The Age of Insurrection: The Radical Right's Assault on American Democracy

by David Neiwert

Overview

"An important book, offering the clearest explanation of how dark forces conspired to overthrow our democratically elected government and install a fascist regime in its place. And it’s a warning that what comes next might be even worse... His prose is passionate, thoughtful, at times blisteringly funny and always deeply morally engaged with the importance of the work." — The Seattle Times

"A brisk and searing history... It's a disturbing look at how hard extremism is to stamp out." —Publishers Weekly

The strange and terrible tale of the far right’s long war on American democracy . . .
 
From a smattering of ominous right-wing compounds in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s, to the shocking January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, America has seen the culmination of a long-building war on democracy being waged by a fundamentally violent and antidemocratic far-right movement that unironically calls itself the "Patriot" movement.
 
So how did we get here? Award-winning journalist David Neiwert — who been following the rise of these extremist groups since the late 1970s, when he was a young reporter in Idaho — explores how the movement was built over decades, how it was set aflame by Donald Trump and his cohorts, and how it will continue to attack American democracy for the foreseeable future. Neiwert especially studies how the Pacific Northwest has long been a breeding ground of extremist violence, from the time when neo-nazis migrated to the area from southern California in the 1970s, through the great battles in Portland and Seattle and neighboring towns over the last decade. 
 
Laying out how these groups organize their terroristic violence and attacks on democratic institutions at every level—including local, state, and federal targets—Neiwert details what their strategies and plans look like for the foreseeable future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781685890360
Publisher:	Melville House Publishing
Publication date:	06/27/2023
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	476,956
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

David Neiwert is an award-winning investigative journalist and the author of several books, including Red Pill, Blue Pill: How to Counteract the Conspiracy Theories that are Killing Us (Prometheus 2020), Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump (Verso 2017), Of Orcas and Men: What Killer Whales Can Teach Us (Overlook 2016), and And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border (Nation Books 2013).

Read an Excerpt

The Road to Sedition

On January 10, 49 B.C.E., Gaius Julius Caesar, then governor of Cisalpine Gaul but on the cusp of being stripped of all power, ordered one of his legions to cross the Rubicon River, explicitly in defiance of the Roman Senate, which had ordered him to disband his army, which by law was not permitted within the borders of the Roman Republic. His action set off four years of civil war in Italy, culminating with the demise of the republic as Caesar assumed complete dictatorial control of the empire.

On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump—on the verge of being officially unseated from the presidency—heeded the urgings of his most rabid supporters and crossed his own Rubicon. Speaking that day to a crowd of tens of thousands of supporters who had turned out to “Stop the Steal” of the 2020 presidential election, he falsely claimed that he had been cheated out of the presidency and urged them to march to the Capitol to protest the outcome.

Now, it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down . . .

Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.

I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.

As he said these words, people in the crowd could be heard shouting: “Storm the Capitol!” “Invade the Capitol building!” “Let’s take the Capitol!” “Let’s take it!” “Take the Capitol!”

As Trump wrapped things up, he concluded:

And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.

So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue.

And we’re going to the Capitol, and we’re going to try and give.

The Democrats are hopeless—they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don’t need any of our help. We’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.

So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Many of his supporters, in fact, were already at the Capitol at that moment, tussling with Capitol Police at the barricades. Thousands more surged in that direction. Trump, despite saying he would, did not join the march.

He tried. As he entered the presidential limousine, he told his Secret Service detail to take him to the Capitol. (He later told The Washington Post he tried to go there: “Secret Service said I couldn’t go. I would have gone there in a minute.”) The agents refused, saying the security risk was too great. According to several witnesses, he attempted to take control of the steering wheel. In the end, he conceded to his security detail, retreating to the White House and watching the drama unfold from there.

Like Caesar or any other commanding general, he knew they would follow his orders, even if that part about being “peaceful” slipped their minds. As it did.

——

The mob that Donald Trump unleashed that day was not, as its Republican apologists would later claim, simply an aggregation of angry conservatives who “got out of hand” while protesting his defeat in the 2020 election. The siege of the Capitol had been carefully planned, orchestrated by paramilitary claques who spearheaded the attack, and supported by an army of true believers of various stripes: conspiracy theorists, Christian nationalists, and far-right street brawlers. Trump’s MAGA army.

