credit him for that. That's a low bar, but he met It should be a low bar.
Andrea Chalupa (00:36:42):
Thank you for not violently overthrowing our democracy or an award. That's where we are, America. I want to ask you, all those years growing up in Christian Nationalist school in Indiana and in Colorado Springs, what gave you hope? What was your lifeline to connect yourself to yourself?
Chrissy Stroop (00:37:06):
Yeah, that's a very interesting question mean, so when I was really young and elementary and maybe getting into middle school and you just believe everything your parents say, I wasn't plagued with doubt at that time, and we had a pretty comfortable middle class life after the earliest years of my childhood. But as I said, I did just feel kind of out of sync a lot of the time. So what I did was I read, I just read a lot, and...
Andrea Chalupa (00:37:33):
But they're banning books.
Chrissy Stroop (00:37:35):
Oh, yeah. No, that's bad.
Andrea Chalupa (00:37:37):
But what kind of books were you reading that were waking you up to yourself?
Chrissy Stroop (00:37:40):
There's a really funny thing. My mom is a Christian school teacher. Well, she's a teacher's aide now about to retire. My dad is a music pastor. They've both actually moved really far for where they came from. So we still have a pretty good relationship. They are now kind of isolated from the social community that I grew up in because they got their COVID vaccines and boosters, and they didn't vote for Trump. They actually voted for Harris, which is like, it's wild to me because in 2016, I couldn't convince my mom to vote for Hillary Clinton. She didn't vote for Trump either, but she's like, but she's not a Christian. And I'm like, yes, she is. She's a practicing Methodist. And mom was just like, I just don't believe it.
Andrea Chalupa (00:38:20):
She's a mouthy woman with devil horns coming out of her.
Chrissy Stroop (00:38:25):
She said, it takes a village when everyone knows God wants the parents to have 100% of all their rights over for their children to do whatever they want.
Andrea Chalupa (00:38:35):
So my friend who works on the front lines of the climate crisis was saying how difficult it is for her to talk to her Christian nationalist mother, because her mother was like, do you really believe in the climate crisis? Jesus is going to take care of it all.
Chrissy Stroop (00:38:51):
Yeah, I heard some of that growing up when we were just first talking about global warming or the ozone home, that sort of thing. I would often get that dismissive response from adults. And this is actually something that I came to have some concern about, even from the age of 8, 9, 10, somewhere in there, because my grandma on my mom's side who was actually very moderate and always a peacemaker, and when I got older and I was arguing with my relatives, she would try to shut that down. But then once she pulled me aside and told me she didn't support blanket abortion bans, and she voted for Obama, and I was like, wow. So she got me a subscription to Ranger Rick Magazine and renewed it for many years as a Christian.
Andrea Chalupa (00:39:32):
And it radicalized you, Ranger Rick did.
Chrissy Stroop (00:39:35):
Well sort of, I mean, it planted seeds, right? Ranger Rick is published by, I think the National Wildlife Organization, something like that, and it is got a lot of information that's pro environment and that stuff I ate up and I was willing to define myself as an environmentalist and then start getting on people in my family when they didn't turn out the lights when they left the room or being like, why don't we recycle mom and dad? Why don't we recycle?
Andrea Chalupa (00:40:00):
So environmental stewardship is sort of like a reasonable entry point to help draw people towards the light.
Chrissy Stroop (00:40:09):
And you can easily, I mean, there's a lot of things you can easily argue from the Bible, including many authoritarian and bad things. But yeah, you can argue from the Bible that stewardship, right? God wants us to be good stewards of this world, even if let's say it is going to end soon, we're still supposed to take care of it. So you could try to make that argument without officially rocking the boat of the Christian ideology, even though most of the Christians around you, and it made you weird. But there was also, of course, a lot of information about evolution in there, but I would always just tell myself at the time like, oh, but we don't believe that millions of years apart. But wow, what an interesting story about dinosaurs.
Andrea Chalupa (00:40:48):
Yeah. How do evangelicals make sense of dinosaurs?
Chrissy Stroop (00:40:51):
Oh God, so many ways that, I mean, they're completely absurd, but there's some very funny theories and approaches to that. So I think kind of the most common one when I was growing up in our milieu was that dinosaurs, they were basically just overgrown reptiles. Because you see back before Noah's flood when there was a firmament over the earth that protected people from UV rays and whatever, and people lived to be 900 years old. But you know how they describe those people in the book of Genesis, reptiles just grow to their environment. If they're going to live for 900 years, obviously they'll be huge. Oh my God.
