In the land of believers

Gonzo journalist Matt Taibbi goes undercover into the nation's fringes and finds surprising similarities between the religious right and 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

By Vincent Rossmeier

Read more: Books, Conspiracy, Politics, Religious Right, Interviews, Authors, Books Interviews

May 16, 2008 | Matt Taibbi writes with the unfettered rage of a man in a bar fight. Modeling himself as a modern day Hunter S. Thompson, Taibbi has carved out a blunt, provocative style in his political writing for Rolling Stone and the New York Press. Taibbi is notorious for his vicious descriptions: He once referred to Tom DeLay as a "balding incubus" with a "Gorgon's gaze" and called Harry Reid "a dour, pro-life Mormon with a campaign chest full of casino money." Throughout his career, Taibbi has purposely cultivated his image as a journalistic bad boy.

His last book, "Spanking the Donkey," was a scathing diary of the 2004 presidential elections that included his recollection of a stoned meeting with Dennis Kucinich. Yet he is perhaps best known for his irreverent 2005 column in the New York Press, "The 52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope," that seemed to delight in the pope's imminent demise and included such items as "Pope pisses himself just before the end; gets all over nurse" and "Doctor applies fingers to neck to check expiring Pope's pulse. Pope's ear falls off." Several politicians, including Charles Schumer, Hillary Clinton and Michael Bloomberg, subsequently denounced Taibbi's column. At the time, Taibbi argued that the piece "had almost nothing to do with the pope or Catholics whatsoever, and certainly wasn't hate speech," but the resulting controversy led to Taibbi's departure from the paper and the resignation of the paper's editor.

In his new book, "The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire," Taibbi embarks on a journey through contemporary America, a place that he believes is on the verge of a psychological collapse. Reporting for Rolling Stone, Taibbi goes undercover as a born-again Christian to investigate John Hagee's apocalyptic mega-church. He also documents his contentious experiences with members of the 9/11 Truth Movement, whose conspiracy theories he portrays as leftist parallels to the delusional beliefs of the religious right. Taibbi sees Americans on both sides of the political spectrum reverting to a new tribalism that makes communication and mutual understanding near impossible. In a book that is as darkly funny as it is depressing, Taibbi assails every aspect of modern-day America.

Salon spoke with Taibbi about his book, calling people "retards," and his pessimistic view of America's future.

What does the title of your book mean?

A theme I started to pick up on as I was covering politics for Rolling Stone was this idea that increasingly, we're not really a nation of citizens that have a commonly accepted group of facts that we're debating. Instead we're retreating into these insoluble pockets that have their own versions of reality. In this book, you're looking at, on the one side, the religious right, who sees 9/11 as divine retribution against the United States for sins like being too permissive to homosexuals, and on the other side, on the left, you have 9/11 as this conspiracy that was committed by the United States government against its own people. As people are retreating into these alternative versions of reality, they're unable to agree on anything, and we get this increasingly stagnant form of politics.

In the book, you suggest that this great derangement actually works in the favor of our politicians, because when people trail off into these "escapist fantasies" they don't question the status quo. They focus on irrelevant matters and ignore that their politicians aren't doing what they were put in Washington to do.

Right. It's an ideal situation for a corrupt kleptocracy. What we have now is a situation where politicians get a whole bunch of money from mainly business interests. Then once they hold that office, they spend all their time in office paying back over and over again those campaign contributions through various favors and contracts and that sort of thing. That's really all politics is in this country, it's just a money game.

You really think our political situation is that simple?

Obviously, there's some ideology that comes into it. The politicians do have some leeway to vote their conscience on social issues and things like that. But I've talked to members of Congress and they tell me quite openly that they almost have to start running for reelection again as soon as they get into office.

Who do you think is responsible for this development?

I think the responsibility goes all the way around. A part of this is due to the politicians themselves and a lot of it has to do with the media, certainly, because we don't report any of this stuff.

Why is that?

Because it's viewed as boring. I was in Congress on the day that they passed the final House omnibus appropriations bill a couple of years ago and I was the only reporter in the press gallery when that bill got passed. And we're talking about a bill that basically wrapped up like eight of the 11 appropriations bills into one bill, so you're talking about more than a trillion dollars of public money that was spent and there wasn't a single reporter there to cover it. That tells you a lot about who's paying attention to how the government spends the public's money.

After attending a convention for the 9/11 Truth Movement, you wrote: "The People aren't always the victims in the historical narratives. Sometimes the People are greedy, chest-pumping, ignorant assholes too." So do you think the people who have these "crazy beliefs," as you describe them, bear responsibility for their own ideas?

I'm a product of an East Coast liberal arts educational system. We were all sort of raised in that type of Marxist paradigm where the people are these unwitting victims of the oppressive politicians, but the reality is, if you look at some of the crazy, crazy ideas that are being bandied around nowadays, people have to take responsibility for being that escapist and that unrealistic. It's not fair to pin that all on the media and the politicians. You can spend all your time worrying about whether or not God can reconquer Israel -- if you don't spend anytime worrying about what your congressman is doing with the 50 thousand in taxes you sent in this year, it's your own fault at some level.

For the book, you went undercover to John Hagee's church in Texas and acted like a loyal congregant in order to observe the religious right. While you were at the church, there was an instance where Hagee's son, who's also a pastor, was speaking to the congregation and compared Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Satan. And you note the tepid response of the audience to that allegation. Instead, what gets people in the church excited is when they're talking about themselves and their own problems.

Absolutely, these people are joining Hagee's church because they're lonely, because they have trouble negotiating their own lives. They need to have some kind of support system. And they need to have somebody to claim to them what the cause of their personal problems are. In the church, they do a very good job of blaming an individual's misfortunes on a lack of faith or Satan or demons. The trade-off for people is, by joining the church, and getting this type of explanation, it alleviates their responsibility to think for themselves. But the danger of that is that they're willing to go along with whatever nutty politics are being pushed on them. What I saw is that these people joined the church for personal reasons, but they ended up supporting whatever the political line was just because it's a trade-off.

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