The White Power Movement After El Paso

The White Power Movement After El Paso

Kathleen Belew on domestic terrorism and Davis Maraniss on HUAC.

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We’re still thinking about the terrorist attack in El Paso, where 22 people were killed at a Walmart and two dozen more were injured. Like almost all of these attacks, the El Paso killings have been treated as an isolated event carried out by a loner. But the attacks in Charleston, Charlottesville, Christchurch, El Paso, and elsewhere are connected; the perpetrators are all part of the White Power movement, with roots going back to the 1970s. That’s what Kathleen Belew says—she writes for the New York Times op-ed page, she teaches history at the University of Chicago, and she’s the author of the book Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, it’s out now in paperback.

Also: HUAC is history; the heyday of the House Un-American Activities Committee was the 1950s. But we’re still concerned about government attacks on people, and groups, called “Un-American.” David Maraniss has been thinking about that history—his father was called before HUAC in 1952 and then blacklisted from his job as a newspaper editor. His new book is A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father.

 

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