Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy

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.

Publisher: Atria/One Signal Publishers
Published: 10/08/2024
Pages: 352
Weight: 1.28lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.99d
ISBN: 9781668023235

About the Author
Jon Michaels is a professor of law at UCLA School of Law and is a graduate of Williams College, Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He also attended Yale Law School, where he served as an editor for the Yale Law Journal. Michaels clerked first for Judge Guido Calabresi of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and then for Justice David Souter of the US Supreme Court. A two-time winner of the American Constitution Society's Cudahy Award for scholarly excellence in administrative law, Michaels is a frequent legal affairs commentator for national and local media outlets.

David Noll is the associate dean for faculty research and development and a professor of law at Rutgers University. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, the New York Law Journal, and many others. He clerked for Judges Pierre N. Leval and Raymond J. Lohier Jr. on the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Judge Richard J. Holwell on the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.