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Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America
A Guardian Best Book of the Year“A gripping study of white power…Explosive.”—New York Times“Helps explain how we got to today’s alt-right.”—Terry Gross, Fresh AirThe white power movement in America wants a revolution.Returning to a country ripped apart by a war they felt they were not allowed to win, a small group of Vietnam veterans and disgruntled civilians who shared their virulent anti-communism and potent sense of betrayal concluded that waging war on their own country was justified. The command structure of their covert movement gave women a prominent place. They operated with discipline, made tragic headlines in Waco, Ruby Ridge, and Oklahoma City, and are resurgent under President Trump. Based on a decade of deep immersion in previously classified FBI files and on extensive interviews, Bring the War Home tells the story of American paramilitarism and the birth of the alt-right.“A much-needed and troubling revelation… The power of Belew’s book comes, in part, from the fact that it reveals a story about white-racist violence that we should all already know.”—The Nation“Fascinating… Shows how hatred of the federal government, fears of communism, and racism all combined in white-power ideology and explains why our responses to the movement have long been woefully inadequate.”—Slate“Superbly comprehensive…supplants all journalistic accounts of America’s resurgent white supremacism.”—Pankaj Mishra, The Guardian
339 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 9, 2018
744 people are currently reading
11156 people want to read
About the author
Kathleen Belew
4 books145 followersShe specializes in the history of the present. She spent ten years researching and writing her first book, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (Harvard, 2018, paperback 2019). In it, she explores how white power activists created a social movement through a common story about betrayal by the government, war, and its weapons, uniforms, and technologies. By uniting Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi, skinhead, and other groups, the movement mobilized and carried out escalating acts of violence that reached a crescendo in the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City. This movement was never adequately confronted, and remains a threat to American democracy.
Her next book, Home at the End of the World, illuminates our era of apocalypse through a history focused on her native Colorado where, in the 1990s, high-profile kidnappings and murders, right-wing religious ideology, and a mass shooting exposed rents in America’s social fabric, and dramatically changed our relationship with place, violence, and politics (Random House).
Belew has spoken about Bring the War Home in a wide variety of places, including The Rachel Maddow Show, The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell, AC 360 with Anderson Cooper, Frontline, Fresh Air, and All Things Considered. Her work has featured prominently in documentaries such as Homegrown Hate: The War Among Us (ABC) and Documenting Hate: New American Nazis (Frontline).
Belew is an Associate Professor of History at Northwestern University. She earned tenure at the University of Chicago in 2021, where she spent seven years. Her research has received the support of the Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Jacob K. Javits Foundation. Belew earned her BA in the Comparative History of Ideas from the University of Washington, where she was named Dean’s Medalist in the Humanities. She earned a doctorate in American Studies from Yale University. Belew has held postdoctoral fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (2019-20), Northwestern University, and Rutgers University. Her award-winning teaching centers on the broad themes of history of the present, conservatism, race, gender, violence, identity, and the meaning of war.
Belew is co-editor of and contributor to A Field Guide to White Supremacy, and has contributed essays to Myth America and The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment.
Her next book, Home at the End of the World, illuminates our era of apocalypse through a history focused on her native Colorado where, in the 1990s, high-profile kidnappings and murders, right-wing religious ideology, and a mass shooting exposed rents in America’s social fabric, and dramatically changed our relationship with place, violence, and politics (Random House).
Belew has spoken about Bring the War Home in a wide variety of places, including The Rachel Maddow Show, The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell, AC 360 with Anderson Cooper, Frontline, Fresh Air, and All Things Considered. Her work has featured prominently in documentaries such as Homegrown Hate: The War Among Us (ABC) and Documenting Hate: New American Nazis (Frontline).
Belew is an Associate Professor of History at Northwestern University. She earned tenure at the University of Chicago in 2021, where she spent seven years. Her research has received the support of the Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Jacob K. Javits Foundation. Belew earned her BA in the Comparative History of Ideas from the University of Washington, where she was named Dean’s Medalist in the Humanities. She earned a doctorate in American Studies from Yale University. Belew has held postdoctoral fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (2019-20), Northwestern University, and Rutgers University. Her award-winning teaching centers on the broad themes of history of the present, conservatism, race, gender, violence, identity, and the meaning of war.
Belew is co-editor of and contributor to A Field Guide to White Supremacy, and has contributed essays to Myth America and The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment.
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September 3, 2022
“The story of white power as a social movement exposes something broader about the enduring impact of state violence in America. It reveals one catastrophic ricochet of the Vietnam War, in the form of its paramilitary aftermath. It also reveals something important about war itself. War is not neatly contained in the space and time legitimated by the state. It reverberates in other terrains and lasts long past armistice. It comes home in ways bloody and unexpected…”
- Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America
When I pick up a nonfiction book, I am looking for a balance between content and literary execution. I expect that the research will utilize the appropriate sources, analyze those sources objectively, and draw conclusions based on the best evidence available. But I also want something that is enjoyable to read. Readability is important, because if the pages don’t hold my attention, there is no way I’m ever going to get the message being communicated.
Kathleen Belew’s Bring the War Home is an example of a book that has important things to say, but often gets in its own way in terms of style. It is impressively sourced, as attested by the vast and detailed endnotes. Unfortunately, it is also written in a manner that is self-limiting, ensuring that Bring the War Home – at least for me – never reached its full promise.
***
At the risk of oversimplifying, white power movements in the United States have historically adhered to something of a pattern. Whenever nonwhite Americans have made any progress in civil rights – even if that progress is modest – there has been a subsequent white backlash. The Ku Klux Klan, for instance, emerged as a terrorist organization in the wake of Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction. The Klan’s second wave appeared in the 1920s, following the conclusion of a world war that saw thousands of black Americans serve as troops, and then return home demanding better treatment. When America elected her first black president – well, you get the picture.
Based on this pattern, it makes sense that Belew starts Bring the War Home in the shadow of Vietnam. Intensely controversial – and ultimately futile – the war unfolded next to the great civil rights movements of the 1960s, which resulted in landmark legislation. Faced with the loss of “their country,” the Vietnam experience bred men like Louis Beam, a former door-gunner and white nationalist who used his army training to organize armed cadres along military lines.
From the 1970s to the 1980s, Beam – and many others like him – waged a startlingly forgotten war on his own country. During this time period, white power movements trafficked in weapons, assassinated their opponents, and spread vile propaganda. To fund these enterprises, they also engaged in a slew of criminal activity, including armed robbery and counterfeiting. All of this, according to Belew, culminated with the April 19, 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.
***
Bring the War Home is most successful when coalescing around narrative set pieces, whether it’s a murder, bombing, or trial. Though I do not think Belew is a natural storyteller – at its best, the prose is workmanlike; at its worse, a bit tedious – she still does a really good job bringing to life events that might otherwise be overlooked.
For example, Belew starts with an excellent description of the Klan’s attempt to run off Vietnamese fishermen in Texas. Equally gripping is the depiction of the Greensboro massacre – which I had somehow never heard of – where the Klan opened fire on a Communist Workers Party parade, killing five and wounding a dozen.
***
Among Belew’s more impressive accomplishments is piecing together the evidence so that it creates a meaningful whole. The groups she attempts to penetrate – such as “The Order” – are designed to be secretive. Belew finds the seams in this code of silence, giving you an unforgettable view from the inside out.
That view is pretty chilling. Whether she is following the various threads of white nationalism in the U.S. Army (including stolen weapons), or discoursing on the role of women (who proudly accepted their retrograde archetypes as virtuous maidens and racial propagators), Belew presents a very bleak portrait of poisonous logic and twisted worldviews.
***
The highs of Bring the War Home are – in my estimation – somewhat dampened by the flatness of the writing. Belew also tends to be needlessly repetitive. At one point, she covers a criminal trial in which a number of white supremacists were acquitted by a jury. After the trial, certain members of the jury became romantically involved with the newly-freed defendants. While shocking and inappropriate, Belew keeps repeating this fact as though worried I couldn’t grasp the concept the first time she said it. Similar repetitions occur throughout, and bog down the pacing.
***
For me, Bring the War Home fizzled at the end. Specifically, despite her forceful presentation, I was not wholly convinced by Belew’s closing argument that Timothy McVeigh represented the zenith of the white power movement. While Belew provides circumstantial evidence of his involvement with white nationalists, there is a great deal more direct evidence revealed through McVeigh’s trial and subsequent confessions that point in different directions.
To be sure, McVeigh was a racist, and moved within the interlocking circles of white supremacists, tax evaders, sovereign citizens, and survivalists. That said, there is no indication that he was working with any white power group, much less that he was following such a group’s orders. Rather, there is a surfeit of testimony that McVeigh’s homicidal actions were spurred by the fiery culmination of the ATF’s botched raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas in 1993. In other words, McVeigh’s terror attack was the psychopathic response to his views on the limits of government, rather than an act calibrated to reinforce white power structures or demonstrate racial superiority. The reality is that McVeigh appeared to be responding – in a wildly inappropriate, immoral, and criminal manner – to militarized policing, a genuine problem that – as Belew mentions in passing – actually falls hardest on minority communities.
