Carol Mason, "From the Clinics to the Capitol: How Opposing Abortion Became Insurrectionary" (U California Press, 2025)

Summary

Podcast Summary: New Books Network – Interview with Carol Mason, “From the Clinics to the Capitol: How Opposing Abortion Became Insurrectionary” (U California Press, 2025)
Date: November 5, 2025 | Host: Sharon Yam | Guest: Carol Mason

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Episode Overview

This episode of the New Books Network Gender Studies channel features Dr. Carol Mason, the Otis A. Singletary Endowed Chair in the Humanities at the University of Kentucky, discussing her new book, From the Clinics to the Capitol: How Opposing Abortion Became Insurrectionary. The conversation unpacks the relationship between the anti-abortion movement and the rise of insurrectionary, nationalist politics in the United States and beyond. Drawing on thirty years of research, Mason traces historical evolutions, explores transnational influences, and connects local campus incidents to global far-right movements.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Book Motivation and Main Argument

• Catalyst: Mason’s shock at the January 6th, 2021 insurrection ("I both couldn't believe it and had seen it all before." [04:45]) prompted her to articulate the evolution from anti-abortion activism to outright insurrection.
• Core Thesis: Anti-abortion stories, images, and policies have helped prime Americans for white nationalism and authoritarian populism ("...has primed the American imagination for white nationalism and authoritarian populism." [03:46]).
• Scope: The book moves from local (clinic violence, campus protests) to national (legislation, political rhetoric) to international (transnational export of tactics and narratives).

2. Transnational Impact of U.S. Anti-abortion Movements

• The U.S. has exported anti-abortion tactics, rhetoric, and funding abroad since the 1970s, especially casting abortion as emotionally and physically destructive ("...the US has exported anti abortion tactics, rhetoric and personnel as well as funds to other countries." [10:22]).
• Case studies include Ireland, Russia, and the U.S., focusing on their investments in whiteness and national identity ("...all of those countries had a particular investment in whiteness especially." [08:42]).
• Anti-abortion stories exported overseas increasingly rely on emotional affect rather than rational debate.

3. Campus as Microcosm: Created Equal and Provocation Tactics

• Description of the "Created Equal" group’s spatial, nearly horror-movie-like staging on campus, using escalating warnings and graphic images to provoke students ("...what the anti abortion group does with a campus is very similar to what happens in a horror film temporally." [15:13]).
• These groups provoke confrontation, recording interactions in hopes of lawsuits or claims of censorship ("...they are wearing body cams and they are basically trying to provoke physical altercations..." [18:58]).

4. Research Process & Motivations

• Mason’s approach is driven by moments of deep confusion and contradiction, often asking herself, “what the fuck?” as a research method ("...some of the best research comes from the question what the fuck?" [22:30]).
• She details her longstanding inquiry into the paradox of those who kill in the name of "life" ("What does life mean if you can kill for it?" [23:06]).

5. Reproductive Justice Framework and White Nationalism

• Reproductive justice (RJ) discourse transcends the pro-life/pro-choice binary by including how race, gender, and bodily autonomy are policed, linking anti-abortion activism with white nationalist anxieties about demographic change ("...the anti abortion stories and images are often used to convince white people in particular that their children and their offspring are endangered in a systemic way." [12:41]).
• Mason stresses nuance and clearly states: "Not all people who oppose abortion are white supremacists" ([26:06]).

6. Temporality, Apocalypse, and Mobilization

• The far right experiences time differently, often perceiving themselves as constantly living in a moment of revolutionary crisis—a shift from anticipation of apocalypse to the presumption of living within one ("...the apocalyptic narrative had changed a little bit. And it wasn't so much about waiting for an impending apocalypse, but it was more about presuming and seeing yourself already in an apocalyptic scenario." [39:18]).
• Mason uses examples like a wristwatch inscribed “one hour closer to his return” to illustrate this dual experience of time—living regular lives while preparing for “the return" or revolutionary rupture ([35:36]).

7. Rhetoric, Stasis, and Echoing Arguments Across the Political Spectrum

• Mason cautions against viewing the right and left as monolithic or entirely oppositional, identifying that affect, narratives, and emotion often matter more than rational argument ("...that formulation feeds into this apocalyptic narrative mindset." [45:12]).
• She explains how anti-abortion rhetoric migrated from targeting clinics to viewing the federal government itself as the enemy, opening alliances with other far-right actors ("...they decided not to just oppose federal government policies, but to see the federal government as the enemy." [48:56]).

