Five years ago, still struggling to explain Donald Trump’s political success, The New York Times alighted on the 1619 Project, by which one could view Trump’s election as merely one manifestation of the racism that, per the project, has always de˜ned American life. Phrases such as white supremacy, systemic racism, and white privilege became conversational boilerplate, and to people of a certain cast of mind, it all suddenly seemed so obvious and simple.
John Ganz’s book is something of a 1990 Project: an attempt to locate the proximate origins of MAGA success in the combative and at times racially sordid right-wing fringe of the
