Person

Kathleen Belew

Related Excerpts

White Power

A review of two recent books about white paramilitarism in the wake of the Cold War.

The Bloody History of Border Militias Runs Deep — and Law Enforcement Is Part of It

The West's history is full of stories of white Americans taking the law into their own hands to beat back nonwhite populations.

White Supremacy Has Always Been Mainstream

“Very fine people”—fathers and husbands, as well as mothers and daughters—have always been central to the work of white supremacy.

Declaration of War

The violent rise of white supremacy after the Vietnam War.
Two men fighting during Shay's Rebellion.
partner

Fights Over American Democracy Reach Back to the Founding Era

In early America, the soaring ideals behind establishing a new democracy were marked by cycles of progress and backlash.
Illustration of a soldier in a tank battering through a fiery wooden structure.

A Fire Started in Waco. Thirty Years Later, It’s Still Burning.

Behind the Oklahoma City bombing and even the January 6th attack was a military-style assault in Texas that galvanized the far right.
Texas investigators and medical examiners stand on top of the ruins of the Mount Carmel compound.

How the Right Got Waco Wrong

Militia groups have long used Waco as a rallying cry. But it was never the example of whiteness under siege that they invoke.
Former President Donald Trump in Selma, North Carolina

The Historians Take a First Crack at Donald J. Trump

On the promises and perils of very recent history.
Donald Rumsfeld in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2005 (Jim Young-Pool/Getty Images).

Lasting Cruelties

A new book situates the War on Terror as a story of domination which traces back to the founding of the US as a settler-colonial and slaveholding behemoth.

Beyond the End of History

Historians' prohibition on 'presentism' crumbles under the weight of events.
Louis Beam

Armed Resistance, Lone Wolves, and Media Messaging: Meet the Godfather of the ‘Alt-Right’

There would be no Richard Spencer without Louis Beam.
The front pages of major newspapers the day after the Greensboro Massacre.

Fighting the Klan in Reagan’s America

The KKK was on the march in the 1980s. What strategies worked to stem their rise?