J6: Don’t Call it ‘Christian Nationalism’

Review by Bill Doughty

It’s one of the best books explaining many of the roots of the violent attack on the Capitol of January 6, 2021. Matthew D. Taylor’s “The Violent Take It by Force” (Broadleaf Books 2024) digs deep to reveal the tendrils that led to the riot and insurrection attempt of J6.

Through extensive research, interviews, and forensics, Taylor identifies the influential religious leaders who motivated so many MAGA Trump-supporters to come to Washington D.C., attend prayer vigils, and then march on the halls of Congress –– attacking police and threatening to kill the vice president and lawmakers.

The subtitle of Taylor’s book is “The Christian Movement that is Threatening Our Democracy.” But Taylor, who is a Christian himself, says “Christians are the best people to defang extremist Christianity.” And he champions the true meaning of “religious freedom” as outlined in the U.S. Constitution.

“Free speech and freedom of religious expression are core values of American democracy,” he writes. Taylor calls for “a civic reckoning that we need to have within American Christianity and in American society.”

“The mobilization for the Capitol Riot was conducted –– and the ongoing pageant of spiritual warfare in American politics is still being directed –– by Christian ministers and Christian politicians. They are using Christian theology, Christian Bible citations, Christian worship, and Christian symbols; therefore, this story pertains to all Christians. Whether we are Independent Charismatics or not, NAR (New Apostolic Reformation) fans or not, we are our ‘brother's [and sister's] keeper’ (Gen. 4); we all share in the same baptism and worship the same Lord in Jesus Christ (Eph. 4); we are part of the same body (Rom.12). So if, as a Christian, you object to the activities and theologies I have outlined, it is your obligation to speak up. We will be complicit if we allow such things to be done in our name.

It is my opinion, informed by history, that Christianity in America has not been this divided-theologically, socially, regionally, or epistemically— since the eve of the Civil War [when, as Frederick Douglass informed a nation, chattel slavery was justified by white slavers as ordained in the Bible]. We desperately need intra-Christian and ecumenical conversations— perhaps some quite heated and contentious-that speak to these differences and bridge these divides. The best people to defang extremist Christianity are Christians.”

Extremist Christianity –– Christian nationalism –– is proudly proclaimed, promoted, and displayed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth; Speaker of the House Mike Johnson; Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis; Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Jim Jordan; as well as dozens of advisors and influencers in the Trump administration.

Influential true-believers also include B-listers like Project 2025’s Russell Vought, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn (who is recruiting a “Christian Army”), activist Charlie Kirk, televangelists like Kenneth Copeland (of “COVID-19 Wind of God” YouTube fame), and (to a lesser degree now) former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Not every Republican is a Christian extremist, by the way, but every Christian extremist is likely a Republican.

Taylor recognizes that the goal of most of the one-party extremists is not just a Christian nation, but also a Christian world. In other words. They preach not only embracing nationalism but also promoting dominion theology and global supremacism. Moreover, they desire spiritual warfare and a crusade for their other “savior,” Donald Trump.

Though they are a minority among all Christians or other people who believe in God, these Christian supremacists were indispensable in motivating rioters on Jan. 6, 2021.

Taylor’s book introduces many influential women and men in the Christian Supremacy movement who see themselves as prophets, apostles, or otherwise ordained leaders and motivators. Among them are:

