Jeff Sharlet on ‘Sanewashing’ and Fascism

Nonfiction writer Jeff Sharlet joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss how mainstream media outlets sanitize Donald Trump’s rhetoric in their reporting rather than straightforwardly describing his words and behavior, an approach recently dubbed “sanewashing” by The New Republic’s Parker Molloy. Sharlet analyzes the term’s usefulness and also its limitations; talks about the need to describe fascism using the word itself; and reflects on who is now at the center of political discourse and who is at the fringe. He also considers whether popular new media influencers like the MeidasTouch Network and YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen are really filling the need to describe Trump as he is. He reads from his book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War.

Check out video excerpts from our interviews at Lit Hub’s Virtual Book Channel, Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and our website. This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

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From the episode:

Whitney Terrell: Parker Molloy, who writes for The New Republic, coined a word for how the media papers over the true nature of what Trump says and does: “sanewashing.” She writes, “While speaking at an event put on by the extremist group Moms for Liberty, Trump spread a baseless conspiracy theory that ‘your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation,’ referring to transition-related surgeries for trans people. In their write-up of the event, a glowing piece about how Trump ‘charmed’ this group of ‘conservative moms,’ the Times didn’t even mention the moment where he blathered on and on about a crazy conspiracy that has and will never happen.” She has a ton of other examples, too. Can you talk about this term, and the mainstream media “sanewashing”?

Jeff Sharlet: Yeah, I think it’s such an interesting term, and I’m an admirer of Parker’s work. On the one hand, I’m so grateful for this term, and on the other hand, I disagree with it, and I think I would like to propose a different way. 

I started covering Trump rallies with the first being in Youngstown, Ohio, in 2016, and an editor I’d worked with for a long time, who knew that I often write about varieties of religious experience, suggested the obvious: Go to a Trump rally and report it as a religious meeting. So I did on one condition: I was not going to get a press pass. I had been doing journalism for 30 years without a press pass; I was not going to break my perfect record. I just went and waited in line for eight hours and walked in. 

When I talked to people, I’d say, “This is what I’m doing. I’m a writer.” But it was astonishing, because with regard to the press at a Trump rally, there’s a metal pen in the middle of the arena, and it’s kayfabe. You know that kind of theater of wrestling? Because there’ll be a moment at every rally where Trump will say, “Look at those scum,” and everyone turns around and they “fly the bird,” and it’s very cathartic for them and so on. But the press stays in that metal pen, and at this rally in Youngstown—I had been writing about religion for years and years—I heard one of the hardest right preachers I’ve ever heard, and I’ve been to a lot of far right churches.  The crowd, who are not churchgoers, are eating it up. This is what Christian nationalism really is. It’s not so much about going to church. It’s about this idea of a mythic Christian nation. And what’s the press doing? Texting. Tapping on the phone. This isn’t the main event. And that was my first clue, and there were a few things going on. 

This was before everyone said, “How can such a profane man win,” and I’m like, “Oh, this guy is going to win the religious right vote. Don’t listen to the Christian right warlords who are all tied into the establishment. Pay attention to ordinary people.” And so there’s the sanewashing there, right? We’re just saying, “He’s not religious. There’s no religious appeal.” There was all kinds of sanewashing, avoiding the fact that in Youngstown, Ohio, a big part of that crowd really were Democrats. That was a real thing. They were Democrats who voted for Obama, and we’re now going to vote for Trump. Well, that sanewashing also discarded that, and that was something liberals wanted to discard, right? I’m not both-sidesing, I’m just saying what was there.  

But, most of all was the performativity of a Trump rally. And this goes on to this day. Trump does skits. A great way to understand Trump is to watch a rally, turn the volume down, and if you’ve never seen Lenny Bruce, or a Borscht Belt comedian, that’s what he’s doing. It’s the timing of an insult comic. It’s not Mussolini, it’s sharp and it’s edgy and it’s mean. So if you then turn the sound on and say, “These words don’t make exact sense,” you are missing the meaning. So that’s my concern with sanewashing. And again, great respect for Parker’s work, and I think they’re one of the few who is reaching out at this. But I think there’s a great reassurance narrative going on right now.  

