Finish What We Started
The MAGA Movement's Ground War to End Democracy
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3.6 • 10개의 평가
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- US$14.99
출판사 설명
The immersive, captivating untold story of the mass radicalization of the Republican Party in the aftermath of January 6, 2021, entrenching the political power of a radical right-wing movement dedicated to dismantling democracy itself.
Inspired by Donald Trump’s election lies, a growing movement of grassroots activists mobilized around the country to pick up where the insurrection left off, laying the groundwork to succeed next time where Trump had failed to keep himself in power. But their own success in taking over and purging the Republican Party became their undoing as it drove away moderates and supplied the Democrats with a winning message in the 2022 midterms. Still, the MAGA Republicans proved uninterested in learning from that defeat, only becoming more extreme, divisive, and dead set on returning Trump to power.
Washington Post national political reporter Isaac Arnsdorf has spent years at the forefront of reporting on this growing movement. Drawing on extensive, exclusive on-the-ground reporting around the country, and deepened by historical context, Arnsdorf has produced the defining journalistic account of the origins, evolution and future of the MAGA movement. Combining critical and rigorous reporting with the intimacy and complexity of a novel, this book is unlike any other in the decade since Donald Trump convulsed and transformed American politics.
Finish What We Started tells the story of the ordinary Americans driving this change, who they are and where they came from, what motivates them, and what their movement means for the survival of American democracy.
New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
"Entertaining, enlightening and disturbing." —Ira Glass, American public radio personality
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Washington Post journalist Arnsdorf debuts with a raucous recap of the evolution of Trumpism since the 2020 election via the "Precinct Strategy," a movement encouraging adherents to join the Republican Party's lowest ranks as precinct committeemen, from which vantage point they can oust moderate Republican leaders and promote MAGA primary candidates. Arnsdorf profiles leading characters in this political drama, including Arizona Republican Dan Schultz, who started the movement; MAGA generalissimo Steve Bannon, who boosted it on his War Room podcast; and Georgia mom Salleigh Grubbs, whose viral video of election workers allegedly shredding ballots set her on a path to becoming chairwoman of her local precinct committee, where she oversees campaigning and election monitoring. Arnsdorf spotlights MAGA extremism ("To talk to Susan... was to hear about how the person in the White House was a body double or a clone wearing a Joe Biden mask") and paints a fascinating picture of politics at its grubbiest in tedious party meetings where factions wrestle over Robert's Rules of Order. His colorful reportage teases out from the tangle of conspiracy theorizing the deeper yearning of MAGA zealots to have their voices heard in a world that seems immovably complex and atomized. It's an entertaining and insightful look at the Republican Party in extremis.
