Dr. Kathleen Belew says she studies “the history of the present.” Put another way, she studies the history that shapes issues of the modern day. And in her particular case, those issues have to do with white power activists.
“I’m interested in a number of recent histories that can give us a clearer idea about the problems that face contemporary society and also about the kinds of solutions that we might not otherwise encounter without the benefit of that historical perspective,” says Belew.
Belew is in her first year as an associate professor in the department of history at Northwestern University. She says she has spent a good portion of her career examining the concepts of white power and extremism. Her first book, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, chronicles the white power movement, which she says brought together Klan, Neo-Nazi, skinhead, and militia activists in a social movement in the late 1970s. The book examines the movement’s escalation to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The subject matter is again growing in relevance.
“That book has had a second life as a work of urgent public scholarship after events like the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, the Proud Boys comment during one of the presidential debates, and then, of course, the Jan. 6 attack — alongside many other acts of white power violence, like shootings in Christchurch, Buffalo, El Paso, The Tree of Life synagogue shooting, and others,” Belew says.
The Proud Boys are a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group known for sentiments of white supremacy and misogyny. The group was established amid the 2016 presidential election.
“They wished to overthrow the United States [government], and they saw the nation not as the United States, but as a kind of conglomerate of white people worldwide,” says Belew. “So, I think it helps to think about it that way because it shows how much this is an anti-American form of violence.”
Belew suggests using the term white power and not white nationalist, “because what we’re talking about is a movement that’s really interested in revolution.” She says the nation in the term white nationalism for hate groups does not refer to the United States and it should not be mistaken for overzealous patriotism.
