Survival in the Gig Economy
Freedom from the nine-to-five or another form of exploitation? The gig economy is both!
Book gives you the truth about about what to expect and helps you make a plan when nothing is predictable.
Freedom from the nine-to-five or another form of exploitation? The gig economy is both!
Book gives you the truth about about what to expect and helps you make a plan when nothing is predictable.
Most of books addressing the topic of Christian Nationalism are written either by Christian faith leaders (who explain how and why Christian Nationalism perverts the teachings of Jesus) or religious historians/academics, who trace the origins of Christian Nationalism and its roots in slavery, white supremacy and oligarchy.
Kingdom of Rage takes a slightly different tack. Elizabeth Neumann formerly served as the assistant secretary for counterterrorism at the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security. While Neumann is also a Christian and approaches the problem from a faith perspective, she adds what the research on counterterrorism and radicalization have to tell us. Her primary argument is that after September 11, our counterterrorism forces became blinder-focused on Muslim radicalization and completely missed the radicalization that was happening in our own back yard. The targeting and demonization of Muslims contributed to narratives of grievance, anxiety and fear that fueled Christian extremism.
This “us versus them” narrative created an “ever-increasing toxic soup of fear and outrage that dominated conservative infotainment. And it spread into some pulpits as pastors increasingly recognized that their congregants were primarily catechized by their favorite conservative talk show host instead of the Bible….The solution—we were told—was earthly power to protect ourselves. And if we could not obtain that power through legitimate political means, then the rules could be broken.” Neumann then traces a through-line from September 11th to January 6th.
Neumann argues that we must move past simplistic explanations for radicalization. While ideology plays a role, it is not the underlying reason why people become extremists. Millions of faithful Muslims would never take part in something like September 11th. Billions of people around the globe are subjected to injustice, oppression, discrimination, unemployment, poverty and crime, yet we don’t see all of them joining terrorist groups.
Neumann chooses to define extremism in the words of J.M. Berger, an anti-extremism researcher and recognized expert: “Extremism is the belief that an in-group’s success or survival can never be separated from the need for hostile action against an out-group.” Extremism is founded on the premises of identity theory, which defines the existence of an out-group that presents an existential crisis for the in-group. The next step is radicalization. Contrary to popular myth, extremists are not mentally ill, nor is there a single path or personality type who becomes radicalized. “Radicalization, by and large, happens to normal, functional people. Radicalization can happen to people we know. Radicalization can happen to us.”
Mere exposure to extremist ideology by itself is not sufficient to produce radicalization. Researchers have identified more than one hundred risk factors that create vulnerability to radicalization. The most significant of these risk factors are “unmet psycho-social needs, often caused by experiences of humiliation or disrespect, psychological distress, a recent crisis, or loss of significance.”
Neumann also documents the increasing role that social media plays in the radicalization process: Between 2005 and 2010, some 73% of subjects told researchers that social media played no role in their radicalization, while only 25% said social media played a secondary role. Less than 2% said social media played a major role. Between 2011 and 2016, these numbers reversed: 73% said social media played a primary role in their radicalization, while slightly over 26% said it played no role. Looking at 2016 alone, social media played a primary or secondary role in 90% of cases. Social media has also been implicated in accelerating radicalization, or what DHS calls the “flash-to-bang” time between initial radicalization and violent act.
Domestic violent extremism (or domestic terrorism) is harder to detect and disrupt than terrorism originating outside the U.S., mainly due to “limitations on the use of counterterrorism tools on domestic groups and movements.” There were signs of such activity in the U.S. throughout the 1990s: the siege against the Branch Davidians in Waco in 1993 (David Koresh); the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 (Timothy McVeigh), the Centennial Park bombing in Atlanta (Eric Rodolph). These were members of right-wing groups with varying motivations and grievances, but included general anti-government and anti-abortion ideologies as well as white supremacy. Attention to these groups was diverted after September 11th.
Neumann admits she grew up in the Bible Belt and had once been a “die-hard Republican who bought into the rhetoric that the other side—the Democrats, the Clinton’s, the ‘libs,’ pick your label—were the problem, the enemy even….because the Republican Party was God’s team.” Neumann was serving at DHS in the first Trump administration, but she had started looking for other work in the summer of 2019. However, her job search was put on hold following “a spate of domestic terror attacks” in Gilroy, CA, El Paso, TX, and Dayton, OH, when Neumann “spent most of the fall briefing Congress and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget on the plan and our budgetary needs—with a key focus on the need to build prevention capabilities.”
Neumann was in the process of transition to CISA in April 2020, but “by then we were in full lockdown from COVID-19.” During COVID, Neumann re-connected with some Christian friends who got her back into a Bible study, at the same time she was “processing the three years of toxicity of my time serving in the DHS under the Trump administration.” A turning point came after Lafayette Square, and Neumann decided that she needed to speak out. She gave an interview with ABC News on the COVID-19 pandemic, she connected with a group of former Republican National Security officials and signed letters for Defending Democracy Together. She also made a video testimonial for Republican Voters Against Trump. She describes herself today as “politically homeless [but] finding community with others discovering the same.”
