525. JD Vance vs. the Pope and the Far-Right Funding Machine (Question Time)

on their own theology. Is this just naked power politics? Or does it reflect a genuine belief among the MAGA movement that they represent true Christianity better than the Pope does? And before I hand over to you, there are two examples of this. Strongly from JD Vance, who of course is very, very proud of being a born again Catholic.

He managed to get in an argument with the last Pope about what he called the order of love, in which he tried to argue that Christianity was essentially about looking after your own family and people first and other people later. And now he's managed to get an argument with the current Pope about Augustinian just war theory, where he claims the Iran war is a just war. Over the

And that is not because I believe in papal infallibility, I don't, but I know that to get where he is, he has had to devote his whole life to theology and to impressing a lot of people in the Catholic Church that he knows his stuff. J. D. Vance got to where he is because Donald Trump put him there. And as you say, he's become a Catholic. He's apparently writing a book about this wonderful conversion.

And he genuinely thinks he can argue with the Pope on theology. So does My Johnson, the speaker, so does Pete Hexeth. And this is what happens, I think, with cults. You now had Sean Hannerty, the the kind of well known MAGA broadcaster, saying, I no longer consider myself a Catholic because of this row going on between Trump and the Pope. In other words, if I have to choose the Pope or Trump

I'm gonna go with Trump. And what's incredible about all of these people is that they seem to have real trouble with the Pope. being an expert on scripture, but no trouble with Trump posting pictures of himself as Jesus, or frankly being a deeply unchristian human being. And the other thing, don't forget, Roy, this all started, this particular

chapter in this row started when Hexer's deputy in the Pentagon, Eldridge Colby, met the Vatican's US envoy, a guy called Cardinal Christophe Pierre, And warned that the US military had the power to do everything in the world and the Catholic Church better decide what side it's on.

So it's just a form of the MAGA madness that we've seen. But there is a method to the madness. Now you know I've been I've I think twice now, I did it again with um Dominic Sambrook when he stood in for you when you were away in the Galapagos. And these fourteen tenets, if you like, of fascism that are posted up in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, number eight.

Religion and government are intertwined. Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions. And maybe that's where you can pick up on the the just war, because that's what has taken this to the next stage of this round.

And the whole idea of Hannity saying he's stopping being a Catholic because he can't sit with the Pope on this, or Vance saying the Pope should stay out of these theological matters and there's something he doesn't understand called just war theory. is completely bizarre because it goes against the whole doctrine of the Catholic Church. The second thing though that has been really striking is you you began by

making the move, which I think many people feel, which is an appeal to the naked authority of the Pope, you know, the guys like Pep Guardiola in relation to football. What isn't happening so much is a real engagement with the substance. There's a lot of Vance said, Pope said, Pope's more important. Actually the reality is that Vance and the administration are wrong. I mean they're theologically illiterate. Yeah. They are consistently portraying a worldview which is

Well, in a lot of their actions almost seems to be completely unbound by any kind of ethical principles. There's no sense of empathy There's no sense of caring for the vulnerable. I mean, if Christ's message is about anything, I mean, I guess the The repeated theme of the gospels again and again is that this is someone who is perpetually reaching out to the most marginalized people in society. Maybe that's a two PC way of putting it, but I mean he's

deliberately reaching out to lepers, to prostitutes, to rejected tax collectors, to Samaritans who are, you know, a real sort of minority group that are hated by the majority. And that's what the Pope has been doing in saying he's not gonna go to the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, instead he's going to greet refugees on the Greek islands. Yeah.

He was bathing feet uh during Easter week, including the feet of Muslims. He's done a big publicized tour to the Muslim world. And this is really the Pope reminding us that Christianity properly understood, it's about forgiveness, it's about sinners, and it's about grace. And actually what the Pope is communicating and a lot of people in the Anglican Church here in Britain is much more thoughtful compassion and respect for Islam than we're getting out of this so called Christian right.

who are increasingly creating this Judeo Christian stuff. Over to you.

