Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy [Minkštas viršelis]

"For readers of How Democracies Die, two legal scholars expose the history of the GOP's hidden political strategy to rollback protected rights, from abortion and gun control to surveillance and LGBTQ rights. Virginia's governor sets up a tip line for parents to snitch on teachers who acknowledge the reality of racial inequality. Texas unleashes bounty hunters against individuals who aid or abet anyone seeking an abortion. Florida encourages drivers to run over Black Lives Matter protesters who gather peacefully. And everywhere, there is the persistent threat of political violence. While these episodes might seem to be isolated spasms of MAGA rage, they reflect a concerted legal and political strategy that has been quietly unfolding in courts, think tanks, and state legislatures since the violent insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. With painstaking and enlightening research, Vigilante Nation exposes the insidious network of right-wing lawyers, politicians, funders, and preachers who are deploying vigilantism to cement their hold on power and impose a theocratic version of America. For so long, we have been taught by a bipartisan consensus that vigilantism is incompatible with our rule of law, but our history shows that the right has used it toenforce their vision of true social order. From the Fugitive Slave Act's use of bounty hunters to Southern militias violently enforcing the terror of Jim Crow, America has long been the home of political vigilantism. Now, discover what the future holds and how crucial it is that we each understand our country's vigilante laws"--

A vivid account of the Right’s subversive campaign to impose Christian nationalist rule.

Time and again, when confronted with serious challenges to their power and privilege, white Christian nationalists seek solace—and satisfaction—in state-supported forms of vigilantism.

This was true at the dawn of the American republic, when Northern abolitionists threatened the Southern slavocracy. It was also true in the aftermath of the Civil War, when emancipated Black Americans and their Northern allies sought to fulfill the promises of Reconstruction. And though this pattern was seemingly broken after the Civil Rights revolution of the 1950s and ’60s—and abandoned once and for all—legal vigilantism has made a surprising, roaring comeback in the months and years following the failed coup of January 6, 2021.

Committed to never again losing power, let alone experiencing the humiliation that followed on the heels of the heavy-handed insurrection, overlapping networks of right-wing lawyers, politicians, plutocrats, and preachers have resurrected state-supported vigilantism.

Vigilante Nation tells this story of the American Right marginalizing, subordinating, and disenfranchising the increasingly diverse and cosmopolitan members of the American polity. This book exposes the vigilantes’ plans, explains their methods—everything from book bans to anti-abortion bounties to attacks on government proceedings, including elections—and underscores the stakes. Now that supporters of democratic equality are numerous and dexterous enough to finally secure the broad promises of the civil rights revolution, the race is on for MAGA Republicans to subvert our democracy before a countermovement can rise up to thwart their insidious plans.