Culture

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘It happens again and again’: why Americans are obsessed with secret societies

      by

      US congressional hearings can be dry affairs but not of late. First there was Robert Kennedy Jr, purveyor of disinformation about vaccines and much else, testifying about big tech censorship. Then David Grusch, a former intelligence officer, claiming that the government knows more than it admits about UFOs: “Non-human biologics had been recovered at crash sites.”The fact that both captured the public imagination is not so surprising. In a new book, Under the Eye of Power, cultural historian Colin Dickey argues that our hunger for conspiracy theories is less fringe and more mainstream than we like to admit. Fearmongering about secret groups pulling levers of power behind the scenes, “conspiring to pervert the will of the people and the rule of law”, is older than America itself.From the 1692 Salem witch trials to the American Revolution (thought by some to be a conspiracy organised by the French), from the satanic panic to the Illuminati and QAnon, it has been tempting to dismiss conspiracy theories as an aberration, resonating with a small and marginal segment of the population. But Dickey, 45, came to understand them as hardwired into how many people process democracy.He says via Zoom from a book-lined room in Brooklyn, New York: “When I was a child I was taught that the Salem witch trials and McCarthy hearings – which I think were taught primarily because Arthur Miller’s The Crucible yokes these two instances together – were the outliers, the standouts in American history when things just got out of hand but we’re mostly very sane and rational, the rest of the justice system works and you don’t have to worry too much.“But what I found is that those in fact aren’t outliers. I began to see a pattern emerge whereby there’s almost a template for fears of secret societies, of this invisible, undetectable group that is nonetheless doing terrible things behind the scenes.“It happens again and again; the names change. Sometimes it’s the Catholics, sometimes it’s the Jews, sometimes it’s the satanists, sometimes it’s the socialists or the anarchists. But it recurs with enough frequency that I began to see it as something that gets deployed almost on cue when certain moments arise in American history.”An early example was Freemasonry, the leading fraternal organisation of the 18th century with members including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Otis and Paul Revere. What began as a teacher of moral, intellectual and spiritual values came to be regarded with hostility and suspicion.Dickey explains: “Freemasonry went from being a positive social philanthropic fraternal organisation that people like Ben Franklin and Washington were proud to be associated with to increasingly being seen as this parallel shadow government that had infiltrated the country and that people were less and less sanguine about having in their midst. They began to fear this idea of a secret society that didn’t seem beholden to the democratic lawmakers of the country.”The author also sheds light on attacks on Catholics in the 19th century, driven by a prejudice among Protestants that they were beholden only to a foreign pope and could not act as fully enlightened American citizens.“Outside Boston, a convent in 1834 was burned to the ground by people who assumed that the priests were using the confessional as some sort of half blackmail, half mind control device to imprison and sexually enslave women against their will, that there were babies being produced that were then being murdered and buried in the catacombs beneath the ground,” he says.“It’s basically very structurally similar to the contemporary conspiracy theory around Pizzagate or the movie that just came out, Sound of Freedom [popular with QAnon followers]. This idea of the cabal of sexual abusers, which was being used against Catholics in the 1830s, with just a few of the key details changed but more or less the same narrative.”But something important did shift in the 20th century. Until then most conspiracy theories posited foreign infiltrators trying to harm the American government. If you believed that the US has perfected democracy, it was easier to blame outside saboteurs for anything that went wrong.“After world war two and the sixties, that gradually but irrevocably changes to the point where now most Americans take it on an article of faith that the government is out to do them harm on some level or another. Conspiracy theories are often marshalled around this idea that people in the government know more and what’s happening here is the result of government actors,” Dickey says.“You see that with 9/11 conspiracy theories and you see it with the JFK assassination. The idea that the head of state was assassinated and yet, for a large part of the population, the only explanation was that the government itself in some form or another was responsible for this is representative of that sea change.”There is no doubt that the internet is an important part of the story. Human rights groups blamed anti-Rohingya propaganda on Facebook for inciting a genocide in Myanmar. But the author resists any attempt to shift moral responsibility to social media. It exacerbates some of our latent tendencies, he argues, but those tendencies are there no matter what.Dickey sees in QAnon both classic strains of conspiracy theory and some new mutations. “There’s this idea of the government insider who is leaking secret information, which we’ve had historically with something like Watergate and Deep Throat, but also the figure who claims that he has been shown classified information and is sharing them is something you hear in UFO conspiracies time and time again. So that felt very classical.“What does seem new is that QAnon is this weird hybrid of a very dangerous, quite racist and homo- and transphobic conspiracy theory mixed with an online multilevel marketing scheme and also a community forum for puzzle solvers,” he says.