WEBVTT - The History of the White Power Movement (Rebroadcast) 0:00:15.396 --> 0:00:24.436 Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show 0:00:24.436 --> 0:00:27.596 where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news. 0:00:28.076 --> 0:00:31.396 I'm Noah Feldman. We're going to have a new episode 0:00:31.396 --> 0:00:34.836 in your feed on Wednesday, but before then, I wanted 0:00:34.876 --> 0:00:38.276 to share this episode with you from our archives. I 0:00:38.316 --> 0:00:40.836 couldn't stop thinking about it in the light of the 0:00:40.916 --> 0:00:45.076 insurrection at the Capitol. It's a conversation I had with 0:00:45.196 --> 0:00:48.996 Kathleen Bellou, a historian at the University of Chicago. Her 0:00:49.036 --> 0:00:52.316 book Bring the War Home, The White Power Movement and 0:00:52.396 --> 0:00:56.916 Paramilitary America is the definitive look at the modern history 0:00:57.196 --> 0:01:00.436 of the white power movement. I spoke to Kathleen in 0:01:00.476 --> 0:01:03.516 May of twenty nineteen, just after a shooting at a 0:01:03.556 --> 0:01:06.916 synagogue outside San Diego in which one person was killed 0:01:07.116 --> 0:01:10.356 and three were injured. She held me then see how 0:01:10.356 --> 0:01:12.876 that shooting was not just an isolated action by a 0:01:12.876 --> 0:01:16.556 white supremacist, but part of a broader social movement, and 0:01:16.636 --> 0:01:21.676 she predicted that there would be more attacks. Unfortunately, Kathleen 0:01:22.076 --> 0:01:25.356 was right. I've been thinking about our conversation because it 0:01:25.476 --> 0:01:29.556 helped me put what happened at the Capitol into historical context. 0:01:30.316 --> 0:01:33.676 It's no surprise that Kathleen has been widely interviewed and 0:01:33.796 --> 0:01:36.996 quoted in the last week. I hope listening to her 0:01:37.076 --> 0:01:40.676 now helps you contextualize the same way it has done 0:01:40.876 --> 0:01:52.396 for me. Kathleen, welcome to Deep Background. Before we dive 0:01:52.596 --> 0:01:56.796 into the history and prehistory of white power and white supremacy, 0:01:56.876 --> 0:01:59.156 can I ask you just a personal question, how did 0:01:59.196 --> 0:02:01.516 she get interested in this topic? It is not the 0:02:01.596 --> 0:02:05.196 most obvious topic for historian to work on. It isn't 0:02:05.196 --> 0:02:08.596 and in fact, when I began the dissertation, I was 0:02:08.636 --> 0:02:10.996 told by more than one person that it technically could 0:02:10.996 --> 0:02:13.916 not count as history, because the usual rule of thumb 0:02:13.916 --> 0:02:15.716 when you're starting a dissertation is that you should be 0:02:15.756 --> 0:02:19.036 studying things twenty five years ago or further is the rule. 0:02:19.756 --> 0:02:21.196 It turns out that it took me so long to 0:02:21.196 --> 0:02:23.236 finish the book that I had cleared that mark by 0:02:23.276 --> 0:02:26.636 the time it was all said and done. But I 0:02:26.676 --> 0:02:30.556 actually think that the study of the recent past has become, 0:02:30.596 --> 0:02:32.956 as you can see with this project, urgently important to 0:02:33.076 --> 0:02:37.676 understanding our political moment and the debates and challenges that 0:02:37.716 --> 0:02:40.396 we now find ourselves embroiled in. I wanted to start 0:02:40.396 --> 0:02:44.516 by asking about the category of white power or white supremacy, 0:02:45.116 --> 0:02:48.076 certainly in a country like the United States, which had 0:02:48.116 --> 0:02:50.716 slavery from the very beginning of the country, and of 0:02:50.716 --> 0:02:53.236 course there was slavery long before there was a United States. 0:02:53.716 --> 0:02:59.196 In North America. The idea that white people are superior 0:02:59.236 --> 0:03:02.196 to the black people, that people of African descent, is 0:03:02.636 --> 0:03:05.996 almost baked in to the earliest history of the country 0:03:05.996 --> 0:03:09.636 and the prehistory of the country. And I wonder, how 0:03:09.636 --> 0:03:11.556 do you know where to start? You know, when you 0:03:11.596 --> 0:03:14.716 talk about white power or white supremacy. You know, how 0:03:14.716 --> 0:03:16.036 do you know that you don't have to start all 0:03:16.036 --> 0:03:17.916 the way back in the sixteen hundreds when the first 0:03:17.956 --> 0:03:21.116 African slaves were brought to the Americas, or in seventeen 0:03:21.116 --> 0:03:24.516 eighty seven with the US Constitution, which enshrines slavery in 0:03:24.556 --> 0:03:29.236 certain respects. The what's you are working starting place when 0:03:29.236 --> 0:03:32.516 you start thinking about white power. So when I teach 0:03:32.556 --> 0:03:34.916 this to my undergraduates, we do start with those long 0:03:35.076 --> 0:03:39.676 histories of racial inequality, the ways that white supremacy is 0:03:39.716 --> 0:03:42.836 not only a matter of ideological belief for some people 0:03:42.836 --> 0:03:45.996 in the United States, but has become imbricated in our 0:03:45.996 --> 0:03:49.276 systems of government, our distribution of resources, are policing and 0:03:49.396 --> 0:03:52.276 all kinds of other ways. It's everywhere. Race is everywhere 0:03:52.276 --> 0:03:55.316 in this country. Race is everywhere. I think reasonable people 0:03:55.356 --> 0:04:00.316 can agree on that. I think that the definitions part 0:04:00.836 --> 0:04:05.756 is critically important, especially now. So what white power refers 0:04:05.796 --> 0:04:09.636 to is a movement that comes out of the Nam War, 0:04:10.116 --> 0:04:14.156 brings together a bunch of ideologically diverse activists who had 0:04:14.196 --> 0:04:18.196 not been working together before, such as clansmen, Neo Nazis, skinheads, 0:04:18.276 --> 0:04:22.796 radical tax resistors, white separatists, and others, and kind of 0:04:22.796 --> 0:04:26.236 amalgamates them into one social movement, using the narrative of 0:04:26.236 --> 0:04:29.236 the war to bind them together, and then declares war 0:04:29.396 --> 0:04:33.436 on the federal government. So that begins in nineteen eighty three. 0:04:34.556 --> 0:04:39.516 Before that, I would characterize things like the mini iterations 0:04:39.516 --> 0:04:43.676 of the KKK, the Neo Nazi Party in the United States. 0:04:43.996 --> 0:04:48.036 Those things are more like vigilante violence, in that the 0:04:48.196 --> 0:04:53.196 violence is either supporting the state or supporting local status 0:04:53.276 --> 0:04:56.836 quo power. Post nineteen eighty three, we're dealing with a 0:04:56.836 --> 0:05:00.796 completely different thing. After that, it is a revolutionary movement 0:05:00.836 --> 0:05:03.556 that is attempting to overthrow the United States, either through 0:05:04.396 --> 0:05:07.796 a kind of long asymmetrical war of sabotage or through 0:05:07.876 --> 0:05:13.436 a direct revolution. So that's the white power movement. The 0:05:13.796 --> 0:05:17.956 tricky one for a lot of people is white nationalism. 0:05:17.996 --> 0:05:20.436 And actually, I think it's easier to understand right now 0:05:20.476 --> 0:05:23.276 because all of these stories in the news about Hindu 0:05:23.396 --> 0:05:27.916 nationalism make this distinction really, really clear. So Hindu nationalism, 0:05:27.956 --> 0:05:31.076 for listeners who meant to be familiar, is a movement 0:05:31.116 --> 0:05:35.316 in India in which people who are a Hindu nationalists 0:05:35.316 --> 0:05:39.956 and they call themselves that are organizing to make India 0:05:40.556 --> 0:05:44.956 more oriented around Hinduism in culture and in policy. Right, 0:05:45.076 --> 0:05:47.636 so they're trying to inject the nation of India with 0:05:47.836 --> 0:05:52.716 Hinduism more than an Ardias. It's complicated in India by 0:05:52.756 --> 0:05:56.316 the fact that the name for India in the language 0:05:56.276 --> 0:06:00.516 and Hindi is Hindustan. So you know, the word itself, 0:06:00.596 --> 0:06:03.716 Hindu doesn't only mean the religion. It also means a culture, 0:06:03.756 --> 0:06:06.556 also means a civilization. It's a tricky one, indeed. But 0:06:06.596 --> 0:06:11.556 the category is India white nationalism. The category is not 0:06:11.636 --> 0:06:15.556 the United States. The nation imagined by white nationalism after 0:06:15.716 --> 0:06:19.756 nineteen eighty three is fundamentally opposed to the United States 0:06:19.756 --> 0:06:22.116 and also to New Zealand and Australia and other nations 0:06:22.116 --> 0:06:25.956 where this takes hold. White nationalism is attempting to create 0:06:26.036 --> 0:06:30.756 a transnational group of white people that will take over 0:06:30.796 --> 0:06:33.996 white homelands, and eventually many of them hope to wage 0:06:34.036 --> 0:06:37.116 war such that they can achieve an all white world. 