***
My biggest frustration in Bring the War Home is the strict boundaries of its scope of inquiry, tethered tightly to the Vietnam War, and ending sharply in 1995. Published in 2018, Belew was fully aware of the ugly forces unleashed by the 2016 election, resulting in a president who provided political cover to white supremacists, and who gave them tacit permission to say the quiet part loud. Nevertheless, she provides only a brief epilogue connecting her story to the present-day. Obviously, Belew intended to encompass a particular timeframe, and did not mean this to be a comprehensive history. I cannot fault her for that. Still, this would have been more powerful if some effort had been made to bridge the gap between Oklahoma City and Charlottesville.
***
Whatever faults I found, Bring the War Home is still effective.
It is also really scary.
Even more terrifying is the prospect that things have probably gotten worse. Instead of a limited bunch of racist wannabe-soldiers taking target practice in the backcountry, there is a limitless number of racists sitting in their own basements, connected to each other by the internet, fueling their made-up grievances in an endless feedback loop. Instead of a known leader like Louis Beam, we are faced with the prospect of sudden violence perpetrated by previous unknowns such as Dylan Roof and Payton Gendron, anonymous nonentities filling the voids in their lives with alt-right conspiracy theories and vast stores of weaponry, determined to derive some meaning from their own unfulfilled existences by destroying others.
- Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America
When I pick up a nonfiction book, I am looking for a balance between content and literary execution. I expect that the research will utilize the appropriate sources, analyze those sources objectively, and draw conclusions based on the best evidence available. But I also want something that is enjoyable to read. Readability is important, because if the pages don’t hold my attention, there is no way I’m ever going to get the message being communicated.
Kathleen Belew’s Bring the War Home is an example of a book that has important things to say, but often gets in its own way in terms of style. It is impressively sourced, as attested by the vast and detailed endnotes. Unfortunately, it is also written in a manner that is self-limiting, ensuring that Bring the War Home – at least for me – never reached its full promise.
***
At the risk of oversimplifying, white power movements in the United States have historically adhered to something of a pattern. Whenever nonwhite Americans have made any progress in civil rights – even if that progress is modest – there has been a subsequent white backlash. The Ku Klux Klan, for instance, emerged as a terrorist organization in the wake of Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction. The Klan’s second wave appeared in the 1920s, following the conclusion of a world war that saw thousands of black Americans serve as troops, and then return home demanding better treatment. When America elected her first black president – well, you get the picture.
Based on this pattern, it makes sense that Belew starts Bring the War Home in the shadow of Vietnam. Intensely controversial – and ultimately futile – the war unfolded next to the great civil rights movements of the 1960s, which resulted in landmark legislation. Faced with the loss of “their country,” the Vietnam experience bred men like Louis Beam, a former door-gunner and white nationalist who used his army training to organize armed cadres along military lines.
From the 1970s to the 1980s, Beam – and many others like him – waged a startlingly forgotten war on his own country. During this time period, white power movements trafficked in weapons, assassinated their opponents, and spread vile propaganda. To fund these enterprises, they also engaged in a slew of criminal activity, including armed robbery and counterfeiting. All of this, according to Belew, culminated with the April 19, 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.
***
Bring the War Home is most successful when coalescing around narrative set pieces, whether it’s a murder, bombing, or trial. Though I do not think Belew is a natural storyteller – at its best, the prose is workmanlike; at its worse, a bit tedious – she still does a really good job bringing to life events that might otherwise be overlooked.
For example, Belew starts with an excellent description of the Klan’s attempt to run off Vietnamese fishermen in Texas. Equally gripping is the depiction of the Greensboro massacre – which I had somehow never heard of – where the Klan opened fire on a Communist Workers Party parade, killing five and wounding a dozen.
***
Among Belew’s more impressive accomplishments is piecing together the evidence so that it creates a meaningful whole. The groups she attempts to penetrate – such as “The Order” – are designed to be secretive. Belew finds the seams in this code of silence, giving you an unforgettable view from the inside out.
That view is pretty chilling. Whether she is following the various threads of white nationalism in the U.S. Army (including stolen weapons), or discoursing on the role of women (who proudly accepted their retrograde archetypes as virtuous maidens and racial propagators), Belew presents a very bleak portrait of poisonous logic and twisted worldviews.
***
The highs of Bring the War Home are – in my estimation – somewhat dampened by the flatness of the writing. Belew also tends to be needlessly repetitive. At one point, she covers a criminal trial in which a number of white supremacists were acquitted by a jury. After the trial, certain members of the jury became romantically involved with the newly-freed defendants. While shocking and inappropriate, Belew keeps repeating this fact as though worried I couldn’t grasp the concept the first time she said it. Similar repetitions occur throughout, and bog down the pacing.
***
For me, Bring the War Home fizzled at the end. Specifically, despite her forceful presentation, I was not wholly convinced by Belew’s closing argument that Timothy McVeigh represented the zenith of the white power movement. While Belew provides circumstantial evidence of his involvement with white nationalists, there is a great deal more direct evidence revealed through McVeigh’s trial and subsequent confessions that point in different directions.
To be sure, McVeigh was a racist, and moved within the interlocking circles of white supremacists, tax evaders, sovereign citizens, and survivalists. That said, there is no indication that he was working with any white power group, much less that he was following such a group’s orders. Rather, there is a surfeit of testimony that McVeigh’s homicidal actions were spurred by the fiery culmination of the ATF’s botched raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas in 1993. In other words, McVeigh’s terror attack was the psychopathic response to his views on the limits of government, rather than an act calibrated to reinforce white power structures or demonstrate racial superiority. The reality is that McVeigh appeared to be responding – in a wildly inappropriate, immoral, and criminal manner – to militarized policing, a genuine problem that – as Belew mentions in passing – actually falls hardest on minority communities.
***
My biggest frustration in Bring the War Home is the strict boundaries of its scope of inquiry, tethered tightly to the Vietnam War, and ending sharply in 1995. Published in 2018, Belew was fully aware of the ugly forces unleashed by the 2016 election, resulting in a president who provided political cover to white supremacists, and who gave them tacit permission to say the quiet part loud. Nevertheless, she provides only a brief epilogue connecting her story to the present-day. Obviously, Belew intended to encompass a particular timeframe, and did not mean this to be a comprehensive history. I cannot fault her for that. Still, this would have been more powerful if some effort had been made to bridge the gap between Oklahoma City and Charlottesville.
***
Whatever faults I found, Bring the War Home is still effective.
It is also really scary.
Even more terrifying is the prospect that things have probably gotten worse. Instead of a limited bunch of racist wannabe-soldiers taking target practice in the backcountry, there is a limitless number of racists sitting in their own basements, connected to each other by the internet, fueling their made-up grievances in an endless feedback loop. Instead of a known leader like Louis Beam, we are faced with the prospect of sudden violence perpetrated by previous unknowns such as Dylan Roof and Payton Gendron, anonymous nonentities filling the voids in their lives with alt-right conspiracy theories and vast stores of weaponry, determined to derive some meaning from their own unfulfilled existences by destroying others.
September 21, 2018
So I've been reading a lot of books about the rise of white power groups and this was my favorite because it was a solid and serious historic book as opposed to just a journalist interviewing these groups or a memoir.
The book was excellent and I could talk about just this book all day, but I want to do something different and do a double review. I like to read several books at a time and it just so happened that I read the Looming Tower (about Al Qaeda) by Lawrence Wright at the same time as I was reading this one and I was struck by how similar Al Qaeda was to the white power paramilitary in the US. There are obvious differences, but there are more similarities than you would expect. So here's what I observed of both movements:
1. Both are run by men who feel disaffected and feel like their society has lost its way. Al Qaeda resists the push of modernity on Islam and the white power groups resist the Civil Rights movements changes and feminism in the 60s.
2. Both movements believe in strict gender roles and view men as hyper masculine warriors whose sole job is to protect their women from being soiled. Both view women as pure virgins to be protected. BOTH movements take on polygamy and retreat from the world into their own highly armed home spaces. The women of both movements seem to be brainwashed into the rightness and holiness of the movement the men are running.
3. Both are ostensibly rooted in religion (Al Qaeda more so), but both are perversions of the mainstream religious movement. However, the Saudi Wahabbi's are much more fundamentalists than the right wing Christian movement. Both movements glamorize a past of violence sanctioned by God. The white power movement talks about the crusades and Al Qaeda about the Islamic Caliphate.
4. Both movements are ignored by the FBI until a major act of terrorism. Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Oklahoma city building was not as devastating as 9/11, but it was not linked to the broader white power movement. The FBI did not take the Al Qaeda threat very seriously until it was too late. After 9/11, they shifted gears quickly and snuffed it out.
