I certainly see it in the conspiracy theories, whether it’s birtherism or fluoride in the drinking water. Birchers had a theory that fluoride was essentially poison and part of a Communist plot; that this was big government forcing people to put poison in their bodies.

And I see it in a more explicit racism. Trump had dinner with Ye and Nick Fuentes a couple months ago. Nick Fuentes, who is a Holocaust denier and white supremacist, recently said that his organization, the Groypers, is really an extension of the Birch Society. He called it a prelude to the Groypers.

The last area is a very hard-line culture-war stance, especially around issues of education, books, and what young people are being taught. The idea that progressive education and a rich exposure to a variety of texts and ideas and perspectives is fundamentally un-American—it tramples on the genius of American history and of the Republic—and that schools and libraries and texts that people are exposed to have to be policed.

-MATTHE DALLEK IN THE THE new Republic