0:06:37.636 --> 0:06:41.356 That's not the same thing as say the Clan in 0:06:41.396 --> 0:06:44.716 the nineteen twenties, where people were marching on the National 0:06:44.756 --> 0:06:48.196 Mall with their robes and hoods but their faces uncovered, which, 0:06:48.316 --> 0:06:52.716 among other things, anti immigrant. It was both suppressing African Americans, 0:06:52.716 --> 0:06:54.876 but also the Clan in the nineteen it's nineteen twenties 0:06:54.876 --> 0:06:58.916 iteration was very focused on immigrants, especially from Catholic countries. 0:06:59.076 --> 0:07:01.236 The white power movement also is anti immigrant. But the 0:07:01.236 --> 0:07:04.956 thing that's different is that after nineteen eighty three, this 0:07:05.036 --> 0:07:08.476 is an anti government, anti nation movement. It's not an 0:07:08.516 --> 0:07:12.956 over exert of patriotism. It's not just too much nationalism. 0:07:12.996 --> 0:07:17.036 You talked about opposition to the United States as opposed 0:07:17.036 --> 0:07:20.556 to vigilante violence. But in its first iteration, when the 0:07:20.636 --> 0:07:23.996 ku Klux Klan came into existence after the Civil War 0:07:24.556 --> 0:07:27.636 in part to resist the attempts at the creation of 0:07:27.716 --> 0:07:30.716 racial equality that we're being imposed in the South by 0:07:30.836 --> 0:07:34.316 military reconstruction, that is, by an occupation of Union troops. 0:07:35.356 --> 0:07:37.876 Wasn't it also in its origins the clan at that 0:07:37.916 --> 0:07:41.356 point in a sense revolutionary. It was opposed to the 0:07:41.356 --> 0:07:44.636 government of the United States, and it was supporting the 0:07:44.716 --> 0:07:49.156 already defeated ideals of the Confederacy. So in some sense, 0:07:49.596 --> 0:07:52.516 wasn't there a revolutionary impulse implicit in the clan from 0:07:52.516 --> 0:07:55.716 the beginning? I think yes, But I think this one 0:07:55.796 --> 0:07:58.156 is highly debatable, and I think it depends on what 0:07:58.236 --> 0:08:01.476 historians would call periodization, meaning when you choose to stop 0:08:01.516 --> 0:08:03.956 that story. So, the first clan was founded in eighteen 0:08:04.036 --> 0:08:09.716 sixty six in Pulaski, Tennessee, by frustrated veterans of the Federacy. 0:08:10.596 --> 0:08:13.836 It very quickly grew, but at the beginning was mostly 0:08:14.676 --> 0:08:19.276 understood as sort of like a burlesque prankster group. And 0:08:19.316 --> 0:08:23.076 then there is this moment when it formalizes and turns violent, 0:08:23.556 --> 0:08:27.916 and that violence is directed at African Americans, school tax collectors, 0:08:28.836 --> 0:08:31.876 school teachers, and people from the North who come in 0:08:31.916 --> 0:08:36.236 to implement reconstruction and people in the South who support reconstruction. 0:08:36.676 --> 0:08:40.716 In other words, it is an attempt either to resist 0:08:41.596 --> 0:08:46.316 the federal government's efforts to reconstruct the South or to 0:08:47.476 --> 0:08:51.396 form a new system of power. So right in there 0:08:51.436 --> 0:08:56.476 is the distinction between revolutionary and something else. Historians have 0:08:56.556 --> 0:09:00.596 sort of argued a lot over this, but I think 0:09:00.636 --> 0:09:03.676 it's important to remember that the Jim Crow regime in 0:09:03.676 --> 0:09:06.956 the South is not sort of just a continuation of slavery, 0:09:07.516 --> 0:09:10.596 but something that has to be built and constructed and 0:09:10.676 --> 0:09:18.436 invented after reconstruction. The clan doesn't disappear when reconstruction ends. Instead, 0:09:18.676 --> 0:09:23.796 it largely just relocates into citizen militias, into groups like 0:09:23.836 --> 0:09:26.996 the Red Shirts and the White Shirts, into rifle clubs, 0:09:27.036 --> 0:09:31.036 and into spectacle lynchings, which are these mass public participation 0:09:31.116 --> 0:09:33.356 events that carry out a lot of the same kind 0:09:33.356 --> 0:09:35.876 of violence that the clan was already doing, but a 0:09:35.916 --> 0:09:37.116 lot of it in public. I mean, one of the 0:09:37.156 --> 0:09:41.236 things that always amazes me about lynching is that