I use “white power” to name the movement that, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, united Neo-Nazis, Klansmen, skinheads, white separatists, tax protesters, and militiamen in common cause, and eventually in a war against the federal government.
Some people have referred to this as “white nationalism.” I think that’s misleading because when you say the word “nationalism,” people assume you mean an excess of patriotism, but that’s not what these people believe. [...]
They believe in a racial nation that would be transnational in scope and would involve a violent ending to the United States and remove all people of color and establish a new society based on the idea that white people are the chosen people. [...]
It’s a fringe movement at every point, but if you include all the various groups that it’s composed of (and you should), it’s quite a lot. It helps to think of it in terms of concentric circles. In the center, there’s a group of approximately 25,000 people who are hardcore members: They attend events, they buy literature, they make their whole lives about the movement. Those are the people who are willing to [commit] violence and sacrifice themselves. [...]
But despite all those efforts, there wasn’t a decisive stop to the violence. There wasn’t really a decisive stop to the organized movement either. I think what history shows us is that this is a movement with flexible ideologies that is capable of going underground when there is pressure and then reemerging when there is not. I think it would take a real change in how people think about and write about and confront this kind of activism for there to be anything like an endpoint.
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