8. Polarization and Resisting Simple Divides

• The manufactured us-versus-them mentality, particularly visible in abortion debates, primes society for authoritarian divides ("...if we buy into that idea, idea that there's an us and there's a them, we're not going to be able to sustain democracy..." [53:13]).
• Mason argues for nuance, connection, and the RJ tradition as models for coalition and empathy—even among those who disagree on abortion.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On seeing January 6th:
  “I both couldn't believe it and had seen it all before. This kind of political combat was not only reminiscent of mass attacks on abortion clinics, but it was also the stuff of the right wing fiction and nonfiction I had read over 30 years of research.” (Carol Mason, 04:45)
• On research motivation:
  “Some of the best research comes from the question what the fuck?” (Carol Mason, 22:30)
• On student reactions to campus anti-abortion demonstrations:
  “What I found about this particular generation of students is that often they aren't convinced by the images...but it angers them.” (Carol Mason, 17:44)
• On temporality:
  “It wasn't so much about waiting for an impending apocalypse, but it was more about presuming and seeing yourself already in an apocalyptic scenario.” (Carol Mason, 39:18)
• On white nationalism:
  “It's important to realize that in this historical moment we are contending with a multicultural and multiracial right. And many anti abortion materials right now claim to oppose abortion as an extension of racial justice or civil rights or even abolitionism...the use of civil rights, like the use of anti slavery rhetoric, is not the same as wanting to have an egalitarian society.” (Carol Mason, 27:33)
• On polarization:
  “If we buy into that idea, that there’s an us and a them, we’re not going to be able to sustain democracy because it is in the authoritarian’s power to pit us against each other as if there were just an us and a them.” (Carol Mason, 53:21)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Book introduction and author’s motivation: 03:46–07:19
• Global export of US anti-abortion activism: 08:06–13:07
• Campus microcosms & protest tactics: 14:04–20:06
• Research method and origin story: 21:55–24:39
• Reproductive justice, race, and white nationalism: 24:39–31:17
• Far right temporalities & apocalyptic narratives: 33:31–41:44
• Shared rhetoric across political spectrums: 41:44–50:49
• Reframing polarization & closing thoughts: 52:19–57:09

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Closing Advice

• Against Certainty and Division:
  “It’s really important not to see the right as a monolith ... The more that we read and write and connect with people with an eye toward nuance, the better off we’ll be ... try and figure out how to make connections with people and not to demonize others ... they’re your American family too and that they’ve been lied to.” (Carol Mason, 53:13)

• On engaging with nuance:
  “Departing wisdom is that we need to dive into the nuances despite the fact that sometimes that is very messy work.” (Sharon Yam, 56:35)

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Summary Tone

The conversation is scholarly yet accessible, deeply empathetic, and both descriptive and analytical. Mason continually stresses the importance of nuance, emotional intelligence, and historical context, challenging easy binaries while providing grounded, research-driven insights into a phenomenon at the intersection of gender, nationalism, and world politics.

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Full Episode Title:
Carol Mason, "From the Clinics to the Capitol: How Opposing Abortion Became Insurrectionary" (U California Press, 2025)
Recommended for: Scholars, students, activists, and anyone concerned with contemporary right-wing movements, gender politics, and democratic resilience.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Each day will have its troubles, but by God's grace they can be survived.

[A]

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[C]

Welcome to the New Books Network Gender Studies Channel. My name is Sharon Yam and today I am very happy to be talking with Dr. Carol Mason about her new book from the Clinics to the How Opposing Abortion Became Insurrectionary. So I'm going to briefly introduce Dr. Mason, who is also a colleague of mine at the University of Kentucky so Dr. Carol Mason is the Otis A. Singletary Endowed Chair in the Humanities at the University of Kentucky, and she's also currently interim chair of the Gender and Women's Studies Department there. And she has authored several books about the rise of the right since the 1960s, and the most recent book is a culmination of decades of her research that connects anti abortion far right activist with the January 6th insurrectionist. So Carol, welcome to the podcast.

