BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel

Tracking the Rebirth of White Nationalism in America

Let’s talk about that face punch. You remember, and you probably saw it online at least a dozen times if not more: So-called alt-right founder Richard Spencer, while being interviewed on tape, catching a fist to the face. It was catnip to a lot of folks happy to see his creepy intellectual posturing in the name of white separatism taken down a peg. Author Vegas Tenold argues that it also gave the cluster of highly-disorganized movements standing under the far right umbrella the unifying focus they needed. In Everything You Love Will Burn: Inside the Rebirth of White Nationalism in America (Nation Books), Tenold shares material gathered over six years researching groups so incompetent he was sure they would never get their act together. Then came Charlottesville.

The far right is no joke — they have committed hate crimes, including murder, acts of terror, and most of what they have to say is blood-curdling. But Tenold’s meticulous reporting includes many hilarious scenes. Matthew Heimbach is an activist pushing white separatism, but trying to sell it with aw-shucks charm despite being tagged “The Little Fuhrer” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Several rallies he works to organize are undermined when an ancient KKK member insists on taking the stage and spewing racial epithets. Richard Spencer reaches out to and then snubs him repeatedly and he’s alternately flattered and resentful about their unconsummated bromance. A rally intended to unify several groups around their shared hate for Antifa (the black-clad group of anti-fascist counter-protestors) ramped everyone’s paranoia up to 11, but the most exciting development relayed via walkie-talkie was about a man seen on the road with a knife: “I don’t know if he’s Antifa. He does have a man bun, though.”

Tenold began researching white supremacy early in 2011 out of little more than a sense of morbid curiosity. When Anders Breivik killed 77 people in Norway in the name of a race war, his interest sharpened. Tenold is Norwegian but lives in Brooklyn. He spent extensive time with members of the KKK, the National Socialist Movement, and the Traditional Workers Party. Their incompetence, disorganization, and tendency toward infighting left him thinking they’d always exist on the fringes of society at best. The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, in which many were injured and counter-protester Heather Heyer was killed, exposed the degree to which the far right’s values are part of the mainstream now. Matthew Heimbach attended Donald Trump’s inauguration, but was also invited to speak behind closed doors to a group of GOP members. Most of the people Tenold spends time with support Trump — the title is a mocking text message Heimbach sent him on election night, complete with “LOL” and smiley face — then throw up their hands when he fails to impose instant segregation. Nevertheless, Trump’s clear support for the torch-wielders has given the alt-right an enormous shot of confidence.

Burn looks back at the origins of white supremacist movements in the US, and notes the way race is used to confuse what is often a war on the poor, not solely the white. When Tenold tries to engage interview subjects about this, they try to twist his words into a reductive and obtuse “all lives matter” rant, and he gives up.

After Charlottesville, the groups that had seemed ascendant once again fragment and, after being vastly outnumbered at numerous public gatherings, begin to lose steam. Tenold acknowledges how dangerous they are, but ultimately believes they’re doomed to fail, albeit for a reason even more discouraging than their resurgence. Given how entrenched white supremacy is in American society — from income inequality to the prison system to police brutality, and the list goes on—there’s no need for fringe groups to push the agenda even harder. It’s already been made palatable, or at least into something we can choke down, by so many of us through its ubiquity. Everything You Love Will Burn offers no easy solutions to the problem, but its clear-eyed reporting helps us to make sense of the violence that seemed to come from out of the blue in 2017, and realize it was with us the whole time.

Heather Seggel is a freelance writer based in Northern California. Email heatherlseggel@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2018

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