Planning board. I give special thank you to all of our sponsors for their generous support this year especially when trust is our programming partner, Robert Mccormick foundation, out the wood foundation, the tribune, 3 own real estate and cspan booktv. Todays program will be broadcast live on cspan2s booktv and if there is time for a q a session with the author, we ask you to use the microphone in the center of the room so the home viewing audience can participate as well. Before we begin todays program we ask that you silence your cell phone and if you are going to be taking photos during the presentation that you turn off all flash. With that said please welcome the Washington Post book critic and winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, carlos lozada, and author kathleen belew. [applause] a pleasure to be here with kathleen belew, assistant professor of history in chicago and we are here to discuss her book bring the war home the White Power Movement and paramilitary america. Kathleen hold a doctorate from Yale University and spent a decade or so working on this book. When i first encountered your book i thought what a timely moment to explore a contemporary history of this movement but by the time you finish it you realize the timeliness was the same 5 years ago or 10 years ago or 30 years ago and youve told a much longer history here well before charlottesville became shorthand for anything. First off, i am curious to know how you decided to embark on this research. I wanted to do something on truth and reconciliation commission. We have a long complex history of racial inequality in the United States, much is the history of racial violence and yet we havent seen a sustained public dialogue around race the way many other countries have that kind of history have. It took me to the trc process in north carolina, including 2005 with the books research. What they are trying to do is figure out the legacy of an event that happened on november 3, 1979, when a group of clan and neonazi protesters opened fire on leftist protests against the clan and killed 5 people when africanamerican people and four white men. An event that to a historian is already out of time, 1979 is later than you expect for clan shooting, it is in the wrong set of victims from what i thought i knew about the clan and the interesting thing is the more i got into this footage of the trc the thing the perpetrators and people affiliated with clan and neonazi groups kept saying was along the lines of i killed communists in vietnam so why wouldnt i kill them here . That collapses a lot of things, it collapses battlefront and homefront, collapses wartime and peacetime, it collapses all kinds of different communist enemies into one pool of people. I couldnt let go of what a contradiction that was in so many ways. When i followed into the archives i found that appears through these newspapers and correspondence files and throughout this movement. One of the themes of the book gets at the relationship between americas wars and periods of resurgence in white power, the period you describe, the memories and narratives surrounding vietnam serving as an inspiration. How did that relationship work . An interesting thing. If you look at the surges in kk came membership until the end of the 19th century, the 20th century, you notice very quickly that clan membership always aligned with the aftermath of warfare and they do that more consistently than they do with populism, poverty, antiimmigration so there is something about the aftermath of war that is important to these moments of vigilante and revolutionary violence perpetrated by these groups but turns out not to be as simple as a story about a rambo story of a veteran coming home and waging war at home. It turns out first of all a lot of people who claim to be veterans arent. It turns out people who are activeduty troops are involved in similar ways and becomes more violent in the aftermath it is across ages. And everything in American Society has a moment of intense violence in warfare. In the aftermath of vietnam, summons to mental veterans are using the recruitment device. And in his popular paramilitary mode is the incredibly efficient technologies, and strategies, to escalate the death toll in these acts of violence. Host your book stands roughly the 70s through the 90s. In the epilogue you slightly start looking at some of the contemporary issues, prolonged wars in iraq and afghanistan shaped a new generation, and you identify the aftermath of war produces this. Do you see that happening again following these prolonged wars in afghanistan . This is tricky to figure out. One way to think of this is this is the first year they dont remember 9 11. We have been at war their entire lives, this is a new forever war. The cycle of the violent aftermath, doesnt mean we look for lower peak, or a delay in the spike. We are completely off the map with historical precedent. One brief the tour, so many terms, i work for a newspaper, struggling with what to call White Supremacists, White Nationalists, you are very specific, you call is a White Power Movements. It is a White Supremacists movement bus White Supremacy is very broad and applies to a lot of left radical things in American Society raging from individual Belief Systems that are less extremist up to many different kinds of systems of power and we could look at court systems, there are many ways our society benefited White Supremacy over time. White nationalist is a little trickier. It is technically correct, when people hear the phrase White Nationalist most people think about something sort of benign, the overexertion of patriotism. People think about injecting whiteness. The image that comes to mind is the clan of the 1920s when people were wearing robes and hoods but no masks and marching on the National Mall in washington dc, 100 americanism, that is not what this movement is doing after 1983 and got into the present. When people talk about white power which is what i white activists call themselves what they mean is White Nationalism that is for transactional area. It is not the United States. The nationalism in White National is the transnational white quality that they would put together into a homeland or allwhite world. That is a fundamentally democratic project opposed to the United States or other nations and much more radical to then patriotism predicated on whiteness. Host give us a broad assessment of how large is a movement in the United States, hierarchical guest i think it helps to think of concentric circles so in the middle, 25,000 people, talking about the 80s. In aggregate count which includes a bunch of denominations so skinheads and klansmen and neonazis together. In the middle, 25,000 people live and breathe and put their lives in this movement, often marry other activists in the movement, they get rides from the airport and religious counseling in the movement and share resources with each other. 