[B]

Thank you, Dr. Yam. I'm going to call you Sharon because it just feels too strange given our collegiality and our connections to go with Dr. And Dr. Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Great Carol. So this book, I don't when I was reading it because partly because this is so incredibly timely, I personally am excited to talk more about it to you and have some questions about your research and writing process. But before, before we dive into the juicy parts of your work, can you tell the readers a little bit of what this book is about? Kind of what motivated your writing of this?

[B]

Sure. Well, the book is a scholar story about how the anti abortion movement has primed the American imagination for white nationalism and authoritarian populism. Or to put it in less academic terms, it's a book about how anti abortion stories, images, policies have primed Americans to embrace attitudes and politics once deemed wrong or extreme. What motivated me to write this? I'd like to give you the audio version of my book trailer which tells you sort of the story of my watching the events of January 6, 2021 unfold and what happened in my brain that me want to write this book. So if I can go ahead and play that audio, I'll do that now.

[C]

Yeah, go ahead please.

[B]

January 6, 2021. I was tracking the news with a paradoxical mix of incredulous fear and horrible recognition. I both couldn't believe it and had seen it all before. This kind of political combat was not only reminiscent of mass attacks on abortion clinics, but it was also the stuff of the right wing fiction and nonfiction. I had read over 30 years of research. I was texting with my sister. She was frustrated. She was perplexed by the break in at the Capitol and the hunting down of members of government. My sister texted, I just don't understand. I don't know why they would do that. I texted back, I do. Thirty years ago, I began researching the murders of abortion providers, asking, what does life mean if you can kill for it? I traveled to gatherings of Operation Rescue, encountering people who felt killing for life was justifiable homicide. My first book argues that apocalyptic thinking was the common denominator to a variety of right wing agitators and conservative politicians or oppose abortion. Back then I was spry and wore a leather jacket. Over the years I settled into teaching and wearing Talbots. Operation Rescue got old too. But in 2017 it was back in my own home state trying to shut down the last abortion clinic in Kentucky. I drove there in the rain to see if the connections among elected officials, white supremacists, paramilitary groups and anti abortion militants were more obvious now. My name is Carol Mason. My new book is from the Clinics to the How Opposing Abortion Became Insurrectionary. This book tells you what I know. Journalists give you hot takes on political violence and policy changes as they happen. I give you the deep dive into the question of how and why anti abortionists joined other militants in waging war against the federal government. It's a scholar's story derived from 30 years of researching the right and dedicated to people like my sister and you folks who just don't understand how we got to this point. The Release date is August 2025. Order it today from University of California Press. Yeah.

[C]

Thank you. So from this brief trailer and from the title, we have a sense that this book is largely focusing on the role of the far right anti abortion movement and how it is connected to the anti democratic and authoritarian forces that we are seeing right now. So I'm wondering, because the book is full of so many rich examples, both historical and also more contemporary examples, such as events that are unfolding on our very own college campus, I'm wondering if you can kind of tease the listeners a little bit and give us some highlights on what they will learn if they were to read this book.

[B]

Well, yeah. Thank you. The first chapter, I wanted the book to have an international scope. And so that first chapter is part of an article that was first published in the Rise of the Global Right special issue of Signs. And I really wanted to have some sense of how the anti abortion movement has had an impact globally. We in the United States tend to see the abortion debate as a clash of absolutes. Those are two phrases that get bandied about a lot. And so one of my research questions for this book was how do people talk about abortion in other countries? And I ended up looking at Ireland, Russia and the United States because I felt like all of those countries had a particular investment in whiteness especially. And also the timing of it was really important. At the time I was researching Ireland was was going through the process of decriminalizing abortion and Russia was becoming More and more anti abortion. And the US Was on the brink of repealing Roe v. Wade. And I always say, even though I'm sure listeners of this podcast are very erudite and scholarly, I always want to make sure to characterize Roe v. Wade as a compromise legal decision that actually regulated and standardized abortion restrictions across the United States. It wasn't necessarily a full decriminalization of it and had so many caveats to it and ushered in all sorts of particularities like the viability idea and medicalizing women's choices. So that 1973 Supreme Court decision was sort of on the chopping board block as I was researching this. And I really just wanted to sort of figure out what US Role was. And what I found out was that since the 70s, the US has exported anti abortion tactics, rhetoric and personnel as well as funds to other countries. And from the 1990s onward, they especially exported the idea that women are hurt by abortion and need to be protected from it. And in this kind of story that was prevalent since the 90s, abortion becomes something much more than just a medical procedure used to terminate a pregnancy. In this story that gets exported abroad, abortion is seen as an evil industry full of quacks and demons instead of one aspect of reproductive health care. And over the last few decades, that story got more and more fierce, depicting abortion as injurious and torturous and depicting people getting them as under the spell of depraved and satanic people. And so this story doesn't really rely on rational argument or argumentative debate as much as it relies on feeling and emotion. So it's very powerful stuff. And those who are deploying this powerful story about abortion, using it to convince people to vote in certain ways for right wing parties. And so I think that part of what the book does and what you'll see in that first chapter with its international scope, is to see that there is a transnationality to the very localized anti abortion campaigns and that it has contributed to the global rise of the right. And so that's just one sort of takeaway. Absolutely. That I want readers to walk away with, that it's contributed to that global rise of the right. And then a second thing that is also very related to that is that the anti abortion stories and images are often used to convince white people in particular that their children and their offspring are endangered in a systemic way. And so that is how abortion, anti abortion stuff really sort of plays into the white nationalism that we see rising up.

