American Swastika

Reviews / Votes

American Swastika is a must-read volume for anyone trying to understand both the history and the rise of white supremacy in the US. Based on years of ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews, Simi and Futrell interrogate white supremacy organizations in the contemporary US. Specifically, they take a deep dive into four social movements, broadly defined: the Ku Klux Klan, Christian identity groups, neo-Nazis, and racist skinheads. The authors accomplish this task by considering the history of white supremacy in the US and among these social movements, but they go one step further, elucidating the processes of their formation by focusing on key structures of white supremacy movements, including hate in the home, white power parties, white power music, virtual hate, and white power communities. Drawing heavily on their ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, Simi and Futrell paint a stunning and horrifying picture of white supremacy movements, both at the margins and right under everyone's noses. This critical update to the first edition (CH, Nov'10, 48-1786) is a necessary study for any scholar, student, or citizen seeking to better understand the persistence and pervasiveness of white supremacy in the US. Essential. All readers. * Choice Reviews * The main strength of American Swastika is the degree to which Simi was able to directly interact with these groups and attempt to accurately describe their specific point of view. When analyzing this material with Futrell, they were able to give an in-depth analysis of this process and the phenomenology that emerges from it. -- David Polizzi, Indiana state University American Swastika sheds clear light and the beliefs, activities, and goals of those in the far right. Actually hearing their words and "seeing" them in action via the qualitative descriptions helps readers get a clear idea as to who these people are and the danger they pose. -- Harold Geistman, Wayne State University The ethnographic nature of American Swastika provides students with a close, intense look at the disturbingly banal nature of white supremacy. The accessible writing provides a visceral experience for students, who are confronted with the reality of race-based hatred within the United States -- Cedric Heraux, Adrian College The ethnographic nature of American Swastika provides students with a close, intense look at the disturbingly banal nature of white supremacy. The accessible writing provides a visceral experience for students, who are confronted with the reality of race-based hatred within the United States. -- Cedric Heraux, Adrian College Since its initial publication in 2010, American Swastika has been the go-to source for comprehending the dangerous persistence of racist hate movements in the U.S. With this new edition, Pete Simi and Robert Futrell take an important additional step-offering not only a catalog of the white supremacist threat as it exists today, but a framework for explaining how related movements have, and will, continue to develop and evolve if left unchecked. Their crucial intervention-demonstrating how the troubling far-right mobilizations that marked the Trump presidency furthered longstanding patterns of racist hate-serves as a lucid and insightful primer on how evolving technological and political landscapes have provided tools for white supremacists to exploit. Scholars, policymakers, and invested citizen-readers alike will find no better resource for understanding the threats posed by organized racism-and no clearer roadmap for effectively responding to those threats. -- David Cunningham, Washington University in St. Louis American Swastika, now in its updated 3rd edition, has long been the text for understanding the white supremacist movement, its ideas, its activists, and its allure for those drawn into its orbit. Fully updated to capture how in recent years hate movements have become more public and more powerful, this text is fundamental to grasping the challenge America faces and the task ahead if white supremacy is to ever be vanquished from our society and culture. -- Heidi Beirich, Southern Poverty Law Center Simi and Futrell provide a valuable service by shedding light on the "ordinariness" of white power activism, which can make it that much more dangerous. They take social networks seriously when addressing the big questions about how people can adhere to despicable beliefs and to endure stigma in their daily lives for holding those beliefs and engaging in repulsive activities. They remind us of how collective identities are not created in a vacuum and if they are not regularly reinforced, they die. American Swastika shows how heterodox beliefs and practices require constant reinforcement in settings that normalize white supremacy and embed it within cultural practices and social ties. The timely third edition of this extraordinary book offers priceless insight into the way that racist extremism has polluted our politics. -- Rory McVeigh, University of Notre Dame