The Undertow

While I was reading Bob Woodward's accounts of the Trump presidency, I came across a reference to Jeff Sharlet's wonderful and terrible book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War.  I just had to read it, although it took me a while to get to the top of the holds list at my local library.

Published in 2023, The Undertow is a series of essays which explore the nether regions of the American Right, Trump's base. They were written over a number of years as Sharlet travels around the country talking not to politicians but to ordinary punters who are sold, not just on Trump as a person, but on the whole package - the conspiracies, the misogyny, the guns, the end of abortion, the stolen election, you name it, they believe it.

He goes to various events - Trump rallies in which journalists are kept in a cage for Trump to humiliate at the appropriate time; the International Conference on Men's Issues, relocated at short notice from the swanky Detroit Hilton to the decidedly more down market VFW hall (equivalent to RSL for us Aussies) when the Hilton realised they were hosting a bunch of nutty 'men's rights' campaigners; a 'Justice for Ashli Babbitt' rally mourning and celebrating the death of a woman shot by police during the 2021 Trumpist insurrection which makes her out to be a patriot killed in the line of duty.  

Most of all, he goes to church - the vapid prosperity gospel church of Pastor Rich Wilkerson Jr where the faith seems to be entirely about getting rich and having a good time with God; then on the dark side, little independent churches where 'prophets' share the direct word of God about how the demonic socialists are stealing children but the Lord is about to reveal their evil and overcome them.  He tries to talk to the ordinary people in the pews, but finds himself carefully shepherded away from them to the 'approved' informants or, in one case, forcibly shown the door by armed guards.

He also just meets people - he drives around the Republican heartland and stops to take photos of the signs people put out - variations on the Confederate flag, banners celebrating the 'right to bear arms', flags conflating Trump with Jesus.  He meets the people who put them up, and often finds himself invited in for a chat.

The cumulative result of these encounters is harrowing.  It seems that a disturbing number of people in the US believe that a civil war is coming, or is already under way.  They are heavily armed in preparation, often beginning their weapons education before they can read.  They believe the government is coming for their arms, and are prepared to shoot to kill in order to keep them.  They believe that immigrants across their border are an army of rapists and murderers intent on destroying American society, while Black Lives Matter protestors are a violent anarcho-socialist force intent on imposing a new socialist order.  They have no faith in the government defending them from these dangers and so are gearing up to defend themselves.  

Many of them also believe some or all of a whole package of conspiratorial tales originating in the soup of far-right conspiracy theory - the stolen election, of course, the climate crisis as a manufactured excuse to introduce socialism and take their guns, the feminist takeover of society (this, as abortion rights were being wound back across the US), Bill Gates implanting micro-chips through vaccinations, the kidnapping and sacrifice of thousands of children.    It is a frightening, lawless looking glass world in which all evidence must be filtered through the mouths of various online media sources and the bizarre reaches of Youtube.  

I can hardly do it justice here.  You would like to think it was just a few cranks, but Trump's ongoing popularity and stranglehold on the Republican Party says it is not.  Social cohesion is broken in the US, there is no longer an agreed way of arriving at truth or a core of trust.  The existence of a majority of people who think this is all nonsense is cold comfort given the number of guns in play.  It's hard to see how this could end well.

***

In an immediate sense, Sharlet is describing a grassroots uprising.  The people he meets - the family who lead a local militia, the veterans in a local bar, the men at the ill-starred men's conference - are just ordinary punters, responding to the social unease they see around them.  There isn't a single leader (Trump is a figurehead who reads the room and responds accordingly) or any formal organisation.

I was left, however, with a question.  Who comes up with the ideas and seeds them?  Who spreads them?  Who gives them an airing on mainstream media as if they are actual stories?  Who is the mysterious 'Q' who provides the basis for 'Q-anon', the most famous of the online conspiracy theories? Who is paying the piper who plays these discordant tunes? 

Some of them, like 'Q', are firmly in the shadows.  Others, to be sure, are just ordinary punters like the independent pastors who have somehow managed to attract a following.  But much of it is out in the open for anyone who wants to see.  For instance, the pro-gun stuff originates with the National Rifle Association, whose principal members and funders are weapons manufacturers.  All those private arsenals don't come cheap and someone is making  big bucks out of all this paranoia.  

Others are media proprietors.  For instance there was Infowars, co-owned and run by the infamous Alex Jones who spread all manner of conspiracy stories, all the while spruiking dubious dietary supplements through which he made most of his money.  The more controversial his stories, the more eyes he drew and the more product he sold, at least until he over-reached and was ordered to pay millions in compensation to the young survivors of the Sandy Hook school massacre who he claimed were actors perpetrating a hoax.  Or Breitbart News, run after its founder died by Steve Bannon who later became Trump's 'Chief Strategist', whatever that means.  Not to mention Fox News, owned by that hoary old billionaire Rupert Murdoch, who made the bullshit respectable.  Each of these chaos entrepreneurs has build a business model around selling sensational misinformation.

But there are also business models which appear to run on auto-pilot.  For instance, the various social media companies allow people to create their own content.  This could be any content, they don't care - much of it is cat videos, or music, or porn.  Some of it is political - left wing, right wing, centrist, whatever your taste.  The algorithms are designed to keep you looking so if you look at a cat video it will show you more cats, then maybe a tiger, or a dog, and before you know it your feed is filled with all manner of animals.  It will never stop, the only way out is to turn it off.  

