Jan 2, 2024
BOOK REVIEW: God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America
By Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware/Columbia University Press
Reviewed by: Philip Mudd
The Reviewer: Philip Mudd was Deputy Director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and the FBI’s national security branch. He is the author of several books including, Black Site: The CIA in the Post 9/11 World.
REVIEW —The political maelstrom leading up to, during, and after the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol centered partly on one question: How accountable was President Trump, and how might he be held accountable? Behind the question lay the judgment that revolutionary movements require leadership, and that this revolutionary movement, absent the President, might not have erupted into violence.
It’s not that easy, the authors of this new book might say. Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware, drawing on decades of experience following terrorist groups, sketch out a half-century of right-wing extremism in America in their new book, God, Guns and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America, combining detailed descriptions of militant factions and individuals along with the themes and motivations that define this history of political violence. The roots of this problem in America go further back than many of us might remember; discounting today’s violence as a short-term eruption linked to one man, is not only simplistic but dangerous. Without national attention, the authors argue, American democracy might stumble, or fall.