25,000 people in the middle. Outside of that is more like 150175,000 additional people and those people are not as dedicated but they go to marches and attend rallies as described in newspapers. Outside that is a bigger group of 450,000 more people who dont by the newspapers but regularly read newspapers. We can imagine this goes on to a diffuse group of people who would never read Something Like that, through a friend or social relationship. When is it pushes out into the mainstream, from very for injected into mainstream politics, and to pull people in who might be radicalized and pulled into that diehard movement. When we think of the coverage, and some of you saw the vice news video, you have done what i find interesting about this book, as a historian, archival history of this movement, a lot of correspondence or careful reading of the literature of the movement, books and newspapers and literature plays a huge role in this book. Why do you think that is . There is a novel that recurs to Timothy Mcveigh, a recurring theme, why does it have that power . This is utopian or dystopian novel and this novel is much more than a novel. Is a cultural lodestar, does a ton of practical work in addition to being a work of fiction, outlines plans for specific acts of violence, a hit list of targets, but the staying power is not a stylistic merit but it answers fundamental question about imaginative possibility. How could this tiny Fringe Movement think they could do this, with militarized superstate in World History with a tiny group of people . How do they make it happen . To acquit them, judges and juries look at them and think how can they succeed . This is a tiny group with limited resources. In so many words, a small group of people can use acts of violence to politicize and awaken other white people, they think they can awaken them with fascinations or infrastructure targeted acts. They can come to because, a state of emergency that is so selfevident that all they needed shake people out of their routine and join the cause and joined the race war and be successful. One of your frustrations in this book is the fact that people see attacks such as south carolina, Timothy Mcveigh and it gets categorized as a lone wolf action, one committed or disturbed individual, one that you argue is they flow very much, why do you have to be frustrated . Why is it lone wolf attacks . The lone wolf idea is frustrating because even that phrase they would depicted as madmen, and all of those things allow this to disappear as such. This is flowing from a strategy adopted around the same time the movement around 1983 which is what we could think of today. What it means is people can act in small groups of 2 to 12 activists in common cause with no demonstrable ties with one another or direct orders for leadership. That strategy is adopted to avoid Court Prosecution of course. It is also adopted because klansmen in the 1960s are frustrated with how many fbi informants snuck into clan groups doing undercover surveillance so this is strategy to stymie that. The durable consequences are much bigger because the real takeaways we lost sight of this entire thing as a social movement and only get the story of one or a few people, not the network of people connected together. Glad you raised that point, it is such a key aspect of the story. You mentioned 1983. There is a moment, a transition in this movement in which the state comes to be seen as the enemy. What happened, what made the revolutionary turn . A key thing to understand in this political moment, 1983 with the Tipping Point for the movement was the reason we know this happened is there is what several people later described as a secret backdoor meeting where there is a declaration of war against the state. Historians a little bit skeptical about secret backdoor meetings when the testimony comes out as part of a witness protection deal and plea bargain. The secret meeting we can take with a grain of salt but what we can observe his activism changes after 1983, they adopted leaderless resistance, and protointernet organizing. Incidentally, a social networking push. It includes not only a fascination list but personal ads and recipes so we now recognize part of the network, that is 1984. We dont have a movement that went online in 198586. In 1983, distributed a bunch of stolen money around the country and used it to buy apple and minicomputers, not small. A lot of dollars back then. Thousands of millions of dollars, millions of dollars from the time with cars around the country and an activist teaching everybody how to get online on these bulletin boards. That was in 1983. The tip has to do with an infrastructure preparedness. Training in paramilitary camps, and getting ready for warfare. They are frustrated with the state but in the second term of the reagan administration, and these activist stand to gain for a sympathetic ear of the executives. And they see a distance between reagans Campaign Promises and what he is delivering and his moderation as the final word that state even held by the problem. Can never meet their goals, never deliver what they want. They see that on the fundamental reparation of the state itself and declare war. And donald trump and the acts of racial violence. And it was very ripe shocking things when i read this book. The alt right online culture and radicalization is being such a thing of now and in the 80s. You devote a chapter and elsewhere in the book, the role of women in this movement both as agents and collaborators