You have to be very, very careful with the language. And I think the MAGA people, the Hexas, the Vanses, the Trumps, they are being careful with their language. in that they're being very, very deliberate about this and I do think it relates to basically saying there is only one power in this country and it is Donald Trump and it is those who follow Donald Trump.

I don't I I don't think the Jesus thing was a mistake. I think it was, you know, when he posted the picture of himself as Jesus. He b it's all part of the same kind of crazy stuff. And on the Just War, where you said that they're just wrong, I looked it up and found this

explanation in one of the old books of the Catholic Church, and it says a constant tenet of the thousand-year tradition of just war theory is a nation can only legitimately take up the sword in self defense once all peace efforts have failed. That is, to be a just war, it must be a defense against another who actively wages war. And that's why Pope Leo said He, God, does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war. Now, I can see why that would rile up Trump.

It's'cause that essentially is almost is almost saying that Iran, in the current set of circumstances, has a greater justification to defend itself because it has come under attack. So that I think goes to the heart of it. But Yeah, you're where you're absolutely right. Of course this is this is interesting territory for you because I mean when was it you got into a real row with JD Vance none other than J D Vance when you was that over that was over Ordo Amoris, wasn't it?

In fact, Christ's message in the Parable of the Good Samaritan is exactly the reverse. It's exactly about not putting your own first, but reaching out to the people who are excluded. On on your Augustine point, there's this big distinction which people talk about, which Augustine makes between the yus ad bellum, which is your th the justice of going to war

And the yus in bello, which is how you conduct yourself in the war. So one of them is about are you making the correct moral arguments for going to war in the first place? And the second thing is are you doing your very best to protect civilians, etc.? follow the rules of war. And these things go right back to the early Middle Ages. And one of the things that we will get attacked by, obviously, is people will then jump up and down and say, How about the Iraq war?

Of course it's true that in the Iraq War and in many other things that people have done over the last hundreds of years. we have done things which may have been hypocritical, may have been uh poorly justified, may in many cases have been wrong. But there's all the difference in the world between A situation where governments tried to make arguments for going to war, in good faith or bad faith, tried to go to the United Nations.

tried to explain what threat they thought they were facing and the new world of Trump where you don't even have the pretense, you don't even have the hypocrisy. And people would say, well, okay, maybe getting rid of hypocrisy is a good thing. It isn't. The the hypocrisy, if that's what you want to call it, in other words, all our attempts in the past to try to make legal arguments for these wars, is what allowed other people to challenge these wars on their own terms.

If you move into a world in which you make no moral arguments at all, and that's what's so weird about what Vance is saying, I mean of course they're not making Augustinian just war theory arguments. We don't even know why they went to war. One of the things we discussed in the main podcasts of course

How do you get a peace deal when you can't even define why you've gone to war in the first place, right? That's right at the heart of the whole thing. And whether you're talking about Sudan or whether you're talking about Iran or whether you're talking about what's happening inside the United States.

The fundamental thing that's going on with Trump is the complete lack of any kind of legal or moral principle which makes it impossible actually to resolve things or indeed argue against them because they're not making arguments.

His brother is MAGA all the way. The Pope's brother. So I'm all about the gospel. His brother is MAGA all the way. And then the next thing is that they cancelled an eleven million pound fund, which okay, and the overall budget of the administration is tiny. But it was for a charity that deal the Catholic church charity that deals with children of immigrants, helps children of immigrants. So and then you have Hexerth.

saying, I don't know if you saw his well latest rant at the media says the press are the Pharisees. Again, making you think that Trump is Jesus, right? The Pharisees are the people who tried to always to undermine Jesus and you the press, you're always trying to undermine Trump. And I think this is a kind of form of madness. And of course it they have wrapped themselves in this. I don't know what the what they really believe.

