The White Power Movement’s History

BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Well, turning now to the U.S. the Biden administration is rolling out a new strategy to counter domestic terrorism. The very first of its kind. And one

of its top aims is to confront the long-standing drivers of home-grown extremism, racism and bigotry. This, as the first capitol rioter is

sentenced. Award winning historian and author, Kathleen Bulu, is professor at the University of Chicago. Her work traces violence and militarization

in American life and how to combat it. Here she is talking to Michel Martin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHEL MARTIN: Thanks, Bianna. Professor Kathleen Belew, thank you so much for talking with us.

KATHLEEN BELEW, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: Of course.

MARTIN: Now, a lot of people know your work from your 2018 book, which chronicled the “Rise of White Power Activism” from Vietnam to the Oklahoma

City bombing. Could you just tell us the direct line between the white power movement and what happened at the capitol in January 6th?

BELEW: The white power movement was the coming together of an assortment of different groups and activists immediately after the Vietnam War. So,

what we saw is in the late 1970s and early ’80s, Klansman, Neo-Nazis and later skinheads, militiamen, tax resisters, followers of Christian

identify, white separatists all got together with the common goal of waging war on the American government.

They declared that war in 1983 and then adopted cell-style terrorism and sort of propagated a number of violent actions leading up to a massive

seditious conspiracy trial in the late 1980s and then major altercations of federal government in the early 1990s.

That takes us up to Oklahoma City bombing which happened in 1995. Now, that it is largest domestic terror attack in our nation’s history and it’s the

biggest mass casualty event in American history between Pearl Harbor and 9/11. But most of us still don’t remember that as the work of an organized

social movement rather than, you know, a few bad apples.

Between Oklahoma City, which by the way, increased militia activity and the present, what we see is reorganization of this movement online and sort of

the spinning out into a bunch of new forms. So, today, this movement came out into public discourse again with the Unite the Right rally in

Charlottesville and has really been on the march since.

MARTIN: Well, how did it start? What is it that happened in that sort of post-Vietnam era that created this kind of whatever this is, what would you

call it, this movement, I guess?

BELEW: I think the thing that really brought these activists together was a shared experience of the Vietnam War. Now, for some of them, this had to

do with literal combat in Vietnam and for veterans and active-duty troops that came into the movement in its early formation, that certainly was the

case. But the story about the Vietnam War became something much bigger and broader and something that was open to people who didn’t fight and open to

women and open to younger activists. And the idea was sort of that the government was the site of betrayal, the site of all problems, and a direct

threat to their nation.

So, the Vietnam War was really the catalyst that brought these activists together and it also provided the uniforms, language, tactics and weapons

that escalated the impact of this movement over the years that followed.

MARTIN: Why that direction and not another direction? I mean, the Vietnam War was catalyzing to a number of movements, but why did it take this kind

of vicious, violent, kind of anti- — racist direction for the people for whom it did?

BELEW: One important thing to know here is that we’re not talking about a story that’s representative of Vietnam veterans or a veteran as a whole.

This is a tiny fraction of people within that broader population. And just as you say, the Vietnam War was a catalyzing experience in the other

direction for a great many people who found new sort of other kinds of political activity coming out of that experience.

But this is actually part of a longer arc of activity. We can see that across the run of American history, the best predictor for surges in right-

wing violent activity and militant activity are — the best predictor is not poverty or immigration or reactionary mindset or the advances of

communities of color. The best predictor is the aftermath of warfare. We see stooges (ph) of the clan after the civil war, after World War I, after

World War II, after Korea, after Vietnam. And we’re seeing one now after the global was on terror. I skipped the Gulf War, but, of course, the Gulf

War fuels the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 which is carried out by white power activists with other movement connections.

And one thing to think about here is that this is really not just veterans. In fact, the research shows us coming out of sociology that all measures of

violence are higher in the aftermath of warfare. So, it isn’t that war is creating violence among these groups. It is that these groups, which use

opportunistic recruitment and radicalization practices are able to take advantage of this broader disaffection and violent tendency in society in

those moments, and that is what really escalates their membership of numbers and creates opportunities for violent impact.

MARTIN: Well, you know, you said something earlier that fascinated me. You said that women play a significant role in this movement. I don’t think a

lot of people realize that. Like what role do women play in this?

BELEW: If we look at the history of this movement, women were incredibly important. They did work in softening public perceptions of what people

were doing. They did symbolic work of symbolizing sort of the race under attack and the reproductive capacity of white women. And they also did real

on the ground violent work, like driving get away cars and disguising people and designing secret insignia. They ran their open newspapers. They

drove other activists to and from the airport. This was a big network of people.

And the other thing to remember is that, at the bottom, this was a social movement. People in the inner circles of the white power movement went to

church in the movement. They homeschooled kids with curricula from the movement. They went to marital counseling in the movement. They stayed at

each other’s houses when they drove across the country. This is deeply imbricated social network. And that is what gives it the power to wage acts

of violence the way that it does.

MARTIN: As we are speaking now, the first people connected to the mob attack on the U.S. capitol have now been sentenced. The very first persons

sentenced was a grandmother of five. Says she’s remorseful. Sentenced to three years’ probation.

First of all, what is your take on the adjudication of the case and what we’ve seen? And what have we learned from all the people who have been

arrested and charged so far?

BELEW: Yes. I think the big thing to remember is that what we saw on January the 6th is really the collision of a bunch of different currents in

sort of right-wing politics. One of them is simply the Trump base, which was sort of ginned up by ideas about the stolen election and by false

information and fiery speeches. Some were there to perhaps wreak havoc, but a lot of them were there simply to demonstrate. That is well within their

rights and part of our accepted political culture.

Then we have some people that are a little bit trickier to deal with here. So, we have QAnon activists who are engaged in a deep set of conspiracy

theories that calls for violent action. And we have white power activists. And that last thread is where I think the serious action on January 6th

came from. It is where the weapons came from. And it is also the thread that brings with it generations of mobilization and strategy honing and

cell-style terrorism and paramilitary camps and serious military-grade weapons and material. That thread is the thing that I am personally most

concerned about.

So, my guess — I’m not a legal specialist, but my guess is that the charges will focus on the people who really were there to provoke a violent

assault on our democracy and will not focus on the people who were simply caught up in the moment or there as part of a speech action. That is what,

as a citizen, I hope will happen.

MARTIN: You talked about the fact — one of the things that concerns you most about the mob attack on the capitol is that I think you have described

it — I’m not sure what words you exactly used, but it is kind of a rehearsal in a way. And so, what is the goal here? What is the end game?

Like what do these people think they are going to accomplish with this?

BELEW: So, in any social movement there is, of course, a variety of goals and a diversity of viewpoints, and that is even more true in this case

where the capitol action really brought together white power activists, QAnon followers and sort of more garden variety Trump supporters.

Those three groups function differently and we wouldn’t want to paint them all with the same brush. But when we’re thinking about white power

activists who have been at this for decades now and who have a long track record of activity and have a long history where we can see not only what

they say they are doing but the actual record of action, it is very clear that the playbook here is still coming from a set of strategies adopted in

the 1980s, including those presented in “The Turner Diaries,” which is a dystopian novel that lays out of this idea set, also leaderless resistance,

which is effectively cell style terrorism. And that set of strategies is oriented towards waging war on the federal government. It is oriented

towards the overthrow of the United States.

And it is important to remember that for those activists, the nation in white national-ism is not the United States at all, it is the imagined

Arian nation of white people that is transnational. So, we shouldn’t think of this as white nationalism the way people think of sort of overzealous

patriotism. This is a profoundly anti-immigration — or, excuse me, a profoundly anti-American movement and it poses real threats to democracy

and to American people.

MARTIN: What do you make of the increasing identification of the Republican Party with elements of this movement? I mean, according to a

poll by the American Enterprise Institute, the poll found that nearly 40 percent of Republicans think political violence is justifiable and could be

necessary. We find that a majority in some places of — in some polls, a majority of Republicans are adopting this falsehood that the election was

stolen from the former president, you know, Donald Trump.

And then, in fact, we see the that the party apparatus in a number of states have been taken over by people who have adopted this falsehood. So,

what do you make of that?

BELEW: Absolutely. And I would just add to the list of concerning information things like the GOP issuing, a talking points memo, asking us

to direct our attention away from white power organization, after the El Paso shooting was carried out by a white power gunman. Things like people

distorting the idea of what happened on January 6th as a normal tourist visit. All of that is deeply, deeply distressing because now we’re talking

not only about sort of the radical fringe that might carry out an act of violence. We’re also talking the way that that fringe has impacted and

corrupted our democratic norms and our mainstream politics.

Now, I think reasonable people can agree that we should have a bright line dividing our political process from people who would like to overthrow it

and install autocracy.

MARTIN: But we don’t have that bright line is I guess what I’m saying, Professor Belew.

BELEW: Yes.

MARTIN: We do not have that bright line.

BELEW: Right.

MARTIN: So, what does that mean? And why is that?