“It is a real blend and synthesis of a bunch of different things that all appeal to slightly different personalities. It’s spread a little wider because it’s able to bring in people who might be otherwise disparate and unconnected and yokes them all under this banner by being vague and nebulous and not attached to too many specific beliefs or practices.”Then there is the “great replacement” theory, pushed by rightwing figures such as Tucker Carlson, which describes a supposed elite conspiracy to change the demographics of the US by replacing white people with people of colour, immigrants and Muslims. Dickey notes that such conspiracy theories tend to flare up most predictably when there is significant demographic change or previously marginalised groups push for visibility and equality.“Both with the increased visibility of the LGBTQ community and trans men and women demanding rights and equality, alongside the racial and ethnic identity of America changing, as it always has, these things are combining to create a terror among some people who see this change as too rapid, too inexplicable, too destabilising. Rather than admit that America is constantly in flux, they are seizing upon the idea that this is in fact an artificial change brought about by secret elites who are working behind the scenes to undermine what ‘America’ actually is.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe phrase “conspiracy theory” was coined by philosopher Karl Popper. In his 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies, he discusses the “conspiracy theory of society”: the idea that major events are the “result of direct design by some powerful individuals and groups”.Dickey explains: “The conspiracy theory of society happens when you get rid of God and ask what’s in his place. What I found in writing the book and thinking through my other research in conspiracy theories is what they do is offer an explanatory mechanism for chaos and disorder and randomness, almost to the point of a quasi-theological explanation.“Anything that is happening today can be, if you so choose, understood to be part of the incredibly byzantine and hidden plan of the Illuminati that may seem confusing to us on the surface but you can trust as an article of faith that is part of their grand plan. They are both omniscient and omnipotent (unlike God they’re not benevolent) but they are working behind the scenes and that explains the world.“Even though that’s a malicious and terrible view of the world, for a segment of the population that is more reassuring than a world of pure chaos and disorder. People will cling to this idea that, yes, well, at least we know that this is part of this malevolent world order, even if it’s evil and out to get us.”What makes an enduring conspiracy theory? One element is that they start with a kernel of truth and grounds for doubt. Dickey acknowledges that scepticism is healthy and the impulse that leads to a conspiracy theory is a fine one. Citizens are not obliged to accept everything they are told at face value.He says: “Almost any conspiracy theory starts with a legitimate question that I would agree: yeah, let’s look into that, let’s see what we can find. It’s the refusal to accept evidence when the evidence doesn’t pan out in the way that you want it to that leads to problems because then what you have to do is construct an increasingly elaborate conspiratorial framework to explain why you’re not finding the evidence you were hoping for. That’s where you get completely lost in the weeds.”From MMR to Covid-19, vaccines have been a prime example of how initially reasonable concerns over possible side-effects can career into an insidious irrationality.“I understand that people might be hesitant and have questions, and yet from a legitimate curiosity or understandable hesitation people then spin out to wildly improbable, indefensible and dangerous conspiracy theories. Time and time again the most virulent conspiracy theories often have some kernel of truth which is then being spun in dramatic and horrible directions,” Dickey says.Secondly, there is humans’ notoriously short attention span. Dickey writes that conspiracy theories feed on historical amnesia and depend on the belief that what is happening now has never happened before. Many people have therefore been taken aback by former president Donald Trump’s “big lie” of a stolen election and by QAnon, whose followers perceive Democrats are a cabal of Satan worshippers and sex traffickers.Dickey says: “A lot of Americans were sort of, ‘Well, how could people possibly believe this nonsense? No one has ever thought something this absurd.’ As a result a lot of us were caught flat-footed and didn’t take these things seriously, didn’t respond fast enough until things were already out of control.“What I wanted to do with this book is to lay out that this is almost like a playbook that gets run and that one step to defeating it is being aware that it’s used like this. When the next one comes along – because there will be a next one – maybe we’ll be able to get out ahead of it a little bit faster.”Yet acolytes of Trump and QAnon seem impervious to reason. Facts and evidence that contradict their view are attributed to the conspiracy and seen as cause to dig in heels further. Dickey hopes readers of his book will come away with a better understanding of what causes normal, rational and educated people to embrace certain conspiracy theories – and start to think about what they can do to push back on them.“What almost never works is barking facts and truth at them because people subscribe to these things because they fulfil an existential or emotional need,” he says. “If I was given the keys to the kingdom and asked what to do about it, I would want to start with addressing people’s emotional concerns there.“What is the underlying existential conflict, the cognitive dissonance? What is the thing that is freaking them out, that is leading them to be susceptible to conspiracy theories, and what can we do as a culture and as a nation to address those existential concerns? You don’t debunk the theories unless you first lay the groundwork for an off-ramp for whatever that emotional need is that led them to embrace the theory in the first place.”
      Under the Eye of Power is out now More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Hamilton: The Energetic Founder review: a fast and satisfying read