[C]

Yeah, thank you for that. What I really appreciate as a reader is your ability to be able to zoom in and zoom out across time and also space. So like you were saying, you opened by talking about the transnational scope and network of far right movements and anti abortion activism. And also in terms of space, there was a lot of toggling between what is happening at the Capitol, also the capitol of various states nationally and also very locally on campus. So I, if you can give the audience a little example of how what are maybe perhaps a particular local event that motivated you to write about these national and even international phenomenon.

[B]

Right. Well, I do start off some of the chapters with localized sort of reflections on what I see around Kentucky and often on our campus. And that is because every time an anti abortion group comes to campus, I routinely get a student either emailing me or popping in my office saying, Dr. Mason, have you seen what's on the quad? And so they really struggle with the kind of anti abortion activism that visits campuses. So one of the chapters, I believe it's chapter two, actually gives a deep dive in that particular group that visits the University of Kentucky campus and examines four different filmic texts that are produced by or about the group, which is called Created Equal. And so this is something that I believe I shared with your students in your class just a couple weeks ago, where we look at how the students encounter this anti abortion group. And I make the point that geographically and spatially, what the anti abortion group does with a campus is very similar to what happens in a horror film temporally. So in a horror film you get some scare that then turns out to be nothing. Or you build that sense of suspense and you get a couple of false warnings that something is going to jump out at you or someone's going to get hurt, or someone's going to get eaten. And this sort of happens over time in a film until there is in fact a monster there or a killer there. And we then get, depending on the kind of horror movie, we get a full display of gore and torture, if it's torturous kind of thing. And so in relating this to the campus situation, what the anti abortion group does is at the periphery of the quad they'll put out signs that say warning, upsetting images ahead. I don't know if I have exactly the right quotation that's on the signs. And you walk in a little bit further and says warning, dangerous, you know, dangerous ideas ahead. And then as you reach the sort of center of the quad, you get to see as well as be notified of, so your appetite is whetted with these signs that bring you in spatially. And then in the center of the quad you see, well, it continues. The concentric circles continue to sort of get smaller. And in one you see these huge banners, which they've used since the 1990s, that purport abortion as compared with slavery or the Holocaust. Or just show you an image of bloody pictures, right? And they're blown up, so they're magnified. And then in the middle of the quad we get an actual Jumbotron. And a Jumbotron is an electronic scorekeeping device that you can put up videos. And so they have something up there that is moving and not just still pictures. And the anti abortion group group says that this is an image of a dismembered or a dismembered fetal body. But of course the fetal body is not a body. And what makes it move are hands sort of manipulating it. But it's gory and it's gross and students are understandably upset by it. And what I found about this particular generation of students is that often they aren't convinced by the images. They sort of know that these are medically misleading images and they sort of know that these comparisons are ridiculous, but it angers them. And what I found out through researching this group is that they are wearing body cams and they are basically trying to provoke physical altercations so that they can then turn around and sue either individuals or student groups that may be protesting them or the institution itself for censorship or for vandalism or damage of property. So this chapter was inspired by the things that I saw on my campus and how I saw my students react to it.

[C]

Yeah, thank you so much for that. And also there are some other events that you mentioned, including anti trans right wing speakers coming to campus and other similar types of speakers on campus who seems like their main purpose was to provoke some type of a reaction or confrontation for students. And so how did you, how did you, when you were going to these events, did you ever anticipate that you'll be run one day writing about it? As a researcher, I am interested in your process of how you take notes and then later on was able to compile them and generate this really compelling narrative and argument.

