Mike Johnson

Oh, my...

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Mike Johnson (1972–) is the current Speaker of the United States House of Representatives after the previous Speaker Kevin McCarthy was removed from office on October 3, 2023. A former legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), he is a Southern Baptist^[2] wingnut who holds some of the most religiously extremist conservative stances within U.S. politics.^[3][4] It's unsurprising that the Freedom Caucus is in love with this guy, though Johnson himself is not a member of the group.^[5]

Before becoming House Speaker, Johnson served as a U.S. representative from Louisiana's 4th district (And continues to serve in that role) and a state representative from the state's 8th district.

Political fundamentalism[edit]

Johnson strongly advocates for policies typically espoused by the religious right — including Christian nationalism,^[8] a nationwide ban on abortion,^[9] gay marriage,^[10] and covenant marriage laws.^[11][12] He frequently, if not always conforms his political views with Christianity; likewise, he frequently insinuates that America is in decline due to the country turning its back on the "18th-century" religious and moral "values" that the country was (allegedly obviously) founded upon.^{[13][note 1]} To give you an idea of how religiously deluded he is, Johnson believes mass shootings are caused by abortions, secularization, and even the teaching of evolution,^[14][15] and prayer is the solution to the issue.^[16]

He strongly believes in Young Earth creationism as well as its handmaiden, Biblical literalism, and has even written articles for Answers in Genesis;^[17] in his article defending the Ark Encounter, he accused "radical secularists" of not only undermining constitutional law but also "misrepresenting related facts."^[18]

In a similar manner, Johnson wrote a few articles for Townhall.com back in 2007, which largely focused on the whine that Christians were being persecuted. There, Johnson contrasted an article wondering why "our public officials and private atheists" were supposedly panicking about Jesus' teachings (which he described as "turn the other cheek, go the second mile, reach out in mercy to those who are lonely or impoverished or hurting") with an article that ignored these very same teachings in order to complain about the Day of Silence and, of course, accuse this protest of being part of the homosexual agenda.^[19][20]

Johnson also moonlights as a professor at Liberty University teaching "Constitution and free enterprise".^[21]

He also claims to believe that men and women are equal but strictly advocates for traditional gender roles to be upheld; naturally to him, women cannot and should not take up roles that are for men only because that is what God wants.^[10]

Even discussions over climate change fall victim to Johnson's religious agenda. Johnson believes human activity is not the primary cause of climate change;^[22] but on top of that, he's also denigrated climate activists as "irrational" and "anti-God," likening the modern climate movement as a religious cult that's replaced the worshiping of God with the worshiping of Earth.^[23] On a podcast with Jordan Peterson, Johnson took this view into conspiracy territory, stating that, at the international level, climate change was a "sinister agenda" being pushed by "elites at the top of the food chain".^[23]

Dominionism[edit]

The Pine Tree Flag, aka the "Appeal to Heaven" flag. Conceived in the American Revolution, it was appropriated by Dominionists and the New Apostolic Reformation in the 2010s, and was a flag frequently seen at the 2021 U.S. coup attempt.^[24][25] In November 2023, Rolling Stone revealed that this flag hangs outside Johnson's Washington DC office.^[25]

Despite being a "constitutional lawyer" as he puts it himself, Johnson has clearly never heard of the Establishment clause and thinks that the American public has been brainwashed into thinking that the separation of church and state is a new phenomenon rather than something that actually exists in the U.S. Constitution, claiming that America is not a democracy but a "biblical republic";^[26] this is essentially pious fraud.

In the late 2010s, Johnson prepared seminars to be presented in Louisiana Baptist churches entitled Answers for Our Times. The seminar insisted (historical facts be damned) that the United States was a Christian nation. The seminars' goal was equipping "churches to take a stand against the cultural attacks now being directed at people of faith, the traditional family and basic freedoms embedded in the U.S. Constitution." (The later presumably not including the Establishment clause, of course.)^[27]

Mike Johnson has claimed that the pseudohistorian David Barton, who has questioned the Constitutionality of the separation of church and state, has had a "profound influence" on him.^[28]

Underscoring his theocratic beliefs, Johnson has cultivated ties with members of theocratic movements such as the New Apostolic Reformation.^[29] In fact, he is a close affiliate of the leader of the NAR, Jim Garlow.^[30]

In November 2023, Mike Johnson spoke at an event hosted by the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, a Christian nationalist organization that says its goal is to codify a “biblical worldview” into law.^[31] During that closed-doors speech, Johnson, thinking the media wouldn't notice (and unaware that the speech was being recorded for the NACL Facebook page), proclaimed that his ascent to the House speaker role was divine intervention and compared himself to Moses.^[32]

Homophobia[edit]

Johnson has been called "the most anti-equality Speaker in U.S. history." He opposes same-sex marriage and called homosexuals "sinful" and "destructive", claiming that support for homosexuality could lead to support for pedophilia as well.^[33] He went as far as to claim that "experts projected that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic" without identifying who these "experts" were.^[34]

In 2004, he went on a slippery slope argument on how the legalization of same-sex marriage would enable other forms of sexual misconduct or deviancy:

Society cannot give its stamp of approval to such a dangerous lifestyle. If we change marriage for this tiny, modern minority, we will have to do it for every deviant group. Polygamists, polyamorists, pedophiles, and others will be next in line to claim equal protection. They already are. There will be no legal basis to deny a bisexual the right to marry a partner of each sex, or a person to marry his pet.

