A renowned expert on genocide argues that there is a real risk of violent atrocities happening in the United States If many people were shocked by Donald Trump's 2016 election, many more were stunned when, months later, white supremacists took to the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting "Blood and Soil" and "Jews will not replace us!" Like Trump, the Charlottesville marchers were dismissed as aberrations-crazed extremists who did not represent the real US. It Can Happen Here demonstrates that, rather than being exceptional, such white power extremism and the violent atrocities linked to it are a part of American history. And, alarmingly, they remain a very real threat to the US today. Alexander Hinton explains how murky politics, structural racism, the promotion of American exceptionalism, and a belief that the US has have achieved a color-blind society have diverted attention from the deep roots of white supremacist violence in the US's brutal past. Drawing on his years of research and teaching on mass violence, Hinton details the warning signs of impending genocide and atrocity crimes, the tools used by ideologues to fan the flames of hate, and the shocking ways in which "us" versus "them" violence is supported by inherently racist institutions and policies. It Can Happen Here is an essential new assessment of the dangers of contemporary white power extremism in the United States. While revealing the threat of genocide and atrocity crimes that loom over the country, Hinton offers actions we can take to prevent it from happening, illuminating a hopeful path forward for a nation in crisis.
Alex Labar Hinton is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Founder and Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, and UNESCO Chair on Genocide Prevention at Rutgers University, and the author of over a dozen books, including the award-winning Why Did They Kill?: Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide.
"[Alexander Laban] Hinton offers deep instruction for anyone seeking to better understand the bigotry that permeates American society [...] Hinton is deeply concerned with the idea of why people hate and how that hate plays out publicly [...] [W]ell-researched, readable account." * Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review * "With sober analysis and in assiduous detail, Hinton explores the ways the United States is 'simmering at a low boil,' and evinces every risk indicator for widespread mass atrocity crimes...Alarming but never alarmist, Hinton provides a chilling introduction to genocide studies through a chronicle of his travails during the Trump years." * Salon.com * "Fortunately Hinton does not leave us with problems, but has a solution too: A Truth Commission on White Supremacy and Its Legacies that would extend beyond the aims of the reparations bill following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, and open a discussion about the perpetrations of white nationalists and supremacists in a past yet unaccounted for. The understanding Hinton provides to events marking US history is objective, nuanced and noble, and teaches us readers that in seeking to define and judge phenomena and people intelligently, accurately and critically, these must necessarily be placed in the continuum of time and space." * LSE Review of Books * "By offering a thorough analysis of Trump's speeches and alt-right moral economies, It Can Happen Here links America's history of white supremacy and contemporary struggles over race to perceived threats to America's future. Hinton clears a new path for critical engagement through the face of public anthropology. Among the best critically engaged writing of our time. A must read!" -- Kamari Maxine Clarke, University of California Los Angeles "In chilling detail, It Can Happen Here traces particular racialized patterns that serve as warning and prompt for further examination of the deepest conditions that make genocide possible." -- Alisse Waterston, author of Light in Dark Times: The Human Search for Meaning "With an anthropologist's eye, Cambodia expert Alexander Laban Hinton analyzes the US white power scene and discerns disturbing parallels with the Khmer Rouge paranoia he has studied so closely. It is the long history of genocide and slavery in this country that provides the historically meaningful framework, he argues, rather than interwar European fascism. Analytically hard-hitting, Hinton's book is a model of critical reflection." -- A. Dirk Moses, author of The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression "Could white power advocates' dreams of racial genocide happen here? Hinton takes on that chilling question by looking at how people think about racial violence, from white supremacists at Charlottesville, to those charged with atrocities in the Cambodian genocide and students in his college classroom. The result is an account that is engaging, informative, and a model of the difficult dialogues in our schools and communities that are needed to begin healing our racially fractured society." -- Kathleen Blee, author of Understanding Racist Activism: Theory, Methods, and Research "For those who have been grappling with ways to bring discussions surrounding authoritarianism in the United States, white supremacist violence, and Donald Trump into college and high school classrooms, this book offers a useful template to follow." * Ethnic & Racial Studies *
