Meet Hannah Faulkner: Young, Ambitious, And Useful To The Republican Right

Young Influencers Take To The Bully Pulpit To Undermine Women's Gains

Let’s thank the documentary journalist Layla Wright for taking us to the thought factory where Republican rightwing bilge and Christian fundamentalist sausage is made in alignment.

In the new BBC documentary American’s New Female Right, (more aptly titled ‘America’s New Female Reich’), directed by Louis Theroux, we meet 16-year-old Hannah Faulkner, a braces-wearing, fiery conservative teen influencer who’s gained attention by haranguing feminism and the LGBTQ movement. Hannah, who lives with her conservative Christian family in Nashville, believes, or has been taught to spout, platitudes about a woman’s place, and of course God. This might not be too alarming except that Hannah, like many young, camera-ready women are leading a podcast and social media-driven crusade, backed by big Conservative money and power. They have the skill to recruit lonely GenZers to the let’s-reverse-time movement with the lure of religion, but for the purpose of putting women, well, in their place.

Let’s join Layla Wright during dinner at the Faulkner household. In fewer than five minutes of footage, we are exposed to scary patriarchal indoctrination, tribalism, conspiracy theories, religious fanatism, and hypocrisy – but we’ll get to the hypocrisy part last.

Hannah’s father, a former pastor-turned-tradesman, leads a sermon at dinner. He prompts his young son, who sports a shock of long blond curly hair that bursts beyond his baseball cap, to read a passage: “Wives submit to your own husbands. Where the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is head of the Church.”

Hannah’s father surveys the table, which includes his wife, four children, and Wright, who navigates this gooey scene with a poker face.

“Any questions?” Hannah’s father asks.

Before anyone can answer, he says: “If you think about a man’s body and a woman’s body, who’s the boss?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “The man. Look at the man’s body. Look at the woman’s body. When a man and women make love (his children appear to range from about 8 to 16 years old, but this is not a sex ed lesson) who’s in control?” Again, he’s not really asking. “The man,” he continues. “Even when you look at homosexual couples, they have a manly one and a feminine one. A leader and a follower.”

At this point, no one is wondering why this man is an ex-pastor. Or why he asserts his dominance.

He continues: “Even though people are kicking at the goat, saying ‘no, no, no, women power, we don’t need men,’ you know what, the man is the head of the household. Everybody knows it.”

Hannah has long been ingesting Right-Wing sound bites like these for breakfast, lunch and dinner during her home-schooled upbringing. But unlike Pa, Hannah is marketable. She’s a useful tool, a perfect political evangelist for a movement pouncing on and funding young women who proselytize about so-called traditional values and keeping women tethered to the kitchen and bedroom, but who really believe their place is in front of a podcast microphone, and anywhere else where they can build a platform, make money, and marinate in the glow of other podcasters and fans to feel seen and stave off loneliness.

When Wright, in that sly way of hers, points out that Hannah is independent, with a promising career ahead of her, Hannah’s Big Daddy bristles. Asked how he sees his daughter, he answers “She’s an amazing cook. She’s very good with her money. She’s beautiful and smart. She’s got a great worldview based on scripture.”

But he adds, “I’ve told Hannah. First and foremost, her job is to be a mother and a wife. She understands that because she believes this book.”

We’ll see about that.

Hannah’s been bathed in attention since she organized a Teens Against Gender Mutilation Rally, sponsored by the monster conservative group Turning Point USA, outside Murfreesboro City Hall in Tennessee in 2023 when she was 14. This is no Hannah Montana – just a typical teen living a double life. This is Hannah Banana, who told Wright she doesn’t have friends, only acquaintances. She is a misguided teen, a handmaid for the religious Right (that is clearly not religious at all) who see women standing in the way of their dominance. Rattled by #metoo and the rise of women in the boardroom and politics, men dream of the day when they come home to a coiffed woman who hands them a martini, looks like a million bucks and puts beef bourguignon on the table for dinner – after spending a day herding children, cleaning house, and teaching the young-uns Bible verse.

These young teen emissaries are tasked with making women in the 21^st century believe that’s what they want, too.

Hannah is now a darling on Right-Wing podcasts because she’s self-published a book, “Last Chance to Save the Republic,” with a forward by Michael Flynn. Yeah, that guy. On America’s Real Voice Morning Sunrise show, the Fox-clone presenter thanks Hannah for using her influence to put Donald in the Spite House.

Then, she asks her what the book is about.

In a long gushing sentence without punctuation, Hannah says: the myths, the separation of church and state, we’re not a democracy, we’re a Constitutional Republic, Jan. 6, the vaccine, infringement of our Second Amendment Rights, the educational system, this digital age we’re living in with pornography on the rise (the average porn watcher is 11 years old, she says), Planned Parenthood, the origins of gender ideology – “where did this even begin?” And she rounds it out with the greatest issue: The breakdown of the American family. Which, according to the scholarly teen, is due to the rejection of God.

Whew, that sounds like 15 different books, but hey, Hannah’s got the world in her palm. No doubt, in her nearly 19 years, and with her esteemed education, she’s done enough reading, writing, studying, and analysis to pen a tome.

American Women of the Reich, um, the Right, introduces us to a bevy of women who believe women should not have the right to vote. Women who say women being given the right to vote has led to “degeneracy, the destabilization of Western civilization.” There are the “trad wives,” cos playing in costumes worn by Elizabeth Montgomery (of course, joke’s on them because Samatha in Bewitched was the one in power.) Best of all is Candace Owens’ comment: “Every societal ill we’re facing is being caused by women.”

There was a time when most women were happily living in the 21^st century and that the troglodytes dominating Right Wing public spheres, were fringe. It’s unclear whether documentaries like Theroux’s, and others in the genre, are early warning sirens, or just slice-of-life curiosities. Christian Fundamentalists so badly want to tell everyone else how to live, and they’ve found a perfect political bedfellow to lie in bed with. Like Wright said, she wanted to do this documentary because influencers like Hannah were popping up in her social feeds in Liverpool, England. Wright’s curiosity has given us a window in. One that should scare the hell out of us and bring us to our feet.

*Featured Image from America’s New Female Right: Hannah Faulkner