• Paula White, who helped elect Donald Trump and now serves in the White House as his spiritual advisor. Trump is just one of many celebrities who gravitated to White (or vice versa); others whom she ministered to include Michael Jackson (after allegations of child molestation), Deion Sanders, Darryl Strawberry, Kid Rock, and Tyra Banks. White conducted an officially sanctioned prayer service on the morning of January 6, 2021 calling for the presidential election to be “overturned right now in the name of Jesus.”
• Cindy Jacobs, celestial-charismatic Pentecostal Christian prophet who believes in actual demons. Her 2025 prophecies include themes of “overcome,” "global reset," and increased “spiritual authority” and "disruptive glory.” Jacobs participated in a prayer tour in the White House on January 5, 2021. She spoke at a Jericho March on Dec. 12, 2020, a forerunner to the rally one year later that led to the Capitol riot.
• Lance Wallnau, who at that same 2020 rally said: ”You are the privileged generation that is called to endure the contradiction along with Donald Trump and see America restored," he told the crowd. "This is not a weak movement. This is the beginning of a Christian populist uprising! There is a backlash coming. We are going to continue to build this as a groundswell from now till 2022. You will be on the news; they will not be able to ignore you… There is a Great Awakening coming! This is the spark that is starting it right now!” He is the champion of the Seven Mountains Mandate –– a blueprint for Christian dominion takeover of seven spheres of society: government (including the military), education, media, arts/entertainment, business, family, and religion. Wallnau defended Trump after the Access Hollywood tape after the presidential candidate bragged about assaulting women; Wallnau said it was the “Devil’s fault.” His YouTube “Flashpoint” show galvanized believers across the country. Taylor writes: “If we are looking for the key mobilizers that got Christians enraged and activated enough to drive or fly, sometimes cross-country, to the US Capitol on January 6, we have to look at Lance Wallnau and his NAR Flash Point platform, two of the most important and influential conduits of that mobilization.” Wallnau hosted then-VP-candidate J.D. Vance at a NAR town hall in 2024 leading up to the election. Taylor calls Wallnau “chief propagandist of the MAGA movement” and someone to watch carefully in the months and years ahead.
• Sean Feucht (“foyt”) says “worship is a weapon.” He ties his worship music to politics and sees himself as David against Goliath, naming his row house in Washington, D.C. “Camp Elah,” after the stream where David gathered stones for his sling. Trump hosted Feucht at Mara Lago and signed Feucht’s guitar. Feucht played, prayed and preached at his Let Us Worship services in 175 cities in 2023. He recently said, “We’re living in a spiritual war …The Bible says, when you encounter wicked deeds of darkness, expose them. Don’t tolerate them. It’s like David: David didn’t go try to tolerate the giant. He came into a nation full of apathy and said, ‘The giant needs to fall down.’” Taylor says Feucht “plays heavily on a persecution neurosis among American evangelicals.” Taylor concludes, “Sean Feucht did not have a direct hand in the Capitol Riot, but we should not underestimate the impact that his city-by-city crusade had in fostering the psyche and ethos of January 6.”
• Ché Ahn spoke at a prayer rally in D.C. on Jan. 5, and said: “I believe this week we are going to throw Jezebel out and Jehu is going to rise up, and were going to rule and reign through President Trump and under the lordship of Jesus Christ, because I'm telling you the consequences are severe if Biden [or] Harris becomes president… We are here to change history. I believe we are going to shift this nation and this election that's been stolen from Donald Trump and from the United States of America. This is why it's so important that we gather tomorrow and pray and show up and just take the stand to show the world that this is the most egregious fraud — the most scandalous [thing] –– that has happened in U.S. history….”
• Lou Engle is NAR partner with Ahn. The two Independent Charismatic leaders gained fame with their followers a quarter of a century ago at a mass event: The Call DC, held September 2, 2000. Engle said he received a prophecy to organize the rally, which in hindsight was a precursor to J6, considering what was said at the event. “In fact,” according to Taylor, “one of the prayers offered from the stage during The Call DC was, ‘Lord, we turn our hearts to the Capitol building. ... Lord, would your fire just flood through the Capitol, your fire of revival just flood through the Capitol building.’ After the event, Engle opined, ‘I believe The Call DC was part of a shift in the heavens and that God has thrown a window open... We have entered a season of time in a massive spiritual war: It's Pearl Harbor. It's Nazirites [the biblical sect of ascetic adherents to strict Judaism that included John the Baptist] or Nazism. We are in a war, and if we don't win, we lose everything.’” Note that this was said 25 years ago and two decades before J6.
• Dutch Sheets may be the foremost promoter of the Christian nationalist flag known as An Appeal to Heaven, which looks more (ironically) like an environmental icon with it’s distinctive green fir tree on a white background. Sheets showed the flag to President Trump, who attended one of Sheets’s NAR rallies. Sheets believes, based on his interpretation of the Bible, that Jesus should be at the center of government and have dominion over everything. Taylor says this is counter to what most Christians believe, interpreting Jesus’s own words, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Sheets is one of the most radical extremists, calling former President Barack Obama a Muslim, calling for God to “cleanse our government,” and organizing a militia “using the authority of Christ’s name.” Taylor shows how the White House coordinated with Sheets in 2020 and the lead-up to January 6. Evidence of Dutch Sheets’s influence at J6 is found in the sheer number of Christian nationalist flagpoles carried and in some cases, as with other flagpoles, used as weapons to attack police and guards.
• C. Peter Wagner was the father of New Apostolic Reformation and the mentor/godfather of the apostles, prophets, and leaders mentioned above. Though he died on October 21, 2016, he had already done his part to help elect President Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton less than three weeks after his death. And, his legacy continues thanks to the garden of followers he grew.

