Few Americans, if any, had ever heard of John Eastmanbefore the events of January 6, 2021. The legal architect of Donald Trump’sattempts to overturn the 2020 election was hardly a high-profile name, even forthose steeped in covering American politics. He was, in many ways, an unknown, pulledby the events and the aftermath of January 6 into the riptides of Americanhistory.
A handful of analysts and investigators tracing thecontours of the American far right, however, knew of Eastman’s work long beforethe events of January 6, and of the kind of churning, burning illiberalism thatbrought him into Trump’s orbit. One of those was Katherine Stewart, whose newbook,Money,Lies, and God, threads the diffuse movements that have congealed into theauthoritarianism at the core of Trumpism.
Stewart first intersected with Eastman not in the aftermathof Trump’s failed insurrection but in 2019, when she tracked him to a tony,rarefied conclave in, of all places, Verona, Italy. Eastman was speaking at theannual conference of the World Congress of Families—a far-right,Russian-American organization dedicated to the abolition of abortion and thebuttressing of so-called “traditional values”—regaling his audience with talesof “how secularism, liberalism, and gender confusion are destroying everythinggood in the world.” The speech, as Stewart writes, revealed Eastman to be “acommitted ally of the theocrats.” But there was also “some foundation otherthan biblical literalism,” Stewart sensed, propelling him and cementing thekinds of illiberal alliances crucial to Trump’s reign.
The search for the broader foundations of Eastman’s and hisallies’ beliefs is at the center of Money, Lies, and God, the follow-upto Stewart’s critically acclaimed 2020 ThePower Worshippers. That book explored the dogmatism at the core of theAmerican religious right, and how such forces drew American evangelicals furtherand further into the illiberal abyss. It was, at the time, a signal flare ofjust how willingly such professedly godly groups could embrace a figure likeTrump.
Stewart’s newest book is a continuation of that theme. Butafter the events of January 6, it was clear that the right had changed. This movement—withall the ideological allies, deep-pocketed donors, and misogynistsmassing around Eastman, joining him in this antidemocratic fight—presents anew face of the American far right. And it is that edifice that Stewart masterfullydetails in her new book, explaining not only why these pro-Trump forces have alreadyattempted to drive a stake through the heart of American democracy, but howthey will try to do so once again.
Part on-the-ground conversations, part sociological analysis,Money, Lies, and God is a convincing tour of the mutuallyreinforcing elements of American reaction:
“apostles” of Jesus,atheist billionaires, reactionary Catholic theologians, pseudo-Platonicintellectuals, woman-hating opponents of “the gynocracy,” high-poweredevangelical networkers, Jewish devotees of Ayn Rand, pronatalists preoccupiedwith a dearth of (white) babies, COVID truthers, and battalions of “spiritwarriors” who appear to be inventing a new style of religion even as they setabout undermining democracy at its foundations.
Trumpism is hardly one thing, even if it is overly relianton Trump himself. Instead, Stewart uses her deep familiarity with the Americanfar right to chart out what are, by the mid-2020s, the major elements ofTrump’s political project, which she describes as the Funders, Power Players,Infantry, Sergeants, and Thinkers. The “Funders” are those within thebillionaire class bankrolling the forces below them, using access toeffectively bottomless pots of wealth to guide American politics. Some of thesenames are increasingly familiar, like Leonard Leo, the benefactor who helped steer the Supreme Courtpicks duringTrump’s first term, building out Trumpist allies on the highest court of theland and helping rule in favor of things like all-encompassing presidential immunity, a position onceridiculed when espoused by figures like disgracedRichard Nixon. Leo serves as the chair of CRC Advisors, which, as Stewartwrites, “directs over $1 billion in right-wing funding toward reactionarycauses.” 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 organizationslike Opus Dei, a far-right Catholic group that does not publicize itsmembership rolls. All of them together have access to, and help direct, agreater pile of money than anything hard-right forces in America have everknown. “The decisive development in the first decades of the 21st century wasnot the alliance between Team Money and Team God but the simple fact that,thanks to escalating inequality, the big money got a lot bigger,” Stewartnotes. “What was new was the number of zeroes in the checks—and the extremismof the thinking guiding the money people.”
