Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement From the Margins to the Mainstream
By Leonard Zeskind
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 672 pages, $37.50.
To most Americans, including seasoned political observers, the machinations of white supremacists and professional antisemites are regarded, if at all, as crude carnival theater. After more than three decades of close observation, Leonard Zeskind, recipient of a 1998 MacArthur Fellowship for his independent scholarship on far-right, racist and neo-Nazi groups, is not so dismissive. More important, his first book, “Blood and Politics,” analyzes the past 35 years to provide a trenchant and troubling assessment of the future of what Zeskind terms “the white nationalist movement.”
Since the mid-1980s a number of books have detailed homegrown paramilitaries and the bigoted zealots behind them, but “Blood and Politics” provides an entirely deeper level of analysis. Zeskind is the first to fully integrate a sophisticated understanding of global events — specifically the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union — with an equally forceful insight into the uniquely American dynamics of racial identity, Southern sectionalism and national politics. After the Soviet Union “cracked apart like a three-minute egg,” and anticommunism became almost instantly irrelevant to American national identity, white nationalists rushed in to fill the vacuum.
The end of the Cold War dichotomy gave way to a new struggle, that of nationalism vs. internationalism, and the results of this “geopolitical earthquake” are still reverberating all around us, Zeskind explains. While most of the civilized world ostensibly looked on with horror as the multicultural communities of Yugoslavia disintegrated under the demands of ethnic nationalism, white supremacists and antisemites in the United States saw increased promise in the prospect of recasting their domestic struggle as both an ethnic and religious war.
The subtitle of “Blood and Politics” offers a history of the white nationalist movement “from the margins to the mainstream,” and the description is certainly apt. In the hands of less-skilled authors, navigating the netherworld of white supremacist groups too often becomes an exercise in cataloging the alphabet soup of one seemingly hapless sect after another. But Zeskind concentrates not only on painting the picture of a movement — which allows the plethora of people and groups he describes to fall into place more readily — but also on highlighting the critical fault line between “vanguardists,” who advocate violent, revolutionary struggle, and “mainstreamers,” who favor the ballot box over the bullet.
“Blood and Politics” elucidates this distinction chiefly through the personalities and political histories of two men who contributed perhaps more than anyone else to the development of the contemporary white nationalist movement. William Pierce, a physicist by training, was in the vanguard, while Willis Carto, a gray everyman with a background in sales, pushed toward the mainstream. Both were children of the Depression who came of age politically in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decision ending segregation, and both dedicated the balance of their lives to the cause of white supremacy and the extirpation of anything Jewish, but any similarity ended there.
Carto was the founder of the perennially vitriolic and “anti-Zionist” Liberty Lobby, which at its peak employed dozens of staffers in its Capitol Hill offices, had a multimillion dollar budget and circulated its house organ, The Spotlight, to hundreds of thousands of paid subscribers. As obsessively secretive as he was litigious, Carto made an indelible mark on the political landscape of white nationalism as the founder of both the Institute for Historical Review and the Populist Party. The former was dedicated to the proposition that the Holocaust was a hoax, but its real purpose was the rehabilitation of National Socialism as an acceptable political doctrine. The latter attempted to create a third party capable of moving racism and antisemitism into the political mainstream. Zeskind details the inner workings of both organizations, and exposes, for the first time, the full role played by Carto in these and other equally bigoted enterprises spanning some 40 years.
Where Carto sought to penetrate the ranks of mainstream conservatives, as well as peel off conservative constituencies to his own cause, Pierce had a more narrow view: He sought to recruit hardened cadres of violent revolutionaries, men willing to die for the cause of Aryan brotherhood and racial revolution. Pierce, who died in 2002, is perhaps best known as the author of “The Turner Diaries,” a phantasmagorical novel about an imagined race war. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was perhaps one of its most notorious fans. Pierce was a one-time acolyte of George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, and went on himself to establish the neo-Nazi National Alliance.
“Blood and Politics” does more than simply tell the story of Carto and Pierce; it comprehensively exposes and illuminates a cast of characters who occupy places of particular importance on either side of the line dividing mainstreamers from revolutionaries, and thus contextualizes literally all the significant recent personalities and events within the white nationalist movement. While the political ascendancy of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke has inspired countless exposés, Zeskind’s treatment of Duke’s political experiment more thoroughly explains the origins of the movement that gave rise to him and the one he subsequently helped shape. While the story of The Order, a 1980s-era band of bank robbers and would-be Aryan warriors, has been detailed vividly by a range of journalists and authors, “Blood and Politics” is the first book to fully articulate the tension between these vanguardists and their “mainstreaming” counterparts.
The descriptions are fresh, but the book suffers from an absence of photographs, which would have helped bring more of the scenes and characters to life. Zeskind takes his subject seriously, and refrains from caricature; but he is not beyond crafting colorful prose occasionally ladled with well-deserved derision. Nestled deep in the Ozark Mountains, the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord was one of the most heavily armed paramilitary compounds of the mid-1980s. Zeskind describes it:
Weapons of every description were cached around the camp like sacks of wheat for a future famine. Light antitank weapons, known as LAW rockets, dynamite, and military-style plastic explosives were hidden. So was a thirty-gallon barrel of cyanide and forty thousand dollars worth of gold coins, Krugerrands, the currency of the apartheid regime in South Africa…. [T]he CSA was ultimately a heavily armed and criminal compound for cultists. Atop this gunpowder dung heap sat James Ellison, like a combination guru and Gruppenführer.
Zeskind also takes aim squarely at former syndicated columnist Samuel Francis — a paleo-conservative stalwart — and his journalist-turned-politician colleague, Patrick Buchanan, who stunned the Republican political establishment with his first-place finish in the 1996 New Hampshire presidential primary and went on to poll more than 3 million votes by hammering away at brown-skinned immigrants, embracing the Confederate flag and excoriating abortionists. Buchanan was “a white Christian nationalist, first and foremost,” Zeskind reminds us, before detailing the healthy smattering of professional racists and antisemites who peppered the state leadership of his national campaign.
“Blood and Politics” also reprises the success of such old-line segregationist groups as the Council of Conservative Citizens, which changed its name but not its racist agenda. Most important, the council claimed an array of local, state and federal elected officials as their allies, including former Georgia congressman Bob Barr and former Senate majority leader Trent Lott, who were forced to distance themselves when their links to the council became front-page news.
Although antisemitism and racism are usually inseparable handmaidens within the white nationalist movement, some groups tried to parse their prejudices. It was an awkward endeavor. Jared Taylor, founder of the group American Renaissance, reveled in the pseudo-intellectual discourse of scientific racism, but he inspired the ire of fellow activists by giving a platform to such men as Rabbi Mayer Schiller, a teacher at Yeshiva University High School in Manhattan, despite the fact that the rabbi objected to “egalitarianism” and bemoaned the destruction of the white race as vigorously as any white supremacist.
As prologue, Zeskind recounts the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia and notes that “in a matter of a few historical seconds,” this multiethnic state went up in flames. While Zeskind doesn’t predict similar violence in the United States, he does forcefully make the point that the inevitable midcentury demographic shift toward a minority-white nation has the potential to stimulate white nationalists of future generations to pursue a balkanization of their own design. No doubt some hardened movement activists will be spurred to commit violence, as they always have. More important, Zeskind warns us, others will seek to use politics to consolidate white racial and political identity in reaction to the inevitable demographic change. To do so, they will draw on symbols of the past to write their future.
The civil rights movement succeeded in abolishing de jure segregation, even if the rate of change fell short of the “all deliberate speed” mandated by the Brown decision. And the presidential election of Barack Obama certainly marks the success of America as a multiracial democracy, notwithstanding the need for continued progress. What remains an open question, in Zeskind’s eyes, is how well the nation will make the transition to become a multiethnic state in which white people are a minority. For those who are committed to making that changeover a successful one, it will be necessary to anticipate and understand the forces that are likely to be arrayed against them. “Blood and Politics” will be indispensable to that effort.
Daniel Levitas is the author of “The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right” (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2002).
