cover image Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

Katherine Stewart. Bloomsbury, $29.99 (352p) ISBN 978-1-63557-854-6

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[ers], 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. (Feb.)