“Right-wing extremist” is a label that covers a lot of territory (radical Second Amendmentists, antitax and antigovernment extremists, radical Christians, in addition to a variety of white supremacist groups: Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi, skinhead), but it is a term that perhaps became unavoidable, at least as a practical matter, after Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal government building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168. This is a book written in the post–Oklahoma City period and is not primarily informed by post-9/11 concerns. It is largely descriptive and historical. Although it does make use of interest-group theory at points, this work is not organized around any specific social scientific theory-building agenda. George Michael provides a detailed survey of right-wing extremist groups and their activities (to include terrorism), as well as an account of the efforts of both the government and a wide array of private interest groups to resist and undermine their efforts. Perhaps most notable and interesting are 20 interviews Michael conducted with actors on all sides of this struggle (including William Pierce, chairman of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, and author of the novel The Turner Diaries, which served as a blueprint for McVeigh).

The story of right-wing extremism in America since World War II basically concerns the clear success of efforts, both public and private, to weaken these political protest groups. For example, in the 1960s, FBI Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) efforts reduced the Klan's numbers from about 14,000 to just over 4,000. Today, aggressive law-enforcement and civil suits by private groups hamper the organizational efforts of these groups in a variety of ways. Michael's summary of the major players and their history returns again and again to the decisive impact of persistent and effective disruption of these groups by outsiders.

As a source of terrorism, right-wing extremist groups are held responsible for 176 deaths, in addition to Oklahoma City, over the course of the 40-year period covered in this book (1958–98). Michael points out more than once that gang violence in one city (Los Angeles) in one year alone (1991) claimed more than 700 lives. One might wonder about this comparison, but his point is to put the actual threat of right-wing extremist violence into some sort of perspective. Generally speaking, he argues that “the domestic terrorist threat from both the Left and Right had largely evaporated by the mid-1980s” (p. 145). Although Oklahoma City and a number of other prominent events (Ruby Ridge, Waco) occurred in the 1990s, these were isolated episodes. For some time, right-wing extremist groups have been reduced, as a matter of organizational weakness and practical necessity, to a strategy of “leaderless resistance”: “No real terrorist infrastructure as such exists in the far-right milieu” (p. 125). Timothy McVeigh was thus a symbol of weakness, not strength.

To explain the weakness of right-wing extremist groups, Michael focuses on the immediate efforts of law-enforcement and various private groups to resist their progress. He emphasizes the role played by myriad private “watchdog” groups devoted largely or solely to resisting right-wing extremism in America. In addition to such well-known organizations as the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, more than 300 such groups are surveyed. Unlike those they monitor, these watchdog groups are well funded and well organized and enjoy public respectability, as well as easy access to political decision makers.

Private watchdog groups employ a number of strategies to combat right-wing extremists. Sometimes their efforts take the form of straightforward political advocacy and lobbying. But most controversial has been the successful use of civil lawsuits by watchdog groups to target far-right groups' financial assets. Because juries sympathize with victims of racist and other forms of hate-inspired violence, right-wing extremist groups have been held financially responsible for the actions of individuals who are affiliated with them in only the loosest way. The upshot has been to make the open operation of such groups practically impossible.

Some civil libertarians worry that this strategy could be used to stifle a wide variety of politically unpopular organizations and viewpoints in the future. The author shares this concern and indeed goes so far as to suggest a “double standard” in the American view of political persecution: At least in the period he studies, right-wing extremist groups face a higher “level of scrutiny” than do “left-wing and minority groups” (p. 193).

But here the limits of Michael's attempt to explain the status of right-extremist groups in terms of narrow, immediate causes (law enforcement, interest groups) without any reference to broader explanations from political culture and the context of recent history become apparent. There is another interpretation possible here, one that he begins to lay out at various points, suggesting the stamp of liberal democracy at every step in his story. Right-wing extremist groups, many of which are inspired to some degree by a radicalization of liberal democratic principles (Second Amendment, antitaxation, mistrust of the state), emerge out of a context in which they are, in important degrees, tolerated and even protected by the Constitution (speech and association). While government monitoring and intervention has worked to weaken these groups, American policy is nothing like the approach of some European democracies, which simply outlaw such groups. Instead, the main American opposition has come, fittingly, from civil liability lawsuits launched by other private associations, and, one hastens to add, from the obvious outlines of post–World War II and post-civil rights–movement political culture.

Confronting Right-Wing Extremism and Terrorism in the USA is a competent survey of American right-wing extremist groups and their organized opposition. Much more could have been said about the impact of 9/11 in particular—a cursory six-page treatment added to the conclusion does not do justice to the topic—but otherwise the treatment of the issues covered here is thorough and adequate to the needs of anyone wanting general familiarity with the subject matter.