there 0:09:41.236 --> 0:09:45.436 are postcards that were spread through the South of people 0:09:45.716 --> 0:09:49.516 white people gathered around a lynched African American with a 0:09:49.516 --> 0:09:52.316 photograph being taken as a kind of commemoration of the event, 0:09:52.396 --> 0:09:54.516 and no one, no one's wearing a mask, no one's 0:09:54.556 --> 0:09:57.356 hiding his face. Not only that, but there are women 0:09:57.356 --> 0:10:00.476 and children in their Sunday best clothes. These events are 0:09:59.676 --> 0:10:03.436 all very often happening on the courthouse or at local 0:10:03.516 --> 0:10:06.316 sites of power. And it's also not just in the South. 0:10:06.396 --> 0:10:10.436 These are happening in Indiana and the Pacific Northwest, in Texas, 0:10:11.156 --> 0:10:14.196 and in fact, for one stretch in South Texas, the 0:10:14.276 --> 0:10:17.196 chance of being lynched as much higher for Mexican Americans 0:10:17.236 --> 0:10:19.516 and Mexicans than it is for African American men in 0:10:19.556 --> 0:10:25.036 the South. It's that move into lynching that makes me 0:10:25.156 --> 0:10:28.156 reluctant to think of it as revolutionary violence, because lynching 0:10:28.156 --> 0:10:32.836 has mostly been understood as scholars as conveying a kind 0:10:32.996 --> 0:10:36.756 of popular sovereignty of the community, in other words, in 0:10:36.796 --> 0:10:39.636 other words, that when you lynch somebody, the whole community 0:10:39.716 --> 0:10:41.476 is getting together to do it. It's a kind of 0:10:41.596 --> 0:10:45.716 perverted version of small d democracy, where we're doing this 0:10:45.956 --> 0:10:49.476 as a collective. Yes, it's a claim to that power. 0:10:49.516 --> 0:10:52.116 It's a taking back of sovereign power from the state. 0:10:52.596 --> 0:10:56.516 Let's turn now to that revolutionary movement which, as you 0:10:56.636 --> 0:11:01.716 described in nineteen eighty three, unites itself to some degree 0:11:01.996 --> 0:11:05.836 and declares war on the United States of America. Tell 0:11:05.916 --> 0:11:07.956 us that story, because I don't think that's very well known. 0:11:08.076 --> 0:11:12.316 The nineteen eighty three turn comes after this big infrastructure 0:11:12.356 --> 0:11:15.796 build up, an organization of a social movement that happens 0:11:16.196 --> 0:11:20.596 in the years proceeding. The clan builds paramilitary training camps 0:11:20.636 --> 0:11:23.956 all around the country, It trains people in paramilitary warfare. 0:11:24.636 --> 0:11:28.036 It works on amassing weapons and material, getting money, getting 0:11:28.036 --> 0:11:31.636 people organized, getting people in contact with one another. And 0:11:31.716 --> 0:11:35.276 by nineteen eighty three, I think there are two major 0:11:35.356 --> 0:11:38.316 things that happen. One is that that infrastructure is in place. 0:11:38.396 --> 0:11:40.636 Activists know each other, They're all in the same room. 0:11:40.716 --> 0:11:42.956 They're kind of coherent around this common story of the 0:11:43.036 --> 0:11:46.916 Vietnam War, which has allowed some connections possible between different 0:11:46.956 --> 0:11:49.836 groups that weren't possible before. And the other thing that 0:11:49.876 --> 0:11:54.476 happens is they get really frustrated with Reagan. Activists in 0:11:54.516 --> 0:11:57.956 the movement don't make this revolutionary turn in a moment 0:11:57.956 --> 0:12:01.836 of leftist state power, but instead under the second term 0:12:01.836 --> 0:12:04.756 of the Reagan administration. And their argument about this is 0:12:04.756 --> 0:12:10.636 that the distance between Reagan's campaign promises and what they 0:12:10.676 --> 0:12:14.396 see as his moderation proves to them once and for 0:12:14.476 --> 0:12:17.236 all that electoral change will never deliver the kind of 0:12:17.276 --> 0:12:19.996 world they want, and therefore they need to declare war. 0:12:20.316 --> 0:12:23.196 Now this is this is really relevant to us in 0:12:23.196 --> 0:12:25.956 the present moment, because it means that even at moments 0:12:25.996 --> 0:12:30.276 when the center through the left might see kind of 0:12:30.276 --> 0:12:34.276 a moment of conservative orientation and executive power, that doesn't 0:12:34.276 --> 0:12:36.476 mean that activists on the fringe right will be