I don't and I I don't want to question their beliefs. Beliefs are a very, very personal thing and you know, Texas talks constantly about going to church every day. The reason he he read out that fake Bible verse was he claims that he'd heard something the sermons

But then he also said that this was the prayer that he says was used by the search and rescue team. that saved the downed airman in Iran a few weeks ago. The same and this was the same thing when he said, This is the guy who was downed on Friday and rose on Sunday. So to go m back to my point about the the Holocaust Museum point eight.

This is a deliberate thing of constantly wrapping up what they're doing in religious rhetoric. And if you are somebody like Pope Leo, who clearly, clearly can't stand what these people are doing to America and to the world. Then you can see why he would get very, very offended.

somehow are supposed to believe all the most extreme verses of the Quran. I mean, if this were true, the world would be Mahem. Of course it's not true. Of course it's not true, is it? billions of Muslims um believe the most extreme verse of the Quran. And yet what you're seeing with Heggsith is he's quoting some of the most extreme lines from the Old Testament. And you can see the same with some of the religious zionists in Israel.

quoting very, very extreme lines. So it suits them, you know, John Cleese just did this on Twitter, saying, Oh, all Muslims are a bunch of genocidal maniacs because here is a line from the Quran about killing non believers.

struggling with ancient texts in different ways, interpreting them in very sophisticated ways that the Pope intuitively understands. That's why he's comfortable sitting with Muslim clerics, or indeed uh sitting with Jewish scholars and why we have to get away from this kind of social media fundamentalism.

which was called June two thousand and four. And he said, I think you'd find it very, very interesting. The trouble is it's out of print. If you've struggled to find one, I'll send you mine. It's out of print, couldn't find anywhere. He sent it to me. And honestly, somebody needs to bring it back into print. So it was published in nineteen ninety-eight. It's called June 2004. I've now finished it. I won't give away the whole story, but essentially the story is this.

On the back of an economic crash, a very right wing, charismatic celebrity politician takes over and suborns and transforms the Republican Party. He becomes president. He oversees the most chilling centralization of power. He reforms communications law so that his backers have control of TV networks. He politicizes the Department of Justice.

to go after his critics and his enemies. He gives the police more power. He uses the military to enforce domestic political decisions. And then eventually accelerates to the kind of crimes and cover up. that become exposed and you think i these are now so bad he can't survive and he does.

It's it's really, really chilly. So it's June two thousand four, so it was just twenty years ahead of its time. But Stephen, thank you for sending that to me. I don't know if Lawrence W. Brett is still alive. I think he is. Um, but he should update it for the modern age. It's absolutely brilliant.

which was very important in the election campaign for Trump because the Democrats were saying, Look at this, this is all the stuff, this very dangerous stuff that Trump's gonna do and Trump was absolutely denying it. I haven't really heard of this document. This isn't really my programme. And since he's come into the office, a great deal of it has now been implemented. It now becomes apparent that it's pretty close to his manifesto.

Why aren't we talking, Amanda from Wright asks, about this as a coordinated international authoritarian project? What can democracies actually do to counter it? So over to you on this report.

Then you had to internationalise campaigns. He understood the importance of propaganda, he understood the need for networks, he understood the need for money to fund it all. He was the key to Steve Bannon's operation in the States and around the world. He's the key to the rise of Nigel Farage. is the key to far right parties and campaigns everywhere. And I've always felt uh that the right has always been better than the left at this, this international organisation.

So just to say this one report written by this guy, Neil Datter, Executive Director of the European Parliamentary Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Rights. So his report covers just four years twenty nineteen, twenty twenty three, and it calculates at one point one eight billion dollars. the money that has flowed into over two hundred and seventy organisations variously opposing

gender equality, LGBTQ, abortion, contraception and planning, children's rights to education about sexuality and health. A lot of the work comes out of America, but the funding very focused on Europe. Seventy three percent is across Europe, eight hundred and sixty nine point five million dollars, eighteen percent in Russia, and nine percent US organisations based in Europe, over a hundred million. And of the five countries in Europe where most of this money is spent

Number one is Hungary, number two is France, number three is the UK, then Poland, then Spain. And it's used for advocacy, for lobbying, for their own media networks, for big grants, for anti gender services. getting into political parties, a lot of it's about litigation. You know, when we had all that fuss not long ago about buffer zones around abortion clinics, changing hate speech laws. So it's all very, very strategic.