[A]

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[B]

No. The answer is no. I did not anticipate writing this book until 2021. And some of the things that I'm reflecting on from campus happened in 2017 and 2018. And I'm not quite sure, maybe 2023 were some of the ones with the anti trans speake group that had large banners that said women are property. I had not planned to write this book. And so my research method. I'm going to give you the spiel that I give undergraduate students who are particularly more attuned to activism rather than scholarship, and that is that some of the best research comes from the question what the fuck? And so there have just been. I think that's how I started reading and writing about anti abortion movement back in the 90s when I myself was a graduate student and I did not understand how now as a movement, the quote unquote, the quote pro life unquote movement was sustained when people from their own movement began killing physicians and clinic workers and other reproductive health care providers. And it was such a sense of hypocrisy that I really needed to, to study that. And so my research question then was, what does life mean if you can kill for it? And I was getting a PhD in English at the time, so this was very much a discursive kind of question. What kind of crisis in linguistic representation was this if people who claim to be pro life and want to champion and defend life will go out and kill? It didn't make sense to me. And so really I've always been sort of a researcher who has looked around and seen something that doesn't make sense. And out of my own sense of inquiry and trying to make sense of the word world. I have researched it using a variety of different interdisciplinary methods.

[C]

So throughout the book you were. And also, I think even beyond, beyond this book, you are often using a reproductive justice framework to understand these anti abortion movements and how they are connected.

[B]

With.

[C]

Other authoritarian forces that we are seeing almost always on the news right now. And so for the audience, a little bit of a context for the reproductive justice framework. We are moving beyond talking about reproductive politics just as pro life and pro choice, but rather we're considering reproduction as intertwining with constructions of race, of gender, of bodily autonomy. And throughout the book you really draw out the linkages, particularly between the surveillance and policing of abortion reproduction and also with white nationalism. So can you talk a little bit more about what you mean by white nationalism? And why do you think that there is a deep connection between the anti abortion movements from the far right with a strong sense of white supremacy and that right now is connected also to what loving America means?

[B]

Right. Okay, thanks. It's a great question. I want to say at the outset, outset that my book explicitly says that not all people who oppose abortion are white supremacists. I think that's really important to note because I've actually been completely misrepresented as saying that all pro lifers are racist. That's not the case. And if anyone, if you're hearing anyone say that Professor Mason said that, then they haven't read my book and didn't get very far because on page 11, I explicitly say that these are not synonymous. But also in this summer, even before the book came out, I had a voicemail on my office phone say, this is for the professor who says all pro lifers are racist. I think you have it backwards. And then she proceeded to tell why I was the racist one. So it's a really remarkable thing to think about these connections and to get your message completely wrong. But I think that it's important for the students to understand that I'm not, not calling that. And when I teach a class on reproductive justice at the University of Kentucky, like you do, I have people in my class who identify as anti abortion and pro life in class. And what I tell them is that, you know, if you believe that life begins at conception and you want to uphold that spiritual tradition because it means something to you, that's fine. I don't have a problem with that. And the idea that life begins at conception is a very good religious belief. And so I tell them, you know, if you're going to live your life by that religious belief, that's fine so far as you don't impose it on somebody else. And I think that that's something that I carry into the classroom from the reproductive justice tradition, because I know that the folks who were advocating and organizing around the RJ idea was that they very much came from and worked with communities who had been denied the right to give birth, the right to parent. And so for many of them, they have a belief about opposing abortion and their historical circumstances completely warrant that. And so the idea of expanding our view to encompass how do we champion and honor the people who give life, we expand that notion and make the idea of the sanctity of life, not just the intellectual property of a quote unquote pro life movement. So with all that said, I think that it's important to realize that in this historical moment we are contending with a multicultural and multiracial right. And many anti abortion materials right now claim to oppose abortion as an extension of racial justice or civil rights or even abolitionism. And I have a good bit about abortion abolitionism in the book. By looking closely at those kinds of campaigns, I found that the use of civil rights, like the use of anti slavery rhetoric, is not the same as wanting to have an egalitarian society. Often instead, these groups want a society based on what they call God's law and a patriarchal natural order. So it's really important to figure out how the rhetoric can accommodate white nationalist ideas, even if the people saying the rhetoric are not necessarily identifying themselves as white nationalist or white supremacist. But there are some instances with crossover from those far right white supremacist groups into anti abortion groups. Yeah.

