On the Shelf
American Reich: A Homicide in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate
By Eric Lichtblau
Little Brown and Firm: 352 pages, $30
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Have you ever heard of Orange County? It’s the place the great Republicans go earlier than they die.
It ought to come as no shock that Orange County, a beloved county for the grandfather of contemporary American conservatism, Ronald Reagan, could be the fertile panorama for far-right ideology and white supremacy. Reaganomics apart, the O.C. has lengthy since held a particular if not barely off-putting place, of oceanfront leisure, trendy luxurious and all-American household leisure — famed by hit reveals (“The Actual Housewives of Orange County,” “The O.C.” and “Laguna Seaside,” amongst others). Even crime in Orange County has been sensationalized and glamorized, with themes veneered by opulence, secrecy and illusions of suburban perfection. To Eric Lichtblau, the Pulitzer Prize winner and former Los Angeles Occasions reporter, the true story is far-right terrorism — and its unstated grip on the county’s story.
“One of many causes I made a decision to give attention to Orange County is that it’s not the norm — not what you consider because the Deep South. It’s Disneyland. It’s California,” Lichtblau says. “These are people who find themselves attempting to take again America from the shores of Orange County as a result of it’s gotten too brown of their view.”
His latest investigative e-book, “American Reich,” focuses on the 2018 homicide of homosexual Jewish teenager Blaze Bernstein as a lens to look at Orange County and the way the hate-driven homicide by the hands of a former classmate connects to a nationwide net of white supremacy and terrorism.
I grew up a number of miles away from Bernstein, attending a performing arts college much like his — and Sam Woodward’s. I bear in mind the early discovery of the homicide the place Woodward grew to become a suspect, adopted by the information that the case was being investigated as a hate crime. The homicide adopted the information cycle for years to come back, however in its protection, there was a scarcity of continuity in seeing how this occasion match right into a broader sample and historical past ingrained in Orange County. There was a bar down the road from me the place an Iranian American man was stabbed only for not being white. The seaside park of Marblehead, the place associates and I visited for homecoming images throughout sundown, was reported as a morning meet-up spot for neo-Nazis in skeleton masks coaching for “white unity” fight. These had been simply a few of the myriad occasions Lichtblau explores as signs of one thing extra unsettling than one-offs.
Samuel Lincoln Woodward, of Newport Seaside, speaks together with his lawyer throughout his 2018 arraignment on homicide prices within the loss of life of Blaze Bernstein.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Occasions)
Lichtblau started the e-book in 2020, within the midst of COVID. He wished to discover a place emblematic of the nationwide epidemic that he, like many others, was witnessing — a few of the highest file of anti-Asian assaults, assaults on Black, Latino and LGBTQ+ communities, and rising extremist rhetoric and actions.
“Orange County type of match plenty of these packing containers,” Lichtblau says. “The horrible tragedy with Blaze Bernstein being killed by one among his highschool classmates — who had been radicalized — mirrored a rising brazenness of the white supremacy motion we’ve seen as a complete in America in recent times.”
Bernstein’s loss of life had been solely two years prior. The Ivy League pupil had agreed to satisfy former classmate Woodward one night throughout winter break. The 2 had by no means been shut; Woodward had been a lone wolf throughout his temporary time on the Orange County College of the Arts, earlier than transferring as a result of college’s liberalness. On two separate events through the years, Woodward had reached out to Bernstein underneath the pretense of grappling together with his personal sexuality. Bernstein had no thought he was being baited, or that his former classmate was a part of a sprawling underground community of far-right extremists — linked to mass shooters, longtime Charles Manson followers, neo-Nazi camps, and on-line chains the place members bonded over a shared fantasy of harming minorities and beginning a white revolution.
“However how is that this occurring in 2025?”
These networks didn’t seem out of nowhere. They’d lengthy been planted in Orange County’s soil, main again to the early 1900s when the county was dwelling to sprawling orange groves.
Mexican laborers, who shaped the spine of the orange-grove financial system (second to grease and producing wealth that even rivaled the Gold Rush), had been met with violence when the unionized laborers wished to strike for higher situations. The Orange County sheriff, additionally an orange grower, issued an order. “SHOOT TO KILL, SAYS SHERIFF,” the banner headline within the Santa Ana Register learn. Chinese language immigrants additionally confronted violence. They’d performed a big function in constructing the county’s state of governance, however had been blamed for a case of leprosy, and on the suggestion of a councilman, had their neighborhood of Chinatown torched whereas the white residents watched.
Gideon Bernstein and Jeanne Pepper Bernstein, heart, mother and father of Blaze Bernstein, converse throughout a information convention after a 2018 sentencing for Samuel Woodward at Orange County Superior Court docket.
(Jeff Gritchen/Pool / Orange County Register)
Main as much as the brand new millennium introduced an onslaught of white energy rock popping out of the county’s music scene. Members with shaved heads and Nazi memorabilia would dance to rage-fueled declarations of white supremacy, clashing, if not worse, with non-white members of the neighborhood whereas listening to lyrics like, “When the final white strikes out of O.C., the American flag will go away with me… We’ll die for a land that’s yours and mine” (from the band Youngland).
A veteran and member of one among Orange County’s white energy bands, Wade Michael Web page, later murdered six congregants at at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012.
“It’s come and gone,” says Lichtblau, who seen these currents shifting within the early 2000s — and through the years, when Reagandland broke in sure components to turn out to be purple. Even with sights of blue amid purple, Trump on the panorama introduced a brand new wave — one which Lichtblau explains was fueled by “claiming their nation again” and “capturing the second that Trump launched.”
It may be onerous to fathom the fact: that the Orange County of white supremacy exists alongside an Orange County formed each economically and culturally by its immigrant communities, the place since 2004, the majority of its residents are individuals of shade. Then once more, to anybody who has spent appreciable time there, you’ll discover the unusual cognitive dissonance amongst its cultural panorama.
It’s a peculiar sight to see a MAGA stand promoting nativist slogans on a Spanish-named road, or Accomplice flags behind pickup vans pulling into the parking numerous neighborhood taquerias or Vietnamese pho retailers for a meal. Or a few of the households who’ve lived within the county for generations nonetheless using Latino staff, but inside their dwelling rooms Fox Information might be enjoying alarmist rhetoric about “Latinos,” alongside Reagan-era memorabilia proudly displayed alongside framed Bible verses. This cut up actuality — a multicultural neighborhood and one of many far-right — oddly fills the framework of a county born from a cut up with its neighbor, L.A., solely to develop an aggressive identification in opposition to stated neighbor’s perceived liberalness.
It’s this cultural rejection that led to “the orange curtain” or the “Orange County bubble,” which recommend these racially-charged ideologies keep contained or, exhaustingly, echo throughout the county’s sphere. Quite the opposite, Lichtblau has seen how these white suburban views spill outward. Look no additional than the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, additionally the e-book’s launch date.
Whereas widespread perception may assume these insurrectionists got here from deeply conservative areas, it was truly the opposite, as Lichtblau explains. “It was from locations like Orange County,” he says, “the place the voting patterns had been seeing probably the most shift.” Some may argue — adamantly or reluctantly — that Jan. 6 was merely a stop-the-steal protest gone fallacious, a momentary lapse or mob mentality. However Lichtblau sees one thing a lot bigger. “This was white satisfaction on show. There was plenty of neo-Nazi stuff, together with plenty of Orange County individuals stuff.”
As a society, it’s been collectively determined to anticipate the profile of the lone wolf killer, the outcast, sporting an identification strung from the illusions of a white man’s oppression — the kind to rail in opposition to unemployment advantages however nonetheless money the test. Somebody like Sam Woodward, minimize from the vestiges of the as soon as venerable conservative Americana household, the kind of God-fearing Christians who, as “American Reich” research within the Woodward family, train and bond over ideological hate, and even whereas entrenched in a homicide case, constantly attain out to the sufferer’s household to the purpose the place the choose has to intervene. The existence of those suburban households is understood, as is the slippery hope one won’t ever cross paths with them on this ever-spinning spherical of American roulette. However neither these people nor their hate crimes are random, as Lichtblau discusses, and the lone wolves aren’t as alone as assumed. These underground channels have lengthy been ingrained within the American groundscape like landmines, now reactivated by a far-right digital panorama that connects these members and multiplies their ideologies on a nationwide degree. Lichtblau’s new investigation goes past the paradigm of Orange County to point out a deeper cultural epidemic that’s been taking form.
Beavin Pappas is an arts and tradition author. Raised in Orange County, he now splits his time between New York and Cairo, the place he’s at work on his debut e-book.
