WEBVTT - The History of the White Power Movement 0:00:15.356 --> 0:00:22.716 Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show 0:00:22.756 --> 0:00:25.756 where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news. 0:00:26.156 --> 0:00:30.716 I'm Noah Feldman. The shooting at a synagogue outside San 0:00:30.716 --> 0:00:33.116 Diego on the last day of Passover was just the 0:00:33.196 --> 0:00:36.716 latest deadly attack where the suspect has reported links to 0:00:36.756 --> 0:00:40.876 white supremacy. This incident pushed me to think harder and 0:00:40.956 --> 0:00:44.236 deeper about the roots of white supremacy in the United States. 0:00:44.796 --> 0:00:48.276 Are we really seeing something new here or is this 0:00:48.356 --> 0:00:50.916 the same brand of white supremacy that's been around for 0:00:50.916 --> 0:00:52.996 a very long time, as long ago as the Civil 0:00:52.996 --> 0:00:56.956 War maybe before. To answer these questions and more, we're 0:00:56.996 --> 0:01:00.036 joined by Kathleen Bellou. She's an assistant professor of history 0:01:00.036 --> 0:01:03.076 at the University of Chicago, and her book Bring the 0:01:03.076 --> 0:01:07.036 War Home, The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America is 0:01:07.076 --> 0:01:11.156 the definitive look at the modern history of white power movement. Kathleen, 0:01:11.436 --> 0:01:13.996 Welcome to Deep Background. Thank you for having me, and 0:01:14.076 --> 0:01:16.556 thank you for the kind words about the book. Before 0:01:16.596 --> 0:01:20.796 we dive into the history and prehistory of white power 0:01:20.836 --> 0:01:23.356 and white supremacy, can I ask you just a personal question, 0:01:23.596 --> 0:01:25.916 how did you get interested in this topic? It is 0:01:25.956 --> 0:01:28.596 not the most obvious topic for a starting to work on. 0:01:29.516 --> 0:01:32.556 It isn't, and in fact, when I began the dissertation, 0:01:33.236 --> 0:01:34.996 I was told by more than one person that it 0:01:35.036 --> 0:01:38.476 technically could not count as history, because the usual rule 0:01:38.476 --> 0:01:40.236 of thumb when you're starting a dissertation is that you 0:01:40.236 --> 0:01:42.916 should be studying things twenty five years ago or further 0:01:43.396 --> 0:01:45.596 is the rule. It turns out that it took me 0:01:45.636 --> 0:01:47.476 so long to finish the book that I had cleared 0:01:47.516 --> 0:01:50.116 that mark by the time it was all said and done. 0:01:50.476 --> 0:01:53.236 But I actually think that the study of the recent 0:01:53.316 --> 0:01:56.796 past has become, as you can see with this project, 0:01:56.876 --> 0:02:01.476 urgently important to understanding our political moment and the debates 0:02:01.516 --> 0:02:04.596 and challenges that we now find ourselves embroiled in. I 0:02:04.596 --> 0:02:07.836 wanted to start by asking about the category of white 0:02:07.836 --> 0:02:11.156 power or white supreme see. Certainly in a country like 0:02:11.196 --> 0:02:14.876 the United States, which had slavery from the very beginning 0:02:14.876 --> 0:02:16.676 of the country, and of course there were slavery long 0:02:16.716 --> 0:02:20.596 before there was a United States in North America, the 0:02:20.916 --> 0:02:25.036 idea that white people are superior to the black people, 0:02:25.076 --> 0:02:28.516 that people of African descent is you know, almost baked 0:02:28.556 --> 0:02:32.036 in to the earliest history of the country and the 0:02:32.036 --> 0:02:35.596 prehistory of the country. And I wonder, how do you 0:02:35.636 --> 0:02:37.876 know where to start? You know, when you talk about 0:02:37.876 --> 0:02:40.676 white power or white supremacy. You know, how do you 0:02:40.716 --> 0:02:42.036 know that you don't have to start all the way 0:02:42.076 --> 0:02:44.556 back in the sixteen hundreds when the first African slaves 0:02:44.596 --> 0:02:47.316 were brought to the Americas, or in seventeen eighty seven 0:02:47.396 --> 0:02:52.196 with the US Constitution which enshrines slavery in certain respects. 