assuaged 0:12:36.516 --> 0:12:39.156 by that, And in fact that's had just the opposite 0:12:39.276 --> 0:12:42.596 effect in this case. So that's extremely important, as you say, 0:12:42.716 --> 0:12:46.836 for the question of the relationship between recent rounds of 0:12:47.596 --> 0:12:51.156 white power of violence and the Trump administration, there's a 0:12:51.156 --> 0:12:55.236 tendency on the left to say, well, look at Charlottesville, 0:12:55.756 --> 0:13:00.956 which followed Donald Trump's assenting to the presidency, and then 0:13:01.036 --> 0:13:03.956 look at subsequent events the Tree of Life shooting, for 0:13:03.996 --> 0:13:07.076 example in the United States, the Christchurch, New Zealand attacks, 0:13:07.116 --> 0:13:10.356 and to see this all as much a result of 0:13:10.396 --> 0:13:14.116 the election of Donald Trump. And if I understand you correctly, 0:13:14.196 --> 0:13:17.596 you're telling a slightly different story about the way that 0:13:17.796 --> 0:13:20.476 white power activists reacted, for example, to the election of 0:13:20.716 --> 0:13:23.716 Ronald Reagan. It's not that they were empowered or emboldened 0:13:24.156 --> 0:13:26.756 by the election of a conservative president. It's rather that 0:13:26.796 --> 0:13:29.116 they felt that it wasn't enough, and that therefore they 0:13:29.196 --> 0:13:33.996 needed to take some revolutionary action. Is that in your mind? 0:13:33.996 --> 0:13:36.036 I mean, we're jumping ahead to the president, which will 0:13:36.076 --> 0:13:38.636 come to you in good time as well. But is 0:13:38.836 --> 0:13:41.396 your view that something like that is happening now among 0:13:41.516 --> 0:13:44.636 white power activists. It's not that they're emboldened so much 0:13:44.676 --> 0:13:46.636 by Trump's election, it's that it's not enough and it 0:13:46.636 --> 0:13:50.396 gives them reason to do more. I suspect that's what 0:13:50.436 --> 0:13:53.476 we're seeing. This is when I have to give the 0:13:53.596 --> 0:13:56.956 historian caveat that the thing that lets me see the 0:13:56.996 --> 0:13:58.796 story that I write about in the book is this 0:13:58.956 --> 0:14:03.876 archive that spans newspapers, primary source materials, FBI and other 0:14:03.956 --> 0:14:07.516 surveillance documents, court testimony. We don't get that kind of 0:14:07.516 --> 0:14:10.636 source base in real time. When you talk about as 0:14:10.676 --> 0:14:13.956 a historian, talk about the archive, you mean some literal 0:14:14.036 --> 0:14:16.876 archives in some cases cashes of documents. But it's also 0:14:16.956 --> 0:14:18.996 the word archive is also a metaphor that a starin's 0:14:19.076 --> 0:14:22.516 used to describe all the materials that you guys use 0:14:22.636 --> 0:14:25.676 to try to make sense of his artical events. Exactly. 0:14:25.676 --> 0:14:27.516 You can think about it as like the receipts for 0:14:27.556 --> 0:14:30.276 the story I'm going to tell I don't have that 0:14:30.396 --> 0:14:34.196 kind of information about events from about nineteen ninety six forward, 0:14:34.236 --> 0:14:35.916 and there are some reasons for why that is in 0:14:35.996 --> 0:14:41.796 this particular cash of sources, but the earlier period does 0:14:41.916 --> 0:14:45.556 tell us a couple of things that make me concerned 0:14:45.596 --> 0:14:48.156 about the present moment in the ways that you've just described. 0:14:48.236 --> 0:14:51.716 One of them is that when there is this moment 0:14:51.716 --> 0:14:57.596 of perceived sympathetic administration that has not assuaged these activists, 0:14:57.596 --> 0:14:59.476 and in fact that has been seen as a call 0:14:59.516 --> 0:15:02.276 to arms. The other one is that there have always 0:15:02.316 --> 0:15:05.636 been sort of two spheres of activity in this movement. 0:15:06.196 --> 0:15:10.596 One of them is the sort of mass mobilizations like 0:15:10.676 --> 0:15:19.516 Charlottesville marches, political campaigns, organizing events, recruitment drives, campus campaigns 0:15:19.916 --> 0:15:23.876 to recruit students, speed was public speaking to ours, things 0:15:23.876 --> 0:15:28.476 like that. The other one is this massive network of 0:15:28.676 --> 0:15:34.756 paramilitary camps, cell style terror, illegal communication in many cases, 0:15:34.916 --> 0:15:38.956 and different kinds of crime ranging from assassination to the 0:15:39.716 --> 0:15:44.716 obtaining of stolen military weapons and material to mass violence attacks. 