5. THE MAIN SIMILARITY, which was striking to me: BOTH of these groups were used, armed, and trained by the US Defense department or CIA during the 80s to fight communists. Not Al Qaeda because they weren't formed yet, but the Taliban and the Afghani Mujahedeen that Bin Laden uses were all formerly relied on by the US to beat back the communists in Afghanistan.
In the case of the white paramilitary, the movement started in Vietnam and when these vets came back, they formed civilian contra paramilitaries and the US either used their services or turned a blind eye as these men went into Nicaragua and other central American countries and used their military training to informally wage war on commies. They also tried to kill "commies" (aka Asian immigrants trying to fish in America).
6. Both movements started with a bunch of enemies and then both honed in on one: The US federal government.
7. Obviously, both groups blame everyone else for their own problems and filled with rage.
Al Qaeda is dead, but then there was ISIS and there will be more and more of these hate-filled extremists. We have to take the threat of these men and their ideas seriously and not rely just on the FBI to take them down, but also on the political systems in which both groups embedded themselves. Obviously, the US does a much better job at rooting out the violent psychos on our own soil and failed states in the middle east do not, but it's important for Americans to distinguish between the likes of Al Qaeda and the Taliban and other Middle Eastern regimes that they don't like instead of lumping them all together. That's what gives rise to white hate groups here who think all people of color are commies.
The book was excellent and I could talk about just this book all day, but I want to do something different and do a double review. I like to read several books at a time and it just so happened that I read the Looming Tower (about Al Qaeda) by Lawrence Wright at the same time as I was reading this one and I was struck by how similar Al Qaeda was to the white power paramilitary in the US. There are obvious differences, but there are more similarities than you would expect. So here's what I observed of both movements:
1. Both are run by men who feel disaffected and feel like their society has lost its way. Al Qaeda resists the push of modernity on Islam and the white power groups resist the Civil Rights movements changes and feminism in the 60s.
2. Both movements believe in strict gender roles and view men as hyper masculine warriors whose sole job is to protect their women from being soiled. Both view women as pure virgins to be protected. BOTH movements take on polygamy and retreat from the world into their own highly armed home spaces. The women of both movements seem to be brainwashed into the rightness and holiness of the movement the men are running.
3. Both are ostensibly rooted in religion (Al Qaeda more so), but both are perversions of the mainstream religious movement. However, the Saudi Wahabbi's are much more fundamentalists than the right wing Christian movement. Both movements glamorize a past of violence sanctioned by God. The white power movement talks about the crusades and Al Qaeda about the Islamic Caliphate.
4. Both movements are ignored by the FBI until a major act of terrorism. Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Oklahoma city building was not as devastating as 9/11, but it was not linked to the broader white power movement. The FBI did not take the Al Qaeda threat very seriously until it was too late. After 9/11, they shifted gears quickly and snuffed it out.
5. THE MAIN SIMILARITY, which was striking to me: BOTH of these groups were used, armed, and trained by the US Defense department or CIA during the 80s to fight communists. Not Al Qaeda because they weren't formed yet, but the Taliban and the Afghani Mujahedeen that Bin Laden uses were all formerly relied on by the US to beat back the communists in Afghanistan.
In the case of the white paramilitary, the movement started in Vietnam and when these vets came back, they formed civilian contra paramilitaries and the US either used their services or turned a blind eye as these men went into Nicaragua and other central American countries and used their military training to informally wage war on commies. They also tried to kill "commies" (aka Asian immigrants trying to fish in America).
6. Both movements started with a bunch of enemies and then both honed in on one: The US federal government.
7. Obviously, both groups blame everyone else for their own problems and filled with rage.
Al Qaeda is dead, but then there was ISIS and there will be more and more of these hate-filled extremists. We have to take the threat of these men and their ideas seriously and not rely just on the FBI to take them down, but also on the political systems in which both groups embedded themselves. Obviously, the US does a much better job at rooting out the violent psychos on our own soil and failed states in the middle east do not, but it's important for Americans to distinguish between the likes of Al Qaeda and the Taliban and other Middle Eastern regimes that they don't like instead of lumping them all together. That's what gives rise to white hate groups here who think all people of color are commies.
July 23, 2018
I remember reading a passage in The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President by Taylor Branch where he describes the behind-the-scenes befuddlement of Clinton (and others close to him) after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995; they couldn’t generate any willingness by Republican lawmakers to investigate violent, anti-government extremists. Even with blood in the streets, conservative lawmakers were instead committed to rallying behind the anti-government paramilitary movements still enflamed by the events in Ruby Ridge, Idaho and Waco, Texas. It was bizarre. I remember thinking at the time how odd it was; I continue to marvel when political honchos parrot the idea that victims deserve what they get—if they work for the government.
Kathleen Belew brings clarity to much of that confusion. She draws a clear line between the different and evolving strains of American white power movements, showing how their interconnectedness is often overlooked (willfully at times), minimized, and thus rendered invisible. But a line exists. And the white power movement exists as well—perhaps more prominently and dangerously than at any point in the last 50 years.
Belew’s fascinating thesis ascribes the origin story of the contemporary white power movement squarely in the experience of the Vietnam War. The perceived (and real) betrayals by America’s political leadership (see Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character by Jonathan Shay), combined with shifting cultural values, and what Belew describes as “the first real test” of an integrated American military, to germinate a hostile backlash to liberal ideals, feminism, multiculturalism, interconnected markets, and government itself. Characterized by pervasive anti-communism, after the fall of the U.S.S.R. the movement adapted by finding common cause in fighting the regulatory state; and it continued to recruit by fomenting race war, glorifying paramilitary culture, and infiltrating right-wing politics.
The unmistakable conclusion is that many of the people who participated in different movements (cultural or paramilitary), were, in fact, always the same crowd. The Soldier of Fortune types merged with various chapters of the KKK or the Neo-Nazis, which overlapped with the John Birch Society and The Order, and so on. Today’s “Deep State” was yesterday’s Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG). The Unite the Right Rally of August, 2017 eerily reflects the Greensboro massacre of November 3, 1979.
In a truly chilling epilogue, Belew posits that Timothy McVeigh and Dylann Roof (the white supremacist who murdered 9 African Americans in Charleston, SC) succeeded in their aims. A stated goal of each of these men was to foment race war; to make explicit the perceived grievances of the white race and to usher in a violent new era of American history. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to pretend that this isn’t exactly what has happened.
Kathleen Belew brings clarity to much of that confusion. She draws a clear line between the different and evolving strains of American white power movements, showing how their interconnectedness is often overlooked (willfully at times), minimized, and thus rendered invisible. But a line exists. And the white power movement exists as well—perhaps more prominently and dangerously than at any point in the last 50 years.
Belew’s fascinating thesis ascribes the origin story of the contemporary white power movement squarely in the experience of the Vietnam War. The perceived (and real) betrayals by America’s political leadership (see Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character by Jonathan Shay), combined with shifting cultural values, and what Belew describes as “the first real test” of an integrated American military, to germinate a hostile backlash to liberal ideals, feminism, multiculturalism, interconnected markets, and government itself. Characterized by pervasive anti-communism, after the fall of the U.S.S.R. the movement adapted by finding common cause in fighting the regulatory state; and it continued to recruit by fomenting race war, glorifying paramilitary culture, and infiltrating right-wing politics.
The unmistakable conclusion is that many of the people who participated in different movements (cultural or paramilitary), were, in fact, always the same crowd. The Soldier of Fortune types merged with various chapters of the KKK or the Neo-Nazis, which overlapped with the John Birch Society and The Order, and so on. Today’s “Deep State” was yesterday’s Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG). The Unite the Right Rally of August, 2017 eerily reflects the Greensboro massacre of November 3, 1979.
In a truly chilling epilogue, Belew posits that Timothy McVeigh and Dylann Roof (the white supremacist who murdered 9 African Americans in Charleston, SC) succeeded in their aims. A stated goal of each of these men was to foment race war; to make explicit the perceived grievances of the white race and to usher in a violent new era of American history. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to pretend that this isn’t exactly what has happened.
December 5, 2019
Page 106 (my book) President Reagan’s inaugural address 1981
“In this present crisis government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”
Page 104
In 1983 the white power movement declared war on the state... white power activists now fought for a white homeland, attempted to destabilize the federal government, and waged revolutionary race war.
This book is about the rise of radical right wing groups (meaning white supremacists for the most part) in the United States. Up until the 1970’s the right wing was more or less allied with the federal or state government; it was trying to persuade the government of the error of its ways – to restore segregation, to curtail immigration, restrict women’s rights (as in protecting white women)...
The primary theory of the author for the rise of the radical right militancy is the disenchantment with the Vietnam War. Some returning white veterans felt betrayed, not only by the government, but by the U.S. citizenry. Militarily they felt the government prevented them from “winning” in Vietnam and upon returning home they felt vilified and unwelcome by the populace. They were undoubtedly comparing themselves to World War II veterans - and the differences were obvious.
