Thank you for the chance to review this book, however, unfortunately, I was unable to read and review this title before it was archived.

Everything You Love Will Burn: Inside the Rebirth of White Nationalism in America by Norwegian journalist Vegas Tenold is not light reading. It’s a book that I started while also knowing it would be upsetting. But I can’t walk away from these topics, or allow myself to be blissfully ignorant anymore. That said, I can only understand the white nationalist movement on an intellectual level. Emotionally, the belief set is still completely unfathomable to me.

Tenold doesn’t set out to explain why these people believe what they believe. He wants to explain the history of the movement, from post-Civil War KKK to Charlottesville. The historical focus means that he discusses various white nationalist groups, focusing primarily on their leaders. Tenold doesn’t agree with them, and he’s not trying to get readers to understand their positions. He puts them all on a timeline of history, and states their primary focus and challenges. He also connects this history to white nationalism as it exists now.

One of Tenold’s main guides to the current state of white nationalism in America is a guy named Matthew Heimbach. It’s clear that Tenold has spent a lot of time with Heimbach, as a journalistic resource. They aren’t friends, but sometimes Heimbach forgets and that allows Tenold to learn things only members of these groups typically know. It’s not easy reading about cross burning or other hateful views and behavior. I can’t imagine being in Tenold’s shoes.

All of his subjects let Tenold behind a curtain of membership, without requiring his admittance to their groups. Why? They are interested in publicity because it gets the word out to potential followers. And these groups need it. Until very recent years, they were a fast-dwindling group of mostly male, definitely aging members. However, Tenold tracks the work Heimbach and others do to help unite several smaller groups into a larger organization. They’re looking for presence in the current political scene.

My conclusions
Vegas Tenold is a journalistic story teller, with a strong stomach for difficult situations. He embeds himself in a way that most writers would choose not to do. And then he takes that experience and turns it into a frighteningly compelling story.

I didn’t expect to be as drawn to this book as I was. I thought it would be horribly difficult to read. Don’t get me wrong. It was absolutely difficult. But the distance Tenold puts between the white nationalist and the reader helps. His writing style is historical and somewhat dispassionate. And although it made for some dry passages, the style balances the topic’s hot and angry feel.

I read this during a time I was also reading Congressman John Lewis’ memoir about the Civil Rights Movement. (Review coming soon—the Lewis book is long!) The two books were counterpoints of good and evil, right and wrong.

If you’re curious about the alt-right and far right as they relate to U.S. politics in 2018, this is a strong reading choice. Be prepared for plenty of much earlier history, though. Tenold writes well, and his willingness to engage people he disagrees with is admirable. I’m curious what he’ll choose next.

Acknowledgements
Many thanks to NetGalley, Perseus Books, PublicAffairs, Nation Books, and the author for a digital advanced reader’s copy in exchange for this honest review.

I tend to think of white nationalist groups as hate cults. But, admittedly, I knew little about them because I find them so completely intolerable. I wanted to read this book because it offers a view from a distance. I didn't have to actually interact with these people in order to get a glimpse inside their world and, perhaps, better understand them.

This book is well written, and it certainly does take us inside the white nationalist movement. The author spent years with these various groups, attending their meeting and rallies, and getting to know some of the individuals involved. Throughout the book, we're there with these people as they organize events and justify their messages of racism and prejudice. We see how groups form, split apart, and come together in new groups to sometimes become stronger.

While interesting, I felt the middle of the book became repetitive and a little disorganized. I got tired of reading the same messages from the same people, told in a different way at a different meeting, but the same nonetheless. We bounce from one group to another, from one rally to another, without a clear purpose. I wanted better cohesion, and perhaps more input from a sociological standpoint from the author.

I'm also not totally sold on the fact that these people we meet are a fair representation of the white nationalist movement. I don't know how any of them manage to organize anything at all, much less how they would be a threat. Most of them are childish, narrow-minded, quick-tempered, uneducated racists. This feels too much like the expected stereotype. Clearly, these groups are not made up of all backwoods bigots. I would have liked to meet some of the more educated members who are involved in politics and business, though I imagine those people would not be willing to spew their rancid words to a journalist.

