Jeff Sharlet has spent two decades covering the intersection of extreme Christian nationalism and the far-right. In his new book,Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, he gives snapshots of a country rapidly devolving into a Christian fascism state. He captures the rage, the despair, the dislocation, the alienation, the aesthetic of violence, and the magical thinking that are the foundations of all fascist movementsforces that are now coalescing around the Trump-led Republican Party. The bizarre conspiracy theories and buffoonish quality of many who lead and embrace this movement, such as Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, make the use American fascists easy to ridicule and dismiss. But Sharlet implores us to take them seriously as an existential threat to what is left of our anemic democracy.Jeff SharletjoinsThe Chris Hedges Reportto discuss his new book and the rising tide of Christofascism threatening our democracy. <\/p>\n
Studio Production: David Hebden, Adam Coley, Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Adam Coley <\/p>\n
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible. <\/p>\n
Speaker 1: <\/p>\n
(singing) <\/p>\n
Chris Hedges: <\/p>\n
Jeff Sharlet has spent two decades covering the intersection of extreme Christian nationalism, what I have defined as Christian fascism, and the far right. In his new book, Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, he gives us snapshots of a country rapidly devolving into a Christianized fascist state. He captures the rage, the despair, the dislocation, the alienation, and the aesthetic of violence as well as the magical thinking that are the hallmarks of all fascist movements, a fascist movement that is coalesced around the Trump-led Republican Party. <\/p>\n
The bizarre conspiracy theories and buffoonish qualities of many who lead and embrace this movement such as Republican representative Lauren Boebert make the term American fascism easy to ridicule and dismiss, but Sharlet implores us to take these Christian fascists seriously as an existential threat to what is left of our anemic democracy. <\/p>\n
Joining me to discuss his new book is Jeff Sharlet. So, Jeff, Im going to have to skip your first chapter, which is gorgeous. Everyone has to buy the book and read it on Harry Belafonte. Just really moving and beautifully written. Of course, Belafonte being this amazing figure. The book is really snapshots from around the country. I find your insights into Trump supporters extremely prescient. I think because of your experience covering the Christian right, those I called Christian fascists over a decade ago in my book, and I think you do use the word fascist now in a way that perhaps you didnt then. <\/p>\n
But I just want to begin with because you make a distinction between Trumps first run and his second run that I found particularly fascinating. His first run drawn from Norman Vincent Peales the Prosperity Gospel. I think Norman Vincent Peale married him and Ivana Trump. For those who dont know, this is the very well-known, unfortunately, Presbyterian, Im Presbyterian preacher, who argued that if you are right with God, you would be blessed in material ways, extremely popular, especially with the rich like the Rockefellers. <\/p>\n
But lets begin with the evolution, because the evolution I thought was really sharp and of course, very frightening. But lets talk about the first Trump and his congregants. I think you in one point even may even call it the Church of Trump and whats happened the second time around and where were moving. <\/p>\n
Jeff Sharlet: <\/p>\n
Yeah, I think from the first rally I went to was an early 2016 in Youngstown, Ohio, which is, of course, a town just absolutely destroyed, a steel town just decimated and there was a big crowd as the airplane hangar. And the first thing I noticed and would realize was a staple was while the press, which was all penned up, they all agreed to stay in a little metal cage basically so that they can be used as like a prop in Trumps passion play was twiddling their thumbs. He was introduced by one of the most right-wing preachers Id ever heard, just a local preacher, but a very, very militant guy. And Ive heard a lot of right-wing preachers. <\/p>\n
And in fact that this was a staple of this and it was a sort of a combination of that kind of wrath of God. But also, at this particular, or I think it was at this No, it was a different rally. Black preacher who often introduced him would say, I dont see Black, I dont see white. The only color I see is green. <\/p>\n
And I would listen to the people around me talking about while they waited for his plane, Trump Force One to come in. Remember, this is not a president. Hes coming in his own presence and we talk about all the gold with it. The plane was literally heavy with gold. And I realized that what was happening here was this appeal to the prosperity gospel. <\/p>\n