So here were veterans trained for combat playing the victim card, and then turning to radical right wing groups for recognition, camaraderie and support to assuage their frustrations.
Page 2
White power activists increasingly saw the state as their enemy... many Americans lost faith in the state that they had trusted to take care of them.
Increasingly this distrust of government became in the 1980’s a declaration of war on the U.S. government – this culminated in 1995 in the Oklahoma bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building killing 168 people and wounding over 500. This was orchestrated by Timothy McVeigh a Gulf War veteran.
The author also makes the point that although there are many different white power groups they collude together as allies. Whether they be the Ku Klux Klan (which has organizations in many states) or white militias or white survivalists, gun activists...they all are united in their hatred of the U.S. government. These groups are interconnected by friendship and marriage to each other.
It is mistake to dismiss them, as many do, as “wacko loner outsiders”. They are well organized. Their former or current military service has enabled them to steal a vast array of weapons from U.S. military bases which they are stockpiling.
With the demise of communism in the early 1990’s the U.S. government was seen even more as a ubiquitous enemy – as a superstate allied with the United Nations, a New World Order, a Jewish and liberal conspiracy to subdue the white race.
The Mount Carmel disaster near Waco, Texas; even though it was an integrated community, was twisted by white supremacists as a gross intrusion by the government on gun rights and survivalists (I grant that Waco was a travesty but the commune was heavily armed).
Page 55
On November 3, 1979 a caravan of neo-Nazis and Klansman fired upon a communist organized “Death to the Klan” rally at a black housing project in Greensboro, North Carolina. Five protestors died – four white men and one black woman – and many more were injured. Fourteen Klansmen and neo-Nazis faced murder, conspiracy and felony charges... all-white juries acquitted the defendants in state and federal trials.
This book takes us up until the mid-90’s. It gives us a history of white supremacy, which indeed is more than relevant to our current era. Think of what Dylan Roof did in the Charleston Church in 2015. White supremacist in Charlottesville chanted “Jews will not replace us”.
Page 16
The story of white power as a social movement exposes something broader about the enduring impact of state violence in America. It reveals one catastrophic ricochet of the Vietnam War, in the form of paramilitary aftermath. It also reveals something important about war itself. War is not neatly contained in the space and time legitimated by the state. It reverberates in other terrains and lasts long past armistice. It comes home bloody and unexpected.
“In this present crisis government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”
Page 104
In 1983 the white power movement declared war on the state... white power activists now fought for a white homeland, attempted to destabilize the federal government, and waged revolutionary race war.
This book is about the rise of radical right wing groups (meaning white supremacists for the most part) in the United States. Up until the 1970’s the right wing was more or less allied with the federal or state government; it was trying to persuade the government of the error of its ways – to restore segregation, to curtail immigration, restrict women’s rights (as in protecting white women)...
The primary theory of the author for the rise of the radical right militancy is the disenchantment with the Vietnam War. Some returning white veterans felt betrayed, not only by the government, but by the U.S. citizenry. Militarily they felt the government prevented them from “winning” in Vietnam and upon returning home they felt vilified and unwelcome by the populace. They were undoubtedly comparing themselves to World War II veterans - and the differences were obvious.
So here were veterans trained for combat playing the victim card, and then turning to radical right wing groups for recognition, camaraderie and support to assuage their frustrations.
Page 2
White power activists increasingly saw the state as their enemy... many Americans lost faith in the state that they had trusted to take care of them.
Increasingly this distrust of government became in the 1980’s a declaration of war on the U.S. government – this culminated in 1995 in the Oklahoma bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building killing 168 people and wounding over 500. This was orchestrated by Timothy McVeigh a Gulf War veteran.
The author also makes the point that although there are many different white power groups they collude together as allies. Whether they be the Ku Klux Klan (which has organizations in many states) or white militias or white survivalists, gun activists...they all are united in their hatred of the U.S. government. These groups are interconnected by friendship and marriage to each other.
It is mistake to dismiss them, as many do, as “wacko loner outsiders”. They are well organized. Their former or current military service has enabled them to steal a vast array of weapons from U.S. military bases which they are stockpiling.
With the demise of communism in the early 1990’s the U.S. government was seen even more as a ubiquitous enemy – as a superstate allied with the United Nations, a New World Order, a Jewish and liberal conspiracy to subdue the white race.
The Mount Carmel disaster near Waco, Texas; even though it was an integrated community, was twisted by white supremacists as a gross intrusion by the government on gun rights and survivalists (I grant that Waco was a travesty but the commune was heavily armed).
Page 55
On November 3, 1979 a caravan of neo-Nazis and Klansman fired upon a communist organized “Death to the Klan” rally at a black housing project in Greensboro, North Carolina. Five protestors died – four white men and one black woman – and many more were injured. Fourteen Klansmen and neo-Nazis faced murder, conspiracy and felony charges... all-white juries acquitted the defendants in state and federal trials.
This book takes us up until the mid-90’s. It gives us a history of white supremacy, which indeed is more than relevant to our current era. Think of what Dylan Roof did in the Charleston Church in 2015. White supremacist in Charlottesville chanted “Jews will not replace us”.
Page 16
The story of white power as a social movement exposes something broader about the enduring impact of state violence in America. It reveals one catastrophic ricochet of the Vietnam War, in the form of paramilitary aftermath. It also reveals something important about war itself. War is not neatly contained in the space and time legitimated by the state. It reverberates in other terrains and lasts long past armistice. It comes home bloody and unexpected.
May 14, 2022
Forget Stephen King. This is the scariest book I've ever read.
The book mostly covers the white power movement in the 80s and 90s, ending with the Oklahoma City bombing, which I remember well. But, unbeknownst to me, that bombing launched a "widespread wave of violence as the militia movement, and the broader white power movement, took action around the country."
Guess I wasn't paying attention back then. I'm paying attention now. We all know there's a resurgence of late. They are emboldened. And they're coming to your town. They've already arrived in my liberal town (The Proud Boys) appearing en masse at a school board meeting, flashing their white power hand signs. It's enough to give you nightmares.
This is essential reading for anyone who's paying attention!
The book mostly covers the white power movement in the 80s and 90s, ending with the Oklahoma City bombing, which I remember well. But, unbeknownst to me, that bombing launched a "widespread wave of violence as the militia movement, and the broader white power movement, took action around the country."
Guess I wasn't paying attention back then. I'm paying attention now. We all know there's a resurgence of late. They are emboldened. And they're coming to your town. They've already arrived in my liberal town (The Proud Boys) appearing en masse at a school board meeting, flashing their white power hand signs. It's enough to give you nightmares.
This is essential reading for anyone who's paying attention!
May 26, 2018
Bring the War Home makes deeply disturbing reading. From the violent harassment of Vietnamese refugees in Texas to the Oklahoma City bombing, Kathleen Belew traces the increasing militarization of the white power movement back to the aftermath of the Vietnam War, when returning military personnel brought home the expertise they had developed in handling weapons and explosives and then used those skills in the service of racist ideology and a war against the U.S. government.
Murder, armed robbery, bombings ... heavily-armed white power groups from the Klan to the Order and Aryan Nations have deployed them all in their campaigns of terror. The size of the arsenals amassed by some of these groups stunned me.
Belew supplies ample evidence to support her thesis that the roots of the present-day white power movement can be found in the fallout from the Vietnam War. She also explores in depth the influence of the racist novel The Turner Diaries in providing a blueprint for antistatist violence, along with Klansman and Aryan Nations member Louis Beam's manifesto on leaderless resistance. Indeed, Belew argues that it is largely due to the white power movement's adoption of the latter that law enforcement agencies, the media, and the general public have failed to understand that racist and anti-government terrorist actions are not the work of lone wolves but instead belong in a context of a well-coordinated network of violent extremists.
Bring the War Home is a well-researched and sober analysis of a very dangerous group of people.
Murder, armed robbery, bombings ... heavily-armed white power groups from the Klan to the Order and Aryan Nations have deployed them all in their campaigns of terror. The size of the arsenals amassed by some of these groups stunned me.
Belew supplies ample evidence to support her thesis that the roots of the present-day white power movement can be found in the fallout from the Vietnam War. She also explores in depth the influence of the racist novel The Turner Diaries in providing a blueprint for antistatist violence, along with Klansman and Aryan Nations member Louis Beam's manifesto on leaderless resistance. Indeed, Belew argues that it is largely due to the white power movement's adoption of the latter that law enforcement agencies, the media, and the general public have failed to understand that racist and anti-government terrorist actions are not the work of lone wolves but instead belong in a context of a well-coordinated network of violent extremists.
Bring the War Home is a well-researched and sober analysis of a very dangerous group of people.