      by

      If you never read Ron Chernow’s monumental (818-page) biography of Alexander Hamilton, or if you just want to check the facts behind the smash hit musical inspired by Chernow’s work, this slender new volume is just the book for you.Written by the lawyer and law professor RJ Bernstein, who died this year at the age of 67, Hamilton: The Energetic Founder reaches the same conclusion Chernow did two decades ago when he wrote, “If Washington is the father of the country and Madison the father of the constitution, then Alexander Hamilton was surely the father of the American government.” Bernstein, however, only requires 107 pages before the notes to convey Hamilton’s vital role in the creation of our body politic.Hamilton was born on 11 January, sometime between 1753 and 1758 – no one is certain. He was born on Nevis, the illegitimate son of a French Huguenot mother and James Hamilton, fourth son of Alexander Hamilton, Lord of the Grange in Ayrshire.He had a wretched childhood. After his mother died, he was sent to live with one of her cousins, Robert Lytton, but that only lasted until Lytton hanged himself. Alexander’s fortunes improved after attending a Hebrew school in Charlestown. In his teens he became clerk to a successful merchant. The next stage of his life was determined by an act of god. In 1772, a hurricane destroyed St Croix. Hamilton wrote about the disaster and its religious significance in a letter to the Royal Danish American Gazette. The distinctive prose style which would make him such an influential and successful adult caught the attention of a Presbyterian minister, who took up a collection to pay for Hamilton’s education on the American mainland.After “polishing his Greek and Latin” at an academy in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, Hamilton applied to the College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton. Turned down, he ended up in New York at what would become Columbia, then called King’s College. Like millions of Ivy League undergraduates who followed in his footsteps, his college years gave him vital connections in New York City including two “lifelong friends … Robert Troup, his college roommate, and John Jay.Bernstein argues there was something even more important about Hamilton’s truncated undergraduate career: it gave him “an American point of view, rather than a perspective attached to a particular colony such as New York”.After the Revolutionary war forced the closing of King’s, Hamilton used the rest of his college money to start his own artillery brigade. Distinguishing himself at the battles of Trenton and Princeton, he caught the attention of George Washington, who made him his principal aide de camp.From 1780 onwards, Hamilton had one abiding obsession: “Giving the United States the government that a new, independent nation needed and deserved.” Even before the original articles of Confederation were adopted, Hamilton recognized their inadequacies. He soon became one of the most forceful advocates for a much stronger constitution. He, Jay and James Madison wrote a twice-weekly column called The Federalist for New York City newspapers, under the pseudonym Publius. Together they produced 88 essays, but Hamilton wrote 51. Their greatest influence actually came after the constitution was adopted, in 1788.Hamilton’s role in the uphill battle to get New York to ratify the constitution animates one of many exciting sections in Bernstein’s brisk and rigorous book. When Hamilton became a leader of the pro-constitution forces, he was “one of only 19 pro-convention delegates”, facing 46 opponents. But “grim determination and mastery of the arts of constitutional and political argument” was enough to reverse those numbers, especially after “express riders” paid for by Hamilton arrived at the New York convention, in Poughkeepsie, with news that New Hampshire and Virginia had ratified. Since one more state than needed had now approved the new document, New Yorkers faced a new choice: “They could vote to join the Union … or they could vote to leave the Union by rejecting” the constitution. The Federalists prevailed, 30-27.Hamilton’s long association with Washington led to his most important appointment, as the first secretary of the treasury, and then to his most important victory: the creation by Congress of the Bank of the United States, over fierce opposition from Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton followed the creation of the bank with a report to Congress “on the subject of manufactures”, urging the country to take manufacturing as seriously as agriculture. Congress refused to adopt his recommendations.More than two centuries later, though, Joe Biden’s greatest legislative achievements, the Build Back Better and Inflation Reduction acts, are both full of echoes of Hamilton’s ideas, including “subsidizing key industries”, “awarding prizes for new developments in technology”, “building a system of roads and canals” and “encouraging inventions by paying bounties”.Hamilton would not live long enough to see his ideas about a powerful constitution enshrined. And this book suggests that the depression he felt after his son died a in a duel contributed to Hamilton’s own behavior when Aaron Burr demanded that he meet him at dawn for a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey.In a farewell letter to his wife, Hamilton revealed that he planned to fire his gun into the air. That was what he did after Burr fired the fatal shot into Hamilton’s liver – suggesting the final act of Hamilton’s life was something not far from suicide.
      Hamilton: The Energetic Founder is published in the US by Oxford University Press More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Criminal liability for librarians’: the fight against US rightwing book bans

