This country’s deeply ingrained white supremacy and the resurgence of fascism have revealed themselves, last night, to be undeniably mutually reinforcing. When this antidemocratic and racist president was first elected I wrote here about The White Flight from American Democracy. I could not have imagined it would go so far as a mob storming the Capitol with matching red hats and corporate logos for flags. In the first few weeks of the administration, I outlined some of the ways that our field has been complicit in the rise of autocracy both here and around the world.
In this moment I want to share with you a close read of one institution. In this one institution even largely the work of one person in that institution–fascism, Nazism, and white supremacy present themselves tightly wound together at the core of a body of work and influence that stretches across decades. This may seem myopic in such a moment of bizarre crises. But I think we have had enough of the vague platitud