When Trump says, Were going to win so much youre going to get tired of winning. He wasnt saying that, Im just like you. He was saying like prosperity gospel preachers always do. Look at my blessings. Look at my airplane, my riches, my beautiful suit. I am obviously more blessed than you. But by falling behind me, falling into my wake, you can partake that blessing, too. <\/p>\n
And you raised Norman Vincent Peale, who he referred to as his preacher, we make a lot of Trumps irreligiosity, but of course, I think were confusing religiosity with piety. Hes certainly impious. But he grew up really fascinated by Billy Graham on television as a charismatic figure and Norman Vincent Peale, the power of positive thinking. He described Norman Vincent Peale as part of his holy trinity of mentors his father, Fred, from when he learned toughness, Roy Cohn, the legendary Red Scare warrior from whom he learned cunning. <\/p>\n
And Norman Vincent Peale, you could argue from whom he learned bullshit that the point is the sale. Norman Vincent Peale boiled the gospel down to a salesmans manual. And he carried that forth. And thats what was happening in 2016, I think was really was he was saying, Vote for me and youll get a piece of the riches. Youre going to get some of the gold. Youre playing, too, will be heavy with this precious cargo. <\/p>\n
Chris Hedges: <\/p>\n
In that sense, he really replicates the role of a mega preacher completely who is idolized, who cant be questioned on the root to physical prosperity. But the second time Trump runs, which you also cover, you say the whole landscape has changed in a much darker way. How did it change? <\/p>\n
Jeff Sharlet: <\/p>\n
Well, by 2020, of course, were into the pandemic. Youre going to win so much you get tired of winning, we cant really go with that. There was the aborted slogan tag, Keep American great, but MAGA just worked so well that he stuck with that. But it was darker in the sense of he had been using conspiracy theories. <\/p>\n
And I think whats fascinating with that kind of narrative world that he was creating, was winking at, hes a little bit like a drug dealer who starts using his own supply. And I write in the book of a particular interview with Laura Ingraham in, I think it was in 2019 actually, no, the summer of 2020 and talking Laura Ingraham is doing what the right-wing press did for him, which was always to kind of take his words, broadcast them, but also channel them into some kind of reason. <\/p>\n
And he was resisting it, sitting on the edge of his chair, leaning forward, looking very uneasy, talking about dark forces, men in black uniforms circling in the plains above him right now. Hes using the present tense. And you could see Laura Ingraham trying to reel him back saying, By dark forces, you must mean Obamas people. And hes like, No, no, I mean people. You dont know who they are. I cant tell you the name. <\/p>\n
And hes no longer winking at the conspiracy theories hes trafficked in. I think hes sort of fallen into the abyss. And that kind of conspiracy thought was so definitive of the rallies I would go to where theres always a lot of blood and gore in the rhetoric of a Trump rally. And thats been one of the failings of the press and not really addressing that. They would just ignore those stories. <\/p>\n
But now, he would go on at length about decapitations and disembowelment and bad ombres as he put it, creeping in through windows. Lots of this sort of horrible horror movie kind of rape fantasies and things that he knew that he couldnt even tell you about. And it struck me as a kind of modernized Americanized bastardized gnostic gospel, Gnosticism. And I know that youve read deeply in this literature. <\/p>\n
But just to boil it down in the simplest sense, an idea that theres an elect or a small group initiates who have secret knowledge and whats on the surface isnt real. And in fact the actual God you see isnt real. Theres a deeper power behind that. And of course, Gnosticism even has its own variation of the deep state, the bureaucracy that gets in the way of the truth. I dont think Trump actually believed QAnon, but he believed in this kind of Gnosticism, this secret knowledge that you obtained not through rationalism but through a kind of mystic connection. And of course, this starts to sound a lot like fascism, which it is. <\/p>\n
Chris Hedges: <\/p>\n
Gnosticism is the heretical or was the early church to find it as a radical, these various gospels that could get very fantastic, but it was based on secret knowledge and initiants had this secret knowledge that others didnt have. I think youre dead on when you describe this as a kind of form of modern Gnosticism. <\/p>\n
And just to go back the earlier iteration of Trump is that he would say these outrageous things, particularly to the press you write about this, who are kind of caged off and he would call in essence for violence against the press or they should be But then say it was just a joke. But he doesnt do that in the second time around. It changes. <\/p>\n