0:02:52.196 --> 0:02:55.676 The what's your working starting place when you start thinking 0:02:55.716 --> 0:02:59.396 about white power? So when I teach this to my undergraduates, 0:02:59.436 --> 0:03:02.476 we do start with those long histories of racial inequality, 0:03:02.596 --> 0:03:06.516 the ways that white supremacy is not only a matter 0:03:06.556 --> 0:03:09.556 of ideological belief for some people in the United States, 0:03:09.596 --> 0:03:12.876 but has become imbricated in our systems of government, our 0:03:12.916 --> 0:03:16.596 distribution of resources, are policing, and all kinds of other ways. 0:03:16.716 --> 0:03:19.836 It's everywhere everywhere in this country. Race is everywhere. I 0:03:19.876 --> 0:03:23.796 think reasonable people can agree on that. I think that 0:03:24.076 --> 0:03:30.196 the definitions part is critically important, especially now. So what 0:03:30.356 --> 0:03:34.516 white power refers to is a movement that comes out 0:03:34.516 --> 0:03:38.356 of the Vietnam War, brings together a bunch of ideologically 0:03:38.436 --> 0:03:41.916 diverse activists who had not been working together before. Such 0:03:41.916 --> 0:03:46.236 as clansmen, Neo Nazis, skinheads, radical tax resistors, white separatists, 0:03:46.236 --> 0:03:50.836 and others, and kind of amalgamates them into one social movement, 0:03:51.036 --> 0:03:53.356 using the narrative of the war to bind them together, 0:03:53.676 --> 0:03:57.516 and then declares war on the federal government. So that 0:03:57.676 --> 0:04:02.676 begins in nineteen eighty three. Before that, I would characterize 0:04:03.236 --> 0:04:07.876 things like the many iterations of the KKK, the Neo 0:04:07.956 --> 0:04:10.836 Nazi Party in the United States. Those things are more 0:04:10.916 --> 0:04:16.036 like vigilante violence in that the violence is either supporting 0:04:16.556 --> 0:04:21.276 the state or supporting local status quo power. Post nineteen 0:04:21.316 --> 0:04:24.916 eighty three, we're dealing with a completely different thing. After that, 0:04:25.036 --> 0:04:27.876 it is a revolutionary movement that is attempting to overthrow 0:04:27.916 --> 0:04:31.716 the United States, either through a kind of long asymmetrical 0:04:31.836 --> 0:04:36.716 war of sabotage or through a direct revolution. So that's 0:04:36.716 --> 0:04:40.756 the white power movement. The tricky one for a lot 0:04:40.796 --> 0:04:44.876 of people is white nationalism. And actually I think it's 0:04:44.876 --> 0:04:47.276 easier to understand right now because all of these stories 0:04:47.276 --> 0:04:51.036 in the news about Hindu nationalism make this distinction really 0:04:51.036 --> 0:04:54.836 really clear. So Hindu nationalism, for listeners who might not 0:04:54.876 --> 0:04:58.956 be familiar, is a movement in India in which people 0:04:59.116 --> 0:05:01.996 who are a Hindu nationalist, and they call themselves that 0:05:02.436 --> 0:05:08.436 are organizing to make India more oriented around Hinduism in 0:05:08.596 --> 0:05:11.996 culture and in policy. Right, so they're trying to inject 0:05:12.076 --> 0:05:16.516 the nation of India with Hinduism more than a Nardias. 0:05:17.156 --> 0:05:19.956 It's complicated in India by the fact that the name 0:05:20.076 --> 0:05:25.116 for India in the language Hindi is Hindustan. So you know, 0:05:25.516 --> 0:05:28.556 the word itself, Hindu doesn't only mean the religion, it 0:05:28.596 --> 0:05:30.676 also means a culture. It also means a civilization. It's 0:05:30.676 --> 0:05:34.916 a tricky one indeed, But the category is India. In 0:05:34.956 --> 0:05:38.836 white nationalism, the category is not the United States. The 0:05:38.956 --> 0:05:42.876 nation imagined by white nationalism after nineteen eighty three is 0:05:42.916 --> 0:05:46.156 fundamentally opposed to the United States and also to New 0:05:46.236 --> 0:05:48.876 Zealand and Australia and other nations where this takes hold. 0:05:49.476 --> 0:05:53.756 White nationalism is attempting to create a transnational group of 0:05:53.796 --> 0:05:58.476 white people that will take over white homelands, and eventually 0:05:58.556 --> 0:06:01.116 many of them hope to wage war such that they 0:06:01.156 --> 0:06:04.276 can achieve an all white world. That's not the same 0:06:04.316 --> 0:06:08.356 thing as say the clan in the nineteen twenties, where 0:06:08.356 --> 0:06:11.396 people were marching on the National Mall with their robes 0:06:11.396 --> 0:06:14.596 and hoods, but their faces uncovered, which was which is, 0:06:14.636 --> 0:06:17.716 among other things, anti immigrant. It was both about suppressing 0:06:17.756 --> 0:06:19.956 African Americans, but also the clan in the nineteen its 0:06:20.036 --> 0:06:23.916 nineteen twenties iteration was very focused on immigrants, especially from 0:06:23.916 --> 0:06:26.836 Catholic countries. The White Power movement also is anti immigrant. 