They Want to Kill Americans

February 1, 2022

Having revealed Harvey Weinstein's violent behavior two decades ago in a New Yorker profile, Auletta asks in Hollywood Ending whether Weinstein's sexual predation can be attributed to himself alone or to the Hollywood power game--and why it took so long to challenge it. Tech theorist and venture capitalist Ball explains The Metaverse as a three-dimensional network of interconnected experiences and devices, tools and infrastructure that transcends virtual reality and has the capacity to reshape society. In Nobody Is Protected, Geopolitics editor in chief Jones (Border Walls) tracks the U.S. Border Patrol from its brutal early days to its current power to conduct warrantless stops and interrogations within 100 miles of the border, arguing that it is trampling on the Fourth Amendment in its bid to become a national police force. From New York Times best-selling, National Magazine Award-winning Leibovich (This Town), Thank You for Your Servitude critiques the cult of submission in the Republican Party that allowed Donald Trump to flourish. A veteran of the U.S. intelligence community's Combating Terrorism program, the Black, Arabic-speaking Nance shifts his focus from al Qaeda and ISIS to the threat posed by the January 6, 2021, insurrectionists and their supporters--privileged, he argues, by their whiteness--in They Want To Kill Americans (200,000-copy first printing).

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May 9, 2022
MSNBC counterterrorism expert Nance (The Plot to Betray America) alleges in this disturbing if overwrought study that a “political paramilitary insurgency” is preparing to bring down the Biden administration and return Donald Trump to power. Discussing the violent capabilities of the insurgency’s “affiliated militias, terrorists, and enforcers,” Nance notes that “white rural people” own most of the guns legally registered in the U.S. and recounts previous acts of domestic terrorism, including the 2019 El Paso Walmart massacre. Discussing the role of Q-Anon in the “weaponization of Trump cultism,” Nance claims that as many as 15% of Americans believe the Q-Anon conspiracy that the U.S. government is controlled “by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.” Nance also compares the Republican Party to Sinn Féin, the political wing of the IRA, and alleges that some Republican lawmakers are too fearful for their own safety to stray from the “big lie” that Trump won the 2020 election. Though Nance forcefully articulates his belief that American democracy is in mortal danger, he overstates the coordination between right-wing groups and oversimplifies the relationship between online posturing and real-world actions. Still, this is a frightening and provocative thought experiment.

May 15, 2022
A scathing look at the MAGA crowd and the existential threat they pose to American democracy. As a writer on terrorism and fascism, Nance has previously specialized in two areas: the workings of al-Qaida and the Islamic State and the mindset and actions of Trump and his followers. In this follow-up to The Plot To Betray America, the author blends them to examine the movement he calls "TITUS, the Trump Insurgency in the United States," whose practitioners and supporters, like the best terrorists, blend into the community and are perfectly content with the thought of killing anyone who disagrees with them--all with the aim "to destroy American democracy and install Donald Trump as dictator." Trump might like nothing better, or he might have other plans. Regardless, writes Nance, Trumpism is not likely to disappear, especially now that the Republican Party has become its wholly owned subsidiary and is doing whatever it can to dismantle voting rights to disenfranchise its opposition and retain permanent power. Meanwhile, the TITUS tribe, by Nance's account, is executing a carefully planned four-part strategy that centers on avenging the 2020 election--a matter that could embrace executing opposition politicians. "Violent extremists in the United States and terrorists in the Middle East," writes the author, "have remarkably similar pathways to radicalization," pathways that very often wander into the realms of make-believe (as with QAnon's fevered distortions) by way of online sources. The author digs deep to describe organizations and individuals coordinating with TITUS, including the Proud Boys and a depressingly high number of active-duty police and military-service personnel. That Trump proved a remarkably inept president does not deter these supporters, who form a base that "has become an openly fascist movement"--and, Nance concludes, represent a threat that "America will have to confront for the next generation at the least." A stark warning to be taken seriously.

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