David A. Neiwert

Neiwert covers his topic of alt-right terror organizations and conspiracy theories with his usual scholarship and flair. This book feels like something of a continuation of his other work "Alt-America", this time focusing in on the conspiracy theories that radicalize the furthest and most hateful fringes of the Right. Something that sets this apart from other books chronicling the history of these hate groups is a section towards the end with advice and suggestions about how we as a society show more and as individuals can stop the spread of these dangerous "theories". I enjoy the way Neiwert writes, I just wish his topics of research weren't so distressingly prevalent. show less

Here's a book that addresses the mainstreaming of political violence during the Trump era, including the Biden interregnum. I got it from the public library, but it's not hard to imagine the ubiquitous aspiring right-wing library censors trying to memory-hole this book just as their fellow "patriots" have been attempting to revise the relevant history in other media.

Author David Neiwert has a long and illustrious track record as a journalist documenting right-wing violent rhetoric. The show more prose of this long book is clear and typically compelling, but it shows some signs of having been frankensteined from disparate compositions, mainly in that a few issues receive redundant treatment without internal cross-reference or acknowledgement. For example, he twice goes into extensive detail on the origins and deployment of the "bloody shirt" trope in political argument.

The account given here is very thorough for the period, instancing events large and small, in rural and urban settings across the country. But the greatest focus and detail is on the Pacific Northwest, which is perhaps more exemplary than typical of the national phenomena. Neiwert himself lives in Washington state.

The book is organized into three large sections. The first is trained on the "Rubicon" of the January 6 insurrection. The second discusses the organizational and cultural background of white supremacists, militias, brawler clubs, and other incipient brownshirts. The third describes the imposition of these groups on the political process and the public at large. Notable and worthwhile portions of this book include the debunking of the Antifa scare and the discussion of far-right actors and sympathies in police forces.

Reading The Age of Insurrection while witnessing the pardons of the January 6 convicts was a truly dispiriting experience. Although Neiwert's final chapter makes a call to "out-organize" the far right in an effort to recover US democratic institutions, his postscript "The Echoes of History" is more bracing than encouraging. The book is well worth reading, though, for the view it gives of the last decade, and it is likely to become even more important during the full-court gaslighting that has already begun with a second Trump administration. show less

Author Neiwert is an investigative reporter who has been working the beat of the rightward fringe of American politics for decades. This book published in 2020 saw all too clearly the "conspiracist" contribution to what eventuated in the Capitol violence of January 2021--not that there's any reason to think that episode exhausted the impulse.

The subtitle is "How to Counteract the Conspiracy Theories That Are Killing Us," but most of the book is in fact dedicated to establishing that show more "Conspiracy Theories ... Are Killing Us." Not only have conspiracist subcultures and rationales contributed to most US mass murder incidents in the last three decades, but conspiracism is killing the country's polity--degrading civic identity and thwarting democratic possibilities.

Neiwert begins the book with the important acknowledgement that there are in fact many real conspiracies, past and present. He distinguishes these and their discovery from the conspiracist worldview of fabulist paranoia. He also draws a line between the "old conspiracism" (epitomized by obsessive JFK assassination and UFO investigators) and the "new conspiracist" Infowars and Q-anon crowds. And he offers a digestible cultural history of conspiracist thinking in the US that goes back to the eighteenth century.

Only in the final chapter does the book provide any "How to Counteract" ideas and material, and these are of the difficult no-silver-bullet variety. Thanks to pandemic-driven isolation, outrage-mongering social media, and the bizarre twists of surveillance capitalism, we are all epistemologists now. This book is a sober overview of the biggest hazards in the increasingly difficult work of orienting society towards genuine events and shared goals, rather than paranoid hallucinations and cultural fracture. show less

The Age of Insurrection by David Neiwert is an essential read for anyone interested in understanding the radical right, especially with an eye toward thwarting their continued terrorism.

This book primarily covers the period from the 1970s until now, largely because Neiwert has firsthand knowledge of this period from his research and journalism activity. This means that, while including explanations of many of the conspiracies and ideas, this is much more "on the ground" than many books. show more Those books are important, we have to be able to think both abstractly about the ideas as well as pragmatically about the actions. Neiwert offers some of both but is focused on the actions and strategies of the radical right.

Ideally this book will be read not simply to understand these movements but to formulate countermeasures. This will hopefully serve as a call to action (or to arms if the radical right continues to insist on armed confrontation) for activists and a wake-up call for any politicians or policymakers who might be conservative but still prefer the idea of a democracy over some form of authoritarian rule.

I would recommend this to anyone interested in what is happening in the US (as well as the rest of the world). If you have high blood pressure (as I do), just make sure you're taking your meds because this book will anger you as well as make you question those around you who pretend to not be like these extremists but still spew the same nonsense (we all know these people, probably related to a few of them).

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less