“Claiming that Peter Wagner ‘radicalized’ all these people would be a stretch because many of them were radical long before they crossed paths with him. But he knit them together, mentored them, raised their celebrity profiles, and boosted their epistemic confidence that they were the vanguard of the end times, meant to vanquish God's demonic enemies on the earth. I think a more accurate rendering of events would be to say that they all radicalized each other.

It was their shared theology and their Seven Mountains ideology that made these apostles and prophets gravitate toward politics and right-wing Christian activism. It wasn't a conspiracy that drew them to Donald Trump; it was an opportunity—an unprecedented chance to see their visions of revival and reformation with a top-down takeover of society accomplished.”

Taylor is clear that not everyone who participated in the J6 riot was motivated by their religion. Among the rioters were also outright racists, anarchists, and autocracy supporters with various grievances against the government. But the evidence of a Christian supremacist presence –– in raised crucifixes, bibles, and “An Appeal to Heaven” flags –– was obvious and powerful.

Dutch Sheets and Trump

While the history of the An Appeal to Heaven flag goes back to the American Revolution, some argue that the flag has been co-opted to promote a Christian nation and justification for violence in order to create a theocracy, and to hell with the Constitution.

“At the end of the day, this book is not about the physical violence that occurred on January 6. It is about the theologies of violence, the ideation of violence, and the romanticization of spiritual violence that have grown up in charismatic evangelicalism. It is about the culture of violent rhetoric that has spread from there into broader American Christianity and into American politics.

My objection to the NAR leaders is not that they believe in demons or practice spiritual warfare, which is fairly common across many forms of Christian belief and practice. My complaint is that they are spiritual war-mongers, constantly expanding the arena of spiritual warfare, mapping it onto geographical territory and divisive politics in a deeply destabilizing and antidemocratic manner. Buttressed by latent American Christian entitlement and indignation, that impulse to violence is the iceberg from which the outcropping of violence on January 6 protrudes. And that iceberg still sits just under the surface of the waters of American Christianity.”

In a Politico article on Christian nationalism Taylor warns about the growing roots cracking the foundation of democracy, “There’s been a tectonic shift in how the leadership of the religious right operates. These folks aren’t as interested in democracy or working through democratic systems as in the old religious right because their theology is one of Christian warfare.”

The antidote to a violent NAR revival and reformation movement trying to topple the government is a coalition of peace-loving Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and other religious people –– along with free-thinking and independent nonbelievers –– who will take peaceful action in spite of intimidation, suppression, and retribution. Otherwise, as Taylor asks in his conclusion, “what will become of our pluralistic democracy?”

Matthew Taylor, who grew up in an evangelical family, is a scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies. (J6 images are from U.S. Congress public domain.)

Offshore Vampires of the ‘Broligarchy’

Review by Bill Doughty

In the previous Navy Reads review of the novel Punk’s Force, the key villain is a man named Wolfe. He’s a character with virtually no character –– willing to obliterate an aircraft carrier, destroy the U.S. Navy, and end world peace in order to profit personally and hide his treasures of gold and crypto offshore. And he had a powerful assistant to help him.

Punk Force’s Wolfe is a fictional caricature of some of the very real ultra-rich people who stash their wealth in offshore financial institutions. They hide their riches primarily to evade paying taxes and avoid other laws. And they have plenty of quiet professionals to assist them.