So you might start out watching a video of Steve Bannon, perhaps part curious, part skeptical, and then it will show you a bit more Bannon, then maybe some Jordan Peterson, or some Alex Jones, and before you know it you are watching a three hour explanation, with photos, of how the Clintons and Obamas kidnap children and smuggle them via the basement of a Washington pizza shop into a network of tunnels where they are sexually abused and then ritually murdered.  Eventually, sleep deprived and half-crazy, you are on your way to set fire to this shop and save the children. This really happened, although sadly the would-be arsonist was so tired she fell asleep at the wheel and was killed when her car ran off the road.  Back in the real world the shop doesn't even have a basement, just a pizza oven out the back, but you have seen the photos on Youtube.  This all seems spontaneous but it's not because those long hours of eyes on the screen, trapped by a diabolically clever algorithm that was written by a real human, are earning Youtube or Tik Tok or whatever other unregulated global mega-corp is curating your feed mountains of advertising dollars which have made their owners some of the richest people on the planet.

But this, perhaps, points us to the fact that while many of the things these foot-soldiers of the Right believe is fantasy, some of it is actually true.  The government will not, in fact, protect them and in many ways is trying to harm them.  It is not doing this through some deep state plot to kidnap children or implant micro-chips, but through plain, old-fashioned power politics.  Four decades of neo-liberal governments have left Western countries, the US most of all, with hollowed-out public institutions and powerful, lawless corporations.  These corporations are intent on their own profits regardless of the harm to ordinary people and the governments of the rich world do not merely allow them to do it, they assist in the process.  They build regulatory systems and infrastructure that facilitate the raping of the planet, the pollution of air, land and sea, the exhaustion of natural resources, permanent damage to the global climate, the spread of global hunger.  The costs of these things fall disproportionately on poor people and they feel it but don't understand it because the architecture of information is also in the hands of these wealthy corporations.  Governments can barely exercise any limits on old, traditional businesses like miners, manufacturers and newspaper proprietors - how could they possibly begin to regulate the new world of trans-national tech corporations?

But this regulatory light touch is not universal.  The Law of the Conservation of Red Tape dictates that regulations cannot be removed from a society and must instead be displaced - in this case, taken from the rich and given to the poor like some sort of perverse Robin Hood.  Hence poor people find that they are subject to ever more stringent surveillance and restriction.  They live with punitive welfare policies which require more of them while offering them less.  They are on the receiving end of 'law and order' policies which imprison poor Black people for trivial offences while rich people get away with fraud, theft and murder.  We see increasing surveillance and detention of poor immigrants.  The government is indeed out to get them, and their guns won't save them although their white skins just might.  

***

I don't know how it's going to turn out, but I still have hope.  I don't have a lot of hope for the success of the Biden-led Democrats or the other 'centre-left' parties to wind back the march of neo-liberal destruction because they are merely focused on managing it a little better and taking the edge off its harshest consequences.  They are the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke, but the engineers are not coming to fix the hole with any kind of urgency.  

What I do have hope in is the grass-roots movements of the broad Left - the Black Lives Matter movement, Extinction Rebellion, the School Strike for Climate, the women's marches, the Free Palestine protestors and so many more.  For every gun-obsessed conspiracy theorist of the Right we need two non-violent protestors who are prepared to stand up for justice, not just for themselves, but for people around the world and even the deluded gun nuts who see them as dupes of the socialist conspiracy.   Because Trump will not save these people, all he will do is enrich himself at their expense.

So, by way of an antidote to Jeff Sharlet's gloomy tales, why not read Vanessa Nakate's A Bigger Picture?  Nakate lives in Uganda, not exactly a beacon of democracy although no longer the brutal military hell-hole it once was.  She was inspired by the school strikers in Europe and America and decided to stage her own strike at home in Kampala.  The 'striking' is modest - they don't demonstrate outside the Ugandan Parliament because you seriously do not want to get arrested by the Ugandan police, but they stand in busy public areas with their signs.  Nor do they take time off school to do it - young Africans are acutely aware of the importance of education.  

From small beginnings standing on a street corner with a couple of her younger siblings, she has ended up being a key organiser of youth climate action across Africa, attended various international climate forums, challenged racism in the climate movement and written a book about climate activism, all before turning 25.  She's not just show-boating either.  She has set up a charity that provides more efficient, climate-friendly cooking stoves for schools in her province of Uganda and plants fruit trees in their grounds, so that the children of this poor country can get decent meals at least once a day as they learn, without having to breathe smoke and collect mountains of firewood before school each morning.  She is a young dynamo.

The communication tools and technologies that fuel the Trumpist, Q-Anon uprising can also fuel the progressive, life-affirming movements that we see all around us.  The internet can spawn conspiracy theories but it can allow a young African woman to be inspired by activists on the other side of the world and in her turn connect up people across multiple countries in the global South.  

The Christian faith can be hijacked by the prosperity gospel, weird conspiracies and the oppression of women, but it inspires Vanessa Nakate (and so many others, including me) to promote peace, generosity and environmental stewardship.  There is no reason for us to cower in our homes as the forces of the Right rise around us.  We have the tools to resist, to build a better world.  

It's not easy, but when has it ever been?  Don't lose hope!