This book does offer some valuable insight and is certainly worth reading.

As part of my reading goals for the year, I added an additional goal of trying to understand people I fundamentally disagree with. I started by listening to the audiobook version of Anne Coulter's In Trump We Trust, which just left me wanting to throttle her. Mind you, I will freely admit to being pretty darned lefty, even for a Canadian, and my two best friends are an Argentinian and an Indian (Asian, that is) who both immigrated to Canada as children, so Coulter's constant arguments about immigrants (both those who came through legal means and illegal means) being the root of everything bad in the US made me wonder about her sanity.

A better choice for reading was Everything You Love Will Burn, by Vegas Tenold. The author is a journalist, born in raised in Norway. He decided to look into the state of white nationalist organizations. He started long before Trump was even being talked about as a candidate for the 2016 presidential race. His way in was a then fairly minor nationalist, Matthew Heimbach. The man has grown in prominence over the years, as Tenold followed him around from time to time.

He also gets into the history of white supremacist organizations, such as the KKK, and looks at modern variations of the KKK and skinheads and neo-nazis, and other organizations that run the gamut from get rid of non-whites in... permanent ways, to whites should control everything, and finally calling for the complete separation of the races into different countries (much like the post-civil war push to get freed slave to chose to go back to Africa, resulting in the country Liberia).

Heimbach falls into the last category. He doesn't spout white supremacy, but he thinks that whites should have their own nation, while the other races should be somewhere else (where isn't really defined). He actually comes across as a pretty easy going kind of guy. Reasonable, at least until he decides to start talking about why the Holocaust couldn't possibly have happened.

One thing that really stands out in the book is the comparison of the difference from the white supremacists and nationalist organization of the early to mid-twentieth century, which was their heyday, to where they are today. Today, by the end of the book, seemed pretty... sad. And pathetic. Despite the events in Charlottesville, where a woman was killed, and Trump refused to denounce the alt-right protesters whose actions led to her death, it appears that white nationalists have trouble getting any real numbers showing up for protests, and the ones who usually do show up are ones that just wanted a fight.

Basically, my takeaway from the book was that despite the occasional resurgence from people like Matthew Heimbach and Richard Spence, these organizations seem to be slowly fading away, since that majority of the generation coming up don't agree with their attitudes.

This was a very desterbing, yet very well written book. I will be recommending it to friends and family for sure.

This book was good but very hard to read. It is crazy that this type of behavior is making a comeback. Very well researched and extremely well written. When we think of the KKK as well as other "white power" groups and their locations, we think of the South. This book will enlighten you that they are all over. When reading some of this book it made me remember when Mort Downey had a tv show and some of his guests. Read this book with an open mind. It may make you change your minds about somethings, or give you a better insight on why some feel the way they do. All we can do is pray for them as well as ourselves. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC copy of this book in return for my honest review.

A fascinating look at the rise of white supremacy and other movements. A must read for everyone.

Disturbing
Sad
Shocking
But as always one sided. Racism is rampant in those that hate, regardless of color. I know this from the title was only going to show one side but when you show one side you must be careful to not inadvertently excuse another. This book will make you sad for us all.

I have to admit, I could not finish this book. It was just too disturbing, and too much for me to handle, the fact that there are still people in the world who think and believe the things the author discovered. The white supremacy groups, who once appeared relegated to the trashbin of history, have found new life in their belief that Donald Trump is their savior. It was just sickening.
The writing is good. Perhaps others will be able to power through the wretchedness of these people, but I just could not.
I'm left fearful for what is happening to us. And wondering how in the world did the author persevere through witnessing this?

