I’ve been watching, reading, and thinking about the fractures in American democracy for several years now — through the lens of a citizen, an educator, a media literacy teacher, and a veteran who took the same oath every person featured in this documentary once swore. So when I say that Against All Enemies (2023) is the single most important documentary I’ve seen for understanding how and why we arrived at our current political moment, I mean it without reservation.
The film was directed by Charlie Sadoff and produced by journalist Sebastian Junger and veteran advocate Ken Harbaugh. You can watch the full documentary — reposted to YouTube by ENDEVR under the title “The Rise of Militias: Is the USA on the Brink of Civil War?” — for free:
📺 Watch: Against All Enemies (ENDEVR / YouTube)
Why This Film Matters
One of the most dangerous myths about January 6th, 2021 is that it was an anomaly — a one-off eruption of mob anger that has since passed. Against All Enemies systematically dismantles that myth. Through meticulous historical research and personal testimony from veterans on every side of the crisis, the film traces a continuous thread from post-Vietnam white power organizing, through Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, through the rise of the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and Three Percenters, straight to the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
This is not a comfortable film. It shouldn’t be.
One of its most urgent arguments is structural: America has never passed domestic terrorism legislation, which means law enforcement cannot pursue the networks behind political violence — only individual perpetrators. As one expert explains, “You need a hot body in order to start an investigation.” Meanwhile, the film shows how these movements deliberately recruit military veterans precisely because of the legitimacy, training, and institutional credibility they carry.
The film also connects the dots across American history in ways that our public schools rarely do — from the Reconstruction-era KKK’s deliberate campaign of election subversion, to the modern use of “election integrity” rhetoric as a vehicle for voter suppression, to the explicit role of social media in scaling extremist recruitment to a size that would have been impossible in previous generations.
What makes Against All Enemies so valuable for the “Hard History” category here at Heal Our Culture is its central premise: We cannot have a functioning democracy without a shared foundation of truth. Grievance narratives, as historian Dr. Kathleen Belew notes, are constructed, but they are potent. And once a significant portion of the electorate believes the very act of counting votes is illegitimate, we have already crossed into dangerous territory.
The Voices Worth Knowing
The film draws on a remarkable range of credible witnesses, who are also included (with photos) in the IMDB listing for “Against All Enemies.” These are the voices I’d encourage you to follow:
- Dr. Kathleen Belew — Associate Professor of History, Northwestern University; leading scholar of the American white power movement
- Gen. Stanley McChrystal (Ret.) — Former Commander, Joint Special Operations Command
- Ali Soufan — Former FBI Special Agent; Chairman & CEO, The Soufan Group
- Kristofer Goldsmith — Army veteran and researcher on veteran radicalization and extremism (Substack: “On Offense”)
- Rep. Jason Crow — U.S. Army Ranger veteran; U.S. Representative (CO-6)
- Rep. Mikie Sherrill — Former Navy pilot; U.S. Representative (NJ-11)
- Rep. Seth Moulton — Former Marine Corps Officer; U.S. Representative (MA-6)
- Michael Washington — Master Sergeant, USMC (Ret.); Veteran Mental Health Therapist
- Simon Clark — Author, Terror Vanquished; Director, Foreign Policy for America
- Denver Riggleman — Former Air Force Officer; Former U.S. Representative (VA-5); Jan. 6 Committee advisor
- Bill Kristol — Conservative commentator and co-founder, Defending Democracy Together, editor of The Bulwark
Referenced Reading
The documentary points toward several books referenced or closely connected to the film’s arguments:
- 📖 Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America by Kathleen Belew (Harvard University Press) — The essential academic history behind this film. Belew traces the modern white power movement from post-Vietnam trauma to Oklahoma City and beyond.
- 📖 Terror Vanquished: The Italian Approach to Defeating Terrorism by Simon Clark — A case study in how a democracy successfully dismantled a domestic terrorist movement, with direct lessons for the United States.
- 📖 Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance — Featured in the documentary as context for the cultural and economic grievances driving radicalization. Worth reading critically alongside the film.
- ⚠️ The Turner Diaries by William Luther Pierce — Content warning: this is a virulently racist, antisemitic novel. The documentary reveals that this text served as a literal operational blueprint for the January 6th attack. Do not seek it out, but do understand that it exists and that experts consider it the most dangerous piece of extremist literature in modern American history. No link provided.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Near the end of the film, one veteran says something I keep returning to: “The only way back — the only possibility of reconciliation — is a conversation that can occur in an environment of truth.”
That is the work of Heal Our Culture. It is not comfortable work. It requires us to look clearly at hard history without flinching… at the KKK’s century-long campaign of election subversion, the deliberate exploitation of returning veterans, the way social media has scaled recruitment for movements that were once fringe.
But looking clearly is the prerequisite for everything else. This has been one of my goals for the “Conspiracies and Culture Wars” Media Literacy Inquiry project which I started in 2019. That work continues today.
If you watch Against All Enemies, I encourage you to share it widely. Talk about it. Assign it. And then ask the question the film leaves us with: Which side of history do you want to be on?
Wes Fryer is a middle school STEM and media literacy teacher in Charlotte, NC, a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate, and the founder of HealOurCulture.org. Follow him on Mastodon and Substack.
Leave a Reply