Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael
Society & Culture
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!
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The Hamas Attack, Israel/Palestine, U.S. Foreign Policy, and How Hamas Got Power in the First Place w/ Prof. Stephen Zunes
Hamas’ Unprecedented Attack on Israel and How It May Change Middle East Geopolitics Irrevocably w/ James M. Dorsey
The Secret History of Watergate: Nixon, Howard Hughes, and Blackmail in Politics w/ Jonathan Marshall
The Political Right and Equality: Turning Back the Tide of Egalitarian Modernity w/ Matt McManus
Nagorno-Karabakh and the Persecution of Armenians w/ Alfred de Zayas, Former UN Independent Expert on International Order
U.S. Foreign Policy, Great Power Competition, and the Azerbaijani Ethnic Cleansing of Armenians w/ Mark Movsesian
Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories w/ Mike Rothschild
The Afghanistan Ouroboros, the BCCI, and 9/11 w/ Blowback’s Noah Kulwin
Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times
War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine w/ Norman Solomon
Military Carbon Emissions & Congressional Blocking of DoD Emission Reduction Efforts w/ Hanna Homestead
Unanswered Questions: What the September Eleventh Families Asked and the 9/11 Commission Ignored w/ Ray McGinnis
No Justice, No Police?: The Politics of Protest and Social Change w/ Matt Clement
Tyranny Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty and What to Do About It (+ Opposing the Eugenicist, Nietzschean Right) w/ Sohrab Ahmari
The Maui Fires and the Grotesque Mismanagement of a Disaster w/ Journalist Albert Lanier from Hawaii
The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968 w/ Luke A. Nichter
The Hidden History of American Democracy w/ Thom Hartmann/The Risks of Nuclear War, Oppenheimer, & Reflections on Alamogordo and Los Alamos w/ Ret. LTC. William J. Astore
The Black Poor, Class, and Affirmative Action w/ Bertrand Cooper
The Texas Mall Shooting and the Phenomena of Nazis of Color w/ Spencer Sunshine and Isaac
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