With the “Whitmer 13” dominating the headlines, and Leah Sottile’s latest excellent podcast, Two Minutes Past 9, dominating my podcast app (and your Forcening recommendations!) at the moment, I thought we could put our heads together about a syllabus on the subject. I’m primarily talking about American domestic terrorism, not that that narrows the subject down much [heavy sigh].
Off the top of my head, in addition to 2MP9 and Bundyville’s second season, I’d recommend American Experience’s “Oklahoma City”; Dave Cullen’s Columbine; and Pamela Colloff’s “The Reckoning” (as well as the doc derived in large part from Colloff’s “96 Minutes,” Tower.
Docs, Frontline episodes, New Yorker pieces, pods, books are all welcome. …Well: you know. “Welcome.” But I do look forward to your recs, as always! — SDB
[My comment is going to be unhelfpul.] I read Columbine because I'm interested in anything about teenagers, but I haven't read anything about adults and domestic (or international) terrorism. I have a real mental block against crimes done by men, to men. Which is not to say that women aren't also victims and occasional perpetrators of terrorism, but mostly, it's very male. (That is also why I don't watch war movies or westerns.) I would like to read a book about the SLA and Patty Hearst, and similar leftist terrorism groups that involved women as major players, if anyone can recommend the best one(s) to me.
This is a topic that has been on my mind constantly, even before yesterday’s horrific headlines. I have a couple of book recommendations.
First and foremost, an absolute must read is Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement And Paramilitary America by Kathleen Belew. It is outstanding and includes the most definitive historic account of the 1979 Greensboro Massacre (deadly clash between the KKK and the Communist Workers Party) I have found. I grew up in Greensboro and while I’d been able to pick up a lot of the story through osmosis, I‘d been searching for an account like Belew’s for decades. It’s simply an astonishing, comprehensive history of the modern white power movement in the U.S.
I also just finished Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism by Seyward Darby which I also recommend. It’s the story of three women in the white nationalist movement and how they became radicalized. But it also chronicles the roots of the movement and the various figures and ideologies that have taken root.
American Experience’s Oklahoma City is so good. I was able to visit the memorial site a couple of years ago when I was in OKC for work. Really grateful I had a chance to see it.
I recall that season of American Experience also had very good episodes on Ruby Ridge and Waco and together with the Oklahoma City episode they told a pretty comprehensive story about the whole separatist movement (waco was more complicated but it certainly "inspired" a lot of the anger about the government that came later).
I normally don’t have good recommendations because I’m often well behind on even the books I really want to read. But having a book review editor as a spouse occasionally means that I get things early, and over the summer, I went through a copy of “American Zealots” before it was sent off to the reviewer.
Look, it’s an academic book, but it’s very approachable. It’s got amazing descriptive analyses that allows the author to track exactly how right wing extremist violence has changed over the past 30 years, as well as tracking the frequency. There’s enough descriptions of individual events to give context and whet the appetite for more info about some of the attacks and people described.
In one sense, it’s almost the opposite of true crime. Rather than give an example of something, and try to pan back from that to universal ideas, it starts with the big view, then zooms in on individual events. But if we’re interested in really understanding, and potentially countering, these activities, I think a view like that is probably more useful.
So, worth checking out as the state of the art on the field, and actually pretty reasonably priced for an academic press book.
[My comment is going to be unhelfpul.] I read Columbine because I'm interested in anything about teenagers, but I haven't read anything about adults and domestic (or international) terrorism. I have a real mental block against crimes done by men, to men. Which is not to say that women aren't also victims and occasional perpetrators of terrorism, but mostly, it's very male. (That is also why I don't watch war movies or westerns.) I would like to read a book about the SLA and Patty Hearst, and similar leftist terrorism groups that involved women as major players, if anyone can recommend the best one(s) to me.
This is a topic that has been on my mind constantly, even before yesterday’s horrific headlines. I have a couple of book recommendations.
First and foremost, an absolute must read is Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement And Paramilitary America by Kathleen Belew. It is outstanding and includes the most definitive historic account of the 1979 Greensboro Massacre (deadly clash between the KKK and the Communist Workers Party) I have found. I grew up in Greensboro and while I’d been able to pick up a lot of the story through osmosis, I‘d been searching for an account like Belew’s for decades. It’s simply an astonishing, comprehensive history of the modern white power movement in the U.S.
I also just finished Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism by Seyward Darby which I also recommend. It’s the story of three women in the white nationalist movement and how they became radicalized. But it also chronicles the roots of the movement and the various figures and ideologies that have taken root.
American Experience’s Oklahoma City is so good. I was able to visit the memorial site a couple of years ago when I was in OKC for work. Really grateful I had a chance to see it.
A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof BY RACHEL KAADZI GHANSAH is a great piece. Very sad, angering, and illuminating.
I recall that season of American Experience also had very good episodes on Ruby Ridge and Waco and together with the Oklahoma City episode they told a pretty comprehensive story about the whole separatist movement (waco was more complicated but it certainly "inspired" a lot of the anger about the government that came later).
I normally don’t have good recommendations because I’m often well behind on even the books I really want to read. But having a book review editor as a spouse occasionally means that I get things early, and over the summer, I went through a copy of “American Zealots” before it was sent off to the reviewer.
Look, it’s an academic book, but it’s very approachable. It’s got amazing descriptive analyses that allows the author to track exactly how right wing extremist violence has changed over the past 30 years, as well as tracking the frequency. There’s enough descriptions of individual events to give context and whet the appetite for more info about some of the attacks and people described.
In one sense, it’s almost the opposite of true crime. Rather than give an example of something, and try to pan back from that to universal ideas, it starts with the big view, then zooms in on individual events. But if we’re interested in really understanding, and potentially countering, these activities, I think a view like that is probably more useful.
So, worth checking out as the state of the art on the field, and actually pretty reasonably priced for an academic press book.
This reminds me I really need to get a hold of The Skies Belong to Us.