Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

Ray held two opinions that to him seamlessly cohered. On one hand, he condemned the Charlottesville KKK in no uncertain terms: “Those idiots with the flags—the American, Confederate, and Nazi flags all together—their whole white supremacist thing . . . How stupid can you get?” On the other hand, he also felt the white supremacists were giving the American and the Confederate flag “a bad rep,” since the latter represented the honor he felt should be properly accorded young men who defended a Southern “homeland” against a Northern “invader.” The homeland he imagined was very like that in which his own ancestors—poor white Kentucky farmers and horsemen—had grown up, and in which there were no slaves.