Jeff Sharlet: <\/p>\n
No. He still does it. Its the joking not joking method and he still does it. And I think we encounter it all the time and a lot of our colleagues in the press are like Charlie Brown trying to kick that football, but Lucy keeps holding and they just keep going up in the air every time. I mean, even the second time around, there was a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, so-called sweetest place on Earth, where the streetlights are actually shaped like Hersheys kisses. And it was a very violent speech, but none of that was reported. The takeaway was he says, Four more years, maybe eight more years, 12 more years. Oh, Im joking. Or maybe Im not. <\/p>\n
I think when you compare them before to a megachurch preacher, I think for a lot of secular folks, theres an imagination of these preachers as pious and proper as opposed to the reality. And I think you make this very good point of the mini cults of personality that a megachurch preacher can create in his own ecosystem in which outrageousness, lies, winks, funniness, hypocrisies, all that becomes a part of the performance and it becomes in a way sort of sacralized so that if Trump says one thing at one rally and then kind of contradicts himself at the next, and that happens and people will hear it. <\/p>\n
Youd meet people whod gone to 50, 60, 100 rallies. They were like deadheads traveling around the country. Theres all kinds of little sex and cults that have their own ideas about what happens at the rally that travel around. They would hear those differences and yet they would not hear it as evidence of falsehood, but as evidence of truth. They would say, Theres something deep here. This is a signal. This is an invitation for me to consider. <\/p>\n
And I think now this is really hard for anyone who after Trump to really reckon with is to say theyre experiencing that as a kind of intellectually stimulating encounter. Theyre being asked to participate in meaning-making as they understand it. Meaning-making that is submissive to the great man, the great leader, but they are not passive receivers. They experience themselves as more engaged than they do otherwise in politics. That is in no way, I dont want anyone to hear that as like saying, Oh, youre saying that Trump has something of value? No, no. The meaning that hes making is horrific, but it is a collective project. <\/p>\n
Chris Hedges: <\/p>\n
Well, Hannah Arendt makes this point that its not about truth or reality or consistency. Its about catering to the emotional needs of the moment. So, you can completely contradict what you said even the day before, as long as youre catering to those emotional needs. Were going to get into fascism, which of course I agree with you. I think it is the right word and I think people have to begin to use it. But first I want to talk about, I know this again was extremely thoughtful. You talk about the call, the snake and the bullet, so explain. <\/p>\n
Jeff Sharlet: <\/p>\n
So, one of the things again that I feel like you hear this phrase sometimes, pundits use this, theyll say something [inaudible 00:14:11], theyll say, Its just theater. And I always get very confused by that as a person who loves the arts. What do you mean just theater? Theater is powerful. Theater, theres no such thing as just theater. Its theater. And yes, Trump did theater, he did performance, and yet so often, these bits, these skits that he would do, sometimes thered be comedy skits. Hed do multiple voices moving around the stage. <\/p>\n
And the first campaign, three that would show up pretty reliably where the call, the snake and the bullet. And the call was he would do both sides of a phone call with a company that he was just going to call when he becomes president, This is how were going to handle sending jobs overseas. Hell just call them up and he would play out the whole phone call and the crowded cheering because hes telling off the boss just the way they wish they could. <\/p>\n
The snake, he takes actually a song originally written by a Black civil rights activist. Its a little poem and he would take it out and very sort of elaborately unfold the paper, although he didnt need it, he had it memorized. And its about inviting a snake in a woman who picks up a snake who cries for help. She picks up the snake and the snake bites her and the snake scolds her and says, You knew what I was. <\/p>\n
To him, this is a metaphor for what is happening by immigrants coming to the United States. We let immigrants in and then they bite us. And that would always be accompanied with a kind of litany of martyrs. He would name these individuals, usually white individuals who had been killed by undocumented people of color and a fair number of people in the crowd knew those names. Although I think we talk about it later, I think the age of martyrs really came post January 6th. <\/p>\n
