Starred review from December 2, 2024
The “antidemocratic” movement behind Donald Trump’s political ascendancy comprises “people and ideas that in ordinary circumstances would not dream of sharing a bed,” according to this illuminating account. Drawing on 15 years of reporting, journalist Stewart (The Power Worshippers) profiles figures central to what she describes as an organized political project of “reactionary nihilism”—a motley collection of “atheist billionaires... Catholic theologians, pseudo-Platonic intellectuals, woman-hat, high-powered evangelical networkers, Jewish devotees of Ayn Rand, pronatalists... COVID truthers, and ‘spirit warriors.’ ” She asserts that they have coalesced around “a new and distinctly American variant of authoritarianism or fascism,” which predated Trump’s political rise, propelled by growing income disparities over the past half-century that have fueled “anger and resentment” among those “who perceive, more or less accurately, that they are falling behind.” Stewart’s fine-grained and eye-opening investigation meticulously outlines the loose organizational structure that keeps these strange bedfellows banded together—with a focus on the lines of connections between the movement’s funders, intellectuals, and foot-soldiers, three groups that do not always share the same priorities—and optimistically concludes that as a “disproportionately mobilized minority,” the movement could be countered by a better organized majority able to exploit the movement’s internal ideological fissures. This offers urgently needed background on the 2024 election results.
January 15, 2025
An in-depth look at the chief strands that make up the American far right. "The movement described in this book isn't looking for a seat at the noisy table of American democracy; it wants to burn down the house." So writes journalist Stewart, whose previous work has concerned the disappearing wall between church and state. Just so, among the major contributors to MAGA and other far-right elements have been the leaders and foot soldiers of "a radically new, intensely politicized religion centered on a newly concocted 'pro-life' theory and--among a large number--the idea of spiritual warfare.'" Stewart argues that the movement is an elaborate con whereby power elites pretend to share common ground with "the Infantry," while what she terms the Funders and the Thinkers seek self-centered gains that do nothing for ordinary people: "Each gains power by deceiving the others. Inevitably, they attempt to deceive the rest of us, too, and then they begin to deceive themselves." Antidemocratic, opposed to public education, and given to conspiratorial thinking, this united front, albeit with divergent goals, has gained so strong a foothold in national and now international politics by drowning out the opposition and keeping the "right-wing outrage machine" fully engaged, Stewart says. But she reminds readers that "the antidemocratic reactionaries are nothing more than a disproportionately mobilized minority," vastly outnumbered by centrists. She counsels that the far right is essentially divided, though it appears to be monolithic, and that its message is often contradictory and often off-message entirely. Defeating it, she notes, will require long-term thinking, since the far right is "not merely planning to win the next election." An impassioned takedown of a "militant minority."
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