      by

      In the classic comedy Blackadder, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger demanded “tougher sentences for geography teachers”. So much for satire. In the real world, US Republican politicians are now seeking “criminal liability for librarians”.To Skye Perryman, president and chief executive of the nonprofit Democracy Forward, as absurd as rightwing book bans can seem (a Florida claim that the Arthur books can “damage the souls” of children a particularly florid example), this is no laughing matter at all.She says: “In Arkansas, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a bill into law that would have done a number of things, including creating the potential of criminal liability for librarians.”The law, Act 372, would make it a misdemeanor offense, punishable by up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $2,500, for librarians and booksellers to furnish minors with materials deemed “harmful” by authorities. The law also provides for challenges to materials in public libraries.Last Saturday, two days before the bill was to become law, a federal judge blocked it, as a violation of free speech rights under the first amendment to the US constitution.The judge, Timothy L Brooks, quoted Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel: “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.” Feelings are running high.Arkansas is set to appeal. It will face organised opposition. Democracy Forward is part of a broad coalition including the Arkansas Library Association, the Central Arkansas Library System, community bookstores, the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild, the state branch of the American Civil Liberties Union and individual library users.For Perryman, such work is only beginning.“What we know is that laws like the one in Arkansas are part of a national effort from anti-democratic forces, movements and people that do not represent the vast majority of the American people, or even the vast majority of people in states like Arkansas, that are seeking to sow culture wars in order to undermine democracy.“In Arkansas, we blocked that law with a broad coalition of booksellers, librarians and community members, and I think that’s really important in terms of understanding what’s happening in these communities. We are seeing people who do not typically go to court, who do not typically resort to the legal process, really mobilising.”Attempted book bans in libraries and public schools have proliferated in Republican states, complaints made on grounds of history, race, gender, LGBTQ+ rights and more. Attempts to ban titles by high-profile authors (Maya Angelou, Amanda Gorman, Art Spiegelman) have attracted national headlines. The phenomenon has perhaps been most visible in Florida, under a governor, Ron DeSantis, running for the Republican presidential nomination, and with “grass roots” groups such as Moms for Liberty sprouting and shouting loud.Perryman points to sources of fertiliser for such rapid growth.“We have seen a real effort on the part of anti-democratic and far-right actors like Sarah Huckabee Sanders, like Ron DeSantis in Florida, like [Governor] Greg Abbott in Texas, like legislatures that have developed this [policy]. We have seen a real effort from those sort of lawmakers to develop strategies that are responsive to a very vocal but small minority of people.“The far right has been strategic about trying to organize groups such as Moms for Liberty, formed to provide an appearance that there is an organic movement sprouting across the country, that people are really concerned about children being able to access books, about freedom of expression and what’s being taught in schools.“And what we see time and again is that those voices do not represent a majority of people, and that they are part of a network that is coordinated to try to create issues, in order to be able to roll back progress and roll back our basic freedoms, including the freedom to read and the ability of communities to thrive.“In order to combat that, we have to understand what we’re up against. And so what we have done at Democracy Forward is not only work with on-the-ground communities seeking resources to fight back, who need legal representation … but also to really look and monitor what is happening at the local and state levels throughout the country. And who is behind those efforts.”Democracy Forward was founded after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, by “a dedicated and spirited group” who wanted to take the fight back to the right. Before her current role, Perryman was chief legal officer and general counsel of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, working to “enhance access and equity in healthcare”.She now links book bans to assaults on other civil liberties including access to abortion, a right three Trump appointees to the US supreme court helped remove last year.“If you would have lived a few years ago in the United States, what you would see was laws popping up around the country where there were criminal penalties for doctors for doing their job.“Rightwing actors that were highly coordinated and resourced pushed the law further and further, in order to be able to play in friendly jurisdictions and ultimately they did what they sought to achieve, which was to overturn a constitutional right to access reproductive healthcare through abortion.”Now, Perryman says, “in the censorship space, it is very important to understand that this is a similar playbook.“When you have political movements that do not represent the majority of people … you have to assume that their desire is to fundamentally alter our democracy and to fundamentally alter our first amendment, our ability to express ourselves, the ability of children to be able to get good education and ideas and materials.“And so we take this very seriously, because this is a movement in this country that is a threat to democracy and we will do everything we can to push back.” More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      The big idea: is it too late to stop extremism taking over politics?

