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A Jewish journalist takes sides in America’s ‘slow civil war’
(JTA) — Jeff Sharlet admits up front that his book about what he and others call the “Trumpocene” epoch is not objective.
“Transparent subjectivity is a virtue for this kind of reporting,” he said. “I am trying to understand the proliferation, which is very real, of fascist flags [across America]. I don’t like it when I see a movement [creating] fascist folk art.”
In “The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War,” the religion reporter and writing professor chronicles his recent journeys across America interviewing QAnon acolytes, Christian nationalists, proud misogynists, unrepentant January 6ers, armed militia men and strict anti-abortion activists — all still in thrall to Donald Trump.
It’s a familiar story of an America on the edge, but Sharlet adds the perspective of a journalist who has long covered religion. He was among the first to note that Trump rallies were less political events than religious revivals. And like many religions, he says, Trumpism is resistant to the kinds of “civil discourse” that many people propose as an antidote to polarization.
“We cannot fact check a myth, right?” Sharlet told me in a video interview from his home in Vermont. “It’s not going to work to say, ‘That’s not true.’”
I wanted to speak to Sharlet to discuss what he calls the “gospel of Trump” and how it differs from partisan politics as usual. And I wanted to know more about his own Jewish background and how that has informed his project.
Sharlet, a professor of writing at Dartmouth College, shapes his narrative largely around the story of Ashli Babbitt, the 35-year-old woman who was killed by a Capitol police officer during the Jan. 6 riot. He talks to those who lionize Babbitt, standing on porches under flags reading “F— Biden” and “No Surrender.” He describes the ways she has become a martyr on the far-right, part of a mythology that inverts what happened on that day.
Babbitt, he suggests, was a victim of the “undertow” of the book’s title: a sense of “grief and loss and mourning” that animated protesters like her. Trump spoke directly to this “erosion of white power, which was felt more severely down the socio-economic ladder,” Sharlet said. “Ashli Babbitt experiences it as a loss, but she can’t name the structural details – like the fact that there’s such a lack of banking regulation that she ends up with a loan that literally nobody can pay back.”
So she joined the mob charging the Capitol. “Unprocessed grief curdles into rage, rage that just sits there until along comes Trump,” said Sharlet. The result is a stew that he unhesitantly calls fascism, which he has defined as a right-wing cult of personality that takes pleasure in violence, disdains democracy and considers its opponents decadent.
Sharlet visits churches where the same rage is heard in the pulpit and where Trump is regarded as a prophet, leading outsiders to wonder how faithful Christians could embrace Trump despite his own lack of Christian values.
On the latter assertion, Sharlet notes that Trump does have Christian values, rooted in the teachings of his childhood pastor, Norman Vincent Peale. The author of “The Power of Positive Thinking” and a proponent of the “prosperity gospel,” Peale saw material wealth as a sign of divine providence, and “applied Christianity” as a way to achieve it.
“Politicians have long borrowed from religion the passion and the righteousness, but no other major modern figure [before Trump] had channeled the tension that makes Scripture endure, the desire, the wanting that gives rise to the closest analogue to Trumpism: the prosperity gospel, the American religion of winning,” he writes.
He also speaks to pastors and followers who would read Trump’s words “like Scripture”: “Every tweet, every misspelling, every typo, every strange capitalization — especially the capitalizations, said [one pastor] — had meaning.” Sharlet compares this to Gnosticism, the heretical Christian movement that believed in “a form of exclusive knowledge reserved for the faithful, a ‘truth’ you must have the eyes to see.”
Sharlet, whose earlier book “The Family” was about a fundamentalist ministry influential among the Washington political elite, said Christian nationalists who are drawn to dictators and flawed strongmen often cite the story of King David. The Old Testament king gains God’s favor despite killing his rival Uriah and, depending how you look at it, seducing or raping Uriah’s wife Bathsheba. “They’re very invested in this idea of chosenness, and King David is chosen,” said Sharlet.
All this mixing of religion, power and grievance made me wonder if liberal denominations have an adequate response to the stirrings on the far right.
“In the book I go to Glad Tidings, a church in Yuba City, California. And you walk in and there’s no crosses, because the pastor thinks the cross is a weak symbol of sacrifice. Instead the pulpit is made of swords,” said Sharlet. “That’s not to say that liberal religion is always weak — I mean, you have Reverend William Barber of the Forward Together Moral Movement in North Carolina, and liberal, religiously motivated activists who put themselves in the position of abortion clinic defenders.”