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Leonard Zeskind nneds to also study the antisemitic Islamicists among us and the association they have built with both the radical right but especially the radical left.
There is more danger to the Jewish community from the radical left than from the right.
Instead of searching the Ozarks (as he mentioned) for white sheets, maybe he should look at some profs at his local university.
I have read your “The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right” and am looking forward to reading your new book. It would seem that the SPLC is the only one with a grip on what the white supremacy movement is about and what their plans are, your books open a whole new understanding of what is going on. Keep up the good fight. Respectfully Submitted
Yes, Islamic and Black racism unfortunately also exists. I think it is important to see the link between early childhood abuse and adult violence as described at wwww.psychohistory.com. It is not enough to know the facts. Without personal therapy available to the masses no peaceful transition is imaginable.
What would Zeskind say about the non-racist One World Nazi Party? I mean, this party is a multiracial Nazi party that wants to turn the US into a new nation called New Vinland. Zeskind is a bit behind the times. These "white nationalists" are starting to reach out to non-whites in an effort to "destroy Jewish power." It's quite unreal.
Here is there site: http://www.ownparty.org/
These folks even calim that there were black (African) Nazis. I'm telling you, things are getting scary for this nation.
Jennifer,
I see what you mean. Have you seen this site? This is yet another one of these white Nazi sites that reaches out to non-whites.
http://hitlersociety.org/index_files/home.html
It's run by a woman of all things! Crazy I tell ya!
I'm definitely asking my public library for this book! Just look at all the racist crazies this review knocked out of the woodworks!
You people with your halacha based racist theocracy in the middle east are analysing our racist tendencies?
haha.. your hypocrisy knows no bounds.
Jews are the ones who brought multi culturalism to America. Jews are the vanguard of displacing the founding stock of America and yet White Nationalists are the bad guys? What am I missing here?
A recent poll showed that the people of the world voted Israel as the worst country on Earth. I don't think its just the White Nationalists who dislike you.
LoL, how long will you sit there, as a left-wing airhead, spouting nonsense of the "evil whites"? How long will you continue your rhetoric in an age that's increasingly contrary to your delusional world cast forever in the glow of the mid 1900's?
How long will you continue your nonsense, when a man cannot defend himself against armed black robbers, without being called a racist and tried for a felony? Where he can save lives, but the media and feral malcontents pounce upon him like rabid wolverines?
Or how about how a lieing stripper who just happens to be black can conjure a faux story of rape and racism and get all the media hypocrites and leftists, such as yourself, backing her. Only to be made fools of soon afterward.
Let me bring forth a little statistic for you here.
1976-2004 White on Black Homicide: 8451
1976-2006 Black on White Homicide: 22,553
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/ovrelracetab.htm
The evil racists were the ones to guide the hands of the blacks to murder, a soft whisper into the ear, forcing them to the poor state of their community, ever violent.
It is clear your fantasy exists only in your mind and the minds of your cohorts.
Now lets seal the deal with the exposure of your hypocrisy.
Israel is maiming and killing Palestinians in the most barbaric of ways. It is purely a racial matter. Being you're Jewish, and they're you're fellow Jew, i suppose its condoned and just fine? Of course, you can do no wrong after all.
You will die, completely out of touch with the reality of the modern world.
Zionism is racial supremacy, only it isn't in the eyes of its practitioners. Hypocrites.
It's a mistake to confound white nationalism with bigotry. The two may often go together, but they are not necessarily twins. For instance, I am a white nationalist, but also a supporter of Israel versus the savage Mahometans, and am, I hope, perfectly cordial with individual Jews and blacks. On the other hand, I can hardly help perceiving and being very unhappy that America's historical culture and population is in grave peril, nor noticing that secular Jews (even Jews on the right, such as various Kristols and Podhoretzes) have been amongst the chief pom-pom girls for open borders and unrestricted immigration. It seems to me that they are stuck in a kind of cultural autopilot where they still instinctively feel that the greatest threat to them are the blonde peasants in the hinterlands. Thus they reflexively attempt to diminish the power of European-Americans. It's neither astonishing nor outrageous that this should be perceived and resented. However, if you are truly worried about white nationalists—and one would suppose that the zealous ferocity of Islam would be a matter of greater concern—why not try talking to them instead of demonizing them? Perhaps a little mutual understanding might result. "A free and frank exchange of ideas," as the saying goes.