The ultra-rich who employ such tactics are sometimes business leaders, drug dealers, power movers in governments, or heads of state themselves. They then control the small nations or states, including the local military, to protect their assets. The blood-sucking result: local poverty, a spread of corruption and crime, and gross inequality that spreads like a contagion. Vampires creating vampires –– with more haves and have-nots and less democracy.

Brooke Harrington sticks her neck out to investigate the secretive world of offshore finance in her fascinating exposé “Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism” (W.W. Norton & Co. 2024). Harrington describes how she gets close to the wealth managers who help the ultra-rich hide their money and gets them to share stories and techniques.

Immersing herself in their world, she discovers this secret (and achilles heel) of the ultra-wealthy: “Their dependence on hired help at all levels.” Harrington embedded herself in the hidden underworld of the professionals who facilitate the transfer and security of offshore funds: “the trustees, private bankers, tax advisers, and other members of the wealth management team that virtually all of the very rich employ.”

Rather than coming across like a boring financial treatise, her book is accessible, insightful, and even suspenseful. It’s no surprise that some offshore financial drama has been featured in movies and documentaries portraying real-life massive scandals.

For example, offshore dark money is implicated “in 2016 electoral politics on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.” Ten years ago, “11.5 million documents from the Panama City wealth management firm Mossack Fonseca came tumbling out” in what became known as the Panama Papers, followed by two other offshore leaks –– the Paradise Papers of 2017 and Pandora Papers of 2021. What might have hidden in the dark recesses of a conspiracy theory came to light to reveal big names involved, including (from the Panama Papers alone) stars such as Jackie Chan, Emma Watson, Lionel Messi, and Simon Cowell and an astounding list of leaders and influencers.

At least 140 politicians were charged in tax evasion schemes; Lionel Messi, by the way, avoided prison by paying a large fine, according to Harrington.

In Offshore, Harrington presents a provocative history of how tax-evasion schemes evolved from the time of Pliny and ancient Rome through the Ottoman Empire and into feudal and colonial times and now in the era of cryptocurrency, kleptocracy, and massive pockets of wealth inequality.

In fact, widespread offshore financing can be directly traced to imperialism of earlier centuries. Most nests of hidden funds are located in previous British colonies. What drives some very rich people to hide their wealth is the same motive that drove rich nations to use military force to take what wasn’t theirs, often in the name of religion (Crusades) or racism (slavery). Their actions were and are antithetical to both democracy and capitalism. It’s anticapitalist because it “hides from true market fluctuations and investment risks of a free market.”

Today, many tax evaders “see themselves as deserving exemption from the rules that bind the rest of us as members of society,” Harrington writes. She cites Nobel laureate and libertarian Friedrich von Hayek, who “argued that capitalism could survive only in an environment where honesty, fairness, and respect for private property were enforced by social norms and laws. In contrast, the value proposition of offshore finance depends on unfairness and dishonesty.”

In a discussion with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, Harrington discusses what she calls the “broligarchy” and how some patriarchal billionaires pay for access to those in power, including all three branches of government in order to get more tax breaks for themselves, less regulations on their actions, and more accumulation of money and power.

The result is concentrations of dynastic wealth that leads to stagnation rather than dynamism and a lust for even more power and influence over politics and politicians, according to Harrington.

She notes that Elon Musk accumulated much of his wealth from “massive taxpayer-funded subsidies,” including “at least $6.7 billion in federal cash infusions and regulatory credits to support his businesses, which were on the verge of bankruptcy.”

“Yet, true to form, Musk used aggressive wealth management techniques in order to pay little or no tax for years, while vehemently opposing any legislation that might require billionaires to pay their fair share,” Harrington says. “For many elites like him, freedom mostly means the liberty to not be taxed.”

