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.