They unified people from a variety of militant groups, including Klansmen, neo-Nazis, skinheads, radical tax protestors, and white separatists to form a new movement of loosely affiliated independent cells to avoid detection. Returning to an America ripped apart by a war they felt they were not allowed to win, a small group of veterans and active-duty military personnel and civilian supporters concluded that waging war on their own country was justified. In Bring the War Home, Kathleen Belew gives us the history of a movement that consolidated in the 1970s and 1980s around a potent sense of betrayal in the Vietnam War and made tragic headlines in Waco and Ruby Ridge and with the Oklahoma City bombing and is resurgent under President Trump. Its soldiers are not lone wolves but highly organized cadres motivated by a coherent and deeply troubling worldview made up of white supremacy, virulent anticommunism, and apocalyptic faith. The white power movement in America wants a revolution. “Belew’s book helps explain how we got to today’s alt right.”-Terry Gross, Fresh Air “A gripping study of white power… Explosive.”- The New York Times Watch Kathleen Belew’s June 2022 conversation with Rachel Maddow about why individual incidents with racist extremist groups must be seen as part of a single, larger groundswell:
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