And the questioner is absolutely right. This is an a very well organised, very well funded international campaign.

on the Polish side you've got this thing pushing it's called the order Euris pushing a very, very aggressive vision. You've got Hungarian state funded NGOs And then on the UK side you've got Care UK, which has got, you know, people in Parliament, uh Billy Graham, Evangelical Foundation. These are Uh evangelical foundation's more on the conservative side.

But they've counted all their funding into this. They haven't attempted to distinguish the amount of money that's being used to do other types of things and the fact that they have conservative views of marriage. And I think in a way that detracts a little bit from the power of this report, which should be focused on Russia, Hungary, Poland, and if there are actors.

in the UK and elsewhere that are really pushing extreme stuff, then we need to push onto how much money they're putting into it and what exactly they're doing. The overall story I think is very compelling, but I think it's probably Uh that it's undermining its own case by lumping everything together and then taking the full funding of organizations like K UK and Billy Graham.

And though we d we don't have time to go through all of it now, but I think what we should maybe do we b the research team put together a very, very good note on the detail of the report. And I think we should maybe put it in the newsletter and let people just digest the scale and the nature of some of the campaigns that they're involved in. And then to bring it back to Mr. Orban, one of the first things that the new Prime Minister, Peter

Which is a private college. Which sounds great, you know, Brazenos College, Oxford, Matthias Corvinus Collegium. Um but it is basically a propaganda organization that is putting out Orban's views on everything from gender to race, far right ideology, universities, think tanks, right wing figureheads. And interestingly, the Prime Minister has added that he thinks it's been a criminal offence

For Orban to have funded MCC using the public purse, and which he said he intends to investigate along with the European Union. Because of course a lot of the money yw mewn gwirionedd yn ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud hynny

uh who have been on the receiving end of some of this uh money, um, actually might have to be investigated on the proceeds of crime legislation. I think that's probably a bit far fetched, but nonetheless Interesting. And and of course a l the so so what Orban was brilliant at was this sense building his own profile.

Becoming an international figure, using state funds then to help build networks, which won, let's be frank, won a lot of the big arguments, or certainly felt like it was winning a lot of the the the big arguments. that have made uh made people like you and me feel very much on the defensive on some of the big progressive causes that we we believe in.

who is sometimes described as Kremlin friendly, uh, he has won the election and won it big. I and I really do think this is we're reaching the time where the European Union has got to grasp this nettle that it's struggled with for so long about how do you have a g uh a European Union that's so much bigger than it used to be now twenty seven countries And so many of the decisions have to be made by unanimity, everybody agreeing with the same thing.

One of the problems with Orban is that he became the the chief disagreeer, for example, in relation to Ukraine. Now, this guy, Radev, is not maybe as powerful within the firmament as uh Orban. But it just shows you that you can sometimes take one step forward and one step back in a very, very similar time frame.

And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Rest is History, which is all about Britain in the nineteen seventies, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise, people are arguing about Europe.

So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain, and the Britain of the mid nineteen seventies. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we'll be looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher.

obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. And we'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of nineteen seventy five, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history.

the moment in nineteen seventy six, when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, Just search for the rest is history wherever you get your podcasts.

deal with the question of full independence because it would give people much more control over their everyday lives. Against the other view, which came from some Conservative colleagues, which is it's a slippery slope. once you grant devolution, you're you're on the fast track to independence. Wh where where do you set sit on that now?

uh government based in Westminster. I felt that the Scottish Parliament, after you know, a very, very long gap, that its reestablishment, would settle that debate. I did think that. And I've said to you before that, you know, um this is something we talked about with Anna Sawa, who's our guest on Leading this week, the Scottish Labour Leader. I can vividly remember the meeting. I remember Pat McFadden was there, Donald Jr was there

I think Gordon Brown might have been there, I can't remember. But s I can remember the debate being, you know, we are so powerful. This government has got such a big majority in the UK. We are so much the dominant power in Scotland. So this electoral system and remember we all be we all had to become experts on De Hont, one of the famous Belgians, whose legacy is that he has a electoral system named after him.

