American Pogroms

Amidst heightened rhetoric and increasing polarization in the United States, American Pogroms chronicles the causes and consequences of two centuries of mob violence in American history, highlighting exactly what's at stake when we allow leaders to legitimate violence and the mob to rule. For much of American history, members of the majority population of the United States indiscriminately attacked and terrorized minority communities. In some parts of the country, mob violence seemed a near-constant part of the regions history, while in others it was a brief, horrific spasm that perpetrators—but not victims—quickly forgot. In American Pogroms, terrorism expert Daniel Byman argues that there is a word for this type of communal violence: pogrom. Although pogroms are historically associated with the orchestrated campaigns of anti-Jewish violence in Tsarist Russia, Byman asserts that pogroms have been an all-too-frequent feature of American history. Tracing two centuries of communal violence, Byman recounts cases of attacks against American religious minorities such as Catholics and Mormons, the killing of thousands of ethnic Mexicans in Texas, the murder and wholesale expulsion of Chinese workers from the American West, and the repeated attacks on the Black community that killed thousands and enabled decades of brutal discrimination. In all these cases, pogroms helped cement a system of injustice that left religious, ethnic, and racial minorities politically and economically marginalized. While the idea of mob violence now strikes most Americans as unthinkable, Byman warns that increased polarization and selective news consumption in recent years has coarsened discourse and legitimized violence, raising the risk that at least some violence will return. A broad-ranging synthesis of how and why majorities have so frequently resorted to community-level violence to restore or cement their power, American Pogroms illustrates the outsized role of violence in U.S. history and how it shapes the country today.

Daniel Byman is a Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and the Director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He was previously a U.S. government analyst, staff member on the 9/11 Commission, and a Senior Advisor to the State Department. A widely published and nationally recognized expert on terrorism and political violence, Byman is the author of ten books, including Spreading Hate and Road Warriors.