From weaponizing legislative majorities and gubernatorial seats to consolidate state power, to rewriting history in classrooms and public spaces to support white Christian and patriarchal hegemony, to silencing its own members for anything less than the absolute veneration of former President Donald Trump, the Republican Party has lurched eagerly toward fascism over the last decade. 

Indeed, a government that can be so quickly upended by one extremist representative is a government already effectively run by extremists. It should come as no surprise, then, that given the chance afforded by Rep. Matt Gaetz’s motion to vacate previous Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House majority replaced the position with a representative like Mike Johnson. 

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No, they did not elect Jim Jordan, an outspoken ally of Trump, founding member of the House Freedom Caucus and one of 147 representatives to vote against certifying the 2020 election results — and a far more well-known and inflammatory figure of the far right than Mike Johnson. 

But Johnson’s selection gave moderate Republicans an easy compromise: an excuse to vote for fascism without a divisive figurehead, yet with all of the moral charm of Christian evangelicalism. Prior to his nomination for speaker, Johnson was a little-known representative from Louisiana — so politically obscure that many other Republican members of Congress did not even know of him.

Johnson’s track record and policies, however, are anything but obscure in the framework of today’s conservatism. Not only is Johnson another one of the 147 representatives who have denied the 2020 election results, but he was the principal figure responsible for creating a legal rationale for his conspiracy-hungry colleagues. 

Johnson filed a brief arguing that the 2020 presidential election results should be invalidated (after hundreds of millions of votes were cast) because, along with other dubious claims of election irregularity, changes to states’ voting procedures amid the coronavirus pandemic were unconstitutional — a line of reasoning so far removed from reality, even members of his own party called it a “fig-leaf intellectual argument.”

This kind of semi-plausible justification of a power grab is lockstep with Johnson’s other dangerous ideologies, including his denial of the separation of church and state. As a former constitutional lawyer, he has claimed that we live in a constitutional republic, not a democracy, because “the founders set that up because they followed the biblical admonition on what a civil society is supposed to look like.” He has stated that “the founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.” He has insisted “secular forces are chipping away” at the “Judeo-Christian roots” of our country. 

Johnson’s beliefs have manifested themselves in a litany of anti-LGBTQIA+ and anti-abortion stances and bills, ranging from proposing a federal “Don’t Say Gay” bill to a perfect voting record against legal abortion. In his days as a lawyer, he advised a prominent anti-gay conversion therapy organization, argued for the criminalization of same-sex consensual sex and compared same-sex marriage to pedophilia and marrying pets.

Johnson is a quiet danger symptomatic of more threatening changes in our political fabric. As one of many ultraconservative, Bible-thumping, MAGA-supporting representatives, he was certainly not a unique ideological option for House Republicans. He was in the right place at the right time. 

But while he may have seemed to be merely a palatable option for the GOP to coalesce behind given no other legitimate legislative leaders, we should be positively terrified of a speaker equipped with the moral weight of Christian evangelism combined with an ability to spin persuasive strawman legal arguments. A speaker who has eloquently and expertly peddled arguments that uphold a revisionist history of the United States.

As one constituent of Johnson wrote in a New York Times opinion piece, “even would-be oppressors can be affable. It’s not just good manners; it’s the Christian way, the proper Southern way. And it is the ultimate deception.”

Johnson may not have the personality of Trump, Jordan or Gaetz, but he is a crucial and calculated facilitator of the nation’s conservative dive into the deep end. He represents all of the hatefulness of Trump’s conservative movement and the destruction of Republican attempts to undermine democracy, but legitimized by Christian goodwill and institutionalized via legal loopholes. 

More than the dreaded battle for the presidency, the 2024 general election calls for voters to turn out for essential House and Senate contests. Even in consistently blue states like California, multiple congressional seats are far from decided. Almost half of USC students also come from states outside of California, and all of these states have pivotal races that can flip the balance of legislative power. 

Yes, electoral politics are far from a panacea to our problems — and the Democrats’ hold on the presidency and Senate prove there are no promises to be made from electoral gains — but extremists like Mike Johnson and his caucus are hardly representative of this country. 

The only thing better for these fascist politicians than denying election results is a disillusioned electorate that will allow them to seize power and wreak even more havoc. Even if we cannot win, this is a game we cannot lose.