“This isn't just an American phenomenon. Worldwide, these elites— including dozens of current and former heads of state, as well as business leaders-are united by their contempt for and brazen defiance of democratic governance. The offshore financial system connects them in a shared project to escape constraints on their economic and political power. Moreover, the scores of presidents, monarchs, and ministers named in the Panama, Paradise, and Pandora Papers have abandoned the notion of national interest: by placing billions in unpaid taxes, stolen foreign aid, and the proceeds of crime into secret offshore structures, they enriched themselves at the expense of their countries. This includes not just anti-corruption campaigners, like Czechia's Andrej Babis and Kenya's Uhuru Kenyatta, but trusted figureheads like the late Queen Elizabeth II of England. Though elites like these may not know one another personally, their uses of offshore position them in a shared space of opposition to legal, political, and economic equity. They create a political problem in democratic societies, where governance depends on legitimacy and the consent of the governed. Such political systems can't function when impunity becomes the ultimate status symbol. Elite lawlessness is a premodern privilege, incompatible with the principle of equality before the law.

“Thus, government and corporate leaders who appear in the offshore leaks should be understood not just as corrupt people who got caught: they are elites in revolt, engaged in a political project of refusing obligation to the societies that allowed them to become wealthy and powerful. Elite exceptionalism has always been the animating principle of the offshore world, but until recently, overt proclamations of impunity were rare. The price of social and political prominence onshore included an obligation to simulate respect for ideals such as the common good and equality before the law. Offshore secrecy changed that, permitting an ethos of radical impunity to flourish and justify itself through its own surging wealth and power. Elites now openly refuse any obligation to the societies that allowed them to become wealthy and powerful: instead, they express radically anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian positions, without fear of sanction. For example, in a 2009 autobiographical essay titled 'The Education of a Libertarian,' Thiel wrote that American women getting the vote ruined democracy and capitalism alike.”

Other oligarchs are aligned not only with misogyny but also with white supremacy, Christian nationalism, and various forms of racialized oppression and violence. In general, they are environment exploiters not protectors. They are friendly with autocracy and against those freedoms in the Constitution they find inconvenient.

So forget about the First Amendment and other constitutional protections. Harrington notes that a common theme among authoritarian tax evaders is also “persecution of journalists who ask uncomfortable questions.”

But asking questions, uncovering facts, and demanding transparency is not a problem; instead, that’s the solution. Incentivizing and rewarding wealth managers to be honest –– and holding the aides and assistants accountable –– is the way to curtail the hiding of dirty money.

As an example, the original agreement with Iran to limit its nuclear program under the Obama administration led to “restricting the ruling regime’s access to legal-financial experts, so that the country’s leadership ‘could not access its foreign exchange assets held abroad,’ according to a Congressional Research Service report.” That resulted in Iranian leaders returning to diplomatic negotiations.

Setting up rules for financial managers has also proven successful in the recent past. After Putin’s Russian invasion of democratic Ukraine, the world’s leading offshore financial centers and many wealth managers showed solidarity in shutting down Russian oligarchs and enforcing related sanctions and legal initiatives.

“Legal change is necessary but experience shows that it won’t suffice as the sole or primary response to the offshore crisis,” Harrington writes. “Rather, I put my hope in changing social norms. Attitudes about right and wrong shift much more quickly than laws.” In other words, ethics, morals, and core values of honor, courage and commitment of “We the People.”

Could public sentiment shift to stigmatize the vampiric ‘broligarchy’ and their use of offshore finance? “If there’s any chance of that, the first step is crating awareness of the problem: That’s one reason I wrote this book.” Her bet is on the side of good versus evil. Stigmatizing the enterprises and going after the go-betweens is the way to success.

But…

As discussed in the previous Navy Reads review, the authors of Punk’s Force created a tireless personal aide to the villain Wolfe. The assistant was available 24/7, almost always had the precise information to help Wolfe carry out his evil schemes, and seemed immune to incentives to do right or punishment if it did wrong.

Wolfe’s assistant was artificial Intelligence.

Escape in Avoiding WWIII

Review by Bill Doughty

Armed missiles incoming. Artificial Intelligence at the controls. USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) is the target. A hit…

Punk’s Force, a novel by Ward Carroll and Tony Peak (Naval Institute Press, 2025) hits hard from the very start and builds to a nail-biting climax. This book will especially appeal to tail-hook warfighters and the military’s test-and-evaluation community.

