Welcome to the Empire Files podcast. This is Abby Martin. This is the audio version of each episode of the Empire Files hosted on Telesaur English. You can watch every episode at the Empire Files. TV.

While many talk about the growth of the alt-right movement under Trump,

there's a much less discussed and much better organized sector of the far-right that has obtained significant power, the Christian right.

I brought my Bible.

During his campaign, Trump took care to appeal to his evangelical constituency, citing the repeal

of Roe v. Wade and other key issues signaling to his base.

He received more votes from evangelical Christians than even the most overtly religious

Republicans, like Mitt Romney and George W. Bush.

Prominent Christian fundamentalist Mike Pence is in the empire's second highest seat of power,

and the entire administration is littered with his fellow extremists, such as Betsy DeVos,

Scott Pruitt, Rick Perry, Ben Carson, and Nikki Haley. Now they have unprecedented influence

over U.S. policy, and the evangelical movement is just one sector of the right wing responsible for the growing threat of fascism in America.

Author Chris Hedges has written extensively about what he calls the development of a Christian fascist movement.

He even went undercover among them for his book, American fascists, the Christian right in the war on America,

as well as witnessed and reported on the rise of fascism abroad. I talked to him about neo-fascism

and the danger posed by this once fringe evangelical movement's recent rise to power.

Many are calling Trump a fascist, even the next Hitler. Can you define what is fascism?

Fascism is not really ideologically based. It's very protean in terms of its ideology.

There's a German historian I like very much who wrote a book called male fantasies about the

Frye Corps. And he describes this was the Frye Corps was the antecedents to the Nazi party.

They were demobilized, right-wing, world war one veterans who were used to crush the Spartacus

uprising in Berlin and the kind of radical left that they killed Rosa Luxembourg and Leibnick. And it revolves more around emotion,

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