The Secrets of the Kingdom

Hugh Urban built his scholarly career primarily through studies of South Asian Tantra, the cultural dynamics of Tantra's increasing profile in the West, and other forms of religion that stress occult aspects of sexual magic, including neo-paganism and Satanism. In recent years, he has widened his attention to additional religions in which secret knowledge plays a prominent role, including Scientology and Heaven's Gate. Urban's latest book brings this expertise to bear on a study of how the George W. Bush administration has used “religion and concealment.” This innocuous-sounding shorthand may itself conceal part of Urban's goal, because he intends a highly damning critique of Bush and his religious–political allies based how they have approached two issues. The first is their use of religion—how Bush's political power base includes a prominent place for conservative fundamentalists and neoconservative religious people, as well as how Bush draws on religious rhetoric and self-understanding. The second is how Bush has operated in relation to a nexus of issues concerned with controlling information: legal and illegal surveillance, propaganda based on half-truths and deliberate lies (and/or the use of narratives and “spin” that collapse the distinction between truths and lies), collusion with a highly centralized and biased corporate media, use of torture, enabling elites to pursue hidden agendas (as opposed to deliberating in democratic and transparent ways) when deciding public policies related to the environment and war, appealing to executive privilege and national security to cover up unpopular and/or criminal activities, and the like. “Secrecy” as a shorthand term for this nexus of issues is not wrong, but it could be misleading because the core issues boil down to the control of knowledge and use of lies in the service of elite power agendas.

American exceptionalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Religion and Society Interactions · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence