When I first began to report on the “constitutional sheriff” movement—which claims that county sheriffs can decide which laws are constitutional or not—I decided that it was vital for me to understand why this movement appealed to a certain segment of the population, many of them the very same people who would become devoted supporters of Donald Trump.
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My first clue came at a “Patriotic Social Gathering” in rural Nevada that featured six currently-serving Nevada sheriffs who all identified as constitutional sheriffs. There, a woman handed me a hat which read “#UNRIG” across the front.
As I continued reporting, researching, and writing, I realized that this term “UNRIG”—a demand, a plea, and a social media marker, held the key. People flocked to the constitutional sheriff movement in 2020 because they felt the federal and state government had betrayed them, and they wanted to do something about it.
As I began writing The Highest Law in the Land, I realized I was questioning an official historical narrative, one that had mostly been written by sheriffs and their supporters. At the same Patriotic Social Gathering, the tour bus used by the constitutional sheriffs included images of a Native American, a cowboy on horseback, and a depiction of Mount Rushmore along the side.
History, widely acknowledged as deeply contested political territory, was core to understanding why so many people in a time of political turmoil, a pandemic, and an unprecedented distrust in public institutions had turned to the sheriff, the most familiar of figures, if also the least understood.
Not only did I need to read about the current political moment, I dove into the history and philosophy of the far-right in order to understand why the constitutional sheriff movement was so appealing and why it had experienced a resurgence in 2020.
Many of the books I read spanned from sociology to history to political theory, all of which helped me to understand what I was seeing. Constitutional sheriff ideology is not new, which is lucky because it meant I could draw upon so many writers and thinkers on the subject.
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Daniel Levitas, The Terrorist Next Door
Levitas, a writer, researcher, and lawyer, spent eight years in the Midwest researching right-wing efforts to recruit rural residents in the 1980s. His book focuses on a man named William Potter Gale, a racist and antisemite, who began the Posse Comitatus movement, which believed that the sheriff was the only rightful law enforcement officer in the country.
Drawing on Gale’s speeches and writings as well as multiple investigations into far-right violence, Levitas draws a picture of a primarily rural far -right movement they preyed upon people experiencing genuine social upheaval.
James Aho, Politics of Righteousness: Idaho Christian Patriotism
Aho is now a Professor Emeritus at Idaho State University, and his 1990 study of Posse Comitatus and the far-right in his home state is a remarkable testament to data collection and time spent on the ground among a community notoriously skeptical of academics and experts.
One of Aho’s most surprising finds is how ordinary members of the far-right are. They are not, he reminds the reader, less educated or more religious. In fact, they are just like all of us.
Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America
Butler is a leading historian of religion and her book addresses head on the racism wrapped within Christian nationalism, which is also a fundamental part of the constitutional sheriff movement. Her idea of “the promise of whiteness” helps to explain why the constitutional sheriff movement includes many people who are non-white, something I observed over and over.
Butler’s work cuts to the quick for anyone who wants to understand how racism intersects with the politics more generally, and the right in particular.
Amy Cooter, Nostalgia, Nationalism, and the US Militia Movement
Cooter spend years joining militias in the Midwest on their exercises in the wilderness as part of a study which, much like Aho’s book, humanizes members of militia movements while also analyzing them with clear eyes.
She points out that people belonging to militia groups do not necessarily see themselves as white supremacists nor even as particularly political, but that those who participate in militia-style exercises and comradery are seeking inclusions in the mythmaking that is America via a nostalgia that is both reactionary and utopian.
Sam Jackson, Oath Keepers: Patriotism and the Edge of Violence in a Right-Wing Antigovernment Group
Richard Mack, the founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, was a founding member of the Oath Keepers and close with Stuart Rhodes, who was sentenced to eighteen years for his role in January 6. Jackson’s book analyzes years of public statements and speeches (raw data that I accessed for my own research) to explain how the group produces a narrative that appeals to militia members.
As Jackson writes, the Oath Keepers “weaponized patriotism in an effort to subvert American democracy.”
Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home
Most people know by now that historian Belew’s book is necessary reading for anyone trying to understand the current state of politics. She defines the “white power movement,” which includes not just intentionally white supremacist groups but also extremist groups with ideologies that necessarily require an interpretation of history that relies upon whiteness.
Belew also defines the concept of “leaderless resistance,” which explains the political violence that comes from white power movements, but is not the result of direct orders from a primary leader from above. Her work helps to explain how extreme ideologies like the “Great Replacement Theory” become a mainstream part of American politics.
Carol Anderson, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America
As I worked on a book about sheriffs, gun continued to come up as a persistent issue. Sheriffs not only carry firearms themselves, like all police, but they also support civilian ownership of firearms to the extent that they are willing to defy state and federal laws. Constitutional sheriffs, almost all of whom are white men, would recite the Second Amendment by heart.
Yet, when police shot and killed Philando Castile, a Black gunowner, these sheriffs did not utter a word. Anderson exposes how the intent and contemporary use of the much-debated Second Amendment has always been about limiting citizenship rights to Black Americans. She links gun ownership to voting rights and, indeed, the very sense of what it means to be an American.
Robert H. Churchill, To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrants Face: Libertarian Political Violence and the Origins of the Militia Movement
Churchill, a historian of early America, takes what militias say and believe seriously. Through interviews with militia members, Churchill traces their version of American history to early American militias, which did engage in political violence, albeit in smaller displays than what we saw on January 6.
Such militia organizations did believe that violence against a tyrannical government was indeed legitimate and something the Founding Fathers contemplated, if not in word at least in popular culture. His work recognizes militias not as aberrations in an otherwise orderly country, but rather as an element of protest that has always questioned the legitimacy of the federal government.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment
Dunbar-Ortiz’s book, much like Anderson’s The Second, examine what the Second Amendment means in a country founded on settler-colonialism. In pointing out that most gun owners are white and male who claim to own guns for “self-protection,” she asks, “What are they afraid of?”
Her answer is found in the violence and genocide of Anglo settlers and the legacy of slavery. The way she tackles the inherent contradiction of the United States—a nation dedicated to democracy and equality but created through colonialism and enslavement—helped me think through how to see sheriffs as both democratically elected and antithetical to equality. Indeed, the sheriffs who support gun ownership are acting out an old tradition, racist violence.
Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America
While Barkun’s book was published in 2003, it is one of the first books to examine conspiracy theories and why they appeal to their adherents. Barkun defines two qualities of conspiracy theories: “millennialism,” or a belief in a final encounter between good and evil, and “stigmatized knowledge,” which we might now describe as “alternative facts” and includes vaccine skepticism and beliefs in UFOs.
What happens when democracy is replaced by conspiracy theories that question the very essence of expertise? Well, Barkun might say, we get Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. endorsing Donald Trump for president.
Catherine Wessinger, How the Millennium Comes Violently From Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate
Wessinger’s book, which is sadly out-of-print, presents case studies of millennialist new religious movements, including the Montana Freeman, a Christian militia/ sovereign citizen group descended from Posse Comitatus that engaged in an 81-day standoff with the FBI (similar to the Branch Davidians, which Wessinger also includes in her book).
Wessinger was involved in ending the stand-off peacefully, a notable difference from other similar incidents. Her book is sympathetic towards groups like the Freeman without ignoring the violent threats they pose; such groups seek “collective, terrestrial salvation,” she explains, in many echoes what we see on the far-right today.
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The Highest Law in the Land by Jessica Pishko is available via Dutton.