0:15:45.316 --> 0:15:47.796 In the period that I study, those two spheres of 0:15:47.796 --> 0:15:51.076 activity happened at the same time, and often there were 0:15:51.116 --> 0:15:53.956 people who crossed the line between those two kinds of activism. 0:15:54.196 --> 0:15:57.036 And we're undertaking both of those things as a coordinated 0:15:57.116 --> 0:15:59.996 kind of kind of campaign. The fact that we can't 0:16:00.116 --> 0:16:03.756 see that underground in real time doesn't mean that that's 0:16:03.796 --> 0:16:08.036 not happenings, as we are noticing more of these above 0:16:08.076 --> 0:16:12.076 board events and in fact, this wave of violent attacks 0:16:12.116 --> 0:16:15.356 that you describe, which I might also add Dylan Roofs 0:16:15.356 --> 0:16:21.196 shooting in Charleston absolutely, I oh no, yeah, well, also 0:16:21.236 --> 0:16:25.436 include Penders Bravik in Norway. Yes. Putting those all together 0:16:25.476 --> 0:16:27.916 in one story is very, very important because then we 0:16:27.916 --> 0:16:30.116 can start to say, oh, wow, this is a wave 0:16:30.156 --> 0:16:32.556 we're talking about. You know, three attempted attacks in the 0:16:32.636 --> 0:16:35.876 last six months. Um. A lot of these are mass attacks, 0:16:35.916 --> 0:16:37.956 a lot of these are people who are using the 0:16:37.996 --> 0:16:41.836 same coordinated messaging. UM. That indicates to me that we 0:16:41.876 --> 0:16:45.116 do have this two spheres model of activism going again, 0:16:45.236 --> 0:16:47.996 even if I can't see the sources in real time 0:16:48.036 --> 0:16:51.436 to be able to describe it in detail. One element 0:16:51.516 --> 0:16:53.876 that I think we need to also add to your 0:16:54.116 --> 0:17:00.836 depiction of people's common narrative of the Vietnam War having 0:17:00.876 --> 0:17:03.916 been lost because of betrayal by the American government and 0:17:04.476 --> 0:17:07.916 anti communism, and they're bringing together of clan members and 0:17:08.036 --> 0:17:11.996 neo Nazis, and other is the religious component. Would you 0:17:12.036 --> 0:17:19.556 say something about the apocalyptic religious elements of the combined 0:17:20.196 --> 0:17:23.516 viewpoints that are coming together around nineteen eighty three in 0:17:23.556 --> 0:17:27.636 this revolutionary movement. Sure, there are kind of two major 0:17:27.876 --> 0:17:32.196 theological innovations of this movement. One of them is Norse paganism, 0:17:32.276 --> 0:17:37.596 so Odinism and other kind of neopagan ideologies that put 0:17:37.636 --> 0:17:40.396 forward the greatness of white cultures in different ways. So 0:17:40.516 --> 0:17:44.596 the idea is to take Nordic mythology, of which Odin 0:17:44.716 --> 0:17:48.156 is a central figure, and to say, ah, Nordic mythology 0:17:48.636 --> 0:17:52.636 equals white people's mythology, something like that exactly so, and 0:17:52.716 --> 0:17:55.316 it comes with a whole cultural apparatus of things like 0:17:55.356 --> 0:17:58.556 writing in ruins and using the Viking imagery and things 0:17:58.596 --> 0:18:01.916 like that. The other one is Christian identity, and I 0:18:01.916 --> 0:18:05.996 think this one is more impactful for a couple of 0:18:05.996 --> 0:18:08.676 different reasons. One is that it has a very clear 0:18:08.836 --> 0:18:11.836 role for women, who turn out to be enormously important 0:18:11.876 --> 0:18:16.236 to motivating this movement and holding it together. The other 0:18:16.556 --> 0:18:19.876 is for its depiction of the end of the world. 