How war came home: From 9/11 to the storming of the U.S. Capitol

Abstract This article reviews three recent books, each of which help establish connections between the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 and the storming of the U.S. Capitol in 2021. The review highlights the ways the 9/11 attacks amplified latent nativist and xenophobic currents in U.S. society. It also shows how the prosecution of the Global War on Terror militarized new sectors of American society while simultaneously undermining trust in government as economic convulsions, protracted overseas wars, and the Covid-19 pandemic adversely affected ordinary Americans. In the course of developing these arguments the review helps explain Donald Trump’s popular appeal and it shows how and why America may now be on the brink of a new civil war.