0:06:26.836 --> 0:06:30.476 But the thing that's different is that after nineteen eighty three, 0:06:30.596 --> 0:06:34.076 this is an anti government, anti nation movement. It's not 0:06:34.196 --> 0:06:38.756 an over exertion of patriotism. It's not just too much nationalism. 0:06:38.796 --> 0:06:42.796 You talked about opposition to the United States as opposed 0:06:42.836 --> 0:06:46.316 to vigilante violence. But in its first iteration, when the 0:06:46.436 --> 0:06:49.756 Ku Klux Klan came into existence after the Civil War 0:06:50.316 --> 0:06:53.436 in part to resist the attempts at the creation of 0:06:53.516 --> 0:06:56.516 racial equality that we're being imposed in the South by 0:06:56.636 --> 0:07:00.116 military reconstruction, that is, by an occupation of Union troops, 0:07:01.156 --> 0:07:03.636 wasn't it also in its origins the clan at that 0:07:03.716 --> 0:07:07.116 point in a sense revolutionary. It was opposed to the 0:07:07.156 --> 0:07:10.916 government of the United States and was supporting the already 0:07:10.996 --> 0:07:15.596 defeated ideals of the Confederacy. So in some sense wasn't 0:07:15.636 --> 0:07:18.796 there a revolutionary impulse implicit in the clan from the beginning. 0:07:19.716 --> 0:07:22.556 I think yes, But I think this one is highly debatable, 0:07:22.596 --> 0:07:25.756 and I think it depends on what historians would call periodization, 0:07:25.876 --> 0:07:28.236 meaning when you choose to stop that story. So, the 0:07:28.276 --> 0:07:31.036 first clan was founded in eighteen sixty six in Pulaski, 0:07:31.076 --> 0:07:37.756 Tennessee by frustrated veterans of the Confederacy. It very quickly grew, 0:07:37.956 --> 0:07:41.396 but at the beginning was mostly understood a sort of 0:07:41.436 --> 0:07:46.076 like a burlesque prankster group. And then there is this 0:07:46.196 --> 0:07:50.196 moment when it formalizes and turns violent, and that violence 0:07:50.236 --> 0:07:55.516 is directed at African Americans, school tax collectors, school teachers, 0:07:55.676 --> 0:07:58.316 and people from the North who come in to implement 0:07:58.356 --> 0:08:02.596 reconstruction and people in the South who support reconstruction. In 0:08:02.636 --> 0:08:07.516 other words, it is an attempt either to resist the 0:08:07.596 --> 0:08:13.836 federal government's effort to reconstruct the South or to form 0:08:13.876 --> 0:08:17.316 a new system of power. So right in there is 0:08:17.316 --> 0:08:22.596 the distinction between revolutionary and something else. Historians have sort 0:08:22.636 --> 0:08:26.596 of argued a lot over this, but I think it's 0:08:26.636 --> 0:08:29.556 important to remember that the Jim Crow regime in the 0:08:29.596 --> 0:08:32.756 South is not sort of just a continuation of slavery, 0:08:33.316 --> 0:08:36.356 but something that has to be built and constructed and 0:08:36.476 --> 0:08:44.276 invented after reconstruction, the clan doesn't disappear when reconstruction ends. Instead, 0:08:44.436 --> 0:08:49.596 it largely just relocates into citizen militias, into groups like 0:08:49.596 --> 0:08:52.796 the Red Shirts and the White Shirts, into rifle clubs, 0:08:52.836 --> 0:08:56.836 and into spectacle lynchings, which are these mass public participation 0:08:56.916 --> 0:08:59.116 events that carry out a lot of the same kind 0:08:59.116 --> 0:09:01.796 of violence that the clan was already doing a lot 0:09:01.836 --> 0:09:03.116 of it in public. I mean. One of the things 0:09:03.156 --> 0:09:07.196 that always amazes me about lynching is that there are 0:09:07.276 --> 0:09:11.796 postcards that were spread through the South of people white 0:09:11.836 --> 0:09:15.796 people gathered around a lynched African American with a photograph 0:09:15.876 --> 0:09:18.116 being taken as a kind of commemoration of the event, 0:09:18.196 --> 0:09:21.036 and no one's wearing a mask, no one's hiding his face. 0:09:21.756 --> 0:09:23.676 Not only that, but there are women and children in 0:09:23.676 --> 0:09:27.036 their Sunday best clothes. These events are all very often 0:09:27.076 --> 0:09:30.036 happening on the courthouse or at local sites of power. 