“They weaponized the fear, and the fear became institutionalized, and we internalized it.” — Janet Reitman
Back in 2022, the ex-Marine Elliot Ackerman came on the show to talk about The Fifth Act, his account of America’s humiliating end in Afghanistan. The New York Times Magazine contributing writer Janet Reitman’s new book, The Inheritance, also imagines post-9/11 America as a tragedy in five acts. But, in contrast with Ackerman’s military account, The Inheritance is an American story, focusing on what Reitman sees as the tragic fate of the country since September 11, 2001.
Reitman watched the towers come down from her Brooklyn rooftop and later found pieces of American Airlines in-flight meals that had drifted across the river and landed in front of her building. She is unambiguous about what came next. The world was with America, she reminds us, but instead we sought violent, often irrational revenge. She was in Iraq on bases displaying NEVER FORGET posters for a war that had nothing to do with the thing we weren’t supposed to forget.
To understand post-9/11 America, Reitman borrows George Packer’s method of quilting individual stories into a single narrative. So she writes about people like Nathan Damigo, a Marine who went to Iraq to avenge 9/11, came home with a condition the Corps denied existed, self-medicated, was cut loose without his benefits, went to prison, and concluded in his cell that the only family he could count on was his white race. So he founded Identity Evropa and became one of the leaders at Charlottesville.
While Reitman sees an American tragedy in a square-jawed veteran like Damigo, she doesn’t present him as a victim. Other characters in Reitman’s story are idealists — an FBI agent who leaks information because he believes citizens ought to know, a lawyer who spends twenty years defending Muslim clients — and not one of them, she says, regrets their choices. Much might have fallen on 9/11, but not individual agency. So while this post-9/11 history might be tragic, Janet Reitman’s The Inheritance remains a classically American story.
FIVE TAKEAWAYS
1. There was another road. The world was with America, and the question on the table was why so much of the world didn’t love it. The answer given was “they hate us for our freedom”, which is no answer. What followed was revenge — and then Iraq, which had nothing to do with it.
2. The worst of it was the home front: a small number sent to fight while everyone else went shopping and thanked them for their service. The thanks never came with a job, housing or a medical bill. And the fear was spread deliberately, then institutionalised, then internalised.
3. Nathan Damigo is the line from Iraq to Charlottesville. Marine, PTSD the Corps denied existed, prison, cut loose without his benefits — and a conclusion reached in a cell that the only family he could count on was his race. He founded Identity Evropa.
4. The looped footage was indoctrination. Her lawyer character spent a year walking into shops and seeing the towers fall again under the words never forget, and asked what it was doing to people. It connected everybody to one moment, and made them angry.
5. Her characters aren’t the ones who lost agency — we are. An FBI agent who leaks on principle, a lawyer defending Muslim clients for twenty years, a contractor who thought he was doing good. Not one regrets it. Own what was done, then don’t give up on the country.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Janet Reitman is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a former contributing editor at Rolling Stone, where she reported extensively on American extremism, including the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division. She covered the Iraq war from Baghdad and from forward bases in 2004 and 2005. Her first book, Inside Scientology, was published in 2011. The Inheritance: An American Tragedy in Five Acts is published by Random House. She lives in Springs, New York.
ABOUT KEEN ON AMERICA
Keen On America is a daily conversation about the ideas, books and arguments shaping the United States, hosted by Andrew Keen, author of The Internet Is Not the Answer and How to Fix the Future. New episodes every day.
CHAPTERS
00:00 — Intro
00:30 — A falling country
01:25 — A tragedy in five acts
01:59 — George Packer and the model for the book
04:43 — Was the response an overreaction?
05:31 — The road America didn’t take
08:08 — Nathan Damigo goes to Iraq
09:20 — “Democracy sucks”
10:21 — Identity Evropa and Charlottesville
12:13 — A few go to war; the rest go shopping
13:42 — Weaponising fear
14:28 — Why 71% of Americans are tired
19:35 — Hobbes, and a nation of fear
23:07 — The idealists
23:45 — The FBI agent, and why he leaked
25:17 — Why the book opens with Vicki Weaver
27:21 — The boy, his father and the AR-15
30:51 — Atomwaffen
35:04 — Watching from a Brooklyn rooftop
36:06 — Marlo Cadeddu and the loop
42:04 — What hope looks like
42:49 — “Don’t give up on this country”