Congressman Jared Huffman’s book No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism (2026) can be likened to a historical primary document in the sense that it covers a lot of events quite well, albeit strictly from a liberal perspective. The text also provides a decent historical background on Christian nationalism’s development within the US empire.
Christofascism: the peak of Western “democracy”
Let us begin with a fundamental truth: Christofascism is simply a more overt variant of Western “democracy,” and the MAGA movement is simply the imperial boomerang coming home.
Huffman offers a good comparison regarding state responses to extremism. He contrasts the aggressive approach to Muslim extremism with the refusal to name Christian privilege.
While he notes that his own Democratic Party also harbours Christian privilege, he immediately deflects by claiming it is “fundamentally” unlike the Republican Party. This represents a core failure of Western liberal democracy; voters merely choose between new, clean chains or old, rusted ones.
This book highlights the large gap between liberal rhetoric and action. It is a work of pure idealism, akin to applying a bandage to a gunshot wound.
The US issue today is not purely due to Christian nationalism, as Democrats like Huffman assert, though it undoubtedly plays a large part. Rather, the US itself is an illegitimate and imperialist entity. Americans do not truly care about democracy, completely ignoring their own endless wars of aggression and regime change operations, which cover the majority of the US’ years of existence.
Liberal Zionism
Huffman loudly condemns Christian Zionism, yet he follows a liberal Zionist line himself. Since 2010, he has received roughly $138,000 from the Zionist lobby, and his voting record includes supporting the IHRA definition of “antisemitism” (H.Res. 1449, H.R. 6090, H.Res. 894, and others), expanding sanctions on alleged use of human shields by Palestinian groups (H.R. 5917), and cutting US funding to UNRWA (H.Res. 1102).
Furthermore, Huffman never names the genocide in Palestine as such in this book, opting for softer terms like “humanitarian catastrophe” and “brutal war.”
In a discussion of “Israeli” expansionism, Huffman suggests that the real problem is that US groups lack “any vision for Israel as a long-term Jewish and democratic state.” In this view, it seems settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing are acceptable so long as the perpetrator is a democracy.
Perhaps most shockingly, he has remained in contact with his religious extremist sister, who is a convert to haredi Judaism. Chairman Mao sharply criticized this exact behaviour in his Combat Liberalism (1937), where he correctly condemned those who let things slide for the sake of personal friendship instead of engaging in principled argument.
Historical revisionism
Huffman’s historical analysis is equally flawed. He admits Thomas Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves and failed “to extend the high-minded principles of justice and equality to all people,” yet claims these are merely “indelible stains on his greatness.”
So, does slave ownership not disqualify one from so-called “greatness”? Jefferson failed to represent true justice and equality, the very things Western “democracy” claims to prize.
There is also a notable amount of anti-Soviet and Russophobic speech in this book. In one instance, Huffman cites genocide enabler Hakeem Jeffries’ comparison of so-called “Russian aggression” to Hitler’s aggression in the 1930s, which is not only insulting to all Russian Red Army troops and the broader legacy of the Great Patriotic War (WWII) but also wholly ignores the issue of Ukrainian ethnonationalist neo-Nazism (e.g., Stepan Bandera, Andrey Melnik, Azov, etc.).
Lastly, Huffman consistently opts for the term “authoritarianism” over the more accurate term “fascism.” This is a common choice among Westerners that I sharply criticized in a previous article, as it deliberately equates fascism with communism to protect the capitalist state.
Final thoughts
Ultimately, No Prophets fails to diagnose the true illness of the US empire; Huffman treats the symptoms of imperial decay while ignoring the terminal disease of capitalism itself, and his liberal idealism offers no lasting material solutions for the working class.
The true threat to lasting global peace and win-win cooperation across states is not Christian nationalism but the US imperialist machine. This machine operates seamlessly regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans hold power; the so-called “democratic system” is a façade that upholds the bourgeois dictatorship regardless of “voting power.” In order to achieve genuine democracy, the complete dismantlement of the US empire and its global hegemony is undoubtedly required.
Thank you to W.W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for the free ARC in exchange for an objective and fair review. This book was released on August 18, 2026. You can keep up with my reads on The StoryGraph and on League of Comic Geeks.
Pedocracy, Plutocracy, Pathocracy, Nepotism, Oligarchy, Synarchy, Kakistocracy, Tribalism, Kleptocracy, Jingoism, Fasci...nah, DEMOCRACY !