Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right

Product Description
“Reveals a political trend that threatens both our form of government and our species.” - Timothy Snyder, author of ON TYRANNY"Riveting.... Want to understand how so many Americans turned against truth? Read this book." Nancy Maclean, author of DEMOCRACY IN CHAINSIn 1981, emboldened by Ronald Reagan's election, a group of some fifty Republican operatives, evangelicals, oil barons, and gun lobbyists met in a Washington suburb to coordinate their attack on civil liberties and the social safety net. They called their coalition the Council for National Policy. Over four decades, this elite club has become a strategic nerve center for channeling money and mobilizing votes. Its secretive membership rolls represent a high-powered roster of fundamentalists, oligarchs, and their allies, from Oliver North, Ed Meese, and Tim LaHaye in the Council's early days to Kellyanne Conway, Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins, and the DeVos and Mercer families today. In Shadow Network, award-winning author and media analyst Anne Nelson chronicles this astonishing history and illuminates the coalition's key figures and their tactics. She traces how the collapse of local journalism laid the foundation for the Council for National Policy's information war and listens in on the hardline broadcasting its members control. And she reveals how the group has collaborated with the Koch brothers to outfit Radical Right organizations with state-of-the-art apps and a shared pool of captured voter data - outmaneuvering the Democratic Party in a digital arms race whose result has yet to be decided. In a time of stark and growing threats to our most valued institutions and democratic freedoms, Shadow Network is essential reading.
Review
“Fascinating . . . You can't convert anxiety into votes without cash, and Nelson does an excellent job following the money . . . Shadow Network is bound to appeal to those whose interest in politics run deep, but it's not so inside baseball that lay readers will be stuck in the weeds. . . . Readers curious about how the American right gets its message out will find much to admire in it.” ―NPR.org“If you like being scared, read Anne Nelson's Shadow Network. It's the alarming story of how Christian fundamentalists coalesced into a political force and have essentially taken over the Trump administration. . . . The task of putting this whole story together is nothing shy of monumental.” ―San Francisco Review of Books“Throughout Shadow Network, Nelson paints an utterly damning portrait of the rise of the modern right, of ostensibly Christian political activists partnering with fabulously wealthy industrialists to effectively take over the country. She identifies the owners, purveyors, and funders of right-wing media, and delves into the political donations of right-wing millionaires and billionaires, which have been enormously effective at lowering taxes and eliminating regulations.” ―The New Republic“An explosive, comprehensive account of the 30-year relationship between the conservative Council for National Policy, which promotes a stringent political ideology based on Southern Baptist morals, and the Republican Party . . . Nelson meticulously and chronologically traces the connections between the CNP and a host of Republican leaders and organizations. This is an absolutely momentous piece of investigative journalism.” ―Publishers Weekly, starred review“Fascinating . . . Nelson deftly and persuasively follows the money, tracing how it has flowed into government, political campaigns, and organizations to support the Christian fundamentalist agenda, concerned less with the economy than with social issues such as opposition to abortion and rights for LGBT people, and fomenting cultural divisions.” ―National Book Review“There is, finally, a growing awareness of how effectively the right has organized to seize control of American politics-an awareness Shadow Network will help spread.” ―Boston Review“Nelson's met