0:09:30.716 --> 0:09:32.516 And it's also not just in the South. These are 0:09:32.556 --> 0:09:37.036 happening in Indiana, in the Pacific Northwest, in Texas, and 0:09:37.116 --> 0:09:40.356 in fact, for one stretch in South Texas, the chance 0:09:40.436 --> 0:09:43.116 of being lynched as much higher for Mexican Americans and 0:09:43.196 --> 0:09:45.716 Mexicans than it is for African American men in the South. 0:09:47.436 --> 0:09:51.436 It's it's that move into lynching that makes me reluctant 0:09:51.476 --> 0:09:54.116 to think of it as revolutionary violence, because lynching has 0:09:54.196 --> 0:09:58.876 mostly been understood as scholars as conveying a kind of 0:09:59.036 --> 0:10:02.516 popular sovereignty of the community, in other words, that in 0:10:02.556 --> 0:10:04.956 other words, that when when you lynch somebody, the whole 0:10:04.956 --> 0:10:07.156 community is getting together to do it, it's a kind 0:10:07.156 --> 0:10:11.436 of perverted version of small d democracy, where we're doing 0:10:11.436 --> 0:10:15.276 this as a collective. Yes, it's a claim to that power. 0:10:15.316 --> 0:10:17.916 It's a taking back of sovereign power from the state. 0:10:18.396 --> 0:10:22.316 Let's turn now to that revolutionary movement which, as you 0:10:22.436 --> 0:10:27.716 described in nineteen eighty three, unites itself to some degree 0:10:27.796 --> 0:10:31.636 and declares war on the United States of America. Tell 0:10:31.716 --> 0:10:33.756 us that story, because I don't think that's very well known. 0:10:33.876 --> 0:10:38.116 The nineteen eighty three turn comes after this big infrastructure 0:10:38.156 --> 0:10:42.116 build up, an organization of social movement that happens in 0:10:42.156 --> 0:10:46.556 the years proceeding. The clan builds paramilitary training camps all 0:10:46.596 --> 0:10:50.516 around the country. It trains people in paramilitary warfare. It 0:10:50.556 --> 0:10:54.796 works on amassing weapons and material, getting money, getting people organized, 0:10:54.836 --> 0:10:58.036 getting people in contact with one another, and by nineteen 0:10:58.116 --> 0:11:01.836 eighty three. I think there are two major things that happen. 0:11:02.036 --> 0:11:04.956 One is that that infrastructure is in place. Activists know 0:11:05.036 --> 0:11:06.916 each other, They're all in the same room. They're kind 0:11:06.916 --> 0:11:09.476 of coherent around this common story of the Vietnam War, 0:11:09.916 --> 0:11:13.116 which has allowed some connections possible between different groups that 0:11:13.156 --> 0:11:16.116 weren't possible before. And the other thing that happens is 0:11:16.156 --> 0:11:20.836 they get really frustrated with Reagan. Activists in the movement 0:11:21.156 --> 0:11:24.396 don't make this revolutionary turn in a moment of leftist 0:11:24.476 --> 0:11:27.796 state power, but instead under the second term of the 0:11:27.836 --> 0:11:31.276 Reagan administration. And their argument about this is that the 0:11:31.356 --> 0:11:37.036 distance between Reagan's campaign promises and what they see as 0:11:37.156 --> 0:11:40.636 his moderation proves to them once and for all that 0:11:40.716 --> 0:11:43.716 electoral change will never deliver the kind of world they want, 0:11:43.956 --> 0:11:46.596 and therefore they need to declare war. Now. This is 0:11:47.716 --> 0:11:49.676 this is really relevant to us in the present moment 0:11:49.716 --> 0:11:53.476 because it means that even at moments when the center 0:11:53.596 --> 0:11:56.716 through the left might see kind of a moment of 0:11:56.756 --> 0:12:00.796 conservative orientation and executive power, that doesn't mean that activists 0:12:00.836 --> 0:12:02.756 on the friend right will be assuaged by that, and 0:12:02.796 --> 0:12:06.076 in fact, that's had just the opposite effect. In this case. 0:12:06.396 --> 0:12:09.076 So that's extremely important, as you say, for the question 0:12:09.236 --> 0:12:14.076 of the relationship between recent rounds of white power of 0:12:14.156 --> 0:12:17.676 violence and the Trump administration. There's a tendency on the 0:12:17.756 --> 0:12:23.636 left to say, well, look at Charlottesville, which followed Donald 0:12:23.636 --> 0:12:27.676 Trump's ascending to the presidency, and then look at subsequent 0:12:27.716 --> 0:12:30.276 events the Tree of Life shooting, for example in the 0:12:30.356 --> 0:12:33.556 United States, the Christchurch, New Zealand attacks, and to see 0:12:33.596 --> 0:12:36.716 this all as very much a result of the election 0:12:36.876 --> 0:12:40.156 of Donald Trump. And if I understand you correctly, you're 0:12:40.156 --> 0:12:43.836 telling a slightly different story about the way that white 0:12:43.836 --> 0:12:47.076 power activists reacted, for example, to the election of Ronald Reagan. 