Writer Jeff Sharlet describes the current political moment
in the United States as “a season of falling apart” in his latest book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War.
This book is an up-close-and-personal look at the many predominantly white Americans who have been seduced by QAnon conspiracy theories, Trumpism, the heterosexual male movement of incels, or involuntary celibates, and an evangelism that equates material accumulation with proof of God’s love. It is both harrowing and insightful.
W.W. Norton
The text is bookended by two deeply revelatory portraits of luminaries Harry Belafonte and Lee Hays, whose music and activism have inspired generations. Perhaps Sharlet included their examples to temper the disquiet that fills the rest of the book, reminding readers that the country has weathered periods of deep rightwing reaction before. Indeed, he reminds us that Red Scares, lynchings, police brutality, and attacks on free speech and civil rights are as much a part of U.S. history as social progress. Or, perhaps Sharlet is reminding us that the growing movement of rightwing conspirators will one day be relegated to history, pushed to a corner alongside Senator Joseph McCarthy, Anita Bryant, and Jesse Helms.
Either way, The Undertow delves into today’s rightwing movement, and Sharlet writes not from an academic distance, but rather as a participant-observer at numerous conservative events and institutions. In some instances, Sharlet identifies himself as a reporter and a Jew. This bold and obviously risky choice gives the book gravitas, especially because he confesses that he has had several heart attacks and often runs on little to no sleep. That he is driven to understand people whose worldview is vastly different from his own is an understatement. Still, the drive to parse a political current that has led tens of thousands to prepare for an imminent civil war propels him to listen to their stories, probe their ideas, and dig into their beliefs.
A chapter called “Heavy with Gold,” for example, takes readers into a rally during Donald Trump’s 2016 bid for the presidency. Like others, Sharlet waited for hours to hear a speech he describes as a mix of anger, hate, love, fear, and vengeance. Like the hugely influential Norman Vincent Peale, whose 1952 bestseller, The Power of Positive Thinking, has been heralded by Trump, the candidate presented himself as a “businessman-redeemer,” offering salvation and deliverance to his supporters. The audience, Sharlet writes, ate it up, hooting and hollering in appreciation.
It’s an unsettling read.
Similarly, in “Tick-Tock,” Sharlet offers readers a deep dive into the conspiracy theory movement QAnon by introducing a cadre hellbent on preparing for a Second American Revolution, lured by the notion that a “child-sacrificing elite, not just of pedophiles but of cannibals, waiting to harvest children’s adrenal glands” is lying in wait. It would be laughable if it were fiction, but it is not.
Equally serious, a chapter called “The Undertow” takes readers back to January 6, 2021, the day QAnon, the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and other Trump loyalists converged on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., to kill then-Vice President Mike Pence and stop Joe Biden’s confirmation as President.
United by white grievance and “their belief in a strongman and their desire for an iron-fisted God and their love of the way guns make them feel inside and their grief over COVID-19 and their denial of COVID-19 and their loathing of systemic as descriptive of that which they cannot see, can’t hold in their hands and weigh, and their certainty that countless children are being taken, stolen, and raped,” they broke windows and stormed legislative offices. Seeing themselves as “spiritual warriors,” they stressed their desire to halt demographic change rather than share white power with people of color.
Asked about the proximity of the next civil war, many of the day’s participants told Sharlet that it was already underway.
It’s a jolting statement.
Unfortunately, Sharlet does not posit suggestions for countering the racist, sexist, antisemitic, homophobic, and transphobic delusions that he so masterfully describes. Nonetheless, while his vivid depictions make the challenge stark, clear, and pressing, he leaves it to us to develop the strategies and tactics needed to build true democracy and meaningful social equity.