America’s Secret Jihad: The Hidden History of Religious Terrorism in the United States

Wexler (The Awful Grace of God) convincingly makes the case that America has been victimized by significant domestic terrorism for over half a century, much of it inspired by Christian Identity, a theology that “identifies Jews as the spawn of the devil.” He links atrocities familiar (the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995) and less so (attacks on synagogues in the South during the 1950s) to paint a disturbing picture with practical implications for the War on Terror. Most readers will be surprised by the book’s contention that since 9/11, more people in the U.S. have been killed by far right extremists than by those linked or sympathetic to al-Qaeda. Wexler’s deliberate and critical review of the evidence is also likely to prompt reconsideration of the possibility of wider conspiracies behind Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and the Atlanta child murders of 1979–1981. His careful documentation of a religious—as opposed to exclusively racist—motivation for these acts of terror buttresses those, like President Obama, who refuse to recast the War on Terror as a War on Radical Islam. (Aug.)