The Right’s Descent into Fascism?

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The following article was originally posted at Law & Liberty on May 21, 2025.

From the 1980s through 2007, numerous books warned of the threat that the “religious right” posed to America. Tiring of that language, beginning in 2006, critics began to speak instead of the dangers of “Christian nationalism” which, in the words of one of its most prominent students, poses “an existential threat to American democracy and the Christian church in the United States.” I critique much of this literature in my recent book on Christian nationalism and have suggested that critics would soon tire of the “Christian nationalism” slur and move on to more provocative language. Katherine Stewart obliges in her recent book, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy. 

Stewart’s manuscript went to press before the outcome of the 2024 presidential election was known, so she merely expresses concern that “the descent into fascism—if it hasn’t already happened by the time these pages reach you—remains the most likely path through which the American experiment ends, if it is to end.” She believes that American democracy is threatened by “a leadership driven movement” that has “no single headquarters” but instead consists of “powerful networks of leaders, strategists, and donors” who sometimes seem to seek different ends, e.g., small national government vs. massive administrative state, but who all apparently agree that America’s liberal democracy must go. The book is broken into three major sections that roughly follow the title of her book: Money, Lies, and Demons. 

Following the Money

Central to this “movement” are wealthy donors who contribute money to conservative or libertarian causes. These include well-known individuals such as “Betsy DeVos, the Wilks brothers, Rebecah Mercer, Tim Dunn, and the Koch brothers” as well as less well-known ones such as Elbert Hubbard (a pseudonym), James and Joan Lindsey, and Timothy Busch. She occasionally concedes that there are plenty of politically progressive donors, but dismisses them because “with some exceptions, liberal and progressive money tends to go to siloed causes.” 

Getting a particular person elected to the presidency would not seem to be a “siloed” cause, but the project certainly attracted a lot of wealthy donors in 2024. According to the New York Times, in the 2024 race for the presidency, “the Democrats, their allied super PACS and other groups raised about $2.9 billion, versus about $1.8 billion for the Republicans.” Although far more money was spent promoting Harris than Trump, she still lost a fair and democratic election. Perhaps democracy is healthier than Stewart thinks? 

Throughout the book, Stewart writes as if conservative groups are extraordinarily wealthy and as if progressive groups are underfunded. For instance, she regularly references the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) as an example of a “massive,” well-funded, conservative legal advocacy group. It is not clear to me that defending religious liberty and freedom of speech are “conservative” causes, but ADF did raise $101 million in 2022. In the same fiscal year, the Southern Policy Law Center had revenues of $169 million, and the American Civil Liberties Union had revenue of $162 million (all according to IRS form 990 filed in 2022). But perhaps the latter two organizations are “siloed” and, as such, are irrelevant? 

Similarly, Stewart describes the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty as a Catholic group that is one of the “beneficiaries of plutocratic largess,” even though it had revenues of “only” $22 million in 2022. But Becket does not describe itself as either a “Catholic” or “Christian” legal advocacy group, although one may be excused for thinking an organization named after Thomas à Becket is both. Indeed, I introduced an Islamic attorney who once worked for Becket as having worked for a Christian advocacy group. She immediately corrected me. 

As it turns out, this Islamic attorney was on the Becket team that represented the Greens in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores case (2014), a case that Stewart describes as “extending religious privileges to corporations.” Religious liberty is a right, not a privilege, a fact understood by the Democrats and Republicans who approved the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. It was this law that protected the owners of a closely held corporation from having to provide abortifacients to employees against their religious convictions. Nor was this the first case to protect the religious liberty of a corporation (see Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Benficiente União do Vegetal [2006]). And this church was not the first corporation to be protected by the First Amendment, as evidenced by cases such as the New York Times Company v. Sullivan (1964). 

