The Growing Power & Influence Of White Supremacy In America

This election season you can streamline your news intake with up first. Our team of reporters and editors works overnight so you can start every morning with three stories you need to know in short episodes, 12-14 minutes long, to save you time and your sanity. Follow up first on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies.

Many Americans appalled by the violence of the January 6th assault on the U.S. Capitol likely assumed that the rioters came from regions where Donald Trump had his deepest support. But researchers from the University of Chicago found that most came from places Joe Biden had won in the election, often counties where the white population was shrinking relative to non whites. One example is Orange County, California, south of Los Angeles. That's a region highlighted by our guest, veteran investigative journalist Eric Listblau, in his new book.

He argues that America is seeing a nationwide surge in violent bigotry and white supremacy, unlike anything since the bloodiest days of the civil rights movement, often spurred on by incendiary racial rhetoric from Donald Trump. Lischblau writes about young men who follow neo Nazi organizations and in some cases commit horrendous crimes, including the brutal murder of a young gay Jewish man in Orange County, a central focus of his book. Eric Lischblau is a Washington based journalist and two time Pulitzer Prize winner who spent years working for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. He's written three previous books, including the bestseller, The Nazis Next Door. His latest book is American Reich, A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and A New Age of Hate.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (49 minutes, 7,458 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.