The Authoritarian Nexus

The 1980 alliance between the Republican Party and the Southern Baptist Convention was not a mere political coalition but a sinister pact orchestrated by fossil fuel billionaires and religious fundamentalists—both authoritarian, totalitarian, and fascist in their essence—to reshape America into a pliable, anti-rational society primed for a dictator-like figurehead. This coalition, fueled by neoconservative and neoliberal ideologies, systematically dismantled public education, offshored blue-collar jobs, and entrenched a science-denying Christian nationalist culture, eroding the Founding Fathers’ wall between Church and State. The fall of the Soviet Union emboldened these forces, fostering delusions of global cultural dominance through military might and media manipulation. George W. Bush’s presidency marked a hubristic peak, with neoconservative fantasies of remaking the Middle East, while fossil fuel interests backed Israel to secure oil dominance, heedless of cascading climate tipping points. Donald Trump’s presidency, amplified by the New Right’s neofascist ideologues—Curtis Yarvin, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and their ilk—represents the culmination of this decades-long project. The MAGA base, descendants of a dumbed-down, kayfabe-obsessed, authoritarian Christian culture, mirrors the psychological desperation of Weimar Germany’s masses, who embraced Hitler as a strict father-figure amid economic and social collapse. Like German industrialists backing fascism over socialism, today’s fossil fuel and tech elites prop up Trump to thwart progressive movements, ensuring their grip on power as the planet hurtles toward ecological ruin.

The 1980 Alliance: A Corporate-Fundamentalist Conspiracy

In 1980, the Republican Party, shaped by Leo Strauss’s neoconservative disciples and Milton Friedman’s deregulatory economics, forged a transformative alliance with the Southern Baptist Convention, mobilizing 50 million Christians to vote—Republican—for the first time. This was no grassroots movement but a calculated strategy by fossil fuel tycoons and fundamentalist leaders like Jerry Falwell, whose Moral Majority preached biblical inerrancy and cultural warfare. Both groups shared a totalitarian impulse. Their implicit goals were to gut the Department of Education, weakening critical thinking; offshore manufacturing to Mexico and China, impoverishing blue-collar workers; and lure these displaced workers into evangelical churches, where anti-rational narratives thrived. The Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Roe v. Wade (1973) decisions, seen as secular assaults, galvanized fundamentalists, who joined Catholics in a culture war against abortion and evolution, rallying around Francis Schaeffer’s “secular humanism” as a conspiratorial enemy. This alliance eroded the Church-State divide, replacing Enlightenment principles with a vision of “Christian America” rooted in 19th-century Protestant hegemony.

The fundamentalist surge, rooted in the South, was a reaction to the 1960s counterculture—Civil Rights, feminism, gay rights, and the sexual revolution—which shattered the Protestant establishment’s moral authority. Decisions like Engel v. Vitale and Abington Township v. Schempp (1963) banned school prayer and Bible reading, framing secularism as an existential threat. Fundamentalists, led by Falwell and Tim LaHaye, abandoned their earlier separatism for political activism, waging war on secular humanism. Creationism became a flagship cause, with “intelligent design” advocates like William Dembski and Michael Behe challenging Darwinian evolution, backed by politicians like Tom DeLay and George W. Bush. Despite setbacks like McLean v. Arkansas (1982), creationists built multimillion-dollar institutes and lobbied schools to undermine science, fostering a culture vulnerable to authoritarian manipulation.

Post-Soviet Hubris: Neoconservative Delusions and Global Dominance

The Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, under George H.W. Bush, supercharged neoconservative and neoliberal ambitions. Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis convinced them that the US, as the sole hyperpower, could remake the world through military force and media dominance. Neoconservatives envisioned spreading American-style Christianity via astro-turfed revivalist movements, while fossil fuel interests saw global markets ripe for exploitation. This hubris peaked under George W. Bush, a self-proclaimed “born-again Christian” whose administration embodied the alliance’s contradictions: a figurehead propped up by oil barons and Christian nationalists. The 2003 Iraq invasion, driven by neoconservative fantasies of transforming the Middle East into a pro-American bastion, collapsed into chaos, revealing the delusion of “dominionist” Christians who believed military might could impose their worldview. Fossil fuel giants backed US support for Israel, not for biblical prophecy alone but to secure Middle Eastern oil, ignoring climate science warning of rising CO2 levels, melting ice caps, and extreme weather that threaten life for all but the ultra-rich in fortified bunkers.

The New Right’s Neofascist Fever Dream

The New Right, coiling around the American psyche by 2025, is a neofascist acid trip, high on the monarchist ravings of Curtis Yarvin, the money of billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, and the bombast of Donald Trump. Yarvin conjures visions of a “national CEO” to crush the liberal state, his “Dark Enlightenment” echoing the authoritarian lunacy of Mein Kampf. His flippant nod to Hitler (“frankly, Hitler reads a lot like me”) is a deliberate provocation, infecting the rhetoric of J.D. Vance and DOGE’s gutting of the federal workforce. Thiel, the vampire of Silicon Valley, bankrolls this dystopian circus, calling democracy “incompatible with freedom.” Like German industrialists who propped up Hitler, Thiel’s god-complex drives his crusade to reshape America into a tech-fiefdom, funding Vance, Rubio, and a loyalist-stacked National Security Council. Musk, playing the populist, slashes social programs via DOGE cuts to Medicaid and Social Security, echoing fascist regimes that starved the poor to fatten corporate coffers. His X platform amplifies New Right bile, though his clash with MAGA nativists over H-1B visas reveals the alliance’s fault lines. Trump, the gilded carnival barker, wields “unitary executive authority” like a cudgel, his Christian nationalist and anti-immigrant screeds rallying the white, lower-middle-class MAGA “hobbits” while serving capitalist elites.