      by

      Welcome to the 2020s, the beginning of what history books might one day describe as the digital middle ages. Let’s briefly travel back to 2017. I remember sitting in various government buildings briefing politicians and civil servants about QAnon, the emerging internet conspiracy movement whose adherents believe that a cabal of Satan-worshipping elites runs a global paedophile network. We joked about the absurdity of it all but no one took the few thousand anonymous true believers seriously.Fast-forward to 2023. Significant portions of the population in liberal democracies consider it possible that global elites drink the blood of children in order to stay young. Recent surveys suggest that around 17% of Americans believe in the QAnon myth. Some 5% of Germans believe ideas related to the anti-democratic Reichsbürger movement, which asserts that the German Reich continues to exist and rejects the legitimacy of the modern German state. Up to a third of Britons believe that powerful figures in Hollywood, government and the media are secretly engaged in child trafficking. Is humanity on the return journey from enlightenment to the dark ages?As segments of the public have headed towards extremes, so has our politics. In the US, dozens of congressional candidates, including the successfully elected Lauren Boebert, have been supportive of QAnon. The German far-right populist party Alternative für Deutschland is at an all-time high in terms of both its radicalism and its popularity, while Austria’s xenophobic Freedom party is topping the polls. The recent rise to power of far-right parties such as Fratelli d’Italia and the populist Sweden Democrats bolster this trend.I am often asked why the UK doesn’t have a successful far-right populist party. My answer is: because it doesn’t need to. Parts of the Conservative party now cater to audiences that would have voted for the BNP or Ukip in the past. A few years ago, the far-right Britain First claimed that 5,000 of its members had joined the Tory party. Not unlike the Republicans in the US, the Tories have increasingly departed from moderate conservative thinking and lean more and more towards radicalism.In 2020, Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski was asked to apologise for attending the National Conservatism conference in Rome. The event is well known for attracting international far-right figures such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the hard-right US presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. This year, an entire delegation of leading Conservatives attended the same conference in London. It might be hard for extreme-right parties to rise to power in Britain, but there is no shortage of routes for extremist ideas to reach Westminster.Language is a key indicator of radicalisation. The words of Conservative politicians speak for themselves: home secretary Suella Braverman referred to migrants arriving in the UK as an “invasion on our southern coast”, while MP Miriam Cates gave a nod to conspiracy theorists when she warned that “children’s souls” were being “destroyed” by cultural Marxism. Using far-right dog whistles such as “invasion” and “cultural Marxism” invites listeners to open a Pandora’s box of conspiracy myths. Research shows that believing in one makes you more susceptible to others.I sometimes wonder what a QAnon briefing to policymakers might look like in a few years. What if the room no longer laughs at the ludicrous myths but instead endorses them? One could certainly imagine this scenario in the US if Donald Trump were to win the next election. In 2019 – before conspiracy myths inspired attacks on the US Capitol, the German Reichstag, the New Zealand parliament and the Brazilian Congress – I warned in a Guardian opinion piece of the threat QAnon would soon pose to democracy. Are we now at a point where it is it too late to stop democracies being taken over by far-right ideologies and conspiracy thinking? If so, do we simply have to accept the “new normal”?There are various ways we can try to prevent and reverse the spread of extremist narratives. For some people who have turned to extremism over the past few years, too little has changed: anger over political inaction on economic inequality is now further fuelled by the exacerbating cost of living crisis. For others, too much has changed: they see themselves as rebels against a takeover by “woke” or “globalist” policies.What they have in common is a sense that the political class no longer takes their wellbeing seriously, and moves to improve social conditions and reduce inequality would go some way towards reducing such grievances. But beyond that, their fears and frustrations have clearly been instrumentalised by extremists, as well as by opportunistic politicians and profit-oriented social media firms. This means that it is essential to expose extremist manipulation tactics, call out politicians when they normalise conspiracy thinking and regulate algorithm design by the big technology companies that still amplify harmful content.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf the private sector is part of the problem, it can also be part of the solution. Surveys by the Edelman Trust Barometer found that people in liberal democracies have largely lost trust in governments, media and even NGOs but, surprisingly, still trust their employers and workplaces. Companies can play an important role in the fight for democratic values. For example, the Business Council for Democracy tests and develops training courses that firms can offer to employees to help them identify and counter conspiracy myths and targeted disinformation.Young people should be helped to become good digital citizens with rights and responsibilities online, so that they can develop into critical consumers of information. National school curricula should include a new subject at the intersection of psychology and internet studies to help digital natives understand the forces that their parents have struggled to grasp: the psychological processes that drive digital group dynamics, online engagement and the rise of conspiracy thinking.Ultimately, the next generation will vote conspiracy theorists in or out of power. Only they can reverse our journey towards the digital middle ages. Julia Ebner is the author of Going Mainstream: How Extremists Are Taking Over (Ithaka Press).Further readingHow Democracies Die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky (Penguin, £10.99)How Civil War Starts by Barbara F Walter (Penguin, £10.99)Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon by Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko (Redwood, £16.99) More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Why do Republicans hate the Barbie movie? – podcast