Neumann provides data on both left-wing and right-wing violence in the U.S. Left-wing attacks increased from around 5-11% before 2020 to 23% in 2020 and then 40% in 2021. However, Neumann suggests that simply comparing the number of attacks is a false equivalency: “There is a vast difference in the targets of the attacks, the preferred weaponry, and the number of fatalities when we compare right-wing and left-wing extremism. From 1994 to 2020, most left-wing attacks targeted businesses, buildings and infrastructure, not people.”
The biggest increase has been from far-right extremism. “…during 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2020, the number of attacks and plots from the far right exceeded the previous high-water mark of right-wing extremism—1995, the year of the Oklahoma City bombing.” The conclusion of most analyists and multiple nonpartisan think tanks is that, “Over the past forty years, the gravest domestic threat has come from the far right.”
Neumann traces the coalescence of previously unaffiliated right-wing and white power groups in the 1980s: KKK, Neo-Nazis, Christian Identity, Aryan Nations, skinhead. It is believed that the decision to declare war on the American government was made at Aryan World Congress in 1983. Here, the groups developed a computer-based social network to share propaganda and coordinate action, along with terrorist cell-style “leaderless resistance.”
Neumann describes the interaction of external “push” and internal “pull” factors in creating vulnerabilities to radicalization. Huge push factors were September 11, the 2008 financial crisis and COVID-19. Such external events can create conditions of humiliation, loneliness or psychological distress at the individual level. “And when your community amplifies and reinforces grievance and calls for hostile action, the result, research has shown, is a contagion of extremism.”
Neumann identifies three main motivators of radicalization: Needs, narratives and networks. Many of the vulnerability triggers to radicalization are things that individuals often have little control over, such as a personal crisis, psychological distress, or being disrespected. Since we cannot avoid these triggers, Neumann suggests that we can only control our responses to them. Radicalization is a “crystallization of personal and situational characteristics, converging in time and space.” Chronic stress, obsessive thinking and isolation are cognitive susceptibility factors that are then triggered by an external crisis and then amplified by exposure to extremist networks.
Neumann argues that we are in a “liminal age” or “gray zone” where we have left behind the world we knew but have not yet entered the world to be. Approximately every 60 years, the United States undergoes a “moral convulsion.” The last one happened in the 1960s, during the civil rights era. During such times, “People feel disgusted by the state of society. Trust in institutions plummets. Moral indignation is widespread. Contempt for established power is intense.” A highly moralistic generation appears on the scene. It uses new modes of communication to seize control of the national conversation. Groups formerly outside of power rise up and take over the system. There are moments of agitation and excitement, frenzy and accusation, mobilization and passion.”
American society was already becoming more and more disconnected when COVID hit. “Disconnection from people, disconnection from meaningful work, disconnection from meaningful values, disconnection from the natural world, disconnection from status and respect, and disconnection from a hopeful and secure future have been scientifically linked to increases in depression and anxiety.” Neumann gives us data: we are spending less time engaging socially with friends, we have fewer close friends (in 2021, 49% of Americans reported having three or fewer close friends), and in 2018 only 16% of us felt very attached to their local community. On the religious front, the percentage of Americans belonging to a church, synagogue or mosque declined from 70% in 1999 to 47% in 2020.
Neumann points the finger of blame at what some call the “outrage industrial complex,” which you will likely encounter (as well as participate in) if you routinely watch cable news, YouTube, or use X (formerly Twitter) or Facebook. “With growing frequency, prominent leaders in media, politics, and religion take legitimate grievances and catastrophize them, turning them into existential threats. These personalities may not actually believe their own narrative,” yet these narratives “set up the permission structure for hostile action, including violence.”
Neumann argues that, “Today’s Christian extremist movement is made up of mostly cultural, and some genuine, Christians who believe that out-groups (i.e., progressives, liberals, Democrats, elites, the federal government, the “deep state,” globalists, international institutions, immigrants, Muslims, secularists, Marxists, Black Lives Matter, wokeists, and proponents of critical race theory) pose an existential threat to their way of life.” They believe that the day is coming when their cultural “enemies” will persecute them for simply being Christian, and so they must “protect” their Christian way of life.
This convergence of white Christian nationalism with other white supremacy and extremist movements—along with conspiracies and an apocalyptic ideology—that we saw on January 6th, is what is creating the greatest risk for more violence. Moreover, this larger extremist movement is not confined to the United Staes. “The presidents of Hungary and Russia are actively leveraging Christian symbols, culture, texts, and clerics to promote ultranationalism…[and] justify atrocities.”