The New Right’s class dynamics are a house of cards: a shaky pact between monopoly-capitalist titans and resentful lower-middle-class whites, seething at the managerial elite and, to a large degree, any non-whites. The H-1B visa spat, where Trump sided with Musk over Bannon and Loomer, exposes the rift—globalist billionaires versus nativist foot-soldiers. The evangelical wing, despite 80% backing Trump in 2024, frays as USAID freezes and Paula White-Cain’s prosperity gospel alienate younger believers. Critics like Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, decrying “slaveholder religion,” could splinter this bloc. Ideologically, the New Right is a negative project, united by hatred of liberal progress but lacking coherence: Yarvin’s elitism clashes with Bannon’s populism; Thiel’s libertarianism grates against Vought’s statism. Figures like Bronze Age Pervert, peddling Nietzschean violence and Aryan fantasies, flirt with Holocaust-era ideologies, yet the New Right’s leaders shrug, indifferent to history’s body count.

Trump as Culmination: The Weimar Parallel

Trump’s presidency is the logical endpoint of the 1980 alliance, amplified by the New Right’s neofascist ideologues. His MAGA base—economically desperate, culturally alienated, and steeped in evangelical anti-rationalism—mirrors the Weimar Republic’s masses, who, crushed by economic chaos and cultural humiliation, embraced Hitler’s authoritarian father-figure. Trump’s persona, crafted on “The Apprentice” as a genius dealmaker, resonates with a base addicted to kayfabe pro-wrestling and reality TV, unable to distinguish fact from fiction. Like Hitler, Trump channels the grievances of a dumbed-down populace, their critical faculties eroded by decades of underfunded schools and fundamentalist dogma. The Claremont Institute’s venom, from Michael Anton’s Flight 93 Election* to Christopher Rufo’s Critical-Race-Theory witch hunts, fuels this fire, peddling a “Cold Civil War” narrative through Fox News and Breitbart.

Fossil fuel and tech elites, akin to German industrialists, back Trump to counter socialist movements (now led by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), prioritizing profit over planetary survival. The base’s unwavering loyalty, despite worsening conditions, reflects their cultish devotion, primed by dispensationalist narratives of apocalypse and salvation, as seen in Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth and LaHaye’s Left Behind series. US support for Israel, driven by both fundamentalist prophecy and oil interests, underscores this alliance’s reckless disregard for climate catastrophe, as CO2 emissions push Earth toward uninhabitability.

The fundamentalist surge, hybridized with Southern Baptist inerrancy under leaders like Adrian Rogers, was a reaction to the 1960s counterculture. As detailed by Chris R. Armstrong, fundamentalists waged war on secular humanism, a term Schaeffer weaponized to depict a godless conspiracy. Creationism, backed by multimillion-dollar institutes, challenged evolution, fostering anti-rationalism. The Southern Baptist Convention’s “fundamentalization” in the late 1970s, driven by leaders like Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson, armed the denomination for the culture wars, passing resolutions on abortion, school prayer, and Christian political candidates. This anti-rational crusade primed believers to reject evidence, from evolution to climate change, creating a populace vulnerable to the New Right’s neofascist rhetoric.

The New Right’s trajectory suggests at least two possible futures. Oligarchic Lockdown is the likeliest: Trump, Musk, and Thiel have gutted the administrative state via DOGE cuts. Trump’s overreach intensifies our current constitutional crisis. He declares a “state of emergency,” suspending courts and Congress. Media control and security forces stifle protests, with MAGA minions as latter-day Brownshirts. Thiel’s anti-China crusade and trade wars increase Pacific brinkmanship, and geopolitical Blowback ensues.

However, Working-Class Revolt offers a slim chance: a resistance, such as that currently being led by Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, unites workers around jobs and healthcare. Progressive clergy like Wilson-Hartgrove** lead hitherto Trump-supporting Christians to join Labor and form a winning coalition, though this necessitates that the Left prioritize class over identity politics.

Conclusion: A Fascist Legacy and the Path Forward

The 1980 alliance between fossil fuel billionaires and fundamentalists, amplified by the New Right’s neofascist ideologues, set America on a fascist trajectory, culminating in Trump’s cult of personality. By dismantling education, offshoring jobs, and promoting anti-rational Christianity, this coalition created a populace ripe for authoritarianism, mirroring post-WWI Germany. The psychological parallel is stark: like Hitler, Trump offers strict, paternalistic certainty to desperate masses. Fossil fuel and tech elites, like their German counterparts, back this movement to preserve wealth against progressive reform, even as climate collapse looms. Resistance lies in reviving Enlightenment values—reason, science, and Church-State separation—while amplifying socialist policies to address economic despair. Only by dismantling this authoritarian nexus can America avoid Weimar’s fate and secure a livable future.

*”2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees, except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.” https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-flight-93-election/

**Wilson-Hartgrove’s 2020 Revolution of Values explores how the religious right taught Americans to misread the Bible as an endorsement of Christian nationalism, and invites people of faith to re-read Scripture from the perspective of the poor and marginalized whom Jesus blessed. In 2024 he wrote White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy with William J. Barber, II. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wilson-Hartgrove