      by

      Moviegoers flocked to cinemas last weekend for the highly anticipated release of two of the year’s biggest movies – Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. But conservatives have slated Barbie for being, among other things, too ‘woke’, anti-men and even … Chinese propaganda.
      Is the outrage real or is it just another example of politics employing a culture war to rally the base? Jonathan Freedland and Amanda Marcotte try to figure it out

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Blowback review: Miles Taylor on the dangers of a second Trump term

      by

      Miles Taylor is a former chief of staff of the US Department of Homeland Security who catapulted himself to nameless fame in the fall of 2018, when he published an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times under this headline: “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.”Taylor described himself then as one of many senior officials “working diligently from within to frustrate parts of [Trump’s] agenda and his worst inclinations … To be clear, ours is not the popular ‘resistance’ of the left. We want the administration to succeed … But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.”The article set off a firestorm, Trump and his allies demanding to know the identity of this “traitor” while some on the left questioned the morality of continuing to work for an administration after you’ve realized it is a clear and present danger to the health of the country.In his new book, Taylor reveals that debate was as vivid inside him as it was within the rest of the body politic. He has now concluded that anonymity, which he carried into a first book, A Warning, was a mistake, “a gift to authoritarians. They thrive on fear and the suppression of dissent.”The subtitle of his new book is “A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump”, and there is certainly plenty of that in its 300-plus pages. But there is also lots about Taylor’s “mentally, emotionally and physically” painful “journey to the truth”, which included the break-up of his marriage, bouts of alcoholism and prescription drug abuse.Even after the scores of Trump books which have assaulted our bookshelves, Taylor still manages to reveal a few fresh moments of astonishing evil or narrow escapes from Armageddon. These include Trump’s musings to his then chief of staff, John Kelly, “that he badly wanted to strike North Korea with a nuclear weapon”; the president talking about his daughter Ivanka’s “breasts, her backside, and what it might be like to have sex with her”; Steven Miller’s eagerness to eliminate the judiciary (“Yes sir, a country without judges would help”); and Miller’s equal affection for genocide, revealed when he interrogated the commandant of the US coast guard about why he couldn’t use a drone with a missile to “obliterate” a “boat full of immigrants” in “international waters”. International law would be a problem, the commandant explained.The substantive part of Taylor’s book is devoted to waking up Americans to the very real dangers of a second Trump presidency, including plans to “manipulate the justice system to cover up corruption, punish political enemies and reshape US courts”.Taylor reminds us once again of how completely the Republican party has been corrupted by Maga ideology, with powerful allies of the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, calling for “defunding the FBI” while the Texas senator Ted Cruz wants “a complete house cleaning” at the same agency.“They will be unconstrained and untethered,” former homeland security general counsel John Mitnick says. “What little restraint was exercised in terms of respecting the rule of law will be gone.”Like many other George W Bush Republicans, Taylor is weakest when he argues that Trump is an outlier to “ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people”. This ignores the party’s historic affection for racism and homophobia, which dates at least to Richard Nixon’s southern strategy in 1968, or Bush’s advocacy for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, a cornerstone of his re-election campaign in 2004. When Taylor casually accuses Barack Obama of backing away “from America’s allies” and “bowing down to its adversaries”, we are reminded the author is indeed an old-fashioned Republican.But his book is still important because it rings alarm bells about the huge danger of fascism and authoritarianism that would come with Trump’s return to the White House, in a moment when many Washington reporters are silent. This journalistic impotence was evident in two recent stories co-authored by the New York Times reporters Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman.The first, published last month, described Trump’s promise to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Joe Biden as part of “a larger movement on the right to gut the FBI, overhaul a justice department conservatives claim has been ‘weaponized’ against them and abandon the norm – which many Republicans view as a facade – that the department should operate independently from the president”.The second piece by the same trio described Maga plans to eliminate the independence of all federal agencies, including the Federal Reserve board, and laid out Trump’s “plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the state department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as ‘the sick political class that hates our country’”.These two articles totaled 4,800 words but included less than a hundred words from anyone questioning the morality or legality of these plans to politicize the justice department and destroy the federal civil service. This single quote, from Kelly, was the only significant balance provided in either piece: “It would be chaotic. It just simply would be chaotic, because [Trump would] continually be trying to exceed his authority but the sycophants would go along with it. It would be a non-stop gunfight with the Congress and the courts.”The Times reporters did not respond to an email asking why they thought a hundred words of opposition to the Maga agenda were sufficient to make their stories balanced.With that kind of laissez-faire attitude prevailing among too many journalists, books like Taylor’s, which focus on the imminent dangers from a Maga revival, are crucial to a broader effort to rescue American democracy.
      Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump is published in the US by Atria Books More

