“The Alt-Right has been declared the winner. The Alt-Right is more deeply connected to Trumpian populism than the ‘conservative movement,’” Richard Spencer tweeted as the election results rolled in on November 8. “We’re the establishment now.” The loosely organized, yet newly emboldened, white nationalist coalition Spencer lays claim to as president and director of the […]

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I was curious, so I did a bit of research on theories about why great civilizations fall. Some scholars point to the danger of overextended militaries, others on overwhelmed bureaucracies. Sometimes the key factor is declines in public health, often caused by agricultural crises. Political corruption is another contender, as are inflated currencies, technological inferiority, […]

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This January marks my 20th anniversary writing about the American right wing as a historian and a journalist. Wearing my historian’s hat, I’ve documented lunatic John Birch Society members convinced that President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a “conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy”; underground militias stockpiling guns against imminent Communist invasion, threatening death to congressmen […]

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CityCenterDC takes up four square blocks in the heart of downtown Washington. The mixed-use development was built atop the rubble of the former Washington Convention Center, a brutalist concrete structure that was demolished in 2004. The hulking complex had been a testament, of sorts, to an era when Washington wasn’t just America’s capital but its […]

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There was a moment of reckoning on election night when the enormity and irreversibility of what was taking place across the nation hit home with the force of a jackhammer. The talking heads were looking at two state maps, first Pennsylvania and after that Wisconsin, both enlarged on the screen so that each state was […]

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