Jeff Sharlet spends a lot of time going where most people fear to tread: into the heart of militant right-wing movements, where he comes back with unforgettable stories and personal insights about conspiracy theorists and people who want to shatter modern society and remake it in a Christian nationalist image.

Sharlet is a professor of writing at Dartmouth College, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, and the New York Times bestselling author or editor of eight books. His 2023 book, “The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War,” was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist for Nonfiction, and his book, “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power,” was the basis for a 2019 Netflix documentary series,  for which he was narrator and executive producer. Sharlet’s writing on current politics can be found on his Substack, Scenes from a Slow Civil War.

Sharlet describes his work as “reporting on the intersection of religion and politics.”

He no longer characterizes the current state of politics and polarization as a “slow civil war.”

“When I talk to young trans people, they're not paranoid when they say their state wants them not to exist. They are correct. That's sped up. The removal of books, the erasure of history, the threat to the universities, which is a hallmark (of) authoritarianism — this is textbook.”

“Everything Trump has said he was going to do, he has attempted to do. It's time to lay aside the ‘this is just negotiating tactics.’ He's going to negotiate us right down into full fascism.”

Sharlet has written about the carefully crafted imagery of authoritarianism that is on display right now. He singled out Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem's visit to a notorious prison in El Salvador, where she posed "in tight athleisure" outfit while wearing a $50,000 Rolex watch in front of a backdrop of caged shirtless men who had allegedly been deported from the U.S. 

"It's very powerful theater," he said. "Authoritarian movements do not make policy recommendations. They put on theatrical productions. They do not persuade with arguments. They bludgeon with images." 

Sharlet recently returned from reporting trips to Idaho and upstate New York, in Rep. Elise Stefanik’s district. I asked how MAGA supporters whom he encountered were feeling about Trump’s performance, including the predicted economic impact on red states of tariffs, social security and Medicaid cuts, inflation, government layoffs, and the price of eggs – up 60% compared to a year ago.

“There's a lot of people who are pleased with this and there is an increasing radicalization,” he said.

“There used to be a Q-Anon slogan called ‘trust the plan,’ and that's the ethos of the politics: trust the plan.”

MAGA supporters told him that “they're pleased about crackdowns on trans people. A lot of people are really, really happy about crackdowns on colleges.” He described how a member of a church that he visited in Spokane, Washington, “were thrilled. They feel like religious freedom is finally being established.”

"I think people are taking false reassurance of saying, 'Well, he's hurting his own base'. Of course, he's hurting his own base. Fascism is not a good deal. It's not a good deal for anybody. But you break government, and then you have your complete control over it. The goal is power, and with power comes the ability to enrich those who are close to you. It comes with the power to satisfy both your own ideological projects and those of your allies."

On the left, Sharlet said “there's much more tuning out than the first Trump administration.” 

He said that people opposed to Trump “have to build coalitions that are not just the people who have the right political ideas. We have to have coalitions with people who don't normally think about politics, who don't even have an opinion on it.”

“Whatever we're doing, it’s not enough. So good. Let's do more.”