Evil racist bigot that I am, I can't help wondering what benefit Messrs. Zeskind and Levitas expect whites to gain from giving up our status as the dominant majority.
Ah I love people like Daniel Levitas, who do more to promote the white nationalist cause then I ever could.
Calling people childish names like racist/bigot/etc and not countering their arguments makes you look stupid and them look appealing.
More proof of the Jewish world-wide conspiracy eh? I have Jewish friends,and believe in the Jewish State of Israel--but as a whole,Jewish people work from witin any country where they reside ,to corrode that host county's civilization.Look at Jewish members of the U.S. congress.B.M.
Double Standard: when some one advocates one course of action for himself or his group, and advocates a different course of action for others.
Example: If Jewish people see themselves as Jewish people and want their own country, Israel, this is good. But if white Christian people see themselves as white Christians and want their own country, America, this is bad.
The people looking forward to the 'non-Whitening' of the USA are clearly stupid or insane (likely both).
Without its core ethnically White majority (the Anglo-Saxons, Germans, French, Dutch, Irish, Italians, Scandinavians, etc) which is overwhelmingly law-abiding, hard-working/industrious, and politically stable, America will clearly degenerate in to an economically unstable and largely politically ungovernable nation similar to the very multiethnic nations of India or Brazil. You only need to look to the increasingly broke, overcrowded, polluted, crime-filled, and pitiful condition of the extremely multiethnic state of California as an example of what happens once a large portion of America becomes majority non-White.
The wholesale break-up of the USA along ethnic/racial lines is a definite possibility in the near-future, similar to what happened in the Balkans and the former USSR.
You've been warned.
The people looking forward to the 'non-Whitening' of the USA are clearly stupid or insane (likely both).
Without its core ethnically White majority (the Anglo-Saxons, Germans, French, Dutch, Irish, Italians, Scandinavians, etc) which is overwhelmingly law-abiding, hard-working/industrious, and politically stable, America will clearly degenerate in to an economically unstable and largely politically ungovernable nation similar to the very multiethnic nations of India or Brazil. You only need to look to the increasingly broke, overcrowded, polluted, crime-filled, and pitiful condition of the extremely multiethnic state of California as an example of what happens once a large portion of America becomes majority non-White.
The wholesale break-up of the USA along ethnic/racial lines is a definite possibility in the near-future, similar to what happened in the Balkans and the former USSR.
You've been warned.
Leonard Zeskind is a Jew. He's part of the Jewish conspiracy to destroy the White race through mongrelization. He want's to exterminate all White people.
.
This article has too much attitude and too many adjectives to be taken seriously...
.
Why doesn't Israel let in millions of immigrants so that Jews become a minority in their own country? Wouldn't they benefit from that diversity?
Why are White Americans racist, and Jews in Israel are just 'looking to their own?'
Well whatever, we all have to answer to God when we die. And sometimes we even have to start answering before we die.
so far, so good, so what
http://www.ownparty.org/2009/06/07/martinson-interviews-mother-of-the-matrix/
Why are we giving space to these ignorant people. Ah yes, it is because we believe in free speech. How I would love to forget that at this moment. But do let us take full notice of the likes of Rush Limbaugh and the comedians on Fox are saying that encourages this vicious vein of hatred. They must also take responsibility for cynically fostering murder. I point out that I am one of those hard-workers of Scandinavian descent.
G-D wants UNITY with all that are the work of His hands, we are to be woven, together making a covering for the law that is the desire of G-D for our hearts and minds our inward parts as it is written in Ps. 51:6
One of the names of G-D ------G-D of Host---Adoni Ts'vahot------
It is written Isaiah 6:3 "Holy, holy holy is the LORD of host; the whole earth is filled with His glory!"
Zechariah 14....In that day it shall be "The LORD is ONE" and His name one.