[C]

So we kind of. I'm going to want to ask you some more questions, kind of going down this similar line about the white nationalists organizers and prominent figures who historically and also now has been injecting the far right anti abortion movements and also essentially the umbrella, the authoritarian umbrella types of movements that we are seeing right now. In your book or pretty earlier on, you made this point that is have been sticking with me for weeks now you're arguing, you're essentially saying that these folks operate or understand time somewhat differently than we do. So for instance, you give the example that a lot of far right people, they think about revolutions as happening right now, as the revolution was not a historical event, nor was it something that might come in the future, but right now we are actively living in a crisis more moment. So when I first read that part in your book, I thought, oh wow. If we think about time in fundamentally different ways, then of course we will not be able to really understand, properly understand the far right organizing agenda or to be able to effectively combat that. And then later on, in other kind of passing conversations, we talk about it. And you also so reminded me that no, they're not only operating on revolutionary time because in order to pass, say, certain anti abortion legislations or anti trans legislations, far right activists, white nationalists, are also operating on our regular time. So I'm wondering if you can kind of talk a little bit more about how perception of time, or temporality or crisis play a role in how we understand or fail to understand the rise of far right movements.

[B]

Yeah. Let me give you a little rundown of my scholarly evolution of how I've dealt with time, because it goes back to my first book, Killing for Life, the Apocalyptic narrative of Pro life Movements. And there I was dealing. I wrote that in the 90s, it came out in 2002. And there was this sort of idea of at the end of the millennium, right? We're shifting from 1999 to 2000, and everybody from Prince I'm going to party like it's 1999 to the Y2K scare. Everybody was sort of anticipating the turning of the year 2000. The decade leading up to it was a sort of peak for anti abortion violence. And so how did that sense of time play into it? And a lot of people sort of felt like, well, this is just sort of a fantasiecle kind of hysteria. And in the book, what I did was I looked at how a variety of different far right and anti abortion movement folks saw time and theorized time and felt like they were dealing with an amped up kind of impending apocalypse. Right. And so, for example, one of the artifacts that I look at from archives, I do a lot of archives in my work, is I saw a wristwatch that was basically a chronological secular timepiece. And on the face of the watch was the phrase one hour closer to his return. And so there you get a kind of dual temporality, that somebody wearing that watch could make their meetings, make their appointments, go about their daily life. But they're also completely reminded because of that phrase, that a second coming is imminent and what are you doing to prepare the way of the Lord? And so I think that a lot of the folks who were thinking about why there is an urgency to act as if abortion is murder, you know, that was, I think it was Michael Bray's phrase, you know, if you believe abortion is murder, act like it and so to create, to manufacture this sense of urgency, there really was this sense of apocalyptic narrative that there are the evil ones and there are the good ones and you were on the side of the evil or you are on the side of the good. It's a very Manichaean kind of idea that blends really closely with populist ideas. And both of my books, both Killing for Life and from the Clinics to the Capital, look at this blending of apocalyptic thinking with populist ideas. More so in the second book, from the Clinics to the Capitol. And so I looked at this idea of kairos from people who opposed abortion. And L. Brent Bozel was someone who was Goldwater's speech writer and he very much talked about how there is a moment of rupture in secular clock time where you have to take revolutionary action. And he applied that to disrupting clinics. And so that was just one element of that. So that was a story that I told in Killing for Life. And I showed how both mainstream elected politicians and policymakers as well as far right folks who oppose abortion, they all have this they all that apocalyptic narrative, or they're, they're good and they're bad. It's a Manichean divide. You have to prepare for this oncoming sort of onslaught of crisis and conflict that, that was sort of operating. And even though those folks didn't, may not know each other or whatever, that sense of urgency right before the 2000s was really present in both mainstream and extreme kind of anti abortion campaign camps. With this other book, from the Clinics to the Capitol, I realized through research and observation that the apocalyptic narrative had changed a little bit. And it wasn't so much about waiting for an impending apocalypse, but it was more about presuming and seeing yourself already in an apocalyptic scenario. So that's one big distinction. And then I borrowed from the historian Jill Lepore, this idea of a sacred past. She's someone who couldn't understand how people were talking about the revolution without any particular historical accuracy. And she recognized that people, right wing activists of various sorts and stripes were talking about the American Revolution as if it's an ongoing thing, that there's a sacred past that is always already present. And so this idea of revolutionary time, I think so sort of is very much what we saw on January 6th. I think that was very much a chirotic moment where there's a rupture in secular time. And they very much wanted it to be literally a revolutionary situation in the sense of stopping the peaceful transfer of.

