Bring the War Home

The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America

De: Kathleen Belew

Narrado por: Jo Anna Perrin

The white power movement in America wants a revolution. It has declared all-out war against the federal government and its agents, and has carried out - with military precision - an escalating campaign of terror against the American public. Its soldiers are not lone wolves but are highly organized cadres motivated by a coherent and deeply troubling worldview of white supremacy, anticommunism, and apocalypse.

In Bring the War Home, Kathleen Belew gives us the first full history of the movement that consolidated in the 1970s and 1980s around a potent sense of betrayal in the Vietnam War and made tragic headlines in the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.

Returning to an America ripped apart by a war that, in their view, they were not allowed to win, a small but driven group of veterans, active-duty personnel, and civilian supporters concluded that waging war on their own country was justified. They unified people from a variety of militant groups, including Klansmen, neo-Nazis, skinheads, radical tax protestors, and white separatists.The white power movement operated with discipline and clarity, undertaking assassinations, mercenary soldiering, armed robbery, counterfeiting, and weapons trafficking. Its command structure gave women a prominent place in brokering intergroup alliances and giving birth to future recruits.

Belew's disturbing history reveals how war cannot be contained in time and space. In its wake, grievances intensify and violence becomes a logical course of action for some. Bring the War Home argues for awareness of the heightened potential for paramilitarism in a present defined by ongoing war.

©2018 Kathleen Belew (P)2018 Tantor

The reader

I have not seen a more robotic story teller than this woman. Great information, however.

Get the print version

The information in this book is worthwhile. The narrator makes it impossible to absorb as an audiobook.

Unknown

The book explains many things about this period of US history that were seen yet not fully understood by many who lived through it.
Everyone who lived during these years should read this book. Those who are too young to have experienced the Vietnam era should read this book — to understand how we are still living with many of the same challenges and hope they will learn how to recognize propaganda that distorts reality from fiction.

The reality that we have not move from the past

This book finally gave words to the sentiments that many Not members of the alt right have suspected and been saying. It’s no excuse but in my opinion it’s a book that even if,you don’t agree with their behavior it allows you understand it. Not to excuse it or normalize it.

Informative and disturbing

Could not be more relevant right now in America during fuhrer Trump's white power driven administration.

Impartial, much-needed narrative history

Belew is a remarkably thorough and brave scholar, and she needs to be to meet the scholarly challenge of assembling a credible narrative history of a furtive and violent movement like this. Given that much of the movement’s developments involved clandestine and often criminal behavior, it takes great care to assemble and sort through the archive to develop the contours of the real story. That scholarship also involves personal bravery, since the white power movement valorizes acts of  pseudo »lone-wolf » terrorist violence. Finally, the history itself is grippingly narrated and the analysis is intellectually insightful.

Scary and Relevant

Took me about 3 moths to work my way through this one. Disturbing. But a must read.

Insightful

An interesting compilation of the US white power and neo-Nazi movements. The story could drag a bit but overall worth listening to. I did get slightly tired of the narrator. Final paragraphs spoke of the US governments failure to end white supremacy movement. Not much of a surprise in that the US government and our system is in steep decline and has been for approximately 60 years

Like it or not, you need to read this book!

In this book, Kathleen Belew connects all the dots that the white power movement has so painstakingly and often successfully attempted to obscure. The public needs to see this movement with clear eyes and government leaders need to acknowledge and confront it aggressively if they truly intend to fulfill their oath to "...preserve, protect and defend..." the constitution from enemies, foriegn and domestic.

Essential Reading

Belew unveils the continuity of white power movement networks in the US from the 1970’s till today.