Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism
by Jeffrey Toobin
View on GoodreadsJeffrey Toobin's retelling of the Oklahoma City bombing and Timothy McVeigh's biography as a prequel to contemporary right-wing extremism — arguing the 1990s militia movement seeded the same ideology now operating at scale.
Core ideas
- McVeigh's framework — government as illegitimate enemy, Ruby Ridge and Waco as casus belli, The Turner Diaries as scripture — recurs in the Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, and Jan 6 framings with minimal substantive update.
- The institutional response in 1995 (Clinton-era counter-extremism, FBI focus) had real effect but was systematically dismantled in the post-9/11 reorientation toward foreign terrorism — a strategic mistake the book argues we're still paying for.
- The Trump-era mainstreaming of militia-adjacent rhetoric is treated as the predictable harvest of three decades of underemphasis on the domestic-extremism right.
Published2023
Pages426
ISBN9781668013571
ReadMar 2024
