Bill Berkowitz
Stories by Bill Berkowitz
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A New Gilded Age? Today’s Oligarchs Are in a Class of Their Own
Mark Twain coined the term “Gilded Age” in a novel co-authored with Charles Dudley Warner called The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873), which satirized the corruption lurking behind America’s spectacular prosperity in the late 19th century. HBO’s “The Gilded Age,” which returns for its fourth season on November 1, offers a lavish dramatic…
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From Fitness to Fascism: Neo-Nazi Active Clubs Are Recruiting Teens
Active Clubs are a modern, decentralized form of white-supremacist organizing that uses fitness, combat sports, friendship, and online culture as gateways into neo-Nazi and broader white-supremacist politics. Active Club leaders have explicitly described the combination of athletics and social activity as a way of introducing people who might not otherwise be interested in far-right extremism to…
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COINTELPRO 2.0: Trump Targeting Progressive Groups While Weakening the Fight Against Far-Right Violence
At the same time the Trump administration is ramping up “criminal investigations against progressive and even mainstream groups,” Kenneth Roth recently reported in The Guardian, it has lost interest in investigating far-right extremist organizations. The Trump administration’s focus is eerily reminiscent of COINTELPRO, J. Edgar Hoover’s massive campaign to undermine, disrupt, and discredit left-wing and…
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Nine Years After Charlottesville the Far Right Moved From the Margins to the Mainstream
Nine years ago this week the Unite the Right rally was held in Charlottesville, Virginia. Who could forget images of white supremacists marching through Charlottesville wielding flaming torches and chanting, “Jews will not replace us”? And who could forget President Trump’s infamous assertions that there was blame on “both sides” and that “you also had…
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Warning Signs: Trump’s War on the Smithsonian and the Battle for American Memory
For years, conservatives denounced what they called “cancel culture,” arguing that it erased history, silenced dissenting voices, and replaced uncomfortable truths with politically convenient narratives. They presented themselves as defenders of free inquiry and historical accuracy. Now, the Trump administration’s effort to reshape the Smithsonian Institution represents a striking reversal of those principles. Rather than preserving the nation’s premier museum complex as a place of scholarship and evidence, the administration has sought to…
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Project 2025 Is Kicking Democracy’s Butt and the Heritage Foundation is Damn Proud of It
In a recent fundraising email, the Heritage Foundation—the architect of Project 2025—claimed that the administration has already enacted 53 percent of the plan’s recommendations. While that figure cannot be independently verified because some recommendations are broad or overlap, the claim is significant because it comes from the organization that drafted the nearly 900-page blueprint and…
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From Sea to Singeing Sea: The U.S. at 250
“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history.” — Hannah Arendt America is a nation flying without…
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Patriot Front’s July 4th Masked DC March Highlights Modern Extremist Propaganda Tactics
On July 4, hundreds of masked Patriot Front members marched through Washington, D.C., during Independence Day events. Participants wore coordinated clothing (khaki pants, blue shirts, and white face coverings), carried Patriot Front, Confederate, and altered U.S. flags, and chanted slogans including “Reclaim America.” Police monitored the march but reported no arrests or major incidents. The…
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Trump Dismantles USAID; Embraces Octagon Diplomacy
Beyond the White House Spectacle: The UFC’s New Foreign Policy Role On the surface, the recent spectacle of UFC fighters on the White House lawn drew attention for the usual reasons— Donald Trump’s ego, provocative remarks from one of its participants, and the kind of political theater that the president revels in. But a more…
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Meet Lance Wallnau: A Christian Nationalist Influencer You’ve Never Heard Of
You wouldn’t recognize him if you bumped into him on the subway. If he walked into your local coffee shop, chances are nobody would ask for a selfie. He’s not a governor, a television personality, or a Silicon Valley billionaire. Yet over the past decade, Lance Wallnau, the 70-year-old Texas preacher who calls himself a prophet and…
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The Prophet of Profit: How Franklin Graham Swapped His Father’s Legacy for Christian Nationalism
For nearly a decade since his father’s death, Franklin Graham, the son Billy Graham, arguably the most famous person in the history of American evangelicalism, has sought to step into his father’s role as “America’s pastor.” Instead, Franklin Graham is more likely viewed as an unapologetic Trump supporter and a polarizing political figure. In April,…
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Trump and Religious Right Allies Launch Coordinated Attack on Pride Month
Today, the battleground has moved directly into public schools and civil institutions. The contemporary Right’s focus on rolling back protections for transgender individuals, banning pride flags on government property, and substituting traditional Pride Month with alternative designations — such as “Fidelity Month” or “Title IX Month” — marks a structural escalation.