    • 175 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Filthy Rich Politicians: journalist Matt K Lewis on Trump, ethics and money in Washington

      by

      When Covid-19 materialized as a serious threat, Richard Burr took action. As chair of the Senate intelligence committee, the North Carolina Republican had access to information on the pandemic that was unavailable to the American public. He unloaded hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stocks, including investments in the hospitality industry that was likely to be hard-hit. Burr also contacted his brother-in-law, who made his own stock dump. After the trades were publicized, Burr resigned as chair of the intelligence panel. But he was not charged with a crime.For the reporter Matt K Lewis, the story is part of an ever-increasing problem: the outsized role of wealth in Washington. The Daily Beast journalist has written a book, Filthy Rich Politicians, that was published in the US this week. The extent of the problem is reflected by Lewis’s subtitle: The Swamp Creatures, Latte Liberals, and Ruling Class Elites Cashing In on America.“Rich people get elected, and people, when elected, tend to get richer,” Lewis says. “Over time, it has gotten worse.”The narrative is bipartisan and includes progressives and populists from members of the Squad to election deniers.“I think it’s just an irony that I wrote the book Filthy Rich Politicians in a moment when all the politicians in America … one thing almost all have in common is trying to position themselves as being populist outsiders attacking elites,” Lewis says.He is concerned by politicians bolstering their finances during moments of crisis, as Burr did during Covid.“That, I think, is one of the most interesting and disturbing parts of the book. Everybody kind of knows politicians are rich and some of what they do is sketchy. This, I think, most Americans don’t fully appreciate.”Whether regarding Covid or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lewis says, “These are the moments when it really pays off to have inside information.” He points out that the list of members of Congress who made advantageous stock purchases ahead of the Ukraine war included Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, a Democrat, and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a notorious hard-right Republican.The House of Representatives has become a flashpoint. In the lower chamber, where members are ostensibly closer to average Americans, incomes have climbed quite high. The average member of Congress is now 12 times wealthier than the typical US household.“In the last four decades, the gap has demonstrably widened between politicians and ‘We, the people,’” Lewis says.Causes range from insider trading to book deals to lobbying, family members and friends getting in on the action through paid positions as campaign or office staffers. Lewis cites numerous examples.The former Democratic speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi, have netted millions from his stock deals, outperforming top investors including Warren Buffett while Nancy Pelosi fended off attempts at reform.In the annals of lobbying, there is Billy Tauzin, a former Republican congressman from Louisiana. On Capitol Hill, Tauzin helped then-president George W Bush pass a Medicare bill. His term done, Tauzin became a lobbyist for Big Pharma.Running for office is a perfect fit for high net-worth individuals. After all, it requires significant time off from work and enough campaign funds to draw in outside donations. It helps if you’re born into wealth, marry into it – or both.Lewis comes from a different background – though he notes that his wife, Erin DeLullo, is a political consultant who has worked with some of the Republicans he criticizes as self-proclaimed populists, despite their Ivy League degrees.Lewis’s father was a prison guard for three decades. The family never lacked for food on the table, but Lewis got a rude introduction to the wider world when he made his own foray into campaign politics. A $1,000 check was late to his bank account, giving him an impromptu lesson in how much it costs to be poor in Washington.Then, after becoming an opinion journalist at the Daily Caller, a conservative site, Lewis learned how rich people populate the DC landscape. One day, he was researching a tip that a prominent liberal family was polluting the environment with its penchant for boating. A family member contended otherwise, asking if Lewis knew anything about sailing or yachting. Lewis confessed he did not, asked his colleagues if they did, and saw a sea of hands.“For me, it really hit home that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, so to speak,” he recalls.Lewis planned his book as a survey of America’s 100 richest politicians. It evolved into a more substantive project, although the original idea is reflected by two lists in the appendix: the 25 wealthiest members of Congress and the 10 richest presidents.The Florida Republican senator Rick Scott – who before entering politics ran a company fined $1.7bn for Medicare fraud – leads the congressional list with more than $200m. Top of the presidential list is Donald Trump, whose net worth topped out at $3.1bn.“Putting money aside, [Trump] changed the game in many ways,” Lewis says. “It’s never going to be the same, and not primarily because of his wealth – he’s such a different type of human being and president than we’ve ever seen.”Ironically, Trump’s populist denunciations of corruption and the DC “swamp” resonated strongly with voters.Citing a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, Lewis says: “Three-quarters of Americans believed politicians were primarily selfish and interested in feathering their own nest. I don’t think it’s any surprise that one year later, Donald Trump was elected. He talked about how the game was rigged, he talked about elites and the establishment and the need to drain the swamp.”The Biden family has also been doing quite well for itself financially – not just the president’s scandal-embroiled son, Hunter, but Hunter’s uncles Frank and James.“There are a lot of ways politicians and their families can become enriched, sort of trading off the family relationship, name and access,” Lewis says.He mentions a story in the Atlantic about Joe Biden’s 1988 run for president: the campaign took in over $11m, with around 20% of that amount going either to the candidate’s family or to companies they worked for.“You have an example of other people’s money – in this case, campaign donors – being transferred to the family of Joe Biden,” Lewis says. “Given my druthers, I would make this illegal.”He offers more suggestions for limiting the influence of wealth in politics, including a counterintuitive proposal: raise congressional salaries.“I firmly believe in it,” Lewis says. “This will happen after we ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks, after we impose a 10-year moratorium on the revolving door of lobbying, after we ban the ability to make millions from a book deal while you’re serving the country, after we ban the hiring of family for congressional offices and campaigns.“It’s not cheap to live in Washington DC. Once we have curtailed the ability to get rich from nefarious or certainly questionable means, I would compensate them even more so they could focus on the actual job.”
      Filthy Rich Politicians is published in the US by Center Street More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Oppenheimer biographer supports US bill to bar use of AI in nuclear launches