The January 6 insurrection was an attack on the hallmark of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of power. No American president in the nation’s history had refused to acknowledge and participate in this tradition, which is often credited with being the foundation of the stability of its core democratic institution—namely, elections, the final reckoning of the public will. Well before the 2020 election, Trump had made his contempt for this institution plain, and after he lost, he made it manifest by claiming without any evidence he had been cheated, cultivating an army of people ready to use violence to prevent his dethronement and then marshalling them into an attack on Congress, eagerly crossing the Rubicon on his behalf.

Preventing the certification of the Electoral College votes, however, was only the temporal objective of Trump’s army. In a larger sense, the insurrection’s intent was to overthrow democracy itself and replace it with an authoritarian autocracy. The intended outcome was to install Trump as the nation’s permanent president for life: a dictator in the mold of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, or Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In this respect, the tide of authoritarianism that swept over Washington, D.C., on January 6 was in fact only a manifestation of a much larger phenomenon: the global ascent of right-wing authoritarian rule.[iii] In addition to major players where authoritarianism has been in place for a generation or longer like China and Russia, nations around the world—from the Philippines to Italy to Brazil and numerous places in between—autocratic regimes not only have secured political power, but have worked to enact its spread around the world.

This spread has been enabled by a media, internet, and social media environment in which misinformation and disinformation that readily disrupts democratic discourse have become the ordinary state of things. It’s manifested in the rise of far-right political groups, many of them engaging in intimidation and street violence while others work assiduously to insinuate themselves within the democratic electorate even as they undermine democracy itself.

Around the globe, democracies have faced sustained campaigns—fomented both by interior forces and those from outside—in which far-right operatives and leaders undermine the rule of law, pervert elections, attack media freedom, and inflame discrimination against minorities and mistreatment of migrants. Nowhere have these attacks had as significant effect on pluralistic institutions than in the United States, long considered the world’s leading exponent of democracy.

There have been several powerful indicators of American decline: a surge in political domination, embodied in the saturation of intimidation and violence in its discourse; the worsening of long-standing discrimination against racial and ethnic minority groups as well as recent policies on asylum and immigration, eroding their equal treatment under the law; and most particularly the sudden and sharp decline in confidence in its elections, toxified by Trump and his fellow Republicans both before and after his defeat in 2020.

But the United States is only one of the many democracies under siege. In Hungary and Turkey, democratic institutions have already been replaced by autocratic rule. In other nations like India, a theocratic and intolerant majority has despoiled the principles of pluralism and equal citizenship. In European nations like Germany, Sweden, and Italy, far-right political parties are ascendant and acquiring power and influence.

In the latter case, the far right’s rise to power was led by a longtime neofascist named Giorgia Meloni, who won the prime minister’s seat in Italy’s September 2022 elections. For many observers, it was the final manifestation of the long process by which right-wing extremism has been mainstreamed in the West—and, for that matter, the world.

Editorial Reviews

04/10/2023

Journalist Neiwert (Red Pill, Blue Pill) offers a brisk and searing history of right-wing extremist groups in America from the 1970s to the January 6 Capitol riot. As a reporter in northern Idaho in the 1970s and ’80s, Neiwert witnessed the arrival of the Aryan Nations from their former base of operations in Southern California. Noting that the white supremacist group “terrorize the local population with waves of violent hate crimes” and “slowly alter the local demographics by attracting scores of fellow far-right extremists to the region,” Neiwert traces the ripple effects to the 1992 Ruby Ridge raid, in which Aryan Nations “convert” Randy Weaver refused to surrender to the FBI on weapons charges, leading to the deaths of his wife and son; the launch of the Patriot militia movement, which “spread like wildfire” after the 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex.; and the emergence of the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and other paramilitary groups that played roles in the January 6 insurrection. Though not much new ground is broken, Neiwert offers visceral descriptions of these groups’ intimidation tactics; astutely analyzes the overlaps between Christian nationalism, white supremacism, the sovereign citizen movement, and other aspect of their ideology; and sheds light on the right-wing media’s “mind-bending efforts to help Republicans avoid accountability for the January 6 insurrection.” It’s a disturbing look at how hard extremism is to stamp out. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"David Neiwert offers a necessary and chilling read about American extremists and the threat they pose to us all...America’s only hope lies in the power of important books like this one to inspire decent citizens to redouble their efforts to defeat these vile scourges of freedom and democracy." —Charles Kaizer for The Guardian 