Everything You Love Will Burn: Inside the Resurgence of White Nationalism in America by Vegas Tenold

Before you start reading this book, ask yourself what is you want from this book. Are you looking for a rationalization for why white nationalism is making a resurgence? Are you looking for the history of white nationalism in the U.S. or to find what they really believe? Are you hoping that this book will make you feel better about what’s happening in the U.S. and convince you that it is just a phase? Figure out first what you want before proceeding. I didn’t want anything from this book but a different perspective from my own. I’ve never believed that hate groups went away or disappeared. I was always aware that racism was still running rampant in this country, maybe not as bad as Jim Crow era or during the Civil Rights movement, but just because everyone can now use the same water fountain doesn’t mean everyone loves or respects each other. I wanted to read what someone else had to say and what someone else was exposed to. Tenold was fully entrenched in the white nationalist movement for over 5 years. He regularly met with and spoke to different leaders in the movement, attended sacred ceremonies and was present at rallies. He was given an unprecedented amount of access into the white nationalist movement and exposed it in this book.

Everything You Love Will Burn is an intense, unsettling look at those who truly believe in the need for a white ethnic state. The range of those who simply don’t like minorities to those who have no problem resorting to and encouraging violence are discussed throughout these pages. Tenold speaks openly about the relationships he formed with people and how forming those relationship granted him this unbelievable access inside the white nationalism movement. He also speaks openly about his disdain for their views and litters his writing with a tone of disbelief and unmistakable sarcasm. Tenold knew that those people who could be kind and charming to him, could be and were brutal to those they consider to be beneath them or detrimental to the success of the white race. Tenold witnessed the rise and fall of memberships or different organizations, the failed attempts at alliances, the contempt and disdain that the different groups had for each other. Above all, Tenold witnessed the blind hatred that each of these groups had. And he witnessed the rise of Trump and with it the increase in bold tactics and vocal outcry.

I’ll admit that I was apprehensive about reading this book. I had fervently avoided any sympathetic articles starring white supremacists or white nationalists. But I wanted to give this book a shot because it was dealing with a more recent history and events and I’m glad that I did. What Tenold does in this book is fairly simple: he spills the beans on all the white nationalist that he spent the last five years being around. But is this book worth a read? Yes, most definitely. Especially after the events in Charlottesville. I think the most shocking thing to me about reading this book was seeing the names of so many of the people heavily involved in the events of Charlottesville. This was an unexpected glimpse into the events that directly correlated to the violence in Charlottesville which alone make its extremely relevant to the pulse of the U.S. right now.

This book is especially relevant and ties in directly to the rising alt-right movement that I never saw coming. This was excellently written and does not make a caricature of those involved as it would be easy to do. This gets into the thinking of some of those on the alt-right and delves into their pasts, and how one can begin to form such awful opinions. It also offers a helpful guide to the history of the KKK, and how it has fallen and risen repeatedly over the decades, and illuminates how the various white supremacist groups interact with each other. White supremacy is never portrayed sympathetically, but for every one wondering "who are these people?" "how did they start thinking this?" and "how did we get here?" this is a valuable insight.

<b>"Wisconsin goes to Trump! Everything you love will burn! LOL"</b>

This is the text journalist Vegas Tenold received at three o'clock in the morning on November 9, 2016. Just a few hours earlier, it had become apparent to the world that the seemingly impossible had happened, that Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States. The author of the text was Matthew Heimbach, a likable and intelligent white nationalist who Tenold followed and wrote about for six years.

So how did we get here? Where the victory on election night is not the satisfaction of the hard work and effort in convincing your fellow countrymen to the vision you have for the future, but rather a gleeful joy that your countrymen might suffer?

For over half a decade, Tenold immersed himself in the world of the white nationalists, and the ways they looked to grab political power (or not). His primary subject was Matthew Heimbach himself, a former socialist turned white nationalist whose goal is to unite the factions of the movement into one cohesive group, reformed to be palatable to the average American. It isn't easy, and Heimbach seemingly spends half his time trying to get Klan members to leave their robes at home and skinheads to put away the swastikas.

If you think white nationalists are composed of one group of people with one set agenda, Tenold's book will have you thinking again. Not only that, but the sects frequently dislike each other. The skinheads think the KKK is a sober, uptight, stodgy remnant of days gone by, while Klan members find the skinheads to be a little too, well, Nazi. Meanwhile, the Hammerskins just want to turn up the music and get into a fight... usually with their own members. Then there's Art Jones, the octogenarian leader (and sole member) of the America First Committee, whose rambling speeches no one likes.

But there are a couple things these groups had in common. They all believed they were members of an army in an eternal battle against the "reds"-- whom they defined as being anyone they didn't like, and whom they imagined were lurking around every corner. They also were allergic to logic and facts, finding that the <i>absence of proof</i> to their claims was in fact all the proof they really need.

This book was certainly informative, but in my opinion, it was spinning its wheels for the middle third, and it took me a while to read this. The author bounces from one white nationalist faction to another, meeting a colorful cast of (racist and also sometimes kind of crazy) characters along the way. But I wasn't sure what it was leading up to? Is this just a look into white nationalists, or is there a point to it all? I'm still not sure. What this book is not, is about Trump. Not really. Tenold devotes little space to the Republican's courting of certain key white nationalist players, including Matthew Heimbach. About one white nationalist's support of the then candidate, he writes:

<i>"He supported Trump with the aloof enthusiasm of someone who wanted to set fire to something just to see what happened but also didn't really care one way or the other whether it burned. He didn't really mind Hillary and didn't really like Trump that much but seemed to have gone with the candidate who would piss the most people off."</i>

Of course, this didn't stop this same person from declaring after Trump's inauguration: "We're president now."

In the end, the author concludes that the alt-right movement is unlikely to succeed because they don't have "a policy platform so much as a series of gripes and offensive jokes." He writes sums up the movement as such:

<i>"Freed from the burden of political correctness, white frat boys could now explain to the world how white frat boys were the true victims of feminism, affirmative action, and other forms of anti-white persecution and could, with a straight face, stand up in public and rejoice in someone finally fighting for their rights as white, affluent college guys."</i>

I think after 2016, it might be dangerous to write off the altright as trolling, although there certainly are strong elements of that on social media and through internet memes. But I'm confused as to why Tenold's ultimate conclusion is about so-called altright "basement dwellers" when the focus of his entire book is about organized white nationalist groups. There might be overlap between groups like the KKK and skinheads and the altright, but the latter is much more complicated and varied in concept than the two former.

This book was between 3 and 4 stars for me. I went with the higher rating because of the importance of the information in the book. But, really, what I think Tenold had here was a long article. I know that's not what an author wants to hear after six years of research, but this is a stretch in book form. After reading this, I feel like I <i>know</i> white nationalists better than before, but I can't say it was a step toward <i>understanding</i> them.

I received an ARC of this book courtesy of the publisher and NetGalley.

What had initially motivated my excursion into the world of white supremacy was curiosity about a brand of politics that seemed almost too outdated to be real - and one that I was surprised to find thriving throughout the country. 

Journalist Vegas Tenold explains that it was the 2011 massacre perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway that drove him to delve deeper into the world of white supremacy groups. Describing that event, he says it "exposed a world of far-right radicalism that I had scarcely known existed until then and certainly had not believed capable of such a level of carnage. I became convinced that the path to defeating extremism was through understanding it. I began reaching out to more white supremacists and nationalists in the United States, eventually leading me into a world of racism, vitriol, staggering ineptitude, and quixotic ambition. Only toward the end of my foray did I realize that the far-right radicals in America were in the forefront of a nationalistic zeitgeist that would upend the entire 2016 presidential election as well as the political landscape of America."

From 2011, Tenold undertook the not so enviable task of shadowing and reporting from within three American white supremacy groups - the KKK, the National Socialist Movement, and the Traditionalist Workers Party. He also covers some splinter parties, like the Aryan National Alliance, in this very disorganized, often bumbling world of hate groups, factions with specific belief sets or reasons leading them to form their own small, insular groups.

That's the premise - Tenold follows several groups, with his primary contact being Matthew Heimbach. Heimbach is the leader and founder of the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party. Tenold identifies him as more dangerous than his louder, more inflammatory counterparts thanks to his seeming lack of the scary extremism that characterizes so many of them. Tenold accompanies him to various meetings, events and protests or rallies. They have an, if not convivial, then at least comfortable friendship of sorts.

My biggest question, which is touched on somewhat on a few times throughout was if he'd begun to sympathize with his subjects, particularly Heimbach, with whom he spends the most time. He considers it when Heimbach asks him if he wants to know his thoughts on the Holocaust.

His question made me wonder if all the time we had spent together had dulled in some ways or softened my journalistic instincts. If you spend enough time with another person, however much you disagree with or abhor that person's opinions on certain matters, you're bound to find traits you like...He was always upbeat and friendly and had a way of dismissing the rest of the far right in a way that hard to disagree with. Also, there were political issues that we agreed on. We both felt strongly for the struggle of Palestinians, and both believed that the prevalence of money and special interests in American politics had gotten the country into trouble.

Heimbach doesn't use racial epithets, and "the folksy, friendly qualities that made him so much more dangerous than your garden-variety white supremacist had gotten under my skin." He doesn't ask him certain things because he doesn't want to hear the inevitable answers. It's an odd aspect that was never quite resolved in my mind - he doesn't make this a sympathetic portrait whatsoever. And he also presents countering statistics and logic or facts when sharing an argument used by any of the white supremacist groups.

Maybe I was just surprised by his technique, or how he managed to appear neutral to the groups. He does encounter his share of threats and violence, although mostly they service to underscore how wildly disorganized and lacking in cohesive order and realistic principles these groups are.

About that disorganization, it extends in a way to their views of themselves and their reach and membership. For example, at a KKK meeting, "Apparently the lackadaisical showing today was no indication of the KKK's true membership because...there were public members and there were secret members. There was zero evidence to support his claim, but in a way - and according to the Klan's nebulous logic, wasn't the absence of proof really all the proof you needed?" As if you needed any additional reasons why the real fake news (pre-Trump's co-opting) like Russian Facebook ads, and alternative facts were able to be so readily accepted by so many. They lie to themselves all the time. I guess that's a big duh, but Tenold lays it out in an all-too-clear picture.

This idea of the unimportance of facts repeats later when he describes a talk given by Richard Spencer, where Spencer was challenged at a college lecture with dreaded facts: 

"You only cited feelings and emotions. You stood up there tonight and said, 'The world is a worse place, and don't you feel that way, white people?' But literacy rates are the highest they've ever been" - "Who cares," Spencer interjected - "the number of people who die in war is the lowest it's ever been, infant mortality is the lowest it's ever been, women who die in childbirth is the lowest it's ever been...."...What good were numbers that showed that the world was moving forward when white men in particular felt like they were losing ground? Who cared about child mortality and childbirth casualties and literacy rates?

The Hammerskins were the most horrifying group profiled for me, out of an extremely horrifying selection of prospects, mainly because of their propensity for intense, almost frenzied violence, even against each other. But every single group will make you shudder. The only comfort is that they're generally so disorganized that they don't accomplish as much as might be expected if they were smarter and didn't spend so much time fighting with each other.

Looking for a Loyal White Knights rally deep in rural North Carolina, Tenold writes, "At the turn-off to a narrow dirt road stood a decrepit old tractor that someone had taken the time to drape in a Confederate flag. It seemed like a clue, so I took a chance and turned left into the woods." It's a little bit of dark humor, but along with his portrayals of the aforementioned ineptitude among the groups, it helps to lighten up the tone of what's a very serious journalistic look at very seriously frightening hate groups.

Tenold is a compelling writer and his journalistic immersion amongst these unsavory groups, which have been getting louder and bolder of late, is an important look at an ugly but present reality of the recent racial, cultural, and social tensions that have boiled over in America. I found it more readable and less political in scope than the recent Alt-America, but it covers similar topics and makes a good companion read.