The research on this book was exhaustive and alarming. The amount of information that is out there about extremists here in the United States. The terrible irony of the indoctrination of far-right terrorists is that they honestly believe that they can preserve freedom in the United States by stepping on literally every freedom that we have. They complain about government overreach, but believe that every person should be Christian. And not only that, they also advocate for this change to come through violence.

This book particularly explores the rise in lone-wolf terrorism, which makes it intensely difficult to suss them out before tragedy. It explores the fact that the United States has long allowed this indoctrination to flourish and leaves far too many loopholes in the laws against domestic terrorism.

Hoffman lays out a plan at the end for what needs to be done in order to counter the growth of extremism here. He cites examples from other countries to demonstrate the effectiveness of these "soft" measures. He also says that on balance the measures will be more effective for future generations since they are more preventative in nature. The true challenge comes with figuring out what to do about the current deeply entrenched acolytes.

After struggling for a long time trying to get through this book I had to surrender and dnf it. That’s a first in a long time for me.
Initially, I was excited receiving an ARC of God, Guns and Sedition because this book promised to touch subjects that I am immensely interested in.
First of all, the ARC itself is in such a bad shape technically, that reading it makes my head hurt. Something really went wrong while creating the epub-file. There were number codes, empty line foldings where they didn’t belong and no chapter structure. But that is obviously not the author’s fault so that is not the reason I had to put the book away.
I was simply not able to figure out the argumentative structure of the chapters and sub chapters. A lot of the text was name dropping and referencing people or things they did in the past without putting that into greater context. The paragraphs were long and winded and never seemed to end. I felt drained after struggling through just one chapter and had to put the book aside for several days before I was able to pick it up again.
I finally decided that my time was too precious and I could read a lot of better structured books instead of fighting through this one.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

While this is a very important topic, this book is not written for the lay person. There are so many names in the first few chapters that it is confusing to try and keep them straight and too much focus on some cases and not others.

Well, that was terrifying. I have heard most of the names and of course, I know about most of the major incidents, but I had no idea how pervasive this philosophy was. I have been trying to understand how people who used to seem rational have adopted this obviously insane right-wing philosophy that is geared towards terrifying people into thinking that "they": are going to replace them with evil parasitic minorities.
It really took a long legacy and a lot of lies, and a lot of the lies are meant to destroy trust in the system. Even simple things like measles vaccines are now an evil plot by untrustworthy health departments and we should get medical advice from other conspiracy theorists.
The final chapter offers some ideas on ways we can fight this movement, but as the book describes in great detail, it's a leaderless movement where people commit some of these evil acts without even telling the others. I have my personal doubts that the US can recover.
This is a dense read with a lot of information and citations, but it is important for people trying to understand what is happening.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this

God, Guns, and Sedition offers a study of violent far-right extremism in the fifty years. The book largely focuses on the origins and history of the American alt-right, tracing the events and movements that led to lone wolf attacks like the white supremacist mass shooting on Mother Emanuel AME in Charleston (2015) to larger, more coordinated attacks, like the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville and subsequent violence against counterprotestors (2017) and the January 6 insurrection attempt on the US Capitol (2021). While examining the role of social media in disseminating extremist beliefs, the authors also study several prominent events outside the US, such as the Christchurch mosque shootings (2019) and the 2011 Norway attacks.

Since the early days of the Trump administration, I've found myself asking the question "how did we get here?" I knew that the intense (and, at times, violent) polarization of American politics and would not simply fade away in the Biden administration. I found this book helpful for its wide-ranging historical view and overview of the different elements that have led to the emergence of violent extremism in the mainstream. The early chapters focus on the development of anti-government movements and armed militias that grew out of fears of government overreach in response to high-profile stand-offs with armed groups in the 1980s and 1990s. The authors also trace the evolution of white supremacist movements, particularly in response to the Civil Rights Movement. Later chapters describe the growth of online conspiracy groups, such as QAnon and COVID denialism (plus the larger cult of Trump followers), and how these different ideologies merged into the larger coalitions that have enacted high-profile acts of mass violence. The final chapters focus on how these movements entered the mainstream via Trump's tacit endorsement of such groups as the Proud Boys after Charlottesville, culminating on the insurrection attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election led by Trump supporters (including the chilling preparations by the Oath Keepers).

While this book is academic in tone, I found it more accessible than other, more strictly historical, titles on this topic. The chapters are organized by different shifts in these groups' motives and methods, making the historical timeline difficult to track, as it skips around between chapters. Even so, this organization helps demonstrate how so many far-flung groups with disparate ideologies have coalesced into a larger, significant threat to American politics and public life.

Gods, Guns, and Sedition is a history of the Far Right in America with the overall thesis that current far right extremism is not new but is, instead, something that has long existed in America. While I did not really find the thesis to be anything new, I did overall enjoy learning from the book.