Rage also curdles into conspiracy theories. Many of his interviewees share the dark fantasies of QAnon, which imagines that the U.S. government is secretly controlled by Satan-worshiping pedophiles. As outlandish as these ideas sound, he said, “It’s hard to find Republicans now who have not absorbed some element of QAnon. People have never even heard of QAnon, but are worried about pedophiles in the schools, ‘grooming’ their children, apocalyptic visions of cities as battlegrounds of crime. This is straight out of QAnon.”
An audience member holds up a large “Q” sign, representing QAnon, a conspiracy theory group, while waiting in line to see President Donald J. Trump at his rally in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, August 2, 2018. (Rick Loomis/Getty Images)
I ask Sharlet if his sample is selective, and if he only looked for and included people on the fringe to prove a point.
He countered by recalling his conversation with a woman who believed that the deadly Las Vegas shooting, by a high-stakes gambler who left 58 dead in 2017, was actually an attempt by ISIS on the life of Trump (who wasn’t in Vegas at the time). Sharlet was convinced the idea was hers alone. But a Google search told him that the theory was gaining traction on the far right, and that Tucker Carlson had invited a former congressman and retired brigadier general to talk about the “Vegas mystery” on his Fox News show.
Before his abrupt ouster last week, “Tucker Carlson had an audience of 4 million and a reach they say of more around 70 million – which is immeasurably greater than mine,” noted Sharlet. “So who is fringe? Me or Carlson?”
QAnon, he said, agrees with those who say QAnon draws on classic antisemitism. “It infuses QAnon,” he said. “You know, the blood of children being used to keep a secret elite, a secret cabal, directed by [Jewish financier and philanthropist George] Soros, and all the ‘globalist’ language. I was asked on a podcast what they mean by globalists and my answer was simple: the Jews. That’s what they mean, even when they don’t know that they mean it.”
Sharlet, the son of a Jewish dad and a Christian mom, describes himself as “a weird Jew, a secular Jew.”
“I was maybe more forcibly aware of this Jewishness when I grew up in a small town called Scotia, New York, and I got beat up for being a Jew,” he said.
After getting a degree in American history at Hampshire College, he went to work at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he edited Pakn Treger, its literary magazine.
“I don’t like to say that my Jewishness is formed by antisemitism,” he said. “My Jewish education is working for the Yiddish Book Center and all the complications of Yiddish.”
He says the anger he encountered on the road has come to his small town in “a very blue area.” “The folks opposed to fascism still outnumber those who are coming to praise it,” he said. “But my kid goes to a school district that is facing legal threat from far-right people, including Jews, who think that it is too supportive of kids like my queer kid and they want the school to be reporting any instances of kids showing up not wearing the right gender clothes and so on.”
That experience has also shaped his response to those who ask if he is elevating a fringe through his writing.
“I have a queer nonbinary child who is being criminalized in about 20 states now. This is where I keep coming back to,” said Sharlet. “To the folks who say, ‘It’s just terrible what they’re doing to the trans kids,’ I want to say that they really haven’t learned from history. They think that fascism is like, ‘Well, we got our victim. We’re all done here now.’ No. It comes for everybody.”
If there is a solution to this unraveling, Sharlet says it will come from liberals who learn from their right-wing counterparts and create institutions that fight for their values.
“The prime example is higher education,” he said. “For a long time liberals want to insist that higher education is neutral.” And while the left is insisting on neutrality, the right is creating colleges — Regent University in Virginia Beach, the evangelical Liberty University, Oral Roberts University, Hillsdale College in southern Michigan — dedicated to its ideas. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is diverting state funding to transform a small liberal arts college, New College of Florida, into a conservative-leaning school.
“We have to build out cultural institutions and we have to recognize and own up to the fact that colleges are places of values,” he said. “They do not sit with fascism. So own that space, defend that space, be proud of that space. I think every synagogue in America whether it wants to accept this or not and even some of the politically conservative ones have to ask, which side are you on? Neutrality isn’t an option. As Jews especially, we don’t have a choice.”
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Federal budget should include funds to combat hate, protect communities, groups argue
Three weeks after Ottawa unveiled new measures and legislation to combat hate, Jewish groups want Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government to put its money where its mouth is.
Leading up to the Nov. 4 federal budget, B’nai Brith Canada and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) are seeking action on community safety—but at opposite ends of the security pipeline.
B’nai Brith made recommendations to proactively combat antisemitism in its July submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance (FINA) while calling on the federal government to use the Budget Implementation Act (BIA) to eliminate a loophole that allowed listed terrorist entity Samidoun to continue operating as a non-profit corporation.