On the one hand, we have fascism in the shape of Trump, and on the other hand we have this sort of media which believes that the center will still hold. And then we have left and liberals saying, “Well, if only the press would tell the truth about how crazy Trump is, how he makes no sense, how he’s deteriorating, if only they would tell the truth!” Well, no, the press isn’t doing a good job, and they are sort of trying to fit it into a centrist narrative, but sanewashing implies that there is no meaning or storytelling, or meaning making or logic. And if that was the case, this movement wouldn’t be as powerful. The logic is fascist. It’s a dream politic, a nightmare politic.

WT: So you’re saying sanewashing is happening, but it doesn’t matter. It won’t change what’s happening with Trump’s audience. 

V.V. Ganeshananthan:  Wait, you’re actually saying that sanewashing is casting it as purely insanity and that that’s not correct?

JS: Yeah. I mean look at that valuable piece by Parker, which I recommend everyone read. I think Parker and I are probably more in agreement than the entire New York Times and The Washington Post combined, right? But speaking about Trump’s incoherent ramblings, this is a reassurance narrative that we’ve been telling ourselves. “This guy makes no sense! Listen to him. He’s talking about sharks!” Come on, we’re writers. Go and listen to the stories.  

I mean, I’m always thinking of the popular misreading of that famous Joan Didion line from The White Album, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” And to me, the worst sin of centrist liberalism was to recast that line as wondrous and powerful and great, and you read the rest of the paragraph in The White Album, and Joan Didion doesn’t mean it positively. Joan Didion doesn’t mean anything positively. We tell ourselves stories in order to live. Maybe we told ourselves that “Biden’s just fine,” and maybe we tell ourselves that “Trump’s really— You know what? It’s just astroturf.” I mean, I’ve been covering Trump for eight years. It’s never stopped. You come back from a rally and people insist that the people that I spent time with were paid actors or that they weren’t there. That’s a reassurance narrative. 

So with sanewashing, the problem there is that the opposite of sane is insane, and there’s the implication that we don’t have to worry about that, right? If it’s incoherent, it’s not a threat. If the people just knew it was incoherent, leaving aside that The New York Times—Trump likes to call it “the failing New York Times.” It’s not failing, but it is not the center of power it once was. The New York Times’ doing the most brilliant, fantastic, everyday reporting it possibly could, I don’t think that’s going to move the needle that much, because you now may vote against Trump with more knowledge of why you’re doing it, but your vote hasn’t changed. 

VVG: That’s really interesting. So for our listeners, if you look at Jeff’s book The Undertow, there is a fantastic description of this skit-based Trump performance in the section called “The First Campaign,” I think, and there’s this close reading of Trump’s behavior. So it’s interesting because it suggests that sanewashing is an inadequate term, because it suggests that you don’t have to argue back.

JS: Yeah, let me see. I think Parker would agree with this; It’s fascist-washing. In the book, I call it “the F-word” because in an earlier book I wrote in 2008 called The Family, I wrote about a Christian Nationalist movement that explicitly looks to Hitler as a model for understanding Jesus. And they added in Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, and Mao for their common denominator: strength and power. 

After World War II, they actually recruited Nazi war criminals to advise U.S. Congressmen. Men who were not even allowed in the United States. So they flew those members of Congress over to Germany for that. But they weren’t fascists, because fascism is a term that means something. And a book that I recommend to everyone as a very accessible primer, is Robert O. Paxton’s Anatomy of Fascism. He’s a historian of Vichy France, and he’s talking about European fascism in the 1930s. And people say “it’s not like Germany in 1936!” And I’m like, “No, The United States in 2024 is not like that, you’re right. Time and space are real.” It’s different, but it’s that F word, right? 

And I had, at the time, said, I don’t think fascism of that sort is possible, because American fundamentalism, religious fundamentalism, will never switch out. We’ll never have that cult of personality. Jesus is too central to a lot of people, including the American right. Obviously, I was wrong.

Transcribed by Otter.ai. Condensed and edited by Keillan Doyle. 

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Jeff Sharlet

The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War • This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers • Sweet Heaven When I Die • C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy • The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power

Others:

“This genius website captures Trump’s weirdest debate quotes,” by Grace Snelling | Fast Company • Lenny Bruce • The White Album by Joan Didion • The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton • Rick Perlstein • Brian Tyler Cohen • MeidasTouch Network • Jeffrey Ruoff • Susan Faludi • Lane Kirkland • Dietrich Bonhoeffer