Reviews and Comments

I'm not usually a fan of poetry, I have a lot of taste in my mouth from bad, self-important and unpracticed open-mic performances over the years. But Rosenbergs wielding of words, prose and a few poems, in this book is pretty impressive. Her writing style is generally matter-of-fact but she's able to encapsulate rich emotional meaning in small moments that crack the surface.

I was enticed to read this book for a few reasons... First up, Susan Rosenberg will be speaking on a (n online) panel put on by our local anarchist bookstore alongside Herman Bell, David Gilbert and Eric King, all former political prisoners to speak about the recently published "Rattling The Cages" book (definitely worth a gander, lots of insights from former and current political prisoners on Turtle Island). Second, Susan was involved in the May 19th Communist Organization, a group I don't know a lot about besides that it was an anti-racist and anti-Imperialist organization that included Weathermen, Black Liberation Army, Republic of New Afrika and Prairie Fire Organization. M19CO was responsible for the liberation Assata Shakur and the Brinks heist (and a number of bombings of buildings associated with US Imperialism that mostly succeeded in having no casualties). Third, the experience of someone with a good read on patriarchy spending 16 years in BOP womens prisons (and jails in DC & NYC) was insightful, since many prisoner voices I run across are folks in mens prisons. Fourth, Ms. Rosenberg was also a former member of the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, and as an anti-racist Jewish woman had good grounds for critiquing the systemic racism that she saw in US "Justice", but then through the rise of mass incarceration with the "War On Drugs" as well as being in a position to elaborate her experiences of antisemitism and Christian supremacy on a personal and systemic level in the belly of the beast. Fifth, and dovetailing the last point, as a queer woman she also witnessed the HIV/AIDS crisis and was one of the leftist prisoners who worked to shift policy in her facilities as well as engage in grassroots educational and health initiatives as that terrible tide swept the majority poor and Black populations she was incarcerated among. I think lastly, because of the social viewpoint that Ms. Rosenberg exuded throughout the book, her empathy and awareness of social, cultural and systemic inequities and how they distilled behind bars, she had a humanized view of so many of the people she was locked up alongside, engaged with her community behind bars to build solidarity and expressed the heavy losses of people to the cruelty of the US carceral system (through medical neglect, through active counter-insurgency tactics of divide and rule, through the attempted breaking of the spirit into subservient subjects, the criminalization of love behind bars, and through the breakdown of community people had with loved ones on the outside).

It's a heavy book, emotionally, but a really important one. And the poetry is good! I'm pretty sure the book is out of print but it had a big run in 2011 so copies are plentiful and cheap from online sellers.

This book picks up where Blowback by Christopher Simpson left off, with OSS and CIA support and funding of nazi spies and soldiers as the US and others in the Allies occupied and divided former Axis powers. The book mainly follows two saviors of the Reich who met after the failed 20 July to assassinate Hitler by competing Nazis: Otto Skorzeny and Otto Ernst Remer. Lee documents these villains survival after the war, fostering domestic (Remer) and international (Skorzeny) networks of former SS & Nazi leaders who integrated into post-colonial military intelligences, founded arms companies and fostered grassroots neo-fascist movements around Europe, North and South America. There is a lot of history covered in this book and a lot of names (some I recognize, many I don't): it feels in many ways like a cousin project joining Blowback with Blood and Politics by focusing on the some of the cross-Atlantic support between white supremacist groups after WWII and during the period around and following German re-unification. There were some portions that really peaked my interest and I'm challenged to dig a little deeper (such as the portions discussing National Bolshevism and the institutional integration (or at least allowance) of Russian Chauvanism into Bolshevik and CCCP policy from 1917 onward, the German interwar relationship with Russia, the German post-Reunification revanchism and courting of Croatian separatists and more on the NATO/US stay-behinds. A suggested read if you have the time and don't mind constant reminding of how terrible and integrated our enemies are.

What a tome at nearly 550 pages.

The main thrust of the book follows Willis Carto, Yockeyan white nationalist fuhrer of Liberty Lobby (standing in for the Mainstreamers attempting to further normalize white supremacist talking points in US politics after WWII) and William Luther Pierce, little dictator of the National Alliance (standing in for the Vanguardists who thought to agitate the white population into immediately genocidal behavior). The book covers their endeavors, their overlaps, the growth of Holocaust denialism, various iterations of the KKK and a variety of other "white-ists" in and outside of US electoral politics and paramilitarism.

