An eerily prescient guide to the phantasmagoria of our political moment ... Money, Lies, and God covers a lot of terrain, but it's Stewart's exploration of right-wing ideas that makes her book stand out ... Books like hers function not as weapons but as maps, navigating a way around the edges of the abyss.” —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review
“Organized, clear, and compelling … journalism of the highest order … This is an important book and it couldn't appear at a more opportune time.” —California Review of Books
“Among the dozens of books that have attempted to identify the forces that Trump rode to power, this is one of the most closely reported and cogent.” —Jessica T. Mathews, Foreign Affairs
“[Stewart]'s eyewitness account is riveting and will terrify anyone who believes in democratic governance … a compelling read.” —New Pages
“Drawing on 15 years of reporting … Stewart's fine-grained and eye-opening investigation meticulously outlines the loose organizational structure that keeps these strange bedfellows banded together-with a focus on the lines of connections between the movement's funders, intellectuals, and foot-soldiers. This offers urgently needed background on the 2024 election results.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“An in-depth look at the chief strands that make up the American far right … An impassioned takedown of a 'militant minority.'” —Kirkus Reviews
“Here is the life-and-death story most news outlets have missed. Under the evermore intense pressure of multi-billionaire donors determined to shackle democracy and entrepreneurial Christian nationalist leaders eager to take away our freedoms, the Right has radicalized since 2020 into outright fascism, full of menace and exhortations to violence against a majority they have worked diligently to dehumanize. Katherine Stewart provides a bracing must-read story of how the varied streams have merged into a mighty river moving toward massive destruction-and explains to readers how together we can divert it.” —Nancy MacLean, author of DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS
“Katherine Stewart has written what may be the most important political book of the day, exposing the networks of dark money funded, ultra right-wing subversives who have already done enormous damage to our Constitution and the rule of law and are now perilously close to overthrowing the American government as we know it. With persuasive precision and undeniable documentation, Stewart names and connects the dots, refusing to normalize the frighteningly abnormal, confronting powerful forces that too few reporters comprehend, let alone describe.” —Sean Wilentz, author of NO PROPERTY IN MAN and the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University
“A stunning, sweeping account of the coordinated movement to destroy the American experiment through dark money, political organizing, ideological distortion, thuggery, and authoritarianism, Money, Lies, and God is required reading for every person who wields a vote. Not since Dorothy Thompson has a writer documented fascist organizing so persuasively and cogently; this book places Katherine Stewart among the most significant journalists of her generation.” —Kathleen Belew, author of BRING THE WAR HOME
“Katherine Stewart has written a book that pierces through the fog and noise to reveal the dangerous forces gathering, planning and plotting against liberty. She echoes the warnings of Dorothy Thompson about fascism: 'There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, and the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of the happenings.' Stewart hits the mark.” —Steve Schmidt, political strategist and co-founder of The Lincoln Project
“Writing here as part investigative journalist, part sociologist and part political philosopher, Katherine Stewart provides an indispensable citizen's guide to the anti-democratic MAGA Right in America. In Money, Lies and God, the whole gang is here in their dubious political glory – anti-Vaxx Internet provocateurs, pro-Putin anti-abortion zealots, authoritarian Harvard Law professors, anti-gay fanatics, billionaire funders like Tom Monaghan and the Koch brothers, crazed neo-fascist thinkers, exurban megachurch power players, Opus Dei, right-wing political bosses, Michael Flynn, John Eastman, Roger Stone and the well-paid apparatus of political and juridical reaction and corruption. This is a vibrant ideological ecosystem but Stewart explains why the vast majority of Americans must reject its dark vision and defeat its politicians.” —Congressman Jamie Raskin
“Meticulously researched, elegantly written, and hard-hitting, Money Lies and God provides a riveting account of the forces that have brought our nation to the brink. If this book comes too late to save our democracy, it will offer the definitive postmortem.” —Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of JESUS AND JOHN WAYNE
“From the halls of Congress and state legislative buildings to the city council chambers and school boards of your town, America's democracy is under threat as never before. How did we get here? In this powerful piece of investigative journalism, Katherine Stewart uses good, old-fashioned digging to provide the answer. Stewart follows the money, exposes the major players, identifies the foot soldiers and explains the radical philosophy underlying an alarming scheme by Christian Nationalists and other extremists to replace our democracy with a theocracy. Stewart has laid bare the plot. The next step is up to us.” —Rachel K. Laser, President and CEO at Americans United for Separation of Church and State
2024-12-13
An in-depth look at the chief strands that make up the American far right.
“The movement described in this book isn’t looking for a seat at the noisy table of American democracy; it wants to burn down the house.” So writes journalist Stewart, whose previous work has concerned the disappearing wall between church and state. Just so, among the major contributors to MAGA and other far-right elements have been the leaders and foot soldiers of “a radically new, intensely politicized religion centered on a newly concocted ‘pro-life’ theory and—among a large number—the idea of spiritual warfare.’” Stewart argues that the movement is an elaborate con whereby power elites pretend to share common ground with “the Infantry,” while what she terms the Funders and the Thinkers seek self-centered gains that do nothing for ordinary people: “Each gains power by deceiving the others. Inevitably, they attempt to deceive the rest of us, too, and then they begin to deceive themselves.” Antidemocratic, opposed to public education, and given to conspiratorial thinking, this united front, albeit with divergent goals, has gained so strong a foothold in national and now international politics by drowning out the opposition and keeping the “right-wing outrage machine” fully engaged, Stewart says. But she reminds readers that “the antidemocratic reactionaries are nothing more than a disproportionately mobilized minority,” vastly outnumbered by centrists. She counsels that the far right is essentially divided, though it appears to be monolithic, and that its message is often contradictory and often off-message entirely. Defeating it, she notes, will require long-term thinking, since the far right is “not merely planning to win the next election.”
An impassioned takedown of a “militant minority.