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DHS BOLO (Be On The Lookout) Alert Targets Ben Palmer: Satire vs. Government Overreach
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has circulated a nationwide “Be on the Lookout” (BOLO) alert to law enforcement targeting Ben Palmer, a Nashville-based stand-up comedian and online satirist whose parody of U.S. immigration enforcement recently went viral. According to investigative reporting by the journalism non-profit Injustice Watch, the federal bulletin has sparked an escalating…
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Dr. Harry Edwards on NAACP’s Call for Black Athletes to Boycott After SCOTUS Guts Voting Rights
In late April, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Louisiana’s congressional map—which had established a second majority-Black district—was “an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.” As NPR’s Miles Parks and Hansi Lo Wang reported ((https://www.npr.org/2026/04/29/nx-s1-5754657/supreme-court-louisiana-redistricting) while the court technically left Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act intact, the decision “is the latest in a series of…
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When Trump Plays Jesus, Evangelicals Stay Silent
For decades, evangelical leaders have reacted with swift, unambiguous outrage at even the mildest satire or criticism involving Jesus Christ, framing such moments as grave moral offenses. Yet when President Donald Trump shared an AI-generated image portraying himself as Jesus—a depiction that would once have triggered immediate and thunderous rebuke from the likes of Ralph…
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Scripture as Spectacle: Trump’s Public Reading of a Passage From the Bible
As if selling Bibles bearing his signature weren’t enough, President Trump recently added a blistering critique of Pope Leo and the sharing of AI-generated images portraying himself in Christ-like ways—images many religious conservatives and commentators have called “blasphemous” or “sacrilegious.” Now, he is expected to participate in a public reading of biblical scripture. Although he…
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Trump’s Spiritual Advisor Paula White-Cain Compares Trump to Jesus
For Christians, Easter marks the resurrection of Jesus. At the White House this year, it also inspired a striking comparison. During a private Easter event at…
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Pete Hegseth’s Pastor Uses Violent Religious Rhetoric About James Talarico
How seriously should we take the language used by some Christian nationalist figures when they talk about political opponents? A recent episode of the…
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The Small Man in the White House
Hard times create strongmen, and strongmen create harder times. History repeats itself not out of fate, but neglect. The pattern is old and brutally consistent…
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Welcome to the Rapture? Trump’s War Against Iran and the Evangelical ‘Holy War’ Narrative
On March 5, a number of Christian conservative evangelical leaders gathered in the White House to pray for President Donald Trump and for U.S. success in Trump’…
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#DraftBarron and #SendBarron Trending on Social Media
“People come up to me, with tears in their eyes, and they say, ‘Sir, you’re the strongest. Send Barron off to war.’ I’ve always been strong. Very strong.
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Candace Owens’ ‘Bride of Charlie’ Is Fueling MAGA Online ‘Transvestigation’ of Erika Kirk
Candace Owens is a prominent podcaster and right-wing influencer. She has built her brand in part by floating far-fetched conspiracy theories, like the one she…
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Power, Prayer and Obsequious Praise: Franklin Graham’s Trumpian Gospel of Order and Obedience
In a Jan. 14 interview on CBN, (https://cbn.com/news/us/are-end-times-upon-us-franklin-graham-sounds-alarm-iranis-burning) Franklin Graham issued a familiar…
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Whites-Only Arkansas Compound Hosts Online Meeting Aimed at Uniting White Supremacists Worldwide
On 160 acres of rural Arkansas land, beyond a dirt road and river-crossing, a self-described “whites only” community is building cabins, roads and a schoolhouse…
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Domino’s Pizza Mogul’s Ultra-Conservative Catholic Ave Maria University Plagued by Measles Outbreak
A measles outbreak at Ave Maria University was confirmed in late January with two cases, which had grown to nearly 60 by February 11. In response…