Additionally, I really appreciate the insights here into Christian Identity concepts of race and citizenship that bleed into the language of Posse Comitatus-adjacent movements and the origins / shape of the militia movement.

Anyway, there's a lot here and I feel like it certainly widens my understanding of the subject matter, though stopping coverage in the years just after 9-11 and the death of Pierce and collapse of Liberty Lobby and National Alliance. Also, i really appreciate the short chapters that kept both a thematic coverage and chronological progression, allowing a more ecological read than many other history books I've read.

This small booklet is quite a gift. An insightful summary and critique from an anti-statist, anti-colonial perspective published in 1989 by Attack! International as to why anarchists in the UK should support the struggle to decolonize Ireland while not whitewashing failures of past-attempts at class war across Protestant and Catholic communities on the Island as well as short comings of many of the parties involved in Nationalist struggle and the brutality of the occupation. This is sandwiched between (on the one side) perspectives on white settlers in the Irish diaspora who've embraced their heritage to wash away their current status in the core of the core of Empire and (on the other side) updates on the peace process, decommissioning and development of the parties involved in the struggle on both sides of Island up until this year. A great update to anyone with some background knowledge of the issues and a nice introduction for those looking to learn more. Cannot recommend enough.

A really interesting read into a history I'm only vaguely aware of. The book follows the legacy from the Salo Republic (Italian Social Republic) of the Nazi re-imposition of Mussolini in the latter days of WWII, to the post-war neo-fascist resistance groups and foundation of the MSI (Italian Social Movement), largely made up of Salo veterans, through various factions (parliamentary and extra-parliamentary) up to today's ruling "postfascist" Fratelli d'Italia party of Giorgia Meloni. Two worthwhile take-aways for me were the discussion of the victimization narratives (particularly around the Fiobe and continued memorialization of Fascists really aptly compares to Lost Cause narratives and the continued celebration of CSA soldiers and officers in the USA and conflation of antifascism with Stalinism) and the way that the "post-fascists" pivoted and shifted after the fall of the Soviet Union and break up of Yugoslavia from uniting around the dogwhistle of anti-communism to Great Replacement discourse. An interesting book, if a bit dizzying in the number of characters, parties factions that are woven throughout.

Just a quick review here. I've really been appreciating this book: very readable, clear language, interesting history. This really fills in the gaps in my knowledge of the post-WWII fascist movement with a focus on Louis Beam and the 3rd - 4th waves of the KKK, taking momentum from the "stabbed in the back" narrative of the US experience of the Vietnam War, rampant fear mongering around communism, popular white perspectives of overreach by the civil rights and various liberation movements of the long '60s, and the flood of weaponry and tools of war into the hands of an increasingly anti-State white nationalist movement. There's an interesting focus on groups like the KKKK and the uniting of Klan and Neo-Nazi groups during and after the Greensboro Massacre of 1979, the Order and its overlaps with Aryan Nations, National Alliance, the failed Operation Red Dog invasion of Dominica, ties between white nationalists and the CIA-adjacent arming and training of the Contras and other anti-communist paramilitary forces and a whole lot more packed in this book. Off-hand, my criticisms are few as I approach the end of the book. "Bring The War Home" could use some editing, a few facts are covered multiple times in different sentences in a way that made me wonder if I hadn't just read that. Also, there is a heavy reliance on coverage of FBI / ATF / DEA & DOJ legal pursuit (alongside the SPLC, whose lawsuits on behalf of victims were deeper and more numerous than I knew) but not a lot (besides the Vietnamese immigrant community resistance in Gulf Texas) of popular resistance covered. Maybe that's not the scope of the book. But I am definitely appreciative of the work that Belew put into this book, and the thoughtfulness of digging into the motivations (where available and documented) of these racist pieces of shit. Know your enemy.