[C]

Power.

[B]

And that we are still kind of experiencing temporal distortion. I think that Covid in the pandemic was something that really gave us a different sense of temporality. And I think that as we are undergoing a kind of transition that is anti democratic right now, that we're all going to experience this kind of temporal distortion to try and figure out, you know, what do I do? Do I continue along the calendar that I've set out for myself? Do I continue along as if it were normal? Or do I need to do something now? Because things are happening that have never happened before, like a president tearing down the White House un like mass incarceration of people who in another era would be deported with due process. And there are a variety of other examples, but I'll stop there and see if that answered your question.

[C]

Yeah, and it really also gets at the sense that I think I have read some cultural commentary talking about the feeling of living under an authoritarian regime that is a part of the process of a democracy backsliding is the sense that the dissonance between everyday life still feels rather normal, but there are also a lot of seemingly unprecedented events and state violence sense and urgency and sense of, like you were saying, apocalyptic type of crises happening. And so why I that the point that you're making about time, echoing Jill Lepore, really resonated with me is because I think even when those of us who are living our life, we're not part of the far right movement, we're still feeling a warped sense of temporality and also trying to to figure out how to be. And so this connects to another big question that I have for you, which is that as a rhetorician, I am interested in to figuring out at what point when we are talking to folks across difference, where do we hit common ground or reach stasis, and at what point do we lose this? And it seems like to me that a lot of what you were saying and studying this far right writing, sometimes they are even perhaps using some of the language that I would have seen progressive political writing, such as a mistrust of government, seeing the US Government as a totalitarian or authoritarian force, convinced that their cost is just. And hence these kind of arguments have been used in your book describing far right activists to justify the killing of abortion providers, for instance, that justifies even the insurrection at the Capitol. But at the same time, we also have seen critiques of the government coming from the left of the political spectrum. And and so my question, or kind of something that I am still kind of working through, is how is it that we are using A lot of, sometimes a lot of similar effects and argument, but we are in fact envisioning a very different versions of what an ideal society would look like. So how do we reconcile this.

[B]

And how do we reconcile, reconcile the. The idea that, that. That both the right and the left are envisioning different kinds of society, very.

[C]

Different kind of society. While we may sometimes be making the same claims, such as the claim that the government needs to be overthrown or needs to change in a drastic way, that, you know, sometimes using violence and using force is the only way to go.

[B]

I think that's a really complicated question. And I would caution people from thinking about the right and the left as if they're monolithic things and opposed things, because that formulation feeds into this apocalyptic narrative mindset. And as someone who has studied right wing movements and right wing rhetoric far more than I've really studied the left, to be honest with you, I think that there's so much nuance in the different ways that they are envisioning the future that I think that, that we have to be careful about painting the right as one thing. One of the things that I've done to try and facilitate that perspective is to be historical rather than clairvoyant and to be descriptive rather than prescriptive. Because I don't know what comes next and I don't pretend to know what comes next. But the question for me in this book was like, how did it get to be that those who oppose abortion stopped seeing doctors and patients as their focus and their cause? And how did they come to see the federal government as the enemy? I think that how they did that, I sort of trace that through primary writing in my fourth chapter so that I can show people how their thinking went along with people who were much more on the far right, on what people see as extremists. Right? And so the. So knowing that a variety of factions on the right have different viewpoints and different rationales and different imaginations for what comes next and they get together, I think that's where we have to recognize as scholars that we are, as you were saying, dealing not so much with rational argumentation, but with affirmations effect. And so, and so I think that one of the reasons why we have a variety of right wing actors joining together is because we do have narratives and emotive plays and affect playing out rather than straight upright kinds of policy statements and that kind of thing. So I think that to the extent that everyone is trying to see a future, I think that as a scholar, the best Thing I can do is try and figure out how these ideas evolved in a way that they can make coalitions with one another other. And I think that there are a variety of different ways of calling the federal government out. There are lots of different stances against the federal government and political scientists could probably reel these off in a real way. But the thing that I saw happening in primary materials written by anti abortion folks was that they decided not to just oppose federal government policies, but to see the federal government as the enemy. And depending on who is saying that the federal government is the enemy, the enemy is a particular type of thing or person. And so just to sort of tie this up a little bit, I think this is why we have things like the QAnon conspiracy theories that we see the federal government sort of as a satanic cabal in these QAnon conspiracy theories and that I don't think that we could have that kind of conspiracy theory with the particular imagery and the particular sense of urgency and the particular kind of gothic and apocalyptic flavor to them if we hadn't had for decades upon decades the kind of imagery that anti abortion movement fed us. I see that there's very much a similarity there and I don't think that we would have the kinds of affect conspiracy theories that are going on now without some of these things that preceded it and that were contributing. Dean that the anti abortion movement contributed.

