Dave Davies

His new book is American Reich, A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate.

We'll be back after this short break.

This is Fresh Air.

Your book is really about this dramatic rise in hate crimes and hate groups and their activities.

The FBI over time and other federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security did become more focused on hate groups.

What was the effect of those efforts?

I guess this would have been during the Biden administration and during the first Trump administration too, I think, you know.

Well, the pardons of the January 6th writers was a pretty powerful statement, wasn't it?

It's interesting that a good part of your career or at least two of the books that you've previously written have dealt with the original Nazis in Germany.

Your book, The Nazis Next Door, was about how the United States government had eased the way for so many Nazis to come in and

live lives in the United States, including people who'd been involved in various aspects of the Holocaust and other deprivation of rights.

And then another book was about a Holocaust survivor who became an American GI and did some amazing stuff undercover in Germany.

I'm wondering, as you've done this research, if you've reflected on the similarities and differences between the neo-Nazis of the United States and the Nazis that took power in Germany.

Well, let me offer one counterpoint to something that would be a little bit encouraging, and this comes from your book.

I mean, you tell the story of Haijun Si, I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly, a Chinese-born businessman who settles in a community in Orange County, in Ladera Ranch.

He's a new arrival for Asians in that community, and he has kids banging on his doors all hours of the day or night, dumping trash, yelling at him.

Everything's horrible stuff.

And then a neighbor, Layla Parks—

hears about this is mortified.

She organizes patrols, which so many people want to sign up that they can't even – they have too many to fill the shifts.