Neumann argues that, “Part of what allowed this union between evangelicals and Republican politicians to occur was the decline of traditional Christian denominations and the rise of the independent church,” due to the “absence of denominational oversight and accountability.” In the past, preachers have always used fear to “promote conversions and repentance,” but in the past this fear has been focused on death, hell, or an external threat like nuclear war. “As American Christianity become associated with only one side of the political spectrum, the fear that was stoked was not of eternal damnation but of losing our country and the dangers coming from the other political party.”
Neumann says that December 2020 was “the first time I deeply understood Advent….In the wake of the 2020 election, something shifted for me. People weren’t snapping out of it. The fog didn’t lift. By mid-December, the anger and bitterness both in the church and in the political party which I’d invested my entire career were getting worse.” Neumann’s eyes were opened to “my own ignorance and my sin of self-centeredness, pride, blindness (particularly around racial issues and Black Lives Matter), [and] hard-heartedness…It was unnerving to see people with decades more experience than I possess to not have answers to the question, what do we do now?”
Christians in particular saw their numbers diminishing, experiencing the double identity crises of waning Christian culture and white culture. “These rapid changes are disorienting and…create space for narratives that stoke grievances.” Among white Christians, they viewed the “cancel culture phenomenon as a rejection and disrespect of their values and beliefs.” A 2020 Cato Institute study found that 77% of strong conservatives self-censor due to the belief that others would find them offensive. Self-censorship rates were 42% for “strong” liberals and 52% for liberals.
Moreover, where evangelicals previously “found unity in Christ,” they have fractured and splintered due to differing responses to rapid social changes. She breaks down the categories:
The sole purpose of attending church is to be formed into a disciple of Christ, NOT culture wars, celebrity, power, money, or advancing political goals. Pastors should focus on shepherding their flock, not “using the platform of the pulpit to cultivate a following…There should be very clear lines between the ministry of God’s word and discussion of political beliefs….Our country is desperate for a revival of meaningful institutions that help mold and shape us into adults with character, integrity, and competence.“
“The communities that had lectured me for years about principles and virtues abandoned them because they had fixed their eyes on a worldly enemy and pinned their hope to earthly power instead of Christ.”
Neumann cites a 2018 poll in which Americans believed they were angrier than a generation ago; 42% of were personally angrier in the past year than they had been in prior years. “Despite it being a moderate risk factor of extremism, anger’s prevalence in our culture requires us to address it. Anger and fear are serving as primary gateway drugs for the group radicalization that has occurred in recent years.”
Neumann points the finger at all of us. “A democratic republic puts the power in the hands of the people. That means we all have blood on our hands. We are all complicit in allowing our children to be mercilessly targeted. This is the result of society’s criminal negligence….It begins with fixing our own hearts. We must stop hating our neighbor. We must stop trying to ‘own’ each other.”
Neumann began her work at DHS as a junior policy staffer in the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, which eventually became the National Counterterrorism Center, a formalized multi-agency institution coordinated out of the White House Situation Room. “The early days of preventing terrorist attacks were the mission of intelligence, military and low enforcement communities. “Until 2019…there was no office at DHS responsible for systematically building prevention capability across the country.”
However, in 2019, DHS “moved to a public health approach to prevention” applied to the “extremism space,” including building community resilience, mitigating risk factors, and “inoculating the community against conspiracy theories and propaganda used by extremists.” A new office was revamped, now called the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3), to be the “prevention complement to FEMA (response and recovery) and CISA (protection).
Here Neumann sets out details of a logistical plan for protection and risk mitigation that should be government responsibilities. Individual citizens are urged to “stop the glorification of gun culture…educate yourself on primary prevention,…and use your vote and your voice to advocate for change.” She cites a 2023 surgeon general warning for parents to monitor children and teen’s access to social media.
Neumann also urges us to “talk to your loved ones about extremism” as a form of “inoculation.” Parents should regard hate mongering and conspiracy theories the same way they talk to their teens about sex, drugs and smoking. “While we cannot argue someone out of their ideology once they are radicalized, if we introduce a person to the manipulation techniques used and small amounts of the ideology framed in a negative way, it reduces the likelihood they will support the extremist ideology if they are ever exposed to it ‘in the wild.’”
The ultimate antidote is a call to universal love. In a nod to other faiths, Neumann presents quotes form the Hindu Mahatma Ghandi, Gautama Buddha, the Muslim Quran and the Jewish Torah. She urges us, regardless of our religious background and beliefs, to “put away the contempt, the hate, the ‘othering,’ that empowers extremism. Commit to practicing kindness and love with those in your community. Commit to building bridges to people who have had different experiences and people who think differently than you. Commit to humility and curiosity….we can change—one person, one relationship at a time.”
Neumann includes appendices at the end of the book which contain lists of risk factors for radicalization (15), motivational indicators of violence (15), preparation indicators of violence (20), and mobilization indicators of imminent violent acts (7). Neumann advises calling 911 while “being careful” if you observe any of the mobilization indicators: