American history since 1865 can be divided into two competing, at times intersecting, but often opposing stories: Reconstructionist versus Redemptionist. Reconstructionists are supporters of multiracial democracy who believe in building a beloved community where E Pluribus Unum becomes the lived reality of the body politic in the form of guaranteed dignity and citizenship for all. Redemptionists are advocates of white supremacy and supporters of the Lost Cause ideology that has permeated American history textbooks since the nineteenth century, maintaining the Big Lie of Black inferiority and criminality.
In the first of the book’s three parts, aptly titled “Undermining Democracy,” Richardson traces the political disfigurement of twenty-first century conservatives back to anti-New Dealers of the 1930s, some of whom, like the signatories of the 1937 anti-New Deal “Conservative Manifesto,” openly embraced an extremist states’ rights philosophy—in this way, I would argue, extending and amplifying the Lost Cause myth that would be resuscitated in the twenty-first century. In so doing, these Redemptionists of their time adhered closely to the ideals of the Confederate States of America—that, as Richardson writes, “people are inherently unequal and some should rule the rest”—well into the twentieth century. But the emerging liberal consensus that came out of the New Deal and the Second World War helped to institutionalize aspects of multiracial democracy that had been stymied during Reconstruction. The civil rights movement breathed new meaning and substance into the Declaration of Independence, the founding documents, and the very ideal of the American Dream.
After the success of the civil rights movement, though, conservatives organized in unprecedented and effective ways to roll back the political achievements and expansive democratic thrust that marked the nation’s Second Reconstruction. “Movement conservatives”—a blend of think tank-backed intellectuals, wealthy oligarchs, elected leaders, and grassroots activists—embarked on a half-century-long quest to overhaul America’s democratic institutions by making them less responsive to voters, suppressing Blacks and other people of color, and stirring up racial divisions and stoking political polarization to win elections.
Richardson explores the history of movement conservatives in the book’s second part, “The Authoritarian Experiment,” which persuasively draws a throughline from Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump. The main culprit here is Trump, and his naked attacks on racial equality, social justice, and the rule of law in favor of transforming the nation into an authoritarian kleptocracy, complete with staffing his White House with unqualified family, cronies, and friends who left the nation weaker and more vulnerable to attacks from within by white supremacists and without by Russian cyberwarfare that managed to successfully use disinformation to help defend Trump from a litany of charges.