But, in the tradition of Tom Clancy and Stephen Coontz, Punk’s Force is also accessible and rewarding to civilian readers, especially anyone interested in international espionage and contemporary issues facing the United States in general and U.S. Navy in particular. It’s a jolt of a thrill ride.

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, USN (Ret.), agrees:

“Punk’s Force is a tour de force of international intrigue and edge-of-your-seat flying action,” says Mullen. “It also accurately captures the high-stakes challenges facing the U.S. Navy today. I couldn’t put it down.”

Among the novel’s topical issues and themes: drones, hypersonic missiles and counter technology, cryptocurrency, and use of kompromat to corrupt leaders.

Some key lines that stick:

• Avoid “the cardinal sin of underestimating rivals,”
• AI abuse means “Dr. Frankenstein has lost control of his monsters,” and 
• Bad guys profit even though “war, climate change, and injustice would destroy the planet if allowed to continue unchecked.”

The authors present believable characters with complicated psychological challenges and 3D family dynamics. Readers will enjoy the fun call signs, strong women characters, and realistic portrayal of life aboard an aircraft carrier: “That smell –– a combination of fuels, metal, and humanity.” Smells evoke other senses for any reader who has been aboard a CV or CVN –– the sounds of heavy metal punctuated by the 1MC; the sight of clean bulkheads and dirty hands; the feel of ladder rails and non-skid surfaces.

Realistic rivalries are also themes, including Navy vs. Air Force and brown shoe officers (aviators) vs. black show officers (surface warriors). Pecking orders within the military and between individual services are not only rank-based.

But true leadership is shown when there is universal respect and selfless support. The admiral participates in a FOD (foreign object debris) walk-down on the flight deck; he dines with junior enlisted Sailors and Chief Petty Officers; and he volunteers as a patient in a medevac drill.

The authors work in a reference to “the COVID Cruise” with details (but no names mentioned) of the heroic self-sacrifice of Capt. Brett Crozier, CO of USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), and how he took care of his Sailors in the early weeks of the pandemic. Such leadership is heralded in the writings of Stavridis, McRaven, and McChrystal.

Character counts in large amounts.

Ultimately, this book is a yin-yang of good vs. evil, service vs. greed, and devotion vs. betrayal. All the while, it builds with action and intrigue in a shadow of avoiding WWIII and the sinking of America’s lynchpin aircraft carrier. This is a good summer read and a proper escape from current chaos.

A blurb by former Director of Air Warfare Rear Adm. Mike “Nasty” Manzanir, USN (Ret.) reads, “From the throat-catching first chapter through the twists and turns, loops and breaks you’ve become used to flying with Punk, Punk’s Force is a constant full-grunt catsuit. Whether you’ve read all the books in the series or just pick this one up for your flight, you won’t put it down.”

In the authors' Acknowledgements, Ward Carroll, creator of the Punk series, thanks his wingman, Tony Peak, a gifted science fiction writer. Peak, in turn, thanks both Carroll and USNI: The Naval Institute's pedigree is impeccable, and I feel privileged to become a part of it."

Top photo: Aviation Boatswain's Mate (Aircraft Handling) 1st Class Sam Smith, assigned to air department aboard the world's largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), directs an E/A-18G Growler, attached to the "Grey Wolves" of Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 142, on the flight deck, April 14, 2025. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class (Photo by MC3 Tajh Payne)

Second photo: An F/A-18E Super Hornet, attached to the "Tomcatters" of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 31, launches from the flight deck of the world’s largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), April 14, 2025. (Photo by MC2 Maxwell Orlosky)

Upside Down World of AI / Surveillance

Review by Bill Doughty

The invention and deployment of the steam engine accelerated the antislavery movement two centuries ago; the wide use of the telegraph brought about the women’s movement and women’s right to vote 120 years ago; and the intercontinental railroad and telephone helped fire up the Progressive Era while television stoked the civil rights movement.

How technology fuels social movements is one of the insights revealed in “The Private Is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance” by Ray Brescia (New York University Press, 2025).

“As each net technology emerged on the scene, a new social movement embraced it.” And the country moved forward.

“But the history of all of these technologies and their incorporation into social movement advocacy also had another component to them,” Brescia writes. “Each advance in the ability to communicate brought with it a new threat of surveillance and manipulation.”

