New York Times Bestseller
How far are Americans willing to go to force each other to fall in
line?
According to the establishment media, the intelligentsia, and our
political chattering class, the greatest threat to American freedom lies
in right-wing authoritarianism. We've heard that some 75 million
Americans who voted for Donald Trump represent the rise of American
fascism; that conservatives have allowed authoritarianism to bloom in
their midst, creating a grave danger for the republic.
But what if the true authoritarian threat to America doesn't come from
the political right, but from the supposedly anti-fascist left?
There are certainly totalitarians on the political right. But
statistically, they represent a fringe movement with little
institutional clout. The authoritarian left, meanwhile, is ascendant in
nearly every area of American life. A small number of
leftists--college-educated, coastal, and uncompromising--have not just
taken over the Democratic Party but our corporations, our universities,
our scientific establishment, our cultural institutions. And they have
used their newfound power to silence their opposition.
The authoritarian Left is aggressively insistent that everyone must
conform to its values, demanding submission and conformity. The dogmatic
Left is obsessed with putting people in categories and changing human
nature. Everyone who opposes it must be destroyed.
Ben Shapiro looks at everything from pop culture to the Frankfurt
school, social media to the Founding Fathers, to explain the origins of
our turn to tyranny, and why so many seem blind to it.
More than a catalog of bad actors and intemperate acts, The
Authoritarian Moment lays bare the intolerance and rigidity creeping
into all American ideology - and prescribes the solution to ending the
authoritarianism that threatens our future.