But then the bullet, the bullet is just an astonishing piece of work. Hes talking about the Muslims and they chop off heads and hes imitating chopping off the heads and hes imitating putting people in cages and lighting them on fire. But hes got a solution, General Black Jack Pershing in the Philippines in the 19th century. <\/p>\n
Now, the history here is its not history. This didnt happen, but what he says happened, and he acts it out, he plays it out is that he had 50 Muslim rebels, prisoners of war. And he takes 50 bullets and he dips them in blood and Trump mimes it out, swishing it around in pig blood, pig blood. Theyre going to shoot the Muslims with pig blood soaked bullets and then he shoots 49 of the prisoners kills them. Trump acts it out. The crowd is cheering. Theyre ecstatic. And its not righteous violence. Its ecstatic lustful violence. Its pleasure. <\/p>\n
And you say, Caters to the emotional needs. I think thats one of the really key things is he works across a lot of emotions that politicians dont normally address. He leads one bullet and he gives it to the last prisoner and he says, Take that back to your people and tell them that thats what Ill do. <\/p>\n
And this was a whole performance and the crowd would like it so much. Hed say, You want to hear it again? And theyd say, Yes, and he would perform it again. And the press meanwhile would be sitting there saying, Well, lets see, did he say anything about policy or did he indicate anything about appointments and so on, because theyre dismissing all that as just theater. Thats not just theater. That is the substance of Trumpism. <\/p>\n
Chris Hedges: <\/p>\n
I want to ask about martyrs. You write quite a bit. In fact, you go kind of in search of the history of Babbitt, who was killed on January 6th. Talk a little bit about Elias Canetti in Crowds and Power, writes about the importance of martyrs to a new movement like Hassell was to the Nazi party. <\/p>\n
And you were writing about how they reinvented her, particularly I think she was in her 30s, but then her age keeps dropping I think until shes 16. But that also Canetti said that these martyrs, its a fictional narrative. They have to be the most innocent, the most pure, and that these movements need that these martyrs to essentially initiate their followers into these campaigns of violence. Talk about that and then I want to begin to talk about Christian fascism. <\/p>\n
Jeff Sharlet: <\/p>\n
Yeah, I think thats well put. I think if we understand Trumpism theologically, we can see the first campaign as the prosperity gospel, the second as the gnostic gospel. And what were in now, and I would argue since January 6th, were in the age of martyrs. And thats a big step as you said, for initiating people into that kind of violence. <\/p>\n
I think Trump had been trying to cultivate that beforehand, but none of these victims of undocumented people were just well known enough to work. And then on January 6th, Ashli Babbitt, this 30 something year old white woman, blonde hair, southern California, military veteran wearing a Trump flag like a cape and an American flag backpack tries to lead a charge through a broken window. And they would famously say she was unarmed, she was not. Theres the evidence photo of her knife on my cover of the book. She was very clearly there for combat and her own writing and what she understood she was going to do to storm the capitol. <\/p>\n
And we see the hands of a police officer, a Capitol Hill police officer shooter. And theyre the hands of a Black man. And as soon as I saw that, I said, Well, thats one of the oldest stories in American history. Thats the lynching story. A Black man who kills an innocent white woman. Thats the story of Birth of a Nation, first movie ever screened in the White House, 1915, white woman fleeing a Black man who leaps to her death. And thus, the heroes who in the movie literally are the Ku Klux Klan, who ride in to action. <\/p>\n
And so, it starts happening that day and Id had one idea for the book, but on January 6th I sort of had to throw out a lot of stuff and make room because I said, Im going to watch this martyr to myth in form and in action and we start to see flags, the Black flag, a white silhouette of Ashli, a drop of red on her neck where the white woman has been killed. Actually, she was shot in the shoulder. Proud boys give these out as challenge coins. Who shot Ashli Babbitt? Trump finally starts using, even though he knows. He knew who shot Ashli Babbitt, but the idea was everyone who is his enemy shot Ashli Babbitt. And so, she becomes a martyr. <\/p>\n
And I like what you say very much about initiating into violence. Now, I think of one man who was arrested. I think his name is Garret Miller. And hes kind of a comic story when the FBI show up at his house, hes wearing a T-shirt that has a picture of the capitol on January. It says, January 6th, I was there. And it just seems like a doofus. But what they were arresting him for was he had been planning online a vengeance killing for Ashli, who he imagined as a little girl. And they always sort of, not only would they say she was younger than she was, theyd say she was smaller than she was. <\/p>\n
