White Supremacy: Connecting the Dots
When I first heard about A Field Guide to White Supremacy, I knew it would be important. Its co-editor, Kathleen Belew, is the author of Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America—a his- tory of how Vietnam veterans mid-wifed the white power movement that burst forth in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Belew emphasized that the white power movement is a still-living phenomenon: We all saw that truth on January 6, 2021, as Con- federate flags mixed with Trump flags and the criminals beating up Capitol police officers were allowed to just go home, cloaked in white privilege.
It’s no surprise that Belew testified before Congress a week later and in Charlottesville in November 2021 on behalf of those injured during the 2017 “Unite the Right” march. She has long taught us that white supremacy is the ideology behind all the faux grassroots concerns spouted by those in power, and that the white power movement’s distortion of populism is much more dangerous than people realize.
Read the full article in the Winter 2021 issue of Democratic Left.