American Extremism

D. J. Mulloy is a Research Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he also teaches about the history of political extremism. He has taught American Studies at the University of East Anglia and is the editor of Homegrown Revolutionaries: An American Militia Reader.

• Preface 1. Introducing the Militia Movement (i) America in the 1990s: The paranoid decade? (ii) Gun Control, and the Sieges of Ruby Ridge and Waco 2. Approaching Extremism: Theoretical perspectives on the far right in American history (i) Defining Extremism (ii) Status Politics and Status Anxiety: Questions of causation (iii) Style: The characteristics of extremists (iv) A Critique: Towards an alternative approach 3. Conversations with the Dead: The militia movement and American history (i) Inheriting the Past (ii) Contesting the Past (iii) Accessing the Past (iv) The Authority of History 4. A Revolutionary History (i) Citizen Soldiers, Militias and the American War of Independence (ii) The Rhetoric of Revolutionary Action (iii) A Sacred Text: The militia movement and the Declaration of Independence (iv) Conclusion: A continuing inspiration 5. A Republican Tradition (i) The Lost Republic (ii) Reconstructing Republicanism: Basic principles (iii) The Limited Republic (iv) Resisting Tyranny: Militias and the Second Amendment (v) Conclusion: A Republican legacy? 6. A Frontier Nation (i) Going West: Militias, independence and the American frontier (ii) Fighting Talk: Militias and the ideology of vigilantism (iii) The Homestead Ethic (iv) No Duty To Retreat: The militia movement and the code of the West (v) Remembering the Alamo: Militias and the history of Texas (vi) Conclusion: The weird West? 7. Conclusion: History and conspiracy Selected Bibliography

' ... important to scholars interested in the area of terrorism, religion and hatred ... ' - The Times Higher Education Supplement