(00:41:35):
But some people believe that there was a first creation that for some reason God destroyed before ours, and the dinosaur bones are left over from that time, but they weren't actually part of this creation at all. That's called the gap theory. Some people think that Satan just put the dinosaur bones in the earth to trick. People think it's all out there. There is this totally debunked, but for a while there was buzz about they had in the, I think Xi River in Texas found human footprints and dinosaur footprints in the same rock layer proving that they lived together. So that was a thing that went around. Yeah,
Andrea Chalupa (00:42:13):
So internet hoaxes, how many..
Chrissy Stroop (00:42:15):
Before the Internet.
Andrea Chalupa (00:42:16):
Oh, really? So how many people would you say across the country are being indoctrinated into this?
Chrissy Stroop (00:42:23):
That is really hard to say, and I tried to estimate it a few years back using data that was gathered by the then HuffPo religion reporter, Rebecca Klein, who did this really thorough study on Christian schools receiving voucher funding. And I think at any given time, it's got to be in the hundreds of thousands just based on the number of schools, probably low hundreds of thousands would be a conservative estimate, but I think she found about 2,500 schools like Evangelical Christian schools that use certain curricula because that was what they searched for, who's using these particular, the most popular young Earth, creationist, strike wing, evangelical Christian nationalist curriculum, and those would be Bob Jones ace, which stands for Accelerated Christian Education and Abeka, which comes out of Pensacola, Florida, of course, Florida. But anyway, this is going to be a low number, right? You look at schools who are using some of those curricula or those books, textbooks, you look at schools, the overlap of the schools that are using those curricula and the schools that receive voucher funding, and obviously there's going to be schools that are also indoctrinating children this way that fall outside of that.
(00:43:37):
So it's impossible to say for sure. We just don't have the numbers. And that's also because even with a semi-functional department of education at the federal level, American education is so decentralized and such a messy patchwork, and it is Evangelicals and other right-wing conservatives, authoritarians people who they resist any kind of government imposition of any kind of standard curricula because they don't want their kids learning evolution. They don't want their kids learning normal, comprehensive sex ed. They want to control everything, all the information that their kids are exposed to.
Andrea Chalupa (00:44:16):
And they don't want their children learning basic human rights.
Chrissy Stroop (00:44:19):
Of course not, because human rights is a secular concept, although our modern concept of human rights was actually developed largely by Jacque Mari 10, a French philosopher, Neo Thomas, although that kind of has its own potential pitfalls there, because there are Catholics, including authoritarian Catholic integrist, who argue that human rights isn't supposed to extend to people who want to use it for things that do not contribute to human flourishing. The Catholic line is we support human dignity. Read the fine print. Human dignity means that you are not gay, you are not trans. That obviously, if you're those things, you're doing your human dignity wrong and we don't support you.
Andrea Chalupa (00:45:06):
Welcome to the Gaslit Nation Action Guide, updated for 2025. That's Project 2025. All the resources mentioned can be found at gaslitnationpod.com. Just look for our action guide at the top of the main menu. Donald Trump is not the cause of America's fascism crisis. He's a symptom. Trump reflects a deeper disease of corruption, institutional failure, and widespread indifference. We can no longer afford to look away. We're in a moment that calls not just for outrage, but for action. Democracy isn't a guarantee. Democracy is a lifestyle. It's how we live. It's how we show up and how we care for each other. Below is a living list of ways to take care of yourself, protect the vulnerable, and help defend what's left to build a new democracy for all guides for the road ahead, read for courage and clarity.
(00:46:12):
Stride Toward Freedom by Martin Luther King Jr is more than a memoir. It's a blueprint for organizing under fascism. MLK was called radical in his time for simply demanding dignity and human rights. Remember, it's not radical to want clean air, fair wages, and freedom from fear and poverty.
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Mantras and mindsets. When you're afraid, repeat, love that one simple, powerful word, love. Use it like armor intense public spaces or difficult conversations. Just repeat that word. Love in your head like a mantra to help you stay grounded in any tense situations. Have faith in your higher power, in your inner light in each other. You are not alone. Ideas like democracy cannot be killed. Stay human. Anger is natural, but unity is essential. Save the venting for trusted spaces. Focus on protecting and connecting. Protect yourself and others. Know your rights. The ACLU has a comprehensive guide. Check in on vulnerable people. A text message can be a lifeline. Know how to act if ICE is in your area. Learn from Teen Vogue's Guide and start a neighborhood watch.
