In the aftermath of the Storming of the U.S. Capitol on 6 January 2021, historians of Whiteness and race relations in the United States have been working hard to interpret the violence of the Stop the Steal activists and broader neo-fascist militias that attacked the U.S. Congress.

Kathleen Belew, Professor of History at the University of Chicago, has been one of the most important scholars to consider the insurrection through an in-depth historical perspective.

Belew’s Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (2018) is a key study of the diverse neo-Nazi and White Supremacist groups active in the United States since the Vietnam War. The book description on Harvard University Press’s website includes links to many of Belew’s media appearances.

When Northern Illinois University students in my course, HIST 399 Communal Strife: Civil Wars in Comparative Perspective, ask about the Storming of the U.S. Capitol, I point them to Kathleen Belew’s book, articles, and media interviews.

Belew recently appeared on the Ezra Klein Show. A podcast interview is available on The New York Times website. A New Yorker article features Kathleen Belew’s work.