And I can remember it was all about how do you make sure that no one party can ever have lots of power. So what definitely we underestimated was the extent to which the devolution debate would politically benefit the SNP to make it more about the this is a sort of step towards towards nationalism. But also when when Tom says was devolution always going to lead to nationalism It hasn't led to the break up of the UK.

Now, it still might one day, but I and this could be I don't know what what your view on this, I sort of feel that even though John Swinney's trying to make this election in Scotland on May the seventh a a quasi referendum to have another referendum. I don't really feel that that's got legs. I think it's a tactic for the election, not a strategy.

Northern Ireland will ally with the Republic and you'll be left with England and possibly Wales. And when Boris Johnson refused to allow a referendum in uh twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, again I had a lot of people Including members of the Scottish Tory party who were fervent unionists saying Boris is wrong. There's no alternative. He's got to offer a referendum. Yeah. Because they're not gonna put up with Boris.

Uh, you know, I very rarely say this about Boris Johnson, but he seems to have been vindicated that his gamble that he could say no and I guess his argument was we had a referendum quite recently, we're not gonna have another one. Now it's meant to be once a generation.

sort of worked, at least in the short term. I mean, what would if you if I had to put you on the spot, what do you think the chances are of Scotland going independent in the next ten years? More than fifty percent, less than fifty percent? I mean obviously there's no certainty, but what what what's your instinct?

Um so that could be quite a moment for this this whole debate. Um my my we talked in the main podcast about Labour and Keir Starmer. I I actually felt when they were blocking Andy Burnham that one of the things that maybe Keir Starmer might have done was to say, let's get Andy Burnham in and let's put him in the cabinet and put him in charge of the next steps, the next stages of devolution.

Um because I do think there's there's there's something that a lot of people, not just in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but in England as well, that people feel that the current structures of government are not very effective.

But e even France, which is pretty centralized, has these very interesting structure of local mayors who you can see in the local supermarket and challenge and talk to and And we really felt, I think both of us, that when we interviewed Andy Street and Andy Burnham, that it was really moving and interesting hearing them talk about

what they were doing in Birmingham and Manchester and particularly on the economy and industrial policy and the sense that industrial policy needs to be local. That Manchester's industrial policy has to be different from Newcastle's or

As you know, you were teasing me about, you know, w what do we want? More adjectives, when do we want them now? If I was to go into a campaign and say, you know, what do I really want? I want more devolution uh and more uh civil service reform, everyone would kinda yawn, give up and go back to bank

in France is so well established. They all want to know who it is, they want to have relationships with them and they have real power and they use that power. And if they use it badly they get kicked out. It's just

Mamdanis and all the Bloombergs on the other side of the political spectrum into being Mayor of London, you'd really need to have a sense that it's not a ceremonial role. I mean, I remember when I was campaigning saying to a group of students, um in in London University. Uh how many of you think uh you know, transport housing and policing in London as broken they all thought it was. How many of you think that's Sadiq Khan's fault? None of them.

Because they basically saw it as a kind of almost ceremonial role. Now here's a question that really appeals to me because as really focused listeners will remember, I had this amazing experience of being on a stage with Jane Goodall where she did an impression Of a um amazing chimpanzee.

What seems to have happened is that the elders who held them together died, and then the Western group took on the central group in the most horrendous way, murdering, killing. infants, adults, uh, in a in a terrible, kind of ferocious battle of extermination. Over to you.

uh mental structures that we create. The US against Iran. But the odd thing is the chimpanzees who don't seem to have those kinds of mental models certainly don't have flags don't have JCPOAs, appear to be engaging in m in murderous internesign warfare, which is which I think is raising some questions around that.