THE AGE OF INSURRECTION

A trenchant analysis of the many dangers of the far right.

In the days following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol—planned by “paramilitary claques who spearheaded the attack, and supported by…conspiracy theorists, Christian nationalists, and far-right street brawlers”—the GOP made noises about disavowing the insurrection and its actors. No more. As Neiwert, author of Red Pill, Blue Pill and Alt-America, writes, instead of “breaking the fever of right-wing extremism, the event ushered in “an age in which insurrection is celebrated, seditionists are defended as ‘patriots,’ and the politics of menace and violence are woven into our everyday discourse and interactions.” Fueling this are all manner of White supremacist complaints, including the fearful view that immigrants and minorities will “replace” the White majority or the “accelerationist” notion that modern civilization itself is a poison and that fascism is the antidote. Neiwert ranges widely to look at actors major and minor, from the tea party members who paved the way for the angrier, more militant radical right of the sort that we saw in Charlottesville to mouthpieces like Tucker Carlson, who “endorsed the idea that Republicans are being forced to abandon democracy and eventually embrace fascism because of liberal hegemony.” Well reported and well written, Neiwert’s book also exposes allies that one wishes the radical right didn’t have—e.g., local police departments such as those of Portland, Oregon, whose leaders saw the Proud Boys as less alien than the left-wing protestors; and even the senior echelons of the Department of Homeland Security, who exhibited “authoritarian incompetence” throughout the Trump years. As long as Trump and Trumpism are on the political stage, there will be more to come, with the Jan. 6 insurrectionists hailed as heroes and “political prisoners” and QAnon bleatings about pedophilia and evil drag queens still common coin among the retrograde set.

Politics watchers will find Neiwert’s book illuminating—and frightening.