The same time, she did double duty because she was a military veteran. So, shes therefore the stabbed in the back, which is an old fascist ploy, too. They were stabbed in the back. We would righteously win. But traitors in our midst, a cop mowed her down. I dont think shes the end stage martyr of Trump. I think theres a way in which you can understand her and him understanding her as keeping the cross warm until he can hoist himself up there, which he now has, which is what we saw on display in the courtroom. <\/p>\n
Chris Hedges: <\/p>\n
Well, he hasnt done it. Weve done it for him. <\/p>\n
Jeff Sharlet: <\/p>\n
Thats true. Thats true. He knew we would do it. Yeah. <\/p>\n
Chris Hedges: <\/p>\n
Its a terrible conundrum because he should have been charged for all sorts of crimes probably from the first day of his presidency under the emolument clause. But as you point out, it plays completely into his own martyrdom or his own sense of martyrdom and the sense of martyrdom of his supporters. So, we watch now in the trial in New York, its just a big campaign event. <\/p>\n
Jeff Sharlet: <\/p>\n
Yeah, I think, was it the eve of which of the indictments? I cant remember. Its now become so regular. Once you go to a Trump rally, its a little bit like Hotel California. You can never leave. You can never get off the email list, the text list. You can cancel as much as you want. Theyll keep coming five, 10 a day. <\/p>\n
But the eve of the first or second indictment, he sends this fundraising email and says, Dear friend, this may be the last time Im able to write to you. And its got this air of, Its a noble thing I do, and I couldnt help but think of Some listeners will remember from their high school reading a Tale of Two Cities and Sydney Carton bravely going off to [inaudible 00:23:58]. Its a Christ move, right? He emphasizes that, right? Im the only thing standing between them and you. Theyre doing this to me because theyre coming after you. I mean, yeah, he got a slow pitch and he knew how to hit it. <\/p>\n
Chris Hedges: <\/p>\n
I want to talk about fascism. I think both you and I feel that thats an appropriate word to describe this movement. Trump has embraced what I would call the fascistic ideology of the Christian nationalists or the Christian right. But of course, its face doesnt look like past iterations of fascism. Fascism always cloaks itself in national symbols, of venerated national symbols and venerated national mythology. <\/p>\n
And one of the things that, and you point this out in the book, Im just going to read a little passage, because of course it cant embrace the race purity that was very much part of particularly of German fascism. You write, The purification project of the old fascism has also been proved too extreme to be practical for a nation in which the rightest ascendancy can contend for the loyalty of a third of Latinx voters. This time, white supremacy welcomes all. Or, at least, a sufficient veneer of all to reassure its more timid adherents that border walls and Muslim bans and kung flu and Black crime and replacement theory somehow do not add up to the dreaded r-word, which anyway these days, in the new authoritarian imagination, only happens in reverse, against white people. <\/p>\n
So, lets begin to talk about what this new fascism looks like. I certainly saw its genesis within Christian fascism, the Christian right, but the full-blown flower of fascism in Trump does have differences with the traditional Christian right. You know the Christian right very well. And your book, The Family is a great work on it. So, Ill let you go from there. <\/p>\n
Jeff Sharlet: <\/p>\n
Well, first, I want to give you credit for that early book, American Fascist. And around the same time I was writing The Family, theres actually a chapter in the family called the F word. The F word is fascism. Im writing about this. The Family is this kind of very elite Christian nationalist group based in Washington but international and they hold something called the National Prayer Breakfast. On the surface, theyre quite banal. Within, theyre quite extreme. <\/p>\n
And in the post World War II years, they actually went around and recruited former Nazi war criminals, senior war criminals. So, thats about as close to fascism as you can get. But what they would say to those guys is essentially, you have to switch out your loyalty to the frere and give it over to the father. And I argue then, and I was wrong, and I write this in the new book, I was wrong to argue against the word fascism. I wasnt saying its not as bad. I said, theres more than one kind of baton in the sun. <\/p>\n