      by

      A biographer whose Pulitzer prize-winning book inspired the new movie Oppenheimer has expressed support for a US senator’s attempt to bar the use of artificial intelligence in nuclear weapons launches.“Humans must always maintain sole control over nuclear weapons,” Kai Bird, author of American Prometheus, said in a statement reported by Politico.“This technology is too dangerous to gamble with. This bill will send a powerful signal to the world that the United States will never take the reckless step of automating our nuclear command and control.”In Washington on Thursday, Bird met Ed Markey, the Democratic Massachusetts senator who is attempting to add the AI-nuclear provision to a major defense spending bill.Markey, Politico said, was a friend of Bird’s co-author, the late Tufts University professor Martin J Sherwin.A spokesperson for the senator told Politico Markey and Bird “shared their mutual concerns over the proliferation of artificial intelligence in national security and defense without guardrails, and the risks of using nuclear weapons in south Asia and elsewhere.“They also discussed ways to increase awareness of nuclear issues among the younger set.”J Robert Oppenheimer was the driving force behind US development of the atomic bomb, at the end of the second world war.Bird and Sherwin’s book is now the inspiration for Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s summer blockbuster starring Cillian Murphy in the title role.The movie opens in the US on Friday – in competition with Barbie, Greta Gerwig’s film about the popular children’s doll.On Friday, Nolan told the Guardian: “International surveillance of nuclear weapons is possible because nuclear weapons are very difficult to build. Oppenheimer spent $2bn and used thousands of people across America to build those first bombs.“It’s reassuringly difficult to make nuclear weapons and so it’s relatively easy to spot when a country is doing that. I don’t believe any of that applies to AI.”Nolan also noted “very strong parallels” between Oppenheimer and AI experts now calling for such technology to be controlled.Nolan said he had “been interested to talk to some of the leading researchers in the AI field, and hear from them that they view this as their ‘Oppenheimer moment’. And they’re clearly looking to his story for some kind of guidance … as a cautionary tale in terms of what it says about the responsibility of somebody who’s putting this technology to the world, and what their responsibilities would be in terms of unintended consequences.”Bird and Sherwin’s biography, subtitled The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer, was published in 2008.Reviewing for the Guardian, James Buchan saluted the authors’ presentation of “the cocktails and wire-taps and love affairs of Oppenheimer’s existence, his looks and conversation, the way he smoked the cigarettes and pipe that killed him, his famous pork-pie hat and splayed walk, and all the tics and affectations that his students imitated and the patriots and military men despised.“It is as if these authors had gone back to James Boswell, who said of Dr Johnson: ‘Everything relative to so great a man is worth observing.’” More