[C]

That's. Yeah, that's really helpful because I was previously scrappling with the fact that sometimes the the same statement, some someone may make the same statement but coming from wildly motivated by wildly different political ideologies. Say someone saying that I distrust the government could come from like you're in your book, you really trained traced how far right activists when they utter those words what are the implications and what is the world that they're envisioning? And a lot of the. The part that is making me find your work really powerful is though the primary sources that you were analyzing really communicated that deep sense of uncertainty and fear that the world that we're currently in in is going to lead the whole country down an evil path. So given this worldview, I think I understand why the effective force behind far right movements are so immense and powerful. So with that said as also kind of gesturing towards wrapping up, I am wondering are there anything that you would.

[B]

Want the reader readers of your of.

[C]

Your work or the listeners of this podcast to continue to think about to bear in mind after you have, you know, finished writing this work?

[B]

Well, I think, I mean I think I'll reiterate what I said in the last sort of rambling response to your penultimate question, which is that it's really important not to see the right as a monolith. I think at this point we are, are being primed to see only in a kind of two sided debate, which is, I mean, the abortion debate I think was a manufactured moral divide that got, you know, created in the 70s so that there would be single issue voting. And I think that abortion became this quintessentially American kind of thing, whether you're either for it or against it. And that was a strategy that helped Republicans actually gain electoral power. What I see now is that that same kind of impulse to only see in an us and a them is really the thing to guard against right right now. And that's not to say that we can't see the authoritarian threat as anything but completely devastating to democracy. It's not to say you have to feel less than you do. But I think that if we buy into, as individuals and groups and as a society, if we buy into that idea, idea that there's an us and there's a them, we're not going to be able to sustain democracy because it is in the authoritarian's power to pit us against each other as if there were just an us and a them. And I really think that the more that we read and write and connect with people with an eye toward nuance, the better off we'll be. Because I do think that there are ways to find common ground and reproductive justice is really an excellent model for that because reproductive justice, again, as I said earlier, was something that brought in people who opposed abortion into a framework and into an activist situation, an organizing situation that, you know, regardless of that stance, we're going to work with you toward better maternal health, better maternal and infant outcomes, better families, better environments, all that kind of stuff. So I guess for the sake of the, the podcast listeners, I would say really resist that us and them and try and figure out how to make connections with people and not to demonize others, but recognize that they're, you know, that they're your American family too and that they've been lied to. And I heard somebody say somewhere, you know, when your neighbor gets broken into or when your neighbor gets cheated, or when your neighbor gets lied to, or when your neighbor gets, you know, has, has a hardship or has a, has a falling out, you don't say, you doofus, you, you saw this coming. You should have known. You, you embrace that neighbor and you go like, okay, you know, how could I I help you? And I think there are going to be more and more opportunities for us as neighbors on a, on a, on a small scale and on a large scale to help each other out rather than demonize each other.

[C]

Yeah. Thank you so much. So it's the advises to resist the urge to have some kind of certainty. Right. So because a lot of the times we ended up buying into an us versus them narrative because we want to know very clearly who we are, who we are, not what we're supposed to do, what we're not. But departing wisdom is that we need to dive into the nuances despite the fact that sometimes that is very messy work.

[B]

Yes, absolutely.

[C]

Yeah. So thank you so much for talking with us today. Once again, the Carol Mason's book is called from the Clinics to the Capital How Opposing Abortion Became Insurrectionary and is currently out from the University of California Press. Thank you again, Carol.

[B]

Thank you so much, Sharon.