Jeff Sharlet has spent two decades covering the intersection of extreme Christian nationalism and the far-right. In his new book, Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, he gives snapshots of a country rapidly devolving into a Christian fascism state. He captures the rage, the despair, the dislocation, the alienation, the aesthetic of violence, and the magical thinking that are the foundations of all fascist movements—forces that are now coalescing around the Trump-led Republican Party.
The bizarre conspiracy theories and buffoonish quality of many who lead and embrace this movement, such as Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, make the use American fascists easy to ridicule and dismiss. But Sharlet implores us to take them seriously as an existential threat to what is left of our anemic democracy. Jeff Sharlet joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss his new book and the rising tide of Christofascism threatening our democracy.
Jeff Sharlet is an American academic, journalist, and author. Throughout his career, Sharlet’s work has focused on religion. He is a contributing editor for Harper’s, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Rolling Stone. His work has also appeared in Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Esquire, Lapham’s Quarterly, Oxford American, Bookforum, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, New York, Advocate, Guernica, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Columbia Journalism Review, New Statesman, The Nation, The New Republic, Forward, and The Baffler.
Sharlet has taught at New York University and is the Frederick Sessions Beebe ’35 Professor in the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College. He is the recipient of the National Magazine Award for Reporting, the MOLLY National Journalism Prize, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission’s Outspoken Award, and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation’s Thomas Jefferson Award.
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