December 8, 2018
Recently I was watching a Frontline episode on hate groups emerging from the shadows and heard the author of this book mention that there was a marked increase in these groups after every major war so I decided to check out the book. Have to admit I was a bit disappointed but that was probably more about my expectations than the book itself. I was hoping for a more comprehensive look at this trend but found the author spending the majority of the book discussing the post-Vietnam time frame.
The writing is fairly dry and I thought some of the connections were a bit tenuous but there were a couple of interesting tidbits. The first was this idea of a leaderless resisitance which is basically a series of small groups/cells that have very little to no direct connection to each other or a main group. They may meet at a event but the only real provable connection is a general world view and each member/cell takes it upon themselves to act as they see fit.
Another item of interest was how the many disparate groups; anti-communist, neo-Nazi, anti-Jewish/minority seemed to slowly morph and become a more all encompassing movement. For example, in the post-Vietnam time frame there were still enough WWII veterans around to force the neo-Nazi goups to the fringe. As Communism started to implode across the world there was a shift to fighting the "New World Order" and many groups took up this mantle moving forward.
The last interesting item was that like many foreign terrorist groups, these groups have become more sophisticated in terms of weapons, tactics and message rebranding. The author ties this (especially the weapons and tactics) to the uptick in veteran/active dury membership in these groups.
As stated earlier I was hoping for wider view of this phenomenon but there were enough interesting points to keep me plugging along.
6/10
The writing is fairly dry and I thought some of the connections were a bit tenuous but there were a couple of interesting tidbits. The first was this idea of a leaderless resisitance which is basically a series of small groups/cells that have very little to no direct connection to each other or a main group. They may meet at a event but the only real provable connection is a general world view and each member/cell takes it upon themselves to act as they see fit.
Another item of interest was how the many disparate groups; anti-communist, neo-Nazi, anti-Jewish/minority seemed to slowly morph and become a more all encompassing movement. For example, in the post-Vietnam time frame there were still enough WWII veterans around to force the neo-Nazi goups to the fringe. As Communism started to implode across the world there was a shift to fighting the "New World Order" and many groups took up this mantle moving forward.
The last interesting item was that like many foreign terrorist groups, these groups have become more sophisticated in terms of weapons, tactics and message rebranding. The author ties this (especially the weapons and tactics) to the uptick in veteran/active dury membership in these groups.
As stated earlier I was hoping for wider view of this phenomenon but there were enough interesting points to keep me plugging along.
6/10
February 10, 2020
Goddamn - this was good. Exceptionally well-researched and well-organized in its examination of the white separatist movement from Vietnam through the Oklahoma City bombing. This book really helped me understand the foundation of the alt-right and shed a ton of light on the methods and rhetoric used by white supremacists to operate as leaderless clandestine cells in America today.
There are some truly stomach-turning sections in this book but it's worth reading if you want to better arm yourself against the insidious white supremacist arguments/concepts being legitimized with growing frequency under Trump.
There are some truly stomach-turning sections in this book but it's worth reading if you want to better arm yourself against the insidious white supremacist arguments/concepts being legitimized with growing frequency under Trump.
August 11, 2019
One of the best books ever written on the white power movement, essential for understanding how it crystalized into lone-wolf terror. A must read.
October 10, 2020
4.5/5. This is an important work. And an alarming one. Highly recommended.
We are sleep-walking through a prolonged campaign by the white power movement since the 1970's (roots go back much further) that largely operates at the fringes but occasionally, and quite violently, makes its presence felt. The seemingly unnatural amalgamation of long-standing racist, anti-communist groups like the various iterations/factions of the KKK (KKKK, CKKKK, etc) with neo-Nazi's and skinheads and tax evaders and militiamen and Christian evangelicals starts to make sense when you see it tracked over time. As you connect the dots.
She takes you through the period of pro-state military activism in the 70's and early 80's (including mercenary activities in Central America) and then pivots towards a revolutionary platform that is anti-government and fully weaponized. The uniforms, the jargon, the mantras, the origin stories, the literature and propaganda, the weapons, the military and paramilitary training, the names of the major players, the locations, the self-justifications, the financing, the role of women, the underlying racism. They all are of a song, and this book explains the rise of Donald Trump (himself a celebrity-buffoon-narcissist-opportunist who just took the reins) better than JD Vance ever could (though in fairness to him, he didn't set-out to explain Trumpism.... he only retrospectively embraced the moniker of "expert" for fame and book sales). For another great insight into the racist portion of Trump's base, read "White Trash" by Nancy Isenberg.
I didn't give it my highest score because it bogs down in repetitive detail and jumps around fairly often. It’s 1983. Now it's 1979. 1985. Back to 1983. 1992. Unavoidable perhaps, but still confounding. Maybe a (dreaded) time-line or other graphics would have helped. For such a detailed book, there was an unfortunate lack of hard data -- she addresses as an inevitable methodological problem in studying underground separatist groups, which are by nature evasive. My bet is that the FBI has more nuanced estimates than those presented here, and we are left to wonder just how large and widespread these paramilitary groups are in the present day (the text only takes us through the 1995 OKC bombing and its aftermath, plus a short epilogue). Maybe she's plotting a sequel.
There were a few minor issues:
1. On page 144, "Confederate Reader" is described as the newspaper of the CKKKK. On page 145, she describes a name change to the WPP (White Patriot Party) in March of 1985. Then on page 147, she describes the "White Carolinian" as the newspaper of the CKKKK. It had me turning back pages and re-reading (Bill Bryson's cardinal sin of lack of clarity).
2. Page 199, in describing the end of the Ruby Ridge conflict, she states "the standoff ended without a shot fired." This perhaps should say "without another shot fired" since there had already been shooting deaths of a US Marshal and two members of the "besieged family". I'm not sure why you would distinguish different stand-offs within one continuous siege campaign.
But my biggest complaint is all the things she could have included but chose not to. I wanted more connections to present day. I know that her main thesis was in tying these paramilitary groups to the Vietnam War and Operation Desert Storm. She did that with great vigor. And she did a terrific job in delineating the shift from an anti-communist stance (often obscuring racist motivations) after the collapse of the Soviet Union to an anti-government stance (fostering the militia movement). But I think she could have taken the case much further on the following (perhaps in a final chapter or in the epilogue):
The recently documented shift from anti-communism on the alt-Right to a near full-on embrace of Russia by Trump and the NRA; the election hack and its apologists; anti-EU rhetoric; the use of "Fake news". Russians are mostly "white".... and they kill Muslims in Chechnya.... and Putin hated Obama and Hillary... so what's not to like?!
The impact of 9/11 in redrawing the enemy map away from Russia and to Muslims in the Middle East and to immigrants in general. She could have used Trump's own words in the campaign and afterwards, as well as the Muslim ban, and The Wall.
The election of Barack Obama clearly galvanized (ever-present) racism in this country, as well as the paranoia that the government is "coming for your guns!" Trump famously rode the bogus Birther issue to the White House. Many on the alt-Right saw BO as illegitimate. Calls to lock up Hillary Clinton actually speak to a state with TOO MUCH power, but I guess that's obvious and these assholes aren't known for consistency.
The MASSIVE irony that the tactics and in many cases the violent, misogynistic worldview of these paramilitary groups on the alt-Right very closely mirror those of al Qaeda. Leaderless resistance. Cells. Ethnic purity. Just change the fucking names.....
The cult-like aspects of these groups is worth delving into deeper. They close you off. Force feed you propaganda. Encourage intermarriages. Subjugate women to secondary roles. Stifle dissent and either harass or kill those who speak about the organization. The camps have indoctrination and ritual element to them (the KKK, most famously). There are similarities to Scientology and other cults here. The Waco group (Branch Davidians) was an actual cult, full stop. I would have liked a little more exposition on this element.
Drugs? I suspect there is more then just gun trafficking in these groups trying hard to raise money by robbing banks and counterfeiting. Meth anyone in rural white America? Opiates?? You can't swing a dead cat......
How many of these uber-libertarian macho alt-Right douchebags are on the government dole (or living in their parents' basement)? Answer: a holy shit-ton.
Maybe just a little more time on the absurd and utterly abhorrent hypocrisy of these so-called Christians espousing murder of judges and government officials and communists and Jews and whomever du jour....
The alt-Right march and subsequent events of Charlottesville, Va in Aug 2017 or, if too recent, at least the pitched debate and threats pertaining to removal of Confederate memorials around the country. She could have mentioned some of the newer names to the arena since the 90's, like Steve Bannon, Richard Spencer, and Stephen Miller.... "the pus shall rise again...."
We are sleep-walking through a prolonged campaign by the white power movement since the 1970's (roots go back much further) that largely operates at the fringes but occasionally, and quite violently, makes its presence felt. The seemingly unnatural amalgamation of long-standing racist, anti-communist groups like the various iterations/factions of the KKK (KKKK, CKKKK, etc) with neo-Nazi's and skinheads and tax evaders and militiamen and Christian evangelicals starts to make sense when you see it tracked over time. As you connect the dots.