Elsewhere, the “Power Players” Stewart identifies are thosejust underneath the “Funders,” helping direct some of the ocean of moneyflooding pro-Trump, pro-authoritarian movements. These managerial typescomprise a “tiny elite” who “amass tremendous personal power by mobilizingothers around their agendas.” Many of these are well-established figures,“super-lobbyists” like the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Ralph Reed or FamilyResearch Council’s Tony Perkins, who act as both organizers and mouthpieces forpro-Trump policies. These, Stewart says, are the “operational masterminds ofthe antidemocratic movement,” putting the funding into action throughsponsoring conferences, conclaves, and publications. They are, in effect,middlemen—a kind of managerial class directing America’s antidemocraticturn.
The “Infantry,” meanwhile, is made up of the rank-and-fileTrump voters who lap up the kinds of antidemocratic rhetoric spilling out ofeverything from conspiratorial social media feeds to, now, the White House itself.These are the militias, the Tea Party turned Trumpers, and the assorted flotsamof Trump supporters who launched an attempted insurrection on January 6—and whowere all recently pardoned by Trump. They are those who Stewart writes aboutmeeting in Las Vegas in 2023. Alongside a German documentary crew, Stewartjoins a swell of Trump backers at the ReAwaken America Tour, a pro-Trumpconference-cum-revival that gathers an audience of QAnon supporters,antivaxxers, racists, and conspiracy theorists. Stewart finds the crowddescending into increasing mania, with speakers not only regurgitating the mostmalign conspiracies they can find but even calling for “Nuremberg trials” forTrump’s enemies, leaving one of the German team members to ask Stewart, “Are wesafe here?”For those tracing America’s descent into authoritarianism,some of these faces are well known; figures like Reed and Perkins have bothbeen peddling illiberal policies for years, long predating the rise of Trump,and it’s hardly news that Trump’s base is comprised of conspiratorial racists.In that sense, Stewart’s book is treading familiar ground. But it sets itself apart in describing the two remaining groups—the “Sergeants” andthe “Thinkers”—and how these two now buttress not just Trump but modernChristian nationalism itself.
The “Sergeants” are primarily pastors and related churchofficials, many of whom have accelerated their rightward lurch in recent years.These groups have ominous, vaguely militaristic names, including things likethe Black Robe Regiment and the Watchmen on the Wall. These are the followersof the vengeful God of the Old Testament, believers in the efficacy ofretribution. “There is little room for the old ‘Love the sinner, hate the sin’trope here,” Stewart writes. Instead, they embody a Christian nationalism that“is not a policy program; it is perhaps best understood as a politicalmindset.” It is a political proclivity that “includes four basic dispositions:catastrophism; a persecution complex; identitarianism; and an authoritarianreflex.” All of it comprises the kind of kindling from which opposition todemocracy, and even support for fascism, can emerge.
Many of these “spirit warriors” found their way to theso-called “Jericho March” in Washington on January 5, 2021. A “combination ofnationalism, conspiracism, and demon obsession,” according to Stewart, therally featured a range of pastors trying to outdo one another in theirantediluvian rhetoric. One, Greg Bramlage, claimed they were engaged in a“spiritual battle,” while another, Bishop Leon Benjamin, called for followersto “kill” unspecified “demons.” Another pastor, the Reverend Kevin Jessip, describedthe rally as a “strategic gathering of men in this hour to dispel the Kingdomof Darkness.” Twenty-four hours later, as Stewart notes, many who prayed underthese “Sergeants” took up arms and took the fight directly to the Capitolitself—bringing with them a “large wooden cross,” a separate “flag with across,” and banners blaring, “Jesus Saves.”
It is the final group, the “Thinkers,” that presentsarguably Stewart’s most insightful sections. These are the figures like Eastmanand his allies who posit themselves as the ideological, intellectual classcrafting the contours of Trumpism—and identifying the kinds of legal coverTrump can use to dismantle American democracy.Much ofthis cohort can trace directly back to the Claremont Institute, the California-basedorganization where Eastman remains a senior fellow. As Stewart points out,it is the Claremont Institute where the “erstwhile reverence for America’sfounders has been transfigured, with the help of political theorists purloinedfrom Germany’s fascist period, into material support” for Trumpism.
The institute’s modus vivendi centers on the“Straussian man in action”—the man who bends history to his own ends,regardless of the consequence and regardless of democratic legitimacy. Stewart writes:
His mission is to save therepublic. He must tell a few lies, yet he is nonetheless a noble liar, at leastin his own mind. He acts in the political world, where natural right reigns,and not merely in the legal world where lawyers are supposed to toil. Aware ofthe crooked timber from which humanity is made, he is prepared to break offwhatever branches are needed for the bonfire of liberty.