This book shows the work that Simpson did to dig through FOIA-available documentation of US security agencies, particularly the CIC (Counter Intelligence Corps) of the US Army during & after WWII, as well as the OSS & it's successor the CIA, conducting interviews with former agents and researching the whereabouts of former Waffen SS & SD and extremist anti-Communist (read usually fascist) agents who were hidden by the US security state after the war, were spirited out of Europe via Vatican ratlines, were armed and employed in Soviet-occupied parts of Eastern Europe. Simpson touches on parts of Operation Paperclip (the US operation to employ Nazi & Axis scientists, often helping them avoid international war crimes tribunal convictions, obfuscating their status as war criminals and giving them access to US citizenship by manipulating the rules set by US immigration), the Gehlen Organization (the ex-Nazi intelligence-staffed, US-funded post-war network that became the West German intelligence / BND), Operation Bloodstone (the employment, training, arming of former Nazis & collaborators in eastern Europe to undermine the Soviety-controlled sphere) and some of the consequences. Beyond the consequences of impunity to anti-Semitic mass murders, the influence of these machinations also led to neo-Nazi organizing among some of these parties in various parts of the world (including among emigre populations in the US through groups organized by under the auspices of ACEN [Assembly of Captured European Nations] / ABN [Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nation]) and the pushing of a strategy in US international policy paid for & by front organizations allied with Radio Liberation and Radio Free Europe (via CIA funding). That influence pushed an increasingly antagonistic approach toward the Cold War moving to a hot war with USSR, China, North Korea and other states in alignment at the time [from Containment strategy of the Eisenhower regime to Liberation strategy pushed by Joe McCarthy and many others]. Phew. The author does a good job, in my opinion of not pulling a Campist perspective on this, noting that mass killings and the use of former Nazi & collaborationist agents happened on the USSR & Eastern Bloc side as well (though likely to a much less consistent degree, but also not the focus of the book). The book, taking the tone of civil dialogue, notes that the subsidizing of former Waffen SS/SD & collaborators was performed under the auspices of anti-Communist / anti-Totalitarian/ anti-Stalinist reaction and the assumption that a war was impending with the communist bloc, as opposed to Agency-wide valorization of Nazi atrocities. And we see a feedback cycle of positive re-enforcement and confirmation bias as the spy organizations purged any but the more reactionary anti-Communist elements of their own roster, paid per gig the anti-Communist Nazis to tell their handlers just how immanent the threat of Soviet invasion was or how likely the countries under Soviet control were to revolt, and then used Sen. McCarthy to challenge this looming threat by bullying politicians into a more hawkish war footing. A problem with this was, the ex-Nazis were often feeding lies to get the CIA to line their pockets and the US intelligence agencies got high on their own supply. The book was published in 1988, so it had the benefit of being near the tail of the Soviet Union and all of that hindsight, plus the Church Committee and the discovery of what documents could be saved before the agencies involved could employ their shredders. Plus, a number of the people involved were still alive and available for interview (those who didn't decline). I appreciate the author's professional tone (doesn't get in the weeds of presuming intentions or flying down conspiracy rabbit-holes). Definitely a book I'll be holding on to for reference.

This really sat well next to "It Did Happen Here", another published by the Working Class History imprint on PM Press this year. The book covers much of the same early history of the Baldies anti-racist skinhead crew in Minneapolis that joined with Chicago and other local scenes to create the Syndicate and eventually branched out of Skinhead culture to found Anti-Racist Action. Where IDHH covers the collaboration between scenes with a focus on Portland, this shows a degree of how wide ARA spread in the '90s and '00s through parts of so-called USA & Canada, with a focus on the midwestern and eastern portions.

You hear anectdotes and analysis on chapter-level issues and fights up to network wide developments as racist, fascist and anti-abortion groups rose up out of the sludge and various crews attempted to fight them down again. Chapter themes include the role of subculture in incubating and spreading the model, the methods of inter-chapter debate, challenges and innovations from within & without and a lovely tie-up at the end on the legacy of the group and a challenge to build a broad (yet secure and representative) anti-fascism today that can be wide and strong, recognizing the interconnection between institutional oppressions and the street chuds who want to rumble. Quite a good read and lots of material for discussion.

Another overlap with the IDHH book is that they are both heavy on the imagery, lots of pics from demos and lots of organizing graphics, stickers and posters as well as dox materials.

There's a lot in here for anyone looking to learn the history or sharpen their perspective on current struggle.