Exposing the Lies 

In addition to funding conservative legal advocacy groups, donors support organizations that, from Stewart’s perspective, provide intellectual justification for fascist policies. These include the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, the “James Madison Center,” (such a thing exists, but I’m pretty sure she means Princeton University’s James Madison Program), the Edmund Burke Foundation, the Claremont Institute, and the State Policy Network. 

A good example of one of these organizations providing intellectual leadership to the new right is the National Conservative Conferences (NatCon). Here, conservative intellectuals gather to give speeches critiquing the old right and casting a new vision. Stewart attended NatCon 2023 where she heard conservative intellectuals advocate “a mix of nationalist rhetoric (in whatever nation the conversation happens to be taking place); vague (and typically insincere) gestures toward economic populism; and copious amounts of hate for liberals and, worst of all, ‘the woke.’” She offers no justification for calling proponents of economic populism “typically insincere” and she admits that “what this new vision involves is very hard to specify with precision.”

There is truth to almost all of her claims—i.e., conservative donors exist, as do conservative intellectual organizations and individuals, and there are conservative Christian groups aimed at mobilizing voters.

It is understandable that a progressive such as Stewart would find speeches at NatCon to be objectionable. But to paint NatCon as part of an intellectual movement that includes the Federalist Society, Hillsdale College, the James Madison Program, the State Policy Network, and the Claremont Institute beggars belief. Stewart’s presentation overlooks the many disagreements between and sometimes even within these organizations. To name one obvious difference, many conservatives take NatCon speakers advocating economic populism seriously and are quite critical of them. But it gets worse.

Stewart often characterizes these organizations as having a united front (upon occasion, she concedes that they have some differences), but many of their positions, e.g., being pro-life, pro-religious liberty, and pro-school choice, have been held by conservatives since the 1980s. In order to make them seem scary, she engages in guilt by association. For instance, Stewart is able to give examples of a scholar associated with the Claremont Institute criticizing feminism and advocating for more “traditional” gender roles. She attempts to connect these positions to the worst sort of misanthropy by noting that a former “recipient of a Lincoln Fellowship at Claremont [once] reportedly wrote ‘feminists need rape.’” I suspect “reportedly” is doing important legal work here. To support her claim, she cites a Mother Jones article stating that the individual in question posted but then deleted this statement on his blog. If I were a reporter, I’m not sure I would want to rely upon this evidence if I were sued for libel.

But let’s assume that this person wrote and then deleted this offensive and potentially dangerous statement. Claremont accepts 14-15 young professionals each year to participate in the week-long Lincoln Fellowship program. Is it reasonable to hold the Institute responsible for every foolish, hateful, or even dangerous thing past participants ever post?

Even worse, she then transitions from the scholar associated with Claremont to discuss books and Internet posts by misogynists like Bronze Age Pervert (BAP) and one of his fans, Justin Murphy. She connects BAP to the conservative movement by pointing out that Michael Anton reviewed BAP’s book, Bronze Age Mindset, in the Claremont Review of Books, although she does not make it clear that the review was a negative one. Make no mistake, Bronze Age Pervert and Murphy are troubled individuals, and they have Internet followers, but I don’t know anyone at the institutions Stewart highlights who shares their views.

Stewart’s second rhetorical strategy is to use adverbs and adjectives to make conservative thinkers and institutions sound scary. Take, for instance, the case of Princeton Professor Robert P. George, “the reactionary Catholic activist” who is also described as an “ultra conservative legal activist.” George is known for opposing activist decisions such as Roe v. Wade (1973) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), but he is also known for traveling around the country with the very progressive Cornell West, People’s Party presidential candidate in 2024, and engaging in civil dialogue about contentious issues. His most recent book, co-authored with West, provides a model for such dialogue. 

Similarly, Father Richard John Neuhaus is described as an “ultra-right-wing convert” to Catholicism, the Acton Institute is “hard-right,” and Hillsdale College is a “Christian nationalist school” and “the far right institution that operates as a gathering spot for thinkers of the anti-democratic reaction.” Christopher Rufo is a “reactionary henchman” and the Claremont Institute is an organization “wallowing in misogyny and hate.”

