He shot Communists in Vietnam — why not in Greensboro?

“[‘Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America’]  sprang from [Kathleen] Belew’s research on a 1979 anti-Ku Klux Klan rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, in which five members of the Communist Workers Party were murdered. A comment by one of the killers, who was among a group of Klansmen and neo-Nazis, stuck with her: ‘I shot communists in Vietnam. Why wouldn’t I do that here?’

” ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about that,’ Belew said. ‘It collapsed peace time and war time, front lines and home fronts, and different kinds of enemies. I looked through the archive generated by this movement, and that was pervasive throughout the materials. The Vietnam War was a major force in uniting this social movement.’ ”

— From “In new book, UChicago historian examines rise of white power movement” at History News Network (May 2)