Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism

by Rachel Maddow

Deatherage wasted no time in bringing von Gienanth up to speed on the current state of the Nazi-friendly movement in the United States. After five years of fits and starts, the train was finally starting to couple up boxcars from Boston and New York and Asheville and Wichita and Seattle and Los Angeles. The membership of the Militant Christian Patriots, the American League of Christian Women, the Christian Constitutionalists, the Defenders of Christian Civilization, the Christian Mobilizers, the Silver Shirts, the German American Bund, and Deatherage’s own Knights of the White Camelia, a brother organization of the Ku Klux Klan, were falling in line under the colors—and the swastika emblem—of the American Nationalist Confederation. The plan was for a centralized fascist confederation with a national headquarters and well-armed, well-trained paramilitary cells in crucial port cities like Boston, New York, Washington, Miami, Savannah, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.