- Note to Readers
- Introduction
- I. Formation
- 1. The Vietnam War Story
- 2. Building the Underground
- 3. A Unified Movement
- 4. Mercenaries and Paramilitary Praxis
- II. The War Comes Home
- 5. The Revolutionary Turn
- 6. Weapons of War
- 7. Race War and White Women
- III. Apocalypse
- 8. Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Militarized Policing
- 9. The Bombing of Oklahoma City
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Sources
- Acknowledgments
- Index


Bring the War Home
The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America
Product Details
HARDCOVER
$31.00 • £26.95 • €28.95
ISBN 9780674286078
Publication Date: 04/09/2018
Related Links
- At the Atlantic, read Kathleen Belew on the “crunchy-to-alt-right pipeline”
- On NPR’s All Things Considered, listen to Belew analyze the guilty verdict—for “seditious conspiracy”—given to Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes in connection with the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol
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- On WBUR (Boston, MA)’s Here & Now, listen to Belew discuss with host Robin Young what to expect from hearings focused around how members of the far-right prepared to storm the halls of Congress on January 6, 2021
- In the New York Times, read Belew on the May 2022 domestic terrorism attack in Buffalo, NY, and the “long-game” strategy of white-power activists
- At the Atlantic, read Belew’s warning that manifestos (such as the one left by the Buffalo, NY assailant) are not to be ignored—they are playbooks for the next attack
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- Watch Belew’s conversation with CNN’s Anderson Cooper about the Buffalo mass shooting
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- Read a New Yorker Q&A with Belew responding to the May 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, NY
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- Read a Code Switch interview with Belew in which she further unpacks the origins of the extremist movement that attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6
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- Read Belew’s comparison of the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol with the plot of the white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries
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- At The Cut, read an interview with Belew on the question of whether far-right violence will erupt on Election Day
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- Read a Chronicle of Higher Education report on scholarly attempts “not just to disseminate new ideas…but also to dismantle dangerous ones”—such as the distortions of the historical record popular among white supremacists
- At Five Books, discover Belew’s top recommended books about white supremacy
- Read a Yahoo! News Q&A with Belew in the wake of the El Paso attack
- On CNN’s GPS, watch Belew explain to Fareed Zakaria how disparate groups of neo-Nazis, skinheads, and Klansmen came together to form the twenty-first-century White Power Movement
- At The Intercept, read an analysis, informed by Belew’s work, of recent white nationalist terror events and the “dangers of historical amnesia”
- Read a transcript of Belew’s conversation with CNN’s Anderson Cooper in the wake of the El Paso shooting
- Read Guardian coverage of the El Paso attack
- Watch Kathleen Belew explain the crucial difference between “white power” and “white nationalist” ideologies—and why there was a sea change in 1983—on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight
- On WNYC’s On the Media, listen to Belew make the case for why the massacres in Christchurch, New Zealand, are the latest manifestation not just of resentment and paranoia—or even radical racism—but of a clearly defined revolutionary white power movement
- Via C-SPAN’s Book TV, watch Belew discuss Bring the War Home at the 2019 Printers Row Litfest in Chicago
- Listen to Belew’s discussion with KIRO (Seattle, WA)’s Ross Files
- At Public Books, read Belew’s in-depth conversation with historian and fellow HUP author Monica Muñoz Martinez
- Listen to Kathleen Belew discuss the threat posed by violent white supremacists on Voice of America’s Encounter
- On The Chauncey DeVega Show, listen to Belew explain the white power movement’s global plans for “race war”
- Read New York Times and Salon reporting, informed by discussion with Belew, on how increasingly active (and violent) border militias are connected to the transnational white power movement
- Read a Salon interview with Belew on New Zealand, Donald Trump, and the terms “white nationalism” versus “white power”
- At Newsy, watch Belew explain how Trump’s implication that the New Zealand attack was an isolated incident is a success for white supremacists’ leaderless resistance model
- On Radio New Zealand’s Sunday Morning, listen to Belew provide valuable context—earlier incarnations of the white power movement—for the violence in Christchurch
- On WNYC’s The Takeaway, listen to Belew explain how the New Zealand events underscore that the underlying ideology is not “nationalist” but instead specifically transnationalist—and predicated on white supremacy
- On KPFA (Pacifica Radio)’s Letters and Politics, listen to Belew discuss the manifesto left by the Christchurch mosque terrorist as a political document comparable to those by Dylann Roof, Anders Breivik, and “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski
- On the Vancouver Public Radio podcast Redeye, listen to Belew describe the “common thread” that ties together many seemingly unrelated violent attacks
- In the New York Times, read about the increasingly popularity “replacement theory” in white supremacist ideology and in alt-right spaces online
- On NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, listen to Belew explain how white supremacist ideology spreads