The brief called for investments to counter violent extremism with more funding for national security agencies; requiring all federal grant recipients to comply with Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy (which references the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance antisemitism definition); enhancing young Canadians’ understanding of contemporary antisemitism; and making existing antisemitism training for federal public servants mandatory.
In its December 2024 report, FINA endorsed reviewing all grant programs to ensure only projects aligning with Canada’s Anti-Racism strategy receive federal funding. (That report also recommended continued financing and increasing contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency [UNRWA].)
Tying grants to anti-racism
Conditioning grant eligibility isn’t new; the Canada Summer Jobs Program already excludes companies and activities that discriminate in any way, advocate intolerance or discrimination, or actively work to undermine access to sexual health services.
B’nai Brith Canada’s research and advocacy director, Richard Robertson, told The CJN that his organization worked with the government and others following the Laith Marouf scandal, which saw the Department of Canadian Heritage fund a known anti-Israel activist and antisemite to offer anti-racism training to media outlets in Canada. That led to a declaration/attestation for Multiculturalism and Anti-Racism Program grants.
“We’d like to see that replicated across all government agencies involved in grant programs,” said Robertson, “so that all individuals and programs receiving federal funding commit to abiding by Canada’s anti-racism strategies.”
Nor is the call for mandatory training reinventing the wheel, says Roberston, noting the Treasury Board already developed training. “It’s just about making sure that it’s undertaken by all of our public service, so public servants are able to properly identify and address instances of contemporary antisemitism that may arise through the course of their work.”
There was no ask involving physical security and infrastructure through the Canada Community Security Program (CCSP), Robertson insisting maintaining that the rise in extremism and radicalization is the greatest threat to the long-term vitality and well-being of Canadian Jews. “Our submission was strategically designed to implore the federal government to invest in resources that will combat the growth of extremism radicalization in this country,” he said, “for training for the public service, attestation forms—all of these designed to ensure that our government is investing in the fight against racism and hatred proactively.”
In other words: first lines of defence, rather than last. “I hope to one day live in a Canada where security funding for institutions is no longer needed, because our government has proactively combatted rising levels of extremism, radicalization, incitement and division. That is where we believe the funding is most urgently needed.”
In the crosshairs
Meanwhile, CIJA CEO Noah Shack wrote to Prime Minister Carney, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne and Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree in the hours following the October 2 Yom Kippur terrorist attack at a synagogue in Manchester, England.
He reminded them that “Jewish Canadians have been in the crosshairs” since October 7, 2023, with schools shot at, synagogues firebombed and desecrated, Jewish-owned businesses targeted, coordinated efforts to exclude Jews from public life, and violent assaults. “The numbers speak for themselves: a Jewish Canadian is 25 times more likely to experience a hate crime than any other Canadian.” (According to Statistics Canada, there were 920 police-reported hate crimes against Jews in 2024, exceeding all hate crimes targeting other religious groups that year combined.)
Following the announcement of new legislation to protect access to places of worship, schools, and community centres, he urged the government preparing its first budget “to consider the urgent need to invest in strengthening security for the Jewish community—to help safeguard lives within these institutions.”
The CCSP, which replaced the Security Infrastructure Program last year, has been a crucial resource to enhance security, disbursing more than $40 million to more than 940 projects helping all Canadian communities at risk of hate-motivated crimes to date.
That’s a sum equal to the annual amount spent solely by Canada’s Jewish community, which comprises less than one percent of the country’s population. Security costs for Canadian Jewish communities total more than $40 million due to the spike in threats and attacks, Shack told The CJN, the cost extending beyond financial, but also affecting Canadian Jews’ ability to live Jewish lives and pass on traditions to their children.
The U.K. model
CIJA is suggesting significant budget increases, similar to the United Kingdom, whose Jewish population totals some 300,000, about two-thirds the size of Canada’s. The U.K. government this year announced a four-year funding package of approximately CAD$33.5 million annually to the Community Security Trust (CST), whose mandate begins with the physical protection and defence of the country’s Jews, and which gained charitable status in 1994.
According to a statement from the Trust to The CJN, the CST relies almost entirely on direct community donations for core funding, as there is no centralized federation funding structure in the U.K. Those funds pay for CST’s operating costs and for contributions to the cost of security equipment and infrastructure at community buildings, including more than 500 synagogues and Jewish community sites across the country.
Separate from its operating costs, the Trust administers annual state funding on behalf of the U.K. Home Office to pay for Jewish schools, synagogues and other premises to hire security guards from private firms. In 2024, CST, staffed by some 100 employees and 2,000 volunteers, managed government funding for commercial security guards to over 200 educational establishments, summer and winter camps for 28 youth movements, over 260 synagogues, nearly 50 high-profile communal buildings, and multisite operations that covered over 100 Jewish communal and commercial sites within close proximity to each other.