0:18:20.476 --> 0:18:23.916 So the nineteen eighties in general are a time of 0:18:24.116 --> 0:18:27.356 deep fixation on the end of the world. There's deep, 0:18:27.396 --> 0:18:32.396 deep apocalyptic belief kind of across American culture, including in 0:18:32.516 --> 0:18:36.596 evangelical churches, which are recruiting much larger congregations and much 0:18:36.596 --> 0:18:41.396 more politicized congregations in the nineteen eighties. Now in evangelical Christianity, 0:18:41.476 --> 0:18:44.076 that comes with a belief in a day called the Rapture, 0:18:44.436 --> 0:18:46.796 which is a moment when all of the faithful are 0:18:46.836 --> 0:18:50.796 supposed to be peacefully transported to Heaven before this big, 0:18:50.876 --> 0:18:54.876 bloody last battle that will come right before the return 0:18:54.916 --> 0:18:59.596 of Christ. So Christian identity has no Rapture, but it 0:18:59.636 --> 0:19:03.116 does have the battle. So what Christian identity does is 0:19:03.636 --> 0:19:07.436 turn its believers into either survivalists. You either have to 0:19:07.436 --> 0:19:11.116 survive this end times before or Jesus returns, or you 0:19:11.156 --> 0:19:13.476 have to become a soldier of God to clear the 0:19:13.516 --> 0:19:17.636 world of non white populations before you know, before Christ 0:19:17.676 --> 0:19:20.156 can return to the world. So what it does is 0:19:20.196 --> 0:19:24.716 transfigure this whole host of social issues that are important 0:19:24.716 --> 0:19:28.676 to the white power movement into a holy war. And 0:19:28.756 --> 0:19:30.796 one way to think about this is that it comes 0:19:30.796 --> 0:19:34.436 with this intense sense of emergency about something that people 0:19:34.436 --> 0:19:38.596 talk about very casual, casually in American culture, which is 0:19:38.996 --> 0:19:42.516 this kind of imagined moment of demographic change when the 0:19:42.556 --> 0:19:45.996 country will switch over from a majority white population to 0:19:46.236 --> 0:19:50.236 something else, And as different communities begin to make that 0:19:50.276 --> 0:19:52.796 transition in the eighties and the nineties, these activists get 0:19:52.796 --> 0:19:57.396 more and more preoccupied with this. For people in the 0:19:57.436 --> 0:20:03.076 white power movement, the issues that might be conservative or 0:20:03.196 --> 0:20:08.276 understandable to us as conservative, like opposing immigration, opposing abortion, 0:20:09.156 --> 0:20:14.796 GBT rights, opposing feminism, being in favor of racial segregation, 0:20:14.876 --> 0:20:18.196 or freedom of association, all of that stuff for white 0:20:18.196 --> 0:20:23.276 power activists is attached to this deep preoccupation with the 0:20:23.276 --> 0:20:27.276 future of the race through the production of white babies. 0:20:27.716 --> 0:20:32.316 So it's not for white power activists just they oppose 0:20:32.396 --> 0:20:34.916 abortion because it's a conservative issue or because they have 0:20:34.956 --> 0:20:39.396 concerns about unborn life. It's that they oppose abortion because 0:20:39.436 --> 0:20:42.436 abortion is one thing that is threatening the white birth rate, 0:20:42.756 --> 0:20:46.676 along with immigration integration, which they think will result in 0:20:46.716 --> 0:20:48.836 the birth of non white children or mixed race children 0:20:48.836 --> 0:20:53.436 who they see as non human. LGBT rights they think 0:20:53.476 --> 0:20:58.036 will take white women out of the work of birthing children. 0:20:58.036 --> 0:21:00.196 They're worried about feminism because they think women should be 0:21:00.196 --> 0:21:03.516 at home raising children. This whole production of white children. 0:21:03.596 --> 0:21:05.916 Thing is like the glue that holds together this whole 0:21:05.916 --> 0:21:08.036 belief system. And in order for it to make sense, 0:21:08.076 --> 0:21:11.516 you really have to think about how vivid and immediate 0:21:11.596 --> 0:21:14.916 this sense of emergency is to these activists. They feel 0:21:14.956 --> 0:21:18.516 this as an apocalyptic threat, so not as kind of 0:21:18.556 --> 0:21:21.196 like a soft demographic change that's going to come at 0:21:21.196 --> 0:21:34.676 some point. We'll be right back, okay. So you get 0:21:34.716 --> 0:21:41.756 this attempt to unify these disparate, potentially disparate social groups 0:21:42.196 --> 0:21:45.676 around a common vision and a kind of a common ideology. 0:21:46.276 --> 0:21:49.996 It's happening in the middle of the nineteen eighties, and 0:21:50.276 --> 0:21:56.596 it then leads to some rather extraordinary consequences, most saliently 0:21:56.756 --> 0:21:58.876 in your book. And this is the kind of climactic 0:21:58.956 --> 0:22:03.836 point in your book, the nineteen ninety five bombing of 0:22:03.876 --> 0:22:08.116 the Oklahoma City Federal Building by Timothy McVay and a 0:22:08.196 --> 0:22:10.996 group of others, And will say more about that group. 