Few Americans, if any, had ever heard of John Eastman
before the events of January 6, 2021. The legal architect of Donald Trump’s
attempts to overturn the 2020 election was hardly a high-profile name, even for
those steeped in covering American politics. He was, in many ways, an unknown, pulled
by the events and the aftermath of January 6 into the riptides of American
history.
A handful of analysts and investigators tracing the
contours of the American far right, however, knew of Eastman’s work long before
the events of January 6, and of the kind of churning, burning illiberalism that
brought him into Trump’s orbit. One of those was Katherine Stewart, whose new
book, Money,
Lies, and God, threads the diffuse movements that have congealed into the
authoritarianism at the core of Trumpism.
Stewart first intersected with Eastman not in the aftermath
of Trump’s failed insurrection but in 2019, when she tracked him to a tony,
rarefied conclave in, of all places, Verona, Italy. Eastman was speaking at the
annual conference of the World Congress of Families—a far-right,
Russian-American organization dedicated to the abolition of abortion and the
buttressing of so-called “traditional values”—regaling his audience with tales
of “how secularism, liberalism, and gender confusion are destroying everything
good in the world.” The speech, as Stewart writes, revealed Eastman to be “a
committed ally of the theocrats.” But there was also “some foundation other
than biblical literalism,” Stewart sensed, propelling him and cementing the
kinds of illiberal alliances crucial to Trump’s reign.
The search for the broader foundations of Eastman’s and his
allies’ beliefs is at the center of Money, Lies, and God, the follow-up
to Stewart’s critically acclaimed 2020 The
Power Worshippers. That book explored the dogmatism at the core of the
American religious right, and how such forces drew American evangelicals further
and further into the illiberal abyss. It was, at the time, a signal flare of
just how willingly such professedly godly groups could embrace a figure like
Trump.
Stewart’s newest book is a continuation of that theme. But
after the events of January 6, it was clear that the right had changed. This movement—with
all the ideological allies, deep-pocketed donors, and misogynists
massing around Eastman, joining him in this antidemocratic fight—presents a
new face of the American far right. And it is that edifice that Stewart masterfully
details in her new book, explaining not only why these pro-Trump forces have already
attempted to drive a stake through the heart of American democracy, but how
they will try to do so once again.
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.
The “Infantry,” meanwhile, is made up of the rank-and-file
Trump voters who lap up the kinds of antidemocratic rhetoric spilling out of
everything from conspiratorial social media feeds to, now, the White House itself.
These are the militias, the Tea Party turned Trumpers, and the assorted flotsam
of Trump supporters who launched an attempted insurrection on January 6—and who
were all recently pardoned by Trump. They are those who Stewart writes about
meeting in Las Vegas in 2023. Alongside a German documentary crew, Stewart
joins a swell of Trump backers at the ReAwaken America Tour, a pro-Trump
conference-cum-revival that gathers an audience of QAnon supporters,
antivaxxers, racists, and conspiracy theorists. Stewart finds the crowd
descending into increasing mania, with speakers not only regurgitating the most
malign conspiracies they can find but even calling for “Nuremberg trials” for
Trump’s enemies, leaving one of the German team members to ask Stewart, “Are we
safe here?” For those tracing America’s descent into authoritarianism,
some of these faces are well known; figures like Reed and Perkins have both
been peddling illiberal policies for years, long predating the rise of Trump,
and it’s hardly news that Trump’s base is comprised of conspiratorial racists.
In that sense, Stewart’s book is treading familiar ground. But it sets itself apart in describing the two remaining groups—the “Sergeants” and
the “Thinkers”—and how these two now buttress not just Trump but modern
Christian nationalism itself.
The “Sergeants” are primarily pastors and related church
officials, many of whom have accelerated their rightward lurch in recent years.
These groups have ominous, vaguely militaristic names, including things like
the Black Robe Regiment and the Watchmen on the Wall. These are the followers
of the vengeful God of the Old Testament, believers in the efficacy of
retribution. “There is little room for the old ‘Love the sinner, hate the sin’
trope here,” Stewart writes. Instead, they embody a Christian nationalism that
“is not a policy program; it is perhaps best understood as a political
mindset.” It is a political proclivity that “includes four basic dispositions:
catastrophism; a persecution complex; identitarianism; and an authoritarian
reflex.” All of it comprises the kind of kindling from which opposition to
democracy, and even support for fascism, can emerge.
Many of these “spirit warriors” found their way to the
so-called “Jericho March” in Washington on January 5, 2021. A “combination of
nationalism, conspiracism, and demon obsession,” according to Stewart, the
rally featured a range of pastors trying to outdo one another in their
antediluvian rhetoric. One, Greg Bramlage, claimed they were engaged in a
“spiritual battle,” while another, Bishop Leon Benjamin, called for followers
to “kill” unspecified “demons.” Another pastor, the Reverend Kevin Jessip, described
the rally as a “strategic gathering of men in this hour to dispel the Kingdom
of Darkness.” Twenty-four hours later, as Stewart notes, many who prayed under
these “Sergeants” took up arms and took the fight directly to the Capitol
itself—bringing with them a “large wooden cross,” a separate “flag with a
cross,” and banners blaring, “Jesus Saves.”
It is the Claremont Institute where the “erstwhile reverence for America’s founders has been transfigured, with the help of political theorists purloined from Germany’s fascist period, into material support” for Trumpism.