BELEW: So, my question is, what is the work we haven’t done in understanding our own history that makes those distortions possible? In

other words, why don’t we have a story about the Oklahoma City bombing as an act of social movement terrorism? Why don’t we have — until this year,

we haven’t had appropriate resources devoted to this problem. We haven’t had widespread public concern. We haven’t had changes in journalistic and

other kinds of public discourse norms around how we report the stories. We still think about lone wolves when we should be thinking about a ground

swell.

And until we make that set of changes and really confront this whole set of problems that run across many different scales of our society, I just don’t

see how we can confront this problem.

MARTIN: And what does that look like? What would it look like to confront this in the way that you think is necessary?

BELEW: I think we need a set of policy changes, ranging from the kinds of things that have just been proposed in the counterterrorism strategy set

forth by the Biden administration to the sorts of reforms that are being considered by the Department of Defense now, to resource allocation,

changes in laws, changes in structure, changes in journalistic norms, and also changes in community resources.

One of the things that I really like in the new national security strategy is the allocation of resources at the local level for support for

deradicalization, support for teachers and librarians and parents who is see people doing down this rabbit hole and don’t know what to do. Nobody

wants to call the FBI in that situation when it is your kid or your student. We need resources for those people and those families.

And we also need resources for communities that have been impacted by this, and that is starting to be more and more and more communities. Such that

Pittsburgh and El Paso and Charleston need to understand that they have been impacted by the same thing. Those are acts after anti-Semitic violence

in Pittsburgh and anti-black in Charleston and anti-immigrant violence in El Paso, but those are also all acts of white power violence.

Those gunmen have a shared ideology. They read each other’s manifestos. They have in real-life and sometimes online connections. We have to

understand all of that is part of the same problem and the same problem as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and (INAUDIBLE) and the base. All of

that is the same ground swell. We should be thinking about it only with degrees of difference. We shouldn’t be treating them as different stories.

MARTIN: But yet, we find that — at least find that these governmental entities, particularly at the state and local level, which are dominated by

Republicans are obsessed with Black Lives Matter, Antifa, whatever that is or whatever they think it is, and critical race theory. What we see is this

ground swell of concern about the teaching of alternate narratives around the presence of African Americans in a society who are, if my may remind

us, 13 percent of the population. What’s that about? Is — what’s that about?

BELEW: Absolutely. And I mean, look, I’m a historian. So, I’m very aware that when you have a hammer, everything is a nail. But I really think this

is about insufficient understanding of our shared history. And when I say, our, I mean, the denizens of the United States, the people who live in this

terrain. There’s a lot of people who live here and who have lived here under different kinds of freedom and unfreedom for many, many centuries and

we owe it to each other to have a real conversation about evidence-based history that we have come from together.

And I think, you know, this — the United States is not alone in its history of racial inequality and racial violence, or even in its history of

systems and laws that have disproportionately benefitted white people. And I think an overwhelming number of scholars agree with that premise. But the

United States is sort of alone in how little we as a public have grappled with that history that we descend from. And this doesn’t need to be about

American and un-American. This is about the story that we all come from. It is a matter of basic truth finding.

MARTIN: OK. Professor Belew, I respect that this is the work of your life. I respect that it is greatly important. But I — as I’m sitting here, 15

miles from where I live, you know, hundreds of armed people assaulted the capitol with the intention of overthrowing an election and then who knows

what else.

So, forgive me if I’m having a little trouble with a concept that a better teaching of history right now is going to address a problem like that. And

so, forgive me. But like, what else?

BELEW: A better teaching of history isn’t for the people who are marching on the capitol. It is for people coming next. What we need is that

alongside a broad array of public policy solutions that tackle this problem at many different levels. This is urgent all across our society.

So, for instance, we have problems with infiltration at the Department of Defense. We have problems of infiltration probably in police departments,

but we don’t know because there is no central recordkeeping. We have problems of local radicalization. We have problems of insufficient trauma

resources and insufficient mental health resources for communities impacted. And we have problems with massive availability of weapons and

other kinds of material that end up in the hands of these groups.

And here I’m talking not only about the sort of basic issues that we as a society share with available firearms to anyone but also the fact that

these groups have routinely gotten their hands on stolen military weapons and material from posts and bases, and that that problem has been with us

since the 1980s and here we still are with this in 2021.

So as an historian, I’m interested in both the solutions we need right now for the crisis and I’m interested in longer-term conversations about our

shared history and legacies that can position us for more equitable exercises of democratic franchise going forward as well.

MARTIN: Kathleen Belew, thank you so much for talking with us today.

BELEW: Thank you very much for having me.