#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Rachel Maddow traces the fight to preserve American democracy
back to World War II when a handful of committed public servants and brave private citizens
thwarted far-right plotters trying to steer our nation toward an alliance with the Nazis.
“A ripping read—well rendered fast-paced and delivered with the same punch and assurance that
she brings to a broadcast. . . . The parallels to the present day are strong even startling.”—
The New York Times (Editors’ Choice) Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra
Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive
on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after
our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II a clandestine network flooded the country
with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading
Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis not against it. It was a sophisticated
and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions promote antisemitism
and destroy citizens’ confidence in their elected leaders with the ultimate goal of
overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule. That effort worked—tongue
and groove—alongside an ultra-right paramilitary movement that stockpiled bombs and weapons and
trained for mass murder and violent insurrection. At the same time a handful of
extraordinary activists and journalists were tracking the scheme exposing it even as it was
unfolding. In 1941 the U.S. Department of Justice finally made a frontal attack identifying
the key plotters finding their backers and prosecuting dozens in federal court. None of it
went as planned. While the scheme has been remembered in history—if at all—as the work of
fringe players in reality it involved a large number of some of the country’s most influential
elected officials. Their interference in law enforcement efforts against the plot is a dark
story of the rule of law bending and then breaking under the weight of political intimidation.
That failure of the legal system had consequences. The tentacles of that unslain beast have
reached forward into our history for decades. But the heroic efforts of the activists
journalists prosecutors and regular citizens who sought to expose the insurrectionists also
make for a deeply resonant deeply relevant tale in our own disquieting times.