It is the final group, the “Thinkers,” that presents
arguably Stewart’s most insightful sections. These are the figures like Eastman
and his allies who posit themselves as the ideological, intellectual class
crafting the contours of Trumpism—and identifying the kinds of legal cover
Trump can use to dismantle American democracy. Much of
this cohort can trace directly back to the Claremont Institute, the California-based
organization where Eastman remains a senior fellow. As Stewart points out,
it is the Claremont Institute where the “erstwhile reverence for America’s
founders has been transfigured, with the help of political theorists purloined
from Germany’s fascist period, into material support” for Trumpism.
The institute’s modus vivendi centers on the
“Straussian man in action”—the man who bends history to his own ends,
regardless of the consequence and regardless of democratic legitimacy. Stewart writes:
His mission is to save the
republic. He must tell a few lies, yet he is nonetheless a noble liar, at least
in his own mind. He acts in the political world, where natural right reigns,
and not merely in the legal world where lawyers are supposed to toil. Aware of
the crooked timber from which humanity is made, he is prepared to break off
whatever branches are needed for the bonfire of liberty.
This core Claremont belief leads to the yearning for a
so-called “Red Caesar”—a masculine leader untrammeled by anything like
democratic oversight or political pushback, grabbing a society by the throat
and forcing it back into a world in which men, and especially white men, are
once more restored to the top of America’s sociopolitical hierarchy. Indeed,
there is an almost obsessive approach at Claremont to restoring supposed
masculinity within American society. Stewart traces this belief system at
Claremont—where, she says, all of the board members “appear to be male”—to
Harvey C. Mansfield Jr., who wrote a 2006 book called Manliness and
“counts as nobility among Claremont’s extended family.” As Mansfield argued,
“gender stereotypes are all true”—including, bizarrely, that women would make bad
soldiers because “they fear spiders.”
As Stewart details, Mansfield was “far too sophisticated to
openly argue for stripping American women of the rights they have fought for
over the past two centuries—but in the private sphere, “those highly accurate
stereotypes should reign triumphant.” This belief has seeped into Claremont’s
bones and manifested itself at Claremont many times over. There is a Claremont
Fellow named Jack Murphy who once said that “feminists need rape.” There was another
Claremont official who gave a talk titled, “Does Feminism Undermine the
Nation?” There is the promotion of work by an author named Coston Alamariu—better
known by his nom de plume “Bronze Age Pervert”—who oozes undiluted
misogyny and rails against “the gynocracy.” As Alamariu wrote, “It took 100
years of women in public life for them to almost totally destroy a
civilization”—and the only way forward is to “use Trump as a model of success.”
These Claremont-based “Thinkers” also include figures like
Curtis Yarvin, who has contributed to the Claremont publication American
Mind and “appeared as an honored guest on Claremont podcasts.” Yarvin’s
affections for despotism have been widely reported elsewhere, but it is his
historical ignorance that highlights just how shallow the Claremont men’s
pretensions at intellectualism truly are. Not only does Yarvin preposterously believe that “European
civilization” wasn’t responsible for any genocides before the Holocaust—as if
genocides in places like the Africa, North America, or even Ireland and Ukraine never existed—but he further
maintains that America now needs to collapse into dictatorship in order to
rebuild.
The “men of Claremont frame their not-so-hidden longing for
revenge as a series of ruminations about the rise of an American Caesar,” Stewart
writes. “And when that ‘Red Caesar’ arrives, he can thank the oligarchs for
funding his rise, and he can thank the rank and file of the movement for
supporting him in the name of ‘authenticity.’ But he would owe at least as
large a debt of gratitude to the unhappy men of Claremont, those spurned
would-be members of the intellectual elite … for explaining just who he is, and
why he should go ahead and blow the whole place up.”
Taken together, Money, Lies, and God paints not only
a devastating picture of the state of American democracy (as if one was
needed) but one that also contributes texture and context to understanding the
current American political moment. The book convincingly argues that, when it
comes to figures like Eastman or Leo or any of the men affiliated with the
Claremont Institute, calls for dialogue and civility are futile. “In earlier
times this may have been sage advice,” Stewart writes. “Today it is a delusion.
American democracy is failing because it is under direct attack, and the attack
is not coming equally from both sides. 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.” American democracy isn’t simply dying. It is, as
Stewart observes, being murdered.
Another revelation from the book, however, is not nearly as
ominous. Because the movement comprises so many moving parts, there’s no
guarantee that such a constellation of forces can last. Trump remains the glue
that holds such a coalition together, with each group—the billionaires and the
bullies in the pulpits, the keyboard conspiracists and the misogynists trying
to put an intellectual sheen on it all—each seeing, and often getting, what
they want with him. But once Trump goes, there’s every reason to suspect that
such a coalition will splinter, undone by competing claims. Wide cleavages
remain on subjects from China to health care to tax cuts, bridged only through
Trump’s person and persona.
This is cold comfort for those hoping for a resuscitation
of American democracy anytime soon. Trump has spent the first months in his
second term sprinting toward a constitutional crisis, cheered on by the allies
he’s found along the way—not least the supposed “Thinkers” claiming
intellectual leadership of the movement. For figures like Eastman, it’s not an
executive run amok that presents a threat to the core of American democracy but, rather, those who would stand in Trump’s way. The Democratic Party, Eastman said in 2023, is “an existential
threat to the very survivability, not just of our nation, but of the example
that our nation, properly understood, provides to the world. That’s the
stakes.” From his lips to God’s—or at least Trump’s—ears.
The post The New Far-Right Coalition That’s Out to Destroy American Democracy appeared first on New Republic.
