Appendix A: The Research This book is based on a kind of research sociologists describe as “exploratory” and “hypothesis generating.” The goal of it is not to see how common or rare something is, or where one does and doesn’t find it, or to study how the something comes and goes through time—although I draw on the research of others who address such questions. My goal has been to discover what that something actually is. I’ve long been fascinated by the emotional draw of right-wing politics; that’s my “something.” It took getting close and that determined my choice of method.