If everyone does what is right in his own eyes, chaos and sexual anarchy will result. And make no mistake, the extremists who seek to redefine marriage also want to deny you the right to object to immoral behavior. Our precious religious freedom hangs in the balance. Homosexuals have the right to live however they choose but they cannot redefine marriage for our entire society. The stakes are very high in this battle, and it is not "intolerance" for us to desire a healthy and prosperous community.^[35]

Similarly in 2003, he voiced opposition towards Lawrence v. Texas and explicitly advocated for the discrimination against those who commit sodomy and homosexual activities:

Proscriptions against sodomy have deep roots in religion, politics and law. States have always maintained the right to discourage the evils of sexual conduct outside marriage, and the state is right to discriminate between heterosexual and homosexual conduct since the latter cannot occur within the confines of marriage. Homosexuals do not meet the criteria for a suspect class under the equal protection clause because they are neither disadvantaged nor identified on the basis of immutable characteristics, as all are capable of changing their abnormal lifestyles.^[36]

Johnson has partnered with Exodus International, a conversion therapy group.^[37]

In 2005, for his efforts in Alliance Defending Freedom (then known as the Alliance Defense Fund) fighting gay marriage in Louisiana, he was presented with an award by the Family Research Council.^[38] Johnson has since been a frequent guest on the FRC show "Washington Watch with Tony Perkins".^[39]

After becoming House Speaker, however, Johnson has somewhat reneged on his opposition to the same-sex marriage. In an interview with Sean Hannity, he stated he was okay with the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges^[40] even though he initially sought to have it overturned soon after the decision was made.^[41]

The decline[edit]

Johnson has a hard-on for masculinist fantasies of the Roman Empire,^[42] and falsely blames homosexuality for its demise.^[43][44]

While there have been ancient historians who have blamed homosexuality for the decline of Rome (e.g. Sallust, Polybius, and Juvenal), it doesn't mean that these historians were "objective" or correct.^[45] "The only people who think they’re 'objective' are white nationalist intellectuals."^[45][46] The idea that homosexuality caused the decline of Rome, is not unusual, but according to historian John Boswell, this was one of two "major distortions in modern treatments of Roman homosexuality".^[45] "This claim has little to do with the history of Rome and everything to do with the history of hatred of Gay people."^[45]

Social Security and welfare[edit]

Like many Republicans, Johnson has sought to repeal or cut spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, calling it a top priority for Congress to do so. While he was chair of the Republican Study Committee from 2019 to 2021, he helped craft budget resolutions that would have slashed these programs by trillions of dollars. In an attempt to justify his position, he nonsensically claimed that forced births are what drive welfare programs like Social Security and blamed women for wanting abortions instead of bringing in "able-bodied workers."^[47][48]

Persecution complex[edit]

During the podcast that he runs with his wife, "Truth be Told with Mike and Kelly Johnson", Johnson explained why he only defended Christian issues (for example as a lawyer at ADF). His explanation ran along the lines of his having a persecution complex:^[49]

Racism[edit]

Johnson has made remarks that are adjacent to the racist "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory. He has frequently made false public claims such as, "This is the plan of our friends on this side — to turn all the illegals into voters. That’s why the border's open."^[50]

Election denier[edit]

Johnson is an ardent believer that Donald Trump's victory in the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen due to voter fraud and has worked to overturn the election results. In fact, he has been described as "most important architect of the electoral college objections" — he took lead in the failed lawsuit that tried to nullify Joe Biden's victory and voted against certifying the election results during and after the onset of the 2021 U.S. coup attempt.^[51] The fact that he is now House Speaker has raised obvious concerns on how the 2024 presidential elections will play out.^[52]

Forced birth and keeping dead people on life support[edit]

During Johnson's time at ADF, he took an active part in the circus that revolved around trying to keep the clinically dead Terri Schiavo on a feeding tube as long as possible. Johnson also viewed this task as morally equivalent to also banning all abortions, and the opposite stance to that of Nazi Germany. In 2005, at the time of the termination of Schiavo's feeding tube, Johnson wrote a letter to the Shreveport Times explaining his Nazi analogy:^[53][54]

Hail Putin![edit]

Johnson and other Louisiana Republicans were able to receive tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from three Russian nationals in 2018, Konstantin Nikolaev, Mikhail Yuriev, and Andrey Kunatbaev. It was something that they could not legally do directly, so they funneled the donations through the US company in which they owned an 88% majority share.^[55] As of 2023, Konstantin Nikolaev was under economic sanctions by Ukraine.^[56] Given that Johnson has at best been foot dragging on aid to Ukraine or at worst supporting genocide.^[57]

Notes[edit]

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