This core Claremont belief leads to the yearning for aso-called “Red Caesar”—a masculine leader untrammeled by anything likedemocratic oversight or political pushback, grabbing a society by the throatand forcing it back into a world in which men, and especially white men, areonce more restored to the top of America’s sociopolitical hierarchy. Indeed,there is an almost obsessive approach at Claremont to restoring supposedmasculinity within American society.Stewart traces this belief system atClaremont—where, she says, all of the board members “appear to be male”—toHarvey C. Mansfield Jr., who wrote a 2006 book called Manliness and“counts as nobility among Claremont’s extended family.” As Mansfield argued,“gender stereotypes are all true”—including, bizarrely, that women would make badsoldiers because “they fear spiders.”
As Stewart details, Mansfield was “far too sophisticated toopenly argue for stripping American women of the rights they have fought forover the past two centuries—but in the private sphere, “those highly accuratestereotypes should reign triumphant.” This belief has seeped into Claremont’sbones and manifested itself at Claremont many times over.There isa 2020 alumnus of their Lincoln fellowshipnamed Jack Murphy who once said that “feminists need rape.”* There was anotherClaremont official who gave a talk titled, “Does Feminism Undermine theNation?” There is the promotion of work by an author named Coston Alamariu—betterknown by his nom de plume “Bronze Age Pervert”—who oozes undilutedmisogyny and rails against “the gynocracy.” As Alamariu wrote, “It took 100years of women in public life for them to almost totally destroy acivilization”—and the only way forward is to “use Trump as a model of success.”
These Claremont-based “Thinkers” also include figures likeCurtis Yarvin, who has contributed to the Claremont publication AmericanMind and “appeared as an honored guest on Claremont podcasts.” Yarvin’saffections for despotism have been widely reported elsewhere, but it is hishistorical ignorance that highlights just how shallow the Claremont men’spretensions at intellectualism truly are. Not only does Yarvin preposterously believe that “Europeancivilization” wasn’t responsible for any genocides before the Holocaust—as ifgenocides in places like the Africa, North America, or even Ireland and Ukraine never existed—but he furthermaintains that America now needs to collapse into dictatorship in order torebuild.
The “men of Claremont frame their not-so-hidden longing forrevenge as a series of ruminations about the rise of an American Caesar,” Stewartwrites. “And when that ‘Red Caesar’ arrives, he can thank the oligarchs forfunding his rise, and he can thank the rank and file of the movement forsupporting him in the name of ‘authenticity.’ But he would owe at least aslarge a debt of gratitude to the unhappy men of Claremont, those spurnedwould-be members of the intellectual elite … for explaining just who he is, andwhy he should go ahead and blow the whole place up.”
Taken together, Money, Lies, and God paints not onlya devastating picture of the state of American democracy (as if one wasneeded) but one that also contributes texture and context to understanding thecurrent American political moment. The book convincingly argues that, when itcomes to figures like Eastman or Leo or any of the men affiliated with theClaremont Institute, calls for dialogue and civility are futile. “In earliertimes this may have been sage advice,” Stewart writes. “Today it is a delusion.American democracy is failing because it is under direct attack, and the attackis not coming equally from both sides. The movement described in this bookisn’t looking for a seat at the noisy table of American democracy; it wants toburn down the house.” American democracy isn’t simply dying.It is, asStewart observes, being murdered.
Another revelation from the book, however, is not nearly asominous. Because the movement comprises so many moving parts, there’s noguarantee that such a constellation of forces can last. Trump remains the gluethat holds such a coalition together, with each group—the billionaires and thebullies in the pulpits, the keyboard conspiracists and the misogynists tryingto put an intellectual sheen on it all—each seeing, and often getting, whatthey want with him. But once Trump goes, there’s every reason to suspect thatsuch a coalition will splinter, undone by competing claims. Wide cleavagesremain on subjects from China to health care to tax cuts, bridged only throughTrump’s person and persona.
This is cold comfort for those hoping for a resuscitationof American democracy anytime soon. Trump has spent the first months in hissecond term sprinting toward a constitutional crisis, cheered on by the allieshe’s found along the way—not least the supposed “Thinkers” claimingintellectual leadership of the movement. For figures like Eastman, it’s not anexecutive run amok that presents a threat to the core of American democracy but, rather, those who would stand in Trump’s way. The Democratic Party, Eastman said in 2023, is “an existentialthreat to the very survivability, not just of our nation, but of the examplethat our nation, properly understood, provides to the world. That’s thestakes.” From his lips to God’s—or at least Trump’s—ears.
*This article previously misstated Jack Murphy’s title.