She takes you through the period of pro-state military activism in the 70's and early 80's (including mercenary activities in Central America) and then pivots towards a revolutionary platform that is anti-government and fully weaponized. The uniforms, the jargon, the mantras, the origin stories, the literature and propaganda, the weapons, the military and paramilitary training, the names of the major players, the locations, the self-justifications, the financing, the role of women, the underlying racism. They all are of a song, and this book explains the rise of Donald Trump (himself a celebrity-buffoon-narcissist-opportunist who just took the reins) better than JD Vance ever could (though in fairness to him, he didn't set-out to explain Trumpism.... he only retrospectively embraced the moniker of "expert" for fame and book sales). For another great insight into the racist portion of Trump's base, read "White Trash" by Nancy Isenberg.
I didn't give it my highest score because it bogs down in repetitive detail and jumps around fairly often. It’s 1983. Now it's 1979. 1985. Back to 1983. 1992. Unavoidable perhaps, but still confounding. Maybe a (dreaded) time-line or other graphics would have helped. For such a detailed book, there was an unfortunate lack of hard data -- she addresses as an inevitable methodological problem in studying underground separatist groups, which are by nature evasive. My bet is that the FBI has more nuanced estimates than those presented here, and we are left to wonder just how large and widespread these paramilitary groups are in the present day (the text only takes us through the 1995 OKC bombing and its aftermath, plus a short epilogue). Maybe she's plotting a sequel.
There were a few minor issues:
1. On page 144, "Confederate Reader" is described as the newspaper of the CKKKK. On page 145, she describes a name change to the WPP (White Patriot Party) in March of 1985. Then on page 147, she describes the "White Carolinian" as the newspaper of the CKKKK. It had me turning back pages and re-reading (Bill Bryson's cardinal sin of lack of clarity).
2. Page 199, in describing the end of the Ruby Ridge conflict, she states "the standoff ended without a shot fired." This perhaps should say "without another shot fired" since there had already been shooting deaths of a US Marshal and two members of the "besieged family". I'm not sure why you would distinguish different stand-offs within one continuous siege campaign.
But my biggest complaint is all the things she could have included but chose not to. I wanted more connections to present day. I know that her main thesis was in tying these paramilitary groups to the Vietnam War and Operation Desert Storm. She did that with great vigor. And she did a terrific job in delineating the shift from an anti-communist stance (often obscuring racist motivations) after the collapse of the Soviet Union to an anti-government stance (fostering the militia movement). But I think she could have taken the case much further on the following (perhaps in a final chapter or in the epilogue):
The recently documented shift from anti-communism on the alt-Right to a near full-on embrace of Russia by Trump and the NRA; the election hack and its apologists; anti-EU rhetoric; the use of "Fake news". Russians are mostly "white".... and they kill Muslims in Chechnya.... and Putin hated Obama and Hillary... so what's not to like?!
The impact of 9/11 in redrawing the enemy map away from Russia and to Muslims in the Middle East and to immigrants in general. She could have used Trump's own words in the campaign and afterwards, as well as the Muslim ban, and The Wall.
The election of Barack Obama clearly galvanized (ever-present) racism in this country, as well as the paranoia that the government is "coming for your guns!" Trump famously rode the bogus Birther issue to the White House. Many on the alt-Right saw BO as illegitimate. Calls to lock up Hillary Clinton actually speak to a state with TOO MUCH power, but I guess that's obvious and these assholes aren't known for consistency.
The MASSIVE irony that the tactics and in many cases the violent, misogynistic worldview of these paramilitary groups on the alt-Right very closely mirror those of al Qaeda. Leaderless resistance. Cells. Ethnic purity. Just change the fucking names.....
The cult-like aspects of these groups is worth delving into deeper. They close you off. Force feed you propaganda. Encourage intermarriages. Subjugate women to secondary roles. Stifle dissent and either harass or kill those who speak about the organization. The camps have indoctrination and ritual element to them (the KKK, most famously). There are similarities to Scientology and other cults here. The Waco group (Branch Davidians) was an actual cult, full stop. I would have liked a little more exposition on this element.
Drugs? I suspect there is more then just gun trafficking in these groups trying hard to raise money by robbing banks and counterfeiting. Meth anyone in rural white America? Opiates?? You can't swing a dead cat......
How many of these uber-libertarian macho alt-Right douchebags are on the government dole (or living in their parents' basement)? Answer: a holy shit-ton.
Maybe just a little more time on the absurd and utterly abhorrent hypocrisy of these so-called Christians espousing murder of judges and government officials and communists and Jews and whomever du jour....
The alt-Right march and subsequent events of Charlottesville, Va in Aug 2017 or, if too recent, at least the pitched debate and threats pertaining to removal of Confederate memorials around the country. She could have mentioned some of the newer names to the arena since the 90's, like Steve Bannon, Richard Spencer, and Stephen Miller.... "the pus shall rise again...."
July 2, 2019
Cons (minor):
- A bit dry and repetitive in places
Pros (major):
- Timely
- Chilling
- Dazzlingly well-researched
The killer paragraph, from the epilogue:
- A bit dry and repetitive in places
Pros (major):
- Timely
- Chilling
- Dazzlingly well-researched
The killer paragraph, from the epilogue:
What was left unfinished, unexplained, and unconfronted about white power meant that it could resurge in the years following 1995. White power should have been legible as a coherent social movement but was instead largely narrated and prosecuted as scattered actions and inexplicable lone wolf attacks motivated not by ideology but by madness or personal animus. It might have been treated as a wide-reaching social network with the capacity to inflict mass casualties, but was too often brushed off as backwardness or ineptitude. It should have been acknowledged as producing, supporting, and deploying a coherent worldview that posed radical challenges to a liberal consensus around racial and gender equality and support of institutions including the vote, courts, the rule of law, and federal legislative bodies. Instead, the disappearance of the movement in the years after Oklahoma City [...] left open the possibility of new waves of action. [...] this new activity would largely continue to evade public understanding, despite the warnings of watchdog groups, until it broke into mainstream politics in the 2016 presidential campaign and election.
May 24, 2018
Belew has written an important and groundbreaking history of the post-Vietnam white power movement. Her account differs from earlier studies because of its attention to the imperial dimensions of pot-Vietnam white power's imaginary and scope, as well as the central role of the US war in Vietnam in remapping how white supremacists understood the state, revolutionary violence, and whiteness. Equally important is how Belew historicizes the figure of the Lone Wolf in a deliberate strategy of "Leaderless Resistance," which was, and remains, central to the White Power movement's tactical vocabulary. Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995 serves as the clearest example here of both the history Belew unravels and the ways in which it has been masked and occluded in popular narratives. In the epilogue, Belew carries this history forward to Dylann Roof's murder of nine people in Charleston's Mother Emanuel church in 2015 and to the resurgent alt-right during and after the election of Donald Trump, ensuring that this will be a valuable text for historians of the 21st century as well as historians of the 20th.
May 25, 2019
In some ways this book covers the same ground as other books on this particular branch of the far right by such as authors as Leonard Zeskind, Daniel Levitas, Matthew Lyons, and Chip Berlet . What's different about Belew's account is the tight focus on the role of mythology of the Vietnam war in the foundations of the militant wing of the white supremacist right and the conciseness of her survey that covers the racist militant right in different locations from the 1970s through the Oklahoma City bombing. Synthesizing considerable existing scholarship and bringing additional primary sources together, Belew does a great job explaining the historical trajectory of the revolutionary white supremacist right in the U.S. in different regions and over different time periods. She covers the roots of "the order" and goes into detail on the mostly forgotten Fort Smith Sedition trial, after which 13 white supremacists were acquitted in 1988. She also discusses the roles that women played in the movement. A definite must-read for anyone trying to make sense of the far-right in the U.S.
December 8, 2018
Part 1, chapter 4: Ronald Reagan was subcontracting foreign policy to white power militias. This is worth remembering when both Democrats and Republicans claim that Donald Trump represents some unspeakable degradation of what came before.
This book shows that much that we have come to think of as features of a new or resurgent far right movement go back at least a few decades.
This book shows that much that we have come to think of as features of a new or resurgent far right movement go back at least a few decades.
October 7, 2022
Interesting and important concept, but I found this one suuuuuuper dense and difficult to get into. Not super accessible for the more casual and less academic reader.
January 23, 2019
An urgent new book about the modern white power movement that reframes much of our understanding about racism, paramilitary violence, and the far right. Belew argues that the Vietnam War sparked the formation of a new white power movement that eventually drew in a revived Klan, neo-Nazis, skinheads, radical anti-tax protestors, a variety of conspiracy theorists and militiamen. The Vietnam War created a narrative in which soldiers felt betrayed by a country that "made them fight with one hand tied behind their back" and then "spat on them" when they returned home to a bad economy. The narrative that the gov't was on the side on minorities and against white, Christian families. Belew carefully shows how white power advocates built on many of the themes of the modern conservative movement but took these ideas to extremes. She also shows that certain government actions and inactions helped fuel the movement. White power gained immensely from mercenaries going to Central America, South Africa, and other places to profit from their military skills and fight communists and non-whites. Despite the legal violations inherent in these actions, the Reagan admin in particular usually let it go, allowing these people to come and go and form wider networks or radicals.
