Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy
Jon Michaels · David Noll
Oct 2024 · Simon and Schuster · Narrated by Eric Yang
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7 hr 53 min
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For readers of How Democracies Die, two legal scholars expose the MAGA Republican strategy to roll back civil, political, and privacy rights and subvert American democracy—and prescribe a plan for beating the Christian nationalists at their own game.
Time and again, when confronted with serious challenges to their power and privilege, white Christian nationalists seek solace—and satisfaction—in state-supported forms of vigilantism. This was true at the dawn of the American republic, when Northern abolitionists threatened the Southern slavocracy. It was also true in the aftermath of the Civil War, when emancipated Black Americans and their Northern allies sought to fulfill the promises of Reconstruction. And though this pattern was seemingly broken after the Civil Rights revolution of the 1950s and ’60s—and abandoned once and for all—legal vigilantism has made a surprising, roaring comeback in the months and years following the failed coup of January 6, 2021.
Committed to never again losing power, let alone experiencing the humiliation that followed on the heels of the ham-fisted insurrection, overlapping networks of right-wing lawyers, politicians, plutocrats, and preachers have resurrected state-supported vigilantism.
Vigilante Nation tells this story of the American Right marginalizing, subordinating, and disenfranchising the increasingly diverse and cosmopolitan members of the American polity. This book exposes the vigilantes’ plans, explains their methods—everything from book bans to anti-abortion bounties to attacks on government proceedings, including elections—and underscores the stakes. Now that supporters of democratic equality are numerous and dexterous enough to finally secure the broad promises of the civil rights revolution, the race is on for Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and the architects of Project 2025 to subvert our democracy before a countermovement can rise up to thwart their insidious plans.
Time and again, when confronted with serious challenges to their power and privilege, white Christian nationalists seek solace—and satisfaction—in state-supported forms of vigilantism. This was true at the dawn of the American republic, when Northern abolitionists threatened the Southern slavocracy. It was also true in the aftermath of the Civil War, when emancipated Black Americans and their Northern allies sought to fulfill the promises of Reconstruction. And though this pattern was seemingly broken after the Civil Rights revolution of the 1950s and ’60s—and abandoned once and for all—legal vigilantism has made a surprising, roaring comeback in the months and years following the failed coup of January 6, 2021.
Committed to never again losing power, let alone experiencing the humiliation that followed on the heels of the ham-fisted insurrection, overlapping networks of right-wing lawyers, politicians, plutocrats, and preachers have resurrected state-supported vigilantism.
Vigilante Nation tells this story of the American Right marginalizing, subordinating, and disenfranchising the increasingly diverse and cosmopolitan members of the American polity. This book exposes the vigilantes’ plans, explains their methods—everything from book bans to anti-abortion bounties to attacks on government proceedings, including elections—and underscores the stakes. Now that supporters of democratic equality are numerous and dexterous enough to finally secure the broad promises of the civil rights revolution, the race is on for Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and the architects of Project 2025 to subvert our democracy before a countermovement can rise up to thwart their insidious plans.
About the author
Jon Michaels is a UCLA professor of law specializing in constitutional, administrative, and national-security law. His award-winning scholarship has been published in The Yale Law Journal, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, and the Harvard Law Review; his popular essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, and The Forward. A Yale Law graduate and former Supreme Court clerk, Michaels is a member of the American Law Institute, serves on the advisory board of UCLA’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, and is a faculty affiliate of UCLA’s Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy. His first book, Constitutional Coup, was published by Harvard University Press.
David Noll is the associate dean for faculty research and development and a professor of law at Rutgers Law School. His scholarly writings on civil procedure, complex litigation, and administrative law have appeared in the California Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the New York University Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and the Texas Law Review, among others, and his popular writing has appeared in venues including The New York Times, Politico, Slate, and the New York Law Journal. A graduate of Columbia University and New York University School of Law, Noll is an academic fellow of the National Institute for Civil Justice. He clerked on the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
David Noll is the associate dean for faculty research and development and a professor of law at Rutgers Law School. His scholarly writings on civil procedure, complex litigation, and administrative law have appeared in the California Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the New York University Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and the Texas Law Review, among others, and his popular writing has appeared in venues including The New York Times, Politico, Slate, and the New York Law Journal. A graduate of Columbia University and New York University School of Law, Noll is an academic fellow of the National Institute for Civil Justice. He clerked on the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
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