and this sort of justification protecting weight womanhood in female helplessness as being the drivers of this movement. That sort of unit yang of women in the White Power Movement. This is a huge surprise for me in the archives because most of the scholarship has been about paramilitary masculinity and that is like the dominant outward facing thing you see, people in fatigues, usually men marching down the street in great numbers, that kind of activism but it turns out there is this huge underground network of women and furthermore what you want to do is look at those as a social movement, if you want to see the relationship between groups, one of the ways you can do that is by looking at marriages and domestic relationships. I talked about rides to the airport, a huge part of what women are doing. There is a broader kind of problem with conservatism that has only begun to be corrected in the us in the last 10 years or so where we the academy largely missed the role of conservative women because we were expecting womens activism to look like feminist activism but turns out theres a lot of ways to be doing activism that arent in which the people do not say they are activists, they are doing Political Action but doing things ranging from disguising people driving getaway cars which is deeply open to the current undertakings of this movement up to running their own delivery groups, publishing their own quarterlies, and in those positions, one of the examples to think about is the story of the leader of the order, robert matthews, the order is a bank robbing terror cell that masterminds, and in the 1980s and articulating the Ideological Movement of materials and there is a moment bob matthews has a last faceoff, many madefortv movies and usually depicted as a remote cabin with one person inside, hold a machine gun and flares on the cabin, and goes up in a fireball and he dies with the amount of ordnance inside. That part is true but it is not a remote cabin. It is a vacation house on the isle of washington. Hes not the only person in there. The tub is full of women and children who until the moment the fbi confrontation happens there are people cooking, he is watching the toddlers, women are helping to die his hair and in this context, the story of one woman who was in the cabin before this happened and in a court testimony, did you see this declaration of war which is a foundational document, this is a track. And i proofread it for them. Historians who study women alike wait, wait, wait, wait, that can mean i added three paragraphs. In that space, political and religious views tell them they are to be subservient and taking orders from their husband and that is the mode of accessible action within these communities but they are doing a lot around the edges of what is possible. It is a hugely significant thing but women are important because of their symbolic value but there are a bunch of issues we might understand, opposing abortion, opposing immigration, opposing lgbt rights, opposing racial integration, so this movement, all about white children and reproduction, they oppose abortion not because of an abstract value around fetal personhood or something but they are worried about the declining white birthweight rate, the same reason they oppose lgbt rights and feminism because they dont want the women out of the home because they are worried about the white birthrate. All of this comes down to the symbolic production around white womens bodies and the way women are held up as idyllic figures in discourse. The creators of the next generation of warriors. They talked about women have to have 3 or more children or it is racial extinction and women in skinhead groups who are much more assertive, masculine, they wear shirts, they go topless, women in other kind of segments of the movement would not agree with. Even those women are talking about what they want to do is be ideal wives and mothers and everything everyone is on the same rhetorical thing. You the vote a lot of time to explaining how different groups in this movement go about acquiring so many the relationship with activeduty military. Can you explain that a little bit . How do they accumulate so much . The accumulation of weapons is a large and consenting subplot that runs through the entire book. I do have one chapter that is just about obtaining stolen weapons from military bases and armories which they are doing by the tons, not metaphorical tons but they are taking things from the armory at fort bragg and not returning them. The pentagon is aware of this but has a difficult time clamping down until well after these groups have acquired a bunch. And then these activists stand trial for conspiracy, when they are acquitted the weapons are just returned to the groups a lot of these weapons just stay in circulation through the militia moment. Your book spans vietnam through the 90s but you discuss in the epilogue how the debate and controversy surrounding confederate symbols could facilitate a further resurgence in the movement. We have seen that kind of backlash. What do you think are the key lessons of this history . To what women are dealing with today . Guest i think this is a very good example of how history can show is a kind of different set of possibilities then we might take from the immediate context we find ourselves in mostly because i think our real response to this movement would involve something spanning many Different Levels of solutions ranging from the way individuals take in the stories, the way journalists use words like lone wolf and things like this instead of looking for political and social ties all the way up through things like jury education, prosecutorial strategy and surveillance resources hate crimes law all the way. There is a big scale of things that happened to address this kind of violence. The other thing this is about continuity over time. And we are generations into this activism, the children i write about our leaders of these groups and some left the movement and have written beautiful accounts of how to get out of hate but we are dealing with something, this is deeply ingrained in our recent history and its not going to go away without a change. Ignoring it history shows us will not make