AMERICAN CAESAR: How Theocrats and Tech Lords Are Turning America into a Monarchy, sobering and timely

AMERICAN CAESAR: How Theocrats and Tech Lords Are Turning America into a Monarchy
BRADLEY B. ONISHI
St. Martin's Essentials (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A chilling and urgently needed exposé on the forces pushing American politics and religion toward a post-constitutional autocracy

From Silicon Valley boardrooms to rural pulpits, from Catholic monasteries to Beltway think tanks and Project 2025, a convergence is underway. Reactionary Catholics dream of a new Christendom. Protestant pastors invoke divine right over democratic rule. Tech billionaires, led by the likes of Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, argue that freedom and democracy are incompatible. Their solution? A singular ruler to bring “order” out of what they see as liberal chaos.

With a theologian’s sensibility, a journalist’s touch, and a historian’s eye for how movements evolve and adapt, Dr. Bradley B. Onishi traces the strange alliance between spiritual warfare and Silicon Valley libertarianism. At the center of it all is the desire for an unbound executive—one man, beyond checks, beyond balance, beyond democracy. This isn’t nostalgia for the 1950s. It’s an organized attempt to abandon the American experiment altogether. A former insider turned academic expert, Onishi brings unmatched depth to this investigation—tracing his own path from evangelical pastor to co-host of Straight White American Jesus, the nation’s leading religion and politics podcast.

As the 2024 election fades into history and a new political order takes shape, American Caesar is not just a warning. It’s a map of how we got here—and a call to act before the Republic as we know it becomes just another chapter in a forgotten history book.

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My Review: I'm highly suspicious of the notion that "order" is a Good Thing because who decides this for other people is generally who wants to control those other people's lives in close detail. Those kinds of people are almost always puritans of one or another sort, who believe "They" should not be thinking those thoughts/doing those things (usually, though not always, sexual) because *eeewww*.

Author Onishi adds in the tech industry's "thinkers" to the usual suspects but stops short of using the slurs I myownself hurl at them. Author Onishi is tendentious as hell, shouting and waving his arms at the public, determinedly pointing the fingers of both hands at sometimes strained parallels with a past distant enough to make comparisons very very broad. Human nature does not change from what I can see; the same playbooks are still effective because our psychology is much the same.

"Much the same" does not mean we're always going to succumb to the same ruses. Look at the demonization of immigrants that's largely limited to haters and shouters, who are always in every era a minority; how many more people did what Minneapolis did and showed up to disrupt ICEstapo raids? California's honking warners of imminent danger are not getting hate outside the small bubble of the haters and screamers or there would be giant crowds of people helping ICE instead of huge shortages of recruits.

I'm not trying to put you off the read, it says what I think and explains what I fear; it brings the receipts for its bases of argument; it's going a bit further into the "it's inevitable, prepare to suffer" direction than I suspect is fully supported by developments. I think its tone is alarmist in a time when alarm is not only justified, but required; however presenting the grim facts ought to serve, not presenting deterministic conclusions. Those tend to dishearten the ordinary person, not rile them into the resistance and non-compliance we so urgently need to support and spread as a mindset.

Flawed by an overly emotional tone or not, this book can and should be part of your pre-election reading.

SHADOWS OF THE REPUBLIC: The Rebirth of Fascism in America and How to Defeat It for Good, spot-on and well thought through if light on action items

SHADOWS OF THE REPUBLIC: The Rebirth of Fascism in America and How to Defeat It for Good
OMER AZIZ
Broadleaf Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$32.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: What is driving the rise of fascism—and how can we stop it?

In this singular investigation into the sinister realms of fascism and its many guises, Omer Aziz, author of the acclaimed Brown Boy and contributing writer for the Boston Globe, sets out to answer the Why are so many young people like him drifting to the ultranationalist right? Shadows of the Republic offers a haunting portrait of American fascism, how it began, and why it is now focused on immigration, technology, and the purification of society.

Fascism is not coming to America; it has been here for a long time. With astringent clarity, Aziz traces the flaring up of fascist ideas in both American history and our current moment.

From the dominance of the KKK, to the Nazi rally in New York in 1939, to the alliances between U.S. elites and European fascists, Aziz examines the long shadows of fascism. Traveling across the United States and Europe, he illuminates connections between street fascists and the ones in suits, between Hitler and the country across the ocean he so admired. Aziz examines culture in Germany and Italy in the 1930s, where propaganda ministers made people believe both everything and nothing, and he examines the apppeal of the far right among the very group it targets. Using interviews with experts and his own experience, he also offers an anti-fascist playbook to reinvigorate democracy and our civic life.

Fascism is a precise term, cheapened by overuse. Yet when a word describes reality, we can't afford to ignore it. From the pulsing power of an ideology of the past to its comeback among even those with the most to lose, Shadows of the Republic offers the definitive story of American fascism—and what we can do to salvage democracy for years to come.

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My Review: From the publisher's blurbs:

"A comprehensive work on fascism and America's democracy."—BOB WOODWARD
"An alarm bell announcing that the American house is on fire."—STEPHEN KING
"A provocative and passionate reminder that democracies don't collapse overnight."—CALEB GAYLE

Not bad, as a group of famous names lending a book their luster. It helps that Brown Boy already proved Author Omer's literary cred to all and sundry. (If you've never read it, your library has a decent chance of having a copy on their shelves.) A man with multiple degrees from good schools who happens to be from a Pakistani-Canadian immigrant family knows exclusion and profiling intimately. It's why he speaks with the passion for his antifascist beliefs that clearly powers his writing of this book.

What will likely open the reader's eyes is the depth and age of fascism's roots in the US. It's really easy to say "it's this regime's doing" but it ain't the whole truth, or even close to it. In doing the reporting for this book, Author Omer delved into the different identities in modern fascism, from street-level grievance-led prejudice to boardroom media-trained corporatism. Each branch of the shrub has its own genesis, its own (perverse) virtue-signaling, and its own class systems to go with its origins.

A serious problem we're watching play out in real time is the anti-intellectual fervor of fascists. Ultimately, Author Omer decries the harms being done to all of us now, but points out we can use this same reality against the fascists. It's heartening to read a book that doesn't just ring the tocsin for the republic for which we stand, but shows us who's resisting (or resisted before) and how.

I'm sad there was not *more* of that in the read, but understand the reasoning of focusing on presenting the system so we can stop making the fumblimg foolery that's led us to this dark passage in our country's existence. It's widely applicable to many places, of course, but wow are the people of the US led carefully away from thinking critically about what's happening around us. Author Omer explains how effectively and helpfully but maybe a bit too often.

Author Omer is a fine, approachable guide to the perpetrators and the resisters. It's clear whose side he's on but he doesn't fall into the trap where I live my life, ie vilifying The Others and treating them as unworthy shitty beings. I admire this character trait. I have never in my rising-seventy years on Earth been able to emulate it. Would that I could, but at least Author Omer provides example and encouragement to try, try again.

As a read, this is a fine experience; as a guide to resistance, this is an inspiring collection of ideas; as a way to support people who are doing good work in the world, buying a copy of this book is a good investment.