Eoin Higgins’ Owned and Katherine Stewart’s Money, Lies, and God Behind the Movement to Destroy American Democracy make a compelling case that the American right has not merely gained power through electoral victories but has fundamentally reshaped the ideological and institutional landscape of the country. What emerges from their work is not a picture of a fragmented and chaotic reactionary movement but of a well-financed, deeply interconnected project whose central aim is to dismantle democracy and replace it with a permanent structure of oligarchic and theocratic rule.
Higgins, focusing on media and its co-option by Silicon Valley’s billionaire class, shows how figures once associated with radical critique have been absorbed into reactionary politics, not necessarily because of ideological shifts but because of the lucrative incentives provided by the right’s alternative media ecosystem.
Stewart examines how Christian nationalism has moved from being an influential but constrained political force to one that now seeks to reshape the American political system in its own image. The alignment between religious nationalism, corporate power, and the machinery of the Republican Party is not incidental but a crucial feature of the contemporary reactionary project.
At the heart of both books is the idea that what is happening in America is not simply a contest between left and right, or between competing electoral strategies, but a fundamental restructuring of power that the left, and particularly the liberal centre, has failed to counter. Both Owned and Money, Lies, and God are necessary tools for understanding the Trumpocene—the political era defined not just by Donald Trump’s influence but by the long-term reconfiguration of American institutions to enable reactionary rule. Alongside writers such as Kerry Howley and Jeff Sharlett, who have chronicled the psychological and ideological underpinnings of modern right-wing politics, Higgins and Stewart offer indispensable insights into the mechanisms through which power is being consolidated.
MAGA’s Mindset
While Owned and Money, Lies, and God lay out the institutional mechanisms behind the right’s consolidation of power, Jeff Sharlett’s The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, published in 2023, provides essential context for understanding the emotional, spiritual, and cultural dimensions of MAGA’s fascist underpinnings. Though it predates Higgins’ and Stewart’s books, it serves as a crucial prelude to their forensic analysis, exploring the conditions that made the rise of reactionary power not just possible but inevitable.
Sharlett is one of the few writers who has not only tracked the rise of the religious right but has embedded himself within the spaces where authoritarianism is nurtured, exploring the psychological grip Trumpism holds over its followers. His earlier work, The Family, exposed the secretive Christian fundamentalist network at the heart of American politics. In The Undertow, he shifts his focus to the rank-and-file believers, showing how Trump’s base sees him not merely as a political leader but as a messianic figure whose rule transcends democratic norms.
Sharlett captures the fervour of Trump’s most hardcore supporters, those who no longer operate within the framework of conventional politics but who view every election, every court case, every challenge to their leader as a spiritual battle. He reveals that many Trump followers have absorbed a fundamentalist vision of politics, where democracy is not just an obstacle but a heresy, an idea that must be uprooted so that a “righteous” order can be imposed.
As Stewart puts it, “The desired end state of Christian nationalism today is neither to win a majority nor to secure a seat at the table in a pluralistic democracy but to entrench minority rule under the facade of democracy.” Sharlett extends this argument by showing how this project is not simply institutional but psychological, rooted in a narrative of righteous struggle where any electoral defeat is seen as illegitimate, any opposition inherently evil.
One of Stewart’s most devastating critiques is how liberal institutions have enabled the rise of Christian nationalism by insisting on the neutrality of institutions that were already under attack. Courts, universities, and even large corporations have all bent to right-wing pressure while maintaining the fiction that they are simply responding to ‘both sides’ of political debate. The right has understood that institutions are never neutral, that they can be reshaped, captured, and weaponised. The left, meanwhile, has spent decades treating institutions as though they exist outside of power struggles. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Supreme Court, where the right has built an infrastructure that ensures its control for generations. As Stewart notes, “this is not just a battle of ideas; it is a battle over the institutions that decide which ideas can be implemented as law.”
The Long Game
Both Stewart and Higgins depict a right-wing movement that has been decades in the making. This is no improvised insurgency. The institutions, networks, and ideologies now defining the American right are the result of long-term strategic planning, beginning in the latter half of the 20th century. Stewart, in particular, outlines how conservative evangelical leaders, in collaboration with corporate backers, created an alternative political infrastructure, complete with media channels, legal advocacy groups, and well-funded policy networks.
“The Funders might share the Christian nationalist mindset with their followers but they certainly don’t have to, and many do not. Some identify with other religious traditions, and some appear to have confessed to no religion more than the worship of money. The core of their belief system is that democracy in its current configuration threatens their power and privilege.”
This historical continuity is essential to understanding the moment we are in. The reactionary right was not conjured into existence by Trump; rather, Trump is the culmination of efforts that stretch back to the Powell Memo of 1971, the Reagan-era fusion of corporate libertarianism and the Christian right, and the judicial capture strategy that gave us the Federalist Society’s iron grip on the courts.
While Stewart’s book focuses on the American religious right, it is clear that the forces she describes are part of a much larger international project. Christian nationalists in the U.S. have built alliances with far-right movements in Europe, Brazil, and India, sharing rhetoric, tactics, and even funding networks. Figures like Viktor Orbán, Jair Bolsonaro, and Narendra Modi have all drawn from the playbook of the American right, using a fusion of religious and nationalist identity to justify authoritarian governance. Meanwhile, American Christian nationalist organisations have poured resources into anti-LGBTQ legislation in Africa and Latin America, seeing these regions as fertile ground for exporting their vision of theocratic rule. Stewart makes clear that what is happening in America is not an isolated phenomenon but part of a global strategy to erode secular democracy.
Higgins’ sharpest observation is that reactionary politics is not simply gaining traction through traditional institutions but is being fuelled by the structural incentives of digital media itself. The old media landscape, with its gatekeeping editors and institutional constraints, at least provided some friction between political extremism and mass audiences. Today, outrage is the organising principle of online discourse, with platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and Substack rewarding those who generate engagement, whether through truth or deception. The success of figures like Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, and Matt Taibbi is not simply ideological; it is structural. Social media does not amplify arguments on the basis of coherence or accuracy but on their ability to provoke reaction. As Higgins notes, “the right has mastered the art of harnessing Silicon Valley’s algorithms to manufacture consent for reactionary politics, while the left remains wedded to a media model that no longer exists.”
The Greenwald Problem
One of the most provocative arguments in Owned is its depiction of Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, two journalists once regarded as icons of the left, who have since become deeply embedded in right-wing media ecosystems. Higgins does not merely criticise them for their shifts in perspective, he argues that their political trajectory was never as principled as many on the left assumed.
Greenwald and Taibbi became heroes of the radical left not because they were committed to socialism or even to structural critiques of power, but because they positioned themselves as adversaries of the liberal establishment. Greenwald, in particular, built his career attacking the hypocrisies of mainstream Democratic politics, from the Obama administration’s surveillance state to Hillary Clinton’s interventionism. Taibbi, meanwhile, made his name with searing critiques of Wall Street corruption, writing for Rolling Stone in a style that mixed Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo journalism with genuine investigative rigour.
“Nearly fifteen years later, people behind many of the institutions that were once threatened by Greenwald now fund the companies that pay him. They do so as part of a push by the tech industry to build a new media ecosystem, one that seldom critiques those in power and eagerly punishes those agitating for change.”
Greenwald’s career, in particular, serves as a cautionary tale of how reactionary media structures absorb dissent. A figure once known for his fearless exposure of state surveillance and war crimes, Greenwald now spends much of his time attacking ‘woke elites’ and defending reactionary billionaires under the guise of free speech.
The Taibbi Problem
Higgins’ critique of Matt Taibbi is particularly damning because it reveals not just an individual trajectory but a broader pattern of how self-styled contrarians have been absorbed into reactionary politics. Taibbi, once celebrated for his fearless reporting on Wall Street corruption and the 2008 financial crisis, has undergone a transformation that mirrors the larger rightward shift of disaffected journalists who define themselves primarily in opposition to the liberal establishment rather than in allegiance to any coherent political project.
Higgins documents how Taibbi’s work on the Twitter Files, a supposed exposé of government interference in online speech, was eagerly embraced by the right, not because it meaningfully exposed state power but because it could be weaponised against the Democratic Party and the broader left. The irony, as Higgins points out, is that Taibbi built his reputation railing against corporate control over public discourse, yet his new position aligns him with the most powerful right-wing media networks and the billionaires who fund them.
“Taibbi’s shift did not occur in a vacuum. He is a product of the larger trend of disaffected media figures embracing the reactionary right—not because their politics changed, but because the right pays better for dissent.”
Where Taibbi once fought to expose the corrupt nexus between financial power and government, he now aligns himself with those who benefit from that very structure, so long as their politics are dressed up as a challenge to ‘the establishment.’ His career illustrates a crucial lesson in how reactionary co-option works: it does not require someone to embrace conservative ideology fully, only to define their opposition narrowly enough that their dissent serves the interests of the right. In this sense, Taibbi is not an anomaly, he is an inevitability in a media landscape where criticism of power has been transformed into a marketable brand.
Beyond Defence
The right has built an infrastructure designed to outlast any single election cycle. It has constructed a media ecosystem, an ideological framework, and a network of institutions that allow it to function even when out of formal power.
If the left continues to assume that the right will simply overreach and collapse under its own contradictions, it will find itself permanently outmanoeuvred. Owned and Money, Lies, and God do not just demand recognition of the scale of the crisis; they call for the construction of a countervailing political infrastructure capable of contesting it.
Higgins and Stewart provide forensic accounts of how power is being seized, but Sharlett complements this by examining why so many are willing to follow. Understanding MAGA requires more than policy critiques or electoral strategies; it demands recognition of the deep undercurrents of faith, grievance, and violence that sustain it.
If Higgins and Stewart diagnose a structural crisis, the question remains: what is the alternative? Their books make it clear that the solution is not more electoral organising or media fact-checking. The right has spent decades constructing a parallel infrastructure, think tanks, legal networks, grassroots organisations, and a billion-dollar media empire, designed to entrench its influence even when out of formal power. The left has no equivalent, and without one, it will remain at a permanent disadvantage. Owned and Money, Lies, and God do not just call for outrage but for a counter-strategy: institutions that can rival the right’s long-term vision, media that is proactive rather than reactive (by then it is too late), and a political movement that treats power as something to be built, not merely won. The right has spent decades capturing institutions; the left must now commit to the same long game, or risk permanent defeat.
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