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Trans rights are human rights. The Human Rights Campaign has a guide on how to support trans people. Read it.
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Abortion is healthcare support. Planned Parenthood Practice bystander intervention. Learn the five Ds from right to B. Know how to deescalate, and if you need to record safely. Beware of surveillance. Phones, apps, smart devices. They're listening for sensitive communication. Go analog. Check out the Gaslit Nation Security Committee presentation on surveillance self-defense.
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Build community power. Join a mutual aid network. Local solidarity saves lives and serves as an early warning system. Check out global giving guide on mutual aid support unions. Start one or join one. Organizing your workplace is the frontline of our democracy. Listen to Gaslit nation's interview with union organizer, Jasmine Lely on how to start a union vote in local elections.
(00:48:48):
State governments are our most direct path to resistance and reform. Get involved with organizations like Run for Something States Project and Sister District Launch, or support ballot initiatives for democracy like Katie Fahe did in Michigan where she took on gerrymandering and won small actions. Make big impacts, organize for the long haul. Smash the oligarchy not each other. Work with groups like The Working Families Party to create people powered alternatives. Fight the climate crisis. George Washington University provides a guide on realistic ways you can combat climate change today. Practice food and product safety, reduce meat, grow what you can and stay informed with sites like food safety News. Use important apps like Yuca and Cleary. Good Housekeeping has a comprehensive guide on strong water filters for your home. Create art. Art tells the truth. Culture moves people before policy does be prepared. Pack a go bag. Make sure it has IDs, meds, water masks, protein bars, chargers.
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Get your documents in order, passports, legal papers, and clean records. Have a lawyer you trust on speed dial. Keep a journal. Record what's happening. Believe your eyes and ears. Buy physical books. Preserve history and ideas. Don't rely on tech platforms alone. Have a safety plan. Know where you can go across town, state lines or abroad. If you need to care for your mind. Protect your mental hygiene block. Grifters and defeatists. Build a circle of resilience. Know your history, read widely. Learn how we got here and how others fought back before us. Listen to the Gaslit Nation special. How we got here. It took 40 years for the far right to hijack our democracy. We must plant seeds of change today together. Raise the next generation with Hope. Shield young kids from the chaos. As best you can, empower older ones to believe in the power of their voice.
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No one is coming to save us. Change isn't about one politician. It's about systems, values, and who we choose to be. In the face of rising fascism, there's no single solution, but there's strength in numbers, in organizing and in love. Whether you live in a Republican hostage, red state or blue state, these resources are for you. Don't take your rights for granted. Practice democracy every day, including staying informed. And if you're not American and you live abroad, the Trump virus can happen anywhere. No democracy is exceptional. Be vigilant and protect your community. That's how we win. A better world is possible. Bookmark the Gasoline Nation action guide@gasnationpod.com. Thank you for staying with us in the fight.
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Our discussion continues, and you can get access to that by signing up at the Truth Teller level or higher on Patreon. Discounted annual memberships are available, and you can also give the gift of membership All summer long. Gaslit Nation created with Love and Anger has been presenting a special series featuring leading experts on how to smash the patriarchy and the oligarchy to make the world safer for everyone. Trump didn't happen overnight. Let's plant Seeds of Hope together for the hottest of hot takes. Join the conversation at the Gaslit Nation salons. Every Monday at 4:00 PM Eastern. I'll be there with our global community of listeners. Come for deep dives into the news. Learn from fellow listeners and share what's happening in your corner of the world. Can't make it live. Recordings of our Monday salons are available on Patreon, along with our monthly Catholic Nation Book Club.
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Access The Salons bonus shows a free episodes and more at patreon.com/gaslit. That's patreon.com/gaslit. Thank you to everyone who supports the show. To help Ukraine with urgently needed humanitarian aid, join me in donating to Razom for ukraine@rosoforukraine.org. To support refugees in conflict zones. Donate to Doctors Without borders@doctorswithoutborders.org and to protect critically endangered orangutans already under pressure from the palm oil industry. Donate to The Orangutan project@theorangutanproject.org. Gaslit Nation is by Andrea Chalupa. Our editing wizard is Nicholas Torres, and our Associate Producer is Carlin Daigle. If you like what we do, leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us reach more listeners and don't forget to check out our Patreon. It keeps us going. Original music and Gaslit Nation is composed by David Whitehead, Martin Berg, Nick Farr, Damian Arga, and Carlin Dagel. Our logo design was generously donated to us by Hamish Spite of the New York based Firm order.
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