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There is a “real and very, very present” threat to the US from a shadowy collection of rightwing leaders, a new book on the movement behind Donald Trump warns, with the aim being “an end to pluralistic democracy”.
Katherine Stewart, a journalist who specializes in the religious right, spent years researching the money and influence that has aided and encouraged tens of millions of Americans in their worship at the throne of Trump.
The result is Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, which sees Stewart explore the “antidemocratic movement” – an unholy mix of Christian nationalists, billionaire oligarchs and conservative ideologues who have seized control of the Republican party, and aim to fundamentally change the US.
“Money is a huge part of the story, meaning that huge concentrations of wealth have destabilized the political system. Second, lies, or conscious disinformation, is a huge feature of this movement. And third God, because the most important ideological framework for the largest part of this movement is Christian nationalism,” Stewart said.
In the book, Stewart details how Republicans have been held hostage by the antidemocratic movement, something that “came together long before Donald Trump descended on a golden escalator in 2015 to announce his candidacy for president”.
Stewart – whose previous two books, The Good News Club and The Power Worshippers, focused on the impact of the Christian right and religious nationalism in the US – spent years traveling to an array of rightwing conferences, from Christian nationalist events to ”Make America great again” fests and sober thinktank talks, and found many similarities. The eclectic groups may not seem to have much in common, but their aim is the same: bringing an end to democracy in the US as we know it. Their method of achieving that is the same too.
“The overwhelming message, from speaker after speaker, was that ‘Trump needs to be allowed to enact his agenda, and you need to get behind him,’” Stewart said.
Though there is an intriguing collection of individuals and organizations in the movement, Stewart categorizes its members as Christian nationalists – who believe, wrongly, that America was founded as a Christian nation and must be governed as such – and the super-rich, who are seeking to secure their own wealth at the expense of others.
“Much of the energy of the movement, too, comes from below, from the anger and resentment that characterizes life among those who perceive, more or less accurately, that they are falling behind,” Stewart writes.
“The best label I can find for the phenomenon – and I do not pretend it is a fully satisfactory label – is ‘reactionary nihilism’. It is reactionary in the sense that it expresses itself as mortal opposition to a perceived catastrophic change in the political order; it is nihilistic because its deepest premise is that the actual world is devoid of value, impervious to reason, and governable only through brutal acts of will. It stands for a kind of unraveling of the American political mind – a madness that now afflicts one side of nearly every political debate.”
Stewart tells the story of how American Christians rallied in response to a plan by Catholic bishops in 1986 to call on their flock to support “economic justice for all”. The bishops’ sentiment was “a challenge to President Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economic ideology”, Stewart writes – and sent Christian capitalists scrambling.
Over the next few decades, ultra-wealthy Christian donors spent millions promoting a different vision of the gospel, one which Stewart writes “promote[s] the capitalist institutions of property, markets, and free enterprise”.
Among the leaders of that movement were Thomas Monaghan, the founder of Domino’s Pizza who in 2002 attempted to build a 250ft-tall crucifix in Michigan, banker Frank Hanna, hedge fund manager Sean Fieler and Timothy Busch, who in donating to the Catholic University of America in 2015 announced that he was “proud to donate to CUA’s vision for an educational program that shows how capitalism and Catholicism can work hand in hand”. Together, they and others have pledged fortunes toward Republican candidates and causes, and established thinktanks and organizations designed to push pro-capitalist, antidemocratic causes – in a way Stewart said Democrats have yet to counter.
“I’m always impressed by how well-organized and strategic this movement is,” Stewart said, noting that it offers “young people and newcomers” a “sustainable career path and incentive to create their futures, secure their futures within the movement”.
Stewart continued, pointing out that “there are pro-democracy thinktanks and institutions and the like, but they tend to center on policy and issues: pro-democracy forces don’t seem to identify and mentor young talent in the same way, they don’t organize and collaborate in the same way.
“They don’t operate with the same coordination of the right, they don’t think strategically about messaging, and about voter engagement and winning over the rank and file.”
Stewart documents some of the troubling ways that organizations, supported by those wealthy backers, have spent their energy – including how they have pushed people to vote. She reports on Chad Connelly, the founder of Faith Wins, an initiative which seeks to turn pastors and churchgoers into political activists.
“The Faith Wins website encourages event attendees to help lead voter registration in their churches with the help of a ‘pastors tool kit’, become poll watchers, and assist ‘with voter integrity efforts’ and other actions,” Stewart writes.
“Pastors are given a QR code, along with an online form, which leads to a suite of tools and messaging materials, including voter guides, voter registration resources, and videos they can use to activate their congregations.”
A central issue for Connelly and Faith Wins is election integrity, which he expounds upon repeatedly in his TV appearances. This is one of the central themes that unites the diverse groups in the antidemocratic movement: Stewart writes that the State Policy Network of libertarian thinktanks and the Virginia Project – a pugnacious get-out-the-vote Republican organization which aims to “eliminate the Democrat party” – may not share the Christian nationalist theology of Faith Wins, but they have the same focus.
“The point, of course, is to convey the frightening but entirely unsubstantiated belief that vast plots are afoot to steal Republican votes,” Stewart writes.
It might seem like a gloomy situation, and a grim future for the US. But Stewart insists the situation is not hopeless.
“We don’t have to crawl into bed and take it. They organized and strategized their way into power, and we need to organize and strategize back,” she said.
Indeed, Stewart ends the book on an optimistic note, listing “six principal findings reported in this book … which should be of interest to a pro-democracy movement”.
“There’s no magic bullet. It’ll take time and effort. But if there is a will for it to be done, I think it can be done,” she said.
“There’s no feature as of yet in the American political system that would ensure that the Maga movement is going to rule indefinitely. And frankly, I take heart from the fact that those of us who believe in democracy and its core principles probably represent a majority and not a minority of the population. I continue to believe more Americans support a democratic political system over some sort of cronyistic, kleptocratic and theocratic system that has authoritarian features.”