0:12:47.116 --> 0:12:50.156 It's not that they were empowered or emboldened by the 0:12:50.196 --> 0:12:53.036 election of a conservative president. It's rather that they felt 0:12:53.036 --> 0:12:55.316 that it wasn't enough and that therefore they needed to 0:12:55.356 --> 0:12:59.996 take some revolutionary action. Is that in your mind? I mean, 0:12:59.996 --> 0:13:02.076 we're jumping ahead to the president, which will come to 0:13:02.316 --> 0:13:04.996 you in good time as well. But is your view 0:13:05.036 --> 0:13:08.836 that something like that is happening now among white power activists. 0:13:08.836 --> 0:13:11.236 It's not that they're emboldened so much by Trump's election, 0:13:11.236 --> 0:13:13.116 It's that it's not enough, and it gives them reason 0:13:13.156 --> 0:13:18.236 to do more. I suspect that's what we're seeing. This 0:13:18.276 --> 0:13:20.756 is when I have to give the historian caveat that 0:13:21.316 --> 0:13:23.276 the thing that lets me see the story that I 0:13:23.316 --> 0:13:27.276 write about in the book is this archive that spans newspapers, 0:13:27.356 --> 0:13:31.956 primary source materials, FBI and other surveillance documents, court testimony. 0:13:32.356 --> 0:13:35.356 We don't get that kind of source base in real time. 0:13:35.476 --> 0:13:37.876 When you talk about as a starian, talk about the archive, 0:13:38.236 --> 0:13:42.036 you mean some literal archives, in some cases cashes of documents. 0:13:42.156 --> 0:13:44.196 But it's also the word archive is also a metaphor 0:13:44.196 --> 0:13:47.516 that a Starin's used to describe all the materials that 0:13:47.676 --> 0:13:49.516 you guys use to try to make sense of his 0:13:49.636 --> 0:13:52.636 darical events exactly. You can think about it as like 0:13:52.676 --> 0:13:54.996 the receipts for the story I'm going to tell I 0:13:55.036 --> 0:13:58.676 don't have that kind of information about events from about 0:13:58.756 --> 0:14:00.956 nineteen ninety six forward, and there are some reasons for 0:14:00.996 --> 0:14:05.396 why that is in this particular cash of sources. But 0:14:05.956 --> 0:14:09.396 the earlier period does tell us a couple of things 0:14:09.436 --> 0:14:12.756 that make me concerned about the present moment in the 0:14:12.796 --> 0:14:14.716 ways that you've just described. One of them is that 0:14:16.156 --> 0:14:21.676 when there is this moment of perceived sympathetic administration, that 0:14:21.756 --> 0:14:24.276 has not assuaged these activists, and in fact that has 0:14:24.316 --> 0:14:26.876 been seen as a call to arms. The other one 0:14:26.956 --> 0:14:30.036 is that there have always been sort of two spheres 0:14:30.076 --> 0:14:34.276 of activity in this movement. One of them is the 0:14:34.356 --> 0:14:43.596 sort of mass mobilizations like Charlottesville marches, political campaigns, organizing events, recruitment, drives, 0:14:44.236 --> 0:14:49.356 campus campaigns to recruit students, speak of public speaking to ours, 0:14:49.436 --> 0:14:53.916 things like that. The other one is this massive network 0:14:54.116 --> 0:15:00.556 of paramilitary camps, cell style terror, illegal communication in many cases, 0:15:00.716 --> 0:15:04.756 and different kinds of crime ranging from assassination to the 0:15:05.516 --> 0:15:10.476 obtaining of stolen military weapons and material to mass violence attacks. 