"An important book, offering the clearest explanation of how dark forces conspired to overthrow our democratically elected government and install a fascist regime in its place. And it’s a warning that what comes next might be even worse... His prose is passionate, thoughtful, at times blisteringly funny and always deeply morally engaged with the importance of the work." —Paul Constant for The Seattle Times

"Now in his fifth decade of reporting on right-wing extremism in the U.S., this expert on authoritarianism warns that the taste of power will propel extremists to continue their assault on democracy... Well-written, impeccably researched, easy to digest, and vivid in its profiles of far-right radicals, The Age of Insurrection is a key source for readers trying to make sense of it all." —Booklist, STARRED review

"Award-winning investigative journalist Neiwert chronicles, defines, and thoroughly documents the rise of alt-right ideologies in the U.S... Equal parts enlightening and terrifying, this is imperative reading for anyone in the United States." —Library Journal, STARRED review

"His story, which spans a half century, is most interesting in its account of what happened to the movement after Charlottesville." - The New Yorker

"A brisk and searing history... It's a disturbing look at how hard extremism is to stamp out." —Publishers Weekly

"A trenchant analysis of the many dangers of the far right... 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... Politics watchers will find Neiwert's book illuminating — and frightening." —Kirkus

"[A] detailed and sweeping new book exploration of the threat the American far right poses nationally and locally." - The Progressive Magazine

"David Neiwert’s new book is a sweeping and detailed exploration of the threat the American far right poses nationally and locally." - Buck's County Beacon

“For over a decade, David Neiwert has been America’s canary in the coal mine—our national early-warning system on the spread of corrosive, eliminationist, right-wing hatred in our midst.”—Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

"Over the last two decades, David Neiwert has been one of our finest analysts of the American far right, paying sustained, serious and careful attention to the seemingly fringe movements of conspiracy theorists and insurrectionists. Now it turns out these movements are not so fringe after all but have helped elect Donald Trump as president. This crisply written book, grounded in his solid reporting, tells the whole sordid story with clarity and force. More than anyone else, Neiwert understands that Trumpism has deep roots in American culture and history. In this book, he lays out those roots for all to see.” —Jeet Heer, Senior Editor at the New Republic

“David Neiwert is among the most astute analysts of the contemporary right.” —Joe Conason, author of Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth

“Neiwert has not only earned his investigative chops over the past decade or so by exploring the dangerous side of right-wing extremism—he’s proven himself to be one of the more lyrical and elegant writers on the beat.” —Daily Kos

“There is no more dogged or more courageous chronicler of the radical American Right than Dave Neiwert. He is the polestar by which we navigate the great distance between what we claim to be as a people, and what we truly are.” – Charles Pierce, Esquire

From the Publisher

★ 06/01/2023

Award-winning investigative journalist Neiwert (Red Pill, Blue Pill) chronicles, defines, and thoroughly documents the rise of alt-right ideologies in the U.S. This impressive narrative spans the 1970s through the present and is a good primer to all of the figures and terms of the alt-right: the great replacement conspiracy theory, accelerationism, Alex Jones, QAnon, the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, the boogaloo movement, the evolving definition of a patriot, neo-Nazi alliances, Christian nationalists, Michael Flynn, COVID deniers, rhetoric about another U.S. civil war, and critical race theory. The book notes that the alt-right's seemingly small groups contribute pieces to a larger movement, and a long-embedded threat to democracy emerges. A history of disruption, violence, and racism is abundantly clear in this work, which depicts authoritarian personalities, social dominance orientation, and the demise of accountability. Neiwert insists that readers take notice as alt-right adherents fill roles in law enforcement and local and federal government. VERDICT Equal parts enlightening and terrifying, this is imperative reading for anyone in the United States.—Tina Panik

Library Journal

2023-03-29
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.

Kirkus Reviews