But I said fundamentalism I thought then was a kind of break on fascism because in American Christian right, Christian national and whatever you want to call it, they werent ever going to go for that cult of personality. They wouldnt switch out Jesus. And I think you rightly argued, no, the cult of personality was there and every significant church around the pastor that they adopted that kind of power and Trumps move was to consolidate it nationally. <\/p>\n
And to strip away some of the respectability politics that still lingered around it. The idea of American political life has always been noble, but now we have the open celebration of violence. You go to a Trump rally in 16 or 20 or now, and as you say, theres that moment where he points to the press and the pen and he says, Theyre the enemy of the people. Theyre scum. And the whole crowd turns around and they fly bulk birds in the air and theyre screaming and theyre having this pleasure thinking about the violence theyre going to commit. <\/p>\n
Very first Trump rally I went to, one of the very first people I met there, nice old sort of hippie grandparent couple, a lot of turquoise jewelry and nice people and theyre talking. And then Gene, the husband says, I want to get a hold of a protester and beat the crap out of him so I can get on TV. <\/p>\n
And his wife looks at him as if I think shes going to rebuke him, this is too much. She says, Oh, Gene. And she sort of melts into him and then she leans over to me and uses language I dont think she used often like this. Shes whispering because she knew she was being naughty and smiling and she was speaking about Hillary Clinton and she says, Dont she look like shed been rode hard and put up wet. <\/p>\n
And that combination, I think of it as theres a great German historian of the right, Annika Brockschmidt. We did a discussion about this, about militant eroticism. This idea of violence as a kind of sexual pleasure, a kind of lust, a kind of authenticity and truth. You know you want to do it. You know you want to hit them. <\/p>\n
Trump says, Wait. One of the things he says, You know you want to hit him and I want you to hit them. Itll feel good. I think this changes things. I think, too, its worth talking about. I know youve thought a lot about this, that fascism in 2023 is not fascism in 1936. America is not Germany and that was a regime. This is still right now a movement. It doesnt have anywhere near full control, but its mutating and its changing rapidly, and thats one of the things. <\/p>\n
Another historian Id refer people to is Anthea Butler, great short book called White Evangelical Racism. Shes a church historian. And she writes about the promise of whiteness and the promise of the whiteness and the way it can seduce even Black folks into thinking, I can be part of this power. <\/p>\n
And every time I go to some far right event, whether its a Trump rally or a militia meeting, I come back and my nice liberal friends. They just assumed that it was all white and it never is. And I try and tell them. Theres a church, a militia church in Omaha, Nebraska in the book, more diverse than any church around here where I live in Vermont, about a third people of color and a full on civil war church. <\/p>\n
They look forward to civil war. They are armed. They are ready. Bring it on. They are fairly openly white supremacists. They preach relentlessly against Black Lives Matter as a metaphor for Blackness itself. And yet, theyve drawn in. Fascism has gravity. Fascism has power. And if we recognize it as such, it shouldnt be that surprising to us that this iteration in America in 2023 is not quite the same racial purity project as happened in Germany 1933. <\/p>\n
Chris Hedges: <\/p>\n
I think you made the point that its defined more by feelings or the embrace of what they describe as white victimization. So, as long as you embrace that, it doesnt matter what color you are. <\/p>\n
Jeff Sharlet: <\/p>\n
Yeah. And in fact, actually in the martyr role that Trump uses of people killed by undocumented folks, he often talks about a young, very promising Black football player. And in a sense, bringing this guy in under the umbrella of whiteness. But this is the same guy whos telling a story. He likes to tell a story of this is sort of the twisted rape fantasy that I spoke of. <\/p>\n
Imagine youre a traveling salesman, he says. And youre thinking, Traveling salesman? Is there such a thing who goes around knocking on doors selling Bibles anymore. But imagine youre traveling salesman in your way and your pretty blonde wife is at home asleep and a bad ombre comes up and he opens a window and he crawls in. <\/p>\n
And the crowd is just, theyre thrilling to it the way you do to a horror movie, but its charged with a perverse sexuality, which is the rape of the white woman, which is a fantasy being twisted into the mind, I think, of white supremacy, and yet hes making that available to a broader sense. <\/p>\n
