You are to be forgiven if you've never been taught about "Vigilante Democracy" in K-12 or higher education, although it is rooted in the founding of the United States, and was prominent throughout the antebellum era, as well as the pivotal influence during a century of domestic terrorism after the Civil War.
No single book appearing on JPR has endeavored to capture the full complexity of how Vigilante Democracy works through both extralegal and legal means in America as does ""
Co-author Jon Michaels joins the Exchange to dive deep into the details laid out in the book he wrote with co-author, David Noll.
Publisher Simon & Schuster :
"Vigilante Nation tells this story of the American Right marginalizing, subordinating, and disenfranchising the increasingly diverse and cosmopolitan members of the American polity. This book exposes the vigilantes鈥� plans, explains their methods鈥攅verything from book bans to anti-abortion bounties to attacks on government proceedings, including elections鈥攁nd underscores the stakes. Now that supporters of democratic equality are numerous and dexterous enough to finally secure the broad promises of the civil rights revolution, the race is on for Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and the architects of Project 2025 to subvert our democracy before a countermovement can rise up to thwart their insidious plans." BOOK
EXCERPT: "...just as the term extralegal vigilantism is no redundancy, legal vigilantism is far from an oxymoron. "We're less familiar with this latter style of vigilantism, but throughout most of our nation's history, legal vigilantism was not only commonplace, but also a foundational feature of our political, social, and economic life. This was certainly true in antebellum America, when state and federal laws authorized plantation owners, bounty hunters, and other agents to ruthlessly enforce and uphold slaveocracy.
"And it was just as true during the long decades of Jim Crow, when lawmakers, judges, sheriffs, mayors, and governors devised vicious legal devices that relied on private actors to expand and intensify state efforts to reinstall and then perpetuate white supremacy.
"January 6 was extralegal, for sure. There was no authority for MAGA diehards to impede the business of Congress, to hang Vice President Mike Pence, to get the "Big Jew" (a reference to Senator Chuck Schumer), or "shoot" House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Harry Dunn and his fellow Capitol Police officers were hardly looking the other way. And the Justice Department has prosecuted hundreds of trespassers, rioters and insurrectionists. The plan for January 7 - and beyond - was to legalize it.
"This would be no small feat given the cultural, economic, and demographic tides lifting the prospects of Black and brown Americans, non-Christians, LGBTQ+ persons, and women who consider themselves the equals of men in both the domestic and commercial sphere.
"To that end, menacing campaigns of harassment and violence couldn't be limited to big political events -- rallies, voter registration drives, and election days. Those would be swept in, for the sake of completeness, but they'd hardly be enough. Private enforcement of the ancien regime would instead have to be an "everyday crusade." And it would have to operate across different domains, using different tools, and targeting different constituencies who threaten white Christian political and cultural hegemony."
Jon Michaels is a UCLA professor of law specializing in constitutional, administrative, and national-security law. His award-winning scholarship has been published in The Yale Law Journal, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, and the Harvard Law Review; his popular essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, and The Forward. A Yale Law graduate and former Supreme Court clerk, Michaels is a member of the American Law Institute, serves on the advisory board of UCLA鈥檚 Safeguarding Democracy Project, and is a faculty affiliate of UCLA鈥檚 Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy. His first book, Constitutional Coup, was published by Harvard University Press.
David Noll is the associate dean for faculty research and development and a professor of law at Rutgers Law School. His scholarly writings on civil procedure, complex litigation, and administrative law have appeared in the California Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the New York University Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, and the Texas Law Review, among others, and his popular writing has appeared in venues including The New York Times, Politico, Slate, and the New York Law Journal. A graduate of Columbia University and New York University School of Law, Noll is an academic fellow of the National Institute for Civil Justice. He clerked on the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
