Blood and Politics: History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream

Join us for a conversation on the paperback release after 17 years of Leonard Zeskind’s Blood and Politics: History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream, a sweeping history of white nationalism’s four-decade rise in America, and how it can help us understand our present moment.

Blood and Politics is Leonard Zeskind’s unprecedented sweeping history of white nationalism’s four-decade rise in America. Banned by The U.S. Naval Academy in April 2025, its re-release could not be more timely. Few American writers have been so thoroughly vindicated by events they spent their lives trying to prevent. Blood and Politics is now “essential to the understanding of our present moment” (Boston Globe). Blood and Politics continues to be a relevant compass to understanding the strategies that drive white nationalism forward. Join us for a discussion on how to stop the spread of the white nationalist movement’s racism and bigotry, to protect human rights and to foster real democracy – and to honor Zeskind’s long-time motto: Fighting Nazis’ can be fun!

About the Speakers: Carol Smith - Leonard's wife and partner of 46 years - offers reflections on the book and Zeskind's legacy. Devin Burghart - executive director of IREHR, has tracked the movement alongside Zeskind since 1991

About the Author: Leonard Zeskind (1949–2025) spent four decades researching – often in-person – the organizing by the white nationalist movement, from think tanks and publications to armed militia groups and Holocaust deniers. A MacArthur Fellow, he founded the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR) in 1983 to carry the work forward. Blood and Politics, published in 2009, remains the definitive account of the post–Civil Rights era white nationalist movement. An essential study of American racism, Blood and Politics is thorough, careful, and troublingly prescient.