Kathleen Belew spent ten years researching and writing Bring the War Home, examining previously classified FBI files and vivid personal testimonies and letters. She is Associate Professor of History at Northwestern University and has appeared on Fresh Air, Weekend Edition, and CBS News. Her work featured prominently in the PBS Frontline documentary “Documenting Hate: New American Nazis.”
A gripping study of white power…It is impossible to read the book
without recalling more recent events…The book’s explosive thesis:
that the white power movement ...emerged as a radical reaction to
the [Vietnam] war…It is a breathtaking argument, one that treats
foreign policy as the impetus for a movement that most people view
through the lens of domestic racism…It’s a stunning indictment of
official culpability, and Belew constructs her case with forensic
care. In doing so, she shows that, while racism is ever with us,
policy choices ranging from local police strategies to the furthest
reaches of foreign policy create the space for white power to
flourish.
*New York Times*
Compelling…Meticulously researched and powerfully argued, Belew’s
book isn’t only a definitive history of white-racist violence in
late-20th-century America, but also a rigorous meditation on the
relationship between American militarism abroad and extremism at
home…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*
Superbly comprehensive…supplants all journalistic accounts of
America’s resurgent white supremacism.
*The Guardian*
Fascinating…Belew connects seemingly disparate events like the
killings at Greensboro, the persecution of Vietnamese fishers in
Texas in the early 1980s, and the siege at Ruby Ridge. She 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*
A gorgeously rendered account of the white power movement in this
country that reveals its symbiotic character, one that both feeds
on mainstream angst and stimulates it to new heights.
*Los Angeles Review of Books*
An engrossing and comprehensive history of the white power movement
in America, highlighting its racism, antigovernment hostility, and
terrorist tactics…Belew presents a convincing case that white power
rhetoric and activism continue to influence mainstream U.S.
politics.
*Publishers Weekly (starred review)*
Belew…counters the treatment of white terrorists as ‘lone wolves’
by tracing the contours of an organized white power movement that
connected radical white extremists from Greensboro, North Carolina,
to Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and from Waco, Texas, to Oklahoma City…Belew
does the hard work of restoring those connections, revealing how
white supremacists built a coalition of rural survivalists, urban
skinheads, and anti-Semitic Christian Identity believers.
*Los Angeles Review of Books*
An essential reference book for our times.
*Rachel Maddow Show*
This is a work of fierce intelligence. Belew shows how white power
activists used their view of the Vietnam War to advance every
element of their reactionary agenda and to justify domestic
terrorism. A book of signal importance and urgency, it provides a
haunting vantage point on contemporary American political
culture.
*Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History
of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America*
Bring the War Home is a tour de force. An utterly engrossing and
piercingly argued history that tracks how the seismic aftershocks
of the Vietnam War gave rise to a white power movement whose toxic
admixture of violent bigotry, antigovernmental hostility, and
racial terrorism helped set the stage for Waco, the Oklahoma City
bombing, and, yes, the presidency of Donald Trump.
*Junot Díaz*
This is a troubling book for many reasons, not just because of the
scope of the white power network it reveals…[It] raises questions
about how the elements of United States culture that valorize
violence and draw ready distinctions between the deserving ‘us’ and
the less deserving ‘them’ ...contribute to mass shootings…Belew
treats the trajectory of white power victimhood as a shift from
attacks on the other to a declaration of war against the federal
government.
*Jotwell*
Fascinating and riveting... that archive is truly incredible.
*Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien*
Belew…traces the origins of the white power movement to the
aftermath of the Vietnam War. She examines how various racist
groups—skinheads, Klansmen, white separatists, neo-Nazis,
militiamen, and others—united under a common banner and took the
movement in a violent and revolutionary direction…Belew also argues
that the anti-government sentiment created by the Vietnam War
helped consolidate and radicalize the white power movement in ways
we haven’t fully understood.
*Vox*
Kathleen Belew’s vital new book begins in the belly of a Huey
helicopter somewhere over South Vietnam. From there she follows
with unflinching honesty the violence that violence begat, from the
tiny cadre of veterans who decided to bring the war home through
Ruby Ridge and Waco to the horror of the Oklahoma City terrorist
attack. Over the years I’ve read any number of exemplary histories.
Never have I read a more courageous one.
*Kevin Boyle, author of Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil
Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age*
An engaging account of how and why the modern white power movement
emerged from 1975 to 1995…[Belew] offers an unprecedented level of
detail, engaging deeply with developments that other authors
typically gloss over…Bring the War Home is an excellent resource
for anyone interested in the history of America’s white power
movement.
*Reason*
A smart and powerfully argued book about the way that the Vietnam
War in particular reshaped white power in the United States… It’s
really fascinating.
*Past Present*
The connection between hate groups and the military is not new…
Bring the War Home charts the path of radical white supremacists
from the end of the Vietnam War to the 1995 bombing of a Federal
government building in Oklahoma City.
*CBS News*
Examine[s] how romantic public narratives have been deployed to
suppress collective memory of the violence that underwrites white
supremacy.
*Times Literary Supplement*
An unquestionably powerful, well-researched and must-read addition
to the post-2016 upsurge in analysis and investigation of the
foundations of modern fascism. Anyone seeking to understand the
origins of the modern far right in the U.S. should include this
work at the top of their reading list.
*Truthout*
Alarming and meticulously researched.
*NYR Daily*
This necessary work reminds readers that white violence—on behalf
of, and against, the state—has a long and deep history.
*Library Journal*
In this major work of scholarly synthesis, Kathleen Belew uses
letters, ephemera and ‘zines’ as well as newspaper reports and
official documents to reconstruct a dark chapter in American
history that has chilling echoes for today.
*Times Higher Education*
Bring the War Home is a fascinating account of right-wing white
power extremists in the United States. Kathleen Belew illuminates
this history through staggeringly broad research. A compelling and
sometimes shocking read, it is an outstanding contribution to the
history of violence.
*Mary L. Dudziak, author of War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its
Consequences*
If you weren’t afraid of the violent white power movement before
reading [this], you will be when you’re done…Belew details fifty
years of energetic racist organizing and violent acts…A ringing
call to recognize the extent of the threat, in order to better
organize an effective response.
*American Historical Review*
For those who wish to make sense of the enduring ‘catastrophic
ricochet of the Vietnam War’ as well as recent events in places
like Charlottesville, Belew’s Bring the War Home is required
reading.
*PopMatters*
Invaluable to understanding our current political moment.
*Against the Current*
A carefully written book that argues that violent white-supremacist
groups were mobilized by the Vietnam War and the Cold War more
generally to undertake an armed campaign in the service of their
anticommunist, White supremacist goals…Belew’s work suggests that
armed violence by militant movements is a far more enduring and
deep-rooted part of American politics than conventional
understandings admit.
*Systemic Organization*
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