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The Conspiracy to End America

Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

“This is the first must-read of the 2024 election cycle if you want to understand the stakes.” –Nicolle Wallace
Former chief Republican strategist, Lincoln Project adviser, and bestselling author of It Was All a Lie, Stuart Stevens offers an ominous warning that the GOP is dragging our country toward autocracy—and if we don’t wake up to the crisis in our system, 2024 may well be our last free and fair election.

Today’s Republican party is not a “normal” political party in the American tradition. It has become an autocratic movement masquerading as a political party. As Stuart Stevens argues in THE CONSPIRACY TO END AMERICA, if we look away from that truth, we greatly increase the likelihood that the America we love will slip away, never to return. 
 
Whenever a democracy slides into autocracy, there are five critical elements at work: financers, propagandists, party support, legal theories to legitimize, and shock troops. THE CONSPIRACY TO END AMERICA examines each of these driving forces on the Right and makes clear how they are working in concert to end our democracy as we know it. 
 
In the tradition of It Can’t Happen Here and On Tyranny, THE CONSPIRACY TO END AMERICA is a blinking red distress call about the dark intentions lurking within Stevens’ old party and a rallying cry to beat back this perilous threat and save the Republic. 

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    • Kirkus

      September 1, 2023
      A former Republican strategist decries a party that has gone off the rails and plunged into totalitarianism. According to Lincoln Project senior adviser Stevens, the author of It Was All a Lie, five ingredients fuel "an autocratic movement masquerading as a political party." These five, in order, are propaganda and its makers; a party willing to be twisted; piles of money and willing suppliers of it; legal theorists willing to distort the law; and a body of shock troops. No one surveying the political landscape would doubt that these five threads are broadly present in the Republican mix. On the first count, the author argues that Fox News did not create the current Republican Party--it was the other way around, with Fox propagandizing in the interest of the authoritarians, among its chief cheerleaders the now-departed Tucker Carlson and Lou Dobbs. The GOP also enabled Trump by responding to his false claims of election fraud by "humoring him" rather than insisting that he honor constitutional norms. It does no good to "imagine that there is a possibility for the Republican Party to become a 'normal' American political party once again"--not with the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Josh Hawley roaming the land. Oceans of money are behind this authoritarian impulse, since the doctrinaire insistence on doing away with regulations is music to a capitalist's ears. The Koch brothers' political staffers alone, Stevens notes, number "three and a half times more employees than the Republican National Committee." Crank lawyers and judges are busily eroding legal norms, and then there are the perpetrators and supporters of the events of Jan. 6--who, Stevens suggests without undue alarmism, will be back in even greater numbers come the next election. It all makes for a civil libertarian's nightmare, but the author offers useful prescriptions for acting to counter the authoritarian impulse. A rallying cry for a movement to push against Trumpism and its legion of true believers.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      September 15, 2023
      Stevens (It Was All a Lie, 2020), a former Republican strategist and campaign manager, writes urgently about the danger to American democracy posed by his former political party. The GOP has ceased to be a responsible governing organization, Stevens argues, and seems to have rejected the most basic tenet of a functioning democracy, the ability to accept losing elections. Using his extensive insider knowledge and experience and drawing from scholars of authoritarianism and right-wing extremism, Stevens discusses the five building blocks of autocracy. These are propagandists, wide support within a major party, financial backers, legal theorizing to legitimize their actions, and the shock troops willing to use violence to get their way. Most striking of his findings is how much older and more successful the Capitol insurrectionists were than average extremists. Stevens documents that each component in the conspiracy to undermine democracy is on the rise. This cautionary study makes it plain that so-called "Trumpism" will survive its namesake since those five pillars have been building for decades, and this movement no longer needs the former president as its figurehead.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Library Journal

      October 6, 2023

      Former chief Republican strategist and Lincoln Project adviser Stevens offers his take on the current state of the Republican Party. His book concentrates on five issues centered around Trump pushing the party to becoming an autocracy: Fox News, populist congressional members, wealthy supporters (Peter Thiel in particular), constitutional lawyers, and those who participated in the insurrection at the capital on January 6, 2021. The book is heavily focused on the 2020 election and the political partisanship that preceded and followed it. Throughout, the book paints a less than favorable picture of the rank-and-file Republican voter's intellect and understanding of politics. Remaining true to the Lincoln Project's disdain for Trumpism, Stevens demeans anyone, from the financially poor to the richest, who voted for or supported Trump. Unfortunately, the book repeatedly and seemingly seeks to vilify discontented voters and candidates seeking election that do not align with the author's views. VERDICT Some readers may find that Stevens, like many others who attack a political party, does more harm than good by encouraging more division in an already divided and disconnected country. Limited general interest for this book.--James Rhoades

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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