An urgent call for a different approach to policing and containing radical right-wing violence.
A former FBI agent examines what he says are the agency’s failures to monitor and thwart the radical right.
The FBI, German holds, “refuses to prioritize investigations of violence by white supremacists.” Instead, he adds, the bureau focuses on less dangerous groups such as Black Lives Matter, even though “far-right militants have committed over one hundred deadly acts just since the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.” Notable among those acts was the storming of the Capitol, about which, just as with that rally, the agency had plenty of advance intelligence but did not act on it, German says—even as one Washington hotel, sensing trouble, chose to close its bar, popular among Proud Boys and their ilk, between Jan. 4 and 6. If a bar can do it, why can’t the feds? German suggests that intelligence failures have a willful component: In the Trump era, he holds, “law enforcement bias became much more overt,” and that bias was all too often tilted against minorities and inclined to overlook violence perpetrated by white supremacists and the far right; indeed, German notes, he left the agency after whistleblowing on the FBI’s post-9/11 focus on “perceived threats from Muslim, Black, Native American, and immigrant activists, environmentalists, and progressive protest groups” instead of real threats from white supremacists. As a result, German holds, these groups have become emboldened. Serious systematic and institutional reforms are needed, says German, who, now a policy fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, urges, “It is time for the FBI to reverse its shift toward broad intelligence collection about innocent Americans and to refocus investigations where facts establish reasonable indications of violence and criminality.”
An urgent call for a different approach to policing and containing radical right-wing violence.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781620977064
Page Count: 336
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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