The justice system was largely unprepared to prosecute white power crimes; the Greensboro shooting in 1979 demonstrates this. When white supremacists opened fire on left-wing protestors, killing 5, the defense used peremptory challenges to get an all-white jury, which saw the killers as sympathetic veterans and defenders of America against Communists (as usual, the left played its hand incredibly poorly here, attacking the court as racist, posing as militants, and even releasing a stink bomb in the court). This strategy worked for a number of cases until the federal government took over the prosecution.
A key turning point came in the late 1980s, when the White Power movement declared war on the state, in keeping with the vision laid out in the Turner Diaries. This is a huge break from white power violence in the past, which was vigilantist: seeking to reinforce state authority through terror and violence (think of the role of vigilante lynching in maintaining Jim Crow, for example). Now, white power focused on trigger a massive anti-state, anti-minority war through acts of terrorism. The disasters at Ruby Ridge and Waco only reinforced their paranoid sense of attack from the government. The culmination of this phase of the White Power movement was
This is a startling book that in a short span examines all kinds of fascinating and disturbing aspects of White Power, including gender roles, the gun show circuit, and their various internal disputes. The big point of the book is that we miss the big picture when we describe Timothy McVeigh as a lone wolf terrorist (or Dylann Roof, or James Fields, you get the idea). McVeigh may have planned the attack with just a few accomplices, but this is how movements like White Power are supposed to work. In the strategy of leaderless resistance, the ideological leaders create networks, draw in recruits, provide training, indoctrinate, and point out general targets, all without implicating themselves directly in the specific plots that their followers carry out. This is not that different from how many insurgencies and other covert, radical political groups operate. McVeigh, for instance, read and disseminated White Power literature, networked with these folks on the gun circuit, attended protests (including Waco), and even stayed at a Michigan white separatist camp for a while in the years before the bombing.
When we miss how people like McVeigh are linked to these movements and ideologies, we depoliticize them, which prevents us from asking tough questions. Why are these ideas proliferating among certain segments of the population? Are mainstream politicians legitimizing them in any way (ahem, TRUMP)? Can we prosecute them effectively if we don't see how they function as a movement? This book raises urgent questions in these areas.
Lastly, let's not forget that these white power guys have declared war on the American state, preached and frequently committed acts of violence on various enemies, and embraced the most ludicrous conspiracy theories. They have hated, with a deep passion, every American president until you-know-who came along. That is the unspoken coda to this excellent book.
The justice system was largely unprepared to prosecute white power crimes; the Greensboro shooting in 1979 demonstrates this. When white supremacists opened fire on left-wing protestors, killing 5, the defense used peremptory challenges to get an all-white jury, which saw the killers as sympathetic veterans and defenders of America against Communists (as usual, the left played its hand incredibly poorly here, attacking the court as racist, posing as militants, and even releasing a stink bomb in the court). This strategy worked for a number of cases until the federal government took over the prosecution.
A key turning point came in the late 1980s, when the White Power movement declared war on the state, in keeping with the vision laid out in the Turner Diaries. This is a huge break from white power violence in the past, which was vigilantist: seeking to reinforce state authority through terror and violence (think of the role of vigilante lynching in maintaining Jim Crow, for example). Now, white power focused on trigger a massive anti-state, anti-minority war through acts of terrorism. The disasters at Ruby Ridge and Waco only reinforced their paranoid sense of attack from the government. The culmination of this phase of the White Power movement was
This is a startling book that in a short span examines all kinds of fascinating and disturbing aspects of White Power, including gender roles, the gun show circuit, and their various internal disputes. The big point of the book is that we miss the big picture when we describe Timothy McVeigh as a lone wolf terrorist (or Dylann Roof, or James Fields, you get the idea). McVeigh may have planned the attack with just a few accomplices, but this is how movements like White Power are supposed to work. In the strategy of leaderless resistance, the ideological leaders create networks, draw in recruits, provide training, indoctrinate, and point out general targets, all without implicating themselves directly in the specific plots that their followers carry out. This is not that different from how many insurgencies and other covert, radical political groups operate. McVeigh, for instance, read and disseminated White Power literature, networked with these folks on the gun circuit, attended protests (including Waco), and even stayed at a Michigan white separatist camp for a while in the years before the bombing.
When we miss how people like McVeigh are linked to these movements and ideologies, we depoliticize them, which prevents us from asking tough questions. Why are these ideas proliferating among certain segments of the population? Are mainstream politicians legitimizing them in any way (ahem, TRUMP)? Can we prosecute them effectively if we don't see how they function as a movement? This book raises urgent questions in these areas.
Lastly, let's not forget that these white power guys have declared war on the American state, preached and frequently committed acts of violence on various enemies, and embraced the most ludicrous conspiracy theories. They have hated, with a deep passion, every American president until you-know-who came along. That is the unspoken coda to this excellent book.
September 2, 2022
scary and well researched, an important historical depiction of the roots of the present day alt right in north america
June 22, 2021
I grew up in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was exposed through a family member to some extreme militia activity, which at first seemed innocuous (guns, distrust of government) but quickly revealed insidious racism at its core. Belew gets into the thick of it with copious footnotes (literally the back 1/3 is notes - which is appreciated) and references - outlining what she views as a breaking point in US history for Vietnam veterans and the linkage to perpetuating violence abroad and then at home. I always wondered where all of this hatred and violence came from and Belew establishes a very clear beginning and tragic end with Oklahoma City. There is a brief afterword about linking these violent extremists to the resurgence during Trump's campaign and administration. However, the echo at the end is 1/6 and that these fanatics and racists are not going anywhere and, in fact, the times they are the most quiet are the ones of the most concern.
October 19, 2025
3.75. They really did win, huh
I guess the most striking thing to me here is the development of the big tent approach to far right anti-government politics, which allows for the consolidation of paramilitary power and actual political power at the same time that the milder sections of the tent can deny the existence of the more radical sections even while they carry out violent and largely successful actions against other race groups and government workers. It’s a blueprint for our current moment. And they lob the same accusations at the left but I’m tired of pretending the scale, goals, and effectiveness are equivalent.
I guess the most striking thing to me here is the development of the big tent approach to far right anti-government politics, which allows for the consolidation of paramilitary power and actual political power at the same time that the milder sections of the tent can deny the existence of the more radical sections even while they carry out violent and largely successful actions against other race groups and government workers. It’s a blueprint for our current moment. And they lob the same accusations at the left but I’m tired of pretending the scale, goals, and effectiveness are equivalent.
December 26, 2020
Listened to this as audiobook, and it was absolutely riveting. Essential reading to understand the history of the White Power Movement starting right after the Vietnam War through the Oklahoma City bombing. It provides background for understanding the current Alt-Right, which is grown from the same soil.
March 23, 2023
I had to read this for class and damn it was actually pretty interesting. This book argued the white power movement has its main roots in Vietnam war times and white men’s hatred for communists and Vietnamese
January 27, 2023
Deeply researched portrait of the evolution of the US white power movement in the 70s and 80s into highly organized cell-style domestic terrorism working to overthrow the American state and wage race war. Belew maps out the shift from pre-1983 white racist violence, which served to support both white supremacy and state power, to the post-1983 revolutionary white power movement, shaped by the disillusionment of Vietnam war vets and defined by antigovernment paramilitarism.
It’s striking to see how mainstream media, law enforcement and political figures minimized the scope and sophistication of white power extremism, instead clinging to a “lone wolf” narrative even as evidence to the contrary surfaced. As Patrick Blanchfield writes, "mainstream politicians and media voices" failed—and continue to fail—to interrogate how “white-power ideology might be implicit […] in our society, our politics, and our habits of war.”
It’s also difficult not to assume almost tacit approval and purposeful failure to intervene from law enforcement and the military, especially given the number of officers and personnel involved in the movement (both at the turn of the 21st century and today). In later chapters, Belew draws a distinct connection between the white power paramilitary movement and the militarization of civilian policing, with its domestic war on communities of color beginning in the 1990s.
The chapter on the protection of white women’s bodies resonates with today’s attacks on abortion/trans rights and dog-whistle coverage of low US birth rates. Belew asserts that “social issues that were related to white women’s sexuality, reproduction, and motherhood but typically described without explicitly racist terminology—including opposition to busing, abortion, contraception, welfare, and immigration—appealed well beyond the white power movement.” She outlines not only the unification of Klan, neo-Nazi, and other white power groups but also the spread of white racist messaging and beliefs within the mainstream evangelical right. Leaves you with a pretty pessimistic view of what the next few years will bring if we keep underestimating this movement.