it go away. Lot of hope in the fact that these kinds of conversations were not happening at the time of my study. All of the events in the book were known at the time, covered in major newspapers. The klan paramilitary camps one or the today show or good morning america, very unfunny saturday night people knew that this was happening. There was not a coherent public understanding and there is not a shift ine the tide. A tactically different moment. That gives me hope. The book and sort of you discuss ruby ridge, waco, Oklahoma City as these key moments not just action in the case of Oklahoma City. Do you think, are there there analogs that we can think about today . Weather, charlottesville, certain, ferguson, are there things that you think, looking back on this. What will we pinpoint as though similar key moments that influenced or strengthened or diminished movement. This is always nervous for historians. We are taught not to say too much about the president. I think the things that the archive shows very clearly over time that i would anticipate to continue, and the time that i am looking at, there were two different spheres. One of them is above ground. Those are the public facing demonstration acts of violence that are out in public, Election Campaign rallies, marches, that, that kind of stuff. This big underground of activity that ide document in the book. Fbi surveillance files. Prosecutions which you do not get until after a major act of violence much later. The fact that we can see the public facing as it happens, does it mean that the underground is it there. I think the archive shows both of those things have happened together. I would anticipate when we are seeing this in the current moment thatth we are in that the is also this building underground moment. One take a way to remember, the Oklahoma City bombing or the shooting of bible study, those t meant to be the end point in and themselves. We have to remember this from the history of the movement. That is not the goal. Those actions will inflame other people and radicalize others. That is where public opposition might locate. One or two questions before we might turn it over for more questions. You talk about not just the accumulation of weapons, but the militarization of Police Forces as playing a huge role in this. Confirming what the movement believes. Peace out that relationship. This is an interesting and unexpected thing that happened in the book. The image that i think shows this really well, during the ruby ridge standoff which is a white power family and wisconsin , a rural cabin in idaho, very remote, remote, the federal government has it encamped and eventually there are deaths in the stand off at the hands of the fbi. Lo during the standoff, there is is bia huge roadblock. A white power picket. Some peoplend get around the roadblock and try to resupply with more weapons. There is a picture when these are arrested. One of them is on the ground being arrested by a member of the atf. They are wearing the same uniform. Because by this point, everybody has been militarized. Want to think about a social movement kind of creating an activism based on counter insurgency, that isen is happeng the same time. We can trace the sort of weapons and technologies of combat from vietnam into the White Power Movement. Veryor directly. This clash of these two paramilitary vocations is one of the things that happens. What are you going to work on next . Im really interested in thinking about violence that we usually imagine as inexplicable and trying to put it into a historical narrative. Violence as a environmental factor. I think it will take me home to colorado. If you have questions, please come to the mic. I think the news reports that they are finding infiltrating the police and military. You saw something in your research. Ive no archives to tell you. That does not mean it did not happen. There are strategies in the White Power Movement to target active duty troops and veterans in the 1980s and 1990s. They tryou to get a handle on ia little bit. Its a difficult thing for the pentagon to respond to. They dont want to interfere with peoples free speech. I think we can all kind of respect that. On the other hand, a way that being a participant is directly in conflict. This movement is trying to be an enemy of the state. There is a series of loose prohibition. There is aar statement in the early 1980s that says we dont think you should be in this movement. See act that is from the defense secretary. Yeah. He says not to, but he doesnt enforce it. [inaudible] thats a good question. [inaudible] this is my little gripe with black clansmen. When we paid them as so shrill and crazy, we lose the fact that a lot of them rise in this movement because they are enormous speakers. That is what makes them able to recruit in the way that are i think that the intercession between french and mainstream is a very critical place that we need to do more work. In this book i was focused on the fringe. I can see ideas going out and i can see people coming in. There is less work on what comes from the mainstream. We can look at Something Like the david duke president ial campaigngn past buchanan said ad did this. David duke is a klansman who ran for president at a point in a runoff in a primary election with pat buchanan and president George George h. W. Bush. Buchanan said what we need to do about dukes work on trent look at what is happening in the platform. Of courseut he became a significant challenger and bush. What we have is a clear movement from david duke all the way to the mainstream. We have that even of david duke cant win the election. Tracing out all those push and pull moments, i think its really important. My archive is over in 1986. Someone needs to look at this very closely. I want to first thank you for your bravery. Your voice will be heard more than anyone elses. Thank you. My question is, i have two questions. As a historian who knows that this country, this sovereign nation was invaded by white people that now claim this to be there country, how do you see that affecting this movement that you write about. And ask your the one and i will get them both. Yes. You are a historian. What do you see as an impetus for white