George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party, was an Ivy League-educated officer who served for over a decade in the U.S. Navy.

He was OF-5, for the record. https://twitter.com/LPDonovan/status/1347919422300811274

The demographic profile of the insurrectionists is also functionally identical to the membership base of the John Birch Society in the 1960s and 1970s.

I mean, the basic thesis of my book project is that the far right and American conservatism are deeply intertwined and draw from the same social basis of support.

The "respectable" types often overlap with the so-called "fringe."

There's nothing new about this -- the White Citizens' Councils, the public, "responsible" alternative to the Ku Klux Klan in the American South during the 1950s and 1960s, were violent white supremacist organizations that drew from the "respectable" classes.

One of the reasons I've come down on the "it's okay to use the word 'fascism'" side of the "is it fascism?" debate is that it's important to understand that this is the same social base as, well, fascist movements, both in the United States and other countries!

And of course the Republican establishment is now going to embrace the language of fascism precisely because it denies their own culpability in supporting fascism!

This is what they did in the '40s and '50s!

William F. Buckley, Jr. *HATED* being called a fascist and repeatedly threatened to sue people who called him one (including Gore Vidal in their infamous exchange during the Democratic National Convention in August 1968).

But Buckley supported the racial apartheid state in the American South! He supported Franco! His father, William F. Buckley, Sr., was also a Francoist and an infamous antisemite to boot!

Hell, Buckley even (briefly) employed Rockwell to sell NATIONAL REVIEW on college campuses!

This was all *intertwined*!