It’s striking to see how mainstream media, law enforcement and political figures minimized the scope and sophistication of white power extremism, instead clinging to a “lone wolf” narrative even as evidence to the contrary surfaced. As Patrick Blanchfield writes, "mainstream politicians and media voices" failed—and continue to fail—to interrogate how “white-power ideology might be implicit […] in our society, our politics, and our habits of war.”
It’s also difficult not to assume almost tacit approval and purposeful failure to intervene from law enforcement and the military, especially given the number of officers and personnel involved in the movement (both at the turn of the 21st century and today). In later chapters, Belew draws a distinct connection between the white power paramilitary movement and the militarization of civilian policing, with its domestic war on communities of color beginning in the 1990s.
The chapter on the protection of white women’s bodies resonates with today’s attacks on abortion/trans rights and dog-whistle coverage of low US birth rates. Belew asserts that “social issues that were related to white women’s sexuality, reproduction, and motherhood but typically described without explicitly racist terminology—including opposition to busing, abortion, contraception, welfare, and immigration—appealed well beyond the white power movement.” She outlines not only the unification of Klan, neo-Nazi, and other white power groups but also the spread of white racist messaging and beliefs within the mainstream evangelical right. Leaves you with a pretty pessimistic view of what the next few years will bring if we keep underestimating this movement.
March 5, 2021
Sadly, this turned out to be a slog. Belew spent 10 years researching this book, and I think she was loath to leave anything out. The result is a mish-mash of facts - the text drowns in a sea of dates, personalities, sects and events. There is no narrative flow; characters and events pop up seemingly at random – it’s as if she embedded her footnotes into the text (though there are also 70+ pages of notes!). The book would have benefited by a more focused narrative, in terms of both time and characters. Even the chapters which seemed focused suffer from too much detail with tangential characters, and jump around in time.
Her premise connects the white power movement to various US military operations, particularly the Vietnam war. This plays out in regards to anti-government sentiment, but doesn’t explain the racism at the heart of the different groups and militias, many of which have no real military connection. It seems to me that “anti-government” is really white supremacy in sheep’s clothing. White supremacists hate the idea that government is giving handouts to underserving black people, so therefore they hate they government. This hate is not exclusive to former military personnel.
Published by Harvard Press in 2019, “Bring the War Home” should have included more on the white power movement, vis-à-vis Trump, who gave the white power movement hope and encouragement, and Barack Obama, whose election brought many white separatists out of the woodwork. I would like to have seen more on the current alt-right group. The Capitol Riot on January 6th definitely had a military aspect to it, but there is no mention of Oath Keepers, formed in 2009, the Proud Boys (2016), Three Percenters (2008), or Qanon (2017).
Her premise connects the white power movement to various US military operations, particularly the Vietnam war. This plays out in regards to anti-government sentiment, but doesn’t explain the racism at the heart of the different groups and militias, many of which have no real military connection. It seems to me that “anti-government” is really white supremacy in sheep’s clothing. White supremacists hate the idea that government is giving handouts to underserving black people, so therefore they hate they government. This hate is not exclusive to former military personnel.
Published by Harvard Press in 2019, “Bring the War Home” should have included more on the white power movement, vis-à-vis Trump, who gave the white power movement hope and encouragement, and Barack Obama, whose election brought many white separatists out of the woodwork. I would like to have seen more on the current alt-right group. The Capitol Riot on January 6th definitely had a military aspect to it, but there is no mention of Oath Keepers, formed in 2009, the Proud Boys (2016), Three Percenters (2008), or Qanon (2017).
February 15, 2021
I really struggle with whether to give this book 3 or 4 stars. 4 stars because it is an obviously well-researched account of the White Power movement since the 1970s, and it contains sporadic bits of fascinating forgotten history (e.g. the presence of American white supremacist mercenaries in Central American and Caribbean conflicts during the 80s). 3 stars because it has a strong “adapted from someone’s grad school thesis” feel and can often read like a recitation of archival data without enough of a narrative frame to give the non-academic reader a sense of how it all adds up. I also agree with a number of reviewers here that the core thesis about how narratives of Vietnam have driven the modern White Power movement, while certainly not without merit, can occasionally feel a bit strained. In many ways, I think the book’s less overt but more interesting thesis is actually its treatment “leaderless resistance” and how that strategy has consistently allowed Americans (particularly in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City Bombing) to underestimate the breadth of the threat posed by White Power violence. In the aftermath of the 1/6 Capitol Attack, this to me is by far the takeaway that resonates most strongly.
February 3, 2019
Highly recommended to anyone wanting to understand the foundation on which the modern "alt-right," and general fascist resurgence, is built upon. Written by a historian of the white power movement, Kathleen Belew writes clearly and persuasively of the links between state violence (war in particular) and increased para-militarism, how more mainstream racist ideas feed into and protect violent racist movements, and how understanding the movement's history is crucial to heading off future violence.
October 16, 2020
Subjectively, I'm docking a star for not fully checking what this was going to be about. This is a fairly close overview of the militarized, militia white supremancy movement started by Vietnam War vets through the Ruby Ridge stand off, Waco, and climaxing, but not ending, in the Oklahoma City bombing if 1995. I would like to read Belew continue this history through the next 25 years and the internet age.
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May 4, 2021Been wanting to read this since Jan 6. It’s a precise, well-researched study of the origin and evolution of the white power movement in the U.S, with a focus on the increasingly amorphous demographic of white power participants. The thesis is that the aftermath of the Vietnam War acted as the defining shift between the white power movement as being racially-motivated to its current objective of being primarily anti-statist. This shift is demonstrated in large part by the blending of conservative, white power language and mercenary/paramilitary activities. The book ends with the failure of the media/public to recognize the extensive white power network that supported the Oklahoma City bombing (and we still tend to erroneously classify Timothy McVeigh as a lone wolf) but the epilogue does make reference to Dylann Roof and some of the Trump-era demonstrations of a strong, motivated white power movement. I appreciated the chapters devoted to the symbol of women in these movements and the failure of the federal government to appropriately contend with the obvious threat of these groups. There is a clear line between military/wartime rhetoric and this specific sort of civilian violence, and it is difficult to minimize the relationship between the military as an institution and state-sponsored violence as an western imperial project with the propagation of white power movements.
January 31, 2021
In the post-civil rights era after Vietnam white supremacists groups were very active and operating and growing their ranks in the "colorblind" era after the Vietnam war. This book covers how these right-wing groups like the Order and Aryan Nations and Christian Identity movement went to war with the US federal government and murdered, kidnaped, robbed banks to raise war chests even used the new computer technology of the era to make message boards. They joined the military and infiltrated police forces to gain skills and influence these institutions. They mastered the tactic of leaderless resistance and using small cells so that if people get caught it won't take down the movement by law enforcement. The movement grew spectacularly in the 80s and 90s and well after and pulled off the Oklahoma City Bombing which killed hundreds of the largest single terrorist attack death toll until 9/11 a few years later. The book only follows the trail to the mid-1990s but the rising militia movement of the Clinton era was not a mellowing but a morphing of neo-nazis into a larger more mainstream movement a development the media at the time totally overlooked. Charlottesville and the Capitol attack have a direct line to that movement starting the Vietnam era. I don't know if our Republic will be murdered but I will know the likely culprits if it is.
June 5, 2022
Compelling, consistent, and comprehensive, this book helps fill a major gap in contemporary historical literature of the United States: the modern white power movement. Covering an expansive 3 decades—from the closing stages of the Vietnam War to the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing—Kathleen Belew uses her extensive research of a oft-undercovered movement to paint a stark picture which we should understand in order to hopefully combat the movement as it is today, since the parallels are not coincidental. While not an easy read as the subject matter is extremely unpleasant, Belew's prose is extremely readable (something which more histories need!) and engaging. Highly recommend for anyone wanting to understand today's situation.
March 23, 2022
An excellent investigation and study of the white power movement in the US from the Vietnam War era through the Oklahoma City bombing. Belew is incredibly thorough and meticulous in her research and sourcing, this is one of the more densely cited works I've read even at only 239 pages. She does a great job showing the linkages, material, ideological, and social/interpersonal, between the various groups, organizations, and major figures within the movement during these years.
My one minor critique is that I think this study could have used a bit more examination of the ties between these movements and the state itself, especially the CIA, and the way these movements are useful in the states internal war against dissent from both the Left and specifically Black liberation movements, but that also would have probably been a bit beyond the scope of this book.
A very good book, highly recommended to help understand the history of the violent white supremacist movement from 1965-1995 and how that shaped the groups that exist today.
My one minor critique is that I think this study could have used a bit more examination of the ties between these movements and the state itself, especially the CIA, and the way these movements are useful in the states internal war against dissent from both the Left and specifically Black liberation movements, but that also would have probably been a bit beyond the scope of this book.
A very good book, highly recommended to help understand the history of the violent white supremacist movement from 1965-1995 and how that shaped the groups that exist today.
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