There is nothing new about white supremacist groups in the U.S., or anti-Semitism, or people who defend the symbols of the Confederacy. (The “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.) From Richard Nixon’s “law and order” platform to Ronald Reagan’s invocation of the “welfare queen,” presidents (mostly Republican, at least in recent decades) have regularly appealed to white, conservative-leaning voters by playing up fears and stereotypes about African-Americans and other minority groups.
What is different about this iteration of white nationalism is how the movement is framing its ideas, and the place those ideas occupy in U.S. politics. CONT.
Perry Bacon Jr., FiveThirtyEight