A Journey into Far-Right Terrorism in America
BOOK REVIEW: God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America
By Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware/Columbia University Press
Reviewed by: Philip Mudd
The Reviewer: Philip Mudd was Deputy Director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and the FBI’s national security branch. He is the author of several books including, Black Site: The CIA in the Post 9/11 World.
REVIEW —The political maelstrom leading up to, during, and after the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol centered partly on one question: How accountable was President Trump, and how might he be held accountable? Behind the question lay the judgment that revolutionary movements require leadership, and that this revolutionary movement, absent the President, might not have erupted into violence.
It’s not that easy, the authors of this new book might say. Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware, drawing on decades of experience following terrorist groups, sketch out a half-century of right-wing extremism in America in their new book, God, Guns and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America, combining detailed descriptions of militant factions and individuals along with the themes and motivations that define this history of political violence. The roots of this problem in America go further back than many of us might remember; discounting today’s violence as a short-term eruption linked to one man, is not only simplistic but dangerous. Without national attention, the authors argue, American democracy might stumble, or fall.
The authors chart how echoes of past grievances in modern political currents have persisted until today, and remind us of how American this phenomenon is, which can be jarring. Chapters about the bloody history of right-wing extremism and violence — most, but not all, in America — remind the reader time and again of how common the phenomena of paranoia and prejudice are among people who see themselves as defenders of the Constitution, and the real American dream.
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These individuals and groups demonize the government as the enemy. The relatively new phrase “deep state” might help define the views of groups profiled in the book, though early violent activists wouldn’t have used that language. “We’ve got to change the bureaucracy,” says one radical profiled in the book, because the bureaucracy threatens American values. Government is typically viewed as “predatory,” part of an ill-defined “New World Order” aimed at eliminating freedoms.
Throughout the book, ideas that many readers might see as fringe appear less so; disturbingly, through hundreds of meticulously researched pages, those ideas emerge as common. The fringe chillingly edges toward the norm, at least in terms of defining the long history of right-wing sedition in America.
Violence is core to the individuals and groups in the book. There’s the militants’ motivational side, their belief that they must act urgently because the government is out to confiscate weapons as a step toward some sort of federal conspiracy. “From the militia’s standpoint,” writes one researcher cited by the authors, “the necessary response [by right-wing radicals] to federal tyranny is to stockpile weapons and engage in paramilitary training for what they regard as an impending showdown.” The parallels to modern-day America aren’t only unavoidable, they’re part of what the authors are trying to tell us through case studies, so many of which could readily describe the camouflage-clad militias that use Second Amendment propaganda to recruit today.
Hoffman and Ware cite dozens of examples that underscore the point that today’s political turmoil and violence, have been part of America for longer than many readers may remember.
Forty years ago, for example, the authors cite an FBI investigation into “antigovernment zealots” who write, “The floodgates of our borders have been opened for years and a population of illegals starving in our streets just might make a loud noise. We are all Americans, first and foremost, devoted to protecting our Constitution and our Christian heritage from enemies both foreign and domestic.” Racial purity, religious purity, government overreach, all crop up in these cases as the sources of simmering anger that seem to seethe through American history for a significant swath of its history. Sowing political divisions, and demonizing opponents, also appears early in the narrative. Americans who oppose some of these right-wing radicals might be vilified by them as “communists” or “socialists,” both labels that any current watcher of today’s battles among politicians will recognize.
The author’s trace the disturbing drumbeat of racism, paranoia, anti-government propaganda, and violence, into the first decades of this century, linking forgotten cases from the 1970s and 1980s with stories that any news consumer today would recognize. Racism surrounding President Obama’s electoral victory; violence in Charlottesville in 2017; anti-government anger stoked by Covid lockdowns; and modern-day xenophobia linked to immigration and the southern border, all are themes that seem to have been passed down for decades, only to become recruiting and motivational tools for today’s extremists. The book is a history of far-right terrorism in America, but in terms of prevalent themes seen today, this book seems as much current cautionary tale as dated history.
Similarly, how these groups operate has an eerie familiarity. For example, the use of emerging electronic media to communicate, recruit, and organize isn’t just a recent phenomenon. Extremists’ use of new forms of communication, including encryption, date back to the final decades of the 20th century, well before the 21st century social media revolution.
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The complex story isn’t easy to relate, and readers might find themselves struggling to keep track of the plots and plotters. Beyond the plots, the themes motivating seditionists too can seem disparate: spurs for politically motivated anger across the decades do not lend themselves to simple categorizations. But for those who believe that today’s mix of anti-immigrant, anti-government “America First” isolationism is a passing phase, the examples of how these themes repeat themselves across decades are voluminous, and they do converge through 250 pages of text.
The book concludes with a range of recommendations, many of which would demand significant societal and political change. This section isn’t for the faint of heart: the recommendations are sweeping and profound, such as alterations to how the government investigates and prosecutes right-wing violence: changes in domestic terrorism laws and longer prison terms for perpetrators are a few of the many recommendations. And then there are calls for more aggressive policing of online content by social media companies, along with a plea for a commitment by national leaders to accept that they are responsible for national unity and restoring the country’s sense of common purpose.
Underlying these recommendations is the message, throughout the book, that combatting right-wing extremism has become such a critical issue in the country that modest measures won’t work. This chapter details big solutions for a big problem.
Read this history, the authors might say. The kind of violence that many Americans think of as ‘un-American’ is actually a part of the country’s fiber. What’s past isn’t necessarily past. It may be prologue.
God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America earns an impressive 3.5 out of 4 trench coats.
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