The New Far-Right Coalition That’s Out to Destroy American Democracy
Part on-the-ground conversations, part sociological analysis, Money, Lies, and God is a convincing tour of the mutually reinforcing elements of American reaction:
“apostles” of Jesus, atheist billionaires, reactionary Catholic theologians, pseudo-Platonic intellectuals, woman-hating opponents of “the gynocracy,” high-powered evangelical networkers, Jewish devotees of Ayn Rand, pronatalists preoccupied with a dearth of (white) babies, COVID truthers, and battalions of “spirit warriors” who appear to be inventing a new style of religion even as they set about undermining democracy at its foundations.
Trumpism is hardly one thing, even if it is overly reliant on Trump himself. Instead, Stewart uses her deep familiarity with the American far right to chart out what are, by the mid-2020s, the major elements of Trump’s political project, which she describes as the Funders, Power Players, Infantry, Sergeants, and Thinkers. The “Funders” are those within the billionaire class bankrolling the forces below them, using access to effectively bottomless pots of wealth to guide American politics. Some of these names are increasingly familiar, like Leonard Leo, the benefactor who helped steer the Supreme Court picks during Trump’s first term, building out Trumpist allies on the highest court of the land and helping rule in favor of things like all-encompassing presidential immunity, a position once ridiculed when espoused by figures like disgraced Richard Nixon. Leo serves as the chair of CRC Advisors, which, as Stewart writes, “directs over $1 billion in right-wing funding toward reactionary causes.” Nor is Leo alone. There is Carl Anderson, head of the Knights of Columbus, who helps bankroll think tanks and media outlets. There are even organizations like Opus Dei, a far-right Catholic group that does not publicize its membership rolls. All of them together have access to, and help direct, a greater pile of money than anything hard-right forces in America have ever known. “The decisive development in the first decades of the 21st century was not the alliance between Team Money and Team God but the simple fact that, thanks to escalating inequality, the big money got a lot bigger,” Stewart notes. “What was new was the number of zeroes in the checks—and the extremism of the thinking guiding the money people.”
Elsewhere, the “Power Players” Stewart identifies are those just underneath the “Funders,” helping direct some of the ocean of money flooding pro-Trump, pro-authoritarian movements. These managerial types comprise a “tiny elite” who “amass tremendous personal power by mobilizing others around their agendas.” Many of these are well-established figures, “super-lobbyists” like the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Ralph Reed or Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, who act as both organizers and mouthpieces for pro-Trump policies. These, Stewart says, are the “operational masterminds of the antidemocratic movement,” putting the funding into action through sponsoring conferences, conclaves, and publications. They are, in effect, middlemen—a kind of managerial class directing America’s antidemocratic turn.