For readers of How Democracies Die, two legal scholars expose the MAGA Republican strategy to roll back civil, political, and privacy rights and subvert American democracy—and prescribe a plan for beating the Christian nationalists at their own game. Time and again, when confronted with serious challenges to their power and privilege, white Christian nationalists seek solace—and satisfaction—in state-supported forms of vigilantism. This was true at the dawn of the American republic, when Northern abolitionists threatened the Southern slavocracy. It was also true in the aftermath of the Civil War, when emancipated Black Americans and their Northern allies sought to fulfill the promises of Reconstruction. And though this pattern was seemingly broken after the Civil Rights revolution of the 1950s and ’60s—and abandoned once and for all—legal vigilantism has made a surprising, roaring comeback in the months and years following the failed coup of January 6, 2021. Committed to never again losing power, let alone experiencing the humiliation that followed on the heels of the ham-fisted insurrection, overlapping networks of right-wing lawyers, politicians, plutocrats, and preachers have resurrected state-supported vigilantism. Vigilante Nation tells this story of the American Right marginalizing, subordinating, and disenfranchising the increasingly diverse and cosmopolitan members of the American polity. This book exposes the vigilantes’ plans, explains their methods—everything from book bans to anti-abortion bounties to attacks on government proceedings, including elections—and underscores the stakes. Now that supporters of democratic equality are numerous and dexterous enough to finally secure the broad promises of the civil rights revolution, the race is on for Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and the architects of Project 2025 to subvert our democracy before a countermovement can rise up to thwart their insidious plans.

Looking at the narrative accounts of mob violence produced by vigilantes and/or their advocates as "official" histories, Lisa Arellano shows how these non-fiction narratives conform to a common formula whose purpose is to legitimate frontier justice and lynching. InVigilantes and Lynch Mobs, Arellano closely examines such narratives as well as the work of western historian and archivist Hubert Howe Bancroft, who was sympathetic to them and that of Ida B. Wells, who wrote in fierce opposition to lynching. Tracing the creation, maintenance, and circulation of dominant, alternative, and oppositional vigilante stories from the 19th century frontier through the Jim Crow South, she casts new light on the role of narrative in creating a knowable past. Demonstrating how these histories ennoble the actions of mobs and render their leaders and members as heroes, Arellano presents a persuasive account of lynching's power to create the conditions favourable to its own existence.

From prehistory to the present-day conservation movement, Pyne explores the efforts of successive American cultures to master wildfire and to use it to shape the landscape.

In recent years, mob attacks on women by men have drawn public attention to an emerging social phenomenon. This book draws upon concepts from critical race theory and sociocultural evolutionary theory to examine this specific form of gender violence, which takes place outside the law and is a vigilante form of enforcing traditional gender norms. The author positions vigilante gender violence as a global issue produced during specific periods of sociocultural change in conditions marked by intensified social stratification. The catalyst for vigilante gender violence is the formal state’s breaching of the "gender bargain," the tacit psychological wage even non-elite men earn by at least not being female. When the state threatens to end the gender bargain by promoting women’s rights, the die is cast for low-status men to enforce this bargain themselves in mob attacks against women who are perceived to be violating the patriarchal order. Seen through independent case studies in different national settings, this book provides empirical evidence that demonstrates the existence of vigilante gender violence in times when societies are shifting from one phase to another and the social hierarchies present within are disrupted. With greater understanding of when and how to predict the occurrence of this phenomenon, the author posits notable ways to prevent it from happening altogether.

For three years Miami cops tried unsuccessfully to solve a series of unrelated murders. As time passed and the body count began to rise, an interagency team of detectives began to ponder the possibility that a serial killer was loose in their county of two and a half million citizens. In 2009, the arrest of Mr. Michael Jerome brought the killing spree to an end. For the police and residents of the county, the case was concluded with a conviction on nine counts of premeditated murder. The perpetrator was sentenced to life in prison without parole. This was not, however, to be the end of the Michael Jerome story. While conducting a routine visit to the Miami-Dade County Jail on an unrelated case, private detective Fairlington Lavender meets Jerome, who is housed in an isolation cell. Interested in this unique case, Lavender is afforded the opportunity to interview the infamous killer. On their last visit together, Jerome hands the detective a fifty three page diary which reveals every detail of his life prior to, during, and after his killing spree. Lavender shares the diary with his friend Dr. Sanford Lerner, a forensic psychiatrist. Over a period of three months, the cop and the doctor meet and piece together the unique mosaic of Michael Jerome in an effort to understand what drove this previously law abiding man to such mayhem. The Case of the Miami Vigilante will afford the reader access to the complete, unedited diary of Michael Jerome. The psychological autopsy Lavender and Lerner conduct as they attempt to reach consensus concerning the motivations, psychological dynamics, and ultimately the clinical diagnosis of this enigmatic man will captivate the interest of anyone who is an ardent follower of crime stories. Was Michael Jerome a serial killer or a righteous vigilante?

Examines the ways in which the frontier myth influences American culture and politics, drawing on fiction, western films, and political writing