0:22:11.356 --> 0:22:15.276 How did that spectacular bombing spectacular in the sense that 0:22:15.316 --> 0:22:18.956 it was a spectacle. It created a spectacle in which 0:22:19.036 --> 0:22:22.716 nearly one hundred and seventy people were killed grow out 0:22:22.756 --> 0:22:25.196 of this movement? How did the movement go from as 0:22:25.196 --> 0:22:29.316 it were, a group of possibly crazy looking peripheral people 0:22:29.836 --> 0:22:33.236 to a cohesive movement that could produce an attack like this. 0:22:34.996 --> 0:22:37.196 That's a great question, and the short answer is through 0:22:37.276 --> 0:22:41.956 women during the nineteen eighties. What unfolds is not sort 0:22:41.996 --> 0:22:49.316 of a popularly understood collection of shrieking and ignorant activists 0:22:49.356 --> 0:22:54.156 in backwoods something, you know, doing their own thing and 0:22:54.276 --> 0:22:57.476 fighting with each other. What we see is actually a 0:22:57.676 --> 0:23:02.196 broad ranging social movement. It includes men, women, and children. 0:23:02.396 --> 0:23:06.996 It includes people in all regions of the country, including rural, suburban, 0:23:07.076 --> 0:23:09.836 and urban spaces, and include people of a lot of 0:23:09.876 --> 0:23:13.636 different age groups, people with education ranging from high school 0:23:13.716 --> 0:23:19.596 dropout and to homeschool to I mean rocket launch engineer 0:23:19.716 --> 0:23:24.956 kind of people. Um. Religious leaders and felons and civilians, 0:23:25.076 --> 0:23:29.956 veterans and active duty troops. So it's really a sprint 0:23:29.996 --> 0:23:35.516 group of people at group for everybody. Yeah, well done. No, No, 0:23:35.556 --> 0:23:37.556 not at all. It's a very diverse group of people 0:23:37.556 --> 0:23:41.636 except racially, yes, um. And it even has multiple faiths 0:23:41.676 --> 0:23:44.476 in it. As we talked about, so that UM, that 0:23:44.676 --> 0:23:48.636 structure UM, together with this turn against the state, leads 0:23:48.636 --> 0:23:51.596 them to adopt a strategy called leaderless resistance. In nineteen 0:23:51.676 --> 0:23:53.916 eighty three, so talked to us about leaderless resistance, because 0:23:53.956 --> 0:23:57.116 that's hugely important for the present moment as well. It 0:23:57.276 --> 0:24:01.716 is leaderless resistance is easy to understand now as just 0:24:01.956 --> 0:24:04.996 cell style terrorism. The idea is that you're going to 0:24:05.516 --> 0:24:12.516 um indoctrinate and shape activist and maybe small cohorts of cells, 0:24:12.796 --> 0:24:15.596 like one to six people, maybe the occasional larger cell 0:24:15.636 --> 0:24:18.596 of twelve people, maybe just one to two activists. You're 0:24:18.596 --> 0:24:22.596 going to get them all aligned towards the same targets, 0:24:22.636 --> 0:24:25.916 and then they're going to act independently without communication with 0:24:26.036 --> 0:24:29.676 leadership and without communication with each other. Now, there's actually 0:24:29.676 --> 0:24:32.716 a historical reason for why they adopt this strategy, which 0:24:32.756 --> 0:24:36.156 is that in the earlier clan in the fifties and 0:24:36.196 --> 0:24:38.356 the sixties, the Third Era clan, which is the one 0:24:38.356 --> 0:24:42.156 that opposes the Civil Rights movement, the federal government had 0:24:42.236 --> 0:24:46.956 sent in a ton of informants under the FBI's Counterintelligence 0:24:46.996 --> 0:24:51.156 Project and other initiatives, and clansmen got really really frustrated 0:24:51.236 --> 0:24:53.116 with how many of these people were getting into their 0:24:53.116 --> 0:24:55.436 meetings and messing up their stuff and getting people arrested 0:24:55.476 --> 0:24:57.236 and turning over mailing lists and all kinds of things 0:24:57.236 --> 0:25:01.276 like that. So leaderless resistance is actually implemented in large 0:25:01.316 --> 0:25:05.916 part to foil surveillance, and it has the other kind 0:25:05.956 --> 0:25:11.236 of immediate benefit of foiling core prosecution, but the lasting 0:25:11.276 --> 0:25:14.596 impact of it has actually been to foil public understanding 0:25:14.876 --> 0:25:18.436 because what happens is leaderless resistance plays right into this 0:25:18.476 --> 0:25:23.356 sort of media narrative about lone wolf violence or crazy 0:25:23.396 --> 0:25:26.716