ABSTRACT
Decades of talking to scary racists, hanging out underneath the horrifying sight of a Klan cross set ablaze, and spending the author's time trying to understand the most awful ideas in American politics had worn the author down intellectually and personally. White supremacism across the twentieth century was organized into identifiable racist groups that, with persistence and some luck, the author could locate and observe. But two things changed that made it harder to study. One was that increased government surveillance made racial extremists warier of scholars and less willing to provide access. In the wake of federal attention to networks of racist and anti-government zealots after the Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 attacks, prominent racist leaders realized that visible and connected groups were easily surveilled and infiltrated. The other change in white supremacism that made it difficult to study was its devolution into lone wolf actors.
