The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War w/ Jeff Sharlet

Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael

On this edition of Parallax Views, last month I spoke to journalist Jeffrey Sharlet, known for his books on the Christian Nationalist movement (The Family and C Street; the former has been made into hit Netflix documentary miniseries), to discuss his latest work The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War. The book is a series of essays exploring the chaotic moment that Sharlet calls the "Trumpocene" and delves into everything from the January 6th insurrection and death of Ashli Babbitt to the Men's Rights Movement. Given he New Hampshire primary on January 23rd, I felt that now was the perfect time to release this prescient conversation.

In this conversation we cover a number of topics including:

- The "F Word"; or fascism

- The rise of the far-right in the U.S. and its global ascendancy

- Trump and Gnosticism; Jeff's citing of the Gnostic poem "Thunder Perfect Mind" in relation to the Trump/MAGA movement phenomena

- Jan 6th and the death of Ashli Babbit; what drove Ashli Babbit into Trumpism and the MAGA movement?

- QAnon and the power of narratives in mobilizing the American right-wing

- Revisiting Jeff's groundbreaking journalism on The Family, C Street, the Council for National Policy (CNP), and Christian Nationalism

- Christian Nationalism and Trumpism as radical reinterpretations of Christianity; the Church itself as not being the be-all-end-all of Christian Nationalism (it's much bigger than that)

- Jeff's experiences reporting on the MRA movement and the ways in which they start with some true observations (men have high suicide rates, custody issues, etc.) that are chucked away in favor of misogny and all-out attacks on feminism (even though some of their initial observations can also be found amongst feminist works such as Susan Faludi's Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man)

- And more!