TheGroundBaby’s Reviews > When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s > Status Update

Hate crime murder in Ventura - two weeks after an altercation - organized murder?

Privatization of foreign policy under Reagan allowed lots of fascist creeps to get money or act as soldiers of shady actors and regimes - ties to Bring the War Home for sure

The vanguard were the militias, clandestine types and mercenaries who were often Vietnam vets, who did actions so bold as the attempted takeover of Dominica, the Oklahoma City bombing, confrontations with the government, and sporadic killings like the fisherman in Texas. The electoralista faction wanted to take advantage of white backlash - and bring the crowd from the GOP, birchers, Wallace supporters etc

Many of those contemporaries saw goals like defending white South Africa, stopping immigration, including violent border stunts. The movement looked like a lot of things based on personalities and varying ideologies, but the core was an embrace of violent terrorism, explicit inequality up to the point of forced expulsion or mass killing of non whites, and up to right wing revolutionaries at the most extreme.

Like how this book says - appealing to racist white workers who weren’t a different class but represented a temperament of feeling talked down to by elites supposedly more interested in non whites. Many of their contemporaries saw goals like defending white South Africa, stopping immigration, including violent border stunts. The movement looked like a lot of things based on personalities and varying ideologies

This chapter talking about David Duke is really revealing about the types of personalities these reactionary movements attract. Narcissists who are constantly on the move from one organization to another like con artists - reminiscent of Tom Metzger, one of Duke’s contemporaries