- On PBS NewsHour, watch Belew discuss how the massacres at two Christchurch, New Zealand mosques are an example of malignant growth in extremist anti-immigrant and white supremacist ideology
- Watch Belew respond to the New Zealand mosque attacks in a panel discussion on CBC’s The National [autoplay video]
- At Dissent, read Belew’s analysis of the New Zealand mosque killings as only the latest example of work by a transnational movement that wants to foment race war
- Listen to Belew discuss radical white terrorism on The Intercept’s podcast, Intercepted
- Read more about Belew’s research as it pertains to the New Zealand events in the Daily Star (Toronto, Canada), New York Times, Vox, and the Washington Post
- Listen to Belew on WTTW (Chicago, IL)’s The Interview Show with Mark Bazer
- On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, watch a feature on the “Documenting Hate” documentary in which Belew explains how the aftermath of warfare correlates with increased recruiting of veterans by paramilitarist white power/white supremacist groups
- Read a March 2019 Guardian report, informed by Belew’s research, warning that the “neo-Nazi plot against America” is well entrenched—and is likely to become more powerful during the remaining years of the Trump administration
- Read New York Times coverage of the arrest of Coast Guard Lt. Christopher Hasson and why Belew believes he can be classified as a “white power activist”—not just a passive proponent of white nationalist beliefs
- Read a Vice report on the U.S. military’s failure to confront the problem of violent extremism within its ranks—including Belew’s thoughts on how Hasson slipped through the cracks
- At the Huffington Post, read about the hidden problem of white nationalism within the U.S. military
- Listen to Belew describe the “business model” of white power movements on The Majority Report with Sam Seder
- On BBC Radio 4’s Thinking Allowed, listen to Belew trace the origins and development of the racist far right in the U.S.—and compare it to similar forces in Europe
- Watch a Democracy Now! feature that uses Belew’s research in its argument that perpetual warfare abroad is fueling white supremacist violence within the United States
- On the Jacobin podcast The Dig, listen to Belew discuss the ideology behind the October 2018 Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh
- At The Daily Beast, read Belew’s analysis of the Tree of Life attack as another tragic success of a decentralized, but increasingly engaged, white power movement
- At PBS.org, stream the full 55-minute PBS Frontline/ProPublica documentary, “Documenting Hate: New American Nazis” (November 2018), for which Kathleen Belew provided expert commentary
- On the podcast Black Agenda Report, listen to Belew discuss how white supremacist ideology has evolved past the localized terror of the Ku Klux Klan
- Watch Belew’s interview with Democracy Now! on the long history of violence simmering below the August 2017 white supremacist actions in Charlottesville, VA
- On the University of Chicago podcast Big Brains, listen to Belew explain her use of archival resources for understanding the past and giving context to the present
- At NYR Daily, read Wajahat Ali—informed by his discussion with Belew—on how to deradicalize white supremacists
- At Past Punditry, historian Nicole Hemmer’s podcast, listen to Belew’s contributions throughout a six-episode series on the August 12 (“A12”), 2017, violence in Charlottesville, Virginia during the Unite the Right rally and counterprotest
- At The Trace, read Belew’s historical take on actions by municipalities to regulate armed militias, the most dangerous of which have generally been right- rather than left-wing
- On KUER’s RadioWest, listen to Belew explain the history of the white power movement, including its roots in a feeling of betrayal among Vietnam vets—and how rhetoric turned into real violence
- On Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien, watch Belew explain how the modern white power activists came to declare war on the state—and how their strategies parallel those of Islamist terrorists
- On CBS News, watch Belew chart the path of radical white supremacists from the Vietnam War onwards
- On ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live, listen to Belew explain how the Vietnam War served as a “lightning rod” for disaffected white power groups
- In the New York Times, read Belew’s analysis of the Oklahoma City bombing’s roots, not in “lone-wolf” misanthropy, but in decades of organized white-power activism
- Watch Belew present Bring the War Home on the bloggingheads.tv interview program, The Wright Show
- Read a Q&A with Belew on the secret history of white power in the New York Times newsletter “Race/Related”
- On NPR’s Fresh Air, listen to Belew’s discussion with Terry Gross about the Vietnam War–era roots of today’s alt-right activism, and how recent “lone wolf” terrorists—like Dylan Roof—are in fact deeply enmeshed in the white power movement
- On NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, listen to Belew explain how acts of terrorism by seemingly isolated, misanthropic white American men are in fact part of a committed and organized white power movement decades in the making
- Read Belew’s discussion with Slate about the effects of our failure to understand white power as a broad social movement
- Read a Vox interview with Belew about the white power movement’s origins in the aftermath of the Vietnam War
- On This American Life, listen to Belew discuss [at 34:10] how the white power movement adopted the “leaderless resistance” model of cell terrorism
- Read an in-depth Q&A with Belew at the Political Research Associates magazine The Public Eye
- Read Belew’s 2014 New York Times op-ed on veterans, violence, and white supremacy
- Visit Kathleen Belew’s website