This is an excellent interview with Jeff Sharlet on American Fascism and the undertow which is pulling so many into its dangerous and delusional clutches. Jeff’s books, film, interviews and voice of experience and wisdom is so needed and important.
And, yes, our nation and world are changing in unpredictable, frightening, sad, accelerating and enormous ways — and, as Jeff illuminates, so many know it’s changing and are hurting and scared.
And it is also so very true as Jeff shares in this interview that “there is grief without mourning — and grief without mourning curdles into anger.”
This is why I write and speak so frequently about trauma and how vital it is to understand trauma and grieve what we are witnessing, experiencing, and absorbing. Otherwise our hearts close — and to the degree that we live with a defended rather than open heart is the degree that we are vulnerable to causing harm, sometimes great harm, to ourselves and others.
And then the switch is triggered and we’re pulled into the undertow… like some I know and love.
I am deeply grateful for the courageous work of Jeff Sharlet. A gift to us all. May we listen and learn and act in whatever ways that we can to help and heal ourselves, our families and communities, our nation and our world. — Molly
Scenes From a Slow Civil War/Jeff Sharlet/TMR
Sam and Emma host Jeff Sharlet, professor of English at Dartmouth College, to discuss his recent book The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War.
Jeff Sharlet dives right into how his work reviews the United States’ failing relationship with fascism, and how he views his own relationship to it, as a long-time journalist covering the Right Wing, walking through the complete refusal to even use the term “fascist” to describe the right until Trump’s rise to power, and how his ascendency saw a marked shift of Christian Nationalism towards a cult of personality.
After a brief definition of fascism, Jeff, Sam, and Emma parse through what role the cult of personality plays in fascism, and how the Christian Theocrats see Trump as more of an avatar, a tool of god to unite the right, before stepping back to look at the evolution of fascism over the last 80 years, looking at the global rise of fascism today, and its continued connection to cultures of aggrievement.
Next, Sharlet looks to the 2020 election and end of Trump’s reign as a particular spark under the far-right, igniting their theocratic attacks on abortion and trans people, also touching on how the far right, and everyone else, view this “slow civil war.”
Wrapping up, they explore the concept of the “rabbit hole” of the far right, the absurdity of appealing to a politics of irrationalism with rationalism, and why the strongest measure in the fight against fascism is stepping up and building beautiful things that people want to be a part of.
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