0:15:11.116 --> 0:15:13.556 In the period that I study, those two spheres of 0:15:13.596 --> 0:15:16.716 activity happened at the same time, um and often there 0:15:16.716 --> 0:15:19.036 were people who crossed the line between those two kinds 0:15:19.036 --> 0:15:21.996 of activism, and we're undertaking both of those things as 0:15:22.036 --> 0:15:25.356 a coordinated kind of kind of campaign. The fact that 0:15:25.396 --> 0:15:29.156 we can't see that underground in real time doesn't mean 0:15:29.196 --> 0:15:33.156 that that's not happening, as as we are noticing more 0:15:33.196 --> 0:15:36.276 of these above board events and in fact, this wave 0:15:36.436 --> 0:15:39.476 of violent attacks that you describe, which I might also 0:15:39.516 --> 0:15:45.636 add Dylan Roofs shooting in Charleston. Absolutely, oh no, yeah, 0:15:45.676 --> 0:15:51.356 wells Bravik in Norway. Yes, putting those all together in 0:15:51.396 --> 0:15:53.836 one story is very very important because then we can 0:15:53.876 --> 0:15:56.116 start to say, oh, wow, this is a wave we're 0:15:56.156 --> 0:15:58.596 talking about. You know, three attempted attacks in the last 0:15:58.636 --> 0:16:01.676 six months. Um. A lot of these are mass attacks, 0:16:01.716 --> 0:16:03.756 A lot of these are people who are using the 0:16:03.756 --> 0:16:07.596 same coordinated messaging. UM. That indicates to me that we 0:16:07.676 --> 0:16:10.916 do have this two spheres model of activism going again, 0:16:11.036 --> 0:16:13.796 even if I can't see the sources in real time 0:16:13.836 --> 0:16:17.196 to be able to describe it in detail. One element 0:16:17.316 --> 0:16:19.636 that I think we need to also add to your 0:16:19.876 --> 0:16:26.636 depiction of people's common narrative of the Vietnam War having 0:16:26.676 --> 0:16:29.716 been lost because of betrayal by the American government and 0:16:30.276 --> 0:16:33.716 anti communism and they're bringing together of clan members and 0:16:33.836 --> 0:16:37.796 neo Nazis and others, is the religious component. Would you 0:16:37.836 --> 0:16:45.316 say something about the apocalyptic religious elements of the combined 0:16:45.996 --> 0:16:49.316 viewpoints that are coming together around nineteen eighty three in 0:16:49.356 --> 0:16:53.436 this revolutionary movement. Sure, there are kind of two major 0:16:53.676 --> 0:16:57.956 theological innovations of this movement. One of them is Norse paganism, 0:16:58.076 --> 0:17:03.396 so Odinism and other kind of neopagan ideologies that put 0:17:03.396 --> 0:17:06.196 forward the greatness of white cultures in different ways. So 0:17:06.276 --> 0:17:10.396 the idea is to take Nordic mythology, of which Odin 0:17:10.516 --> 0:17:13.956 is a central figure, and to say, ah, Nordic mythology 0:17:14.396 --> 0:17:18.156 equals white people's mythology something like that exactly. So there's 0:17:18.356 --> 0:17:20.996 and it comes with a whole cultural apparatus of things 0:17:20.996 --> 0:17:24.076 like writing in ruins and using the Viking imagery and 0:17:24.116 --> 0:17:27.596 things like that. The other one is Christian identity, and 0:17:27.636 --> 0:17:31.676 I think this one is more impactful for a couple 0:17:31.676 --> 0:17:34.076 of different reasons. One is that it has a very 0:17:34.156 --> 0:17:37.076 clear role for women, who turn out to be enormously 0:17:37.116 --> 0:17:41.716 important to motivating this movement and holding it together. The 0:17:41.796 --> 0:17:45.676 other is for its depiction of the end of the world. 0:17:46.236 --> 0:17:49.636 So the nineteen eighties in general are a time of 0:17:49.916 --> 0:17:53.116 deep fixation on the end of the world. There's deep, 0:17:53.196 --> 0:17:58.196 deep apocalyptic belief kind of across American culture, including in 0:17:58.316 --> 0:18:02.396 evangelical churches, which are recruiting much larger congregations and much 0:18:02.396 --> 0:18:07.196 more politicized congregations in the nineteen eighties. Now in evangelical Christianity, 0:18:07.276 --> 0:18:09.876 that comes with a belief in a day all the rapture, 0:18:10.236 --> 0:18:12.596 which is a moment when all of the faithful are 0:18:12.636 --> 0:18:16.556 supposed to be peacefully transported to Heaven before this big, 0:18:16.636 --> 0:18:20.636 bloody last battle that will come right before the return 0:18:20.676 --> 0:18:25.396 of Christ. So Christian identity has no rapture, but it 0:18:25.436 --> 0:18:28.916 does have the battle. So what Christian identity does is 0:18:29.436 --> 0:18:33.196 turn its believers into either survivalists. You either have to 0:18:33.236 --> 0:18:37.036 survive this end times before Jesus returns, or you have 0:18:37.116 --> 0:18:39.556 to become a soldier of God to clear the world 0:18:39.596 --> 0:18:43.596 of non white populations before you know, before Christ can 0:18:43.636 --> 0:18:46.636 return to the world. So what it does is transfigure 0:18:46.716 --> 0:18:50.556 this whole host of social issues that are important to 0:18:50.596 --> 0:18:54.716 the white power movement into a holy war. And one 0:18:54.716 --> 0:18:56.716 way to think about this is that it comes with 0:18:56.756 --> 0:19:00.396 this intense sense of emergency about something that people talk 0:19:00.436 --> 0:19:05.236 about very casually in American culture, which is this kind 0:19:05.236 --> 0:19:09.356 of imagined moment of demographic change when the country will 0:19:09.396 --> 0:19:12.676 switch over from a majority white population to something else. 0:19:13.956 --> 0:19:16.676 And as different communities begin to make that transition in 0:19:16.716 --> 0:19:18.836 the eighties and the nineties, these activists get more and 0:19:18.876 --> 0:19:24.276 more preoccupied with this. For people in the white power movement, 0:19:25.596 --> 0:19:29.996 the issues that might be conservative or understandable to us 0:19:29.996 --> 0:19:38.716 as conservative, like opposing immigration, opposing abortion, LGBT rights, opposing feminism, 0:19:38.756 --> 0:19:41.716 being in favor of racial segregation or freedom of association. 0:19:42.356 --> 0:19:45.916 All of that stuff, for white power activists is attached 0:19:46.156 --> 0:19:50.316 to this deep preoccupation with the future of the race 0:19:50.916 --> 0:19:54.876 through the production of white babies. So it's not for 0:19:54.956 --> 0:19:59.196 white power activists just they oppose abortion because it's a 0:19:59.236 --> 0:20:02.676 conservative issue or because they have concerns about unborn life. 0:20:03.076 --> 0:20:06.556 It's that they oppose abortion because abortion is one thing 0:20:06.636 --> 0:20:11.396 that is threatening the white birthrate, along with immigration integration, 0:20:11.396 --> 0:20:13.076 which they think will result in the birth of non 0:20:13.076 --> 0:20:15.236 white children or mixed race children who they see as 0:20:15.276 --> 0:20:20.636 non human. LGBT rights they think will take white women 0:20:21.236 --> 0:20:24.476 out of the work of birthing children. They're worried about 0:20:24.516 --> 0:20:27.156 feminism because they think women should be at home raising children. 0:20:27.556 --> 0:20:30.116 This whole production of white children thing is like the 0:20:30.156 --> 0:20:32.796 glue that holds together this whole belief system. And in 0:20:32.876 --> 0:20:34.516 order for it to make sense, you really have to 0:20:34.516 --> 0:20:38.716 think about how vivid and immediate this sense of emergency 0:20:39.116 --> 0:20:43.196 is to these activists. They feel this as an apocalyptic threat, 0:20:43.316 --> 0:20:46.236 so not as kind of like a soft demographic change 0:20:46.276 --> 0:20:48.756 that's going to come at some point. Okay, so you 0:20:48.836 --> 0:20:55.516 get this attempt to unify these disparate, potentially disparate social 0:20:55.756 --> 0:20:59.236 groups around a common vision and a kind of a 0:20:59.236 --> 0:21:03.396 common ideology. It's happening in the middle of the nineteen eighties, 0:21:04.116 --> 0:21:10.996 and it then leads to some rather extraordinary consequences, most 0:21:11.156 --> 0:21:13.316 saliently in your book. And this is the kind of 0:21:13.356 --> 0:21:18.436 climactic point in your book, the nineteen ninety five bombing 0:21:18.676 --> 0:21:23.076 of the Oklahoma City Federal Building by Timothy McVay and 0:21:23.236 --> 0:21:26.156 a group of others, And will say more about that group. 0:21:26.516 --> 0:21:30.436 How did that spectacular bombing spectacular in the sense that 0:21:30.476 --> 0:21:34.116 it was a spectacle. It created a spectacle in which 0:21:34.196 --> 0:21:37.836 nearly one hundred and seventy people were killed grow out 0:21:37.916 --> 0:21:40.356 of this movement? How did the movement go from, as 0:21:40.356 --> 0:21:44.476 it were, a group of possibly crazy looking peripheral people 0:21:44.996 --> 0:21:48.396 to a cohesive movement that could produce an attack like this. 0:21:50.196 --> 0:21:52.356 That's a great question, and the short answer is through 0:21:52.436 --> 0:21:57.116 women during the nineteen eighties. What unfolds is not sort 0:21:57.156 --> 0:22:04.476 of a popularly understood collection of shrieking and ignorant activists 0:22:04.516 --> 0:22:09.716 in backwoods something, you know, doing their own and fighting 0:22:09.756 --> 0:22:12.636 with each other, etcetera. What we see is actually a 0:22:12.836 --> 0:22:17.396 broad ranging social movement. It includes men, women, and children. 