This book strugles from a structural standpoint. The first few chapters zip through numerous people that are connected, but the reader really does not understand who any of these people are. Therefore, you're getting a lot of information on people you don't know, nor do you know why you should know them. Further, the book goes back and forth in time, again leading to confusion on the reader's part. The book spends an entire chapter on Timothy McVeigh. While I understand why he is an important character in this book, it felt like a lot for a book that did not center itself on McVeigh. I think the authors could have narrowed their thesis a bit more - it seemed they were centered on the Turner Diaries a bit - and then this would have made more sense.

This book is informative, but it could have done with significant tweaking to help the reader.

God, Guns, and Sedition is a decent introduction to the history of the far right. I would recommend including a list of groups mentioned because this book does mention a fair amount of groups and people. Overall, I really did enjoy this book but I found the last chapter a bit lacking.

There wasn't much information that I hadn't already read in a much more understandable book. There were so many names thrown at you at once and I had a hard time keeping track even with a lot of background knowledge on the people being talked about. Also, at one point someone who is not in any way a mental health professional is uncritically quoted saying that 3/4 of white supremacists "suffer" from Autism Spectrum Disorders. He has no data to back that up and the idea that people suffer from autism instead of just being autistic is offensive in itself.

As much as I hoped this would be a detailed and in-depth look at far right extremism in the United States, the biggest issue I had was poor readability. This isn't really a history of far right extremism, as chapters can and do go back and forth in terms of chronology, but the majority of the information, while interesting, is banal and repetitive. This is a topic that needs to be discussed and written about but I'm not sure the general audience is ready for what these two specific authors have to say, or repeat, about this particular topic.

This was a very 'enjoyable' and educational read about the links between the far-right of the mid 20th century to the current manifestations of the far-right. I think the authors made a clear and compelling case illustrating that the modern far-right is not something that sprang from Trump, a misconception that many Americans held following the 2016 election, but goaded and instrumentalized by him. My biggest suggestion would be that a 'cast of characters' page would have been very useful with a short description (such as which group they founded) since many people would appear and be mentioned later, but I did not always remember exactly who everyone was. My biggest gripe, though, was with the final chapter which provided suggestions on how to combat the threat of the far-right. It seemed to me that the authors did not adequately consider the possible misuses of domestic terrorism policy, such as the creation of a domestic terror group list, as they dismissed concerns summarily despite previously acknowledging the ways in which President Trump had redirected the intelligence apparatus to focus on the threat of the 'far left' despite the nearly nonexistent threat when compared with the far-right. Further, there suggestions seemed to me to show a lot of faith in institutions, which have continually been shown to be incapable of policing themselves, to act in good faith to removed radicalized members in their ranks, such as in law enforcement and the military. However, in law enforcement, there are many instances in which officers protect other bad actors or instances where officers who have committed racially-motivated shootings have been able to be hired at another department a town over. Thus, I would have like the authors to take a more skeptical and measured approach in their suggestions and considered as well how we as a society can make cultural changes to disincentivize the appeal of far-right organizations. It is all well and good to say we need to 'restore faith in democracy,' but without any advice on how this can be achieved, it is a bit of a meaningless suggestion as it is difficult to action while being obvious to readers. Nevertheless, I think the book is a great summation of trends in the development of the far-right and a history that explains much of our current situation.

Well, this doesn’t paint a pretty picture. But it does paint a very real, worrisome one. From the beginnings of far-right hate and organization efforts to the 1960s to the disillusionment that some Vietnam veterans faced in the 1980s all the way up to today, this is an easily mapped blueprint of the Who, Why, How, and What behind this pervasive hate. This proves just how long-held some hate and ideologies are, how they’re passed down from parent to child or from friend to friend or even from coworker to coworker. How this hate still has its claws in this country. And how it’s definitely found a home among far-right groups, both domestically and worldwide.

Often, some of the points and lines between dots aren’t connected or are glossed over to save time or to keep readers wanting to know how to stop this. Not this book. The authors make a point to introduce the most insidious voices, they reference one of the sacred texts (think Turner), and they provide the proof within quotes and how they inspired events in the last 40 or so years. This also goes into how some old hate fizzled out due to lack of membership, but how newer, angrier, more hateful hate has picked up to become even more overt. No, it’s not all on Trump. And these authors don’t pretend that this hate is something new. But they DO clearly point out the rise of hate thanks to Trump. The rise of hate by faux Christians. The refusal to NOT hate because of xenophobia.

It’s a bleak picture, I won’t lie. But it’s also one that provides counterpoints to the agenda of hate. It provides real, touchable ways to negate the hate and to possibly change the path. Maybe not for all hate, but for some of it. And there’s got to be some hope in that, right?