The Age of Insurrection - bookrastinating.com

Hardcover, 544 pages

English language

Published by Melville House.

ISBN:: 978-1-68589-036-0

From a smattering of ominous right-wing compounds in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s, to the shocking January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, America has seen the culmination of a long-building war on democracy being waged by a fundamentally violent and antidemocratic far-right movement that unironically calls itself the "Patriot" movement.

So how did we get here? Award-winning journalist David Neiwert — who been following the rise of these extremist groups since the late 1970s, when he was a young reporter in Idaho — explores how the movement was built over decades, how it was set aflame by Donald Trump and his cohorts, and how it will continue to attack American democracy for the foreseeable future. Neiwert especially studies how the Pacific Northwest has long been a breeding ground of extremist violence, from the time when neo-nazis migrated to the area from southern California in the 1970s, …

From a smattering of ominous right-wing compounds in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s, to the shocking January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, America has seen the culmination of a long-building war on democracy being waged by a fundamentally violent and antidemocratic far-right movement that unironically calls itself the "Patriot" movement.

So how did we get here? Award-winning journalist David Neiwert — who been following the rise of these extremist groups since the late 1970s, when he was a young reporter in Idaho — explores how the movement was built over decades, how it was set aflame by Donald Trump and his cohorts, and how it will continue to attack American democracy for the foreseeable future. Neiwert especially studies how the Pacific Northwest has long been a breeding ground of extremist violence, from the time when neo-nazis migrated to the area from southern California in the 1970s, through the great battles in Portland and Seattle and neighboring towns over the last decade.

Laying out how these groups organize their terroristic violence and attacks on democratic institutions at every level—including local, state, and federal targets—Neiwert details what their strategies and plans look like for the foreseeable future.

1 edition

SocProf reviewed The Age of Insurrection by David Neiwert

Be afraid, be very afraid

5 stars

This book is a continuation of the arduous and thankless work that David Neiwert has been doing for decades: tracking, documenting, and analyzing far-right movements in the United States, under their many iterations. This "longue duree" allows him to see the continuities and ruptures in these movements. However, the present volume makes clear that something has changed, as noted in the title: the far right is now in full insurrectionist mode, from talk to collective action, with an amplified eliminationist rhetoric and obsession with civil war. Neiwert examines this through the early days of the Trump presidency, through the COVID pandemic where the far right latched onto a willing anti-vax movement, through the January 6 insurrection that never really ended, but returned to the local level. But contrary to his previous volume, Neiwert does not offer solutions, except outorganizing this rising fascist movement.