Reign of terror : how the 9/11 era destabilized America and produced Trump / Spencer Ackerman.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 345-416) and index.

Introduction: Neither peace nor victory -- Prologue : the worst terrorist attack in American history -- 9/11 And the security state -- 9/11 And the right -- Liberal complicity in the war on terror -- Obama, the security state, and the "sustainable" war on terror -- The right vs. Obama's war on terror -- The left vs. Obama's war on terror -- The decadent phase of the war on terror, the security state, and the rise of Trump -- Making the war on terror great again -- The invisible enemy.

"An examination of the profound impact that the War on Terror had in pushing American politics and society in an authoritarian direction for an entire generation, at home and abroad, the United States has waged an endless conflict known as the War on Terror. In addition to multiple ground wars, it has pioneered drone strikes and industrial-scale digital surveillance, as well as detaining people indefinitely and torturing them. These conflicts have yielded neither peace nor victory, but they have transformed America. What began as the persecution of Muslims and immigrants has become a normalized, paranoid feature of American politics and security, expanding the possibilities for applying similar or worse measures against other targets at home. A politically divided country turned the War on Terror into a cultural and then tribal struggle, first on the ideological fringes and ultimately expanding to conquer the Republican Party, often with the timid acquiescence of the Democratic Party. Today's nativist resurgence walked through a door opened by the 9/11 era. Reign of Terror will show how these policies created a foundation for American authoritarianism and, though it is not a book about Donald Trump, it will provide a critical explanation of his rise to power and the sources of his political strength. It will show that Barack Obama squandered an opportunity to dismantle the War on Terror after killing Osama bin Laden. That mistake turns out to have been portentous. By the end of his tenure, the war metastasized into a broader and bitter culture struggle in search of a demagogue like Trump to lead it. A union of journalism and intellectual history, Reign of Terror will be a pathbreaking and definitive book with the power to transform how America understands its national security policies and their catastrophic impact on its civic life"-- Provided by publisher.