So what happens to an easily manipulated society when the tsunami of all technology –– AI –– washes over us?

“Today, new technologies like generative artificial intelligence and quantum computing stand poised to supercharge all aspects of communications technologies in ways that are beneficial to humankind but, in others, that will likely prove destructive, completely shredding all semblance of digital privacy along the way and undermining the freedom to advance change,” Brescia observes.

“As we enter a world dominated by generative artificial intelligence, the institutional order is likely to change, and not necessarily for the better. In such a future, the ability to seek out, leverage, manipulate, and inundate individuals with information that will try to sway their actions, chill their speech, incite them to engage in harmful ways, or cause them to disengage such that their inaction is actually against their interests is nearly limitless.”

Brescia’s book is scholarly and sometimes dense, and is filled with both warnings and prescriptions for anyone concerned with preserving democracy in the face of a rising tide of authoritarianism.

“Democracy requires a high degree of protection for individual identity and political privacy, regardless of the the source of the threat to that privacy,” he writes.

“Early in the digital age, before smartphones became personal appendages, techno-futurist Ray Kurzweil envisioned a new type of consciousness ––“the singularity” — that would emerge as a product of the fusion of computers and human intellect.' While this prediction has not yet come to pass, in many ways the melding of the personal and the digital is well underway. Since the early 1990s, an array of new technologies has transformed the ways we live and the power of individuals to influence society and change the world. With the rise of the internet, mobile technologies, social media, and artificial intelligence, the ability of individuals, groups, movements, and political parties to effectuate change has never been greater…

“What is more, soon we are likely to see the widespread adoption of driverless cars; the proliferation of the Internet of Things, a global network of products connected to the internet and to each other; and the encroachment of generative artificial intelligence across all aspects of life. Records of our bodily functions will be digitized and medical treatment revolutionized. Computer servers throughout the world will contain a vast amount of biometric data about us. Our movements will be monitored, just as our steps are being tracked today. Strangers will know and artificial intelligence will track our heart rate, breathing, glucose levels, body temperature, and other biometric data in real time. Our state of being itself-our opinions, our moods, our fears—will fall within this digital system, a shadow, parallel world, like the "Upside Down" from the Netflix retro sci-fi thriller Stranger Things. It is in this world where blurry, spectral versions of us will take shape; yet the characteristics of our avatars may be a more accurate reflection of us than the image we project of ourselves in the real world.”

In fact, corporations create “digital voodoo dolls” as avatars of their customers based on information they collect and store.

Algorithms control what people see and hear, allowing foreign trolls and home-grown miscreants to chip away at unity to create chasms of division. This happens despite how we humans evolved toward altruism, cooperation, and reliance on community. Brescia quotes historian Yuval Noah Harari: “Change through cooperation with others is what may truly make us human and differentiates us from other species.”

In George Orwell’s 1984, a disembodied Big Brother spews, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” In an upside-down world of fiction as fact, an unsuspecting public can be manipulated by big lies, repetition, celebrity, and surveillance by a would-be autocrat.

“George Orwell’s Big Brother had nothing on the surveillance state that now exists,” according to Brescia, who studies institutional theory, perspective, and convergence in order to protect integrity of individual and collective privacy.

“Given the critical role that the integrity of identity plays in the achievement of personal self-realization, as well as individual and collective self-determination, our institutions, laws, and norms must offer robust protections for our private actions and engagements, even our thoughts, as they are manifest in the digital and analog worlds. A recognition of the severe threats to political privacy that lurk in the digital Upside Down is necessary to understand that preserving the integrity of identity is an essential feature of a functioning democracy. This work is an attempt to explore the ways that our laws, institutions, and norms can catch up to new technologies, with all of their capacities as well as the threats that lurk within them, to ensure that we can preserve the integrity of identity in the digital age and advance and enrich the pursuit of democracy, meaningful social change, and, ultimately, human flourishing.”

Brescia says our goal in America should be strengthening the legal infrastructure to protect privacy. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides a framework to protect individual freedoms, including freedom of speech and assembly without interference from the government.

