Rise: In Defense of Judeo-Christian Values and Freedom

Gabriel, founder of the conservative group American Congress for Truth and frequent guest on Fox News, makes a vociferous defense of the superiority of Western culture in this execrable book. In her thesis, she laments the United States’ current multicultural environment, specifically the acceptance of Muslim immigrants. Using questionably sourced information, she attempts to make a case that Muslim Americans are a danger to the country. She discusses her childhood in Lebanon, where she fled from war and violence, before bizarrely disavowing the notion that America is a nation of immigrants; in her view, the true test of American identity is a respect for laws. She asks immigrants to leave behind their cultures, languages, and faiths in order to assimilate into what she terms a Judeo-Christian environment. Leaning hard on various fear-based opinions—including her anxiety about online terrorist recruitment networks, disdain for the overbearing political correctness of the left, and characterizations of the Southern Poverty Law Center (which has classified Gabriel’s American Congress for Truth organization as an anti-Muslim hate group) and Black Lives Matter as terrorist organizations—Gabriel repeatedly warns against the destruction of “Western civilization.” This manipulative work comes across as a dangerous call to arms against marginalized immigrant and refugee groups within America. (Sept.)