Summary
Katherine Stewart’s book, Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, warns of a coordinated right-wing movement aiming to dismantle U.S. democracy.
This movement, comprising Christian nationalists, billionaire oligarchs, and conservative ideologues, aims to dismantle pluralistic democracy and establish a theocratic system.
Stewart highlights its deep organization, financial backing, and strategic voter mobilization, contrasting it with less coordinated pro-democracy efforts.
The term “reactionary nihilism” is an oxymoron.
The popular definition of nihilism is a bad person who rejects my values. Or a bad person who secretly holds values in opposition to their public persona. “Nihilist” in journalistic circles means “double-atheist”, to their readers it just means “wicked”.
its going to be frustrating to people familiar with the philosophy, but it was way too cool of a word to stay esoteric and academic. The solution is to find a new word for the philosophy; accept the loss of the word to popular culture. (which is a good and natural process)