The Book<\/h4>\n
American Apocalypse: The Six Far-Right Groups Waging War on Democracy<\/p>\n
The Author(s)<\/h4>\n
Lauren Lassabe Shepherd <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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The four year period between Trump administrations\u2013the Biden intermission, we might periodize it\u2013offers historians and pundits a short era of metaphorical forks in the road about which to argue. Having witnessed Trump 1.0 and the January 6th insurrection, what in that short interim could have been done to prevent Trump\u2019s return to the White House? With the election behind us, we can say definitively what did not work.<\/p>\n
American Apocalypse: The Six Far-Right Groups Waging War on Democracy<\/em> (2024) by Rena Steinzor is a perfect primary source for any historian looking to study the intermission. If I were teaching with this book, I\u2019d use it as an example of well-intentioned Democratic Party leadership refrains leading up to the 2024 election they lost.<\/p>\n As its subtitle suggests, the book\u2019s motivating question asks who has been waging Apocalypse <\/em>on American democracy. Its answer is the \u201cfar\u201d right, which the author divides into six groups. But the subtitle doesn\u2019t betray Steinzor\u2019s surprise seventh group: the left. Perhaps that\u2019s purposeful, Steinzor wants to focus attention on who she calls the extreme right; but as with any true liberal approach, the left is not spared criticism. The left takes the blame for Trump across a full chapter, as much space as dedicated to each of the six groups of the extreme right: corporations, the (now defunct) Tea Party, the Federalist Society, Fox News, white evangelicals, and self-organized militia groups.<\/p>\n Perhaps the reader sees why I am placing the \u201cfar\u201d right modifier in scare quotes. Many of these groups are not extreme, but mainline constituencies of the Republican Party, especially corporations (which are often also Democrat partisans), Fox News, and white evangelicals. And while the former Tea Party (Steinzor alternately refers to the present-day House Freedom Caucus), the Federalist Society, and militias have what many would agree are extreme beliefs, they are powerful Republican constituencies whose control of the party transcends Donald Trump\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n This is the first key failure of the book: these groups are treated as somehow not representative of the Republican Party, as liabilities who need to be excised. The book imagines a lucid core of the Republican Party that does not exist. For that matter, it imagines a radical wing of the Democrats which has no real power. In this way the book takes for granted that both parties have somehow equal extremes, with equal respective party influence, who need to be moderated to save democracy.<\/p>\n While American Apocalypse <\/em>isn\u2019t framed this way, the author does deliver a helpful story of how mainstream conservatives (not the far right) have waged war on regulatory health and environmental protections since the Nixon years. Underneath it all, this is a book about the deregulation of environmental and worker and consumer safety legislation that ignores the bipartisanship inherent in American neoliberalism. She concedes the oversight: \u201cThe following analysis of how big business became an overpowering political force makes no effort to cope with globalization. Industrial sectors are not considered individually. The root causes of economic successes and failures are left unexamined\u201d (p. 21).<\/p>\n Herein is the book\u2019s second major analytical flaw. American Apocalypse<\/em> places the demise of our federal regulatory system (Steinzor\u2019s stand-in for democracy) squarely on the shoulders of an extreme right\u2013a qualifier that obscures the cooperation of dominant neoliberalism within both parties since the Nixon years. It further offers a historical lesson as advice for 2024: Steinzor characterizes Bill Clinton as \u201cone of the country\u2019s most talented politicians ever to hold the office [of president], Clinton moved briskly to the political center and won reelection\u201d outmaneuvering conservatives like Newt Gingrich (p.58). As we now know, the Clinton strategy of tacking to the center had disastrous results for the Harris campaign. For its abject blind spots regarding the failures of the Democrat\u2019s turn to <\/a>neoliberalism<\/a>, any reader out to understand the history Steinzor wants to tell about the rollback of Nader-esque legal protections will find only part of the story in American Apocalypse<\/em>.<\/p>\n Of course, the right\u2019s role in this history is still important. If readers forgive the book\u2019s overpromise to explain how a handful of nefarious far right groups and all of the left\u00a0 ended American democracy, this is a worthwhile legal history of conservative attacks on the regulatory state. The book is at its best when the author traces the right\u2019s legal campaign, especially in the chapter on the Federalist Society and the final chapter detailing the Citizens United<\/em> case. These are topics to which the author has dedicated her career as Edward M. Robertson Professor of Law (emeritus) at University of Maryland and through her leadership in the Center for Progressive Reform, a D.C. think tank dedicated to social justice and environmental advocacy.<\/p>\n Other chapters, such as the one on white evangelicals, rely heavily on the reporting of a few interchangeable never-Trumper journalists of center-right fame: Tim Alberta (Wall St. Journal, National Review)<\/em>, Michael Gerson (George W. Bush speechwriter), Mike Giglio (Newsweek<\/em>), and Peter Wehner (speechwriter under Reagan and both Bush administrations). The book leans uncritically on Atlantic, Politico, <\/em>and New York Times<\/em> analyses. For its overreliance on these sources, the chapter on the left, who are defined as antifascists, falls short on evidence for the left\u2019s role in the end of the regulatory state. Instead, the chapter\u2019s argument is that antifascist demonstrators are a liability for the Democrats for the way they fuel MAGA attacks. Antifascists are characterized broad brush as \u201cradical left antifa cells\u2026 [who have] created the impression that left-leaning activists oppose free speech\u201d (p. 208-209).<\/p>\n As she writes, \u201cAntifa people,\u201d such as Michael Reinoehl who killed rightwing militiaman Aaron Danielson in Portland during the 2020 George Floyd protests, \u201cgave Donald Trump the opportunity to portray its loose network as a major threat, camouflaging the far more serious domestic terrorism threat posed by far-right groups and patriot militia\u201d (p. 209). Throughout the chapter, Steinzor points to the weakness of the antifascist movement and then blames them, in their relative powerlessness, for diverting attention from Trump\u2019s much more serious and larger patriot militias.<\/p>\n This logic dominates the chapter: activists should not resort to violence to resist, as Trump will finally have an example of apparent leftist extremism for his otherwise baseless attacks on liberalism. She does not consider that Trump\u2013and the far right who are the subject of the book\u2013have never relied on evidence or truth as a basis for attack. Nor does the book acknowledge that the Democrats have long done this work themselves, disempowering their left flank<\/a> to satisfy elites and suburbanites.<\/p>\n For the book\u2019s hyperfocus on a potential Trump victory in 2024, I strongly recommend American Apocalypse <\/em>to anyone who takes seriously our collective failures during the Biden intermission to prevent Trump\u2019s reascent. The author\u2019s position as an emeritus professor of law with a long and respected career in D.C. think tank leadership excellently captures the perspective of those in Democratic leadership who Brent Cebul and Lily Geismer call professional class liberals<\/a>. Gabe Winant\u2019s chapter on academics and institutionalists is an especially helpful companion for reading American Apocalypse<\/em> as a primary source.<\/p>\n For readers interested in the history of the far right\u2013and how it has never been far from mainstream conservatism\u2013I recommend David Austin Walsh\u2019s Taking America Back<\/em><\/a>, Ted Miller\u2019s A Conspiratorial Life<\/em><\/a>, John Huntington\u2019s Far-Right Vanguard<\/em><\/a>, and Nicole Hemmer\u2019s Messengers of the Right<\/em><\/a>. On the liberal myth of the responsible conservative, I recommend Walsh\u2019s Boston Review<\/em><\/a> explainer. For those who share Steinzor\u2019s curiosity on how the right has cunningly rolled back civil liberties and other legal protections, one without the preoccupation of a looming 2024 election, I highly recommend Mike Collins\u2019 recent work, The Anti-Civil Rights Movement<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n Lauren Lassabe Shepherd is a historian of American colleges and universities. She is the author of Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America<\/em> (University of North Carolina Press, 2023).<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Book American Apocalypse: The Six Far-Right Groups Waging War on Democracy The Author(s) Lauren Lassabe Shepherd The four year period between Trump administrations\u2013the Biden intermission, we might periodize it\u2013offers historians and pundits a short era of metaphorical forks in the road about which to argue. Having witnessed Trump 1.0 and the January 6th insurrection, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":245724,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[204,25456,3744,7732,28164,3724,90098,803,90099,4381,90100,90101,3739],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-245723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-history","tag-american","tag-apocalypse","tag-book-reviews","tag-democracy","tag-farright","tag-groups","tag-lassabe","tag-lauren","tag-rena","tag-shepherd","tag-steinzors","tag-waging","tag-war"],"yoast_head":"\nAbout the Reviewer<\/h4>\n