God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America
The Rise of the Parastate under Trump
This month, our book club is reading God, Guns & Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America, which I felt was one of the most timely books. Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware wrote the book. I did not know Bruce well, but I bumped into him now and again. While I was with the Bush Administration, he was in Iraq, at the Agency, and the DNI. Anyone working CT or GWOT had to have read “Inside Terrorism” (Bruce’s first book). It was basically “The Bible” of understanding Terrorism. Even now, it’s still considered the seminal work on the subject. I knew of his work, and I knew him by reputation. He’s a brilliant scholar and expert on terrorism and insurgency.
So, when his book came out and he was studying—and writing—about American Terrorism, it obviously caught my eye. I always thought about “MAGA” as a terrorist organization. I saw the parallels to Al Qaida, particularly in how MAGA are recruited, radicalized, and activated.
I realize that statement may be jarring, but if you understood how Al Qaida worked and removed for a moment its “ends” and looked at it as a machine, you would see the parallels.
I read this book when it first came out, and when I finished it, I was just beside myself.
I wanted to throw up. It was one of those moments where I was like, “Great,” and had this complete feeling of analytical exhaustion. I know I give readers of TLM that feeling more often than they’d like. Well, Bruce gave me that moment with this book. If you read the book (which, hopefully, you did), I’m sure you had similar moments of clarity about the true nature of MAGA and its nihilistic view about America.
The book has a moment that lands with more weight than the authors probably intended when they quoted an extremist leader who, reflecting on his movement’s growing influence, says:
“Why protest the government when you can be the government?”
When I read the book, it didn’t have much meaning. The book initially came out in the Summer of 2024.
Then came the wee hours of the morning of November 6, 2024.
That line explains American politics's last half decade better than most newspaper columns. It’s not just that the violent fringe survived January 6—it’s that they reconstituted inside the system. Elected, appointed, normalized.
This book is a sober, well-researched warning about the enduring infrastructure of domestic extremism. But in the months since its publication, that infrastructure hasn’t just endured—it’s been absorbed. The United States is no longer facing a rebellion against the state. It’s facing a version of the state being rewritten from within, using legal ambiguity, armed loyalty, and spiritual grievance as its new operating system.
This is why I have argued against Timothy Snyder and Bob Reich (among others) that this is not a coup. These people are the government, not attempting to overthrow a legitimately elected government.
The twist isn’t that these groups survived January 6 or the law enforcement crackdowns that followed. It’s that they learned from them. They adapted—not by retreating underground, but by burrowing into the machinery of the state.
They stopped storming the gates and started running for office. They got elected to school boards, county commissions, and state legislatures. They built legal defense funds, media platforms, and policy shops. And they learned to launder their ideology through the language of “parental rights,” “religious freedom,” and “election integrity.”
What was once considered extremist is now procedural. The new insurgency doesn’t wear camouflage or storm the Capitol. It files lawsuits, rewrites regulations, and chairs committees.
We saw how effective they were when suddenly USAID no longer existed.
The insurrection didn’t fail. It evolved. And it found a better strategy: legitimacy.
What Hoffman documented is no longer a threat. It’s a blueprint—one that’s already being followed in states across the country.
If you’ve ever wondered how insurgencies take power without winning a war, or how democracies collapse without a single moment of surrender—this is how.
🔒 For Paid Subscribers:
The Rise of the Parastate – How sheriffs, state AGs, and militias are no longer fringe—they’re the operating core of a parallel state.
Soft Secession in Real Time – Why “Constitutional Sheriffs” now function as sovereign authorities, defying federal law and deputizing ideology.
From Uniform Law to Fragmented Rule – What a “post-jurisdictional America” really looks like—and why your rights now change county to county.
DHS Task Forces and the New Internal Warfare – The federal arm of parastate power: how Homeland Security is repurposing counterterrorism tools for regime enforcement.
What Hoffman Missed – The structural evolution from terrorism to governance, and why this isn’t insurgency anymore—it’s infrastructure.
If you want to understand how authoritarianism actually works in America—not in theory, but on paper, with budgets and badges—this is the rest of the story.