Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past

by Steve Benen

Overview

Instant New York Times Bestseller

A searing, vital investigation of the Republican Party’s dangerous campaign to rewrite recent history in real time, from the Emmy Award-winning Rachel Maddow Show producer and bestselling author of The Impostors.

“There is nobody who is writing in an episodic way who has more influence on the way I think about politics than Steve Benen.” —Rachel Maddow 

For as long as historical records have existed, authoritarian regimes have tried to rewrite history to suit their purposes, using their dictatorial powers to create myths, spread propaganda, justify decisions, erase opponents, and even dispose of crimes.

As the Republican Party becomes increasingly radicalized, the GOP is putting their own twist on a similarly despotic script. Indeed, the party is taking dangerous, aggressive steps to rewrite history—and not just from generations past.

Unable to put a positive spin on Trump-era scandals and fiascos, GOP voices and their allies have grown determined to rewrite the stories of the last few years—from the 2020 election results and the horror of January 6^th to their own legislative record—treating the recent past as an enemy to be overpowered, crushed, and conquered. The consequences for our future, in turn, are dramatic.

Extraordinarily timely and undeniably important, Steve Benen’s new book tells the staggering chronicle of the Republican party’s unsettling attempts at historical revisionism. It reveals not only how dependent they have grown on the tactic, but also how dangerous the consequences are if we allow the party to continue. The stakes, Benen argues, couldn’t be higher: the future of democracy hinges on both our accurate understanding of events and the end of alternative narratives that challenge reality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063393677
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	08/13/2024
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	36,696
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Steve Benen is a producer on The Rachel Maddow Show and the author of The MaddowBlog. Benen’s articles and op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Monthly, The American Prospect, Salon.com, and other publications. For his work on TRMS, he has received two Emmy Awards, and has been nominated for four more. He is the author of The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics, a national bestseller. He lives in Vermont.

Editorial Reviews

08/05/2024

The Republican Party is waging a “frantic gaslighting campaign” to “rewrite the stories that have unfolded over the last several years,” according to this illuminating account from Benen (The Impostors), a producer of The Rachel Maddow Show. Pointing to polls showing that “a majority of Republican voters that Trump made no effort to overturn the 2020 election,” among other misbeliefs that absolve Donald Trump from wrongdoing and exaggerate his successes as president, Benen delves into how the Republican playbook of “historical revisionism” has evolved in recent years to make such lies possible to perpetuate. While much of it comes down to Trump’s habitual lying and self-aggrandizing being repeated as fact on right-leaning outlets like Fox News, Benen also spotlights Republican politicians who have entered Trump’s alternate reality and begun generating their own pro-Trump spin, like Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who claimed the Jan. 6 insurrectionists were “fake Trump protesters,” and New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who asserted that the FBI’s search for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago was part of a “hoax.” While Benen, true to form, spends slightly too much time on Russia-related events, his account is well sourced and covers a lot of ground. This cogent survey of the Trumpist lie factory is worth checking out for more than just fans of Maddow. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

There is nobody who is writing in an episodic, daily way, in any medium, anywhere in the world, who has more influence on the way I think about politics than Steve Benen.” — Rachel Maddow

“A fierce takedown of right-wing mendacity committed in the service of a bigger lie.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Illuminating… well sourced and covers a lot of ground. This cogent survey of the Trumpist lie factory is worth checking out for more than just fans of Maddow.” — Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2024-05-25
A fierce takedown of right-wing mendacity committed in the service of a bigger lie.

It’s one thing to spin fables about the phone company killing JFK. It’s quite another to take an event within recent memory and twist it out of all recognition—to say, for instance, that the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol was just everyday tourist visitation or legitimate political protest. As Benen, a producer for theRachel Maddow Show and the author ofThe Impostors, writes, any Republican who wants to make such claims has to do so without an ounce of bashfulness or self-doubt, for the public will pick up on the fearful scent and leap. “Republicans who intend to replace a factual series of events with fictitious ones must fully commit to the new narrative,” he writes, “no matter how ridiculous it is.” Thus Sen. Tommy Tuberville in a nutshell, and thus the rationale for all of the chaotic performance art on the part of a panoply of GOP leaders: Kevin McCarthy, say, who condemned the Jan. 6 attack but then, in the very next breath, declared that Trump had won the election; the refusal of Republicans up and down the ballot to commit to honoring the results of the next election (“election results are to be embraced when GOP candidates prevail”); their insistence that Trump is the victim of a weaponized Justice Department and not a con man brought to justice. The spin continues: In the current cycle, Republicans are focusing on inflation as a talking point, ignoring that the economy has grown and the unemployment rate has fallen during the Biden administration. Unabashedly one-sided, Benen paints with a broad brush, but not without reason.

Not likely to win over many from the other camp, but with a good amount of signal among the partisan noise.

Kirkus Reviews