people to expect the fact that their brothers and sisters are doing what they are doing. Brothers and sisters meaning these. No. Other white people. Okay. S, yes weird. Doing what they are doing. Okayen. One of the interesting surprises from the archives is that we often have this idea about a political continue on. There is a left and a right. Politicscs. We are in the middle. In the 1980s, i think it is really more of a circle. Two ends have a lot more in common. There is a ton of cross pollination. Ex this is an unexplored area of my archives. The people i write about are really into native americans. Er i think it is partly because a reservation system is one answer to a white homeland question. They like apportioning space fon everybody and then sorting. They also are sort of into the west in a way that creates this. They also have a lot of interest hanging out, i dont want to overstate this. If you live on this compound, youre too likely neighbors neighbors are farmers. We know a lot about the intersection between this. Your other likely neighbors hippies. The people i read about are really interesting. I think that that has to be more than just a simple we will take your good strategies. I think that it is probably that they are cross pollinating. I do think in a place i would expect there to be some amount of these ideas running into each other. The question about how to get people to reckon with disintegration, i really do not know a full answer for you. I think learning the history and a long history of racial violence is the first step. Thank you for your work. I was wondering if you thought there any lessons we should learn from the early part of reconstruction. Pretty aggressively. Try to put down the ku klux klan. Im sorry. What is the question . Are there any things we could learn about how to address this. The act that attempted to deal with the first after the civil war is still the major legal instrument being used. I think the suit coming out of charlottesville is using that act as its organizing thing. Im sorry. Im not a legal historian or a lawyer. That is where we get a lot of the legal precedent. You cannot be in a conspiracy to deprive someone of rights. That is still the Legal Foundation that we are using and a lot of criminal prosecution. Im afraid my question may be much like the last two. You started with truth and reconciliation. Very interested in that. Obviously some things that we might think in law or otherwise affirmatively stop this kind of activity you are talking about. I guess frankly i am more interested in the constructive aspects. The kind of truth reconciliation that has to do with these broad societal issues. Especially the last couple of questions. Have you given some thought to that . Is there some prospect in the u. S. These days . Has south africas process worked as well as im thinking it has and so on . This is a very complex area of study. No longer my area of expertise. Anyone can look around and think we have unresolved issues around atr country, history and race. There have been a bunch of stories going around lately about germany had a huge process around memory of the holocaust that now kind of has a reactionary effect. Some right wing activity today. I am not sure if there is the right answer. I am dedicated to the idea of learning history and reckoning with it can have a positive impact. A lot of what i do my teaching is looking at these long histories of violence and understanding that as part of our shared past. Sort of your hippie comment. Now we are seeing the new religious movement aspect. Did that come into play during your period of study . Do you see any relation, if it did, do you see any relationship to the sort of 70s nomination all christianity. Yes. They are there in the 1980s for sure. Maybe run over between the left and the right. Kind of around white cultural superiority. I think that possibly more powerful theologicalen pictures around christian identity which is a theology which comes from british israel is him. Everyone else neither from state nor animals depending on who asks. The interesting thing about christian identity is at peace with the evangelical moment of the 1980s. The christian identity has no rapture. The deal is that there will be a moment before the tribulations before the end of the world where believers will be transported to heaven so they miss the messy bit at the end. In christian identity there is noll rapture. They are supposed to survive. They are at least supposed to survive if not participate in reading the world of enemies. Before christ can return. That takes this set of political beliefs into a holy war. One more. Talk more about the archives and what youre able to see from them. The people that youre talking about, some of them are still alive. Youve been publicly on this movement. People who are at large. Interestingly, they have not really been in touch with me about it. I will say this. This has been a difficult thing to do and its gotten a lot of pushback at various moments. I have been dedicated to writing about these people as people. That is not usually how they been treated. I think that for me, the idea is if you treat them as people, we there. Accountability talking about politics and action. It is totally possible that they are talking about it in some dark corner of the dark web. I dont know. I hope that they can recognize themselves in the story. I think any history is trying to do that. Please join me in thanking. [applause] every year book tv covers book fairs and festivals around the country. Heres a look at some events coming up. On august 17, tune in for our live coverage of the mississippi book festival held in jackson. Over labor day weekend, the ajc decatur book festival takes place outside of atlanta and will be live from the National Book festival hosted by the library of congress in washington, d. C. Then in september, look for us at the brooklyn book festival in new york city. For more information about upcoming book fairs and festivals and to watch our previous festival coverage, push the tab on our website. Book tv. Org. Asking representative eddie carter what are you reading. First of all, i just finished
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