Portside

In The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition, Linda Gordon emphasizes broad patterns, making the book more timely than even the headlines of white nationalist outpourings the past months would suggest, writes Scott McLemee. What stands out in Gordon’s book is that the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s tried to create a world unto itself through spectacle, mass communications and branding.

Five books by neoliberal authors extolling glories that never were, the essayist eviscerates a state of mind that flatters a cosmopolitan liberal tolerance that has been more at home with nationalism, imperialism and even racism and a worldview that presupposes a chasm between civilized whites and uncivilized nonwhites. even accusing leftists of enabling racism by such affronts as squashing alleged dissimilar people together on buses, trains and subway cars.