Public Safety Canada spokesperson Noémie Allard told The CJN that the 2025-26 CCSP core budget funding for all communities is $16.6 million but may be bolstered in response to emerging priorities or evolving community needs, “determined through broader government initiatives or budgetary decisions.”
Mount Royal MP Anthony Housefather notes that the program allocated some $81.5 million, beginning in 2023 until 2029, adding, “we had gotten many of the community’s requests for changes to the program accepted, but these are additional needs that still need to be met.” He told The CJN his budget priorities are “funding for 24 by 7 operations centers and permanent security guards as well as consideration of direct funding of a community trust type operation as exists in the U.K.”
The CCSP emphasizes proactive measures to enhance safety without isolating physical barriers, said Allard, based on principles of crime prevention through environmental design. That means rather than barricading or fortifying locations, eligible enhancements “focus on visibility, access control, natural surveillance and environmental design to deter threats.”
The program supports expenditures such as modest security hardware; minor renovations; developing security assessments and emergency plans; training activities for security equipment; preparing for and responding to hate-motivated incidents; and time-limited hiring of security personnel.
Moving beyond individual institutions
Shack says increased funds are required for more than simply hiring extra security for high holidays, installing gates or cement bollards. “It’s all of it, together, with new infrastructure for a coordinated approach to security in places like Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, taking our security posture as a community to the next level.” That means moving beyond individual institutions, but looking after the most vulnerable communities, like the Community Security Network in Montreal and the Jewish Security Network in Toronto.
Earlier this year, Deputy Opposition Leader and Thornhill MP Melissa Lantsman wrote Anandasangaree about “continued concerns” with management of the CCSP and its SIP predecessor, which she says remain unaddressed. “Applications for items previously covered by the CCSP and the SIP, including internal security blinds, automated vehicular gates, emergency crash bars, and the ancillary fees for security cameras, continue to be denied by your government with little to no explanation.”
Consequently, she says, synagogues, community centres, and other places are often forced to go without needed security infrastructure while “crimes against Jews are skyrocketing across Canada by triple digits or more.” This budget round, Lantsman’s office is asking for increased funding for security infrastructure and for Ottawa to fully review its funding, “and end any arrangements where money could end up supporting terrorism, (ex. ceasing all funding to UNRWA).”
Without specifying a dollar amount, Shack says the point is that the threat facing Jewish Canadians is no different than that facing Jews in Britain, France or Australia, “and it’s important that we’re doing everything we can to address that. We shouldn’t have to shoulder that all on our own.”
Nor is there a single magic wand: “We need to make sure that police have the resources they need to be present and do their jobs, and we need to make sure that the right cops are available to do the right jobs to keep our community safe.” It’s not about shuffling resources around, but something sustainable until the threat level changes. That means money for prosecutors, money for cops, “not just for them to exist, but also to be properly trained. You can’t just throw a body at the problem.”
Draw lessons from Manchester
The warning signs are here, says Shack, “and we should draw lessons from Manchester, and ensure that we are looking after these critical components.” While Manchester is an ocean and several time zones away, “it’s almost like it’s just next door… I wish it wasn’t so, but this is the reality and we need government to be our partner. We should absolutely not wait for the worst to take place before we prepare to deal with it.”
He insists there’s an important distinction between being prepared and resolved when facing challenges and being fearful: “Everybody is entitled to their feelings and how they’re going to respond to the moment, but we have to look at how we can keep ourselves safe and continue to thrive as a community. Not hiding, not fearing, but being prepared and having eyes wide open to the threats.”
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‘Why do we have to waste a few weeks?’: Satmar rabbi congratulates Mamdani during Williamsburg sukkah hop
This piece first ran as part of The Countdown, our daily newsletter rounding up all the developments in the New York City mayor’s race. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. There are 25 days to the election.
Mamdani on tour
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Zohran Mamdani met with Orthodox Jewish leaders at their sukkahs in Williamsburg yesterday, an overture to a community that has leaned toward Andrew Cuomo in polls.
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Mamdani had a warm welcome at the sukkah of Rabbi Moishe Indig, a leader of the Satmar Hasidic community. One rabbi announced that Indig had called Mamdani “a friend of the Jewish people” and said he would make “the best mayor.”
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“Congratulations — why do we have to waste a few weeks? — on becoming the mayor of New York City. We hope you come back,” said the rabbi who greeted Mamdani. Indig also hosted Brad Lander, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez and several NYPD officers at his sukkah.
