A Longtime Anti-Racism Activist’s Take on History
Reviewed by Loretta J. Ross
The Public Eye, Summer 2009
Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream – By Leonard Zeskind (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009, 656 pages, $37.50 cloth.)
Loretta Ross is National Coordinator of SisterSong, the women of color reproductive health collective based in Atlanta. She is coauthor of Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice.
It is so irritating to watch Pat Buchanan on MSNBC. There he was on Morning Joe, blaming the financial crisis on banks lending to people of color. His makeover as a respectable “conservative” pundit – conveniently forgetting his racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic slippages – is a testament to the power of the mainstream media to shape a Wonderland world Alice would have recognized.
Thank goodness for Leonard Zeskind’s long-awaited book. It has restored my faith in the power of truth to trump travesty.
Thirty years in the making, Blood and Politics reads like a political thriller that details intimate knowledge about the origins, history, leaders and activities of the White supremacist groups in the United States. But Zeskind’s book is no laundry list. His analysis helps us make sense of the netherworld of ideas and relationships that populate and bind together denizens of the Far Right, the Religious Right, and the ultra-conservative movements he places under the banner of “White nationalism.”
for the complete review go to:
http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v24n2/book-blood-politics.html