But what happens when leaders no longer respect or defend the Constitution?

Free and independent thinkers ask questions such as these: How and why can the military be used to confront protesters in cities of political opponents? How can the government use Orwellian tactics to skew the truth about issues such as immigration arrests, assaults on elected officials, attacks on education institutions, realities of an insurrection attempt on the U.S. Capitol, attempts at foreign intervention without congressional approval, and overall disrespect for the judiciary and rule of law?

What if an administration is so corrupt if chooses personal profit and power over the welfare of people and personal privacy?

“Whether democracies can continue to function in the age of Surveillance Capitalism, artificial intelligence, misinformation, and manipulation remains to be seen. The threats to democracy across the world are significant. In the United States, the world's oldest democracy, authoritarianism and threats to the rule of law are real and increasing in force. Today's technology-fueled media environment, because of disintermediation, social media, and artificial intelligence, poses significant threats to the preservation of the American form of democracy, one in which a delicate balance of institutions –– public, private, civic, communicative ––operates to help citizens achieve individual and collective self-determination. In turn, these institutions are reflections of the popular will. I have shown in previous chapters and in past work the symbiotic relationship between institutional change, the ability to communicate, and social movements. What is more, that relationship is constantly changing, as the technology that enables and shapes communication, as well as society and the citizen, is also changing. When that technology is placed within democratic societies, the connections run even deeper, but so does the possibility that such technologies can be used not just to advance democracy but also to undermine it. For these reasons, the need has never been greater to ensure that the communications tools of today and tomorrow are not weapons that can strike at the heart of democracy but rather tools to help realize it.”

Among Brescia’s suggested remedies: using those tools to set up and enforce simple and mandatory disclosures (not obtuse fine-print agreements), instituting “search” protections, ensuring transparency by tech companies of what data is gathered and stored, disclosing the sale of personal data, disclosing uses of algorithms, enforcing clear remedies for breaches of cyber privacy, and embracing an overall shift to an information fiduciary relationship by corporations.

Ultimately, the remedy requires an informed public willing to speak out and stand up for freedom.

Political scientist Erica Chenoweth studies antiauthoritarianism. In her findings about quantitative outcomes, she concludes that 3.5 percent of a population is “required to mount a successful campaign of civil resistance.”

Carrying out civil resistance requires influencing five key pillars: military, business elites, civil servants, state media, and police. The key strategy: nonviolence even in the face of violence. The key proof of success: when public backing of the regime goes away.

Change can be made with “institutional convergence.” For example, Brown vs. Board of Education came about when the interests of civil rights advocates converged with white elites and public pressure at a time when Cold War Soviets criticized the hypocrisy of Jim Crow South’s treatment of African Americans. A coalition of opposition does not have to be homogenous.

A final question: In this century, can the power of AI be harnessed to create a positive social movement to preserve democracy or will everything be turned upside down in an American autocracy or theocracy?

After publication of Brescia’s book, which calls for a framework and methodology to “preserve political privacy in private law contexts,” Americans witnessed an unprecedented invasion of privacy by the Trump Administration in coordination with a technology giant who reportedly paid $350M to help elect a president. Brescia penned an op-ed condemning the Trump administration’s invasion of privacy after Elon Musk and his band of privateers raided the Social Security Administration –– via DOGE.

Brescia wrote, in part:

“…unvetted individuals working for a 'department' that doesn’t officially exist have gained access to the private financial information of hundreds of millions of American taxpayers and businesses. Veterans, retirees, taxpayers, you name it, had such rights swept away by DOGE mercenaries in an instant, with no court review, with no justification, without any consideration for due process rights. And we don’t know the full extent of the release of this information, who has access to it, what their designs on it are and whether they intend to sell it to other companies or even foreign countries, even when it appears some of this information may have been fed into a computer program, driven by artificial intelligence, to help DOGE identify potential cuts.”

The op-ed was written last February, and Brescia urged immediate action by Congress to curtail DOGE’s invasion of privacy. “This is necessary to protect the American people and businesses from this seemingly lawless abuse of privacy and due process and to understand the damage already done.” Sadly, so far his warnings have gone unheeded.