Easy Rider

• Nor is its author, Jeff Sharlet, focused only on the ominous events of January 6, 2021, at the US Capitol.
• Sharlet believes that event is part of a “slow civil war” that threatens the future of the American republic.
• Review: The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War – Jeff Sharlet (W.W. Norton)

American racism

• Sharlet documents Belafonte’s lifelong struggle against racism, through a series of conversations.
• Sharlet uses Belafonte to argue racism is at the heart of the American political and social malady.
• Belafonte, a mainstream performer with cross-race appeal who still suffered intense discrimination, is Sharlet’s bearer of the bad news that racism resides in the core of American identity.
• Read more:
  From sit-ins in the 1960s to uprisings in the new millennium, Harry Belafonte served as a champion of youth activism

‘The American religion of winning’

• While race may be at the heart of a contested American identity, Sharlet believes evangelical religion is propelling the narrative of discontent and rebellion.
• Or rather, a distorted branch within evangelical religion: the prosperity gospel, which teaches that faith and positive thinking attract health, wealth and happiness.
• Wilkerson is portrayed as a very “cool” Christian, with a talent for grabbing headlines and fraternising with celebrity friends.
• Prosperity follows him.” The American prosperity gospel is a materialist practice full of (sometimes unaware) poseurs, a bit like Trump himself.
• His braggadocio at rallies appeals to his acolytes because it operates within “the American religion of winning”.

Evangelical religion and QAnon

• As the apostle Paul wrote: “We walk by faith, not by sight” (KJV, 2 Corinthians 5:7).
• Through QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory provides secular breadcrumbs for those seeking answers for the strange condition of the modern American nation-state.
• QAnon is rooted in Gnostic philosophy, which held that reality is not what it appears (and was expelled from the mainstream of early Christianity’s canon).
• QAnon adherents believe that, with the addition of the conspiracy theories supplied by QAnon, menacing forces and hopeful signs can be effortlessly revealed.
• Read more:
  History repeats itself: From the New Testament to QAnon

A slow civil war

Hope cannot easily spring eternal, so grim are the signs of a slow civil war. Sharlet hints mass protest may be a democratic antidote to the American proto-fascism he fears.

• In the end, Sharlet can only offer the slender hope that democratic practice, one small step at a time, might prevail through the will of sensible people.
• But what if the problem went deeper than an internal culture war?
• Read more:
  In Doppelganger, Naomi Klein says the world is broken: conspiracy theorists 'get the facts wrong but often get the feelings right'

Not unique to America

• Certainly, Australia has experienced white racism – and violent, organised attacks on non-whites.
• Alternatively, follow the unfolding story of the two policemen and a neighbour, gunned down in an ambush in Southern Queensland in 2022.
• But it is harder to channel racist and religious fanaticism into an attack on the political state in Australia.
• They will not be assured of America’s future role as a reliable world bastion of liberal democracy.
• Nor can they be assured the United States will remain the politically stable centre of an increasingly unstable global economic system.

Ian Tyrrell received funding from the Australian Research Council's grant schemes on five occasions from 1996 to 2015.

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