Im not going to go out there and argue the absurd that Trump is ever going to win any significant or hes going to win a significant number of Black votes. Hes not going to win the majority. He doesnt need to. And I feel a lot of liberals are leaning on this idea that diversity will save us. And Ive been hearing that as long as Ive been hearing that the young will save us. Ive been hearing that since I was young, 30 some years ago. <\/p>\n
Theres this sort of passivity. Were waiting for Godot to come and solve the situation as opposed to embracing a radical politics of organizing and real vital democracy that we have to do ourselves. Every one of us. <\/p>\n
Chris Hedges: <\/p>\n
I just want to throw in there that of course, especially in the south, all through slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow, the women who were raped were Black. Mary Chesnut in her diary, even writes about visiting plantations where there were some two dozen mulatto children because of course the chief slaveholder was raping the Black women. I mean, that gets into the paranoid style of American politics. <\/p>\n
Lets talk about civil war. Ive covered civil wars. I think in some ways from my perspective, its even more frightening. Its less a civil war because its not like Weimar Germany where you had armed communist militias battling brown shirts in the streets. Its more the uninterrupted rise of heavily armed fascist, proto-fascists, Trump supporters with small arsenals in their homes and those who dont have any violent counterpart. <\/p>\n
Jeff Sharlet: <\/p>\n
Yeah. Youve covered civil wars. I accidentally, as a younger person, stumbled through one in Algeria. And I know that this is not that. And I am aware of the risk of hyperbole using this phrase I use in my subtitle, Scenes from a Slow Civil War. A slow civil war, and its my way of thinking about it. <\/p>\n
In 2021, what I started noticing was academic historians who are very cautious, rightly so. They understand the history moves slowly. Im married to an academic historian. I understand this and I think its the right way. Starting to say, Oh, some of the conditions of an actual civil war here. And that language had always been there mostly on the fringe of the right, but now, it was moving as a rhetorical ploy more centrally. And I started thinking about the ways, how could we understand slow civil war as a kind of an institutionalization of violence. <\/p>\n
I think the laws, for instance, I write about this in the book. I was in Wisconsin when Roe fell, which became the only blue state in which abortion was completely outlawed. It reverted to 1849 law. And you would hear these stories in the press of a woman who nearly bled out or bled out or something else went horrible happened because she couldnt get access to reproductive care. And as journalists, we know for every story like that we hear, theres a lot that dont go reported. <\/p>\n
And I said, theres a way in which more harm now is being done than all the abortion clinic bombers. Its very easy to see an abortion clinic bomber. And there was a lot more of that than people realize as a kind of at least a desire to spark civil war. And yet here it is. And I thought of the ways that you have these armed militias, these groups of men who line up outside school libraries and churches and bars having drag shows and so on. <\/p>\n
And theres been a few shots fired, not many. And so, people can say, Well, come on now. Nothings really happening. And Im like, Well, this is like were striking matches and flicking them into dry grass and so far, the flames havent caught and so we think everythings fine. How many times can you line up a group of men with guns. <\/p>\n
To what you say though about there not being this counterforce like in Weimar, Germany. I mean, there is a scene in the book where in Sacramento had a rally for Ashli Babbitt. Antifa and Proud Boys show up to battle and they kind of all know each other and its a kind of a ridiculous fight, although I wouldnt have wanted to have one of those blows land on me. <\/p>\n
But Im a nonviolent person, but Im also an all hands on deck person. I think anyone who says, Heres how we beat fascism, we dont know yet because we havent done it. We havent done it yet. So, Im like, Wherever you feel called, do that. That said, I do hear on the left this idea of the John Brown Gun Club and these right-wingers think theyre the only ones with guns. Im a gun owner myself. Theres 400 million guns in civilian hands in the United States, and all you need to do is drive it outside your blue bubble to understand very quickly the disparity of those guns. <\/p>\n
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The rest is here:<\/p>\n
Is the US turning into a Christofascist state? - The Real News Network<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jeff Sharlet has spent two decades covering the intersection of extreme Christian nationalism and the far-right. Continue reading