How war came home: From 9/11 to the storming of the U.S. Capitol

Abstract

This article reviews three recent books, each of which help establish connections between the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 and the storming of the U.S. Capitol in 2021. The review highlights the ways the 9/11 attacks amplified latent nativist and xenophobic currents in U.S. society. It also shows how the prosecution of the Global War on Terror militarized new sectors of American society while simultaneously undermining trust in government as economic convulsions, protracted overseas wars, and the Covid-19 pandemic adversely affected ordinary Americans. In the course of developing these arguments the review helps explain Donald Trump’s popular appeal and it shows how and why America may now be on the brink of a new civil war.

Keywords:

• Politics
• War
• Terror
• 9/11
• U.S.

Notes

1 Here I am following the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation in defining domestic terrorism as “Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature” (https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/terrorism).

2 For more on this topic see Bennett (2012).

3 For more see Hughes (2018).

4 For more on this see Antoun (2008).

5 For additional commentary on this theme see Lakoff’s argument regarding the strong father household in Lakoff (2009).

6 For more on the relationship of splitting to new social and political movements see: Bennett (2020). For more on political paranoia see: Bennett (2015).

7 https://cpost.uchicago.edu/research/domestic_extremism/why_we_cannot_afford_to_ignore_the_american_insurrectionist_movement/

8 For this reason, Ackerman’s deployment of terms such as “nativist” or “white supremacist” may be too general to capture the full complexity of either the MAGA or Insurrectionist movements, both of which need to be ethnographically explored.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jeff Bennett

JEFF BENNETT is an associate professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is the author of the book When the Sun Danced: Myths, Miracles, and Modernity in Early Twentieth Century Portugal. In addition to teaching anthropology, Jeff is a faculty member at the Greater Kansas City Psychoanalytic Institute. Contact information: [email protected]