Kathleen Belew, historian: ‘Trump is using and benefiting from the white power movement’

Patrick Crusius, a withdrawn 21-year-old, drove nine hours from the outskirts of Dallas to El Paso, on the U.S.–Mexico border. After driving all night, he spent another hour behind the wheel with no fixed destination until he parked outside a Walmart. Shortly after 10:30 a.m., he posted a manifesto on an online forum warning of “a Hispanic invasion of Texas” and pulled a semiautomatic rifle from his trunk. Crusius killed 23 people and wounded 22 others, most of Mexican origin. That August 3, 2019 attack was the deadliest racist attack suffered by the Latino community on U.S. soil.That same year, historian Kathleen Belew, 44, published Bring the War Home, the result of a decade of research into the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi cells and other racist militias in the United States. After the El Paso massacre, law enforcement and the media overwhelmingly described Crusius as a “lone wolf.” Belew, however, put forward a thesis more uncomfortable for U.S. society. The perpetrator may have been the only person to pull the trigger, but his actions were a symptom of something larger: a network of thousands of people bound by hatred, racism and violence. She calls it the white power movement.Seven years later, that tide has only continued to grow and has reached the forefront of U.S. politics, Belew warns in an interview marking the Spanish publication of her book. Her remarks come as the United States heads toward the November 3 midterm elections and the far right gains ground around the world. “There is no doubt that Donald Trump is using and benefiting from the white power movement,” she says by video call. “What we are seeing is an integration of extremism into the government itself.”Question. Have racist attacks become more common, or are they simply more visible now?Answer. They are more common. But now that we’re entering Trump’s second term, there is less reason for white power groups to coordinate underground violent attacks because it is now possible and very easy for these activists to become part of state apparatuses and to operate in violent ways. Although we don’t have the data yet about who, for instance, is joining [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] ICE to do the raids on immigrant communities, it would be extremely likely that many white power activists — who would have been doing the same activity extra-legally and for free — would do this for the government. It has also been documented that white power activists run for office and provide security services at Republican events. Mainstream apparatuses are open to them and they can reach the levers of power.Q. How responsible is Trump for legitimizing these groups?A. I can’t speak to Trump’s beliefs or reasoning. We have experts who focus exclusively on that, and it’s a full‑time job. But there were examples as early as his first campaign, such as when he called out the Proud Boys and told them: “Stand back, stand by” — a phrase that became a rallying cry for that racist group. Certainly, the white power movement was heavily involved in the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol. And although he has pardoned most, there was an unprecedented number convicted of seditious conspiracy for plotting to violently overthrow the government.The book looks at a time in the 1980s, when the movement had no options for political involvement. That is no longer the case in the United States or in many other countries where we are seeing the rise of authoritarianism and white supremacist movements.Q. How would you describe the relationship between Trump and the movement?A. There’s no doubt that he is using and benefiting from the white power movement. He is elevating it at times, he’s calling on it at times, and he’s made space for it in our mainstream politics. His adviser Stephen Miller circulated a book called The Camp of the Saints, a white power novel about an Islamic takeover of Europe. It is profoundly violent and racist.He has also pursued an immigration policy that’s very much in line with the movement. We do not know whether he is doing so as part of a strategy or out of belief. It is hard to know how involved every member of this administration is, but we do know the impact this administration has had in bringing the movement to the mainstream of U.S. politics.Q. How do these conspiracy theories influence the midterm elections? A. We see that the Great Replacement theory is what activists used to call the “Zionist occupation government,” the “deep state,” or the “New World Order.” These are a revolving door of labels for the same idea: that an existential threat to white people is being orchestrated by a secret group of elites. That conspiracy dates back at least to the early 20th century in the United States, but it has resurfaced repeatedly since the 1970s and still has deeply held political traction.In the last election, we saw this in claims that Haitian immigrants and refugees were eating their pets in Ohio, which fueled a huge furor. This election is more focused on anti‑immigrant politics, but we continue to see this conspiratorial thinking recur.Q. The far right is winning elections all over the world. Why has this rhetoric gained traction in other countries?A. This is partly a response to demographic change. In the 1990s, it was common in the United States to see innocuous pieces titled “Did you know that such‑and‑such town will cease to be majority white?” For people in this movement, that represents an apocalyptic emergency, because they believe that if the white race is overrun, it will cease to exist and it will literally be the end of the world. That appears in other countries in response to immigration, but also because of the way that these ideas move around on the internet.The white power movement in the United States went online in the 1980s, way before Facebook and long before most people think. And the amount of time we spend online has only provided a super conduit for the speed and power of those messages.Q. You describe the Vietnam War as a turning point for 20th‑century supremacist movements, capturing the disillusionment of a generation that felt betrayed. What are the motivations now?A. The main ones are the sense of being under attack from outsiders and the feeling of betrayal. In the book, that betrayal is to do with the state’s failure in the Vietnam War. Today, although there is a sort of aftermath of war story around the global war on terror and the return of veterans to the United States, I think it is also a sense of betrayal based on promises made to this generation not being kept.People articulate this in different ways. The manosphere and the incel movement express frustration over their inability to pursue romantic relationships. A lot of people in the younger generation in the United States — not just extremists — are frustrated with the distance between what people earn and what it costs to buy a home. There is also existential worry about climate change, the future and government. All of these factors together create a lot of opportunities for recruitment into extremist ideologies.Q. There is a lot of discussion about a pendulum swing in response to the advances of the LGBTQ+ community and the feminist movement. What is your view as a historian?A. I am not fond of the pendulum metaphor because, while there is a kind of push‑and‑pull that brings us around, it does not take into account two factors. One is how far to the right the center has moved. Whatever you believe about Trump, I think it is indisputable that the center point of American politics has moved dramatically to the right since 2016. The other is that the metaphor conveys a sense of inevitability that worries me. Politics does not change by itself; people move politics.In some ways, the Trump moment is a reaction to the Obama era, to the idea of a postracial, multicultural United States. But as a historian, the concept of “Make America Great Again” is complex because it is unclear which point in history they want to return to. It is a vision of a past that never existed... yet that is what they are claiming. It is a pendular movement. It is an interesting moment, but I also feel that pendulum is pulling us in many directions at once.Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition