I’m a professor of modern US and global history at Hartwick College in upstate New York. I have been reading and researching the history of conservative and right-wing movements in the United States and the wider world for almost two decades. My first book, Revolutionaries for the Right: Anticommunist Internationalism and Paramilitary Warfare in the Cold War, was published by University of North Carolina Press in 2018. My articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in Jacobin, Diplomatic History, Terrorism and Political Science, H-War, and H-Diplo. I’m currently at work on two projects: a history of the transatlantic white power movement and a film documentary about the short-lived white supremacist nation of Rhodesia and its contemporary legacies.
I wrote...
Revolutionaries for the Right: Anticommunist Internationalism and Paramilitary Warfare in the Cold War
By
Kyle Burke
What is my book about?
My book, Revolutionaries for the Right, chronicles the rise and fall of what I call the anticommunist international—a global right-wing movement that sought paramilitary action against communism worldwide. Seeking revolution against leftist governments and movements, the anticommunist international ran propaganda campaigns, smuggled weapons, and organized mercenary missions in Rhodesia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Angola, Afghanistan, Cambodia, and many other countries. Utilizing previously untapped archival sources from four continents, Revolutionaries for the Right shows that the circulation of violence—both actual and imagined—between the United States and these overseas battlegrounds in the late Cold War helped radicalize right-wing paramilitary groups at home while also generating new forms of privatized warfare abroad. Those consequences reverberate today.
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The Books I Picked & Why
Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right
By
Lisa McGirr
Why this book?
This is a field-defining work. First published in 2001, McGirr’s book prompted a generation of historians to reexamine the rise and evolution of modern American conservatism. Focused on the suburbs of Orange County, California, Suburban Warriors explored how grassroots conservative activists mobilized to reshape the politics of the nation. Through the stories of ordinary people--housewives and defense workers, evangelical worshippers, and anti-communist activists--we learn how the modern American right evolved from a fringe movement into arguably the most powerful political force in the United States.
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Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal
By
Kim Phillips-Fein
Why this book?
Shifting away from the grassroots origins of modern conservatism, Invisible Hands examines how wealthy, conservative businessmen mobilized to counter the power of organized labor, dismantle the New Deal, and propel the right into political power. Phillips-Fein begins her story in the Depression, as a small set of disgruntled industrialists organized against what they saw as creeping socialism, embodied in FDR’s New Deal. Although marginal at first, these titans of capitalism spent great effort and tremendous sums of money to change the tone and tenor of American politics, convincing many Americans to abandon the promises of economic security for the supposed beneficence of the free market.
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White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism
By
Kevin M. Kruse
Why this book?
The rise of the right was in many ways a southern phenomenon as the Old South transformed into the Sun Belt. White Flight explores how white supremacy and fears over desegregation propelled the conservative movement in Atlanta and on the national stage. As federal initiatives spelled the end for segregation in the 1950s and 1960s, southern whites managed to preserve racial discrimination through more subtle avenues. Whites fled Atlanta’s urban core for its suburbs where they reformed the world of white supremacy, giving birth to new causes such as tax revolts, tuition vouchers, and the privatization of public services.
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Blue-Collar Conservatism: Frank Rizzo's Philadelphia and Populist Politics
By
Timothy J. Lombardo
Why this book?
As the modern conservative movement gained ground, many working-class white, ethnic voters, especially in struggling Northern and Midwestern cities joined its ranks, even as they continued to vote for Democrats in local elections. Blue-Collar Conservatism explores how that happened by focusing on the divisive tenure of Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo.
Elected as a Democrat in 1971, Rizzo was the first former police commissioner to serve as Philly's mayor, and he gained election by harping on “law and order” issues and opposing civil rights reforms in schools, housing, and workplaces, harnessing white claims that such policies were unearned and unfair. In this cauldron of resentment and resistance, historian Tim Lombardo shows, blue-collar whites began to reject the promises of liberalism.
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Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America
By
Kathleen Belew
Why this book?
The modern American right also developed distinct paramilitary dimensions. In the wake of the Vietnam War, a militarized white power movement led by veterans spread across the United States. Uniting Klansman, neo-Nazis, tax protesters, and Christian Identitarians, the movement sought war against immigrants, African Americans, leftists, liberals, and, eventually, the government itself.
To carry out those assaults, members circulated ideas and literature, shared money and housing, hoarded weapons and supplies, and practiced combat and counterfeiting. Their violence spread across the country, culminating in Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995. In Bring the War Home, historian Kathleen Belew explains how all this happened and what it means today.
