“American Reich” Richly Details the Circumstances of the Blaze Bernstein Murder

If you want your new year's reading to hit the ground running with somber and sobering content, look no further than the investigative journalism into the murder of gay, Jewish teen Blaze Bernstein in American Reich: A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate by Eric Lichtblau. As Elon Green says in his New York Times review, "American Reich is queasily of the moment, and evokes our present reality with frightening detail. One can only hope that someday its subject is relegated to the past."

The writing and publication of non-fiction, especially investigative crime journalism, can be tricky in its timing. "The author has no notion whether the work that has eaten up nights and weekends will be timely upon publication. Or, indeed, if that’s even desirable." Green goes on to say that this story, of a Bernstein and his new-Nazi murderer, who was also a former classmate, would hopefully be one of an "unenlightened" past, and not a story that is sadly contemporary. Unfortunately, the murder and its players, which took place in 2018, are tragically in today's headlines.

Blaze Bernstein was nineteen when he responded to flirtatious messages from his former classmate, Sam Woodward, to meet and catch up on old times over a winter break in southern California. They were raised in Orange County, a bastion of conservative thought and burgeoning MAGA ideals, “a petri dish for young white supremacists anxious to take back their culture from minorities.” Bernstein knew he was gay by the time he left high school. Ironically, he was also aware of Woodward's political leanings. Woodward made it known how he felt about gays, Jews, and minorities, being raised in a house rife with ultra-right-wing thought and the requisite Confederate flags and "anti-woke" sentiments. As Lichtblau writes, his father worried that "homosexuals" would "convert" his son.

Green says that Lichblau's portrait of Woodward and his homelife is simplistic and clichéd, but that speaks more to the lack of imagination of the contemporary Nazi movement that Woodward adhered to. He belonged to the group Atomwaffen Division, your typical online muckrakers spurred on by their aversion to the Obama administration. Trump, of course, plays throughout Lichblau's dissection of ideologies and intentions in the group, and in Bernstein's murder.

Why Bernstein agrees to meet up with Woodward will forever remain a mystery, though Lichblau makes the case that there was a fascination with his former classmate. He apparently told a friend that should the meeting turn into a sexual hook-up, it would be "legendary."

Green writes that one of Lichblau's greatest strengths in his book is situating Woodward's Atomwaffen within the greater framework of recent Neo-Nazi movements and the rise of hate crimes since Trump's first term as president. He does say that this can also work as a weakness for the story of Bernstein, whose own story disappears a bit in the mass of crime reporting in the book, as Lichtblau works to portray the enormity of the picture of rising hate crimes. But the larger picture is just as important as Bernstein's personal one. As Green encapsulates: "In the years leading up to Bernstein’s death, Woodward and his compatriots were in thrall to Trump, taking his words as a tacit endorsement to kill." But Lichblau knows where to lay the tacit blame.

Woodward was given life in prison without the possibility of parole.

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