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The seal of approval marks a shift in Mamdani’s fortunes with Orthodox leaders. In early June, before Mamdani beat Cuomo in the primary, the Satmar community endorsed Cuomo.
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Mamdani also stopped at the sukkah of Rabbi Shulem Deutch, who represents another Satmar faction.
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The Satmars prioritize keeping their religious ways of life free from regulation by local governments. When Cuomo was the governor of New York, he cultivated close ties with Satmar leaders and struck deals with them over yeshiva rules.
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While the frontrunner’s staunch criticism of Israel has prompted skepticism among some Jewish New Yorkers, it’s a different matter for Satmar Jews. Traditionally, they are among the ultra-Orthodox who identify with religious anti-Zionism and do not recognize the state of Israel.
Numbers to know
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Mamdani leads the race with 46% of likely voters, according to the first poll released since Mayor Eric Adams dropped out of the race.
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The Quinnipiac poll showed most of Adams’ support transferring to Cuomo, but Cuomo still trailing Mamdani with 33% support. Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa amassed 15% of likely voters.
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While Mamdani continues to lead, the poll showed little new support for him as he failed to clear a majority of the vote.
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Quinnipiac also reported that 41% of likely voters aligned with Mamdani’s views on the Israel-Hamas conflict, more than those who aligned with Cuomo (26%) and Sliwa (13%) combined. And their sympathies lie more with Palestinians (43%) than with Israelis (22%). These findings match up with those of a New York Times/Siena poll last month.
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But Mamdani’s vow to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hasn’t gained the same traction, with 43% of likely voters opposing his pledge and 38% supporting it.
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The poll was conducted from Oct. 3-7 and has an error margin of 3.9%.
Curtis Sliwa dances for Sukkot
- Spotted: Sliwa dancing at a Sukkot celebration in Crown Heights.
Following the money
- Cuomo scored a big boost yesterday, with the NYC Campaign Finance Board awarding his campaign $2.3 million in public matching funds.
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Mamdani, who halted fundraising in early September when he hit the $8 million spending cap, also received $1 million from the CFB. Sliwa got $1.1 million.
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Palestinian Authority Slams Trump as ‘Criminal’ and ‘Unstable’ as He Tries to Help Bring Peace
US President Donald Trump gestures during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Aug. 26, 2025. Photo: Jonathan Ernst via Reuters Connect
President Donald Trump has gone to great lengths to improve the lives of Palestinians. He has invested tremendous political and financial capital to genuinely attempt to give Palestinians a future of opportunity instead of one of violence and terror.
Yet, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has responded not with appreciation, but with vicious demonization.
Jibril Rajoub, one of the PA’s most senior officials and among the closest to Mahmoud Abbas, has unleashed multiple hate-filled rants against Trump in recent weeks.
Rajoub mocked Trump as frivolous, childish, and unstable — “a puppet” of the “Nazis who control Israel”:
Jibril Rajoub: “An [American] president is in power who speaks in a language of frivolity, childishness, and instability and lack of perspective, even at the minimum level …
This [pro-Israel] bias — in my opinion, it is even more than that. He has even become a toy, a puppet in the hands of the group of Nazis who control Israel.” [emphasis added]
[Jibril Rajoub, Facebook page, Sept. 11, 2025]
The previous week, Rajoub accused “criminal Trump” of being a partner to and supporting “neo-Nazi” Israel:
Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “The American administration gave the green light to this fascist [Israeli] government, the neo-Nazi government, to treat the Palestinian issue as if it were an internal Israeli matter, including the continuation of ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the slow annexation of all Palestinian territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
This, of course, aligns with the belief of these neo-Nazis who control Israel … Those who are doing in Gaza what the Nazis did in the 1940s will undoubtedly have no problem taking any [further] step … They behave like the neighborhood bully… with the support of the criminal Trump, who is their partner.”
[Jibril Rajoub, Facebook page, Sept. 2, 2025]
Rajoub’s hate speech is not isolated. Earlier this year, Palestinian Media Watch reported on how Rajoub accused Trump of joining together with “neo-Nazi choir” Israel to “impose their will on the world.”
Rajoub’s statements are part of the PA’s policy of demonizing the US and its leaders, which has been going on for decades. The PA’s disdain for the US has been expressed during both Democratic and Republican administrations. This is in spite of the US being the country giving the greatest amount of funding to the PA since its establishment.
Itamar Marcus is Palestinian Media Watch (PMW)’s Founder and Director. Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch. A version of this article originally appeared at PMW.