by Peter Adams
LSU Press
8/9/2023, hardcover
SKU: 9780807179925
Peter Adams's The Insurrectionist is the first comprehensive biography of Major General Edwin A. Walker, a figure who, in the 1950s and 1960s, became a leader of a far-right political movement known for its elaborate conspiracy theories, authoritarianism, and uncompromising white supremacy. Sixty years before the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Edwin Walker was charged with insurrection and seditious conspiracy. He was arrested on orders from the attorney general after leading a deadly riot against federal marshals as they protected the first African American student attempting to register at the University of Mississippi. Those who flocked to Walker's side believed an invisible government working with coconspirators in the Kremlin and United Nations would soon enslave America under a one-world dictatorship. Walker's deep state conspiracy theory has echoed through American political culture into the age of QAnon, finding a new home among today's far-right extremists.
Reviews:
"Based on in-depth archival research and theoretical insights, The Insurrectionist delivers crucial contexts for understanding the current assault on democratic institutions and thus for analyzing these forces in an epic and ongoing battle." -- Orville Vernon Burton, coauthor of Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court
"The world has long needed a political biography of Edwin A. Walker, the army general turned conservative hellraiser. Peter Adams's new book delivers in spades. Not only does The Insurrectionist make an important contribution to the growing literature on right-wing extremism, but Adams connects Walker's conspiratorial worldview and reactionary politics to the conservative radicalism reverberating throughout America today." -- John S. Huntington, author of Far-Right Vanguard: The Radical Roots of Modern Conservatism
About the Author:
Peter Adams teaches at Old Dominion University. He is the author of The Bowery Boys: Street Corner Radicals and the Politics of Rebellion and Politics, Faith, and the Making of American Judaism.