A sardonic chronicle of how conservatism turned into a racketeering enterprise – and why Donald Trump became the living emblem of the American right’s moral decay. The Longest Con tells the fascinating story of the partisan con artists who have corrupted conservative politics in our time, creating a toxic phenomenon that culminated in the election of Donald Trump, a bumptious fraud whose checkered career and tawdry retinue, including his presidential cabinet, have featured almost every variety of scam. But long before he appeared, Trump’s path to power was blazed by the motley horde of swindlers and quacks who preceded him. From the “professional anti-communists” (whose tactics even J. Edgar Hoover despised) to the “populist” grifters of the Tea Party movement and the religious charlatans of the “prosperity gospel” (who provided a pious front for Trump), the right-wing ripoff has remained remarkably consistent, even as personalities change and new technologies emerge: Stir up anger and resentment, demonize political opponents, promise vengeance, and collect donations from the gullible. It’s a highly lucrative game that any unscrupulous charlatan can play, as many have – and they are named in these pages. In an unsparing and often comic narrative, Joe Conason explores the right’s long, steep descent into a movement whose principal aim is not to protect freedom or defend the Constitution, but merely to line the pockets of pretenders and blowhards whose malevolent tactics now endanger the nation.

When FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reported to the Nixon White House in 1972 about the Bureau's surveillance of John Lennon, he began by explaining that Lennon was a "former member of the Beatles singing group." When a copy of this letter arrived in response to Jon Wiener's 1981 Freedom of Information request, the entire text was withheld—along with almost 200 other pages—on the grounds that releasing it would endanger national security. This book tells the story of the author's remarkable fourteen-year court battle to win release of the Lennon files under the Freedom of Information Act in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. With the publication of Gimme Some Truth , 100 key pages of the Lennon FBI file are available—complete and unexpurgated, fully annotated and presented in a "before and after" format. Lennon's file was compiled in 1972, when the war in Vietnam was at its peak, when Nixon was facing reelection, and when the "clever Beatle" was living in New York and joining up with the New Left and the anti-war movement. The Nixon administration's efforts to "neutralize" Lennon are the subject of Lennon's file. The documents are reproduced in facsimile so that readers can see all the classification stamps, marginal notes, blacked out passages and—in some cases—the initials of J. Edgar Hoover. The file includes lengthy reports by confidential informants detailing the daily lives of anti-war activists, memos to the White House, transcripts of TV shows on which Lennon appeared, and a proposal that Lennon be arrested by local police on drug charges. Fascinating, engrossing, at points hilarious and absurd, Gimme Some Truth documents an era when rock music seemed to have real political force and when youth culture challenged the status quo in Washington. It also delineates the ways the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations fought to preserve government secrecy, and highlights the legal strategies adopted by those who have challenged it.

Dans cet entretien avec Marie-Christine Navarro, Edgar Morin revendique son identité d'inconditionnel touche-à-tout, soucieux de l'avenir de l'Europe et éternel curieux. Il y évoque pêle-mêle certaines des femmes de sa vie – sa mère, notamment –, son enfance, ses engagements, ses enthousiasmes. Surtout, dans ce livre, Edgar Morin revient sur le concept de «reliance» qu'il a inventé, tout en faisant appel aux idées des chercheurs qui l'ont accompagné. Ce concept, central dans son œuvre, a été sans cesse enrichi par les différents champs de recherche qu'il a explorés. «Mes détracteurs, confie Edgar Morin, dédaignent la lecture de mes écrits et m'attribuent les idées les plus simplistes – les seules, sans doute, qu'ils sont capables de concevoir. Au ­lecteur de décider si je suis vulgarisateur, ou penseur.» Edgar Morin, né en 1921, est sociologue et philosophe. Marie-Christine Navarro est auteure et documentariste.