Stewart’s rhetorical strategy of using lots of adverbs and adjectives will likely get lots of nods from readers already convinced she is right (for example, folks like Andrew Seidel and Bradley Onishi, whom she quotes as authorities and whose work I critique here). But it will have little impact on undecided or conservative readers open to being convinced that there is a serious movement committed to undermining America’s liberal democracy. 

Continue reading at Law & Liberty

Exorcising the Demons

The Heritage Foundation, Claremont Institute, etc., may provide intellectual arguments, but Stewart recognizes that they do not have many followers who will serve as foot soldiers in a war against democracy. In the third section of her book, which is entitled “Demons,” she explains that these soldiers are primarily generated by organizations committed to motivating conservative Christians to be involved in politics. 

Stewart is a journalist, and she is at her best when she visits meetings of groups like Faith Wins, Conservative Political Action Congress, Moms for Liberty, ReWaken America, etc., and is able to report silly, outlandish, and sometimes even dangerous things speakers or participants say. For instance, she describes a mom who is terribly concerned with “the homosexual content” of The Diary of Anne Frank, men at supposedly Christian events wearing shirts proclaiming “God, Guns, and Trump” and “F*ck Biden,” and speakers saying things like “Hitler was fighting the same people we’re trying to take down.” I presume her accounts of these events are true, but I also doubt that they characterize many of the people or speakers at the meetings she attended. 

Stewart highlights, as does Matthew Taylor in a recent book, Pentecostal Christians such as Paula White-Cain who believe that Christians need to take “dominion” of the “seven peaks of modern culture—government, business, media, education, entertainment and arts, family, and religion.” Christians have long advocated for bringing Christian values into every part of life. That is why, for instance, the owners of Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A insist on closing their businesses on Sunday. And yet, it is understandable that non-Christians get nervous when Pentecostal leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation call for spiritual warfare against “demons” and “territorial spirits” and lead prayers declaring things like “we have been given legal power from heaven and now exercise our authority.” But adherents to this movement account for a small percentage of the 4 percent of Americans whom Pew deems to be Pentecostal. 

Most of Stewart’s book is devoted to a scary story of America’s descent into fascism. There is truth to almost all of her claims—i.e., conservative donors exist, as do conservative intellectual organizations and individuals, and there are conservative Christian groups aimed at mobilizing voters. She occasionally acknowledges that these individuals and organizations have different goals and so perhaps shouldn’t be considered part of a coherent movement. She references individuals like Bronze Age Pervert who say horrible things, and she quotes Christian conservatives as saying things that are undemocratic, but in the final analysis, she doesn’t come close to making the case that there is a movement afoot to end American democracy and replace it with fascism. 

Despite the extended horror story, the book ends with some hopeful notes, including her claim that “those of us who reject the politics of consequence and division—are in the majority.” This claim is ironic coming from Stewart, given the divisive nature of her book, but I think it is mostly accurate. Although too many Americans (23 percent) agree with the statement that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” the vast majority disagree. BLM riots, the January 6 assault on the Capitol, vandalism of Teslas, and attacks on Jewish students are very concerning, but the vast majority of Americans remain committed to non-violent political action and liberal democracy. 

Stewart’s concluding chapter contains a variety of proposals that would help fend off fascism. These include adopting a system of progressive taxation because the “present system of taxation is flat at best, and even regressive at the top.” This might come as a surprise to “the top 10% of U.S. earners who pay 72% of the nation’s [income] taxes.” As well, and ironically for someone concerned with preserving America’s constitutional order, she suggests that the Electoral College and equal representation of states in the Senate may need to be abolished. 

America, it is safe to say, is not about to descend into fascism. But that will not keep critics like Stewart from comparing conservatives to fascists and Trump to Hitler. Such rhetoric sells books and may be personally satisfying, but it does not contribute to the sort of healthy political discourse necessary for a well-functioning liberal democracy.