My review from 1990.

This is a decidedly inferior book to Philip Finch’s God, Guts, and Guns: A Close Look at the Radical Right. The key phrase in the latter title is a close look. As Finch says, writing about the Radical Right without going amongst it is like Melville writing Moby Dick without putting to sea. Yet, Coates seems to have been content to do virtually that -- confining himself largely to Radical Right literature, cursory phone interviews, and other journalists’ reports. Whereas Finch traveled extensively -- and is also a journalist -- and actually spoke at length to members of the Radical Right (leaders and followers) to gain an understanding of the psychology, motivations, and, yes, the potential threat of the Radical Right, Coates is content to report second-hand and engage in bad psychoanalysis and just plain inconsistent, illogical thinking. Where Finch sees, and I think rightly, the main streak of the Radical Right being radical, rugged individualism, Coates trots out a theory espousing a historical line of bigotry beginning with the Anti-Catholicism of the Know-Nothings. (Despite anti-Catholicism given little attention in conspiracy mongering literature of the Radical Right. Both Finch and Coates see economic hardship as the key to the Radical Right becoming dangerous; however, Coates invalidates his own premise by showing that the economic depression of the thirties failed to increase the Ku Klux Klan’s (the main Radical Right group of the time) after their ties to Nazis was revealed. Coates also has a barely covert and insulting insinuation that rural Midwest and Western America is ripe with racism -- ignoring urban racism and adherents of the Radical Right in cities.

Coates, in his citing of poll and other data confuses the prevalence of a message and its widespread dissemination with its acceptance. Coates also shares the liberal mindset that mere survivalism (and he admits that not all survivalists are Identity racists) as a philosophy is evil and antisocial and that AIDS and war toys are leading us down what he calls the Survivalist Right path. Coates also engages in down right torturous and silly semantical nimbleness in trying to show the pro-Israel stance of some Fundamentalist Christians will lead their followers into the Identity movement. Coates seem to think merely focussing on issues leads to anti-Semitism. Chastizing aid to Israel or questioning the value of social programs to blacks becomes, by default, not legitimate political issues, but roadmarks to racism.

In short, this book is to be used with caution. Nevetheless, about three chapters of this book are worthwhile and parts of two others. Coates traces developments in the Radical Right since Finch’s book. He talks of the emergence of the, to date, most dangerous segment of the Radical Right: the Order. Coates, agreeing with Finch, says the Radical Right likes to talk the good racist fight. The Order got tired of the talk and decided to fight the good racist fight along the lines of the infamous The Turner Diaries. Coates also shows the Radical Right network of diverse organization that supplied aid and members to the Order. Coates details the Gordon Kahl incident, again a post-Finch event as well as outlining the strange -- and sometimes gruesomely sick and violent -- life in the Radical Right compounds which tend to cluster in the Ozarks. Coates is on far less sure ground when he cites every example of violence perpetrated by someone with racist ideas as being symptomatic of the Survivalist Right’s malign influence. Donald and Dan Nichols, the infamous “Mountain Men”, were motivated more by Roussean glorification of man in a natural state and rugged individualism than racism. Charles Ng and Leonard Lake were motivated to incredibly depraved murder and sadism more by the lust for power typical of other serial killers than by racism.

Like Finch, I see, even given past events, little reason to fear the Radical Right significantly altering the political face of America. At most, groups like the Order could become a serious terrorist threat. Coates, however, sees us having a definite potential to change along Survival Right lines. Even giving the historical perspective of three years ago in what was in some ways, a much different world politically and culturally (and I have some guesses as to the Radical Rights reaction to the seeming breakdown of the Soviet Empire and recent events in Israel’s occuppied territories), I can’t agree with Coates alarmism. Coates does differ one other good observation on the Radical Right. It is its sophisticated use of new communications media: videotapes, call-in lines, and phone answering machines, cable access, and, last but not least, computer networks. The latter offer a good potential for private espionage, recruiting, and coordinating of illegal activities (It’s only a matter of time, if it hasn’t happened already, before other political (and non-political) groups follow suit.) I was reminded of how radical political and religous groups seize the opportunity new communications technologies afford. The Protestants utilized the new printing press. Hitler utilized movies as a propaganda medium. ( )