0:22:17.596 --> 0:22:22.196 It includes people in all regions of the country, including rural, suburban, 0:22:22.236 --> 0:22:25.036 and urban spaces, and includes people of a lot of 0:22:25.036 --> 0:22:28.796 different age groups, people with education ranging from high school 0:22:28.876 --> 0:22:34.756 dropout and to homeschool to I mean rocket launch engineer 0:22:34.876 --> 0:22:40.156 kind of people. Um. Religious leaders and felons and civilians, 0:22:40.236 --> 0:22:45.116 veterans and active duty troops. So it's really a disprint 0:22:45.156 --> 0:22:50.676 group of people group the word poor everybody. Yeah, well done. No, no, 0:22:50.716 --> 0:22:52.716 not at all. It's a very diverse group of people 0:22:52.756 --> 0:22:56.796 except racially, yes, um. And it even has multiple faiths 0:22:56.836 --> 0:22:59.676 in it, as we talked about. So that UM, that 0:22:59.836 --> 0:23:03.796 structure UM, together with this turn against the state, leads 0:23:03.796 --> 0:23:06.796 them to adopt a strategy called leaderless resistance in nineteen 0:23:06.836 --> 0:23:09.036 eighty three. So talk to us about leaderless resistance because 0:23:09.036 --> 0:23:12.276 that hugely important for the present moment as well. It 0:23:12.436 --> 0:23:16.876 is leaderless resistance is easy to understand now as just 0:23:17.116 --> 0:23:20.196 cell style terrorism. The idea is that you're going to 0:23:21.316 --> 0:23:27.716 indoctrinate and shape activists and maybe small cohorts of cells, 0:23:27.956 --> 0:23:30.756 like one to six people, maybe the occasional larger cell 0:23:30.796 --> 0:23:33.756 of twelve people, maybe just one to two activists you're 0:23:33.796 --> 0:23:37.436 going to get them all aligned towards the same targets, 0:23:37.796 --> 0:23:41.116 and then they're going to act independently, without communication with 0:23:41.196 --> 0:23:44.836 leadership and without communication with each other. Now, there's actually 0:23:44.876 --> 0:23:47.916 a historical reason for why they adopt this strategy, which 0:23:47.956 --> 0:23:51.356 is that in the earlier clan, in the fifties and 0:23:51.356 --> 0:23:53.516 the sixties, the Third Era clan, which is the one 0:23:53.516 --> 0:23:57.356 that opposes the Civil rights movement, the federal government had 0:23:57.396 --> 0:24:02.116 sent in a ton of informants under the FBI's Counterintelligence 0:24:02.156 --> 0:24:06.316 Project and other initiatives, and clansmen got really really frustrated 0:24:06.396 --> 0:24:08.276 with how many of these people were getting into their 0:24:08.276 --> 0:24:10.756 meetings and messing their stuff and getting people arrested and 0:24:10.796 --> 0:24:12.676 turning over mailing lists and all kinds of things like that. 0:24:13.116 --> 0:24:17.116 So leaderless resistance is actually implemented in large part to 0:24:17.196 --> 0:24:21.916 foil surveillance, and it has the other kind of immediate 0:24:22.716 --> 0:24:26.996 benefit of foiling court prosecution. But the lasting impact of 0:24:27.036 --> 0:24:30.476 it has actually been to foil public understanding. Because what 0:24:30.516 --> 0:24:33.996 happens is leaders resistance plays right into this sort of 0:24:34.076 --> 0:24:39.036 media narrative about lone wolf violence or crazy people or 0:24:39.076 --> 0:24:42.276 a few bad apples or mad gunmen, right where we 0:24:42.356 --> 0:24:45.956 get a lot of different stories about one person committing 0:24:45.996 --> 0:24:48.316 an act of violence and don't get the apparatus to 0:24:48.316 --> 0:24:52.636 put those things together into the same history. So leaderless 0:24:52.636 --> 0:24:54.676 resistance is one of the ways that we get from 0:24:54.756 --> 0:24:57.956 the formation of the movement to Oklahoma City. The other 0:24:57.996 --> 0:25:03.636 one is the implementation of computer social networking. In nineteen 0:25:03.716 --> 0:25:07.916