This book is so upsetting because it's so easy to see how accurate it is. Definitely a book that should be added to the anti-racist booklists as a resource for how white supremacism walks out in the open and the myriad ways it insidiously permeates society. This book is terribly frightening but it does offer a way to combat and educate--will anyone in power listen?

It Can Happen Here is an academic examination of extremist ideology and the increasing possibility of genocide in the USA by Dr. Alexander Laban Hinton. Released 8th June 2021 by NYU Press, it's 304 pages and is available in hardcover and ebook formats.

This is an erudite and well written monograph on the open rise of white extremism in the USA and a reasoned, logical examination of the ways in which it could give rise to genocide and, most importantly, concrete methods to avoid this outcome. The author is an academic and internationally recognized expert in this field and this is what I would call a layman accessible academic treatise of the ideas in all their incarnations as they intersect culture and history. As an academic work, it is *full* of annotations, notes, and minutiae (in a good way). I stopped often to read the background of some of his points in context (many of them link to online resources which are accessible by anyone).

The author knows what he's talking about. He writes perceptively and quite chillingly of what's happened, what's currently happening, and what the possible outcomes are. In short, it *can* happen in the USA and pretending that it's completely impossible and unthinkable is a desperately dangerous ignorance which we can't afford.

Five stars. I learned quite a lot from this book. Much of it made me sad and angry. It was in no way an "easy" read. I would recommend it for library acquisition and also for readers of history and culture.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

This book was received as an ARC by the publisher on NetGalley.

Alexander Laban Hinton’s <i>It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US</i> is an interesting text that fits in the same tradition as other warnings about authoritarianism in the United States. However, unlike the bulk of the literature that has been released on the topic during the Trump years, Hinton’s work comes at the topic from the angle of genocide against the US’s ethnic and religious minorities.

As an anthropologist who spent the bulk of his career dedicated to examining the Cambodian Genocide by the Khmer Rouge, Hinton is placed in an interesting position where he is able to talk about the theory and practice of genocide without falling back on facile comparisons to the Holocaust. Additionally, the way Hinton approaches the text is captivating—he frames his lessons through the lens of classes that he teaches at Rutgers University-Newark, especially through anthropological “teach-ins” of current events. The benefit of this approach is that he recognizes the thought processes of students, including the questions and comments they make, while developing his answers and food for further thought as direct responses to those questions.

Hinton ultimately argues that “yes,” genocide by (white) Americans against ethno-racial minorities can take place. At the same time, Hinton finds that genocide is not a foregone conclusion and can be avoided with some effort. In his view, manufacturing a genocide is much like creating a fire: it requires a specific setting, tinder, a spark, and favorable weather conditions. While the setting and tinder both exist and favorable weather may have existed during the Trump years, a spark was not particularly forthcoming. In the past year, I also believe that the weather has worsened, making the prospect of genocide much less likely. In small part, this is due to the passing of the Trump administration, but I think last year’s hot summer played an important role in this. The largest number of Americans ever now believe that Black Lives Matter is a force for good and increasing numbers of Americans are educating themselves and coming to recognize that systemic racism has deep roots in American history, culture, and society. In short, Americans are (very slowly) becoming more sympathetic to the position of black Americans, and the same is true of attitudes towards Asian Americans in the wake of this spring’s heightened hostility towards them.

While I am deeply familiar with the content at hand, I continue to find it fascinating that the language of atrocity or genocide prevention is used to justify genocide. This was as true in the eighteenth and nineteenth century when Native Americans were slaughtered and expelled in order to prevent violence against white settlers, as it is today when white power activists argue that a show of overwhelming force is necessary to prevent “white genocide,” or the demographic “replacement” of white Americans. For some reason, these numbskull white power activists cannot fathom that the rise of mixed-race children, for instance, is the product of white men and women falling in love with a partner of a different race, rather than some brainwashing conspiracy. The same is true of the State Department’s Diversity Visa Program, where European applicants receive a disproportionate number of available visas in comparison to the number of visas available (they submit around 30% of applications and receive some 40-50% of visas available). It should be obvious to anyone capable of both quantitative and qualitative analysis that “white genocide” is bullshit.

The bulk of this book’s content focuses on events of 2017 and 2018, when the United States’s white power movement was at its most recent high, although Hinton spends plenty of time discussing the history and precedents of the most recent wave. Hinton’s narrow temporal focus is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, we receive a great deal of information about the propaganda campaigns and violent events perpetrated by white power activists in the years at hand. But, on the other, Hinton’s skimming of the events of 2019-20 means that his line to the present is a bit weak (although 2017 was only four years ago, it feels like a decade due to the ludicrous sequences of events and “flattening” of our perspectives of time due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Another weakness is that, although the “teach-in” angle makes the book approachable, it is easy to become overwhelmed with some of the anthropology/comparative genocide jargon that the author uses.

Nevertheless, <i>It Can Happen Here</i> is a welcome contribution to the literature about contemporary extreme-right and white power activism.

I was able to read an ARC of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Overall, this book was interesting and I was able to learn quite a few new concepts and some more information about past events that I was not previously aware of. It also provided information about other books that I am now looking into reading as well. The only issue I had with this book was that after a while it seemed to drag and was pretty repetitive. There were times I would have to check to make sure I had not bumped the screen to a previous page since information that had already been presented in full was again presented like it was something new shortly after.

So you're basically auditing one of Hinton's classes at Rutgers, wherein you're systematically uncovering how likely it is that the US could begin performing a crime such as genocide and, in the midst of that, exploring how we've all but done it in the past.

As Americans, we're quick to feel as if we're in some sort of figurative tower, somehow above and beyond other places without our freedoms and amenities; Hinton exposes our comfort as ignorance but while also refraining from becoming accusatory or harsh. His questions poise the reader toward reflection and growth--this is not only a mark of how good he is at teaching, but how learned he surely must be in exploring these tense, volatile matters in public forums.

There's an education to be had not only in terms of the potential for crimes of genocide under a Trump presidency, but an analysis of cultural genocide in our country, perspective on why white supremacists act as they have by illuminating their most oft-cited resources and argument points (e.g. The 14 Words). The section on white replacement, honestly, is one that I've run into frequently, even when the people I'm speaking to can't quite articulate it.

It's not at all meant to be an echo chamber for the left-leaning or anyone who's anti-Trump; to the contrary, it's a sweeping aid in picking apart why the far-right would be in a position to indulge in violent acts that they wouldn't have considered to perform just ten years ago (yep, it's because they felt that they had the support of the White House itself). We often can better sympathize with a group and, more importantly, diminish divisive thought, when we try to stop referring to someone as "the other" and work to understand them and their points of view. Hinton is by no means looking to ask a person of color to cut a Proud Boy some slack, but learning what the "other side" draws from is an integral part of remaining civilized and, well, preserving one of the greatest things about this country (and the world).

I'm truly just scratching the surface of the content. Very glad I read it, and it gave me lots of useful information going forward.

Many thanks to NYU Press and NetGalley for the advance read.